Apple is laying off 614 employees based in California, the company announced in a WARN notice. The filing says that the workers were notified about their redundancy on March 28 and that they’ll be terminated on May 27.
While the iPhone maker didn’t state exactly which people would be losing their jobs, there is a strong possibility that those working on the self-driving car project are those being let go. It was reported in February that Apple was shutting down its car project and that many of the 2,000 employees would be moved over to the company’s generative AI efforts but given today’s news, it looks like 614 of the employees have no place on that project.
One of the reasons it’s believed that the layoffs are affecting those on car project is because the notice didn’t mention Apple’s Cupertino headquarters but smaller satellite offices which are most likely working on secret projects, such as the self-driving car project.
While we don’t know which project the employees were working on, we know some of the job positions that were cut; they include machine shop managers, hardware engineers, and product design engineers.
CNBC said that it reached out to Apple, but the company only responded to say that it would not comment on the situation. Given the non-disclosure agreements that those who worked on the car project will likely be under, we will probably never get confirmation that those being laid off were working on the car project.
While it’s not great news for the employees affected, they do at least have 60 days now to plan out their next steps. They can use this time to search for new employment or begin retraining for some other position.
Many tech companies have offered generous severance packages but it’s not clear in this situation what Apple will be doing to help those it has just laid off.
Source: CNBC
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