Apple Offers Employees “Startup Experience” By Buying Local Homes, Converting Garages Into Offices
CUPERTINO, CA — To win over the newest generation of tech talent, Apple has announced a new initiative to begin purchasing local houses in Sunnyvale and San Jose in order to give incoming employees the “authentic startup experience.”
The Silicon Valley behemoth has spent the last decade building a new, massive campus in Cupertino. Lovingly nicknamed “The Spaceship,” the new Apple campus is a behemoth with the size of a college campus and the minimalist, cutting edge technology that defines Apple’s brand. Amenities range from an Olympic-size “smart” pool that measures speed and swim strokes to a Nest-compatible gym, free communal bikes, and complimentary chocolate almond milk on every floor.
Although these amenities have historically been able to draw top coding talent graduating from Berkeley and Stanford, the new building has nevertheless become a symbol for the comfort and wealth that Millennial techies are increasingly rolling their eyes at. Large companies like Apple, Google or Facebook heavily compete with VC-backed startups for new college graduates, who face a tough choice between a $100,000 salary with options from a startup and a $115,000 salary with RSUs from “the man.” While campus recruiters might say that its internal groups are “agile like a startup” but “with the resources of a big company,” Millennials are beginning to realize that fun perks and amenities are just there to distract them from Apple’s most shameful secret — that it is one of the largest multinational corporations in the world, with all the mindless tasks and endless bureaucracy that entails.
Apple execs decided to convert area houses into mini startup offices after a survey of new grads in the company revealed that the words “startup” and “innovation” were often associated with “garage” or “basement.” The new program, intended to woo young employees with the allure of working in a sexy startup environment, has already been lauded internally as “revolutionary” and “another great idea from HR.”
Instead of being carefully curated by a professional office manager, each house will have only a small selection of snacks selected from whatever is offered near the entrance of the nearest Safeway or Costco. Coffee must be purchased at the local Starbucks in front of Ranch 99, instead of being readily available from a nearby hipster barista on the company payroll who always smiles and knows what you want to order beforehand. Programmers will be encouraged to work in a real-life garage, which will be uncomfortably hot, crammed with ghetto standing desks made from cardboard boxes, and containing a rusty ping pong table that will double as a dining table.
Apple has deflected criticism that the program is intended to trick impressionable young employees into working 120 hours a week for less benefits and perks. A representative asserted that despite being a large company, Apple is just trying to return to its roots: a few sweaty guys working on computers in a Cupertino garage.
