In their letter they dismiss the notion that the issue is complex and can't be boiled down to the company simply saying "we support X" or "Y is in the right here", but that's exactly what it is. A consumer electronics company cannot be expected to make sense of and take sides in a centuries-long religious and geopolitical conflict.
Just make your customers happy, don’t strongarm them, don’t overprice your products, and pay taxes, is all people are really asking from corporations.
Companies have long known that making your customers happy involves retaining skilled employees, and that incurring extra costs to keep skilled employees happy is worthwhile for the business. Sometimes that involves paying them well. Sometimes that involves putting San Pellegrino in the fridge. And sometimes that requires boycotting the State of Israel.
I feel CEO making public statements around political issues is typically an american thing.As an example, my personal experience in France is that politics is completely out of bounds of corporate life.
Given that Apple has a reasonably large R&D facility in Haifa and a fair amount of business in Israel, I don't see them disinvesting any time soon.
I could imagine them opening a Palestinian office and more stores though.
As Martinez said to Apple, "This will be your life now every week."
https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1395515386402021377
I still use an iPhone. I'm going to be moving away from it now. Apple Management needs to stand up to employees bullying them.
> Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit
C'mon now. Be honest with yourself.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/books/review/chaos-monkey...
Nobody noticed this when the book came out. A posse was out to get him, and scrutinized this book with a fine-toothed comb.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott,_Divestment_and_Sancti...
South Africa is heading towards being a failed state.
Whether you agree with them or not (I feel that companies should not take political stances in general), Are there no boundaries between work and personal beliefs? What happened to having your own beliefs and not forcing it on others?
Perhaps Coinbase and Basecamp are the clever ones to resist accidentally signing up to the lifetime of demands from extremely politically charged activists that thrive from catching out employees and cancelling them for wrongthink and screaming about their dramas all over Twitter.
There is some logic here and I've not found a good way to argue against it.
At least two!
>When I talk to my family and non-tech non-coasts non-city friends about the sort of political polarization I encounter at my high-tech Seattle job, they often think I'm messing with them, that I'm being facetious or exaggerating. Unfortunately, I'm not. It's all so tiresome. The increasing politicization of everything, and tech being at the center of it, made me realize I have no interest anymore in climbing the corporate ladder. I realize that my lack of political fervor is a liability. I wish I cared more about these things, I really do, but I don't.
It’s been working great in China, and it feels like Yuu and other stupid things are going to bring it to Hong Kong so why not the west too?
(1) Tech demands a lot from its employees. We are dedicating a significant portion of our waking hours. They expect us to believe in their mission, and so we also expect that mission to align with our values.
(2) Technology itself is much more far reaching than any other industry. These corporations are massive, and with them massive budgets for lobbying etc. Not demanding that they reflect the values of their employees and customers would be a massive waste of that power or worse — letting them actively use that power to make the world worse.
"we" do? personally i expect my employer to provide financial compensation in exchange for me doing things for them. beyond that i don't really care about whether the giant corporation i work at is truly reflecting my core beliefs. i suspect that they probably aren't.
> reflect the values of their employees
do all employees truly feel the same way about every issue? do employees with a minority opinion feel comfortable expressing those views?
Thus, in being willing censors (or at least moderators) for the powers of good, they have also let themselves be strongarmed by whomever says what is good.
from another angle, the Arab Spring uprisings or Ukrainian Euromaiden events from last decade which were organised on neutral tech platforms, would not be able to take place now because these tech companies have much more moderation and internal responsibilities to be a clean publisher.
When, say, GitHub decides to have their place of business in the US and to subject themselves to US embargoes and therefore bans users in Iran, that's certainly a political statement. But if they say "We were forced to ban users in Iran, because we've decided it's net good for business to be subject to US law and the US does not like Iran," people interpret that as a pretty different political statement from GitHub spontaneously banning users in Iran because they themselves don't like Iran.
It was an awkward turn of phrase
Talking about employee values in aggregate doesn't imply all of them feel the same about every issue.