Google is dropping the Assistant team, and Amazon is dropping the Alexa team. This sounds a lot like Apple is trying to avoid an explicit layoff and forcing employees to quit instead.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. This could have the makings of constructive dismissal. Relocate to a place with vastly different legal protections or be fired? Hmm. Since it also would possibly disproportionately affect female employees, I wonder if some discrimination could also come in to play?
If they are offering a relocation package, and it sounds like they are, then this likely doesn’t fall under constructive discharge. Also in CA a constructive discharge lawsuit often only makes you entitled to the same benefits as if you were fired (i.e. severance and unemployment). These guys aren’t being fired for cause so they still qualify for unemployment and the severance deal Apples offering is probably already worth more than many would get in a lawsuit. A lawsuits not gonna force Apple to move the office back.
I don’t know why everyone always jumps straight to “constructive discharge” and “this must be illegal”. Guys, we live in a legal hellscape, Apple may be being shitty but they aren’t doing anything illegal.
Huh. So they’re all dropping their voice assistant teams. Is this because it turns out people only ever use them as voice activated kitchen timers because it turns out talking to computers sucks, or is some worse generative AI shit coming?
What seems to be going down is that tech firms are laying off AI teams that aren’t based on large LLMs like ChatGPT.
My read: they’re thinking it’s time to lay off those workers in anticipation of replacing that functionality (in siri, cortana, echo/alexa) with a large LLM stack
Google is dropping the Assistant team, and Amazon is dropping the Alexa team. This sounds a lot like Apple is trying to avoid an explicit layoff and forcing employees to quit instead.
Constructive dismissal lawsuit?
Edit: see this comment https://sopuli.xyz/comment/6157509
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. This could have the makings of constructive dismissal. Relocate to a place with vastly different legal protections or be fired? Hmm. Since it also would possibly disproportionately affect female employees, I wonder if some discrimination could also come in to play?
Not a lawyer, just spitballing ideas.
If they are offering a relocation package, and it sounds like they are, then this likely doesn’t fall under constructive discharge. Also in CA a constructive discharge lawsuit often only makes you entitled to the same benefits as if you were fired (i.e. severance and unemployment). These guys aren’t being fired for cause so they still qualify for unemployment and the severance deal Apples offering is probably already worth more than many would get in a lawsuit. A lawsuits not gonna force Apple to move the office back.
I don’t know why everyone always jumps straight to “constructive discharge” and “this must be illegal”. Guys, we live in a legal hellscape, Apple may be being shitty but they aren’t doing anything illegal.
Huh. So they’re all dropping their voice assistant teams. Is this because it turns out people only ever use them as voice activated kitchen timers because it turns out talking to computers sucks, or is some worse generative AI shit coming?
What seems to be going down is that tech firms are laying off AI teams that aren’t based on large LLMs like ChatGPT. My read: they’re thinking it’s time to lay off those workers in anticipation of replacing that functionality (in siri, cortana, echo/alexa) with a large LLM stack
Even if it is constructively a dismissal, you can almost never sue someone for firing you in California.