Apple engineer talks #AppleToo movement and response in new interview

One week since the #AppleToo movement started, it received nearly 500 reports from people across the company that mostly feels ignored by the human resources team. In a new interview, Apple engineer Cher Scarlett, who is the voice of the movement, has addressed the movement and the internal response from other Apple employees.

In an interview with Protocol, Scarlett says that she believes the secrecy and loyalty culture within Apple is very important, and sharing concerns about harassment, discrimination, or bullying is very different from leaking confidential information from the company.

“There’s this culture within Apple that is very rewarding of secrecy and loyalty, and when I have read some of these posts about me, it’s very much seeping through, people are feeling that I’m leaking confidential data.” But Scarlett doesn’t see it that way — she works in corporate security and legal, and she said that she would never leak product information (and that her direct team supports her, and condemns the abuse she’s receiving)

While Apple was always known for its employees that never tell anything about their jobs, the pandemic changed that. In the past months, Apple’s employees shared concerns about equity payment, return to the office, harassment, and even about a former Facebook executive hired by the company that was fired over his controversial beliefs.

“I feel like the company needs to be held accountable because they’re not holding themselves accountable. People want to feel heard. And they don’t feel heard by Apple. There are some people who have been there for decades who feel like Apple leadership used to listen to them, and make them feel like they were listened to, and they feel like that is gone,” she said. “I just want to find a way to create a well-oiled machine that lets people feel confident that they have the press, the public, telling the world that what happened to you was abhorrent and unacceptable.”

As of now, the #AppleToo organizers are working with employees to help them file stories to external labor organizations, like the California Department of Fair Housing and Employment and the federal Equal Opportunity Employment Commission.

“Literally hundreds of people have come to me. I can’t even keep track anymore of the number of people who’ve shared their stories with me. These are people’s lives. They are human beings,” she said. “What else do you do when hundreds of people you don’t know are coming to you with all of these different issues?”

According to Protocol, some of the organizers of the #AppleToo movement are inviting all current and former Apple workers to join a social Discord server “intended to help build community.”

As of now, it’s still unclear what will happen with this movement, whether Apple will listen or not. One thing is for sure, Apple’s culture is changing and more and more employees are speaking their minds about Apple’s workplace environment.