What it’s like to work inside an Apple ‘black site’ (for Apex Systems)

“Apple’s new campus in Cupertino, California, is a symbol of how the company views itself as an employer: simultaneously inspiring its workers with its magnificent scale while coddling them with its four-story café and 100,000-square-foot fitness center,” Joshua Brustein reports for Bloomberg News. “But one group of Apple contractors finds another building, six miles away on Hammerwood Avenue in Sunnyvale, to be a more apt symbol.”
“This building is as bland as the main Apple campus is striking. From the outside, there appears to be a reception area, but it’s unstaffed, which makes sense given that people working in this satellite office — mostly employees of Apple contractors working on Apple Maps — use the back door,” Brustein reports. “Workers say managers instructed them to walk several blocks away before calling for a ride home. Several people who worked here say it’s widely referred to within Apple as a ‘black site,’ as in a covert ops facility.”
“It’s not uncommon for workers not to make it that long. According to 14 current and former contractors employed by Apex Systems, a firm that staffs the building as well as other Apple mapping offices, they operated under the constant threat of termination,” Brustein reports. “Apex, not Apple, manages the workers it hires. Apple says it requires contracting firms to treat workers with ‘dignity and respect.’ Following an inquiry from Bloomberg News, the company says, it conducted a surprise audit of the Hammerwood facility and found a work environment consistent with other Apple locations.”
“While companies aren’t required to disclose the sizes of their contingent workforces, there’s ample evidence that tech companies use large numbers of contractors and temps,” Brustein reports. “Last year, Bloomberg News reported that direct employees at Alphabet Inc.’s Google accounted for less than half its workforce.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ah, yes, temp work usually sucks. That’s hardly a newsflash, so it seems a rather blatant bit of hit-whoring for Bloomberg News to abuse the name of Apple in such an oblique manner.
These people do not work for Apple Inc., they work for Apex Systems.