Earlier this month, the news that former Apple machine learning director Ian Goodfellow resigned after Apple refused to allow employees to continue working remotely full-time made headlines. According to Bloomberg, Goodfellow has now found a job at another company — Alphabet’s DeepMind.
DeepMind, a machine learning company Google acquired in 2014, this week announced the launch of a multimodal, multitasking AI system called Gato. It’s unclear what Goodfellow’s role at DeepMind will be, but before joining Apple, he was a research scientist at Google. Goodfellow is known as one of the foremost machine learning researchers, so this could be a notable loss for Apple, according to Bloomberg.
In an email to Apple employees, Goodfellow explained that he left the company because of Apple’s decision to return to the office. “I firmly believe that more flexibility would be the best policy for my team,” he wrote.
It is reported that Apple began requiring company employees to work in the office one day a week in April, and increased it to two days a week in May. Apple aimed to have employees in the office three days a week starting May 23, but that plan was pushed back due to rising COVID infections across the U.S. For now, however, employees are still required to work on Apple’s campuses and offices at least two days a week.
In addition to Goodfellow, some Apple employees have spoken out against returning to on-site work. In May, a group of employees calling themselves Apple Together wrote to Apple’s executive team, arguing that the hybrid work plan meant not acknowledging flexible work styles and only left employees fear-driven.