Apple’s commitment to Spain: more workers, new office and open vacancies in Barcelona

Apple is comfortable in Spain, and its commitment to our country shows it. The Cupertino giant increased the Spanish workforce by 20% last year to reach 2,025 employees and plans to incorporate another 40 more employees soon. To accommodate all of them, taking into account Tim Cook’s taste for face-to-face contact, last December they opened a new office in Barcelona, ​​opposite the company’s store on Paseo de Gracia, according to Applesfera.

What does Apple do in Spain? In addition to Apple store employees, those in Cupertino have a powerful artificial intelligence and machine learning team in our country, which doubled its staff last year and has become the largest group of Americans working in continental Europe on this type of technology.

And it will grow even more, since the 40 vacancies it has open are to strengthen this artificial intelligence and machine learning team for the remainder of the year with new engineers. In addition, Apple also generates some 120,000 indirect jobs in Spain thanks to businesses derived from iOS apps.

Away from the technological crisis. These hirings and those that it plans to make during the remainder of the year show that Apple is still resisting the crisis that is plaguing other large technology companies, which have been forced to stop the arrival of new employees, except in key positions, and even to undertake numerous layoffs.

Apple is no stranger to layoffs, as this summer it fired some 100 human resources technicians that it had subcontracted in the United States, according to Bloomberg, but it is not going to stop the arrival of new employees. Tim Cook, CEO of the company, then said that the company is going to continue investing during the recession, which does not mean that they are not making some moves to restructure the workforce to optimize resources, but he made it clear that they are going to continue hiring in those teams where lack.

Telecommuting. Apple, therefore, has been spared the controversy of layoffs and personnel adjustments that has shaken other technology companies. But he has also had his own setbacks in the labor section. Its employees have been fighting for a year to achieve greater flexibility in terms of teleworking, in the face of resistance from management, which wants them to work in the office at least three days a week.

This tug-of-war between executives and employees has been the talk of the town since last summer, has even caused some resignations and has lived a new chapter recentlywhen the workers were called back to the offices after the different outbreaks of coronavirus have postponed the decision of the managers of three days of attendance.