Apple To Shut Down Siri Unit In San Diego

(RTTNews) - Tech giant Apple Inc. (AAPL) has announced the decision to shut down the 121-employee Data Operations Annotations team in San Diego, responsible for facilitating Siri's functionality in multiple languages.

The employees received an ultimatum to either relocate to Austin by the end of June to merge with the same team in Texas or to face termination on April 26. The management has asked for a decision from the employees by the end of February.

Further, Apple offered the employees to apply for other jobs within the company. However, some employees feel under-qualified for the other posts and most of them do not plan to relocate, according to a Bloomberg report.

For relocating employees, the tech giant will be offering them stipend of $7,000, whereas the others will be paid four weeks of severance plus another week's worth for each year worked, as well as six months of health insurance coverage.

Earlier, while talking about lay-offs, the company's CEO Tim Cook had commented, "I view that as a last resort."

The iPhone maker had been avoiding making cuts in its workforce even though the other industry giants including Microsoft, Amazon and Google were laying off employees.

According to a data from Layoffs.fyi, 48 tech companies had let go 7,528 employees in 2024.