Tim Cook called remote work 'the mother of all experiments.' Now Apple is cracking down on employees who don’t come in 3 days a week, report says.

Portrait of Apple CEO Tim Cook at WWDC22 at Apple Park on June 6, 2022. (Credit: Justin Sullivan—Getty Images)

In June 2022, Apple CEO Tim Cook sounded pretty philosophical about remote work. "We're running the mother of all experiments,” he said at the TIME 100 symposium in New York, “because we don't know," he trailed off. Just a couple months later, though, he ordered staff back three days a week. And now he’s reportedly threatening to discipline the holdouts. In other words, the experiment may be losing steam.

Apple is threatening to level disciplinary action against workers who fail to come into the office for three-fifths of the working week, Zoë Schiffer, managing editor of tech newsletter Platformer, tweeted on Wednesday. She added that it is tracking employees via ID badge swipes, and some managers may give escalating warnings that could ultimately lead to termination.