A very small percentage of Apple employees work there. It’s primarily top brass and artsy types.

The bulk of the engineers are in unremarkable office parks around the valley.

I spoke with an electrician after the new campus opened. He said Apple was desperate to get the campus open on time, there weren’t enough local electricians. They were able to get more from out of state to come and finish it up for a hefty price. So I’m sure part of the push is to get value out of their investment.

> I wonder how much the $5 billion sunk cost from the new(ish) office has to do with this,

On whatever day of the week one cares to look, Apple’s market value crosses 2 trillion dollars. As of January this year, Apple has nearly 200 billion cash on hand. [0] I won’t even bother to cite how long it takes Apple to earn 5 billion in profit, but I’m guessing much less than the 15 months since lockdown began in Mar 2020.

In other words, 5 billion sunk cost is probably not the reason Apple brass continues to be conservative about WFH with respect to their corporate peers.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/apple-q1-cash-hoard-heres-ho...

Apple has a ton of offices around the bay area. some are leased, others are owned. Even if a significant number of employees were to hypothetically leave, I'm sure they'd just reduce the leases and move people into the owned offices.

I can’t imagine that the campus would be a ghost town with some percentage of attrition… they’d hire in and the terms of office attendance would grow stronger.