Short stay: Apple loses new head of HR after 20 months
Apple Retail boss Deirdre O'Brien will have to take care of human resources again in future. Her successor has left.
Carol Surface, former Chief People Officer at Apple: No reasons given for her departure.
(Image: Apple)
Long-time Apple manager Deirdre O'Brien, who has been with Apple since 1988, is once again having to cope with an additional workload: In addition to her work as head of Apple's retail division with the most employees in the group, she will officially be head of HR again in future. The reason: Carol Surface, who only took over the position of "Chief People Officer" 20 months ago, is about to leave. This was reported by the financial news agency Bloomberg, and Apple has since confirmed the appointment.
Former best-buy manager
O'Brien is thus returning to her old post, but will remain head of retail. The arrangement is not new: before Surface was found less than two years ago, O'Brien had already held the dual position since 2019. Such a quick departure is unusual for Apple – Many of the company's key managers have been with the company for decades.
Videos by heise
It is unclear what drove Surface to make the decision. As Head of Human Resources, she reported directly to CEO Tim Cook. Surface, who joined Apple in early 2023, previously held a similar position at Medtronic, a medical device manufacturer. Before that, she was head of HR at Best Buy, a US electronics chain similar to Mediamarkt. She has also worked in HR management at soda manufacturer PepsiCo.
Apple's reorganization of the management floor
As Chief People Officer, Surface was responsible for around 160,000 Apple employees. She was part of the group's innermost circle of less than 20 people. Most recently, there had been changes in the "Diversity & Inclusion" area of the HR department. The previous head of the department, Barbara Whye, was replaced by Cynthia Bowman from Bank of America, as Whye wants to retire. Otherwise, Surface has been particularly busy helping to restructure Apple's management team, as more and more well-known managers are moving to other positions or leaving the company altogether for reasons of age.
These include the once central hardware manager Dan Riccio and CFO Luca Maestri. Initially, it is planned that O'Brien will once again be both Retail and People Director. Whether and when there will be a replacement for Surface still seems unclear. When Surface joined Apple in 2023, CEO Cook praised her for her "incredible depth of experience". It has not yet been revealed where the HR manager will be moving to.
Empfohlener redaktioneller Inhalt
Mit Ihrer Zustimmung wird hier ein externer Preisvergleich (heise Preisvergleich) geladen.
Ich bin damit einverstanden, dass mir externe Inhalte angezeigt werden. Damit können personenbezogene Daten an Drittplattformen (heise Preisvergleich) übermittelt werden. Mehr dazu in unserer Datenschutzerklärung.
(bsc)
