Apple Parts With Prominent Executive After Employees Complain Over Comments About Women

By Bradley Olson

Apple Inc. parted ways with a prominent advertising-technology executive weeks after hiring him, following complaints from some employees about passages in a memoir about his time in a prior job at Facebook Inc. that they deemed sexist and misogynistic.

Antonio García Martínez, who wrote the book "Chaos Monkeys" about his experience working at Facebook, is no longer with Apple, a spokesman said late Wednesday. Apple didn't disclose more details about his departure.

"At Apple, we have always strived to create an inclusive, welcoming workplace where everyone is respected and accepted," an Apple spokesman said. "Behavior that demeans or discriminates against people for who they are has no place here."

Mr. García Martínez didn't immediately respond to multiple messages seeking comment late Wednesday. A LinkedIn page for him listed him as working in "Product Engineering, Ads Platforms" at Apple, and says he started there last month.

Apple has largely avoided the sort of public controversy among employees over issues of gender and race that have shaken other big tech companies in recent years. Chief Executive Tim Cook has made it a pillar of his leadership at the company to publicly champion diversity and equality.

Some Apple employees communicated their concern and anger Tuesday over Mr. García Martínez's hiring on Slack messaging groups, one Apple employee said. Several Apple employees complained publicly Wednesday about the company's decision to hire Mr. García Martínez, citing passages from his 2016 book. A group of employees circulated a letter to Apple senior executive Eddy Cue, who oversees internet software and services, asking for an investigation into how Mr. García Martinez was hired, according to one of the employees who signed it. Technology-news site the Verge reported on the letter earlier Wednesday.

The letter described as misogynistic statements in Mr. García Martínez's book that it said run counter to Apple's commitments to inclusion and diversity, according to a copy reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The letter highlighted the way in which a number of passages in the book refer to women. In one, Mr. García Martínez wrote: "Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit."

In other passages, he referred to women based on his attraction to their bodies and said "most women" at Facebook and in the Bay Area didn't know "how to dress." In another passage dealing with fundraising, he said an "equity round is having to convince five women to do a sixsome with you, " he wrote.

Tim Higgins contributed to this article.

Write to Bradley Olson at Bradley.Olson@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 13, 2021 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)

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