Back in early June a memo from Apple's CEO revealed a return to work pilot program set to begin in September. Days later it was revealed that a group of employees openly rebelled against the plan by sending management a letter outlining their grievances with the return to work pilot program. At the end of June a message from Apple's retail chief in the form of an internal video had surfaced to quietly convey the message that Apple's back to work program would proceed: "We believe that in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future. If we take a moment to reflect on our unbelievable product launches this past year, the products and the launch execution were built upon the base of years of work that we did when we were all together in-person."

When it comes to Apple's headquarters, the message is clear. Though that doesn't mean that Apple isn't changing with the times. A new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reveals that "some members of Apple’s executive team had been pushing to decentralize out of Cupertino for years before a fuller realization came into place more recently.

Johny Srouji, Apple’s head of custom silicon, was one of the strongest proponents of such a shift. His group opened up offices in Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, Israel and parts of Asia years ago. It has since expanded in Germany, Oregon and San Diego."  

So while Apple wants their core teams in place in Cupertino three days a week starting in September, it doesn't mean that the company is blind to the realities of a dynamically changing workforce. In many ways Apple is leading that charge.  

Srouji isn't alone on this trend as Eddy Cue Apple’s online services chief, has also pushed for decentralization, investing in multiple Los Angeles offices and a location in Nashville.

Decentralization across the company is entering full swing, and Apple has engaged in a costly expansion from the sunny coasts of LA and San Diego to the Pacific Northwest of Oregon and Washington, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Iowa’s Midwest, the Eastern Seaboard of Massachusetts, Miami and New York.

Notably, it’s also spending $2 billion on building new campuses in Austin, Texas, and North Carolina. That’s in addition to hiring engineers in Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Spain and the U.K. Altogether, the moves will add tens of thousands of jobs outside of Silicon Valley. The breadth of the expansion is new for Apple, which has had major offices in Austin, Ireland and Singapore.

Gurman further commented in his Sunday's "Power On" newsletter that "Apple has realized for some time now that it can't wait for the best designers and engineers to gravitate toward its spaceship. It needs to go where those people live today. Apple no longer has the same scrappy feel it had in the early days of the iPhone. It’s now the world’s most valuable company, under the watchful eye of antitrust regulators on multiple continents, and competing for talent with Amazon.com Inc., Google and Netflix Inc."

While a large contingent of Apple employees are still in rebellion mode after living with a new more flexible work week for over a year, Apple's CEO had noted in his memo to employees that Apple is a little different from many of its tech peers whose main businesses live online. Hardware engineers typically don’t have industrial-grade equipment sitting around at home. Those employees will be required four or five days a week, Cook wrote. 'Some of our colleagues have jobs that can only be completed in person.' For many, 'in person' often still means Cupertino."

In the end, Apple's CEO clearly stated that the return to work program would be reviewed one year after its implementation. Being the top technology company around the globe, Cook will make the needed refinements in the program that's best for the majority of Apple's employees. Some will further rebel and leave, and that's to be expected. For more on this, read the full Gurman report that also touches on a range of topics.