Employees of Apple‘s Siri quality control team in San Diego were shocked last week when informed that their jobs were being relocated to Austin, Texas. The 121-person team, tasked with listening to recordings of Siri interactions to ensure the voice assistant responds appropriately, was reportedly told just weeks ago that they would be moved to another Apple campus in San Diego by the end of January. Instead, the technology giant has mandated that all employees must uproot their lives and move to Texas by April 26 if they wish to keep their jobs.

For the impacted employees, many of whom likely never envisioned leaving Southern California, the abrupt announcement has been distressing on multiple fronts. Firstly, the short four-month timeline gives little opportunity for staff to properly handle moving logistics like selling homes or finding new schools for children. Additionally, some employees doubt they have the qualifications to readily step into other roles within Apple’s San Diego operations, should they opt not to relocate.

Offering little consolation is a relocation stipend of $7,000 per employee, considered paltry for offsetting the myriad costs and headaches associated with an unplanned interstate move. Apple states that staff who choose not to relocate will receive severance packages based on their tenure, including four weeks of base pay along with an additional week per year served, as well as six months of continued health insurance.

The San Diego Siri team handles recordings in English plus multiple other languages like Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic. Their function is to audit the voice assistant’s responses to check for errors as part of Apple’s ongoing efforts to improve Siri’s accuracy and usefulness. However, even with human oversight, Apple is perceived as lagging behind rivals Google and Meta in the red-hot artificial intelligence space.

Just what spurred Apple’s decision to consolidate Siri review operations in Texas remains unclear. But the company has recently displayed heightened urgency around AI investments, including reported attempts to purchase training datasets from media outlets. Apple is also releasing more AI coding frameworks to developers and is expected to announce significant advancements to its AI initiatives in June. Still, that offers little immediate relief to the displaced employees now scrambling to chart new career paths on short notice.