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Apple’s culture of secrecy wore down Swift creator and Xcode lead Chris Lattner
- pawadu 10y ago> BI also pointed to an incident in 2015 when Apple’s entire networking team quit over Apple’s refusal to allow them to participate in an industry-wide network security forum known as the Open Compute Product. How big is the "entire networking team", how many people are we talking about here?
- mhurron 10y agoAnd most importantly, is this why my Mac crashes when using NFSv4?
- sync 10y agoThe source publication is a better read: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-apples-culture-of-secrecy-wears-down-its-top-developers-2017-1?r=UK&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/how-apples-culture-of-secrecy...
- Tanegashima 10y agoAnd it's 100% pure bullshit. Sorry, iHaters.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- scarface74 10y agoI'm not saying it wouldn't be a problem for some, but how would Apple's "culture of secrecy" affect Lattner? Apple didn't just release Swift as open source, they released the entire commit history even before it was open source, the future planned roadmap of Swift is discussed openly on a public email list, and the whole Tool chain down to llvm is completely open source.
- blinkingled 10y agoFTA: He always felt constrained at Apple in terms of what he could discuss publicly — resorting to off-the-record chats, surprise presentations, and the like," the person told us. "Similarly, I know he was constrained in recruiting and other areas. Eventually I know that can really wear people down." Running an open source project with lot of contributors requires open communication. Recruiting constraints is self explanatory.
- scarface74 10y agoThat's true for every company. I work at a private mid sized unknown company as the developer lead. I can't go out an publicly speak about what's going on at the company or their roadmap even to employees at other locations or sometimes to my own team. Even though I'm not officially management, I'm privy to information for planning purposes that the company may not want to get out Do you think that Tesla is going to allow him to open source the self driving car software he will be working on? Even though he's not working at Apple, do you think the head of the Swift project is going to refuse to take a pull request from him?
- blinkingled 10y agoWell not every company. But I think you are oversimplifying it. Culture of secrecy in Apple's case most certainly means you can't do anything public at all without going through a bunch of legalese, approval chains and various other roadblocks. Apple for example did not allow AI researchers employed by them to publish papers - they hardly got any researcher interested and they have allowed publishing of one paper so far. Tesla on the other hand seems to be at least making noises about Open Source spirit. It looks like Musk doesn't care about keeping things secret as much as Apple does - https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you. It is quite conceivable that Elon Musk will allow Chris more openness to contribute to LLVM/Swift and whatever Self Driving car stuff he is working on. I mean what has Tesla got to lose if LLVM is improved or even if Tesla's self driving software is open sourced (not the data mind you!) and many others adapt it and improve it?
- clprogrmr 10y agoThe 'extreme secrecy' would be an advantage if they actually managed to surprise their customers. The reality is, over the last couple of years they haven't really created something groundbreaking. Why would you want your own employees to not know that the next big thing they're working on is a minor product update. Also, despite the extreme secrecy, every product announced since the iPhone 5s has been leaked in advance. Factory photos, hands-on reviews of cases, photos of chips, etc. In other words, their employees suffer from the secrecy, but the outside world (who they want to surprise) aren't that excited about their launches and already know in advance what's coming up. So... what's the point really.
- dilemma 10y agoThe majority of leaks are by Apple themselves. The same goes for other smartphone brands.
- CoolGuySteve 10y agoWhile at Apple, I once had to get director approval to get an unreleased version of iTunes for some feature I was working on. It took a couple weeks to plinko up the management chain. When I finally got the build the interface was a slightly lighter shade of grey. It was fucking stupid.
- marpstar 10y agoSwift itself was a huge surprise.
- benologist 10y agoSecret by default - they never had to share it with 100,000s of people building it all.
- coryl 10y agoA low value secret though, most Apple customers don't know or care about swift/llvm/etc.
- kayoone 10y ago
- grabcocque 10y agoI imagine trying to run a consensus-driven open source project from within a super-secret topdownocracy like Apple is next to being an impossible task. That Lattner did it for as long as he did is impressive.
- pilif 10y agoIf the secrecy wore him down, why is he moving to Tesla which is equally secretive? I'm not convinced by this argument.
- pcurve 10y agoIt's not. the linked BI article speculates on other possible reasons.
- forgetsusername 10y ago>why is he moving to Tesla which is equally secretive? In what way is Tesla secretive? They make all kinds of announcements about things that aren't actually "real" yet.
- pilif 10y agosure. but they share none of their engineering insights. As Mr. Lattner is an engineer, I would assume that sharing engineering-related stuff is more interesting than pre-announcing marketing information.
- pkd 10y agoDidn't they open source [sic] all their patents? [1] I'd call that being pretty open. [1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
- guptaneil 10y agoPatents are open by design. "Open sourcing" a patent just means Tesla is agreeing to license the patent to anybody and won't sue you for using it. That's still a marketing/business decision, not an engineering one.
- dv_dt 10y agoWasn't that mostly supercharger patents? There's a shared network effect that helps every electric car maker if they all use the same charger standard...
- bad_user 10y agoApple is a hardware leader, but IMO their culture is toxic for building software. Yes, they have great software achievements in OS X, iOS, Safari, etc. however those happened in spite of their toxic culture, for other reasons. As an inspiring market leader, Apple is able to attract a lot of talented software developers and they also have huge pockets, plus whatever faults they have, it's in Apple's DNA to ship polished products. However I believe building software is their weakness, because building great software is also about collaboration, about building communities, about establishing standards, about reuse and composition. It's what Google and Microsoft are good at.
- burrokeet 10y agoI think their current culture is toxic for both. Their hardware is polished but IMHO has prioritized form over function at an extreme level, and seems to be developed in complete isolation from the user base.
- rohan_ 10y agoThat's ironic, Apple IMHO is one of the few companies that takes UX seriously.
- Tanegashima 10y agoSuch form over function, the current MBP is faster, slimmer and with much more battery life than any other. The difference is that Apple can make it beautiful and funcional, and others just can't.
- jjuel 10y agoIs their software actually any better than anyone else's? Or is it that their software is only expected to work on their hardware so they can fully optimize it for their hardware and it seems better? I have a MacBook and an iPhone, but you would be hard pressed to tell me macOS and iOS are truly better than the alternatives.
- manmal 10y ago
- coldcode 10y agoThis seem more like speculation unless Chris actually says something. Being frustrated in a giant company is something I understand 100%. Moving up the food chain to be more in control is something I also understand which often means going elsewhere.
- untog 10y agoAs a webdev it's occurred to me before that at almost every conference I've been to there have been employees from Google, Mozilla and Microsoft happy to chat about their browsers. They're also active online, via Twitter or whatever. Apple, on the other hand... I've never once met a Safari dev. How does that help anyone - including Apple? Feedback with the people who develop on your product can be very valuable, and it seems Apple aren't interested in any of it.
- pavlov 10y agoApple expects you to go to WWDC to meet employees and engage in dialogue. This way Apple controls the setting and the information being disseminated. (One could call it the "Mountain comes to Muhammad" approach.) It worked pretty well in the 2000-2009 period when you could just buy a WWDC ticket like any other conference pass... But after the iOS App Store exploded, tickets became impossible to get because they started selling out in minutes.
- fauigerzigerk 10y ago>It worked pretty well in the 2000-2009 period when you could just buy a WWDC ticket like any other conference pass... It may have worked well for those who are happy to replace continued, in-depth, online discussion with travelling half way around the world to exchange a few words with someone after paying a ton of money for it.
- y4mi 10y agoyou pretty much nailed down apple culture with that.
- threeseed 10y agoNice straw man there. Apple never replaced their existing online discussions with WWDC. You can continue to talk to WebKit developers using the mailing lists any many Apple developers continue to be present within the Developer program forums.
- Waterluvian 10y agoI wonder what % of Apple employees hare secrecy culture and want to see it die versus the % who were hired due to a compatible attitude towards it and thrive in that kind of culture. I'm very interested in things that make a massive ship very hard to turn. If they wanted a drastic culture shift, would they have to replace a lot of managers and leaders?
- argonaut 10y agoI don't think anyone likes the secrecy. I don't know anyone who doesn't want their name attached to their work.
- gchokov 10y agoSecrecy has always been an advantage. If he doesn't like this, of course, he should leave. Nothing wrong with the two things.
- sambe 10y agoKeeping your best people has always been an advantage. When you keep telling them "if you don't like it, leave", sometimes they take your advice and the problems they saw still exist after they're gone.
- argonaut 10y agoApple wouldn't have a problem with extreme secrecy if their compensation went above and beyond the companies they compete with for engineering talent. But their compensation is basically equivalent, or even less. So except for some particular affinity for an Apple product or team, or variance in interviewing success, I typically see undergrad/masters/PhD graduates vastly preferring Google/Facebook offers over Apple (I use these as an example because each company typically has a standard offer for each group).
- FT_intern 10y agoand they work more hours... for that lower compensation
- 72deluxe 10y agoI would still like to know who's replacing him and what the future is for all of this, particularly Swift given how much Apple was pushing it. As far as I know, it was Lattner's baby. Who's running things these days?
- johnzim 10y agoFrom his leaving post on the swift mailing list: https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20170109/030063.html https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mo... > I’m happy to announce that Ted Kremenek will be taking over for me as “Project Lead” for the Swift project, managing the administrative and leadership responsibility for Swift.org. This recognizes the incredible effort he has already been putting into the project, and reflects a decision I’ve made to leave Apple later this month to pursue an opportunity in another space. This decision wasn't made lightly, and I want you all to know that I’m still completely committed to Swift. I plan to remain an active member of the Swift Core Team, as well as a contributor to the swift-evolution mailing list.
- 72deluxe 10y agoThanks very much indeed. I do wonder if there is a severe brain drain occurring at Apple.
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- shams93 10y agoApple made a mistake choking off iOS safari they're screwing up like MS did in 1999, they're I'm the same position now as MS was when Jobs came back. They're turning iOS into a second rate system by refusing to implement many html5 APIs like webrtc. Similar to the browser wars in 99, the original iPhone had the best mobile browser of its time but in 10 years they've lost that edge.
- hcarvalhoalves 10y agoIt seems now without Jobs, Apple is just repeating mantras without asking themselves "why?". When the company was working on iPhone, iPad, such secrecy made sense. For other stuff, no.
- DoodleBuggy 10y agoOr maybe he got bored and had a great offer from Tesla?
- EdJiang 10y agoChris Lattner on Twitter: >My decision has nothing to do with "openness". The "friend" cited is either fabricated or speculating. Folk just want to make [apple_emoji] look bad. [angry_face_emoji] https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/819974025371787264 https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/819974025371787264
- DoodleBuggy 10y agoIt's OK. We're in a post-fact era.
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- e28eta 10y agoEven before reading his tweet, it seemed pretty clear it was speculation from the quote! > "Eventually I know that can really wear people down." That doesn't say s/he knows it wore Chris down, just that it could have.
- mikeash 10y agoIf only the headline reflected that.
- pfarnsworth 10y agoBlogs and shitty news sites like Business Insider don't practice standard due diligence like newspapers used to. They just print whatever they want, it's ground zero for fake news. There should be more consequence for sites printing things like this, but there isn't, and that's why we are suffering with misinformation.
- calbear81 10y agoThere are consequences if the person affected chooses to take action and meets the legal definition of libel or slander.
- draw_down 10y agoIt has long struck me as an intense, unforgiving place to work, with the upsides that you'll probably make a shit ton of money and possibly work on things that affect many people. Not the kind of tradeoff I would personally make, plus it's in the Valley which I wouldn't like either. I can certainly see it getting old after a time. Especially now, when the bloom is off the rose a bit.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoI think what people forget is that engineers are very curious by nature. They don't want to work on the same things forever. I don't know, but Mr. Lattner probably took Swift was far as he wanted to go with it and now it was time for a change.
- bondolo 10y agoCulture matters. In 1997 I had offers from both Apple and Sun. I was working at a Macintosh ISV which was very badly impacted by Steve cancelling the Mac clones. I knew from friends about the secrecy and siloed environment at NeXT and in Steve's Apple. While I had respect for Steve's accomplishments and vision I made a very conscious effort to choose a different work culture. I ended up working at Sun (and eventually Oracle) for 16 years. It may not have been great for all those years but I can't imagine that I would have lasted at Apple that long and I certainly wouldn't have had the mobility between projects that I did at Sun. Doing it again I would still choose the company with the culture that I felt was the best fit for me with that company's potential being secondary.