15 ms·
Apple fires engineer after his daughter’s iPhone X video goes viral
- sillysaurus3 9y agoIt's pretty strange that someone lost their livelihood solely because they didn't bow to authority. (As opposed to a practical reason, like "what he did mattered.")
- wil421 9y agoIf you are someone else’s employee then you are already “bowing to authority” or as I put it working for someone else. NDAs are serious. If I violated a NDA I would likely be taken to court as well as fired.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoYes. And that's my point: We have no autonomy to decide whether something matters. You don't get to choose. Unless, of course, you're in a position of power. Then you do. That kind of cheapens the idea that we're all working to build something great. Situations like this reveal what we're really working for.
- lolsal 9y ago> We have no autonomy to decide whether something matters. You don't get to choose. The choice was made when he signed the NDA. That's literally what signing it means.
- TrickyRick 9y agoWhat did you expect? You have the choice of refusing to sign and thereby working somewhere else.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoExcept you don't. No matter where you work, the situation is the same. Your options are to smile and sign, or start your own company. And the latter isn't practical for most of us.
- strictnein 9y agoBasically what you're arguing is that an employer shouldn't be able to require anything of their employees.
- notheguyouthink 9y agoWhat's your ideal solution? I can't imagine a world where employers just let employees do whatever they wanted with trade secrets... am I missing something you're trying to say?
- RyanOD 9y agoWithout sounding like I'm judging here, but can you explain why starting your own company, "isn't practical for most of us"? Seems to me the overwhelming majority of people are free to make the choice to start their own company. Or, am I missing something...?
- davidkuhta 9y agoWhat do you mean by: > We have no autonomy to decide whether something matters.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Knufen 9y agoWhat about it do you find strange? He broke the rules, which he himself signed on he wouldn't, and got fired as a result. As a counter argument 'what does it matter i was drink driving officer? There was no one on the road'
- bonestamp2 9y agoIt seems harmless at first, but... In the video, we can see an email on his phone marked "restricted" with a project code name and some other details. That could potentially be harmful. His daugher is probably not allowed to see that, let alone post it on youtube. Not to mention, they want to tightly control the message prior to the pre-order sale... they don't want any unfinished software on the device changing people's opinion and affecting pre-orders unnecessarily.
- joezydeco 9y agoI saw way more harm in the engineer using the phone to pay for lunch at the cafeteria and mention that he worked on that feature. Was that cashier under the same NDA? Now he's seen it and can leak the design to the world and nobody would know. Or were there dozens of these prototypes running around the Apple campus and everyone (including contractors and guests) knows to look the other way?
- Pica_soO 9y agoWell at least this was for a reason. Remember that one guy they fired for a bad decorated apartment? You got life a representative lifestyle- so designer cloths, designer furniture- else apple does not want to associated with you. IKEA is very very close to crossing a line there.
- dpark 9y ago> Remember that one guy they fired for a bad decorated apartment? No. What are you talking about?
- swampthinker 9y agoGot a link to that story?
- gambiting 9y agoIt does matter. I work in an industry where any leaks of a new product can make our share price drop or go up - so an employee being careless about what they share online does actually affect the company a lot. I would absolutely be fired if I leaked what product I am working on and I don't see anything wrong with that, it's not about bowing to authority.
- heimidal 9y agoA man was let go for allowing a family member to record video of an unreleased device on company property. In onboarding materials, it is extremely clear that this sort of thing will get you fired.
- maxerickson 9y agoApple firing him is not him losing his livelihood. If they cut off his hands, that would be loss of livelihood, but he will probably be able to get another job in the field. If his reputation is so sullied that he can't get a tech job, well, then that isn't really just on Apple.
- gooseus 9y agoLost their livelihood? They're not an uninsured flood victim. Sucks if he really liked his job, but I doubt he'll be out of work long enough to really feel it financially.
- forkLding 9y agoSad but makes sense, Im thinking he violated his NDAs, Apple could have likely sued him for that
- sschueller 9y ago"I had no idea this was a violation" Somehow hard to believe.
- hinkley 9y agoI know several kids who can get out of pretty much any trouble by feigning ignorance. Their parents drive me nuts.
- unit91 9y agoMan I wish I could upvote this twice! Since I can't, I'll register my hearty agreement with text.
- II2II 9y agoIs it hard to believe? The article mentions that the phone had been announced and the press already had access to it. A teenager is unlikely to think much about the ship date and unlikely to think about the press having restricted access at all. The ball really falls into the father's court. Not only is he the one covered by the NDA, he also has more life experience and more experience with Apple to realize that he should not have shown his daughter the phone (nevermind let her film it).
- lanewinfield 9y agoAND on Apple property, too!
- joyoustech 9y agoHow a tech company can dictate a lifestyle, and make you lose your job for it, is beyond me. I guess you deserve the consequences if you subscribe to that lifestyle contract.
- TrickyRick 9y agoYes, it's beyond me how a company can have rules about what you're allowed to do on company property. /s
- atonse 9y agoLook, he violated his employer's NDA and it wasn't a mistake. What do you expect? Much worse violations have happened in the past at Apple, and were unintentional. Like the firmware leak that leaked everything about this year's iPhones. As far as I know, nobody was fired for that, because it was a mistake.
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoIf Apple says no filming on campus of an unreleased phone and you do anyway and that phone also happens to have QR codes of unreleased products, HOW is this in anyway related to whatever your comment might mean?
- perfectstorm 9y agothey were inside a company property filming a unreleased company product. Quite frankly I'm not surprised at all given how secretive Apple is around new product releases.
- davidkuhta 9y agoIn what manner was Apple dictating his lifestyle?
- grzm 9y agoDiscussion on the Verge article submission from 1 day ago (73 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15576895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15576895
- luckyt 9y agoLooks like they're making an example of him more than anything else. In this case, a lot of media reporters already have made detailed videos of the phone so the damage is minimal -- but if another engineer leaks the next iPhone at an alpha stage, it would be very different.
- reaperducer 9y agoPerhaps it wasn't in the linked article, but other ones I've read indicate that the video showed things on the phone beyond what Apple's media department let reporters see. Things like internal QR codes and project names. This appears to be more than a simple case of making an example of a bad apple.
- dijit 9y agoFeels like someone has an agenda, this is the 10th time I've heard this story and it has exactly the same information. Father told/showed daughter prototype phone in breach of an NDA that I know he signed if he had access to that hardware. Daughter felt really proud of superstar daddy and took to the internet to show off. Apple has three recourses, 1) Sue the employee to the fullest extent covered under the NDA. My employer can hold me personally liable for any loss of revenue and it wouldn't be hard to claim damage on this. 2) Ignore the incident, set a precedent that leaks are ok. Or internally lambast the employee which is akin to bullying in some eyes. 3) Terminate the employee, allow a clean break and for the employee to persue other jobs with newly accrued information (IE; that when your NDA says "NOBODY (inc. Family) are to be told [...] that it generally means it. This is a non-story. Yes, it's sad. But it's wholly self-inflicted and I think Apple took the least destructive path on this.
- notheguyouthink 9y agoCan someone explain why you're down voting this person? His/her comments seem very reasonable, am I missing something? I hate that HN lets you downvote without an explanation. edit: And now I'm being down voted for asking a question!? Wtf is going on.. I'm trying to get information here..
- frandroid 9y agoMy guess is, the downvotes are for "This is a non-story", while it jumps to the top of HN.
- nix0n 9y agoFrom the official HN guidelines[0]: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- notheguyouthink 9y agoHmm, shame - I was hoping to promote actual discussion about the real reason at hand, but I guess that's not allowed. I do find it very strange that we're not supposed to foster discussion, but rather quietly accept silencing of dissenting views. Seems very against the meaningful discussions that I come up HN for. Strange for me. Thank you, despite it breaking the rules I guess. I'm let down by HN this day. :/
- 27182818284 9y agoFrom the article, "I had no idea this was a violation" Welp, if you weren't getting fired for showing off the iPhone X before it ships without permission you should be fired for being at Apple for four years and not realizing this might be a problem. I can't even take this as genuine. I seriously wonder if they were already half out the door for other reasons.
- dpark 9y agoThe quote is from the daughter. I don’t think it’s particularly genuine either, but it’s not a quote from the employee.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dilap 9y agoSamsung should hire him, and also the daughter to do a walkthru of whatever their next phone is.
- exabrial 9y agoThat would be brilliant marketing actually!
- samfisher83 9y agoThat would be. They should develop a whole ad campaign around that. Apple as the heartless corporate behemoth vs the loving samsung. In reality they are both corporate behemoths, but image is everything. The engineer did violate his NDA, but he was trying to help out his daughter. Should your job really come before family especially since he didn't reveal anything truly secret.
- unit91 9y ago> Should your job really come before family I'm always nervous when I see phrasing like this because it all depends on what you mean by "come before". For example, I would love to spend 40+ more hours per week with my family, but I don't. That doesn't mean I put work before my family, it means I love my family enough to provide for them. Conversely, if I had a job that required 40 hours per week (objectives and culture wise) and I worked 80 hours for the fun of it, then this would be a clear case of putting work before my family. In that case, no, I shouldn't be doing it. The question here is which category (if either) does this fall into? It seems as though the issue here is the employee had a non-disclosure condition of employment, which he violated. The "help" he provided his daughter may have helped her financially, though I suspect ego was the primary driver for both the employee and the daughter. As unpopular as it may be to side with the big-bad-company, I think Apple acted appropriately here.
- aurora72 9y agoSamsung is a collector of NDA violator fathers?
- feketegy 9y agoRelevant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RvNS7JfcMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RvNS7JfcMM
- jacquesm 9y agoIf Apple does not want their devices to be used as intended until an embargo date has passed they should keep them on premises. Once the device is out of the gates the secret is out as well. NDA's are very effective when you are talking about documents and adults. As soon as you're talking about devices and/or kids NDA's are ineffective because anybody that spots the device can post a picture without any recourse by the company and kids will do whatever they want to in today's connected world. Whether it was smart or not is another matter but I feel that firing someone over something like this is way too harsh, besides all the good publicity it gave Apple. But I guess when you're a tech-fashion company it's perfectly ok to ignore the realities of producing physical goods and the fact that you're going to have to let your product out of your control at some point.
- aroch 9y agoThe video was taken on Apple's new campus....
- jsjohnst 9y agoNo it wasn’t. It was on the old 1 Infinite Loop campus. The father mentioned they were moving in December to the new campus.
- deedubaya 9y ago> In the video, which has since been deleted, Peterson shops at Santana Row before meeting her father, Ken Bauer, for pizza at an Apple cafeteria in Cupertino. Bauer pays for their meals with an unreleased iPhone X, telling the cashier that he worked on the phone’s wireless payments feature. This all happened on Apple's campus, mentioned in the second paragraph. Maybe read the article before commenting?
- jacquesm 9y agoAh, I missed that. Ok, so even then: don't let your super secret phone out of the developer area. Many non-Apple employees visit Apple and eat at the cafetaria, any one of those could have spotted the phone. I visited a couple of hardware manufacturers in the past (Swatch, Logitech) and have seen pre-production hardware of which only single working prototypes existed. There is no way that you'd be able to take a photograph of any of those and those are not companies that are as paranoid as Apple about this stuff. My guess is that they are making an example out of this guy to cover up their utter failure in process that allowed this to happen in the first place.
- exabrial 9y agoSad, Apple has indeed lost it's way. Old Apple would have capitalized on any press. Tim Cook is the Steve Balmer of Apple; right now they're still making money off of legacy. Jobs demanded quality and usefulness, not silly touchbars, half-witted protocol implementations, and removing of essential ports (ethernet, headphone jacks, etc). The market is ripe for another commercially supported Unix-based hardware/software outfit to take over and give people what they really want.
- lanewinfield 9y agoYou think Jobs would've been cool with this? What are you smoking?
- CodeSheikh 9y agoThis scenario is pretty much applicable for any private corp. across the nation or globe. Every company has their own rules and regulations around the secrecy of new products before the launch in order to stay competitive. The reason this news story is picking up extra traction is because a) it involves Apple and b) some people are trying to justify the idiocy of this teenager using innocence. This guy should be grateful that Apple is not coming after him with a lawsuit that he cant even dream of defending.
- notfried 9y agoShe came from SoCal to visit him, planning to make this video, and possibly knowing she'd see the iPhone X. I wouldn't be surprised if virality was her target, and this was her way to get into Hollywood. And the father, this must have been his way to help his daughter, maybe he was already planning to retire. He must have known he'd be fired. No one of his seniority is that naive. And no way they shot all this footage in the Cafè and had this much face-to-face interaction with workers there without someone reminding them about "No Photography." No reasonable response he could've given except that they had permission. Edit: Come think of it, forget about the iPhone X, this is probably one of the very few (only?) videos ever of Cafe Macs.
- BFatts 9y agoI assume this is all sarcasm?
- abtinf 9y agoI would think this kind of unintentional mini-leak happens several times per day at Apple: there must be hundreds of employees running around with prototype hardware, using them as their primary phones. If that is true, then it would seem pretty arbitrary to fire the employee, especially since the articles makes it seem like his daughter took the video down immediately on request. Regardless, there is no shortage of demand for RF engineers. An engineer with 17 years of experience, getting fired over something uniquely a concern for Apple, that he was not even primarily responsible for, and getting featured on TechCrunch... This could be one of the best things to ever happen to his career.
- tempodox 9y agoThis seems to be the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBeD8E2xxck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBeD8E2xxck
- skywhopper 9y agoShowing the phone itself and its features does not seem like a fireable offense, but it sounds like some internal naming, documentation and links were visible, which is surely a major violation of company policy, if allowing your family to have access to your internal account were not (which it also certainly is).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]