4 ms·

I'm guessing that it's going to be pretty difficult to hire an engineer who is: - Very good - Wants to live near Palo Alto - Is able to live in the US - Wan

I'm guessing that it's going to be pretty difficult to hire an engineer who is: - Very good - Wants to live near Palo Alto - Is able to live in the US - Wants to be subjected to Apple's privacy rules - Wants to work on fixing bugs instead of making new features In the software engineering game, money only goes so far.

tracker1 9y ago
I'm pretty sure you'd find a LOT of people to do that work for $300k/year... Apple has lots of money to go as far as they like.
- joeblau 9y ago
  Yeah, but if you can make $300k a year, you're likely not dedicating your software engineering career to fixing bugs. Also, you can go a few miles south to Los Gatos and work at Netflix and make $400k/year.
  - linkregister 9y ago
    $400k/year? is that for Principal Engineers and Directors? What would a senior eng make there?
    - joeblau 9y ago
      I think that's for Sr. Engineers++. What I heard is that they do an all in compensation plan so your equity, bonus, and salary are all rolled into your salary and then you decide what you want to do with it. On Glassdoor that doesn't seem to match what I was told though.
  - abakker 9y ago
    I am not an engineer, but from my non-technical POV, this seems ridiculous. Is the cult of building new software really so much more attractive than making the software actually work? I mean, I think this attitude perfectly encapsulates why Apple has problems. Is bug fixing much harder than building the systems from the beginning? Is the difficulty in reading and checking code for errors really hiding the fact that this "unsexy" work of bug fixing involves the actual difficulty? If, in any other field you found people that only wanted to make first drafts, you'd call them copywriters and designers, not engineers. And even if it is totally normal to eschew bug fixing in favor of drafting, isn't there a salary that would cause people to do it? If so, Apple should just pay that and hire those people - it'll still pay off in the long run.
sangnoir 9y ago
Only the first issue can't be solved by throwing more money at it.
- joeblau 9y ago
  If someone is good and can't get a Visa to move to the U.S. more money won't help that either.
  - linkregister 9y ago
    Money can buy a new engineering office in a more immigration-friendly country.
    - joeblau 9y ago
      You're right, but Apple doesn't work like that. They just spent 5 billion dollars on Apple Park attempting to put everyone under one roof. I don't think it's in Apples corporate DNA to outsource core components of their operating system to a more immigration-friendly country.
gurkendoktor 9y ago
If I could work from a European Apple office, this would be 100% my dream job. When you implement new features, you are slave to your marketing department - I'd hate to waste my time on pointless gimmicks like the macOS Siri UI, for example. Maintenance work is much more satisfying because you're directly serving your users (usually skewing towards power users too!). Also, I don't think the privacy restrictions would be so bad. Apple's UIKit engineers occasionally chit-chat with indie devs on Twitter. The problem is that this job would be absolutely futile. If Apple hired 100 great engineers to fix bugs, management would simply double the amount of features that go into each yearly release.
- abakker 9y ago
  For a company that loves minimalism so much, you've hit it right on the money WRT management. The TouchBar, while interesting, is the perfect example of this. I'd love to have had it along with the physical buttons - there's plenty of room. Alone, though, it is pretty weird. I assume that the real problem is that Apple's managers do email and web browsing, and that's it. They probably don't spend enough time in pro apps or trying to be productive to understand that a window manager built in, or physical keys or an improvement to their native text editor would be helpful.

tracker1 9y ago

I'm pretty sure you'd find a LOT of people to do that work for $300k/year... Apple has lots of money to go as far as they like.

joeblau 9y ago
Yeah, but if you can make $300k a year, you're likely not dedicating your software engineering career to fixing bugs. Also, you can go a few miles south to Los Gatos and work at Netflix and make $400k/year.
- linkregister 9y ago
  $400k/year? is that for Principal Engineers and Directors? What would a senior eng make there?
  - joeblau 9y ago
    I think that's for Sr. Engineers++. What I heard is that they do an all in compensation plan so your equity, bonus, and salary are all rolled into your salary and then you decide what you want to do with it. On Glassdoor that doesn't seem to match what I was told though.
- abakker 9y ago
  I am not an engineer, but from my non-technical POV, this seems ridiculous. Is the cult of building new software really so much more attractive than making the software actually work? I mean, I think this attitude perfectly encapsulates why Apple has problems. Is bug fixing much harder than building the systems from the beginning? Is the difficulty in reading and checking code for errors really hiding the fact that this "unsexy" work of bug fixing involves the actual difficulty? If, in any other field you found people that only wanted to make first drafts, you'd call them copywriters and designers, not engineers. And even if it is totally normal to eschew bug fixing in favor of drafting, isn't there a salary that would cause people to do it? If so, Apple should just pay that and hire those people - it'll still pay off in the long run.

sangnoir 9y ago

Only the first issue can't be solved by throwing more money at it.

joeblau 9y ago
If someone is good and can't get a Visa to move to the U.S. more money won't help that either.
- linkregister 9y ago
  Money can buy a new engineering office in a more immigration-friendly country.
  - joeblau 9y ago
    You're right, but Apple doesn't work like that. They just spent 5 billion dollars on Apple Park attempting to put everyone under one roof. I don't think it's in Apples corporate DNA to outsource core components of their operating system to a more immigration-friendly country.

gurkendoktor 9y ago

If I could work from a European Apple office, this would be 100% my dream job. When you implement new features, you are slave to your marketing department - I'd hate to waste my time on pointless gimmicks like the macOS Siri UI, for example. Maintenance work is much more satisfying because you're directly serving your users (usually skewing towards power users too!). Also, I don't think the privacy restrictions would be so bad. Apple's UIKit engineers occasionally chit-chat with indie devs on Twitter. The problem is that this job would be absolutely futile. If Apple hired 100 great engineers to fix bugs, management would simply double the amount of features that go into each yearly release.

abakker 9y ago
For a company that loves minimalism so much, you've hit it right on the money WRT management. The TouchBar, while interesting, is the perfect example of this. I'd love to have had it along with the physical buttons - there's plenty of room. Alone, though, it is pretty weird. I assume that the real problem is that Apple's managers do email and web browsing, and that's it. They probably don't spend enough time in pro apps or trying to be productive to understand that a window manager built in, or physical keys or an improvement to their native text editor would be helpful.