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Somewhat ironic that this memo got leaked but I think in this case it actually serves their purpose for it to be read by everyone (including potential employees

by IBM 8y ago

Somewhat ironic that this memo got leaked but I think in this case it actually serves their purpose for it to be read by everyone (including potential employees). I think this part is key and is something I've always wondered about: >While it may seem flattering to be approached, it’s important to remember that you’re getting played. The success of these outsiders is measured by obtaining Apple’s secrets from you and making them public. A scoop about an unreleased Apple product can generate massive traffic for a publication and financially benefit the blogger or reporter who broke it. But the Apple employee who leaks has everything to lose. I completely understand what's in it for the reporter, but I've never understood what the employee gets out of it. I've been reading Mark Gurman's scoops about Apple for years so I'm definitely biased in wanting that to continue. It just seems like there's tons of upside for the reporter and only downside for the leaker. Also I wonder what goes through a reporter's head when one of their sources get fired because they leaked to them. I'd feel extremely guilty if someone was fired or prosecuted because of me. Not sure how they do it.

loceng 8y ago
And downside for the organization -- first to market is important, and rewarding thieves over the innovators - giving thieves resources over the innovators, is not good overall for society.
- wuliwong 8y ago
  I think IMB's question was just limited to understanding the employee's motivations, I don't think they were implying there are no other affected parties.
  - loceng 8y ago
    Didn't mean to imply that if I did, essentially just wanted to add to their comment.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
chc 8y ago
Maybe they just want people to know the thing they're leaking. I'm sure there are people who find corporate secrecy policies annoying (somebody finds basically every corporate policy annoying) and would view a chance to flout them as an upside in itself.
melvinmt 8y ago
Who says the employee is not being rewarded?
- IBM 8y ago
  Maybe they are? But I think that would magnify the downside of leaking by 10x for limited upside? Note I'm talking about people who work in Cupertino. It makes complete sense for someone working at a supplier in Asia to leak for money, doesn't really make much sense for a software engineer.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Having worked with the tech press a lot, having written in pubs myself, and knowing quite a few reporters well, I think I can confidently say that payments for inside information are pretty rare. In a previous job, I knew lots of information about many companies under NDA and never had a whiff of this sort of thing.
yodon 8y ago
>I’ve never understood what the employee gets out of it The intelligence services have done a great deal of research into the persona of the press leaker/Wikileaks leaker (as distinct from the more traditional espionage leaker). A common trait is for the press leaker to be either highly over-qualified for their job or believe themselves to be over-qualified for their job. The belief coming out of that research is a sense of being under appreciated and a deep need to be recognized by someone (even themselves) for something they’ve done is the primary motivation for this class of leaker. The “leaking good and important things” blanket that the leaks are wrapped in then becomes a secondary factor that is used by the leaker to justify their actions to themselves in their quest for the recognition they need. I doubt if corporate press leakers have been studied as heavily as intelligence sector leakers, but the chances are good there are some similar motivations at play.
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  >The “leaking good and important things” blanket that the leaks are wrapped in then becomes a secondary factor that is used by the leaker to justify Sounds like how a sociopath would interpret the motivations of a good person.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > the motivations of a good person Edward Snowden and someone who leaks an upcoming iPhone's rounded edges are not in the same category.
- DINKDINK 8y ago
  >research into the persona of the press leaker Source?
  - yodon 8y ago
    I’ve been looking for a source to cite on this and my google-fu isn’t pulling it up. Most of the multiple discussions I’ve read on this research were probably around 18 months ago. I’m pretty sure some of the work has been discussed on HN before so hopefully someone else will be able to pull up a link.
praneshp 8y ago
Sometimes the leaker might think they have an upside. I worked (generally, in the same floor/area) with one such person[0]. The actual emails are available for the public, the leaker wanted some coverage for the new startup she was going to move to. [0]: https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/08/18/ex-yahoo-employee-admits-leaking-information-to-author-of-marissa-mayer-book/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/08/18/ex-yahoo-employee-adm...
- bhhaskin 8y ago
  Man that site is bad. First thing on mobile is a full ad.
  - praneshp 8y ago
    I chose it after I tried to google for a better article. The other ones are paywalled[0] or scribd[1] [0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-08/yahoo-sues-ex-staffer-over-claims-she-shared-secrets-with-writer https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-08/yahoo-sue... [1]: https://www.scribd.com/document/275069641/Yahoo-vs-Cecile-Lal-Stipulation-Injunction https://www.scribd.com/document/275069641/Yahoo-vs-Cecile-La...
ghaff 8y ago
There are a number of reasons even if there's no formal quid pro quo such as money under the table or even a nice meal. Reporters cultivate relationships with sources and sharing some inside information can come to be seen as just helping out a friend with some tidbit that doesn't really hurt anything. Furthermore, there can be an ego thing around sharing things you know that other people don't.
koolba 8y ago
> I completely understand what's in it for the reporter, but I've never understood what the employee gets out of it. I've been reading Mark Gurman's scoops about Apple for years so I'm definitely biased in wanting that to continue. It just seems like there's tons of upside for the reporter and only downside for the leaker. There's four reasons people leak information: 1. Out of moral responsibility to report unsafe or illegal activity. 2. To cause direct harm to the root organization because they feel slighted by some action in the past. 3. The "leak" is officially sanctioned as part of a submarine. 4. Ego. Numbers 3 and 4 are the biggies.
- matt_wulfeck 8y ago
  I think it’s a lot more complicated than your oversimplification. For example, where does a quid-pro-quo relationship fit into your categories? Saying leaked out of “ego” is equivalent to saying it was leaked “because”. We know it was something internal to the leaker’s psyche, but research should help us understand what led up to that point and how it could have been avoided. For example, would you say a gossiper gossips because of “ego”?
  - greedo 8y ago
    A gossiper gossips to raise their status; having inside information (and revealing it) shows that they are more knowledgable than the person they gossip to.
- smudgymcscmudge 8y ago
  Somewhere on there should be personal vendettas. More than once I’ve seen screenshots of internal conversations on Business Insider that were clearly motivated by a desire to get that person fired.
  - koolba 8y ago
    I'd consider that part of #2.
  - cavanasm 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Waterluvian 8y ago
Maybe I'm simple but I'm sometimes at tradeshows as an engineering authority. Its hard at times not to say too much, because it's just kind of natural. You have questions and I want to help. I want to share knowledge. I can absolutely appreciate why I can't tell people everything they want to know but it's not my natural state to decline to do so. An example from this week. Someone was asking about the usual questions. Stuff on our website that I can comfortably answer. Then they casually led the conversation to the tech side in appreciation that I'm an engineer doing a great job. He eventually asked, "what feature in your latest release are you the most proud of?" I badly want to tell you because it's fucking cool stuff. But I won't because you're an investor for our competition.
- joezydeco 8y ago
  You'll learn more than you ever expected to know by hanging out at hotel bars during tradeshows. Another great source is the airplane ride to the show. I've heard of at least one tech columnist that would watch people working on laptop presentations on the flights and pick up all kinds of scoops.
  - AmericanChopper 8y ago
    As an ex-smoker, I’ve heard some highly sensitive stuff in publicly accessible smoking areas.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  People like to talk about themselves, but they need to remember that the person they're conversing with might use it against them. In my opinion, it's a very important trait to learn, both how to prevent yourself from giving out information and how to get it out of someone. Pay attention to someone if they keep stuttering or "forgetting key" parts of the statement they're making, getting others to fill in the blanks is one of the easiest ways since our minds just want to do that. So you intentionally pretend to have difficulty remembering what you're saying and let the other person tell you.
- toyg 8y ago
  Classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc
greedo 8y ago
People leak/gossip/whistleblow for a variety of reasons: 1. Immediate Financial - They either have a direct quid-pro-quo with the leak recipient, or stand to benefit directly from the leak. 2. Disagreement with the direction/decision-making - They want Apple to do something different, and internal (legitimate) attempts to influence this decision have failed; usually because the leaker doesn't have the political capital. 3. Vanity/Ego - More of a contributing factor to #2, but they want a feeling of power that comes from leaking. 4. Trolling - A subset of #3 really. Some people just want to watch the world burn. 5. Revenge - Feeling screwed out of a promotion, or otherwise neglected? Leak! 6. Low self-esteem - If you're approached by a reporter or blogger, having something of value is a way to boost yourself.
- alexandercrohde 8y ago
  Can we not group whistleblowing, a usually-legal heroic action of reporting immoral/illegal behavior (to the extent that you can be awarded millions of dollars by the government for whistelblowing) with leaking trivial product details?
  - greedo 8y ago
    If you think the motives of whistleblowers are as pure as the driven snow, we'll just have to agree to disagree. #2 covers their actions, but not all whistleblowers are related to Mother Teresa.
    - LoSboccacc 8y ago
      > not all whistleblowers are related to Mother Teresa so some of them are good?
      - dang 8y ago
        Please don't do this here.
    - alexandercrohde 8y ago
      You're making a strawman argument. I'm not arguing "all whistleblowers are good people," I'm citing the definition of whisteblowing is "a person who informs on a person or organization engaged in an illicit activity." Reporting a CEO embezzling is whistleblowing. Announcing apple is working on a new gizmo is not. Don't conflate them.
ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
Reporters trying to get leaks can also be extremely charming, flirtatious, and often use alcohol to get people to open up. They can also be extremely manipulative. Like pretending they know something already, and so its ok to comment on it, OR they say they are going to print with something that is wrong and damaging for the company. For example the next iPhone only has 6 GB of storage. You can either not confirm that, or you correct them, and say "I think you mean 600 GB", at which point you just leaked a major new feature.
- walshemj 8y ago
  Yeh why do you think TLA's have used journalistic cover in the past its a similar sort of job when it comes down to it.
debt 8y ago
On the contrary, we all are carrying around GPS tracking devices in our pockets that almost every modern worker in most contexts needs to have. So if Apple or Facebook wants leaks to stop happening they need to reverse course and stop the unofficial mandate to connect the world or get a device into every person’s hands. These things are becoming global phenomenon pervasive in nearly everyone’s lives and yet they demand a near total lack of transparency of how they operate. Seems hypocritical and unfair at best and maybe unethical or immoral at worst. Massive organizations and businesses, people and families rely on these things so they at least should have some insight into their operation.
cafard 8y ago
Not all leaks are unauthorized. Organizations often want to put information or misinformation out without taking responsibility for it. The media has paper and airtime to fill, and may or may not be picky about its sources. It is not unusual for an organization to do authorized leaks and try to chase down unauthorized leakers. I'm not sure how many reporters have done jail time to protect their sources, but I'm sure that more than a few have been threatened with it.
gaius 8y ago
I've never understood what the employee gets out of it Revenge against a real or imaginary slight, by senior managers, or even their own line manager.
carterehsmith 8y ago
> but I've never understood what the employee gets out of it They may get money? Some of these companies have valuation in hundreds of billions, and a small bit of news can nudge that +/- 0.5-2% or more which could be a couple billions dollars. If you own just 0.1% of the stock, that would be several $m opportunity . So, paying your informer, say, $100K or something, sounds reasonable, if you can execute it properly, even accounting for fake informers.
trisimix 8y ago
I assume theyd be sad they lost a source of income. Some people are good at surpressing their conscience.
pfarnsworth 8y ago
Back during the dot com boom, I worked at a small, but public company. Wall Street analysts (or people that worked for them) would randomly call people up on their office phones (back during the days when people had their own office phone number) and try to befriend people. If they got a hook, over the course of a few phone calls, they would totally stroke their egos, and then ask them for information about the company. For employees it was like they were doing favors for their friend, and the things they were asking were generally pretty small, but could increase over time. We were warned about this happening since it happened before, so I'm sure similar techniques that worked 20 years ago still work today. It's just a form of social engineering.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
That's funny wording because Steve Jobs management philosophy was all about "playing" his employees and partners, to extract world-changing inventions for minimal compensation.
- dpkonofa 8y ago
  Source?
vbezhenar 8y ago
> I've never understood what the employee gets out of it Bucks?
daveheq 8y ago
The employee may get paid by the reporting agency, or have friends in journalism who are also enthusiasts.

by IBM 8y ago

loceng 8y ago

And downside for the organization -- first to market is important, and rewarding thieves over the innovators - giving thieves resources over the innovators, is not good overall for society.

wuliwong 8y ago
I think IMB's question was just limited to understanding the employee's motivations, I don't think they were implying there are no other affected parties.
- loceng 8y ago
  Didn't mean to imply that if I did, essentially just wanted to add to their comment.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

chc 8y ago

Maybe they just want people to know the thing they're leaking. I'm sure there are people who find corporate secrecy policies annoying (somebody finds basically every corporate policy annoying) and would view a chance to flout them as an upside in itself.

melvinmt 8y ago

Who says the employee is not being rewarded?

IBM 8y ago
Maybe they are? But I think that would magnify the downside of leaking by 10x for limited upside? Note I'm talking about people who work in Cupertino. It makes complete sense for someone working at a supplier in Asia to leak for money, doesn't really make much sense for a software engineer.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Having worked with the tech press a lot, having written in pubs myself, and knowing quite a few reporters well, I think I can confidently say that payments for inside information are pretty rare. In a previous job, I knew lots of information about many companies under NDA and never had a whiff of this sort of thing.

yodon 8y ago

>I’ve never understood what the employee gets out of it The intelligence services have done a great deal of research into the persona of the press leaker/Wikileaks leaker (as distinct from the more traditional espionage leaker). A common trait is for the press leaker to be either highly over-qualified for their job or believe themselves to be over-qualified for their job. The belief coming out of that research is a sense of being under appreciated and a deep need to be recognized by someone (even themselves) for something they’ve done is the primary motivation for this class of leaker. The “leaking good and important things” blanket that the leaks are wrapped in then becomes a secondary factor that is used by the leaker to justify their actions to themselves in their quest for the recognition they need. I doubt if corporate press leakers have been studied as heavily as intelligence sector leakers, but the chances are good there are some similar motivations at play.

gameswithgo 8y ago
>The “leaking good and important things” blanket that the leaks are wrapped in then becomes a secondary factor that is used by the leaker to justify Sounds like how a sociopath would interpret the motivations of a good person.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > the motivations of a good person Edward Snowden and someone who leaks an upcoming iPhone's rounded edges are not in the same category.
DINKDINK 8y ago
>research into the persona of the press leaker Source?
- yodon 8y ago
  I’ve been looking for a source to cite on this and my google-fu isn’t pulling it up. Most of the multiple discussions I’ve read on this research were probably around 18 months ago. I’m pretty sure some of the work has been discussed on HN before so hopefully someone else will be able to pull up a link.

praneshp 8y ago

Sometimes the leaker might think they have an upside. I worked (generally, in the same floor/area) with one such person[0]. The actual emails are available for the public, the leaker wanted some coverage for the new startup she was going to move to. [0]: https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/08/18/ex-yahoo-employee-admits-leaking-information-to-author-of-marissa-mayer-book/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/08/18/ex-yahoo-employee-adm...

bhhaskin 8y ago
Man that site is bad. First thing on mobile is a full ad.
- praneshp 8y ago
  I chose it after I tried to google for a better article. The other ones are paywalled[0] or scribd[1] [0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-08/yahoo-sues-ex-staffer-over-claims-she-shared-secrets-with-writer https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-08/yahoo-sue... [1]: https://www.scribd.com/document/275069641/Yahoo-vs-Cecile-Lal-Stipulation-Injunction https://www.scribd.com/document/275069641/Yahoo-vs-Cecile-La...

ghaff 8y ago

There are a number of reasons even if there's no formal quid pro quo such as money under the table or even a nice meal. Reporters cultivate relationships with sources and sharing some inside information can come to be seen as just helping out a friend with some tidbit that doesn't really hurt anything. Furthermore, there can be an ego thing around sharing things you know that other people don't.

koolba 8y ago

> I completely understand what's in it for the reporter, but I've never understood what the employee gets out of it. I've been reading Mark Gurman's scoops about Apple for years so I'm definitely biased in wanting that to continue. It just seems like there's tons of upside for the reporter and only downside for the leaker. There's four reasons people leak information: 1. Out of moral responsibility to report unsafe or illegal activity. 2. To cause direct harm to the root organization because they feel slighted by some action in the past. 3. The "leak" is officially sanctioned as part of a submarine. 4. Ego. Numbers 3 and 4 are the biggies.

matt_wulfeck 8y ago
I think it’s a lot more complicated than your oversimplification. For example, where does a quid-pro-quo relationship fit into your categories? Saying leaked out of “ego” is equivalent to saying it was leaked “because”. We know it was something internal to the leaker’s psyche, but research should help us understand what led up to that point and how it could have been avoided. For example, would you say a gossiper gossips because of “ego”?
- greedo 8y ago
  A gossiper gossips to raise their status; having inside information (and revealing it) shows that they are more knowledgable than the person they gossip to.
smudgymcscmudge 8y ago
Somewhere on there should be personal vendettas. More than once I’ve seen screenshots of internal conversations on Business Insider that were clearly motivated by a desire to get that person fired.
- koolba 8y ago
  I'd consider that part of #2.
- cavanasm 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Waterluvian 8y ago

Maybe I'm simple but I'm sometimes at tradeshows as an engineering authority. Its hard at times not to say too much, because it's just kind of natural. You have questions and I want to help. I want to share knowledge. I can absolutely appreciate why I can't tell people everything they want to know but it's not my natural state to decline to do so. An example from this week. Someone was asking about the usual questions. Stuff on our website that I can comfortably answer. Then they casually led the conversation to the tech side in appreciation that I'm an engineer doing a great job. He eventually asked, "what feature in your latest release are you the most proud of?" I badly want to tell you because it's fucking cool stuff. But I won't because you're an investor for our competition.

joezydeco 8y ago
You'll learn more than you ever expected to know by hanging out at hotel bars during tradeshows. Another great source is the airplane ride to the show. I've heard of at least one tech columnist that would watch people working on laptop presentations on the flights and pick up all kinds of scoops.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  As an ex-smoker, I’ve heard some highly sensitive stuff in publicly accessible smoking areas.
lotsofpulp 8y ago
People like to talk about themselves, but they need to remember that the person they're conversing with might use it against them. In my opinion, it's a very important trait to learn, both how to prevent yourself from giving out information and how to get it out of someone. Pay attention to someone if they keep stuttering or "forgetting key" parts of the statement they're making, getting others to fill in the blanks is one of the easiest ways since our minds just want to do that. So you intentionally pretend to have difficulty remembering what you're saying and let the other person tell you.
toyg 8y ago
Classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc

greedo 8y ago

People leak/gossip/whistleblow for a variety of reasons: 1. Immediate Financial - They either have a direct quid-pro-quo with the leak recipient, or stand to benefit directly from the leak. 2. Disagreement with the direction/decision-making - They want Apple to do something different, and internal (legitimate) attempts to influence this decision have failed; usually because the leaker doesn't have the political capital. 3. Vanity/Ego - More of a contributing factor to #2, but they want a feeling of power that comes from leaking. 4. Trolling - A subset of #3 really. Some people just want to watch the world burn. 5. Revenge - Feeling screwed out of a promotion, or otherwise neglected? Leak! 6. Low self-esteem - If you're approached by a reporter or blogger, having something of value is a way to boost yourself.

alexandercrohde 8y ago
Can we not group whistleblowing, a usually-legal heroic action of reporting immoral/illegal behavior (to the extent that you can be awarded millions of dollars by the government for whistelblowing) with leaking trivial product details?
- greedo 8y ago
  If you think the motives of whistleblowers are as pure as the driven snow, we'll just have to agree to disagree. #2 covers their actions, but not all whistleblowers are related to Mother Teresa.
  - LoSboccacc 8y ago
    > not all whistleblowers are related to Mother Teresa so some of them are good?
    - dang 8y ago
      Please don't do this here.
  - alexandercrohde 8y ago
    You're making a strawman argument. I'm not arguing "all whistleblowers are good people," I'm citing the definition of whisteblowing is "a person who informs on a person or organization engaged in an illicit activity." Reporting a CEO embezzling is whistleblowing. Announcing apple is working on a new gizmo is not. Don't conflate them.

ghostbrainalpha 8y ago

Reporters trying to get leaks can also be extremely charming, flirtatious, and often use alcohol to get people to open up. They can also be extremely manipulative. Like pretending they know something already, and so its ok to comment on it, OR they say they are going to print with something that is wrong and damaging for the company. For example the next iPhone only has 6 GB of storage. You can either not confirm that, or you correct them, and say "I think you mean 600 GB", at which point you just leaked a major new feature.

walshemj 8y ago
Yeh why do you think TLA's have used journalistic cover in the past its a similar sort of job when it comes down to it.

debt 8y ago

On the contrary, we all are carrying around GPS tracking devices in our pockets that almost every modern worker in most contexts needs to have. So if Apple or Facebook wants leaks to stop happening they need to reverse course and stop the unofficial mandate to connect the world or get a device into every person’s hands. These things are becoming global phenomenon pervasive in nearly everyone’s lives and yet they demand a near total lack of transparency of how they operate. Seems hypocritical and unfair at best and maybe unethical or immoral at worst. Massive organizations and businesses, people and families rely on these things so they at least should have some insight into their operation.

cafard 8y ago

Not all leaks are unauthorized. Organizations often want to put information or misinformation out without taking responsibility for it. The media has paper and airtime to fill, and may or may not be picky about its sources. It is not unusual for an organization to do authorized leaks and try to chase down unauthorized leakers. I'm not sure how many reporters have done jail time to protect their sources, but I'm sure that more than a few have been threatened with it.

gaius 8y ago

I've never understood what the employee gets out of it Revenge against a real or imaginary slight, by senior managers, or even their own line manager.

carterehsmith 8y ago

> but I've never understood what the employee gets out of it They may get money? Some of these companies have valuation in hundreds of billions, and a small bit of news can nudge that +/- 0.5-2% or more which could be a couple billions dollars. If you own just 0.1% of the stock, that would be several $m opportunity . So, paying your informer, say, $100K or something, sounds reasonable, if you can execute it properly, even accounting for fake informers.

trisimix 8y ago

I assume theyd be sad they lost a source of income. Some people are good at surpressing their conscience.

pfarnsworth 8y ago

Back during the dot com boom, I worked at a small, but public company. Wall Street analysts (or people that worked for them) would randomly call people up on their office phones (back during the days when people had their own office phone number) and try to befriend people. If they got a hook, over the course of a few phone calls, they would totally stroke their egos, and then ask them for information about the company. For employees it was like they were doing favors for their friend, and the things they were asking were generally pretty small, but could increase over time. We were warned about this happening since it happened before, so I'm sure similar techniques that worked 20 years ago still work today. It's just a form of social engineering.

fjsolwmv 8y ago

That's funny wording because Steve Jobs management philosophy was all about "playing" his employees and partners, to extract world-changing inventions for minimal compensation.

dpkonofa 8y ago
Source?

vbezhenar 8y ago

> I've never understood what the employee gets out of it Bucks?

daveheq 8y ago

The employee may get paid by the reporting agency, or have friends in journalism who are also enthusiasts.