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He says offhand that Google is a better place for engineers to work than Apple, but as far as I can tell, Apple makes none of these five mistakes.

piaw 16y ago
I know several Apple and ex-Apple engineers. Let's just say that the environment isn't even comparable. Google wins hands down. One of my friends at Apple had to file for an information request so that she could debug a problem that spanned multiple layers of abstraction. A Google engineer faced with that kind of inanity would just quit.
- othermaciej 16y ago
  I've also heard complaints from Google and ex-Google people that wouldn't come up at Apple. Examples: - Launching a hard-to-understand product and providing it with scant marketing support, so it promptly goes nowhere (when Apple launches a product we are committed to making it a success). - Central hiring leads to o way of knowing what kind of project you will end up working on, and high risk that it will be infrastructure grunt work which is not respected by the culture. Does internal secrecy suck more or less than those kinds of things? I dunno. I would not be so bold as to make a claim either way without firsthand experience of both environments.
  - endtime 16y ago
    I'm sure having the trains run on time is nice, but I have to concur with piaw - from the people I've talked to, Apple sounds like a remarkably stifling place to work.
brown9-2 16y ago
Certainly over the course of Apple's decades they've made many managing mistakes and it would be trivial for an insider to make a list of any five of them, without ordering of "the top five" or anything like this. It's impossible to be around for so long and to employ many people and not make any mistakes. No company is perfect. Coming away from this presentation thinking "pffft Company X is so much better because they don't do this" is a huge mistake - if you aren't making mistakes, you aren't trying.

piaw 16y ago

I know several Apple and ex-Apple engineers. Let's just say that the environment isn't even comparable. Google wins hands down. One of my friends at Apple had to file for an information request so that she could debug a problem that spanned multiple layers of abstraction. A Google engineer faced with that kind of inanity would just quit.

othermaciej 16y ago
I've also heard complaints from Google and ex-Google people that wouldn't come up at Apple. Examples: - Launching a hard-to-understand product and providing it with scant marketing support, so it promptly goes nowhere (when Apple launches a product we are committed to making it a success). - Central hiring leads to o way of knowing what kind of project you will end up working on, and high risk that it will be infrastructure grunt work which is not respected by the culture. Does internal secrecy suck more or less than those kinds of things? I dunno. I would not be so bold as to make a claim either way without firsthand experience of both environments.
- endtime 16y ago
  I'm sure having the trains run on time is nice, but I have to concur with piaw - from the people I've talked to, Apple sounds like a remarkably stifling place to work.

brown9-2 16y ago

Certainly over the course of Apple's decades they've made many managing mistakes and it would be trivial for an insider to make a list of any five of them, without ordering of "the top five" or anything like this. It's impossible to be around for so long and to employ many people and not make any mistakes. No company is perfect. Coming away from this presentation thinking "pffft Company X is so much better because they don't do this" is a huge mistake - if you aren't making mistakes, you aren't trying.