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My Experience at Apple

• ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago
  The author deleted the Medium post, but it was cached elsewhere first: https://archive.is/qdJtN https://archive.is/qdJtN
• NeliX4 6y ago
  Blog removed. Read the story at: https://pastebin.com/BG3FjRxB https://pastebin.com/BG3FjRxB - OR - http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eK_CIq9yorQJ:https://ex-apple-engineer.medium.com/my-experience-apple-5d8b6205cb56?source%3Dpost_page-----5d8b6205cb56--------------------------------&hl=fi&gl=fi&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eK_CIq9...
• vietvu 6y ago
  Apple again with PR handling policy: Delete it at all cost. They are not sorry for this.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• zerof1l 6y ago
  Original article on medium got deleted. Here's artchived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20210101181528/https://ex-apple-engineer.medium.com/my-experience-apple-5d8b6205cb56 https://web.archive.org/web/20210101181528/https://ex-apple-...
• IndexPointer 6y ago
  As soon as this starts happening, hire a lawyer and get as much evidence as you can.
• waltwalther 6y ago
  "The author deleted this Medium story."
• waltwalther 6y ago
  post removed - https://pastebin.com/xqnQD4yX https://pastebin.com/xqnQD4yX
• mikulabc 6y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20210102123528/http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://ex-apple-engineer.medium.com/my-experience-apple-5d8b6205cb56&strip=1&vwsrc=0 https://web.archive.org/web/20210102123528/http://webcache.g...
• nikivi 6y ago
  If this is true, I am sure it's not reflective of the entire company as otherwise they won't be shipping these great products.
  • itg 6y ago
    I haven't found much of a correlation between company culture and the quality of products they ship.
    • nikivi 6y ago
      So you can have the experiences as described in the article across all areas of the company with everyone staying in line and still doing their 'best work'?
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • EliRivers 6y ago
        Seems unlikely, doesn't it? I suspect it's not true. This guy clearly wasn't producing his 'best work'. The rest of the team, from his description, doesn't seem very competent. Does your question presuppose that everyone is somehow magically doing their 'best work'? If so, do you have any evidence of that? Lots of companies get by with shitty cultures and low-productivity employees.
  • klipt 6y ago
    For big companies like FANG culture can be very team dependent. There are great teams and awful teams.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• sokoloff 6y ago
  It’s a long, rambling post with some fairly vague and difficult to falsify accusations. I have no connections to Apple (other than as a consumer), but I could not wade through the article enough to determine if I thought there was an actual smoking gun. I suspect the story would be much more powerful if it were 1/5 as long and stuck to the material facts.
  • JKCalhoun 6y ago
    Yeah, I wanted to read it more carefully but it seemed to be a long litany of real or perceived psychological abuse. Maybe I too missed a smoking gun. What I read described an Apple that is completely alien to me. I have never seen or even heard of anything even remotely like this team or the behavior described.
    • smoldesu 6y ago
      Well, that's the basis of their article. They're trying to tell you an "inside story", that's the hook of the whole thing.
    • busterarm 6y ago
      I have a friend who recently left Microsoft after a decade and a half. He'd completely drunk the Kool Aid but ended his experience at the company facing more than a year of abuse from a new manager and senior engineer. Very similar to this long post about Apple, unfortunately. He and a couple of other people on his team tried to move to different teams, but despite a long history of excellent work, everyone was treated by the rest of the company like they were toxic waste. Nobody thinks that their company is like this until they're on the other side of it. In my friend's case, it was only in retrospect that he saw patterns of toxic behavior from management.
      • VRay 6y ago
        I haven't seen this sort of outright abuse, but I've definitely experienced firsthand at multiple companies a situation where a newcomer needs a ton of tribal knowledge in order to do their job, but the newcomer's team members get miffed every time they're asked a question. So then the newcomer ends up having to do way too much work on his/her own the hard way, it makes everything way harder and less effective, and before too long they're branded a "low performer" and it all goes downhill from there. It happened to me at Microsoft, and later it ALMOST happened to me at Apple. Fortunately, at Apple I knew what was going on that time and I just badgered my irate teammate and bullied him into giving me all the info I needed. (Or went around him when I could, since I was lucky that the rest of the team was a lot easier to work with in that respect) He was a nice guy, but he'd get visibly annoyed every time I asked him a question. Either the answer was patently obvious, or the question was unanswerably difficult.. Later on, that teammate left and a new one came onboard with a ludicrous number of really dumb questions, but I just swallowed my bad attitude and did my best to patiently and nicely answer them.. and sure enough, after a couple of months he was fully up to speed. Also, even more fortunately, when things were going badly at Microsoft I had a decent savings account built up and a lot of self confidence/stubbornness, enough to say from a place of complete conviction "I'M not the problem; this whole org is a steaming pile of shit!" no matter who told me otherwise. I feel really bad for the author of TFA, because I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to have the type of screwed-up, mercenary attitude it would take to get through his experiences unscathed.
• IThinkImOKAY 6y ago
  This post was vote manipulated.
• exApple-anon 6y ago
  Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. Unlike others, I actually find this story fairly believable. When I first joined Apple, straight out of college - a good program, top three in the country - I was abused similarly. I joined a team that was on a project behind schedule. Our manager was a brusque, no-nonsense sort of dude. But he clearly had anger problems. On the team were 2 senior engineers, me, and a junior engineer that had just completed his internship and was on a work Visa. As the project got closer to the deadline, and the scope increased, the manager got agitated. In our team meetings, he would start yelling at us. People down the hallways would stare at us with those "looks." In our 1:1s he told us we might not have a job if our product doesn't ship on time (we were competing with another internal team to beat them to the punch.) The two senior engineers decided they'd had enough and quit the team. The manager told us to work overtime (no overtime pay, but we had to for fear of our job). He promised us that if we did it that we would get a month of vacation on him, and that he could secure it for us. The product released. After countless nights of overtime we did it. Our manager left, our guarantee of a month of vacation evaporated, and for the next three months, us two junior engineers were left on 24/7 primary/secondary on-call for a critical service. It was a nightmare. Calls at 3 AM, 6 AM, on weekends. Our manager got a promotion and is fairly high up at Apple now. Horrible experience. I left for a new company that pays me nearly double.
  • gabereiser 6y ago
    Sadly, you can fill in the blank with any FAANG company with this story. I’ve heard it a thousand times. Toxic management. Sorry you went through that, sorry that was your first taste of engineering out of college. Glad you stuck with it. It’s a tough spot to be. Do you roll over and do the job your being yelled at to do even though you know any concessions are BS? Or like the senior folks, do you walk? It’s a really hard choice. Does Apple not have manager feedback mechanisms?
    • hertzrat 6y ago
      Does anybody really want to be “the person who criticizes his or her managers,” in an official on-the-books capacity, in a context where your job is already being threatened?
• vr46 6y ago
  This sounds like an absolutely terrible experience. I hope that a decent writer or journalist takes this story on board and digs a bit deeper. Companies’ internal behaviour should absolutely be of public interest.
  • adjkant 6y ago
    This is a case where a good journalist could do wonders - to synthesize this beyond the extensive length and to force Apple to investigate and respond. IANAL but it sounds like some of this could get near a workplace harassment suit too and publicity could attract pro-bono representation, especially in the current anti-tech political climate. It'd also validate some of this, as this thread is already littered with doubters of the story. While I generally believe most of this, I think a full picture adds a lot more teeth to some of the crucial parts here. Any journalist reading this - please engage with this person and help them.
• gjsman-1000 6y ago
  Honestly, I want to believe anything we get out of companies and people's experiences, but this really feels... off. Maybe it's the writing, but it _feels_ like an Apple hater who never worked at the company wrote a false exposé just for the sake of it.
  • PEJOE 6y ago
    My friends who work at Apple have definitely complained about bureaucracy and a not so great working environment. However article is clearly written by someone who has been psychologically harmed and sees the world through that lens. I did not get the sense that this person was pretending to have worked at Apple
  • j45 6y ago
    Maybe you can try writing something this long, in detail and see if it turns out the same? Assuming you don’t work at Apple. Edit: This post seems plausible once you start hearing multiple accounts.
  • mynameishere 6y ago
    There is something about one person being in a beehive of drama, but at the same time confusing ordinary office politics with "nepotism" or constantly conflating Apple policies and national policies (the so-called "Muslim Ban" etc) or taking what might be honest advice "Quit before you're fired" as some sort of threat. In other words, when one person's short experience contains more complaining than I've made in my entire life--especially when that one person is dealing with a massively deep-pocketed and "woke" corporation--there's indeed something very off about it. This person is almost certainly going for the big bucks.
  • xenihn 6y ago
    Here's a fun bias exercise for you: read the piece replacing Apple with a company you hate, and see if it changes how you feel.
• hu3 6y ago
  This sounds surreal. If that is true, this person had to deal with horrible things at work: - “You are a skinny kid with no experience. Nobody cares about what you do. Just put your head down, shut your mouth or get yourself fired”. - “You escaped a war zone; it is obvious you have many mental problems. ” - “Just leave Apple before they kick you out. This is exactly what happened to the previous guy we fired.” - “My husband worked for FBI and I can get you deported on a cargo boat if I want.” - “How much do you drink? Do you do drugs?”
• polote 6y ago
  Honestly why do people think that cannot happen at Apple ? That kind of thing can happen in any company. Apple is thousands of employees, it only requires a few bad people to create a situation like that. I'm not sure though, creating a post like that is the best thing. I don't know what exists in the US, but in France, you can sue your employer for free (You don't even need a lawyer), and if you are able to show a few emails showing abuse, there is like almost 100% chance the company will loose EDIT: To the people who downvote me, seriously why ?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • opportune 6y ago
    From this and a few other random posts I've seen on Blind and Hacker News, the closed/secretive nature of Apple seems to allow it to happen more frequently than at other companies.
    • jfb 6y ago
      Apple also varies, culturally, pretty widely between departments. It's not always the case that abusive behaviour under one VP -- or good treatment under a different one! -- is extrapolate-able to other organizations.
      • the_local_host 6y ago
        > It's not always the case that abusive behaviour under one VP... is extrapolate-able to other organizations A company ought to be defined by the worst conditions it allows to persist, otherwise they have less incentive to clean up their organization.
        • jfb 6y ago
          Oh, no doubt. I just wanted to point out that someone can go through a whole career at Apple without encountering this sort of garbage.
• praptak 6y ago
  In such situations always gather evidence and hire a lawyer. HR are there to protect the interest of the company, you need someone that you employ to protect your interest.
  • Symbiote 6y ago
    Or in Europe etc, join a/the union. The union least has lawyers experienced in this kind of trouble, and they are cheap/free to use for members.
    • praptak 6y ago
      I don't believe any of the FAANG companies have unions, not even in Europe. This is still good advice though - unions will probably help you even as a non-member.
      • benhurmarcel 6y ago
        In many European countries the presence of unions isn't optional, it's compulsory above a company size threshold for example. It doesn't mean employees have to be part of it, but it has to be present.
        • kamyarg 6y ago
          ^ +1 to support this, just a couple of months back there was a huge mess with N26 (the neo-bank) trying to prevent its employees from unionizing and how they actually did it. Ref: https://www.worker26.com/ https://www.worker26.com/ & https://twitter.com/worker291 https://twitter.com/worker291 Disclaimer: No relation to N26 or the union in any way, just another Berliner supporting their cause
      • eivarv 6y ago
        At least where I live (Norway) your employer doesn't have a say in whether you're organized or not, and wouldn't necessarily know if you are – but you'd typically have an elected representative in companies of a certain size or with a certain number of employees. Most unions I know of operate on a country-level.
• aninteger 6y ago
  This is really sad and I can't imagine going through that. I think we've also heard time and time again that HR is not out to protect you but rather the company. I understand that this is this person's first job but they should have understood that this is not normal behavior. You should always put your (mental) health first and seek other forms of employment, even if you are on a visa, if this type of abuse is occurring.
• bredren 6y ago
  No way to say if this is a legit story, but I have seen this kind of thing at Intel, a subsidiary of comScore and a subsidiary of Siemens. Toxic workplaces exist, and toxic teams within divisions exist. When I saw this stuff, I was too young and inexperienced to recognize bad behavior and recognize my own power to go fish for something else. I did not have immigration issues to think about though, which adds a whole other dimension to getting stuck in something like this. One time I saw this guy in the company softball league charge the pitcher over whether a pitch was a strike or a ball. It was absolutely not okay and the senior manager in the division said the guy was a "teddy bear" and "had kids" and that I needed to drop it. I learned later that he was a major producer in sales engineering for the company's leading product. Sometimes you get unlucky and are placed in a group like this. Powerful engineers probably have more control during the interview stage, and some companies can be good at getting rid of bad behavior. However results and loyalty can outweigh bad behavior. Something that people should think about is their ability to manage emotional barriers. This isn't something I was taught growing up, but I hope young people are more familiar about asserting these today. If people take advantage of you in your personal life, and you have the bad luck of being placed into a workplace with predatory personalities, they will take advantage of you there. Since that is your livelihood, it can be scary. I'd advise people who experience toxic workplaces or think that they are in them to consider whether they themselves are lacking in the ability to assert their own boundaries and act on those assertions when they are broken repeatedly. If you are not able to do this, use your health insurance to seek professional help because you'll need this ability in professional and personal environments for the rest of your life. Better to learn about yourself now than later. If you don't have health insurance, there are communities on reddit and elsewhere that support people dealing with emotional abuse. Which is basically what this stuff is. You can learn a lot by reading and anonymously participating in these communities. If at all possible get professional help even if it means cash out of pocket, because your mental health is among the most valuable investments you can make.
  • systemvoltage 6y ago
    Nation states and adversaries can also fabricate these stories, especially since the damage to western brands is best done at the root - attraction of talent and sowing doubts. On the other hand, it sounds believable that these things happen in a big Corp like Apple. Not trying to be conspiratorial, just to keep in mind - what you see on HN should be taken with a clear headed mind that some of this public information isn’t verified by a reputable newspaper with any anon source.
• newbie578 6y ago
  I have to ask, why is it so hard to criticize or show Apple in a negative light on HN? If this was a post thrashing Google, it would already have over 300 upvotes, and "necessary" comments how there are already people who are "de-Googling" their life... I mean there are already skeptic comments regarding the author's intentions and experience? The fact is that out of all FAA(M)NG companies, work experience in Apple is by far the least known online, some might even say it has tendencies with a cult...
  • parasubvert 6y ago
    I suspect if this were Google there would be similar skepticism about an anonymous unverified story that offers a threat at the end. There is too much bullshit out there on every topic, and it’s usually much more believable if you attach your name and reputation to a story (which is why it’s good to “believe women”, while still verifying). Apple is a big target with a decades of history in online advocacy debates. It’s not hard to criticize Apple on HN, every Apple thread has significant critiques. There are often defenders too, however, which is also fine.
  • sokoloff 6y ago
    There are many articles and comments on HN critical of Apple. Read the vitriol over the 30% App Store cut, accusing them of being a minority and yet simultaneously monopoly producer of smartphones, the MBPro keyboard fiasco (which was absolutely shitty on Apple’s part), the glued-in batteries, the touchbar, the removal of ports, soldered-in RAM, etc. I don’t particularly think Apple gets a pass here. This article is garnering skeptics in part by being a James Joyce-ian barely coherent account of slights that read as a mix of real and imagined.
    • Apocryphon 6y ago
      Apple gets its share of critics as it has since its inception, but it also gets its share of loyalists where the rest of FANG don't. One quickly notices that in discussions there as much of a knee-jerk impulse to defend Apple, as there is to bash the company. Even your comment reveals an abrupt dismissal of the OP's testimony, impugning the character of its author.
• tokamak-teapot 6y ago
  There are areas like this in every company, from 8 person businesses to large corporates. For those who find themselves in one, the biggest stress comes from the fact it’s hard to leave. The abusers know this, of course, and they know that the more abuse they pile on, the harder it gets to leave. There is no easy answer, but I’ve seen it done to many people and those who’ve come out of it okay are those who just left. They had to get another job, yes, but in many cases the company where the abuse occurred is no longer having fun when the victim leaves, so they’ll just respond to a reference request with ‘yes they worked here from X to Y with this title’ and you’ll never have to deal with them again.
  • ljm 6y ago
    This is a sad story not only because of just how toxic that team/department was, bur also because it sounds exactly like one where you're set up to fail the moment it's decided you're placed there. The 'colleagues' in this story sound like they got themselves into a cushy position where they could coast off of the hard work and hopefulness of a new hire, drain them to the point of complete burnout, and then either fire them or let constructive dismissal take its course while they wait for fresh meat. The things a group of nasty individuals can do when put together is truly saddening, and I hope the author of this post finds a better job where they are treated as a human being.
• tdhz77 6y ago
  I must try and understand my bias towards certain tech companies. When somebody says something bad about Facebook I instantly believe, but for some reason I had to really dig into this Apple engineer and it took me longer to believe them. Truth is harder to discern than I had thought.
  • valuearb 6y ago
    Maybe because after every paragraph you ask yourself, why didn’t they just fire them? They could have done it at any point.
    • opportune 6y ago
      At most big companies firing people is a lengthy process. Also firing someone under 12 months into their first "real" job after graduating looks very bad.
      • ghaff 6y ago
        It's hard from an HR perspective and it's something that a lot of managers just don't want to have to deal with. I remember in a former life, a number of problem people--not ill-intentioned but just couldn't do their jobs--who only got forced out as part of one or the other layoffs that happened over the years.
    • KaiserPro 6y ago
      partly its a pain in the arse to fire someone, but also its useful to have a scapegoat about to blame. Also if I take the story at face value, I think there is some level of enjoyment they took in tormenting the OP
  • ma2rten 6y ago
    In my mind the reputation of Facebook is that it's more employee friendly and customer hostile, but Apple is more employee hostile (thinking about Steve Jobs stories) and customer friendly.
• Nokinside 6y ago
  Treatment described is is just small step towards workspace equality. Apple lobbies against Uighur forced labor bill, so they should start treating employees in the US much worse, not better.
  • draw_down 6y ago
    Come on
• systemvoltage 6y ago
  Just keep this in mind - Anon stories like this needs to be verified by a reputable journal, newspaper, etc. Medium or Twitter doesn’t do the due diligence. Nation states can fabricate this easily. Not saying that is indeed the case, I’m asking people to stop looking at places like Substack and Medium as a source of truth, especially Anon posters. WSJ did so much diligence with the Theranos story. Years. They’ve also released a book explaining what went into their analysis and how they approached taking down a big dog like Theranos. Not saying Apple is same as Theronas, mind you; the point is that newspapers such as WSJ do thorough investigations compared to some random anon account on Medium. I’ve just become increasingly aware of misinformation after this the US elections drama. I take everything with a grain of salt.
  • TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    > I take everything with a grain of salt. "Trust but verify" --Ronald Reagan There used to be a saying, "Don't believe everything you read on the internet." Somehow it's been forgotten. Not saying the article is false or contrived. I'm saying we just don't know since it's anonymous, and therefore I take it with a grain of salt.
    • systemvoltage 6y ago
      “Trust but verify” - That doesn’t work anymore. Western values are being eroded. Sadly. Sounds alarmist but I feel like the west in next decade is going to have to deal with a lot of “Distrust and ask for verification”.
      • TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
        > That doesn’t work anymore. Western values are being eroded. If I’m reading the origin of that phrase correctly, it’s actually Russian (not Western) and Reagan borrowed it.
  • jariel 6y ago
    Apple is the #1 advertiser in the world, when are you going to see corporate news really take on corporations?
• draw_down 6y ago
  It’s very important to understand the worst that can happen in a situation. If they fire you, ok that will suck and be painful, but important to maintain perspective. They can’t kill you. These people and these companies and jobs aren’t worth all this. Stand up for yourself and look out for yourself because nobody else is going to.
• jb1991 6y ago
  My wife -- not a current or ex-Apple employee -- had a very similar experience as this, at a different company and in a different geographical location than Apple. It's unfortunate that workplace abuse is so easy to do and hard to fix. She called their bluff when they told her they could easily replace her, after she spoke up about the treatment. They were shocked that she would actually leave. I was so proud of her.
  • jb1991 6y ago
    I have to say -- I'm rather amazed to see folks downvoting this comment. Make of that what you will but I think that speaks for itself.
• valuearb 6y ago
  Why didn’t the manager just fire this person, they could have at any time?
  • nakovet 6y ago
    Some people enjoy causing mental distress in others, from the report they were not busy with work, so they wanted some other games to keep them busy. Similarly people enjoy hurting others and pain, e.g. sadomasochism
  • ineedasername 6y ago
    They'd already fired the previous person and an intern. At some point it stops looking like the worker's fault and starts being very clear the problem is the manager. In fact sometimes the way toxic managers like this are removed is when a decent manager notices that sort of trend.
  • almost_usual 6y ago
    You can’t fire an employee at any time in California without good reason. You need to build a case against the employee, that’s why they were put on a PIP. Either way the manager is insane in this story so I’m not sure what their motivation is.
    • jeffbee 6y ago
      Not sure why you think this. You can fire anyone whenever you want for any or no reason in the state of California. The only exceptions are when you have a written or implied contract that makes you not “at-will”. The best way to be an exception to “at-will” in California is to be paid in advance.
      • almost_usual 6y ago
        If you’re fired without good reason or paper trail and live in California take your employer to court. They still need good cause for termination.
• emptyparadise 6y ago
  My heart goes out to any immigrant forced to stay in a abusive environment like this just to not get kicked out of the country.
  • adultSwim 6y ago
    I've seen that firsthand. Employers really have them over a barrel. Even more with extremely low paid outsourced workers.
    • worker767424 6y ago
      Ironically, if you're here illegally working in fields, it's probably easier to find an employer who treats you better.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• johnghanks 6y ago
  This dude claims to have a PhD but writes like a 12 year old. For example, just read this paragraph: > There was no code repository for our project and the page that was listed as the project page only had script names in it but no code was linked. For example, you could see name of the scripts such as garbage.py but there was no code! ... and honestly think about the type of person that would write like that
• arcticbull 6y ago
  The tough part about FANGs is that being so large, the quality of your manager is basically the sole determining factor of your experience there and yeah you’ll see a few bad apples, no pun intended. I’ve personally landed crap managers at 2 of the FANGs, both the worst managers I’ve had in my career by a long shot. I’ve also seen fantastic managers at one, and uh, mediocre at best but well intentioned at the other.
• Quintus_ 6y ago
  I'm sorry you had to go through this. The world can be a vicious place
• andrewmcwatters 6y ago
  For anyone experiencing workplace harassment, this article is a great example of what not to do. Instead, document everything happening to you with evidence, speak with HR about incidents as they arise, and if they don't take action, seek legal counsel. Doing anything else will paint you in a bad light.
  • smoldesu 6y ago
    It seems like that's what she was doing? At the end, she mentions that she has documented these events, and is asking Apple to step forward now and take responsibility or she'll take it to the press.
  • tooltower 6y ago
    This person was not a US citizen, and needed to remain on the only path to a green card. Your options feel more limiting when that happens. They clearly didn't want to rattle the cage.
    • andrewmcwatters 6y ago
      Attorneys will happily take your money and fight for you. Use what options you have.
      • xvector 6y ago
        This is easy to say but very difficult to actually do. Immigrants are typically more desperate and companies take advantage of that.
        • bdowling 6y ago
          > Immigrants are typically more desperate and companies take advantage of that. An immigrant non-citizen employee who is harmed by an employer has just as much of a right to sue the employer as a citizen employee.
          • 6y ago
• markvdb 6y ago
  This kind of story is why your first priority when you start earning a salary should be to save up some fk you money. That should be about ten times easier on a software developer salary than on anything else, so consider yourself lucky.
  • w0mbat 6y ago
    Absolutely. I had a shitty experience at Apple, manager/team lead treated me as a beginner despite me being in a senior engineer role and I was highly experienced from some other major companies. He thought time at Apple was the only metric. He constantly questioned my code, despite it being actually much better than his, and more Apple style. Would give me no latitude to implement features independently that I could do in my sleep. But I had “fuck you” money saved. It had been my dream to work at Apple, but after 6 months I called it quits, told that asshole where to stick his job.
• parasubvert 6y ago
  This would be far more valuable if it weren’t anonymous and didn’t have the threat at the end. Cheapens the message. Think of Susan Fowler with Uber, and why that was so effective.
  • throwaway_1237 6y ago
    I won’t reply using my real accounts on HN or Medium for fear of retaliation by Apple... I think it’s still valuable and entirely understandable.
    • parasubvert 6y ago
      I didn’t say it had no value. Clearly Apple should be doing an internal investigation. Just that it likely won’t lead to much change on its own from public pressure.
• txdv 6y ago
  > If Apple refuse to take actions, I will interview with major media outlets describing the experience in more details and I will release a list of all individuals involved from senior management to the HR director and all the evidence as public record. Seems like the author is going to expose more details about his story including names if things do not change at Apple. I just wonder, how will he know? He is not working at apple any more.
  • Fordec 6y ago
    There are enough details here that any halfway competent person in HR can decode who this was with company records in about 20 minutes. If they want this to be quiet, they are very able to reach out. Or not.
  • rantwasp 6y ago
    I don’t get it. This person was abused to the moon and back and al they want is for Apple to “fix” it? How would that even work. I would say: lawyer up and make them pay through the nose. Once that happens 1) all the people involved in this will get canned / have a really bad time 2) Apple will put some kind of measures in place to prevent this kind of abuse. Also, hello Apple HR? Wtf are you doing? I understand you give 0 fcks about the employee, but your job is to protect the company? Spoiler Alert: by this story existing you have failed miserably.
• scotth 6y ago
  I have belonged to teams with abusive elements, and it certainly felt similar to what the author describes (while not nearly to the same degree, and for that I feel for them). Approaching HR or higher ups at the company doesn't feel like an approach that is likely to bear fruit. It sucks, because it should, but reality is that you're likely to be labelled a problem — especially if it's your word against a team that is as closely knit as this one is described. I have to wonder whether gritting your teeth and trying to get through it is a better approach (that is, if you want to stay). There is something about being friendly, eager, unemotional, and unopinionated that tends to placate the jerks. You only have to do this as long as it takes to escape to a more emotionally supportive situation. A couple good review cycles, and you can wave goodbye. I realize that this may not be possible depending on your situation. Just an anecdote. In any case, I hope the author lands on their feet. Don't let it get you down.
• __m 6y ago
  Sounds like Steve Jobs is still in charge. I like Apple but I would never work for them
• artursapek 6y ago
  Sounds like the spaceship building could also use some suicide nets.
• saos 6y ago
  Happens in every business. Apple is no different
• TaupeRanger 6y ago
  I find these "bad situation" postmortems to be unreadable most of the time. I do believe that these companies are full of assholes, but there are so many red flags with these one-sided testimonies. I can't tell how much is being conveniently left out to fit a narrative.
  • SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    I’m not going to point to any age “generation” or make big broad generalizations, but from my time at Amazon I saw people who disagree I would have fired in a hot second, and who also from their point of view may have written the exact same thing as the article. I have no real judgment on this guy. But I’ve seen plenty of people straight up not prepared for the real world get hit hard and it’s never ever their fault. I find the lack of admitting any fault anywhere to be suspicious, esp when we know there are always two sides.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I am sorry to hear this. I was a manager for 25 years, at a renowned corporation, that wasn’t fun, but didn’t have too much of this kind of thing. When I became a manager, my personal vow was to “be the manager I always wanted.” Contrary to popular mythology, this was not “Become a doormat.” As anyone that worked for me can tell you, I could be quite firm. But that was the exception; not the rule. Kindness and empathy pay huge dividends, as a manager —as long as they are “for real.” In my experience, artificial empathy gets detected quite quickly, by the types of folks we manage (smart ones). But this should not be considered just an “Apple” problem. It happens everywhere, and, unlike in the movies, where the villain always gets their comeuppance, the perpetrators often thrive, establishing ugly corporate environments. Sadly, their bosses are often quite aware of how bad they are, but they “get results,” and results are the bottom line.
  • sumthinprofound 6y ago
    As a hiring manager, I would never bring on an employee to scapegoat them. I had the experience, once, where I felt the VP of Operations was waiting for me to fail instead of supporting my success. I chalked it up to bad leadership on her part which threatened my ability to achieve the goals I was tasked with. Guess what? No one cares. Part of the pathway to success is to be able to navigate around such obstacles. It took me two years to build up trust with her and turn it into a productive relationship. As a manager, I learned a lot about what not to do by watching her, which was a pretty invaluable lesson.
• totallypear 6y ago
  new throwaway I think what this person missed was that the iBuddy was their real manager all along. And once it became clear that the person would not cooperate with the iBuddy, they became the "problem employee" and were railroaded out. Not justifying the abuse. They should have explained more clearly what was happening or transferred. It's also always more difficult when there are cultural and language barriers; they needed to take a more generous approach and explain things. And instead, they seem to have decided in the first couple days that they weren't going to give this person any slack. I was hired in similar circumstances. I replaced someone who was fired. I had an "informal" manager, who ghostwrote my reviews and did everything my real manager would. Eventually my real manager was fired and the iBuddy became a manager of a new politically favored team. It also looks like this person was hired on directly to a secret project. That's a really rough way to start at Apple. That may explain why they didn't give any slack and why they were really cagey with giving them access to project resources. It also sounds like the project was not going well, which also removes room for error. They must have gotten a bad first impression and that spiraled into a negative feedback loop, since no-one was helping this person into the culture or explain what they were doing wrong. For example, when the real manager got back from vacation, they probably heard bad things from the iBuddy about this person's first couple days. And rather than trying to course correct, the real manager solidified the idea that this person is dangerous to the project and may cause problems for them. Again, this person was being turned into the "troublemaker employee" unnecessarily. I can also corroborate the clique-iness. Retention is better at Apple than other companies (ie. people work there longer on average than other companies). And my experience is that combined with the secret projects and avoiding the bureaucracy is that you learn who will cooperate to get things done and who wont. And it is critical to your success to only work with people who cooperate and to avoid or even sabotage people who won't. There were some other faux-pas here and there that definitely didn't help things. The author seems to have reached out to people without consulting the iBuddy or their manager. That's a huge no-no and again explains why they were on the shitlist. Also, they refused to hand over data citing GDPR. That was another bad call. The author was right to bring up GDPR and explain that they were in violation. But they should not have refused to give up the data. They may be correct on the merits, but it's a death sentence to them personally. Once management decides, you shouldn't be surprised if your reviews / employement is impacted for resisting, even if you are morally right. So again, not excusing the abuse. What happened to the author was terrible and unnecessary. Some Apple specific stuff contributed to it: the high stakes secrecy, clique-iness, and informal power structures. But it sounds like this person also was not familiar with corporate politics and made a lot of faux-pas. With better management, they could have been taught how to navigate Apple's culture.
• sgustard 6y ago
  I worked at Apple decades ago before Next and the return of Steve. It was glorious, fun, respectful, creative and bubbling with energy. Of course, it was nothing like the juggernaut of today. It was an upstart democracy, messy and sublime; now it's China: authoritarian and no patience for dissent.
  • pram 6y ago
    It was also famously rudderless and on the verge of death. Not sure this is a great point to make lol
    • wesleywt 6y ago
      You are also assuming that being a hateful place to work in is what made it successful.
• specialist 6y ago
  I want someone to train an AI with organizational psychology metrics, to better spot dysfunction and pathology. Surely anyone looking at OP's team from afar could spot the dumpster fire, if only the data were available.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ddevault 6y ago
  If a company's value starts with a "B" (or... ugh... a "T"), they won't care about you. You should not give them anything of your life, because it's worth next to nothing to them. Mega-corps are life sucking leeches on employees, customers, and society as a whole. Everyone. How many horror stories is it going to take? Don't get duped by the glamour. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Uber, none of them are going to be good for you. In the worst case, they're going to make you hurt other people. It's an especially horrible idea if you're in a vulnerable position like being here on a visa. Many vulnerable people, including some of my close friends, are being taken advantage of by megacorps, and have very few options. Stay away! It is not your dream job.
  • jaChEWAg 6y ago
    This!!!! It's easy to get the wrong idea about these companies and that it must be a dream to be working there but stories like these prove exactly the opposite and realistic view.
  • carvantes 6y ago
    I don't understand the allure of FAANG for residents besides the money. The thing is, for us H1B workers, we have very limited options. And these big companies have the best track record in processing GC for us. Unless these regulations got changed, and give smaller companies more chances. Given how powerful big companies are, I probably wouldn't be surprised if they also lobbied regulations against small companies hiring immigrants.
    • ddevault 6y ago
      I'm not an immigrant, so I don't have your perspective. But I wonder the same about H1B's: I don't understand the allure of the United States (besides the money?). Our industry is horrible to its H1B's, H1B exploitation is rampant and disgusting. FAANG hires them so that they can exploit them as cheap labor that can't risk leaving. Why not move somewhere else if you want to work abroad? I can think of so many better options.
      • 6y ago
• shmerl 6y ago
  From the outside, Apple's company culture looks horrendous (insane focus on lock-in, sickening anti-competitive behavior and so on). But when such kind of review comes from the inside, it just confirms their infamy.
• grumple 6y ago
  I have experienced abuse at the hands of supervisors (generally disrespectful / belittling behavior). You have to have a special kind of privilege to have not experienced this sort of thing. I haven't ever experienced such a pervasive environment of targeted abuse as in the OP, but it certainly sounds believable. It's the reason why unions came into being. We didn't go from being a society of slaveowners to a society of saints in the past 150 years. I have learned hard lessons though: HR is not there to help you. I consulted HR and a senior director about my previous supervisor's toxic behavior; not only did they do nothing, but they said they had previous complaints about them! And of course, I knew this, because I had many friends in the org, and I had witnessed the disrespect this person displayed towards others. Collect evidence and get a lawyer if you want to stay in the org. This is the only way to protect yourself - it becomes very difficult for them to fire you in retaliation. I haven't taken this route, but I've seen others do it. My advice would be to make plans to leave. OP was in a tough spot due to citizenship. But you have to leave toxic environments. You will not fix them, and if you could, you'd be better off quitting and starting a consultancy to fix those places. Find someplace new and be more particular about joining them.
• asebold 6y ago
  Girl I am so sorry. I 100% believe you. I worked at a Fortune 500 company (you might know one of my former coworkers named “jake”), and experienced and saw similar abuse. I feel like this mentality is indicative of big organizations.
• timvisee 6y ago
  This is horrendous. Thanks for sharing your story in such detail. I hope you'll be doing well.
• kirstenbirgit 6y ago
  I really feel bad for this person. It seems like they are used to another workplace culture than the secretive and strict culture of Apple, and they might have committed some social faux pas which tainted their reputation, leading to sabotage from their teammates. Of course that doesn't excuse their behavior. Additionally, I really hope that they now have learnt to separate themselves emotionally from their workplace. I know that it might've been a stressful (e.g. visa issues), but one should never let themselves get to a point where they cry about a workplace issue in their Christmas/NYE break. It's just a job, after all.
• xenihn 6y ago
  >A few weeks after the previous incident, I was looking at work on Radar which my “iBuddy” had copied directly from what I had done, and I noticed a note under the note section of a hidden slide on a deck that she had uploaded and it was an indirect suicide/murder threat. Given the history of the team, I felt worried sick and stayed home that day from fear of showing up to work and being harmed. I alerted the senior manager who told the iBuddy. The “iBuddy” followed up with another email about a child who was murdered by her parents and was thrown into the river and a person who had committed suicide by hanging himself. My heart breaks for this person. They ended up on a team filled with people exhibiting borderline personality disorder traits, entrenched and protected by corporate interests. Literally my worst nightmare. Compound this with the other factors in this situation (first job, immigrant status) and it's truly horrible. I feel so bad for them.
• faangAnon 6y ago
  I had similar bad manager experience at $FAANG. Managers have so much control over information, narratives, and access to decision makers they control perception so most organizations are useless at properly evaluating their work. I've seen managers ride out perpetually failing projects that haven't made meaningful progress in years, team 'decisions' that are reliably and demonstrably bad, services that cost a fortune to run and have a slew of problems and unhappy customers, and rock-bottom scores in anonymous surveys. None of this matters. Essentially your job as a manager is to take credit, dodge accountability, and expand your empire(headcount) as to maneuver yourself towards the better high-visibility projects. Just like politicians, unless they're overtly bad(and even then) it's difficult to separate them from the sprawling cybernetic organism so you just kind of shrug. Maybe a team's success is because of the manager, maybe it is in spite of them or vice versa - no way to know.
  • adultSwim 6y ago
    Union, now!
    • refulgentis 6y ago
      I don't see how this would change anything - its a function of social dynamics, not how afraid managers are of their reports
      • billy_beef 6y ago
        Unions come with consistent skills trainings, legal counsel, and representatives to intercede when management is treating employees poorly. This seems like a very helpful stable of support to be able to call on in situation like this one.
        • jldugger 6y ago
          > Unions come with consistent skills trainings, legal counsel, and representatives to intercede when management is treating employees poorly I didn't notice any of that when I was represented by SEIU. I had not seen a raise in 4 years, and representatives didn't even call me until after I was laid off. Found a more stable job paying 4x as much though as a result of the layoff.
• jsteinbach 6y ago
  I don't want to comment on the content, but on the form. In my opinion there are two reasons to write such an article: a) To vent b) To get a message around This article is a great and powerful vent (which also makes sense in the context of "healing journey"), but it does a terrible job at getting a message across. Bold messages lose their impact if there are more bold messages than normal text. Also the article is missing a clear red line - I felt myself skipping multiple paragraphs and not missing out on any content. I would be very much interested if the writer could re-write their vent into a powerful message. This might also be a chance (regarding the "healing journey") to re-work the happenings and bring the "this is what happened!!!" into a "THIS is what happened", in the same way an emergency-centre operator deals with emergency calls. Focus on the facts, not the feelings.
• avipars 6y ago
  Reminds me of FB and Amazon
• hartator 6y ago
  I know it’s controversial but you really have to name people to make things move forward.
• brokencode 6y ago
  A company should, by policy, allow struggling employees the chance to try a different team and manager. Otherwise you never know if the employee is causing the problem or if the team is. In this situation, maybe the managers were extremely harsh on the OP, or maybe the OP was misleading in their story to sound like a victim. It’s hard to say without knowing how they’d do on another team. To force somebody out like this without taking every reasonable opportunity to help them improve, especially for a rich company like Apple who can afford to try, is deeply disgusting and is a failure of their HR policies.
  • cgearhart 6y ago
    At my first job out of university I was hired into a company with a developmental program that lasted for the first 3-5 years. New engineers would do rotations for about a year to find a team with a good fit–but new engineers could also be fired pretty trivially within the first year. During one of my rotations I worked on a project with a recent PhD graduate from a fairly renowned university–we'll call him Dave. Dave was terrible at...everything, really. He could not seem to do _anything_ right on the project, and struggled for months to make any progress at all. Eventually I wound up taking over his part of the project, and our manager basically told him "you're being let go at the end of the probationary period unless you find another team that will take you". Dave shopped his resume around internally for the few months left in his probationary period and eventually transferred to a different group in another town a few hours away. I went to work full time for the team where I did my rotation, and a bit less than a year later my boss tells me he had gotten an unsolicited call from the director of the team where Dave transferred. Evidently, Dave was a rockstar there–like a duck in water. The director was calling to ask where Dave was recruited, and if we had anyone else like him or could help them with their recruitment pipelines to source more candidates like Dave. All this to say: to this day I think there are a lot of reasons someone might succeed or fail in any given job. It has been my experience that finding the right team fit is hugely important, and often completely ignored.
• alpb 6y ago
  I am reading through this and I bet my 200$ that this person’s manager/team was primarily white and therefore this person has faced severe racism and bullying as a result of their race: > I had joined Apple on a student OPT visa > I was constantly being excluded from work meetings and events. There were meetings that I would be the only one who was not invited > my manager [...] started laughing and making fun of my last name > My manager was giving indirect negative feedback through the iBuddy rather than speaking with me > I would enter the meetings and they would stop talking and make really strange gestures. I was ignored, ridiculed and attacked in the team meetings > “You escaped a war zone; it is obvious you have many mental problems.” > “My husband worked for FBI and I can get you deported on a cargo boat if I want.” Sounds like a bunch of bully high schoolers that never mentally graduated from high school. I also would like to point out that this post is ranked way lower than it deserves on HN homepage, despite having higher points and shorter time than many of the posts above it. That’s quite unfair. It dropped from #1 to #7 within an hour.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • jldugger 6y ago
    > I am reading through this and I bet my 200$ that this person’s manager/team was primarily white and therefore this person has faced severe racism and bullying as a result of their race I can see why you'd think that, but don't you think it's just as likely that the manager was a high caste Hindu? It seems in poor taste to speculate.
    • geodel 6y ago
      > .. likely that the manager was a high caste Hindu? Good point. I'd say with critical race or caste theory in fashion if atrocity happened perpetrator is either white male in US or upper caste hindu male in India. Any other case would be called deflection from 'real' issues.
  • worker767424 6y ago
    But also > the HR lady looked at the evidence of all the listed issues and concluded that the iBuddy just does not know how to speak English I also suspected it's a clique of a single race, but I went through all the normal ones (white, Mandarin Chinese, Indian), and nothing fit.
• jariel 6y ago
  What's shocking is the level of effort the manager put in to being an asshole. That is some serious psychological issue right there. The victim also seems to be in a very bad emotional state wherein they may interpret things poorly as well, I wonder what the other side of the story was? There's enough there that I don't doubt bad behaviour, but there's also some odd points in there - if they asked her to 'resign' then that's actually a polite way of being fired. Why didn't they just fire her? Seems odd. That would make a fun case to look into. Finally: why do Senior Directors and VPs accept this? What kind of VP wants this kind of garbage going on under them? Why not dump the manager? Odd.
• zepto 6y ago
  I find this entirely believable. Not because I think it’s common at Apple in particular, but because it’s common in companies of almost any size and in almost any industry. It should be better at Apple. They do in fact lead in many areas of improving corporate behavior, but I have actually never heard of them leading in this area, and everyone I know who has worked there makes it sound little different other than the scale of what you work on and the pay, from any other corporation. It’s one of the reasons I have never seriously thought of working for Apple myself. I hope Tim Cook reads this and takes it seriously.
• anonymousiam 6y ago
  Apple is a big company with a great reputation, but there are bad apples in every bunch. My biggest takeaway from this article is that the author should take this advice: Before you accept a position, find out what project you will be working on, and get to know the people who you will be working with. If you are being hired to replace someone who left, try to find out why they left (or were fired). I have not done much moving around in my (long) career, but I have many friends who have. There are plenty of jobs out there, but many of them are tainted by toxic people or cultures. During your interview process, find out what you can. If you come away with any concerns, trust your feelings. If uncertain, raise your concerns and seek more information before you accept an offer. You will either come away with more concerns, or you will find out that your concerns were unfounded. Any big company hiring a new PhD grad should do their best to make the new employee feel welcome as part of the team. It seems that there were plenty of warning signs in this case, but as this was the author's first work experience, she either missed them or did not recognize their significance. It's a shame that the visa process and ITAR rules compounded the problems described. I'm a bit confused about the end of this article where she writes; "If Apple refuse to take actions, I will interview with major media outlets describing the experience in more details and I will release a list of all individuals involved from senior management to the HR director and all the evidence as public record." She no longer works for Apple, and probably doesn't want to ever work there again, so why the threat, and why the ultimatum? Why not just go public with all of the names and documentation? They already did their best to damage her reputation and career. Why should she hold back?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • throwaway44295 6y ago
    > She no longer works for Apple, and probably doesn't want to ever work there again, so why the threat, and why the ultimatum? I'd definitely check with a lawyer on this. I think one could get into serious legal trouble when publishing names
    • anonymousiam 6y ago
• throwaway29303 6y ago
  This is awful. I'm sorry that happened to you. However, If Apple refuse to take actions, I will interview with major media outlets describing the experience in more details and I will release a list of all individuals involved from senior management to the HR director and all the evidence as public record. You're wasting your time if you think they're going to do anything with this kind of approach. Get a lawyer first before thinking on doing any of that, though. And let this be a reminder to everyone else that HR isn't there to help you - it's there to help the company. In this kind of environment it almost feels like one needs to record everything that's happening in order to defend themselves. Cops use cameras, maybe it's time for employees to start wearing them too. Maybe.
  • mark_mart 6y ago
    That's a very petty approach. Apple (or any company) could easily sue this guy for that threat.
    • imaginenore 6y ago
      Sue for a threat to expose? On what grounds?
    • ayushgp 6y ago
      Wouldn't this be protected as a whistleblower?
  • ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    In NY (and, I think, California), that's illegal. I found this out, because at the company at which I worked, managers kept making verbal commitments, then gaslighting me about them. I could never get them to commit in writing, and my own "reflection" emails (the standard advice about this) were worthless. I considered walking around with a little digital recorder in my pocket. But many states have explicit laws against surreptitious audio recording. I suspect that comes from politicians being caught with wires (yeah, I'm a cynic). That's why, if you get a surveillance camera that also records audio, they will usually have a card in there that tells you to post notices if you switch on the audio recorder.
• nojvek 6y ago
  What surprises me is how abusive Amazon and Apple can get to their employees while ship fantastic products to their customers. May be the whole you need great talent and treat them well isn’t true. You just need to treat them well enough so they don’t leave and pressure them enough so they don’t crumble. At the end of the day, management is about getting the most out of your employees and that’s what they are doing right?
  • trap_chateau 6y ago
    This take seems a bit short sighted IMO. How do you know that if the work culture was better, the product wouldn't be any different? It does seem unnecessary to strive for a perfect work-life balance for these giant companies to ship good enough products and make boatloads, though.
    • closeparen 6y ago
      I work at a company where every junior PM is has a right to put any feature he wants on any piece of screen real estate. Every idea about how to build it is good. Every implementation is good enough to launch. Every launch is successful. We do not have the concept of "no." We do not have the concept of failure. It avoids a lot of the politics and culture issues that Apple is infamous for, but I think it's also the reason our products could never be mistaken for theirs.
  • chadcmulligan 6y ago
    You left out Disney, IBM, Microsoft... American corporates are awful to work for imho. I worked for one once, never will again, they do make great products but so many abusive middle managers. I couldn't watch office space for years after - it was too much like real life.
  • programmerslave 6y ago
    It works because of the booming stock.
• vincentmarle 6y ago
  This post reminds me of the first episode of the HBO show "Industry", where (spoiler alert) the workaholic guy dies of having a panic attack after discovering a typo.
• frongpik 6y ago
  That meeting in the abandoned part of the building was scheduled because the sr. director wanted sexual favors. The meeting was scheduled by her manager, but later the director shows up out of blue and the manager leaves and says that "it's something very important". Thev director is the spider here: he's a true sociopath, probably admiring the evil already, has plotted the entire thing to make sure nobody would ever believe the female employee, then got a manager to schedule a meeting without him being involved in paper and then showed up, expecting to get the coerced initiative from the employee. If it worked out, the director would later say that he's never been to that abandoned part of the building. The director even has a personal dog with criminal background that he unleashes on the prey. The best they can do in this situation is a lawsuit from multiple victims, former employees, backed by paper trail (emails, etc.). Edit. I'd add, that companies like Apple don't care about employee troubles, but they care about bad publicity. Call that director out, make Apple realise that he's a net negative for their PR, let Apple boot him out and destroy his reputation: with such track record and publicity, no company would want to hire him and deal with his reputation. Those who don't recognize the law, should be judged without the law.
  • fredericr 6y ago
    you're completely wrong and the author, as paranoid as she is, is not even making these types accusations and you have no place making them. When you have an HR-type meeting with employee you're having problem with, you chose a place that is private so the employee is not embarrassed to be seen. The senior director or HR person is not on the meeting invite in order to not stress you in advance. It's standard practice for a firing/layoff or major HR problem needing dealing with. The employee then usually goes straight home. A perp walk from the main conference room to your desk would be awful.
• dreamcompiler 6y ago
  Things new engineers don't know, but should: 1. HR doesn't work for you; they work to minimize liability for the company. If HR thinks the best way to accomplish that is to destroy your life, that's exactly what they will do. 2. Many SV companies, as well as groups within large, respected SV companies, only survive through exploitation. They exploit their customers, their workforce, or both. Exploitation means obtaining something of value without paying a fair price for it. Exploitation is accomplished through a variety of coercive processes like gaslighting, manipulation, instilling fear, etc. Outright lying is probably the most common coercive tactic since it's easy and there's usually no penalty for it. If you find yourself in an exploitive work environment, you need to leave as quickly as possible. The situation is not going to get better. It's only going to get worse, and your options are two: Leave with your mental health and reputation intact or leave after they have been destroyed. There is no option 3.
  • sdoering 6y ago
    I remember my SO working for a German bank. It was exactly as you describe. She was in a back-office job. She always said she was an overpaid perl script 95% of the time and interesting work for the rest. Exploitation is common in many companies. For me this stems from information asymmetry. Employer knows the job market, knows the salary spread, knows all internal salaries. As an employee you do not have these insights and need to trust the employer to be fair. As we probably all know information asymmetry makes efficient and rational markets to break down. Not sure what a potential solution would look like.
    • Judgmentality 6y ago
      > Not sure what a potential solution would look like. Make all salaries public by law - you could even anonymize people, although there would be lots of issues with that caveat. I'm not saying this is a good solution (most people don't want to talk about their salaries), but it would solve the problem. It's already the case for government employees.
      • H8crilA 6y ago
• coldtea 6y ago
  >If Apple refuse to take actions, I will interview with major media outlets describing the experience in more details and I will release a list of all individuals involved from senior management to the HR director and all the evidence as public record. I'd say go for it. I like Apple products (most of them), but this is nuts, and those people must be punished, up to the level that allowed it. Unfortunately golden parachutes mean that certain levels and above will just get a repositioning and laught it off at worst...
• someonehere 6y ago
  I worked for Apple retail in San Francisco. Being an early retail employee in the Bay Area, we had very close ties to Cupertino. I worked when Steve was still alive. * Retail management in my store ruled by fear. I heard from other stores across the US this was the same as well. * Promotions were handed out to those who kissed ass the hardest. Even if they were unqualified or cheated on promotion exams, if they brown nosed enough they got promoted. * The goal for every retail employee was to eventually make it to Cupertino and work for the corporate side of things. Either Genius support or logistics in Elk Grove. * Those who I knew who made it to Cupertino shared similar experience to the author’s post. Apple comes off as a happy family friendly company, when in reality behind the scenes it’s a rule by fear culture.
  • xenihn 6y ago
    Sounds like Disney.
    • worker767424 6y ago
      Explains why Pixar was such a good fit with Disney.
    • lemonspat 6y ago
      Do you mean park side or Corp side? Because I’ve heard bad stories about the park side of things
      • soared 6y ago
        Park is fine if you're okay with following rules to a T. If you want to think for yourself, well...
  • abdabab 6y ago
    You can sense it when you walk into an Apple store. I met a few unnecessarily rude salesperson and wondered how or why they were still there.
    • 6y ago
• coldtea 6y ago
  Now, imagine the same behavior from bosses, but also being paid way less, working to the bone, and wearing diapers because bathroom breaks are frowned upon. Welcome to Amazon warehouse work...
• justpoolitics 6y ago
  I feel sorry for anyone who has not had many years of corporate experience who enters a situation like this. Toxic survival politics at a big tech company are a triple black diamond ski slope and if you are just learning to ski, you will get murdered by making a single mistake. Knowing what I know now, human beings can behave in shockingly awful ways and politics can become extremely distorted in these environments. The only way to survive a situation like this is to not react emotionally and to take an extremely neutral and objective approach. Do not become a threat or a problem, keep your opinions to yourself, carefully observe the Personalities and structure and understand who they are and why they are acting this way. Do not engage in gossip or any negativity. Do not complain or criticize or raise questions. You do not know the pressures, history or forces causing the behavior of your management and if you become the problem you are cooked. I experienced a toxic situation myself recently, it caused me to do a lot of reading and research. My peers who remained positive and optimistic and polite and non threatening or competitive survived the environment fine. They made a mental decision to be positive. If you find yourself in this persons situation you had better keep your mouth shut until you can find a new place to go or you will get killed off by your peers and your management.
  • worker767424 6y ago
    > who has not had many years of corporate experience Once you have some experience, it's really nice to know you can get another job, what a good job looks like, have a green card, and have enough money saved up to be able to get out of a bad situation.
  • throwaway44295 6y ago
    Exactly this, this should become common knowledge, especially among the people who actually care to create something great. Work is work and private life is private life. I've also worked in very toxic environments but nowadays I'm not surprised by anything anymore. People ask for uncomfortable/impossible accomplishments? Just explain in a very objective way what needs to be done, where the projects is at and how much effort it is normally. Also I highly encourage people to study the Jira boards (or whatever tool you use), chances are it's full of non-sense but also might contain hard facts how long tasks really take by other more established team members. This will make you confident on what the real metrics are and see what is a nonsense request and what not. When people say slightly insulting things it's also best to not be emotional, say nothing or if you feel creative to respond with a respectful but tough response. In any case, it's normal to switch every 2 years and in larger shops there are enough unexpected but safe opportunities to tell about this nonsense. (E.g. when quitting) Also I strongly agree with not speaking to HR/managers, it usually just gets worse (=stressful) the more you do it.
• computerdork 6y ago
  In a huge way, this person's post seems true - from what I've seen being a software engineer for twenty years, many tech companies (especially those in the Bay Area) are fast paced, demanding, and stressful, even for experienced developers. It's often an unforgiving environment where you either perform or are let go - personally have had my own equal share of victories and massive failures - And as for abuse, have had some true horror stories (a senior dev who would actively and openly attack my work at every chance they got during large meetings for months on end). But... ... At the same time, this is somewhat universal to most (not all) companies to some degree, especially tech. And the more important the work, the more stressful the environment often is. Could be way off on this, but just my impression is that since they are a newly graduated PhD working at their first job, am wondering if the shock of that first position (which was also at Apple, who is known to be very demanding), was a bit too much to handle - and if you also have a bad lead, you're in for real trouble. Apologies to this person as I wasn't there and have no real idea on what happened, but the workplace is a tough environment more often than not. Know this only an estimate, but in my humble opinion, Glassdoor is generally in the right ballpark when it comes to a company's actual culture (how it treats its people), and 4.2 for Apple is really good - did a contract job at Stubhub a few years back, which when I worked there was a 2.8 (it's now a 3.3). And yeah, it was really that bad. The politics and scapegoating were the most intense I've ever seen (got caught up on the wrong side of this majorly myself. Felt like I was in one of those targets at those Carnival games where people line up to take shots at you). Yeah, and tech is ruthless but, as another person said, typically in the Bay Area it usually isn't abusive about it. In the socially aware Bay-Area, they often won't tell you directly that they have an issue with you like they do on the East Coast, but through silence and innuendo - you'll feel it before they actually tell you they're not happy. And sorry to hear about this person's visa issues, the stress this has caused my foreign friends is immense. Hope they're okay!
  • KaiserPro 6y ago
    > ... At the same time, this is somewhat universal to most (not all) companies to some degree, especially tech. And the more important the work, the more stressful the environment often is. There is tough love, there is pressured work environment, however this is none of that. Even if half of this is made up or exaggerated, its out and out bullying. it is your responsibility as a work colleague to put a stop to this sort of stuff. I have been bullied and I'm never standing for it again. So if I see shit like this happen near me, they fucking know about it. The most important thing you need to remember is this: just because they are big company it doesn't mean they can treat you like shit. Work your hours, no more, no less, use their free perks, fucking push back when they take the piss.
• gjvc 6y ago
  I hope he/she goes full-on public with this.
• uselessemployee 6y ago
  I believe this particular team was a "Forgotten" team as in the Forgotten Employee (https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/ https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/), or "bullshit jobs team". I probably will never truly understand the sufferings and misery of the author. However, the author perhaps was expecting the environment to be challenging in a positive way, with interesting work and motivated colleagues. Unfortunately for the author, the team was complete opposite of it. Recognizing such environments is also a valuable office skill, because then you can decide for yourself if you would like to basically do nothing alongside the team or leave for greener pastures. Being new to the team and trying to make a positive change immediately will only create resistance from the peers and may lead to abuse described in the article. Paradoxically, doing nothing and being conformant with the team nature would have led to positive reviews and much, much less overall misery.
• Lammy 6y ago
  I'm very sorry to read about your experience and have seen similar stories play out at other "top" tier companies, including once myself. I thought this paragraph really stood out in your post: "This is while the rest of the team were taking weeks and months to complete a task that takes an hour, were on vacation or just out of office or out of touch. The time they were out of office was more than 2 months in one year!" Sounds like you were perceived as a threat to the career stability of people who have been there a long time, have figured out how to coast, and don't want a spotlight shone on their general area. This is not intended to be a justification of any part of what you experienced, but this does sound like it wasn't all personal.
• mistrial9 6y ago
  I worked at Apple Computer long ago and overall, was abused for labor, including no December vacation, expected overtime, and getting me to design the project t-shirt and then not letting me have two of them for my trouble (insult). I was young and dealt with it. I have moved on. I am not surprised by this article.
• xyst 6y ago
  stuff like this needs to be taken to court - air out the laundry of the employer and the public will truly see the evil side of some of the greediest corporations.
• makach 6y ago
  Just wow... I work within IT, and this post totally changed my point of view on Apple - from being optimistically positive to chaotic neutral. I will still consume much of their hw/sw - but I will not have desire to work for them - or think highly about them - until the stories that comes out of Apple change.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• albertopv 6y ago
  If it was me, I wouldn't have lasted so long. No way. I worked for mid size companies, and I found envs quite toxic, but this is a whole new level for me. I'm glad I decided a long time ago my life worths more than working at any $faang.
  • thewarrior 6y ago
    That’s because you aren’t on a visa ?
    • albertopv 6y ago
      Sure. But being on visa means your life must be hell? I don't think so. In this case visa was just an way to hurt.
      • thewarrior 6y ago
        Being on visa means if your life is hell you may have to just put up with it. You may have taken a loan just to get an expensive foreign education.
• throwaway_1237 6y ago
  This rings so true! I interviewed for a few different teams at Apple and got an offer from one (they make you choose a team before you get an offer). There were echos of nepotism, scapegoating, and toxic treatment even during the interview process. Based on the answers I got during the “ask us some questions” portion at the end of each interview, it seemed like a very political and tense environment for a few of the interviewers. Thank you for sharing, this validated that I made the right choice. I’m sorry you had to go through this.
  • bitcoinmoney 6y ago
    Can you share more details so others are aware of how to sniff out or feel out some of the observations you had?
• 23B1 6y ago
  In my experience hiring engineers, people who are raised or cut their teeth at Apple... bring the traits outlined in this article with them when they leave.
• antipaul 6y ago
  Dear author, Please follow-up on your last paragraph. Sincerely, A less courageous soul
• KaiserPro 6y ago
  At a company that has secrecy and "jobsian" leadership at its core, it's not difficult to believe that this kind of stuff happens. The question that's more important: is it common, and is it an accepted tradeoff in the company culture. To those that are expressing disbelief that this happened: even if half of it is made up, its still unacceptable. The reason to not ignore this is that one day, this superteam of arsehole might be in your life.
• worker767424 6y ago
  The author avoided this, but I wonder if the clique was all the same ethnicity. I've definitely seen teams in tech companies that are Chinese teams or Indian teams. Also some white teams, but not as many.
• adultSwim 6y ago
  This is one of the many reasons we need a UNION
• griffoa 6y ago
  I dont quite remember the meeting room names in Mathilda 3 over at the Apple on Mathilda Ave, but if the MA03 (in the screenshot) refers to "Mathilda 3", then this story is totally believable. I worked at Apple and it was absolutely horrible. I remember sitting on the train and actually thinking about killing myself. Reasons were many, but mostly I just didn't fit in there, I think. I felt like people there were also a bunch of whiny little bitches to be honest. Always having some problem with a hand or a back or some family problem or whatever which demanded that they take days off. There were a few people whom I felt were probably talking some shit behind my back, but I couldn't really believe it until I read this story. It was just a horrible horrible place and I can also recognize that thing about having a predecessor, who was apparently a "bad person" and thus had to be terminated. Every other day I would have people telling me how great a place it was and how lucky we were to be working in a place so big while still having that startup feeling. I have worked at startups and I always just imagined to myself that 40 year old "dude" who refuses to grow up. That is Apple.. Never again. I got dragged through the whole white boarding experience also for the first time and it was fun enough, but in hindsight, they should just have asked me if I would suck Steve Jobs dick, if he came in that door. The answer to that question alone would have provided them with enough information about whether I would have been a good hire or not. I am 45 and have never every experienced a work place like that. Always had positive feedback and never had any problems with colleagues.
  • jldugger 6y ago
    Apple's old HQ is on a street called Mariani, and both have a building named Three, viewable on Google maps.
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      MA03 is indeed Mariani 3.
  • throwawy937203 6y ago
    Mathilda 3 is 'MT03'.
  • thinkingemote 6y ago
• worker767424 6y ago
  > Apple was my first job. A dream that came true after many years of hard work... I might be reading into this, but "dream jobs" are likely to disappoint. I've seen it happen a few times.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• spicyramen 6y ago
  Downvote me if you want, but I have had offers and accepted jobs at 2 companies, which first week was a joke, I left (Blue Jeans and Twilio). I didn't care and continue interviewing, I just don't take people BS and unprofessionalism, some have VISA or other needs that need to put up with this non-sense. Just tell people to go hell.
• bawana 6y ago
  The ghost of Steve Jobs is everywhere there. The stories and myths mutate and multiply. That virus finds host in the dark corners of suffering that most people have and their only expiation is to inflict it.
• bawana 6y ago
  The ghost of Steve Jobs is everywhere. That virus finds host in the dark corners of everyone's suffering and can only be expiated by sacrifice of others.
• magicfractal 6y ago
  it’s very sad, this is clearly someone that has suffered a lot of trauma and abuse and feels completely powerless. Imo, we’re seeing what the US immigration system does to folks, all labor protection laws are useless if you have one month to leave the country after losing your job. My heart goes to you anon! Don’t think that your career is over! There’s many other places in the world you can start afresh and have great quality of living and better protections such as Europe and Canada.
• outside1234 6y ago
  I didn't work at Apple, but at Nest Labs, which was essentially an Apple startup, and this resonates very heavily with me from the abuse I received directly from Tony Fadell for a full year -- mostly essentially around protecting my team from systematic overwork. I have had almost a half decade to put it behind me and have perspective on it, and it made a better manager. But the other lesson from this is also that if this starts happening -- drop everything and find a new job -- it is not worth it no matter what.
  • Apocryphon 6y ago
    I don't want to engage in amateur sociology, but I have to wonder that if this is common behavior across ex-Apple orgs (I do recall reading about how the Nest acquisition has been bumpy, as the former company had a very un-"Googley" culture), how much of this is a legacy of the very big impression Steve Jobs made upon the company, and thus on the people who worked under him. I think exposure to abuse normalizes some of the behaviors of abuse. So those who were used to that environment might act the same without a second thought. You see this even with behaviors that might be relatively harmless like being exceptionally cynical or critical.
• neurobashing 6y ago
  I have read things like this from time to time here about bad experiences: > I had no interaction with my manager and she was refusing to have regular 1:1 meetings with me and was not responding to my emails. Seriously, this is the most common red flag in these stories. Not having regular 1:1 meetings (when that's supposed to be a thing) and slow/no communication is an _immediate_ GTFO, do not look back, it is not going to get better.
  • codeisawesome 6y ago
    Wow ... now that I think back - this statement and its converse have been consistently true for me as well over many jobs. Not that frequent 1:1 is a silver bullet... but not having it at all never helps!
• gok 6y ago
  Why would you publish this without names?
• cryptica 6y ago
  It's ironic that the big tech companies which are most affected by issues of racism, misogyny, safety... Are also the ones doing the most preaching about it in the media. Just because these corporations and the media are rotten to the core, they assume that the rot is all around as well. It's not. These big tech corporations just attract the worst people.
• nilshauk 6y ago
  My heart breaks for this engineer. We can’t just file this under “it happens at all large companies” and call it a day. Large companies like Apple should be held to a higher standard. With the rise of evaluating company stocks based on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) shareholders should start demanding that companies publish anonymized statistics on number of HR cases reported and how they were handled. Workplace abuse can happen everywhere but larger companies like Apple need to double-down and start showing that they are handling it. This _might_ sound utopian. But shareholder value is about the only thing companies like Apple care about. Apple held a modicum of respect in my book for stepping up to protect privacy. Reading a piece like this tears that away. I’m reminded that Apple is yet another gigantic tech company. The ends doesn’t justify the means. Great products doesn’t justify abuse.
• scraffa 6y ago
  There is an Apple office populated mostly by Scientology (ProData subcontractors) folks over in Malmoe in Sweden. Maybe their management methods are leaking to SV.
  • frongpik 6y ago
    That's a good theory why things turned so hostile from the start.
• ficklepickle 6y ago
  All the fanbois criticizing the author with thinly-veiled racist/xenophobic rhetoric should be ashamed of themselves. It is the exact same treatment the author describes in the article. Ignoring the substance of what he says and criticizing typographic or subjective stylistic mistakes. I am astonished that you can't see that.
  • jjcon 6y ago
    Stop stirring up trouble where there isn’t any - if you need your daily dose of drama twitter has its door wide open.
• cryptica 6y ago
  Most of the people I know who ended up working for big tech are the biggest psychopaths I've met. These companies don't even select for talent anymore; they just select for psychopathy. If you're not a psychopath, you will not last in such company, no matter how good you are. I'm surprised that they're not all strangling each other in there...
• starpilot 6y ago
  Sounds like an experience working for an Indian team. This can happen at any company.
• djaouen 6y ago
  This is why the tech industry needs unions.
• diebeforei485 6y ago
  I am not too surprised by this. The secrecy and compartmentalization at Apple enables this sort of stuff to happen more often. This wouldn't happen as much at a place like Google with a perf review system calibrated across the company where the manager has little control. There was a well-known incident at Apple where there was an entirely team that quit, except for a handful of folks who were dependent on the company for their visas and would have had to sell everything and leave the country if they also quit at that time.
• altitudinous 6y ago
  Every corporate in the world.
• resynth1943 6y ago
  > One day I went to use the woman restroom my “iBuddy” was there. She told me “die!” and slammed the door in my face. Dunno about anyone else, but this really doesn't add up for me. I can't imagine that happening in real life. It doesn't make sense. That threw me off the whole story. Hoping it's real, though.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• An-apple-anon 6y ago
  Deleted for revealing potentially self incriminating information.
  • resynth1943 6y ago
    "One day I went to use the woman restroom my “iBuddy” was there. She told me “die!” and slammed the door in my face." This bit made me suspicious of the whole thing.
• musicale 6y ago
  I think Apple, like several other notable tech companies, has a ton of great developers and engineers, and a lot of really bad managers (and a few good ones.) As in most tech companies, employees have no power vs. management, and HR exists to protect the company from liability. (And good luck keeping your job if you try to, say, organize a union.) A bummer about Apple as well is that because it is such a popular company, largely due to its well-regarded and often exciting and innovative products, there are always lots of people lined up ready to take your place. As a result, they can get away with paying in prestige (rather than a fair market wage) and demanding excessive (and anti-productive) time commitments. Perhaps it's changed recently, but the myth of dual career ladders has been a major problem at many companies; basically to increase your salary it's almost mandatory to go into management, or to leave for another company. HR and management will point to highly paid individual contributors, but it's largely a pyramid with very few people at the upper ranks, and they do their best to hide and obfuscate the pay scale. Many tech companies also love college hires because they usually lack the ability to negotiate pay, have few outside responsibilities such as children or a spouse, and often lack a concept of work-life balance. After they quit due to burnout they are easily replaced. I still think it's nuts that Tim Cook wants his team to have calls on Sunday nights. There's really nothing that can't wait until Monday morning - it's just a stupid bit of the culture of anti-productive overwork and demands for proof of loyalty to a company that will never repay it.
  • sjg007 6y ago
    Sunday calls are probably to sync up with China’s Monday mornings.
    • ex_Apple_throw 6y ago
      And India. My last Apple manager was always on late night meetings with India because ~80% of the Apple Online Store's work was outsourced to India. Another manager at his level had like 200-300 direct reports located in India. I actually counted the number at the time because it was so many people.
      • 6y ago
• djaouen 6y ago
  If Apple doesn't remedy this situation, I will no longer purchase their products.
• rubicon33 6y ago
  > The new officemate had previous harassment history at Apple as well as criminal history and arrest. She took pride that she does what she wants, and nobody can do anything about it "previous harassment history at Apple as well as criminal history and arrest" .... I am really skeptical of this. Does anyone have insider information to corroborate such a claim?
• xony 6y ago
  feel sad , i had been to such toxic work environment , i quit the job in 6 months and moved back to previous company
• idlewords 6y ago
  My brief advice to anyone writing such a post: start with the most serious accusation you have, and avoid the temptation to add ancillary grievances, however justified, until you have the reader fully engaged and outraged. The way this post structured now, beginning with fairly unspecific complaints about the hiring process, who invited whom to lunch, etc. makes the author come across as a young high-drama individual even though it ramps up to more serious matters. Remember you only have a couple of paragraphs to set the hook and get the reader on your side in a piece like this. Not even your SO or mom want to read the full wall of text about how you were mistreated, let alone internet strangers.
  • lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    I stopped reading when it became obvious that this was some coddled kid’s first exposure to real life. When I see words like “psychological safety”, that sounds straight out of the playbook with the Brown University “safe spaces” crap. Maybe they were saving their real bombs for the end. I’ll never know, but they are probably going to have a very difficult time adjusting to any job.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • IntelMiner 6y ago
      You stopped reading and formed an incredibly offensive and demeaning opinion of them, validated by something that doesn't exist?
      • lawnchair_larry 6y ago
        I don’t understand what this means.
    • shishy 6y ago
      you’re completely wrong, i’d encourage you to read this
• jdkee 6y ago
  It is in the corporate DNA from the very beginning. https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/steve-jobss-dark-past-55a98044f3b4 https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/steve-jobss-dark-pas...
• throwaway9QZAB 6y ago
  I feel extremely uncharitable but I don't see any other comments raising this - this reads like a lot like the writings of people who believe they're being 'gangstalked'. Meetings being added/removed to calendars to mess with you, an 'implied' threat being left in the notes section of a hidden slide in a presentation, meeting notes being manipulated to make them look bad, this sort of thing. Maybe I'm just extremely lucky but I've never worked with anyone who would put in the effort for this sort of thing, even if they really disliked the person. And some of it just makes no sense - an implied murder/suicide threat, in the notes section in a hidden slide in a slideshow? Also the formatting being a long screed with random bolding doesn't help, although that could well be a non-native speaker not realising how this appears to natives.
  • gdix 6y ago
    Exactly my thoughts. I'm surprised that the majority of commenters here are taking this at face value. Especially, as you mentioned, the "implied hidden suicide/murder threat". If it was as the author described, 99% of people at any company on Earth would be absolutely shocked and appalled by something like that. Unless Apple is some truly some kind of other-worldly hellhole, they would not have gotten the reaction that they did. I'm obviously not qualified to diagnose anyone, especially from reading a single blog post. But have any of the other commenters stopped and considered whether it rings true that her coworker shouted "Die!" at her on her way to the bathroom? Or does that sound more like something that someone with, say, paranoid schizophrenia would say?
  • wsc981 6y ago
    > Maybe I'm just extremely lucky but I've never worked with anyone who would put in the effort for this sort of thing, even if they really disliked the person. I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of behaviour is endemic in organisations that use a stack ranking system [0], as Microsoft did in the past. P.S.: I am not implying Apple uses stack ranking. --- [0]: https://www.perdoo.com/resources/stack-ranking/ https://www.perdoo.com/resources/stack-ranking/
  • MattyRad 6y ago
    I also feel uncharitable bringing this up, but it appears nobody in the comments has yet considered that this could be GPT-3 generated text. I only noticed this as a possiblity once you pointed out the random bolding. Some of the article items that seem suspect: - fully random bolding - long, rambling, not entirely coherent (understandable given the subject matter, of course. however, the author also has a PHD?) - inconsistent naming, e.g. iBuddy - broad conclusion that doesn't fully match the content - a nondescript screenshot which doesn't implicate anybody - separated into 5 segments ("parts"), although the segments aren't narratively meaningful - a huge list of accusations (of varying degrees of believably) interwoven as though they were more related textually rather than contextually I hope it's not GPT-3, and that if this is true the victim gets their due justice, but it's worth consideration.
• microtherion 6y ago
  "If you are an Apple employee, please send this story to your upper management particularly Tim Cook." What exactly should we say? "Hey Tim, this unnamed ex-employee, working on an unnamed and extremely vaguely characterized project in an unnamed organization, is accusing unnamed co-workers, managers, and HR-representatives of perpetrating truly appalling abuses on her. You should look into this at once!" ? It's a difficult situation for the original author; I understand their desire to remain anonymous for their protection, and I understand their wish to have their allegations investigated, but I don't see a good way to reconcile these two goals, and especially not a good way to recruit allies for the second goal.
  • imoverclocked 6y ago
    I'm an employee of Apple and am appalled at the behaviors described in this article. I'm also unsure of what I can do to help here for similar reasons. That being said, I hope this person seeks some professional help to sort themselves out after this experience. Not to get political but this is one reason that employment and healthcare shouldn't be so inextricably linked.
  • lemonspat 6y ago
    I have seen people on Twitter get angry over less information. What’s wrong with escalating this internally? We can both agree that there should be a real investigation right?
    • microtherion 6y ago
      I agree. But I don't think the intermediate step of Apple employees reporting this anonymized story to Tim Cook helps much. The original author has the option of reporting this pretty directly to Tim Cook (or, presumably, a team of minions acting as his mail filter), naming names, projects, etc. He'd be well advised to take this report seriously. Alternatively, the author also has a number of further options. They could go to the press, as mentioned in the article. They could also find themselves a lawyer. IANAL, but the allegations, if true, would seem to constitute a constructive dismissal[0], which (apart from human decency) is a reason why Apple should have every interest to investigate the allegations. Any of these three options would seem to me to be a promising way to get this investigated. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal
• josto 6y ago
  Dude go talk to a work comp attorney. You don’t have to pay up front and this is a textbook stress claim, esp if six months employment. It’s sad nobody knows their rights. Your first clue is the fact that they were pressuring you to resign. NEVER RESIGN. It sad he will be dealing with this stress for life but never thought that he should at least consult with an attorney??? THIS IS AMERICA. You think HR and those idiots are going to help you?? Anyone who has to deal with this crap, call an attorney!
  • olivierlacan 6y ago
    I think there are several assumptions in your reaction. - that they would have been able to find let alone retain a lawyer out of grad school - that they knew enough about workers compensation law to event think of that option - that they somehow understood the existence of recourses beyond HR in a highly secretive and litigious company - that they weren't terrified that this could lead to long term stigma and stifle their career which is crucial to their ability to remain in the U.S. I say this as a white European who was under an [OPT][1] and somehow managed to find a company willing to sponsor its renewal. Even for me the process was opaque and terrifying and I'm extremely lucky that no one tried to take advantage of the situation. Had I fallen into the kind of toxic nightmare described in the post, it would also would have felt insurmountable. Most employers don't understand work visas and really don't care to but those who do surely understand the leverage they have. Even people on work visas often struggle to understand their rights since BY DESIGN they are dependent on employers for their ability to remain in the country. If you lose your job under most work visas, you need to find a new job immediately or pack up and go home regardless of the circumstances. Initially, there are [safeguards][2] to prevent wage discrimination for visa workers, but eventually after receiving a work permit, before its renewal, or before an employer accepting to sponsor a green card application, the baseline level of fear you're under effectively reduces job mobility for visa workers. Not being able to "quit and just get a new job" like most U.S. residents because their current one is utterly toxic, visa workers have to interview, secure a new employer, initiate a work visa transfer, all with unpredictable delays in transfer processing from USCIS which routinely leads to companies rescinding job offers because the USCIS is too slow (we're talking months and years) to adjudicate requests. The idea that someone under an OPT would launch a workers comp suit against Apple for emotional abuse is sadly very far-fetched to me. The OPT worker likely be quickly out of a job and their unemployment grace period (90 days for OPT, 60 days for H-1B) would quickly run out as interviewers for prospective jobs would ask "What made you want to leave Apple after such a short time?" [1]: https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/students-and-exchange-visitors/optional-practical-training-opt-for-f-1-students https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/students-... [2]: https://flag.dol.gov/programs/lca https://flag.dol.gov/programs/lca
• m3kw9 6y ago
  The title could easily be My experience at a software firm. No large organization are without more than a few assholes
  • ShowMeWhere 6y ago
    ^ this. It’s par for the course who anyone in tech at a large corporation who’s not naive or looking at life thru rose colored lenses. You are a cog in their machine, an employee number that either is a cost or profit center. Nothing more
• miked85 6y ago
  This reads as a long diatribe from a malcontent and possibly incompetent employee.
• jiggawatts 6y ago
  The author made a comment about GDPR privacy violations, but those are European laws that largely don't apply to American companies, especially related to internal HR matters. While I don't want to dismiss the complaints out-of-hand, it does seem like there's just a touch of exaggeration going on. Perhaps it's just a matter of perspective, but many of the complaints described could be chalked down to someone inexperienced being thrown into the deep end in a large organisation. E.g.: the complaint about "not knowing what I was doing for days" is almost laughable, when in my experience new hires at large orgs aren't properly informed about what they're doing for months! The racism and physical abuse of course is inexcusable, but unfortunately all too common...
  • fredericr 6y ago
    All true, and also GDPR has nothing to do with a developer not being allowed to give data to its manager. This is all paranoid bullshit. The author must have been a real pain in the ass to work with.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• applesock256 6y ago
  Using an alias account obviously. I started working for Apple a few years ago as a software engineer, after leaving a job that I liked, thinking that working for the biggest tech corporation to ever exist would be the next logical step. I don't work in California, and instead work for a satellite office in the northeast US. People in California appear to lack the ability to understand that the northeast is three hours ahead of them. As a result, it's not uncommon for me to have meetings that go on until 9:30pm, multiple times per week. I have brought this up to my manager (and his manager (and his manager)) multiple times, asking if they can schedule meetings a bit earlier, and they say they'll "look into it". Apparently they've been "looking into it" for two years now. Apple ostensibly supports "personal development", which would be great in theory, but anything involving this involves manager approval. While they're usually ok with you going to conferences, I tried getting approval for tuition reimbursement (which is advertised on the people/hrweb site). My direct manager said "ok", but his manager said that he's afraid that me going back to school and completing my degree would be "too big of a distraction from work", and will not be approving my request. My job is ostensibly "individual contributor", but most of what I do is read emails, and copy and paste Java from one file to another. When I told my manager's manager that I didn't find the work enjoyable, and that I would like to be given another project, his response was that I simply "don't understand how cool the project is". My situation is substanially less horrible than the OP's post, I don't have any visa issues or anything and I can fairly easily quit, and I probably will quit fairly soon. Still, that's a difficult thing to do, my stock packages are still vesting. Oh well.
• franklampard 6y ago
  I read the story. Damn this team sucks. If I were the author, I would start interviewing with other companies after the first week.
  • applesock256 6y ago
    I think part of the issue is immigration/visa problems. If you're a US citizen/permanent-resident, there's sort of a "ceiling" to how much abuse you will get from your employer, since at the end of the day you can say "fuck this, I'm working somewhere else"...however, if you're on some kind of visa, these things get a lot more difficult, since the company doesn't just control your livelihood, they actually control you being allowed in the country at all. While of course you can still apply to other places, and maybe you'll get lucky to find another company who wil sponsor your visa, it's a substantially more-uphill battle. (disclaimer, not an immigrant, this is just based on what immigrant friends have told me and from what I've read).
• sidcool 6y ago
  Empathetic with the OP here. And an investigation should be undertaken. However it would be naive to expect this does not happen at Apple. It has thousands of employees. Many of them forgotten. They will try to self preserve. I don't see it as a black and white case. Do not expect rosy experience at any company ever.
• fredericr 6y ago
  I read this whole, long article, and I don't understand how you're freaking out at every. single. step. although you do say the visa thing is the root stress. But you seem to be freaking out even at not getting on-boarded immediately or that you don't have detailed explanation of what you will be working on the first day, or that you're not immediately invited to all the meetings. I work at Autodesk. This is completely normal, it takes a couple of weeks to start on a team and not everything is clear, especially if a key person just left. This isn't a job at Burger King where everything is clear. Also, nobody is going to structure their vacations around you. Some head count is getting allocated, and then filled, often with huge delays, and that person arrives at a certain date, and while people know it's coming, it's not necessarily a good time for anyone, it is forced on us. It's troublesome to onboard the intern or new employee and it gets past around like a hot potatoes sometimes. And no, often there isn't any documentation. I've onboarded probably over 50 people over 20 years. It sounds like you arrived after the project was just sent in a tailspin and people are having meetings just to figure out WTF is the state is the state of project, and you shouldn't have expected to be invited to all those meetings, as you have nothing to contribute as junior and the people probably weren't sure of anything. It's normal. Also, that iBuddy yapping about the previous guy getting fired? We can't know the context, have you thought that person was hugely stressed about it too and sharing that earnestly? I mean, they're on the sinking project as well? And at least she's talking to you and putting you in the context of the team. Insensitive, perhaps, but again the world isn't going to rearrange around you. At one point in the story, you're clearly falling into a depression, and seeing everything dark. A manager repeatedly cancelling and re-scheduling a meeting isn't a plot to harass you: it happens a lot to busy people, we don't know what kind of crisis he's dealing with. During this whole thing, you just assume that everyone is just taking off, missing work, and focused on you. These people might actually be going through crisis on their own and having to put out fires left-and-right. This last bit, where you get a meeting in a locked abandoned building you think nobody should have access to, and you ask the senior director to leave because he wasn't invited: You realize that's paranoid thinking and crazy behavior, right? When you need to have a HR-type meeting with an employee, you have it in a private place -- for the employee's benefit! It's for you that it's in a private place, away from other people's prying eyes. Then, of course, the whole point of the meeting is to have the senior director talk to you, that's what the meeting is, he didn't show up unplanned. He's not on the invite so that you're not too stressed on the way. The idea that they're keeping it secret and deleting the meeting from the calendar to hide it is just paranoid delusions perhaps caused by depression. It's the way it's done. These meetings are happening because you're in deep shit, it's very rare. The director is offering you to leave on our own so that you can leave with your head up and on your own terms, and not have the record of having been fired. It's a kind of curtesy. This might sound horrible -- but firing someone is a last resort. Now, don't get me wrong. I've hired people from india, china, singapore, and other places. I have no doubt that you have suffered inappropriate comments and racist behavior. But we don't know the full story! I've had to fire people as well, who seem to do a lot of work, but a lot of useless work that needed to be redone, or get stuck into rat holes for week without asking questions. These people all thought they were doing as best, and got multiple warnings and "PIPs" (Performance Improvement Projects, as you know) as they could and no doubt had a lot of fingers to point after they were let go. It's always other people's fault.
• neycoda 6y ago
  I hope she spills all the beans publicly. Put out every picture, file document, recording, and email that she can. With accusations like this, the company and the perpetrators need to be exposed to the public, nailed to the wall.
• op00to 6y ago
  Was there a punchline at the end? It read like it was written by a preteen - bouncing around with vignettes and stream of consciousness. I couldn’t get to the end. They all sound awful to work with.
• hsuduebc2 6y ago
  Hope they got fired. I' sorry, this is just terrible. Wish you all the best.
• ffggvv 6y ago
  i worked at a company similar to apple. we had an employee that actually was terrible and not competent in the simplest things. but from their perspective it may have seemed like what the article laid out on the other hand, i see alot of people agreeing that apple is terrible. so in these situations it really is he-said she-said
• verisimilidude 6y ago
  The real story here is that the author depended upon these jerks for his/her work visa, facing deportation back to (I assume) a less pleasant country. It sounds like everyone involved took advantage of that fact. Perhaps systemically. I've faced similarly abusive workplace cliques on multiple occasions. They're very easy to bust if you're willing to put aside your personal shame. But I never had a visa hanging over my head during these confrontations.
  • xpe 6y ago
    > They're very easy to bust if you're willing to put aside your personal shame. I don’t understand what you mean. How do you ‘bust’ them?
  • trixie_ 6y ago
    It doesn’t sound like she was being taken advantage of, they obviously wanted her to leave. She was staying (and killing herself) out of fear deportation which sucks. My question is if California is at-will employment why didn’t they fire her when things weren’t working out? Is it because she went to HR?
    • jldugger 6y ago
      HR reviews when a manager wants to fire someone, and ensures they have justifiable cause, rather than something more nefarious like racial animus that can lead to a lawsuit later. So if the employee is in certain protected classes, they need to dot their i's and cross their t's first. While HR's main job is to advise and not order, this is one area where management tends to listen because in certain cases liability can become personal, and the cost is low.
    • bitcoinmoney 6y ago
      Perps want to continue the abuse. It gives them happiness.
      • trixie_ 6y ago
        So you think everyone invoked at Apple was conspiring to keep her there to pleasure themselves? Does that really sound likely?
• Diesel555 6y ago
  "Unfortunately, Apple became the place that I lost feeling of physical and psychological safety and the terror that it inflicted on me has impacted me on such a core level that the painful memories and flashbacks have replaced my dreams and they will hunt me until I am alive." I really don't understand this. I'm not saying this from a perspective that they are wrong, but that I honestly don't get it, please help me understand it. My response is about ambition related stress. I've had experiences in war torn countries and seen those that are drastically less fortunate than the author. For the author to say that they have terror and flashbacks that will hunt them.... is this just a perspective thing? The author mentions twice he had been in a war related country. Is it a self imposed stress to do well that is greater than the stress that those in poverty and war stricken countries deal with? Is it all relative? I feel like there is real stress involved with ambition from reading this. I mean this honestly, I read this post and feel this is a first world problem post. What am I missing?
  • graerg 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator
  • swiley 6y ago
    I don't think it takes a whole lot to end up with this sort of thing. I distinctly remember having flashbacks/panic attacks for a week or two after someone kissed me for the first time. (for those of you wanting advice for how to deal with people with less experience, take it slow and simple!)
  • Apocryphon 6y ago
    The article talked about being psychologically and emotionally abused in a hostile work environment. The author talked about being insulted in a completely unprofessional way. Just because the trauma is much less than that of a war stricken country does not mean it's any less painful. Not to mention, the threat of poverty, or at least the disruption of one's life, is present in a hostile work environment, especially to someone on a work visa. What does ambition have to do with anything?
  • 6y ago
• lerppana 6y ago
  I find this a very American story.
• someuser123123 6y ago
  Apple like other big companies is a big corporation. What was the author expecting working here?
• swiley 6y ago
  So the company is as abusive to people on the outside as it is on the inside? I guess that shouldn't be surprising.
• Syncbo 6y ago
  I just lost the respect I once had for Apple.
• jxf 6y ago
  This looks dead. Is there a cache?
• webarchiver 6y ago
  Original blog post was taken down. Here's an archive: https://archive.fo/9Yd9y https://archive.fo/9Yd9y
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• kajecounterhack 6y ago
  Post was deleted. Copied text: https://pastebin.com/Db3aAmdb https://pastebin.com/Db3aAmdb Google Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wKj2VsKs04AJ:https://ex-apple-engineer.medium.com/my-experience-apple-5d8b6205cb56&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wKj2VsK...
  • therein 6y ago
    Thank you, this is much appreciated.
  • yagizdegirmenci 6y ago
    Thank you.
• backuperr 6y ago
  the story on medium.com seems to be deleted, here's a backup: https://pastebin.com/p6NSpph2 https://pastebin.com/p6NSpph2 I have seen corporate bullshit (including someone getting bullied into suicide) and believe every word. This deserves to get attention.
• bluishgreen 6y ago
  Did anyone read this fully? What is the most serious and substantial accusation they are making?
• ossusermivami 6y ago
  I have been harassed by some apple recruiter for a SRE type job, the recruiter has been pretty bully when I rejected them, i am glad I didn't gave up and not working for apple.
• ossusermivami 6y ago
  Can some insider let me know how is it to work at RedHat/IBM ? any harassment issue ?
• alecthomas 6y ago
  Seems to have been removed. Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210102041634/https://ex-apple-engineer.medium.com/my-experience-apple-5d8b6205cb56 https://web.archive.org/web/20210102041634/https://ex-apple-...
• throwasnow 6y ago
  Just wanted to add some corroborating info. A friend worked in the Apple hardware group, at a fairly high level. It burned them out pretty bad, to the point where they had to see a therapist. I didn't quite believe what they told me at the time. This posting brought back those memories.
• bluebit 6y ago
  Original was deleted: https://web.archive.org/web/20210101181528/https://ex-apple-engineer.medium.com/my-experience-apple-5d8b6205cb56 https://web.archive.org/web/20210101181528/https://ex-apple-...
• absolutelyrad 6y ago
  Why did the author delete the story?
• RustyRussell 6y ago
  Deleted by author? Any other copies?
• rbrbr 6y ago
  He seemed to have removed the page. Here is the backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20210102002234/https://ex-apple-engineer.medium.com/my-experience-apple-5d8b6205cb56 https://web.archive.org/web/20210102002234/https://ex-apple-...
• 0x000001 6y ago
  ex-Apple employee so using an obvious throwaway. One of the things to understand about Apple is they take disclosure and security very seriously, to an anal degree. After initial on-boarding an employee goes through the disclosure process where she has to submit requests for every project she will work on. Those things are very fine-grained, you rarely get full project disclosure, and have to ask for specific relevant parts, such as architecture, plans, or something else. This process takes a lot of time. Up to weeks. During that time, you CANNOT be exposed to any material related to the project. If someone exposes you to it, they will be disciplined and may be fired. This is why employees might not get invited to meetings once they land in the organization, they are not yet disclosed. Besides that, Apple is a very high stress environment and there's no lack of scare-stories of employees who violated some guidelines or protocols (especially relating to leaking sensitive information, even by accident) who got axed. Apple will ruthlessly protect its secrets and its corporate image. It is not pleasant at the ground level, but that's how it is. Moreover, stress tends to propagate down the organizational pyramid. A C level breathing down the necks of the managers under him will translate to 100s of engineers feeling the heat. My time at Apple wasn't pleasant at start but that was solved easily by some communication. Later when projects started getting stressful I experienced some of that stress and some of the blame culture. People will come down hard on you, and it will come back to bite you in the ass in your yearly review if some manager feels you messed something up, even if your own manager told you just a few months back you're doing well. To summarize my time there, I liked the team and the group, not the organization. The author might want to seek therapy to better handle what she went through. I don't think half of it was as malicious as she thinks, but it would help both with overcoming the trauma and putting things in perspective.
• simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  "The author deleted this Medium story". The story is no longer available. Wondering what happened.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ShowMeWhere 6y ago
  Wah big tech gave it to me dry in the arse and I willingly stayed and endured it. Either sack up and leave or bend over and take it, yee serf. Nothing new in any of this for anyone who’s been in tech and isn’t naive
• shishy 6y ago
  Why did the post get deleted? Hope they didn’t threaten the author.
• etamponi 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. I imagine it had to be painful to write. Sharing such experiences help others in the same situation understand that it's not their fault: unfortunately, toxic people and toxic work environments exist. If you are in a situation like the one described, my advice is: _just leave_. It's not worth it: it's not worth the money, it's not worth the feeling of "failure", it's not worth the fear that you won't find anything better. Just leave. If you have some friends at that job, don't worry: they'll understand. Don't be afraid of not finding anything else: we're very lucky in this regard, software engineering jobs are relatively easy to find. And "there may be many unexpected feasts ahead of you".
• simonkafan 6y ago
  My basic assumption is that most people at the big IT corps either just want to a) make money or b) work on interesting things. I don't think the majority there enjoy torturing colleagues or subordinates (although it certainly can happen). That being said, the story to me sounds entirely or at least partially made up. In this story, everyone at Apple seems to have only the goal of psychologically abusing OP. Especially the passage "the note section of a hidden slide on a deck that she had uploaded and it was an indirect suicide/murder threat" sounds absolutely implausible, why would someone put a death threat in a slide deck which clearly documents said threat? My serious (and absolutely not mean-spirited) advice to OP: see a psychologist and talk to him about it, especially about all the "hidden signs" you supposedly received from colleagues.
  • derangedHorse 6y ago
    You must not be social enough to have met these people, but I can for sure think of people who I knew (but don’t currently work with) who would do these kinds of things. Maybe they didn’t start out to be mean at the start but when the author started commenting about shoddy work and how the team was manipulating data, they probably saw her as trying to ruin a good thing they had going (which would probably threaten all their prospects of career progression). From their perspective they might’ve just saw her criticisms as her maliciously trying to get ahead or as an attempt to showoff her technical superiority by pointing out their mistakes (which may put the manager always correcting typos into perspective as well).
• vordoo 6y ago
  Error 410 The author deleted this Medium story. https://web.archive.org/web/20210102002234/https://ex-apple-engineer.medium.com/my-experience-apple-5d8b6205cb56 https://web.archive.org/web/20210102002234/https://ex-apple-...
• bicepjai 6y ago
  The post is deleted ?
• Kikobeats 6y ago
  "The author deleted this Medium story" any mirror for reading the original content?
• walsand 6y ago
  Does anyone have a copy of the story? It was deleted
  • grzm 6y ago
    There are a number of comments in the thread with links. Here are a few: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25611235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25611235 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25614840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25614840 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25611045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25611045
• walsand 6y ago
  Does anyone have a copy of the story? It seems to have been deleted
• mgh2 6y ago
  I wonder what prompted the author to remove the article.
• cr4zy 6y ago
  Story was deleted, here's the archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210101220230/https://ex-apple-engineer.medium.com/my-experience-apple-5d8b6205cb56 https://web.archive.org/web/20210101220230/https://ex-apple-... Make sure to disable JavaScript.
• m23khan 6y ago
  Frankly speaking, it sounds the author ended up joining a 'dud' team where the entire team is well steeped with playing politics rather than actually being productive. It happens in large companies and sometimes in small ones as well. How these unproductive teams survive is beyond me but they do. I hope the Author realizes one thing: Never ever complain to Manager and/or HR in any company about other team member UNLESS they disclose themselves to you that they don't like that person and ask you for your negative input -- even then, keep it almost neutral / slightly negative. And if you do make the mistake of complaining, DO NOT EVER do it over email/chat/anything written -- a simple call / over-the-coffee conversation is more than enough. Based on this fact, its hard for me to fault the Senior Manager / Director / VP at Apple the Author talked about -- once this kind of thing starts, at any company it is expected outcome from Management. From what I can deduce - the Manager and the violent co-worker were best of friends and Manager was going all out trying to protect that co-worker who was a toxic and non functioning employee. The Manager and co-worker kept on making stupid rules and confrontational policies and the Author kept on thinking she doesn't have any choice and is stuck otherwise she will get deported -- I mean, USA (or any other Country) is not a place where you would end up going in depression over for and start popping mental health pills for while contemplating suicide. I would choose my dignity and sanity even if it meant going back to Yemen or Somalia or somewhere similar. The Author could have simply started applying for jobs in lots of countries for some R&D job or post-doc position and should have left Apple.
  • cutemonster 6y ago
    It can be easy to know what to do when looking back
• cleandreams 6y ago
  I've worked at several of the big whale tech companies in their prime (like, now) and this story shocked me to my shoes. Maybe I have been sheltered. And this may be random and pointless but I was tired enough of google selling my data that my next phone was going to be an IPhone but after reading this I ... just can't.
• njsubedi 6y ago
  The story’s now gone.