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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 th

• 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?
  • nelson_muntz69 6y ago
    Welcome to wage slavery, friend. You can’t even criticize! Hah-ha!
• exApple-anon 6y ago
  > Does Apple not have manager feedback mechanisms? My manager left me out of the first review cycle, but at the end of the second review cycle I did leave a review of the manager. By this time he had left our team though. I don't think it did anything as he continued to rise through the ranks.
  • nicoburns 6y ago
    Would it not be appropriate to contact said managers (new) manager directly in this case?
    • Apocryphon 6y ago
      Not to speak for the OP, but cross-team HR situations at Apple don't exactly play well. I don't think jumping the chain of command so to speak to contact a manager's manager ever actually works.
• meekrohprocess 6y ago
  I don't think so. I've worked at other FAANG companies which had these sorts of posts written about them, and I've witnessed plenty of situations that I would call "abusive". But what I read in this article was beyond the pale. I never felt like anybody adjacent to any of my roles might have cause to fear for their physical safety. Reviews were used as political tools and occasional sources of psychological abuse, sure, but people still got marched out quickly if they stopped acting like empathetic human beings towards their peers.
  • coldtea 6y ago
    >But what I read in this article was beyond the pale. Yes, but while I believe it happened just like that, it's too beyond the pale to be representative of Apple at large. Looks like a particularly, close knit toxic team + gaslighting above levels about the new recruit.
    • Apocryphon 6y ago
      It's hard to say, because Apple is a huge corporation. It would be wrong for the takeaway to be "all of Apple is like this." But it should call into question "how much of Apple is like this?" and "how many more stories are there like this?" because I guarantee you that this author is not the only one who has experienced this at Apple, and there may be elements of its secrecy-obsessed, top-down culture that are common factors which contribute to it.
    • Daho0n 6y ago
      >it's too beyond the pale to be representative of Apple at large. Why?
      • coldtea 6y ago
        Because of a general understanding of how the world works, how businesses are, how western businesses are, people and so on. Same way if a told you some politician was sexually assaulting his pages, you woulnd't assume this is representative of congressmen and pages in general... I don't have recorded minutes of their interactions or other such hard proof.
• greesil 6y ago
  Some companies have a more open and transparent review process. I'm not sure if it would help with a clique, but at least people have to put information in writing which when push comes to shove can be verified. And, reports can review their managers. If your management chain doesn't care then yes, senior people walk.
• ineedasername 6y ago
  You can put just about any company in the "Apple" role here. A bad manager anywhere can cause a workgroup to turn toxic. I've seen it happen literally everywhere I've ever worked, though luckily only 1st hand at one location. (Actually there was one exception: working at a Barnes & Noble during college. I'd heard horror stories about other locations while I was there, but the store I worked at was run by an extremely good manager who cared for her employees and fostered that attitude in her assistant managers as well. It was also the most profitable store in the region, probably not a coincidence)
  • Apocryphon 6y ago
    Any large corporation that gets remotely near the headcount as Apple will have enough variance across team cultures that there will inevitably be cesspools of toxicity, true. But there's still the question if certain orgs foster a higher or lower standard across the org, and what factors contribute to it.
    • simonh 6y ago
      That’s true, I’ve seen toxic situations happening in other teams like those described here at several employers that were otherwise good places to work. Sometimes it’s down to a particular manager, but sometimes it can just be the consequences of a bad decision taken further up the food chain. This can leave a team in a no-win situation where even a good team lead can end up in a mess with no good options. I was at one employer where this happened and the team lead in question fell on his sword and quit rather than beat his team to death. I ended up taking on some of his responsibilities and team members and got some additional resources to deal with the re-org, so it worked out well for the team members and the company. It also gave me my first taste of management. It cost the guy his job though, which was grossly unfair. Not many mangers would have the guts and integrity to do something like that, and even if they did there’s no guarantee it would actually benefit the team. They could just be replaced by a tyrant. The only answer is to be open and honest about what you think and principled in your own actions. Call out bad behaviour where you see it and say when you see mistakes being made. If you aren’t prepared to do so, why should anyone else? Too many people silently tie the line and keep quiet and then wonder why these things spiral out of control and end in disaster. It’s because nobody said anything or did anything about it. We have to be prepared to take responsibility for calling out what’s happening around us and what we do about it as employees. It’s not somebody else’s problem, it’s our problem. Don’t be afraid of losing your job, it may well happen but jobs come and go. Having principles carries a cost, but one I think is worth paying.
• djcapelis 6y ago
  It’s not a hard decision. You unquestionably walk away from a situation like this. If your interactions with the team are going this poorly, walk immediately. There’s nothing to be gained from trying to hang on in a situation like this. This person should have walked much earlier. It’s agonizing how much broken US immigration policy plays a large role in forcing talented people who have decided to join our country to feel like this isn’t an option for them. We owe them much better.
  • uzakov 6y ago
    Not sure why you refer to the US immigration policy, this is how it works essentially everywhere. In the UK, for example, you get around 60 days to find a new job or you have to leave the country. https://iasservices.org.uk/tier-2-visa-termination-employment/ https://iasservices.org.uk/tier-2-visa-termination-employmen... I am not saying that the immigration policy is not broken or broken, I am simply stating the fact that other countries literally do the same.
    • PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      If you're on a H1 (or some of its cousins here) and you lose your job, you have no option to even try to find another. Your legal status in the US is coupled to that job, not just any job.
      • uzakov 6y ago
        Are you sure that is correct? According to results from googling you get 60 days to find a new job if you got laid off from H1B job. https://www.stilt.com/blog/2020/05/steps-after-an-h1b-layoffs/#:~:text=The%2060-day%20grace%20period%20is%20the%20time%20the%20USCIS,the%20evidence%20of%20your%20attempts https://www.stilt.com/blog/2020/05/steps-after-an-h1b-layoff.... Ps: to someone who downvoted, what don't you agree with?
        • PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
          You are right that I overstated this. You do have a window to try to find a new job. However, the new employer will need to be willing to sponsor a new H1B visa, and will need to get their part done within a fairly narrow timeframe. I agree that this is not an impossible scenario. But I also have a strong feeling that it's not a particularly likely one either.
• outside1234 6y ago
  Honestly, at Microsoft, I've never seen a situation like this, and I have worked in something like 15 roles now. That might also be, for better and worse, why Microsoft folks have such long tenure at the company. Its honestly a great place to work compared to these shit shows.
  • starky 6y ago
    I would suspect that finding out how many employees throughout the hierarchy have been there for a long time may be a good way to find a good company. The company I work for got acquired a couple years ago by a much older and larger company, and it usually feels like anyone you talk to has been there for 15, 20, even 30 years. I've yet to have a single issue with someone in that part of the parent organization, even though helping my group out isn't something they have been told to do.
    • tjalfi 6y ago
      My employer is like this - I'm the second newest person on my team and I've been here for 9 years. It's a great place to work and quite difficult to be hired here.
  • ThrowawayB7 6y ago
    To quote the old Tom and Jerry cartoon, "Don't you believe it." I could tell you comparable hair-raising stories I witnessed there over a couple of decades.
  • chihuahua 6y ago
    I agree, in 15 years at MSFT I've had mostly good experiences. The worst I've seen could only be described as "mildly annoying". If any manager behaved like the article described, I don't see how the team would get anything done, plus their MSFT poll score would quickly get them into trouble.
  • noen 6y ago
    I've seen it happen, multiple times, at Microsoft. Additionally know 2nd hand of dozens of other instances of abuse, career sabotage, and scorched earth management. Have been fortunate that the instances I was involved in directly, I was prepared, had extensive documentation, and my position (and my colleagues) were more valuable than the perpetrators, so they were swiftly shown the door. At the end of the day it's the same at every large company. HR protects the business, not the employee. They don't protect the victim, they protect the more valuable resource.
• justapassenger 6y ago
  Big difference is that other FAANGs have much less secretive inside culture. That of course doesn’t prevent abuse, and horrible experiences will happen everywhere. But it’s much easier to hide and develop pockets of abuse if everything you work on is top secret.
  • chihuahua 6y ago
    I've never been able to understand why Apple thinks they need to be so secretive. Most other companies do just fine without pretending that they're working on life-changing secrets that are worthless if they are leaked.
    • AgentOrange1234 6y ago
      I speculate some reasons are: 1. Being able to reveal something new and surprising leads to a flurry of good press. Failing that, constant rumors about what they are working on is like free advertising. 2. Keeping something a secret until it is shipping gives competitors less time to react/plan. 3. Preventing your employees from publicly discussing what they are doing may make it harder to know whom to poach, and harder for folks who want to leave to sell themselves. 4. It is useful as a cultural tool: it brings employees together in sharing a secret, creating an in-group/out-group dynamic; it gives product launches a kind of mystery, makes them something special for employees to watch together and celebrate together. 5. It helps Apple keep control of the framing of a product and the narrative around its launch.
      • tdeck 6y ago
        So they're making it hard to leave, creating a distinctive in-group and air of mystery, and clamping down on information to maintain strict control of the narrative. I can't help but notice that some of these are the same reasons why cults are often so secretive.
        • AgentOrange1234 6y ago
          Sure. I think there are some pretty deep parallels. The company had been really successful. That makes it easy to trust the leadership and believe they know best. If you’re changing the world and doing the best work of your life, maybe that’s worth making sacrifices for (overtime or whatever). On the bright side, I’m not sure there’s any equivalent of the malevolent, sexually abusive stuff we see in cults. Hard to complain about being a well-paid engineer with good benefits, etc.
• dirkgently 6y ago
  Sorry, but absolutely not true. Have worked at two FAANG companies, and neither would tolerate even a hint of such behavior. It's an open secret in silicon valley that you work at apple for one of the three reasons: 1. You didn't know better 2. Were a fan/fanboi. 3. That was the best you could do (for whatever reasons). Every time something negative about Apple gets posted here, I see this typical response - oh, they all do it. Stop with this nonsense.
• cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  9 years at Google and I've never heard of anything this bad here. I'm sure there are cases, and while I've been in unpleasant teams myself with crappy arrogant team leads who got away with dubious personal behaviour because of their engineering genius, the kind of obvious outright hostility and abuse would described by people here... well, I am pretty sure it would lead to some serious sanction. I could be wrong and just lucky tho. FWIW my wife worked at Apple in a non-engineering role for almost a decade about ten years ago, and I can completely see how this kind of dysfunction could happen in that company. Pressure cooker environment.