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I don't know about "increasingly". Apple has always been a fairly authoritarian place to work at, especially in regulating outside activities. Some aspects, lik

I don't know about "increasingly". Apple has always been a fairly authoritarian place to work at, especially in regulating outside activities. Some aspects, like conference publications, have become decidedly LESS authoritarian in recent years. And you would not believe how many rules went into the "casual" dress code for WWDC presenters in the Steve Jobs years… Many of the problems of the working conditions (and I agree that overall, Apple is a very nice place to work), would, in my opinion, be quite well suited to traditional union representation.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
What were those rules? No suits?
- microtherion 5y ago
  Hah! As I remember, it had to be slacks (no jeans) in a prescribed range of colors, shoes (no sneakers, no sandals) in a prescribed range of colors, combined with a somewhat ungainly T-shirt. There may have been more rules. For a company whose dress code for engineers ordinarily was more along the lines of "we prefer that genitals be covered when in public", it was rather restrictive.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    Doesn't seem to have to changed much these past few conferences either. Did you ever have present yourself? Was there a dress code for MacWorld way back when?
    - microtherion 5y ago
      The 2019 dress code was definitely more relaxed, if you look here, for instance: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/408/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/408/ Shirts, worn tucked or untucked, jeans. Compare with the 2001 dress code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX3gE8DMjR4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX3gE8DMjR4 I presented a number of times, but not in the last couple of years.
chmaynard 5y ago
Here's an example of what I had in mind. I was working at Apple during the time when the Infinite Loop campus was designed. I recall that the Apple execs treated the R&D engineers as equal stakeholders in the design of the working spaces. I had the pleasure of working in IL-3 for six years and it was the best office environment I have ever seen anywhere -- spacious, quiet private offices with numerous comfortable common spaces for conversations and informal meetings. Apparently the interior design of the Apple Park headquarters was handled quite differently. Many employees were saddened when they experienced the working environment there, and some even refused to move in.
- microtherion 5y ago
  Very interesting! So that would have been the early 1990s? (I remember visiting Apple/IL in 1993). That precedes my tenure at Apple by several years, so I cannot really comment from an employee perspective, but to outsiders, it was a time when Apple as a company was NOT effectively run in terms of strategy. Apple in the Apple Park era was also orders of magnitude larger than in the IL era. But yes, the design was rather top down, and not all design decisions were great. If are among those who could get a semi-private office in Apple Park (1-3 people), it is much nicer than a non-window office in Infinite Loop. The common spaces are also vastly superior. I'm not a fan of the various shared office pods, but I keep seeing claims that there are people who like working that way (Who knows the mysterious ways of millennials?).

Dracophoenix 5y ago

What were those rules? No suits?

microtherion 5y ago
Hah! As I remember, it had to be slacks (no jeans) in a prescribed range of colors, shoes (no sneakers, no sandals) in a prescribed range of colors, combined with a somewhat ungainly T-shirt. There may have been more rules. For a company whose dress code for engineers ordinarily was more along the lines of "we prefer that genitals be covered when in public", it was rather restrictive.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  Doesn't seem to have to changed much these past few conferences either. Did you ever have present yourself? Was there a dress code for MacWorld way back when?
  - microtherion 5y ago
    The 2019 dress code was definitely more relaxed, if you look here, for instance: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/408/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/408/ Shirts, worn tucked or untucked, jeans. Compare with the 2001 dress code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX3gE8DMjR4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX3gE8DMjR4 I presented a number of times, but not in the last couple of years.

chmaynard 5y ago

Here's an example of what I had in mind. I was working at Apple during the time when the Infinite Loop campus was designed. I recall that the Apple execs treated the R&D engineers as equal stakeholders in the design of the working spaces. I had the pleasure of working in IL-3 for six years and it was the best office environment I have ever seen anywhere -- spacious, quiet private offices with numerous comfortable common spaces for conversations and informal meetings. Apparently the interior design of the Apple Park headquarters was handled quite differently. Many employees were saddened when they experienced the working environment there, and some even refused to move in.

microtherion 5y ago
Very interesting! So that would have been the early 1990s? (I remember visiting Apple/IL in 1993). That precedes my tenure at Apple by several years, so I cannot really comment from an employee perspective, but to outsiders, it was a time when Apple as a company was NOT effectively run in terms of strategy. Apple in the Apple Park era was also orders of magnitude larger than in the IL era. But yes, the design was rather top down, and not all design decisions were great. If are among those who could get a semi-private office in Apple Park (1-3 people), it is much nicer than a non-window office in Infinite Loop. The common spaces are also vastly superior. I'm not a fan of the various shared office pods, but I keep seeing claims that there are people who like working that way (Who knows the mysterious ways of millennials?).