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Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

194 points by xfr 5y ago

ipspam 5y ago
No one is safe from degenerative leftist. Not even Tim Cook. It never ends. "On Friday, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, answered questions from workers in an all-staff meeting for the first time since the public surfacing of employee concerns over topics ranging from pay equity to whether the company should assert itself more on political matters like Texas’ restrictive abortion law."
epistasis 5y ago
I expected this to be about CSAM when I opened the link, but I guess it's stuff that has been brewing even longer than that. Dealing with highly paid, and highly desirable employees that can get a job at the drop of a hat, and which have ample savings to let them glide in any case, means that they have a lot of leverage. You need them just as much as they need you. This is why political policy has been to keep away from full employment, and keep a continuous percentage of people unemployed at all times: power over labor. Without labor, capital and land are useless.
- ytdytvhxgydvhh 5y ago
  Yep. The increased leverage that low-wage employees had during the pandemic due to enhanced unemployment benefits gave them a taste of this as well. Lots of people being able to say “take this job and shove it” led to very real labor shortages in certain sectors.
fezzez 5y ago
https://archive.is/hwuvL https://archive.is/hwuvL
vimy 5y ago
If I was Tim Cook I would immediately shutdown slack and mandate everyone go back to using email. It’s always a tiny minority of activists organizing on slack who are causing a lot of the unrest in tech companies.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  This would not help Apple’s case with the current Department of Labor probes, as well as the investigations complaints lodged with California’s Dept of Industrial Relations Labor Commissioner's Office. Organizing efforts are protected by federal law, as is discussing and sharing your compensation information with others (regarding pay equity). https://www.engadget.com/apple-faces-us-labor-board-investigation-083212877.html https://www.engadget.com/apple-faces-us-labor-board-investig...
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Is it similar to Twitter where the <0.1% drive dialogue?
  - epistasis 5y ago
    You could say that about most communities though. For every person that submits an article to HN, how many readers are there?
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      Same with Reddit. Hell, same with IRL, in person communities. Honestly, that realization is part of why I started commenting on message boards rather than lurking. The vast majority of people read but don't even bother to up/down vote. You have a lot of outsized influence if you choose to comment, even if it doesn't seem like your comments get much attention.
    - mhh__ 5y ago
      Somewhere between 5 and 10 million uniques a day IIRC
- fragmede 5y ago
  An unofficial, definitely don't tell management slack would have 1000s of users before the email prohibiting it managed to finish sending to all employees. Draconian policies seem viable and like they'd work, but they require a certain amount of compliance to be effective.
imgabe 5y ago
> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire another person to do the communicating, what are you doing there? Why not just hire the interpreter? This is like if you're in a wheelchair and you get a job to hang drywall. They pay you, but then have to hire another person to actually hang the drywall while you...point out where to put it?
- daenz 5y ago
  Speaking is only a small part of communicating. A sign language interpreter is just the person's "voice" but their approach on how to treat a customer is still theirs, not their interpreters. EDIT>> For those missing my point. If Chris Voss suddenly needed a sign language interpreter, he'd still be incredibly valuable for his ability to negotiate. A person's skills in communication aren't solely tied to their ability to speak.
  - nvahalik 5y ago
    Have you worked in retail sales?
  - meragrin_ 5y ago
    Sorry, but the interpreter is going to need to be trained to have an understanding. They would likely be paid just as much if not more. It adds quite a bit of friction because interactions will take at least twice as long. It is not a reasonable accommodation. The interpreter would probably be able to help the customer faster alone.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Your message changed my mind on this. Not because one person can negotiate better. Because the package of the two provide a different energy. People feel more comfortable in groups and more pressured one on one. The interpreter is seen as neutral but an upstanding person. Grouping the three presents a natural barrier which gives the customer space. If the interpreter can fullfill the wingman role by neutrally suggesting to go forward with a purchase to someone on the fence you have a real business.
madrox 5y ago
I don't believe Apple or secrecy is the story here. I think the real story is how the pandemic + slack has changed corporate politics. It used to be that most corporate concerns were raised through HR or the management chain, and power ultimately rested with the executive. Now, Slack means it's much easier to put anyone on blast, and it's much harder to control the narrative. Combined with the pandemic, where all socialization happens through these tools, and old corporate cultures are disappearing. Apple is probably one of those that relied on in-person culture more than most. However, I think what's happening here is happening everywhere that has company-wide chat.
- Flatcircle 5y ago
  Bingo
- majormajor 5y ago
  I don't see it. The most disgruntled people I worked with in the past kept most of their griping off of slack or IM or email because they suspected it was logged. Is constant complaining over lunch really less effective than constant complaining in DMs? Or, if it's large channels with lots of participants - what stopped those channels from happening before? Is the idea that people who would've whined over lunch to a small group are now recruiting many others to channels?
  - exBarrelSpoiler 5y ago
    Prior to Slack, constant complaining would happen at the Caffè Macs, after hours, in the halls, between people in the same or adjacent teams. Now teams are less siloed.
    - majormajor 5y ago
      Is that an Apple-specific Covid response? Teams have been more, not less, siloed at the job I've had since Covid started. People bold enough to complain in big mega-channels hasn't happened (similar to how few people would complain in all hands the same way they'd complain at lunch).
jimsimmons 5y ago
As time goes on, Apple, the de-facto emperor of tech, will lose more of its clothes. They haven't had anything new in 10 years and each year their keynotes get more typical and lacklustre. Yet, Cook is up there using all sorts of superlatives, doing cargo cult innovation.
- Bud 5y ago
  I guess you missed Apple Watch (which basically invented its category and leads it by a wide margin), and AirPods (also leads its category by a wide margin), and the M1 (instantly made a joke out of Intel) and most of the history of the iPhone. Kinda makes one wonder what else you've missed. Such as, basically everything. "De facto" is not hyphenated, btw, nor did you use it correctly.
  - reustle 5y ago
    * Pebble: Shipped January 2013 * Android Wear OS: Released June 2014 * Pebble Time (color): February 24, 2015 * Apple Watch 1: April 24, 2015 I wouldn't say they "invented" the category.
    - Bud 5y ago
      That's because you can't assess how much better an Apple Watch is than any of those defunct joke-competitors. Others can, though, like those who actually buy smartwatches.
      - nfw2 5y ago
        Wear OS is not defunct. If Wear OS is not in the category the Apple Watch is leading, what is?
    - eknkc 5y ago
      I used the alternatives. They are not in the same category so I guess Apple invented the category.
  - jimsimmons 5y ago
wolverine876 5y ago
> I understand the secrecy piece is important for product security, to surprise and delight customers When was the last time you were surprised and delighted by an Apple product? I think they make the world's best, and most responsible, products, but surprised by an iPhone upgrade? When was the last time they created a new category?
- dstaley 5y ago
  > When was the last time they created a new category? Almost every current Apple product (save the HomePod) is the category defining product of it's class. The iPhone, the iPad, the M1 MacBooks, the Apple Watch, the AirPods, the Apple TV, the iMac, and the AirTags are all essentially best-in-class, and the standards-bearer for the category.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    I mean, what new product categories has Apple created (or defined) like they did with the iPhone? Phones, tablets, laptops, wearables, etc. are old news. AirTags are pretty cool, but a small category.
    - rectangleboy 5y ago
      The Tile existed before the AirTags.
      - donarb 5y ago
        Can you find an item using Tile if it's out of Bluetooth range, like AirTags can?
    - nfw2 5y ago
      Fwiw, AirTags convinced me to get my first iphone
- eddieroger 5y ago
  Last Tuesday - an Apple Watch is coming with a swipe-capable keyboard and edge to edge screen, but doesn't make it so the bands I own don't work any longer. I will soon have a full, cellular computer on my wrist. That is Dick Tracy future tech. Basically all of the AirPods that support sound cancellation. EarPods that could do a better job of cutting out outside sound than the very expensive Bose headphones I owned prior, but could fit in my jeans coin pocket. The M1 and every Mac to have it so far. Just because you're not surprised and delighted by Apple products does't mean others are.
ALittleLight 5y ago
"she had left Apple after spending several years fighting a decision to reassign her to a role that she said had involved more work for less pay. She said Apple had begun trying to reassign her after she complained that the company’s work on the minerals was not, in some cases, leading to meaningful change in some war-torn countries" I'm impressed that Apple let her spend "several years" fighting a reassignment. I'm also not very sympathetic to this person though. I've quit a job because I got reorg'd into more work for less pay. It sucks, but I don't think it means my employer is problematic or bad or whatever. The role I had was no longer needed and I didn't like the new position I landed in, so I left. That sounds similar to what happened to this person.
- Waterluvian 5y ago
  A job is a job. You just quit and find another one if your employer no longer wants you or wants you to do something you don’t care for. Is this attitude possibly because these companies hire based on the entire emotion that you’re special and elite and we’re all going to link arms and save the planet?
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    That’s my thesis. This has been the m.o. of tech for a while now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27242405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27242405 Maybe even longer, given the semi-Messianic hippie-adjacent attitudes surrounding the birth of modern PCs in Silicon Valley. Some of which was cultivated by Steve Jobs himself. Apple sowed their own seeds.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - yunohn 5y ago
    “She said Apple had begun trying to reassign her after she complained” This is called retaliation, and is illegal. It’s not happenstance that she got re-orged after complaining about underlying issues.
biglost 5y ago
It’s not the same, but majes me remember a question: im really ugly and with an ugly body by magazine standards. If i want to model, but they dont hire me because im not tall enough or good looking, is it discrimination?
- xiphias2 5y ago
  Yes it is, but discrimination itself is not illegal.
elefanten 5y ago
NYT on a big tech company, in 2021, is not a trustworthy source. Deserves healthy skepticism and extra scrutiny.
Bud 5y ago
The leader of this small group of "unrest" folks, Cher Scarlett, apparently got hired in April and has worked for 8 other tech companies, according to this story. Color me unimpressed. She starts agitating after a few months of working entirely from home at a highly-paid gig? Did she even have time to get a clue about whether Apple's doing bad things or not? Or does she just kinda flit around from gig to gig looking for ways to cause trouble? I'm guessing less of the former, and more of the latter.
- slenk 5y ago
  She got hired in April of 2020. Because someone has had jobs at 8 tech companies that makes them a bad employee? The only way I have ever gotten a meaningful raise is by changing companies; it feels like the norm to be at a company for a lot less now-a-days. Personally, I was loyal to a company for 10 years and as soon as I left and my experience vanished off their record, I was approached for the price my new company was giving me. Screw that noise.
- NonEUCitizen 5y ago
  "has worked for 8 other tech companies" is normal in Silicon Valley.
- lukewarm_pocket 5y ago
  Yeah, Cher is an interesting character. Feels like she found a passion in being a corporate activist and it's very interesting to see how her story will play out.
  - ytdytvhxgydvhh 5y ago
    I have a feeling 0 more tech companies will hire her now that a quick Google of her name will attach her to this sort of activism. Even if you agree with some of her points regarding Apple, do you really want her coming into your company and looking for a story to tell?
    - lukewarm_pocket 5y ago
FFRefresh 5y ago
There are a few bigger stories at play here (amongst many) that I see this article as an instance of: 1. Cultural 'meme' & trend that has dramatically spread throughout mostly american, urban, educated, elite/elite-adjacent spaces over the last 7-9 years that lionizes and rewards those who can claim they are a 'victim'. This meme favors certain immutable characteristics as inherently providing victimhood status. If you were born with an immutable characteristic that's held in favor by the meme, you have many advantages available to you. Nobody is supposed to acknowledge those benefits according to this meme. So you can both be objectively very privileged and also considered a mostly helpless victim of an oppressor class. 2. Internet has allowed anyone to be heard, no matter the level in the hierarchy of a company. And if you know how to use the right words according to this victimhood meme (regardless of objective victim status), you have a good chance of being rewarded both socially and professionally. This is a pathway that some take if they don't believe they'll be able to succeed by other means. 3. Increasing trend toward 'safetyism', where the concept of harm is becoming looser and more abstract. You don't need to even be objectively or provably harmed anymore to claim you were harmed and thus victimized. Given all of the above, it's not surprising that big tech companies who operate in these elite spaces will experience 'unrest' amongst their employees. Cultural winds have created pathways for people to both legitimately and illegitimately air grievances to attempt to be rewarded socially/professionally. (And lest anyone interpret the above as suggesting nobody is ever objectively or truly victimized, I am most definitely not saying that.)
- fortran77 5y ago
  > his meme favors certain immutable characteristics as inherently providing victimhood status. And that's why Antonio García Martínez was considered fair game. He's not considered Hispanic (though anti-Communist Cubans rarely are) because he's also Jewish. And I'm sure that was a big motivator behind the mob that wanted to eliminate him from Apple.
- keyb0ardninja 5y ago
  Jonathan Haidt has been talking about exactly this issue for many years now. Here's is one of many of his videos on YouTube dealing exactly with this topic: https://youtu.be/jQcDw1r1lGw https://youtu.be/jQcDw1r1lGw
lukewarm_pocket 5y ago
We have couple of groups at Apple, that are very unhappy with the company due to WFH policy. #remote-work-advocacy channel has gone through some phases, but right now they are at the grief cycle. It's mostly wfh memes and repetitive confirmation-bias articles. Come January, we will get to acceptance phase, and those who wanted to jump ship, will jump ship. Today, during the yearly Tim Cook's hands, wfh chat was talking smack about Apple even though they've officially gotten a response from corporate. It even spilled over to #talk-apple chat. Though, I gotta agree with some criticism. Apple has shot itself in the foot when it publicly takes political sides, and keeps a low radar on certain issues when employees expect Apple to take a stance. Overall, yes, Slack has changed a lot about Apple's culture.
szc 5y ago
I think this is a poorly sourced and not a reliably fact checked article. This is at least the 2nd time on HN that a report has suggested Ashley Gjovik was complaining about "toxic chemicals at work". The previous article referred to something published at "The Verge" - "her office is in an Apple building located on a superfund site" <https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/9/22666049/apple-fires-senior-engineering-program-manager-ashley-gjovik-for-allegedly-leaking-information https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/9/22666049/apple-fires-senio...> Other published articles (and I believe is likely the truth) indicate that the toxic chemical issues were related to her personal living space <https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-dying-my-apartment-was-built-on-toxic-waste/ https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-dying-my-apart...> The nytimes ought to be very embarrassed about this stupid error. I note that the personal toxic superfund site issues were previously discussed on HN. I am also somewhat confused about the persona of "Cher Scarlett". I do not think it is a real identity. I also have some serious doubts if they, or their alter ego, is actually employed at Apple. Reputable journalists could actually verify this with employment and tax records -- journalists would actually have to do the necessary due diligence. Twitter suggests that "Cher Scarlett" is located in Seattle. (This would make them a remote worker for Apple). Also seemingly making quite a lot of tweets. When does this person do any work for Apple? Is this person the reason why Apple isn't responding to Security reports and the bug bounty program? After reading many tweets I am failing to detect any comprehension of, or demonstration of, a computer security "mindset" -- something that, in my experience, does tend to manifest itself in the personality of security folks over extended periods of time. I am unable to determine what sort of security role this person has. I am not suggesting any malice or ill will towards "Cher Scarlett". I am trying to present this as a technical analysis. In summary, I really question if "Cher Scarlett" is actually a real person in they way they are presenting themselves to be.
- Bahamut 5y ago
  Cher is a real employee, but anything more I'll leave unsaid out of respect for her privacy. Apple employees can easily look up other employees, and there are easy ways to tell whether someone is an Apple employee should they choose to reveal some of those things. Also I don't know whether she's remote or onsite, but there are multiple orgs with offices in Seattle - one of my friends just got hired as an engineering manager onsite for Apple in Seattle. Some of these comments could use some fact checking of their own :) .
satisfice 5y ago
People who work at very rich companies get very, very spoiled. I was in Apple R&D for four years (during that period after Jobs left and before he returned). No one was hungry, few people I met were ambitious. I left mainly because they decided to treat software testers as second class citizens, and had no interest in supporting my attempts to innovate in the testing realm. I went to Borland, where morale was high and everyone wanted to beat Microsoft (until they gave up and basically bought our team). The weird thing is that Apple worked really hard training its managers about the law and about good management practices in those days. I suspect they still do. I suspect that it has simply been overwhelmed by youngsters who expect mommy and daddy to fix everything up for their maximum comfort.
- draw_down 5y ago
  It’s a shame Apple leadership didn’t smarten up. They could have been as successful as Borland!
mansour00 5y ago
I really don't have time to read the whole article. One of my closest friends worked right down the hall from Jobs and knew him on a first name basis. He said, and I quote, "he fucked up the raising of my kids with his reality distortion field. If I saw him coming down the hall I'd turn around and go the other way thinking "I don't want to talk to that mother fucker today, he's just going to mess up my life". Another one of my good friends, a Stanford Masters ME, has a daughter that briefly worked for Apple (Stanford grad as well). She left when she got shit for going home for dinner when she had the flu. I'm embedded in the Apple universe, but I hate the company and what it has done to Silicon Valley.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fortran77 5y ago
From the Article, there's this: > In May, hundreds of employees signed a letter urging Apple to publicly support Palestinians during a recent conflict with Israel. And a corporate Slack channel that was set up to organize efforts to push Apple to be more flexible about remote-work arrangements once the pandemic ended now has about 7,500 employees on it. and there's this: > On Friday, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, answered questions from workers in an all-staff meeting for the first time since the public surfacing of employee concerns over topics ranging from pay equity to whether the company should assert itself more on political matters like Texas’ restrictive abortion law. I wonder how many names are involved in both actions. Because: https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/04/palestines-abortion-problem/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/04/palestines-abortion-pro... (Hint: I had someone inside check. And there are many names in common. That means none of this is sincere. I don't know what drives it.)
nikkinana 5y ago
I wanna be a NBA player but I'm white and 75. I'm gonna sue
chmaynard 5y ago
Many of us are curious to see how the pandemic and its aftermath will affect corporate politics and policies, not just at Apple but in other workplaces as well. It's tempting to draw general conclusions based on anecdotal, one-sided accounts of injustice and retribution. Perhaps there is also a bit of schadenfreude at work here.
golemotron 5y ago
This is simply redirected wage pressure.
thenanyu 5y ago
Either slack will implement anti-activism features or a competitor will. Given Benioff’s public persona I’m betting on the latter. The one thing Slack has always sucked at is moderation tools.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  What would those anti-activism features be? As far as I am aware workspace owners can see "private" messages, so slack isn't much use to organize.
  - thenanyu 5y ago
    The same types of tools that forum moderators have available to them on Reddit, HN, Discord, etc. Low hanging items: throttle message rates, limit number of people in a chat room, bans, shadow bans, topics, delayed message posting pending moderation

194 points by xfr 5y ago

No one is safe from degenerative leftist. Not even Tim Cook. It never ends. "On Friday, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, answered questions from workers in an all-staff meeting for the first time since the public surfacing of employee concerns over topics ranging from pay equity to whether the company should assert itself more on political matters like Texas’ restrictive abortion law."

epistasis 5y ago

I expected this to be about CSAM when I opened the link, but I guess it's stuff that has been brewing even longer than that. Dealing with highly paid, and highly desirable employees that can get a job at the drop of a hat, and which have ample savings to let them glide in any case, means that they have a lot of leverage. You need them just as much as they need you. This is why political policy has been to keep away from full employment, and keep a continuous percentage of people unemployed at all times: power over labor. Without labor, capital and land are useless.

ytdytvhxgydvhh 5y ago
Yep. The increased leverage that low-wage employees had during the pandemic due to enhanced unemployment benefits gave them a taste of this as well. Lots of people being able to say “take this job and shove it” led to very real labor shortages in certain sectors.

fezzez 5y ago

https://archive.is/hwuvL https://archive.is/hwuvL

vimy 5y ago

If I was Tim Cook I would immediately shutdown slack and mandate everyone go back to using email. It’s always a tiny minority of activists organizing on slack who are causing a lot of the unrest in tech companies.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
This would not help Apple’s case with the current Department of Labor probes, as well as the investigations complaints lodged with California’s Dept of Industrial Relations Labor Commissioner's Office. Organizing efforts are protected by federal law, as is discussing and sharing your compensation information with others (regarding pay equity). https://www.engadget.com/apple-faces-us-labor-board-investigation-083212877.html https://www.engadget.com/apple-faces-us-labor-board-investig...
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Is it similar to Twitter where the <0.1% drive dialogue?
- epistasis 5y ago
  You could say that about most communities though. For every person that submits an article to HN, how many readers are there?
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    Same with Reddit. Hell, same with IRL, in person communities. Honestly, that realization is part of why I started commenting on message boards rather than lurking. The vast majority of people read but don't even bother to up/down vote. You have a lot of outsized influence if you choose to comment, even if it doesn't seem like your comments get much attention.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    Somewhere between 5 and 10 million uniques a day IIRC
fragmede 5y ago
An unofficial, definitely don't tell management slack would have 1000s of users before the email prohibiting it managed to finish sending to all employees. Draconian policies seem viable and like they'd work, but they require a certain amount of compliance to be effective.

imgabe 5y ago

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire another person to do the communicating, what are you doing there? Why not just hire the interpreter? This is like if you're in a wheelchair and you get a job to hang drywall. They pay you, but then have to hire another person to actually hang the drywall while you...point out where to put it?

daenz 5y ago
Speaking is only a small part of communicating. A sign language interpreter is just the person's "voice" but their approach on how to treat a customer is still theirs, not their interpreters. EDIT>> For those missing my point. If Chris Voss suddenly needed a sign language interpreter, he'd still be incredibly valuable for his ability to negotiate. A person's skills in communication aren't solely tied to their ability to speak.
- nvahalik 5y ago
  Have you worked in retail sales?
- meragrin_ 5y ago
  Sorry, but the interpreter is going to need to be trained to have an understanding. They would likely be paid just as much if not more. It adds quite a bit of friction because interactions will take at least twice as long. It is not a reasonable accommodation. The interpreter would probably be able to help the customer faster alone.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Your message changed my mind on this. Not because one person can negotiate better. Because the package of the two provide a different energy. People feel more comfortable in groups and more pressured one on one. The interpreter is seen as neutral but an upstanding person. Grouping the three presents a natural barrier which gives the customer space. If the interpreter can fullfill the wingman role by neutrally suggesting to go forward with a purchase to someone on the fence you have a real business.

madrox 5y ago

I don't believe Apple or secrecy is the story here. I think the real story is how the pandemic + slack has changed corporate politics. It used to be that most corporate concerns were raised through HR or the management chain, and power ultimately rested with the executive. Now, Slack means it's much easier to put anyone on blast, and it's much harder to control the narrative. Combined with the pandemic, where all socialization happens through these tools, and old corporate cultures are disappearing. Apple is probably one of those that relied on in-person culture more than most. However, I think what's happening here is happening everywhere that has company-wide chat.

Flatcircle 5y ago
Bingo
majormajor 5y ago
I don't see it. The most disgruntled people I worked with in the past kept most of their griping off of slack or IM or email because they suspected it was logged. Is constant complaining over lunch really less effective than constant complaining in DMs? Or, if it's large channels with lots of participants - what stopped those channels from happening before? Is the idea that people who would've whined over lunch to a small group are now recruiting many others to channels?
- exBarrelSpoiler 5y ago
  Prior to Slack, constant complaining would happen at the Caffè Macs, after hours, in the halls, between people in the same or adjacent teams. Now teams are less siloed.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    Is that an Apple-specific Covid response? Teams have been more, not less, siloed at the job I've had since Covid started. People bold enough to complain in big mega-channels hasn't happened (similar to how few people would complain in all hands the same way they'd complain at lunch).

jimsimmons 5y ago

As time goes on, Apple, the de-facto emperor of tech, will lose more of its clothes. They haven't had anything new in 10 years and each year their keynotes get more typical and lacklustre. Yet, Cook is up there using all sorts of superlatives, doing cargo cult innovation.

Bud 5y ago
I guess you missed Apple Watch (which basically invented its category and leads it by a wide margin), and AirPods (also leads its category by a wide margin), and the M1 (instantly made a joke out of Intel) and most of the history of the iPhone. Kinda makes one wonder what else you've missed. Such as, basically everything. "De facto" is not hyphenated, btw, nor did you use it correctly.
- reustle 5y ago
  * Pebble: Shipped January 2013 * Android Wear OS: Released June 2014 * Pebble Time (color): February 24, 2015 * Apple Watch 1: April 24, 2015 I wouldn't say they "invented" the category.
  - Bud 5y ago
    That's because you can't assess how much better an Apple Watch is than any of those defunct joke-competitors. Others can, though, like those who actually buy smartwatches.
    - nfw2 5y ago
      Wear OS is not defunct. If Wear OS is not in the category the Apple Watch is leading, what is?
  - eknkc 5y ago
    I used the alternatives. They are not in the same category so I guess Apple invented the category.
- jimsimmons 5y ago

wolverine876 5y ago

> I understand the secrecy piece is important for product security, to surprise and delight customers When was the last time you were surprised and delighted by an Apple product? I think they make the world's best, and most responsible, products, but surprised by an iPhone upgrade? When was the last time they created a new category?

dstaley 5y ago
> When was the last time they created a new category? Almost every current Apple product (save the HomePod) is the category defining product of it's class. The iPhone, the iPad, the M1 MacBooks, the Apple Watch, the AirPods, the Apple TV, the iMac, and the AirTags are all essentially best-in-class, and the standards-bearer for the category.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  I mean, what new product categories has Apple created (or defined) like they did with the iPhone? Phones, tablets, laptops, wearables, etc. are old news. AirTags are pretty cool, but a small category.
  - rectangleboy 5y ago
    The Tile existed before the AirTags.
    - donarb 5y ago
      Can you find an item using Tile if it's out of Bluetooth range, like AirTags can?
  - nfw2 5y ago
    Fwiw, AirTags convinced me to get my first iphone
eddieroger 5y ago
Last Tuesday - an Apple Watch is coming with a swipe-capable keyboard and edge to edge screen, but doesn't make it so the bands I own don't work any longer. I will soon have a full, cellular computer on my wrist. That is Dick Tracy future tech. Basically all of the AirPods that support sound cancellation. EarPods that could do a better job of cutting out outside sound than the very expensive Bose headphones I owned prior, but could fit in my jeans coin pocket. The M1 and every Mac to have it so far. Just because you're not surprised and delighted by Apple products does't mean others are.

ALittleLight 5y ago

"she had left Apple after spending several years fighting a decision to reassign her to a role that she said had involved more work for less pay. She said Apple had begun trying to reassign her after she complained that the company’s work on the minerals was not, in some cases, leading to meaningful change in some war-torn countries" I'm impressed that Apple let her spend "several years" fighting a reassignment. I'm also not very sympathetic to this person though. I've quit a job because I got reorg'd into more work for less pay. It sucks, but I don't think it means my employer is problematic or bad or whatever. The role I had was no longer needed and I didn't like the new position I landed in, so I left. That sounds similar to what happened to this person.

Waterluvian 5y ago
A job is a job. You just quit and find another one if your employer no longer wants you or wants you to do something you don’t care for. Is this attitude possibly because these companies hire based on the entire emotion that you’re special and elite and we’re all going to link arms and save the planet?
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  That’s my thesis. This has been the m.o. of tech for a while now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27242405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27242405 Maybe even longer, given the semi-Messianic hippie-adjacent attitudes surrounding the birth of modern PCs in Silicon Valley. Some of which was cultivated by Steve Jobs himself. Apple sowed their own seeds.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- yunohn 5y ago
  “She said Apple had begun trying to reassign her after she complained” This is called retaliation, and is illegal. It’s not happenstance that she got re-orged after complaining about underlying issues.

biglost 5y ago

It’s not the same, but majes me remember a question: im really ugly and with an ugly body by magazine standards. If i want to model, but they dont hire me because im not tall enough or good looking, is it discrimination?

xiphias2 5y ago
Yes it is, but discrimination itself is not illegal.

elefanten 5y ago

NYT on a big tech company, in 2021, is not a trustworthy source. Deserves healthy skepticism and extra scrutiny.

Bud 5y ago

The leader of this small group of "unrest" folks, Cher Scarlett, apparently got hired in April and has worked for 8 other tech companies, according to this story. Color me unimpressed. She starts agitating after a few months of working entirely from home at a highly-paid gig? Did she even have time to get a clue about whether Apple's doing bad things or not? Or does she just kinda flit around from gig to gig looking for ways to cause trouble? I'm guessing less of the former, and more of the latter.

slenk 5y ago
She got hired in April of 2020. Because someone has had jobs at 8 tech companies that makes them a bad employee? The only way I have ever gotten a meaningful raise is by changing companies; it feels like the norm to be at a company for a lot less now-a-days. Personally, I was loyal to a company for 10 years and as soon as I left and my experience vanished off their record, I was approached for the price my new company was giving me. Screw that noise.
NonEUCitizen 5y ago
"has worked for 8 other tech companies" is normal in Silicon Valley.
lukewarm_pocket 5y ago
Yeah, Cher is an interesting character. Feels like she found a passion in being a corporate activist and it's very interesting to see how her story will play out.
- ytdytvhxgydvhh 5y ago
  I have a feeling 0 more tech companies will hire her now that a quick Google of her name will attach her to this sort of activism. Even if you agree with some of her points regarding Apple, do you really want her coming into your company and looking for a story to tell?
  - lukewarm_pocket 5y ago

FFRefresh 5y ago

There are a few bigger stories at play here (amongst many) that I see this article as an instance of: 1. Cultural 'meme' & trend that has dramatically spread throughout mostly american, urban, educated, elite/elite-adjacent spaces over the last 7-9 years that lionizes and rewards those who can claim they are a 'victim'. This meme favors certain immutable characteristics as inherently providing victimhood status. If you were born with an immutable characteristic that's held in favor by the meme, you have many advantages available to you. Nobody is supposed to acknowledge those benefits according to this meme. So you can both be objectively very privileged and also considered a mostly helpless victim of an oppressor class. 2. Internet has allowed anyone to be heard, no matter the level in the hierarchy of a company. And if you know how to use the right words according to this victimhood meme (regardless of objective victim status), you have a good chance of being rewarded both socially and professionally. This is a pathway that some take if they don't believe they'll be able to succeed by other means. 3. Increasing trend toward 'safetyism', where the concept of harm is becoming looser and more abstract. You don't need to even be objectively or provably harmed anymore to claim you were harmed and thus victimized. Given all of the above, it's not surprising that big tech companies who operate in these elite spaces will experience 'unrest' amongst their employees. Cultural winds have created pathways for people to both legitimately and illegitimately air grievances to attempt to be rewarded socially/professionally. (And lest anyone interpret the above as suggesting nobody is ever objectively or truly victimized, I am most definitely not saying that.)

fortran77 5y ago
> his meme favors certain immutable characteristics as inherently providing victimhood status. And that's why Antonio García Martínez was considered fair game. He's not considered Hispanic (though anti-Communist Cubans rarely are) because he's also Jewish. And I'm sure that was a big motivator behind the mob that wanted to eliminate him from Apple.
keyb0ardninja 5y ago
Jonathan Haidt has been talking about exactly this issue for many years now. Here's is one of many of his videos on YouTube dealing exactly with this topic: https://youtu.be/jQcDw1r1lGw https://youtu.be/jQcDw1r1lGw

lukewarm_pocket 5y ago

We have couple of groups at Apple, that are very unhappy with the company due to WFH policy. #remote-work-advocacy channel has gone through some phases, but right now they are at the grief cycle. It's mostly wfh memes and repetitive confirmation-bias articles. Come January, we will get to acceptance phase, and those who wanted to jump ship, will jump ship. Today, during the yearly Tim Cook's hands, wfh chat was talking smack about Apple even though they've officially gotten a response from corporate. It even spilled over to #talk-apple chat. Though, I gotta agree with some criticism. Apple has shot itself in the foot when it publicly takes political sides, and keeps a low radar on certain issues when employees expect Apple to take a stance. Overall, yes, Slack has changed a lot about Apple's culture.

szc 5y ago

I think this is a poorly sourced and not a reliably fact checked article. This is at least the 2nd time on HN that a report has suggested Ashley Gjovik was complaining about "toxic chemicals at work". The previous article referred to something published at "The Verge" - "her office is in an Apple building located on a superfund site" <https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/9/22666049/apple-fires-senior-engineering-program-manager-ashley-gjovik-for-allegedly-leaking-information https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/9/22666049/apple-fires-senio...> Other published articles (and I believe is likely the truth) indicate that the toxic chemical issues were related to her personal living space <https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-dying-my-apartment-was-built-on-toxic-waste/ https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-dying-my-apart...> The nytimes ought to be very embarrassed about this stupid error. I note that the personal toxic superfund site issues were previously discussed on HN. I am also somewhat confused about the persona of "Cher Scarlett". I do not think it is a real identity. I also have some serious doubts if they, or their alter ego, is actually employed at Apple. Reputable journalists could actually verify this with employment and tax records -- journalists would actually have to do the necessary due diligence. Twitter suggests that "Cher Scarlett" is located in Seattle. (This would make them a remote worker for Apple). Also seemingly making quite a lot of tweets. When does this person do any work for Apple? Is this person the reason why Apple isn't responding to Security reports and the bug bounty program? After reading many tweets I am failing to detect any comprehension of, or demonstration of, a computer security "mindset" -- something that, in my experience, does tend to manifest itself in the personality of security folks over extended periods of time. I am unable to determine what sort of security role this person has. I am not suggesting any malice or ill will towards "Cher Scarlett". I am trying to present this as a technical analysis. In summary, I really question if "Cher Scarlett" is actually a real person in they way they are presenting themselves to be.

Bahamut 5y ago
Cher is a real employee, but anything more I'll leave unsaid out of respect for her privacy. Apple employees can easily look up other employees, and there are easy ways to tell whether someone is an Apple employee should they choose to reveal some of those things. Also I don't know whether she's remote or onsite, but there are multiple orgs with offices in Seattle - one of my friends just got hired as an engineering manager onsite for Apple in Seattle. Some of these comments could use some fact checking of their own :) .

satisfice 5y ago

People who work at very rich companies get very, very spoiled. I was in Apple R&D for four years (during that period after Jobs left and before he returned). No one was hungry, few people I met were ambitious. I left mainly because they decided to treat software testers as second class citizens, and had no interest in supporting my attempts to innovate in the testing realm. I went to Borland, where morale was high and everyone wanted to beat Microsoft (until they gave up and basically bought our team). The weird thing is that Apple worked really hard training its managers about the law and about good management practices in those days. I suspect they still do. I suspect that it has simply been overwhelmed by youngsters who expect mommy and daddy to fix everything up for their maximum comfort.

draw_down 5y ago
It’s a shame Apple leadership didn’t smarten up. They could have been as successful as Borland!

mansour00 5y ago

I really don't have time to read the whole article. One of my closest friends worked right down the hall from Jobs and knew him on a first name basis. He said, and I quote, "he fucked up the raising of my kids with his reality distortion field. If I saw him coming down the hall I'd turn around and go the other way thinking "I don't want to talk to that mother fucker today, he's just going to mess up my life". Another one of my good friends, a Stanford Masters ME, has a daughter that briefly worked for Apple (Stanford grad as well). She left when she got shit for going home for dinner when she had the flu. I'm embedded in the Apple universe, but I hate the company and what it has done to Silicon Valley.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

fortran77 5y ago

From the Article, there's this: > In May, hundreds of employees signed a letter urging Apple to publicly support Palestinians during a recent conflict with Israel. And a corporate Slack channel that was set up to organize efforts to push Apple to be more flexible about remote-work arrangements once the pandemic ended now has about 7,500 employees on it. and there's this: > On Friday, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, answered questions from workers in an all-staff meeting for the first time since the public surfacing of employee concerns over topics ranging from pay equity to whether the company should assert itself more on political matters like Texas’ restrictive abortion law. I wonder how many names are involved in both actions. Because: https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/04/palestines-abortion-problem/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/04/palestines-abortion-pro... (Hint: I had someone inside check. And there are many names in common. That means none of this is sincere. I don't know what drives it.)

nikkinana 5y ago

I wanna be a NBA player but I'm white and 75. I'm gonna sue

chmaynard 5y ago

Many of us are curious to see how the pandemic and its aftermath will affect corporate politics and policies, not just at Apple but in other workplaces as well. It's tempting to draw general conclusions based on anecdotal, one-sided accounts of injustice and retribution. Perhaps there is also a bit of schadenfreude at work here.

golemotron 5y ago

This is simply redirected wage pressure.

thenanyu 5y ago

Either slack will implement anti-activism features or a competitor will. Given Benioff’s public persona I’m betting on the latter. The one thing Slack has always sucked at is moderation tools.

tomjen3 5y ago
What would those anti-activism features be? As far as I am aware workspace owners can see "private" messages, so slack isn't much use to organize.
- thenanyu 5y ago
  The same types of tools that forum moderators have available to them on Reddit, HN, Discord, etc. Low hanging items: throttle message rates, limit number of people in a chat room, bans, shadow bans, topics, delayed message posting pending moderation