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I guess I’m just old school but I come from a time when I’d be fired for any negative public or even internal comments. And I’m ok with that. I’d rather just q

I guess I’m just old school but I come from a time when I’d be fired for any negative public or even internal comments. And I’m ok with that. I’d rather just quit than try to change a company this way. Or I’d just work into leadership and make executive decisions. Or I’d start a company and do it my way. I just don’t see leadership being convinced by me complaining on Twitter or starting an internal complaint slack channel. It’s good for complaining or winning a lawsuit, but don’t think it’s going to organically make change. It’s sad this person lost their job, but seems reasonable to get fired if you delete things off company equipment when you’ve been directed not to do that.

da_big_ghey 5y ago
Agree, I am confused why the surprise that somebody bad-mouth an employer publicly and get fired for it. Ask, if you were in a business, you have a problem employee who will not stop talking to press to make a public damage against your reputation. How can you handle this when this employee will not stop? Said person is now working against your company interests and not for.
- geofft 5y ago
  They're not working against the company's interests. They may be working against the interests of individuals in management. For public companies like Apple - and arguably for any company larger than a sole proprietorship - those aren't the same thing. (It is still true, of course, that management has the power to fire you and therefore picking fights with management is generally not good for your career. But that's a cold practical observation, not a statement about merit. There's a significant difference between losing a political fight and working against the company's interests.)
  - prepend 5y ago
    It’s hard for us to determine what’s in the company’s best interest. It seems to me that the ex-employee was being counterproductive, but what do I know. The organization is the best equipped to understand the best interests over a single employee. The challenge is that many fired employees will think they are right and the company was wrong. If there’s lawbreaking then maybe a judge will decide. It’s like asking prisoners if they are guilty. They all say not guilty. And some are right and the institution was wrong. But typically the institution is right. With private companies that’s the trade off. Management will decide and fire.
- angry_octet 5y ago
  This is a big cultural disconnect. What you interpret as "bad mouthing" is actually an indication of corporate health, a mechanism for self-correcting behaviour, and pruning bad management practices that cause behaviour to deviate from objectives. However, your views are not uncommon, people like to hide their misbehavior, and it's always a challenge to root those people out.
  - da_big_ghey 5y ago
    Its not criticism that is any problem. Its going to press to try to force some change when you are not getting entirely your way. This is a bad thing. Correct answer if this person was seriously in the interest of Apple would be write letters to shareholders/board if management has ignore the concern.
    - angry_octet 5y ago
      This is, again, the view that the institution is always right, an outmoded and discredited viewpoint.
      - PrincessJess 5y ago
        No it's not lmao. It's that the institution is the one who fills out your fucking paychecks. If I pay you to clean the kitchen, but you want to clean the bathroom, and I tell you to clean the kitchen and not clean the bathroom or you're fired, and you decide to clean the bathroom, what exactly do you think should happen?
      - cybernautique 5y ago
        I'd like to propose a constructive and highly novel perspective: I, me alone, am correct. Yours is, once again, an outmoded and discredited viewpoint.
  - ripbubu 5y ago
    Agreed. And Apple had a reputation for organizational health. Something went wrong. Perhaps, they scaled quickly and the leadership brought in at that time did not grasp the science behind Apple’s organizational health. Since when did Apple become the Navy? Just leave? Some of us dreamed as children to work for this company. In that dream I didn’t envision being sexually harassed and hr shielding the harasser or being paid 20% or more less than my male peers. This isn’t just an Apple issue, but they do set the example for many other companies in tech and out. As an admirer of the innovation of Apple, subpar organizational health promotes stagnation.
thomasahle 5y ago
> I’d rather just quit than try to change a company this way. What if you found every other company were the same way? > Or I’d just work into leadership and make executive decisions. There are much fewer leadership positions than people in those companies. It can't be the general recommendation that if you want to make your workplace better you have to compete for one of a handful of positions. That's like telling somebody living in a monarchy that if they want influence over their lives, they just have to marry into the royal family.
- lowkey_ 5y ago
  > What if you found every other company were the same way? Then make your own company, or failing that, start to think critically about why every company is structured in the way it is. Maybe others have tried it your way and it didn't work? > That's like telling somebody living in a monarchy that if they want influence over their lives, they just have to marry into the royal family. Luckily, because of the freedom this country offers us, the solution is instead to (per the metaphor) go to another of the million monarchies, create your own monarchy, or, yes, work your way up in the monarchy. If you decide to start causing chaos and sowing discontent in your current kingdom, then you may be kicked out of it.
  - burnished 5y ago
    Or, use your freedom to stay where you are and try to change things. You can't pull the freedom card to tell some one they should do something else. Its not consistent.
  - ruined 5y ago
    to continue in that metaphor, it's worth noting that here and most anywhere with something resembling "the freedom this country offers" was formerly a monarchy in which people thinking critically about the way it was structured started causing chaos and sowing discontent, so they could try this other way that people didn't think would work. say about that what you will. it's not surprising that efforts are being made today to decentralize power within the private sphere and create broader rights and democratic management of capital. it's the place people feel most pressure in their lives today, feel the most helpless, and unable to act in their own interests or make their own way. and of course people who are invested in the current system of management will make arguments that it is perfectly rational and any other system cannot work. maybe everyone trying this will get kicked out. but i don't think that will discourage or prevent groups like this, because that doesn't kill the motivation. it's simply selection pressure for tactics that are more decentralized, more direct, popular, faster, and harder to shut down.
kashkhan 5y ago
dynamics are different if the company is small or big. It's like asking a person to leave a country, instead of trying to make it better. "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -JFK
- nradov 5y ago
  Apple only has 80K employees. As countries go, that's a pretty small one.
  - kashkhan 5y ago
    80k direct plus a lot more indirect. And a decent gdp.
  - TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
    As GDP's go, Apple is the 8th largest country on earth by market cap. I know this is a bad equivalency, but they have VASTLY outsized influence with those 80,000 employees because of the wealth they generate. With recent moves like Walmart creating in-house health care options, and Salesforce offering to move people out of Texas because of their abortion laws, our late-stage capitalism is morphing into the cyberpunk dystopia predicted by sci-fi writers 30-40 years ago. It's starting to matter more what company you work for, rather than what country you live in.
    - KingOfCoders 5y ago
      The market cap of a country (with people, companies, land, resourc s,...) is 10-100x it's GDP, just like the market cap of companies has a multiplier over its revenue.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Comparing GDP to market capitalization is meaningless. If you want to make a useful comparison then GDP is more akin to gross profit.
      - 5y ago
devwastaken 5y ago
People are okay with that because they're in a position to not have to care. Perhaps apple is correct in that this was because of deleting things they were not supposed to - but individuals advocating for a culture of "apple can do whatever because it's a company" is nodding along to union busting talking points. Tech sector has been very fortunate in the past to not have to unionize, but now as the workforce grows exponentially, wealth is concentrated, salaries relatively decrease, jobs become commoditized, and companies are overall too big. Most new devs today are not going to see the same autonomy. Devs are slaved in plenty of jobs already, and no they don't make enough nor can they just drop and make a startup using someone else's money. Those things are the top of the 1% of workers. It's demonstrated time and again that outrage at companies works. Marketers run the show, and they don't like bad publicity. In this case it's probably not enough to do anything. Apple has their fingers in too many pies and people can't afford to drop their lock in ecosystem.
- da_big_ghey 5y ago
  If I am in top 1% worker, and if union is generally flatten the salaries to make me receive less for others more, why should I not "nodding along on union busting talking points"? I like my very very large paycheck.
  - nielsbot 5y ago
    Is this trolling? Either way, I hate this self-centered comment. Have you considered that a union could be good for all employees? What about setting minimum salary requirements? Maybe ensuring more of a company's profits are paid out to its workers?
  - pstuart 5y ago
    That could be interpreted as "I've got mine, Jack. Why should I give a fuck about anybody else?" This raises the question: if you only care about yourself, why should we care about you?
    - macinjosh 5y ago
urthor 5y ago
The problem is that if nobody talks up, the world doesn't become a better place. The "like we did in the old days" way of doing stuff, you watch on Mad Men, was pretty unkind to a lot of different folks.
- tcmart14 5y ago
  I know right. I seem to remember the late 1800s and early 1900s where unions were fighting to take care of that stuff. Is that not old ways? Are 'old ways' only occurring in a specific time period?
croes 5y ago
> if you delete things off company equipment when you’ve been directed not to do that. That's just Apple's claim. And you don't seem to have noticed that employees also have rights. It's up to you if you willing to give up yours, but don't devalue others who don't stand idly by and watch giant corporations do whatever they want.
WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
I wish I could go back in time and tell a younger version of myself the steps needed to work at a FAANG. I unfortunately never had the right guidance to get there and hopefully my kids one day will. I can’t complain as things worked out —- but still. I see these employee issues pop up from time to time and I guess I just don’t understand it. I’m not trying to be cruel to the people speaking out. Just I truly don’t understand it. Ungodly money. Ungodly benefits. Working interesting problems everyday. Changing the world. Impacting millions of lives. The best of some of the best teams. No job is perfect and whatever beef exists at Apple right now is 1000x better than some of the trash jobs out there and what some jobs are like in the real universe. It’s not to say Apple should go without ridicule or improvement. Just an outsider perspective who sees Lannisters killing each other in their perfect castle. Not advocating anything. Just hard to imagine walking into Apple and having a tough time or not enjoying it. I suffered much worse for much less in my life. Cheers to everyone trying to improve things though.
- discordance 5y ago
  > Ungodly money. Ungodly benefits. Working interesting problems everyday. Changing the world. Impacting millions of lives. The best of some of the best teams. The pay is good, but the rest of it is not as good as you make it out to be. There are exceptions, but for the most part projects, teams and impact are usually pretty low.
  - WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
    > There are expectations Sounds miserable! In all seriousness, it’s awesome and better than most.
    - exBarrelSpoiler 5y ago
      Apple has a toxic side covered up by silence that is unique among most tech companies. And you want to talk about ungodly money and ungodly benefits, yet there are suicides at Facebook and Amazon. Not to mention in investment banking. All of these things come at a cost.
y7 5y ago
Not being harassed at your workplace should be the norm, not some luxury benefit that you move to a different company for. Pressure for better working conditions always comes from workers themselves, rather than management, because the priorities are simply different. I'm assuming you come from a time where strong unions were still a thing. They were a hard-won victory for workers' rights, and a necessity to improve working conditions. Without them, any complaining employee was simply fired, because it's much cheaper for the organization to fire a few employees than to acquiesce to their demands. The latter is precisely what's happening here.
- kcplate 5y ago
  Maybe it’s just my opinion but there is a world of difference between being forced to work on a factory floor for 16 hours without a break and “The company didn’t denounce…” or “my company is making me return to office…” Perhaps they have other grievances but I guarantee they pale in comparison to what the labor movement worked to solve years back.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I agree with firing for negative public comments, but firing for negative internal comments is pretty stifling - unless those negative comments are also abusive of course.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> I guess I’m just old school but I come from a time when I’d be fired for any negative public or even internal comments. And I’m ok with that. In the US, people have protected rights to discuss and push for changes in their working conditions, and to organize, thanks to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
valtism 5y ago
It's devastating that this is the top opinion coming from here. The "If you don't like it just leave" stance, whether talking about working for a company or living in a country, is so dismissive of the people who see issues and have the courage to try and change things to make it better for others.
- prepend 5y ago
  It’s effective. As a programmer I frequently dismiss stupid, ineffective ideas. I don’t dismiss people, I dismiss their dumb ideas. And actually, I try to improve and build with ideas. These types of approaches seem dumb and ineffective so it’s odd to me that people would try them and be surprised at the outcome. Doing a dumb thing doesn’t mean that I’m courageous. Conflating all dumb things with right things is weird to me. Again, not to be old personish, but it’s ok to point out and not applaud ineffective, counterproductive techniques. If someone comes to you and says “my goal is to improve apple” and the explains their plan to complain on Twitter and organize complaint groups inside apple, I think you would tell them that that approach is not likely to be effective (ie “dumb”). That doesn’t mean the person is bad or anything. Just that their plan is not good. Also, using hyperbolic language like “it’s devastating” is weird to me. If this is devastating, then I want to find ways to protect you from truly devastating things in the world. It’s a great thing to be so privileged that internet discussions that you don’t agree with are devastating.
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  The idea the companies should be able to do whatever they want to their employees and if the employees don't like it they should leave seems common here. But I think a lot of people are really fed up with that attitude and it's a big reason why we're in the midst of the Great Resignation.

da_big_ghey 5y ago

Agree, I am confused why the surprise that somebody bad-mouth an employer publicly and get fired for it. Ask, if you were in a business, you have a problem employee who will not stop talking to press to make a public damage against your reputation. How can you handle this when this employee will not stop? Said person is now working against your company interests and not for.

geofft 5y ago
They're not working against the company's interests. They may be working against the interests of individuals in management. For public companies like Apple - and arguably for any company larger than a sole proprietorship - those aren't the same thing. (It is still true, of course, that management has the power to fire you and therefore picking fights with management is generally not good for your career. But that's a cold practical observation, not a statement about merit. There's a significant difference between losing a political fight and working against the company's interests.)
- prepend 5y ago
  It’s hard for us to determine what’s in the company’s best interest. It seems to me that the ex-employee was being counterproductive, but what do I know. The organization is the best equipped to understand the best interests over a single employee. The challenge is that many fired employees will think they are right and the company was wrong. If there’s lawbreaking then maybe a judge will decide. It’s like asking prisoners if they are guilty. They all say not guilty. And some are right and the institution was wrong. But typically the institution is right. With private companies that’s the trade off. Management will decide and fire.
angry_octet 5y ago
This is a big cultural disconnect. What you interpret as "bad mouthing" is actually an indication of corporate health, a mechanism for self-correcting behaviour, and pruning bad management practices that cause behaviour to deviate from objectives. However, your views are not uncommon, people like to hide their misbehavior, and it's always a challenge to root those people out.
- da_big_ghey 5y ago
  Its not criticism that is any problem. Its going to press to try to force some change when you are not getting entirely your way. This is a bad thing. Correct answer if this person was seriously in the interest of Apple would be write letters to shareholders/board if management has ignore the concern.
  - angry_octet 5y ago
    This is, again, the view that the institution is always right, an outmoded and discredited viewpoint.
    - PrincessJess 5y ago
      No it's not lmao. It's that the institution is the one who fills out your fucking paychecks. If I pay you to clean the kitchen, but you want to clean the bathroom, and I tell you to clean the kitchen and not clean the bathroom or you're fired, and you decide to clean the bathroom, what exactly do you think should happen?
    - cybernautique 5y ago
      I'd like to propose a constructive and highly novel perspective: I, me alone, am correct. Yours is, once again, an outmoded and discredited viewpoint.
- ripbubu 5y ago
  Agreed. And Apple had a reputation for organizational health. Something went wrong. Perhaps, they scaled quickly and the leadership brought in at that time did not grasp the science behind Apple’s organizational health. Since when did Apple become the Navy? Just leave? Some of us dreamed as children to work for this company. In that dream I didn’t envision being sexually harassed and hr shielding the harasser or being paid 20% or more less than my male peers. This isn’t just an Apple issue, but they do set the example for many other companies in tech and out. As an admirer of the innovation of Apple, subpar organizational health promotes stagnation.

thomasahle 5y ago

> I’d rather just quit than try to change a company this way. What if you found every other company were the same way? > Or I’d just work into leadership and make executive decisions. There are much fewer leadership positions than people in those companies. It can't be the general recommendation that if you want to make your workplace better you have to compete for one of a handful of positions. That's like telling somebody living in a monarchy that if they want influence over their lives, they just have to marry into the royal family.

lowkey_ 5y ago
> What if you found every other company were the same way? Then make your own company, or failing that, start to think critically about why every company is structured in the way it is. Maybe others have tried it your way and it didn't work? > That's like telling somebody living in a monarchy that if they want influence over their lives, they just have to marry into the royal family. Luckily, because of the freedom this country offers us, the solution is instead to (per the metaphor) go to another of the million monarchies, create your own monarchy, or, yes, work your way up in the monarchy. If you decide to start causing chaos and sowing discontent in your current kingdom, then you may be kicked out of it.
- burnished 5y ago
  Or, use your freedom to stay where you are and try to change things. You can't pull the freedom card to tell some one they should do something else. Its not consistent.
- ruined 5y ago
  to continue in that metaphor, it's worth noting that here and most anywhere with something resembling "the freedom this country offers" was formerly a monarchy in which people thinking critically about the way it was structured started causing chaos and sowing discontent, so they could try this other way that people didn't think would work. say about that what you will. it's not surprising that efforts are being made today to decentralize power within the private sphere and create broader rights and democratic management of capital. it's the place people feel most pressure in their lives today, feel the most helpless, and unable to act in their own interests or make their own way. and of course people who are invested in the current system of management will make arguments that it is perfectly rational and any other system cannot work. maybe everyone trying this will get kicked out. but i don't think that will discourage or prevent groups like this, because that doesn't kill the motivation. it's simply selection pressure for tactics that are more decentralized, more direct, popular, faster, and harder to shut down.

kashkhan 5y ago

dynamics are different if the company is small or big. It's like asking a person to leave a country, instead of trying to make it better. "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -JFK

nradov 5y ago
Apple only has 80K employees. As countries go, that's a pretty small one.
- kashkhan 5y ago
  80k direct plus a lot more indirect. And a decent gdp.
- TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
  As GDP's go, Apple is the 8th largest country on earth by market cap. I know this is a bad equivalency, but they have VASTLY outsized influence with those 80,000 employees because of the wealth they generate. With recent moves like Walmart creating in-house health care options, and Salesforce offering to move people out of Texas because of their abortion laws, our late-stage capitalism is morphing into the cyberpunk dystopia predicted by sci-fi writers 30-40 years ago. It's starting to matter more what company you work for, rather than what country you live in.
  - KingOfCoders 5y ago
    The market cap of a country (with people, companies, land, resourc s,...) is 10-100x it's GDP, just like the market cap of companies has a multiplier over its revenue.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Comparing GDP to market capitalization is meaningless. If you want to make a useful comparison then GDP is more akin to gross profit.
    - 5y ago

devwastaken 5y ago

People are okay with that because they're in a position to not have to care. Perhaps apple is correct in that this was because of deleting things they were not supposed to - but individuals advocating for a culture of "apple can do whatever because it's a company" is nodding along to union busting talking points. Tech sector has been very fortunate in the past to not have to unionize, but now as the workforce grows exponentially, wealth is concentrated, salaries relatively decrease, jobs become commoditized, and companies are overall too big. Most new devs today are not going to see the same autonomy. Devs are slaved in plenty of jobs already, and no they don't make enough nor can they just drop and make a startup using someone else's money. Those things are the top of the 1% of workers. It's demonstrated time and again that outrage at companies works. Marketers run the show, and they don't like bad publicity. In this case it's probably not enough to do anything. Apple has their fingers in too many pies and people can't afford to drop their lock in ecosystem.

da_big_ghey 5y ago
If I am in top 1% worker, and if union is generally flatten the salaries to make me receive less for others more, why should I not "nodding along on union busting talking points"? I like my very very large paycheck.
- nielsbot 5y ago
  Is this trolling? Either way, I hate this self-centered comment. Have you considered that a union could be good for all employees? What about setting minimum salary requirements? Maybe ensuring more of a company's profits are paid out to its workers?
- pstuart 5y ago
  That could be interpreted as "I've got mine, Jack. Why should I give a fuck about anybody else?" This raises the question: if you only care about yourself, why should we care about you?
  - macinjosh 5y ago

urthor 5y ago

The problem is that if nobody talks up, the world doesn't become a better place. The "like we did in the old days" way of doing stuff, you watch on Mad Men, was pretty unkind to a lot of different folks.

tcmart14 5y ago
I know right. I seem to remember the late 1800s and early 1900s where unions were fighting to take care of that stuff. Is that not old ways? Are 'old ways' only occurring in a specific time period?

croes 5y ago

> if you delete things off company equipment when you’ve been directed not to do that. That's just Apple's claim. And you don't seem to have noticed that employees also have rights. It's up to you if you willing to give up yours, but don't devalue others who don't stand idly by and watch giant corporations do whatever they want.

WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago

I wish I could go back in time and tell a younger version of myself the steps needed to work at a FAANG. I unfortunately never had the right guidance to get there and hopefully my kids one day will. I can’t complain as things worked out —- but still. I see these employee issues pop up from time to time and I guess I just don’t understand it. I’m not trying to be cruel to the people speaking out. Just I truly don’t understand it. Ungodly money. Ungodly benefits. Working interesting problems everyday. Changing the world. Impacting millions of lives. The best of some of the best teams. No job is perfect and whatever beef exists at Apple right now is 1000x better than some of the trash jobs out there and what some jobs are like in the real universe. It’s not to say Apple should go without ridicule or improvement. Just an outsider perspective who sees Lannisters killing each other in their perfect castle. Not advocating anything. Just hard to imagine walking into Apple and having a tough time or not enjoying it. I suffered much worse for much less in my life. Cheers to everyone trying to improve things though.

discordance 5y ago
> Ungodly money. Ungodly benefits. Working interesting problems everyday. Changing the world. Impacting millions of lives. The best of some of the best teams. The pay is good, but the rest of it is not as good as you make it out to be. There are exceptions, but for the most part projects, teams and impact are usually pretty low.
- WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
  > There are expectations Sounds miserable! In all seriousness, it’s awesome and better than most.
  - exBarrelSpoiler 5y ago
    Apple has a toxic side covered up by silence that is unique among most tech companies. And you want to talk about ungodly money and ungodly benefits, yet there are suicides at Facebook and Amazon. Not to mention in investment banking. All of these things come at a cost.

y7 5y ago

Not being harassed at your workplace should be the norm, not some luxury benefit that you move to a different company for. Pressure for better working conditions always comes from workers themselves, rather than management, because the priorities are simply different. I'm assuming you come from a time where strong unions were still a thing. They were a hard-won victory for workers' rights, and a necessity to improve working conditions. Without them, any complaining employee was simply fired, because it's much cheaper for the organization to fire a few employees than to acquiesce to their demands. The latter is precisely what's happening here.

kcplate 5y ago
Maybe it’s just my opinion but there is a world of difference between being forced to work on a factory floor for 16 hours without a break and “The company didn’t denounce…” or “my company is making me return to office…” Perhaps they have other grievances but I guarantee they pale in comparison to what the labor movement worked to solve years back.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

I agree with firing for negative public comments, but firing for negative internal comments is pretty stifling - unless those negative comments are also abusive of course.

heavyset_go 5y ago

> I guess I’m just old school but I come from a time when I’d be fired for any negative public or even internal comments. And I’m ok with that. In the US, people have protected rights to discuss and push for changes in their working conditions, and to organize, thanks to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.

valtism 5y ago

It's devastating that this is the top opinion coming from here. The "If you don't like it just leave" stance, whether talking about working for a company or living in a country, is so dismissive of the people who see issues and have the courage to try and change things to make it better for others.

prepend 5y ago
It’s effective. As a programmer I frequently dismiss stupid, ineffective ideas. I don’t dismiss people, I dismiss their dumb ideas. And actually, I try to improve and build with ideas. These types of approaches seem dumb and ineffective so it’s odd to me that people would try them and be surprised at the outcome. Doing a dumb thing doesn’t mean that I’m courageous. Conflating all dumb things with right things is weird to me. Again, not to be old personish, but it’s ok to point out and not applaud ineffective, counterproductive techniques. If someone comes to you and says “my goal is to improve apple” and the explains their plan to complain on Twitter and organize complaint groups inside apple, I think you would tell them that that approach is not likely to be effective (ie “dumb”). That doesn’t mean the person is bad or anything. Just that their plan is not good. Also, using hyperbolic language like “it’s devastating” is weird to me. If this is devastating, then I want to find ways to protect you from truly devastating things in the world. It’s a great thing to be so privileged that internet discussions that you don’t agree with are devastating.
UncleOxidant 5y ago
The idea the companies should be able to do whatever they want to their employees and if the employees don't like it they should leave seems common here. But I think a lot of people are really fed up with that attitude and it's a big reason why we're in the midst of the Great Resignation.