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I think it's really important to note that Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies, but not only do they choose to do so th

by tedivm 5y ago

I think it's really important to note that Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies, but not only do they choose to do so they also make sure the information is wrong. Apple is, essentially, being unethical on two levels. They're selling or sharing employee information, and they're purposefully making it so that information is wrong. I want to stress this- I ask during the interview process of every company I work at whether they share employment information with the credit bureaus and most say no. I've worked at startups and a couple of larger companies. What Apple is doing here seems purely vindictive. I'm also not sure how this is legal- it seems like it would fall under defamation laws. I would personally be willing to sue over this (but I've never worked for Apple).

hammock 5y ago
>Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies, but not only do they choose to do so they also make sure the information is wrong. Apple is, essentially, being unethical on two levels By giving out wrong personal information, the argument could be made that they are protecting privacy. I do not believe saying "associate" is wrong, though. It's a term that is commonly used by HR to refer generically to anyone who works for a company. If you haven't encountered it, it may feel foreign to you, especially since Apple is a retail company and you may be conflating it with "retail associate." That's not what it means though. "Employee" is a term fraught with legal and other liability in it's use (think Uber drivers - are they employees or contractors?). HR departments will refer to everybody as “associates” to mitigate risk. If Apple wanted to confirm employment, but not divulge titles, they could say associate. Similarly, Starbucks uses "partners." Do you really think a barista is a part-owner in Starbucks and that's why they're called a partner?
- dsr_ 5y ago
  If they wanted to protect privacy, they would only have two responses: "We confirm that this person worked for Apple, ending on [date]. By policy, we don't discuss any further details." "We do not have records that this person worked for Apple."
  - hammock 5y ago
    That is essentially what wiping title record with "associate" does. It's a generic term that is commonly synonymous with employee.
    - BoiledCabbage 5y ago
      No it's clearly not. It's very clearly implying they had a job with the title "associate".
      - awill 5y ago
        Exactly. No information is better than inaccurate information.
      - adrusi 5y ago
        No it doesn't. It clearly could mean that, but it literally just means the person has associated with the company. I don't know why they'd use language that could create that confusion, but it's not straightforward dishonesty.
        ant6n 5y ago
        It could mean that, but not clearly, and it really doesn't mean that.
        dev_tty01 5y ago
        Setting aside whether it is a good practice or not, if all of these agencies know that Apple does this, then it becomes a de facto meangingless term. If this has been an ongoing practice for a while and an agency is not aware of it, then it is a bad agency to work with.
        BoiledCabbage 5y ago
        So your answer is "It's ok to be misleading. And because you don't know you're being mislead it's your fault"? Yeah I have a very different opinion of that situation.
- tedivm 5y ago
  Protecting privacy would be not giving names out at all- instead they do confirm employment, but lie about what the role was.
- SR2Z 5y ago
  Or that by demoting people that Apple is lying and could be sued for tortious interference.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  There are reasons for privacy, which include discrimination based on that information. Discrimination based on incorrect information is just as harmful. That said "associate" is arguably vague.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  > "Employee" is a term fraught with legal and other liability in it's use (think Uber drivers - are they employees or contractors?). HR departments will refer to everybody as “associates” to mitigate risk. If Apple wanted to confirm employment, but not divulge titles, they could say associate. But yet if you call these services while the person is still employed, they absolutely will divulge titles. There's no risk mitigation happening. It's just "you're no longer one of us, we don't give a shit".
  - ghaff 5y ago
    >But yet if you call these services while the person is still employed, they absolutely will divulge titles. Is that actually the case?
    - FireBeyond 5y ago
      The company involved stated that if the person was currently employed, they would give the job title (and that while their service would report 'Associate' post employment, if someone cared enough to clarify, they would be able to call them, give identifying information, and they would be able to get job titles from historic data).
      - hammock 5y ago
        So this isn't a case of Apple fucking past employees over. It's just a case of them not wanting to give the titles to Experian. What a lot of hullabaloo over nothing.
        FireBeyond 5y ago
        Or anybody. So any ex-employee could potentially fail a background check / employment verification check (as at least one person here has). Because Apple, previously happy to say "Yes, this person works here as a Senior Product Manager" now says "Eh, sure. They were associated with the company." They're not obligated to, you're right. But it's not exactly endearing of a company that has any gratitude whatsoever to its employees. But then again, from a company that was more than happy to engage in multiple illegal acts to collude to avoid poaching, to collude to keep salaries artificially deflated, I'm not entirely surprised.
pbronez 5y ago
> Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies Also, those third parties don't have to take Apple's word. Equifax and Lexis-Nexis (named in the article) are selling a data product, which is undermined by Apple's bad behavior. Shouldn't these companies have an incentive to provide accurate data? This is where it gets interesting. I looked up the products in question, and they are VERY careful to talk about streamlining workflows, and connecting you to previous employers without every making claims about the accuracy of the data provided by thos employers. Equifax's "The Work Number can deliver an automated income and employment verification solution that streamlines the transfer of information between employers and verifier."[0] They do this "thanks to a powerful alliance partnerships with many of the top payroll and HCMs". They are clearly just sloshing data out of payroll systems into a proprietary database. You'd think they'd notice when a large employer overwrites everyone's title on their last paycheck, but they make no claims about quality control on this data. The article specifically mentions Inverify, which is owned by Equifax. Their verification services page[2] also focuses on efficiency ("Throw it over the Fence"). They claim to "[gather] your electronic data and [upload] relevant information so you do not have to search for employee data from multiple sources." Note that there's nothing in there about quality control. I suspect Inverify exists to provide a services layer over the The Work Number data product. LexisNexis doesn't make their offerings as obvious. I found this pdf for LexisNexis Screening Solutions[3]. They say "We have developed relationships with many employers and will make those difficult calls for you, thereby simplifying your job." One way they help make those difficult calls is that they "call and verify previous employment with each source." So that's a data quality claim, but they're still focused on just parroting whatever the upstream employer says. You would expect that products like this would have rigorous, automated anomaly detection procedures in place. As an employer, I don't want to waste time figuring out why this otherwise great senior dev was an "associate" at Apple. I want my verification provider to, at minimum, tell me "heads up, Apple is a fickle and vindictive employer so you can't really trust this." Of course it would be even BETTER if they said "our professional assessment is they were a Level 4. We believe that because that's what the previous 200 paystubs and 4 W2 forms said before they screwed with the data after their departure." If you're gonna build a terrifying data business, at least be good at it! [0] https://workforce.equifax.com/resource/-/resource/employment-verifications-with-the-work-number-product-sheet https://workforce.equifax.com/resource/-/resource/employment... [1] https://workforce.equifax.com/solutions/employment-verifications https://workforce.equifax.com/solutions/employment-verificat... [2] https://inverify.net/our-services/verification-services.aspx https://inverify.net/our-services/verification-services.aspx [3] https://www.lexisnexis.com/literature/pdfs/EXP_Previous_Employment_Verification.pdf https://www.lexisnexis.com/literature/pdfs/EXP_Previous_Empl...
frankfrankfrank 5y ago
I don't necessarily agree that what they are doing is unethical. It seems more a preservation of their business practices. Which is understandable and actually the ethical thing to do since Apple has no obligation to help others, including competitors. There is also an argument that what they are doing is the ethical thing to do by not feeding data into yet another mass surveillance and control system to manage and control people's lives. Imagine you defy or upset the regime … poof … your official employment history says you have no history and are a liar. You are a non-person now. What is unethical though is the wholesale surveillance and monitoring without any kind of control by those who are being surveilled and monitored, regarding their "employment history" (not all that different than how slave owners would "horse trade" slaves). I realize that many will find that hyperbolic, but in essence it is the same thing going on, the force with the power is negotiating and conversing and managing their resources without those resources being aware, having any input, or being able to even object to it being done. Those resources that are treated like that are not just cattle that may have desirable traits, or slaves that have a stout back, they are humans … Human Resources. I keep trying to get people to understand that the reality of the matter is that what we call salvery was never actually ended, it was simply pivoted because the ruling class realized there was a far more efficient, effective, lower cost, less hassle and wildly more profitable way of achieving the same exploration … just abstract the means and methods of control with money, regulations, incentives, etc. Why spend all day trying to force people to work against their will where you get marginal returns from a small set of human resources, when you can just construct a system where you can get major increases in returns from a/the majority of society. It is not a coincidence that this evolution from industrial and agricultural slavery started shortly after the Civil War in the USA. Now we have whole global corporations run by like self-governing slave hives, including a very similar foreman/overseer structure that trickles down to the lowly digital field workers in the code factories, call centers, and cheerful retail stores.
- inlined 5y ago
  If apple is lying about job titles and that lie harms an individual that is the definition of libel.
- edmundsauto 5y ago
digitailor 5y ago
It's a really good point about Apple willfully using an Experian service as part of this strategy. As to defamation, I don't think that's clear. Apple is intentionally using the term to be as legally vague as possible about how it externally reports its past connection to its ex-payees. This is mostly liability management, essentially saying less that can't be called false, instead of the defamatory tactic of saying more that is not true. as·so·ci·ate (n) 1. a partner or colleague in business or at work. 2. a person with limited or subordinate membership of an organization. 3. joined or connected with an organization or business. - Source: Google search results fed by Oxford Languages This kind of vague hedging in communication for legal purposes is pretty longterm characteristic of the organization. It's the "say absolutely nothing after termination that can be dissected in court later" school. The school has adherents all over the place.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  While I agree it’s probably not defamation and is just meant to say as little as possible, there’s no way this would be the end all in court - apple surely keeps the original records internally so a court case could easily find your original title.
  - digitailor 5y ago
    Well said- it's as much or more to try to provide minimum reasoning to allow a party to bring them to court as influence proceedings in court. But the lack of statements made after termination is undeniably helpful to parties with this kind of MO if things end up there.

by tedivm 5y ago

hammock 5y ago

>Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies, but not only do they choose to do so they also make sure the information is wrong. Apple is, essentially, being unethical on two levels By giving out wrong personal information, the argument could be made that they are protecting privacy. I do not believe saying "associate" is wrong, though. It's a term that is commonly used by HR to refer generically to anyone who works for a company. If you haven't encountered it, it may feel foreign to you, especially since Apple is a retail company and you may be conflating it with "retail associate." That's not what it means though. "Employee" is a term fraught with legal and other liability in it's use (think Uber drivers - are they employees or contractors?). HR departments will refer to everybody as “associates” to mitigate risk. If Apple wanted to confirm employment, but not divulge titles, they could say associate. Similarly, Starbucks uses "partners." Do you really think a barista is a part-owner in Starbucks and that's why they're called a partner?

dsr_ 5y ago
If they wanted to protect privacy, they would only have two responses: "We confirm that this person worked for Apple, ending on [date]. By policy, we don't discuss any further details." "We do not have records that this person worked for Apple."
- hammock 5y ago
  That is essentially what wiping title record with "associate" does. It's a generic term that is commonly synonymous with employee.
  - BoiledCabbage 5y ago
    No it's clearly not. It's very clearly implying they had a job with the title "associate".
    - awill 5y ago
      Exactly. No information is better than inaccurate information.
    - adrusi 5y ago
      No it doesn't. It clearly could mean that, but it literally just means the person has associated with the company. I don't know why they'd use language that could create that confusion, but it's not straightforward dishonesty.
      - ant6n 5y ago
        It could mean that, but not clearly, and it really doesn't mean that.
        dev_tty01 5y ago
        Setting aside whether it is a good practice or not, if all of these agencies know that Apple does this, then it becomes a de facto meangingless term. If this has been an ongoing practice for a while and an agency is not aware of it, then it is a bad agency to work with.
        BoiledCabbage 5y ago
        So your answer is "It's ok to be misleading. And because you don't know you're being mislead it's your fault"? Yeah I have a very different opinion of that situation.
tedivm 5y ago
Protecting privacy would be not giving names out at all- instead they do confirm employment, but lie about what the role was.
SR2Z 5y ago
Or that by demoting people that Apple is lying and could be sued for tortious interference.
Chris2048 5y ago
There are reasons for privacy, which include discrimination based on that information. Discrimination based on incorrect information is just as harmful. That said "associate" is arguably vague.
FireBeyond 5y ago
> "Employee" is a term fraught with legal and other liability in it's use (think Uber drivers - are they employees or contractors?). HR departments will refer to everybody as “associates” to mitigate risk. If Apple wanted to confirm employment, but not divulge titles, they could say associate. But yet if you call these services while the person is still employed, they absolutely will divulge titles. There's no risk mitigation happening. It's just "you're no longer one of us, we don't give a shit".
- ghaff 5y ago
  >But yet if you call these services while the person is still employed, they absolutely will divulge titles. Is that actually the case?
  - FireBeyond 5y ago
    The company involved stated that if the person was currently employed, they would give the job title (and that while their service would report 'Associate' post employment, if someone cared enough to clarify, they would be able to call them, give identifying information, and they would be able to get job titles from historic data).
    - hammock 5y ago
      So this isn't a case of Apple fucking past employees over. It's just a case of them not wanting to give the titles to Experian. What a lot of hullabaloo over nothing.
      - FireBeyond 5y ago
        Or anybody. So any ex-employee could potentially fail a background check / employment verification check (as at least one person here has). Because Apple, previously happy to say "Yes, this person works here as a Senior Product Manager" now says "Eh, sure. They were associated with the company." They're not obligated to, you're right. But it's not exactly endearing of a company that has any gratitude whatsoever to its employees. But then again, from a company that was more than happy to engage in multiple illegal acts to collude to avoid poaching, to collude to keep salaries artificially deflated, I'm not entirely surprised.

pbronez 5y ago

> Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies Also, those third parties don't have to take Apple's word. Equifax and Lexis-Nexis (named in the article) are selling a data product, which is undermined by Apple's bad behavior. Shouldn't these companies have an incentive to provide accurate data? This is where it gets interesting. I looked up the products in question, and they are VERY careful to talk about streamlining workflows, and connecting you to previous employers without every making claims about the accuracy of the data provided by thos employers. Equifax's "The Work Number can deliver an automated income and employment verification solution that streamlines the transfer of information between employers and verifier."[0] They do this "thanks to a powerful alliance partnerships with many of the top payroll and HCMs". They are clearly just sloshing data out of payroll systems into a proprietary database. You'd think they'd notice when a large employer overwrites everyone's title on their last paycheck, but they make no claims about quality control on this data. The article specifically mentions Inverify, which is owned by Equifax. Their verification services page[2] also focuses on efficiency ("Throw it over the Fence"). They claim to "[gather] your electronic data and [upload] relevant information so you do not have to search for employee data from multiple sources." Note that there's nothing in there about quality control. I suspect Inverify exists to provide a services layer over the The Work Number data product. LexisNexis doesn't make their offerings as obvious. I found this pdf for LexisNexis Screening Solutions[3]. They say "We have developed relationships with many employers and will make those difficult calls for you, thereby simplifying your job." One way they help make those difficult calls is that they "call and verify previous employment with each source." So that's a data quality claim, but they're still focused on just parroting whatever the upstream employer says. You would expect that products like this would have rigorous, automated anomaly detection procedures in place. As an employer, I don't want to waste time figuring out why this otherwise great senior dev was an "associate" at Apple. I want my verification provider to, at minimum, tell me "heads up, Apple is a fickle and vindictive employer so you can't really trust this." Of course it would be even BETTER if they said "our professional assessment is they were a Level 4. We believe that because that's what the previous 200 paystubs and 4 W2 forms said before they screwed with the data after their departure." If you're gonna build a terrifying data business, at least be good at it! [0] https://workforce.equifax.com/resource/-/resource/employment-verifications-with-the-work-number-product-sheet https://workforce.equifax.com/resource/-/resource/employment... [1] https://workforce.equifax.com/solutions/employment-verifications https://workforce.equifax.com/solutions/employment-verificat... [2] https://inverify.net/our-services/verification-services.aspx https://inverify.net/our-services/verification-services.aspx [3] https://www.lexisnexis.com/literature/pdfs/EXP_Previous_Employment_Verification.pdf https://www.lexisnexis.com/literature/pdfs/EXP_Previous_Empl...

frankfrankfrank 5y ago

I don't necessarily agree that what they are doing is unethical. It seems more a preservation of their business practices. Which is understandable and actually the ethical thing to do since Apple has no obligation to help others, including competitors. There is also an argument that what they are doing is the ethical thing to do by not feeding data into yet another mass surveillance and control system to manage and control people's lives. Imagine you defy or upset the regime … poof … your official employment history says you have no history and are a liar. You are a non-person now. What is unethical though is the wholesale surveillance and monitoring without any kind of control by those who are being surveilled and monitored, regarding their "employment history" (not all that different than how slave owners would "horse trade" slaves). I realize that many will find that hyperbolic, but in essence it is the same thing going on, the force with the power is negotiating and conversing and managing their resources without those resources being aware, having any input, or being able to even object to it being done. Those resources that are treated like that are not just cattle that may have desirable traits, or slaves that have a stout back, they are humans … Human Resources. I keep trying to get people to understand that the reality of the matter is that what we call salvery was never actually ended, it was simply pivoted because the ruling class realized there was a far more efficient, effective, lower cost, less hassle and wildly more profitable way of achieving the same exploration … just abstract the means and methods of control with money, regulations, incentives, etc. Why spend all day trying to force people to work against their will where you get marginal returns from a small set of human resources, when you can just construct a system where you can get major increases in returns from a/the majority of society. It is not a coincidence that this evolution from industrial and agricultural slavery started shortly after the Civil War in the USA. Now we have whole global corporations run by like self-governing slave hives, including a very similar foreman/overseer structure that trickles down to the lowly digital field workers in the code factories, call centers, and cheerful retail stores.

inlined 5y ago
If apple is lying about job titles and that lie harms an individual that is the definition of libel.
edmundsauto 5y ago

digitailor 5y ago

It's a really good point about Apple willfully using an Experian service as part of this strategy. As to defamation, I don't think that's clear. Apple is intentionally using the term to be as legally vague as possible about how it externally reports its past connection to its ex-payees. This is mostly liability management, essentially saying less that can't be called false, instead of the defamatory tactic of saying more that is not true. as·so·ci·ate (n) 1. a partner or colleague in business or at work. 2. a person with limited or subordinate membership of an organization. 3. joined or connected with an organization or business. - Source: Google search results fed by Oxford Languages This kind of vague hedging in communication for legal purposes is pretty longterm characteristic of the organization. It's the "say absolutely nothing after termination that can be dissected in court later" school. The school has adherents all over the place.

vineyardmike 5y ago
While I agree it’s probably not defamation and is just meant to say as little as possible, there’s no way this would be the end all in court - apple surely keeps the original records internally so a court case could easily find your original title.
- digitailor 5y ago
  Well said- it's as much or more to try to provide minimum reasoning to allow a party to bring them to court as influence proceedings in court. But the lack of statements made after termination is undeniably helpful to parties with this kind of MO if things end up there.