14 ms·

How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

205 points by retskrad 4y ago

lkj3lkjlkj3 4y ago
[flagged]
lelandfe 4y ago
Original article: https://www.fastcompany.com/90748492/apple-airpods-pro-creation https://www.fastcompany.com/90748492/apple-airpods-pro-creat... First half of the article: "Teams were innovating for months in silos only to finally converge in the eleventh hour before launch, ending up in five- or six-hour-long daily meetings, causing tremendous friction and burnout. People were frustrated." Second half of the article: "regular cross-staff sessions, transparency, and shared voice" created the AirPods Pro Frankly, pretty skimpy on the details – ironic considering the topic.
- wmf 4y ago
  I wonder how much cross-team collaboration was required for AirPods Pro? Do they have some kind of iOS or hardware integration that regular AirPods don't?
  - judge2020 4y ago
    I know there are sometimes developer betas that accidentally include pre-production hardware info and strings[0], or features that would have no use outside of rumored products, eg WebXR[1], so they exist in iOS. I imagine a bad merge can get internal features into public builds, but they seem to be incredibly rare. 0: https://www.idropnews.com/news/homepod-setup-process-leaked-latest-ios-11-beta/47737/ https://www.idropnews.com/news/homepod-setup-process-leaked-... 1: https://igamesnews.com/mobile/ios-15-4-leaks-possible-apple-virtual-reality-glasses/ https://igamesnews.com/mobile/ios-15-4-leaks-possible-apple-...
- Tao332 4y ago
  It's pretty funny that they had to break through this insane cultural wall just to make yet another pair of headphones I don't want. I don't really think of "more headphones, but better somehow" as innovation.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
88913527 4y ago
> Secrecy is a value it held dear, to preserve the “surprise and delight” for customers. I think the last time I felt this way about an Apple Event was the launch of the iPad. Not only are they burning out engineers, they're optimizing for a value that isn't part of their secret sauce anymore. I expect innovation, but not surprise. An N'th generation anything just won't have the same zing as it did the first few times.
- jdgoesmarching 4y ago
  “Surprise and delight” is just the PR line, the point is having more control over the marketing and positioning of a product on launch. We could debate whether that’s worth the R&D inefficiency, but Apple hasn’t exactly failed by deferring to their marketing folks over the years.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- infogulch 4y ago
  Imagine the counterfactual: an Apple engineering blog that routinely publishes in depth articles describing the awesome challenges that their engineering teams are overcoming in an org as vertically integrated as Apple. That would make me more hype about their products than anything.
  - openknot 4y ago
    I would personally be very interested in such a blog, but so would Apple's competitors. I've read that being too open about methods can let competitors catch up to once-unique advantages quickly, especially as it lets them design a roadmap of future features to work on. Suppose Apple had an engineering blog that released a roadmap about the M1 chips before their release. Then, Apple's laptops might not have such a massive lead on Intel/AMD processors today, as laptop manufacturers may have invested more in ARM processors by seeing them as viable due to Apple's work.
    - infogulch 4y ago
TomVDB 4y ago
One thing I love about my company is that most information is not siloed. There are product lines that I have no business known about, but I have access anyway. It’s not only exciting to know what’s cooking in ankthwr group’s kitchen, it’s also great when experts from other teams volunteer to help when you’re stuck on a problem that’s their domain. In larger companies, knowing what others are working on makes it a lot easier to find experts at something. And I’ve never experienced any of them being reluctant to share due to fear of disclosing information about the products they’re working on. I don’t think I’d feel at home at Apple.
Animats 4y ago
There is technical debt associated with operating at a high level of secrecy. I used to work in a place that did classified work for the three-letter agencies. The teams working on the most classified projects tended to stagnate. They had advanced technology in narrow areas, but had fallen behind commercial technology across the board. They were still building minicomputer-based systems a decade later than they should have been. And they'd get stuck in dead-end niche technologies. As a rule of thumb for bidding purposes, we assumed that classifying a project doubled the cost.
- zebnyc 4y ago
  Sounds like a nice retirement plan, if you can get it and can stand it
- rjsw 4y ago
  > As a rule of thumb for bidding purposes, we assumed that classifying a project doubled the cost. There is a similar statement in the "Skunk Works" book.
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  I had a taste of that experience when I was an intern. Interned for a government contractor that did some classified work. Like you said, thing go so slowly on this do projects, and in government contracting in general, that now I have a line in my LinkedIn bio saying I am open to any role as long as it’s not with the Government or a Government Contractor.
openknot 4y ago
From Hacker News's guidelines, the preferred original source that the linked 9to5Mac quotes heavily from is from Fast Company: https://www.fastcompany.com/90748492/apple-airpods-pro-creation https://www.fastcompany.com/90748492/apple-airpods-pro-creat... However, I suspect that a submission with the original source's headline would have led to less engagement (as it is "How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro," as opposed to " Apple’s secrecy created engineer burnout").
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 4y ago
  Looks like a mod changed the URL to that from https://9to5mac.com/2022/05/06/apples-secrecy-created-engineer-burnout/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/05/06/apples-secrecy-created-engine....
wheresmycraisin 4y ago
Once got 2 interviews deep into a job at apple. I still have no idea wtf I was interviewing for and completely lost motivation to proceed.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  It's aggravating for sure. I've cancelled interviews with them before because they couldn't confirm that I was actually interviewing for the team and product I knew I was interviewing for. The secrecy often crosses the line into silly and even disrespectful.
  - serenitylater 4y ago
    For real, was it their self driving division? The faux secrecy in that was astounding. Like everyone knows what is going on here just tell that the computer vision machine learning job focused on high definition video and LiDAR data is for the car, we both know it’s for the car.
    - AlotOfReading 4y ago
      Got it in one. It was the only division I was interested in, they reached out to me, and I made that extremely clear upfront. There were already 6 other offers on the table and having been through Apple's fairly exhausting process before, didn't want to waste time interviewing for a team at the wrong level in the stack.
    - wheresmycraisin 4y ago
      I assumed I was interviewing for the self driving car because it was rumored back then, and then the secrecy might make sense. Also it's good for my ego lol. Then I asked a friend that works for them about it years later and she said apple is secretive about any position... I could've been interviewing for a help desk position in the cafe for all I know.
skuhn 4y ago
I worked at Apple relatively briefly, in a lead role on an Important Project that required its own form to be disclosed on it (besides the general agreement you sign to begin employment). A truly toxic work environment that I couldn't get out of fast enough once I shipped the project. All kinds of projects at Apple have their own disclosure forms, and you are only given one to sign if it's deemed necessary to your work. My responsibilities on this project didn't entitle me to be disclosed on it, which led to all manner of hilariously frustrating guessing games as I tried to deliver on the requirements without actually being told what they were. Conversations regularly went like this: "I can't tell you that that approach won't satisfy the requirements, but I would think twice if I were you." Ultimately I think that I puzzled out what was needed and successfully delivered it, but the method was pure madness. This wasn't even some new silver gadget launch, it was an infrastructure component to a future product launch down the road. Yet everything and anything can be given the top secret treatment. Why is that? Running a disclosure-required project is prestigious. Being disclosed on projects is a badge of honor, almost even a high score board, and not being disclosed is used as a weapon in big or small ways. Anything that Apple manages to ship (in my experience) is in spite of their corporate culture, not because of it.
- urthor 4y ago
  Keep in mind this attitude makes total sense to hardware engineers. The hardware business is... Let's just say that the difficulties you face definitely exist for hardware engineers. But, difficulties involving negotiations plus recalcitrant South Korean factory owners are WORSE. In "South Korean factory owner negotiations," secrecy is paramount. Particularly if said South Korean factory owner is the biggest supplier of iPhone screens. And also makes an entire line of competitor phones to your products. Apple's CEO, COO and "head of services" all have degrees from Duke University and 30 year careers in supply chain management. The company is widely regarded as being run by a Gang of 4, those 3 plus the general counsel. From the outside, Apple is very much a hardware company that knows nothing about software. The software is only good because Mac fans join the company and slave hard enough to make it that way.
  - skuhn 4y ago
signaru 4y ago
I once worked under a research grant where the leader is trying to impress by delivering more than promised, i.e. doing a related side project that is not part of the original plan. Upon learning about this "secret" side project, this didn't please the grant giving agency so the side project was made "official" while funding remained the same. An increase in official deliverables without an increase in funding and staff was just a recipe for burn-out. Worse, the engineers that had to toil in the side project did not get as much recognition or networking as those in the official deliverable, as it was not the priority among the collaborators. On the other hand, the leader only had to demand more from engineers to appear prolific to the eyes of the public.
selfhifive 4y ago
I don't see how they can come up with software hardware integration and optimisation by working in silos that converge at the eleventh hour. In fact the closed ecosystem criterion would mean lots of internal dependency and more communication.
awelkjlkrg 4y ago
vlovich123 4y ago
> He said it was so bad that engineers didn’t even know who they could and couldn’t talk to about their work. This sounds off. When I worked there 7 years ago there was an internal website where you punch in the person’s name and it tells you about all the mutual disclosures you have. I would expect it’s integrated into Directory by now. Also, I don’t recall AirPods development as being particularly more open considering I was in the same rough org and the only reason I heard about it in advance of launch was because I happened to be in an exec review where it was being demoed along with other forward looking products. I guess that could be considered “more open” but that wasn’t an experience many engineers got.
- kanbara 4y ago
  not in directory, but slack, meetings, and all sorts of shit integrate. you can see anyone who has disclosures you have and also use the site. it's not a big deal, and you don't want everyone to have access to every project. idk why people think it's difficult
Fede_V 4y ago
I know that Apple is incredibly secretive about their launches, and I'm not surprised that carries over to their internal culture, but, I'm incredibly skeptical of stories told from the point of view of an HR person that has every single incentive to hype up their revolutionary new process that unleashed productivity and improved morale. Every single time I read a similar story and I had first or second hand knowledge of how things actually played out, the role of the person telling the story was massively stretched out.
- Dardania 4y ago
  Agreed. Also, to cite AirPods Pro as breaking the mould on a secrecy culture…it was pretty obvious that the airpod product would develop to have noise cancelling. The stakes for secrecy were much lower.
halotrope 4y ago
Lets take a moment to appreciate that obnoxious auto-playing video that covers half the screen on mobile. Bonus points for it staying there when scrolling. I am really wondering what it will take to make the web more like wikipedia and less like a casino.
- visarga 4y ago
  > I am really wondering what it will take to make the web more like wikipedia and less like a casino. Don't hold your breath for them to do anything, but a "reader mode" browser extension can help on your side.
mwattsun 4y ago
It'd be interesting to see a comparison of Apple's "Strictly controlled interface between groups on a need to know basis" and Amazon's "All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces. Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces." I'm guessing most companies have a more leaky abstraction approach https://gist.github.com/kislayverma/d48b84db1ac5d737715e8319bd4dd368 https://gist.github.com/kislayverma/d48b84db1ac5d737715e8319...
- otterley 4y ago
  The two are orthogonal. Amazon’s culture of building and intercommunicating with service interfaces doesn’t mean there aren’t secret projects in the works. For example, new AWS services are often introduced at re:Invent to the surprise and delight of both customers and employees.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    I work in the consulting department at AWS. I touch a lot of different services. The service team will often tell me about upcoming features and tell me not to tell my customers without signing an NDA. I’ll be thinking about a solution to work around a limitation of an AWS service, reach out to the service team to get their thoughts and they will tell me, they are working on something similar. They will either tell me they are working on it or for me to go for it. I’ve never had an instance where I found out six months later that I wasted my time because they wouldn’t share their roadmap with me.
zebnyc 4y ago
My conversatons with my brother who works at Apple goes something like this. Me: "What are you working on?" Him: "All I can tell you is that I am working on a project which will launch later this year and you hear about it in the news."
- ant6n 4y ago
  Won’t he tell u what projects he did in the past?
  - marcins 4y ago
    Heh.. "I worked on macOS 10.14, 10.15, 11, 12, but I can't tell you what I'm working on now, it'll launch later this year"
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- ip26 4y ago
  Is that supposed to be surprising? I don’t tell people about unannounced projects I work on either.
  - gkop 4y ago
    There’s a middle ground. We make fun of “stealth mode” start ups and non-technical idea people demanding an NDA for a coffee chat, we should pick on the big companies too, when they take themselves too seriously (Eg. non-Apple companies copying Apple’s way of working, without recognizing what works for Apple is unique, it’s got an outlier track record over its 46 years). And, maybe you’re not as close with your brother as grandparent. Some siblings are very close.
Erikun 4y ago
What is an "HR Business Partner"?
- rm445 4y ago
  It's a job title in HR with a certain level of seniority. It doesn't imply that the business is organised as a partnership. It's a dumb title, but very common. I think the root cause is a lack of a general job title for a senior contributor in that field. With the debasement of the word engineer, I'm just glad they're not called senior HR engineer.
  - namdnay 4y ago
    It’s not just that, it’s also the fact that they are assigned to a part of the business, as opposed to internal/company wide stuff (like the global compensation guidelines, or organizing graduate recruitment drives)
JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
They made some earbuds, how brave.
teekert 4y ago
I just can’t read this with that uncloseable ad about an electric snowmobile at the top (Firefox, iOS). It’s truly one of the most annoying ads I ever saw.
avidphantasm 4y ago
For the past five years I have wondered: what is an “HR business partner”? This seems like a recent (ca. 2015? earlier?) euphemism for HR goon, or at more charitably an HR fixer. Is this indeed a new term for an existing job, or a new role? Where dig this term come from? SHRM? B-school academics?
- siva7 4y ago
  Have wondered the same and it seems just to be a new modern title for someone who works in HR.
- fleddr 4y ago
  Some HR departments gets so large and fluffy that a significant amount of employees do "HR for HR". Internal stuff that is completely disconnected from the rest of the business. Those that sometimes actually do talk to the business are called "HR business partners".
- namdnay 4y ago
  HR business partner is assigned to a specific department/division/whatever of the company to be their “HR person”. If you’re in that division you talk to your HR BP, they’re the one who will do the yearly baselining exercise with the managing director etc. So basically the public face of HR for that division As opposed to the people working on company-wide stuff like salary guidelines, rulebooks, “the way we work” brochures, recruitment, etc
lulzifer 4y ago
cosmiccatnap 4y ago
Fascinating how this article got bubbled up after the unfavorable versions were posted by the people who were actually there...
rob_c 4y ago
one of the least recyclable/servicable products in history, can we all agree that this side of the device needs _serious_ attention.

205 points by retskrad 4y ago

[flagged]

Original article: https://www.fastcompany.com/90748492/apple-airpods-pro-creation https://www.fastcompany.com/90748492/apple-airpods-pro-creat... First half of the article: "Teams were innovating for months in silos only to finally converge in the eleventh hour before launch, ending up in five- or six-hour-long daily meetings, causing tremendous friction and burnout. People were frustrated." Second half of the article: "regular cross-staff sessions, transparency, and shared voice" created the AirPods Pro Frankly, pretty skimpy on the details – ironic considering the topic.

wmf 4y ago
I wonder how much cross-team collaboration was required for AirPods Pro? Do they have some kind of iOS or hardware integration that regular AirPods don't?
- judge2020 4y ago
  I know there are sometimes developer betas that accidentally include pre-production hardware info and strings[0], or features that would have no use outside of rumored products, eg WebXR[1], so they exist in iOS. I imagine a bad merge can get internal features into public builds, but they seem to be incredibly rare. 0: https://www.idropnews.com/news/homepod-setup-process-leaked-latest-ios-11-beta/47737/ https://www.idropnews.com/news/homepod-setup-process-leaked-... 1: https://igamesnews.com/mobile/ios-15-4-leaks-possible-apple-virtual-reality-glasses/ https://igamesnews.com/mobile/ios-15-4-leaks-possible-apple-...
Tao332 4y ago
It's pretty funny that they had to break through this insane cultural wall just to make yet another pair of headphones I don't want. I don't really think of "more headphones, but better somehow" as innovation.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

88913527 4y ago

> Secrecy is a value it held dear, to preserve the “surprise and delight” for customers. I think the last time I felt this way about an Apple Event was the launch of the iPad. Not only are they burning out engineers, they're optimizing for a value that isn't part of their secret sauce anymore. I expect innovation, but not surprise. An N'th generation anything just won't have the same zing as it did the first few times.

jdgoesmarching 4y ago
“Surprise and delight” is just the PR line, the point is having more control over the marketing and positioning of a product on launch. We could debate whether that’s worth the R&D inefficiency, but Apple hasn’t exactly failed by deferring to their marketing folks over the years.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
infogulch 4y ago
Imagine the counterfactual: an Apple engineering blog that routinely publishes in depth articles describing the awesome challenges that their engineering teams are overcoming in an org as vertically integrated as Apple. That would make me more hype about their products than anything.
- openknot 4y ago
  I would personally be very interested in such a blog, but so would Apple's competitors. I've read that being too open about methods can let competitors catch up to once-unique advantages quickly, especially as it lets them design a roadmap of future features to work on. Suppose Apple had an engineering blog that released a roadmap about the M1 chips before their release. Then, Apple's laptops might not have such a massive lead on Intel/AMD processors today, as laptop manufacturers may have invested more in ARM processors by seeing them as viable due to Apple's work.
  - infogulch 4y ago

TomVDB 4y ago

One thing I love about my company is that most information is not siloed. There are product lines that I have no business known about, but I have access anyway. It’s not only exciting to know what’s cooking in ankthwr group’s kitchen, it’s also great when experts from other teams volunteer to help when you’re stuck on a problem that’s their domain. In larger companies, knowing what others are working on makes it a lot easier to find experts at something. And I’ve never experienced any of them being reluctant to share due to fear of disclosing information about the products they’re working on. I don’t think I’d feel at home at Apple.

Animats 4y ago

There is technical debt associated with operating at a high level of secrecy. I used to work in a place that did classified work for the three-letter agencies. The teams working on the most classified projects tended to stagnate. They had advanced technology in narrow areas, but had fallen behind commercial technology across the board. They were still building minicomputer-based systems a decade later than they should have been. And they'd get stuck in dead-end niche technologies. As a rule of thumb for bidding purposes, we assumed that classifying a project doubled the cost.

zebnyc 4y ago
Sounds like a nice retirement plan, if you can get it and can stand it
rjsw 4y ago
> As a rule of thumb for bidding purposes, we assumed that classifying a project doubled the cost. There is a similar statement in the "Skunk Works" book.
_fat_santa 4y ago
I had a taste of that experience when I was an intern. Interned for a government contractor that did some classified work. Like you said, thing go so slowly on this do projects, and in government contracting in general, that now I have a line in my LinkedIn bio saying I am open to any role as long as it’s not with the Government or a Government Contractor.

openknot 4y ago

From Hacker News's guidelines, the preferred original source that the linked 9to5Mac quotes heavily from is from Fast Company: https://www.fastcompany.com/90748492/apple-airpods-pro-creation https://www.fastcompany.com/90748492/apple-airpods-pro-creat... However, I suspect that a submission with the original source's headline would have led to less engagement (as it is "How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro," as opposed to " Apple’s secrecy created engineer burnout").

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dang 4y ago
Looks like a mod changed the URL to that from https://9to5mac.com/2022/05/06/apples-secrecy-created-engineer-burnout/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/05/06/apples-secrecy-created-engine....

wheresmycraisin 4y ago

Once got 2 interviews deep into a job at apple. I still have no idea wtf I was interviewing for and completely lost motivation to proceed.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
It's aggravating for sure. I've cancelled interviews with them before because they couldn't confirm that I was actually interviewing for the team and product I knew I was interviewing for. The secrecy often crosses the line into silly and even disrespectful.
- serenitylater 4y ago
  For real, was it their self driving division? The faux secrecy in that was astounding. Like everyone knows what is going on here just tell that the computer vision machine learning job focused on high definition video and LiDAR data is for the car, we both know it’s for the car.
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    Got it in one. It was the only division I was interested in, they reached out to me, and I made that extremely clear upfront. There were already 6 other offers on the table and having been through Apple's fairly exhausting process before, didn't want to waste time interviewing for a team at the wrong level in the stack.
  - wheresmycraisin 4y ago
    I assumed I was interviewing for the self driving car because it was rumored back then, and then the secrecy might make sense. Also it's good for my ego lol. Then I asked a friend that works for them about it years later and she said apple is secretive about any position... I could've been interviewing for a help desk position in the cafe for all I know.

skuhn 4y ago

I worked at Apple relatively briefly, in a lead role on an Important Project that required its own form to be disclosed on it (besides the general agreement you sign to begin employment). A truly toxic work environment that I couldn't get out of fast enough once I shipped the project. All kinds of projects at Apple have their own disclosure forms, and you are only given one to sign if it's deemed necessary to your work. My responsibilities on this project didn't entitle me to be disclosed on it, which led to all manner of hilariously frustrating guessing games as I tried to deliver on the requirements without actually being told what they were. Conversations regularly went like this: "I can't tell you that that approach won't satisfy the requirements, but I would think twice if I were you." Ultimately I think that I puzzled out what was needed and successfully delivered it, but the method was pure madness. This wasn't even some new silver gadget launch, it was an infrastructure component to a future product launch down the road. Yet everything and anything can be given the top secret treatment. Why is that? Running a disclosure-required project is prestigious. Being disclosed on projects is a badge of honor, almost even a high score board, and not being disclosed is used as a weapon in big or small ways. Anything that Apple manages to ship (in my experience) is in spite of their corporate culture, not because of it.

urthor 4y ago
Keep in mind this attitude makes total sense to hardware engineers. The hardware business is... Let's just say that the difficulties you face definitely exist for hardware engineers. But, difficulties involving negotiations plus recalcitrant South Korean factory owners are WORSE. In "South Korean factory owner negotiations," secrecy is paramount. Particularly if said South Korean factory owner is the biggest supplier of iPhone screens. And also makes an entire line of competitor phones to your products. Apple's CEO, COO and "head of services" all have degrees from Duke University and 30 year careers in supply chain management. The company is widely regarded as being run by a Gang of 4, those 3 plus the general counsel. From the outside, Apple is very much a hardware company that knows nothing about software. The software is only good because Mac fans join the company and slave hard enough to make it that way.
- skuhn 4y ago

signaru 4y ago

I once worked under a research grant where the leader is trying to impress by delivering more than promised, i.e. doing a related side project that is not part of the original plan. Upon learning about this "secret" side project, this didn't please the grant giving agency so the side project was made "official" while funding remained the same. An increase in official deliverables without an increase in funding and staff was just a recipe for burn-out. Worse, the engineers that had to toil in the side project did not get as much recognition or networking as those in the official deliverable, as it was not the priority among the collaborators. On the other hand, the leader only had to demand more from engineers to appear prolific to the eyes of the public.

selfhifive 4y ago

I don't see how they can come up with software hardware integration and optimisation by working in silos that converge at the eleventh hour. In fact the closed ecosystem criterion would mean lots of internal dependency and more communication.

awelkjlkrg 4y ago

vlovich123 4y ago

> He said it was so bad that engineers didn’t even know who they could and couldn’t talk to about their work. This sounds off. When I worked there 7 years ago there was an internal website where you punch in the person’s name and it tells you about all the mutual disclosures you have. I would expect it’s integrated into Directory by now. Also, I don’t recall AirPods development as being particularly more open considering I was in the same rough org and the only reason I heard about it in advance of launch was because I happened to be in an exec review where it was being demoed along with other forward looking products. I guess that could be considered “more open” but that wasn’t an experience many engineers got.

kanbara 4y ago
not in directory, but slack, meetings, and all sorts of shit integrate. you can see anyone who has disclosures you have and also use the site. it's not a big deal, and you don't want everyone to have access to every project. idk why people think it's difficult

Fede_V 4y ago

I know that Apple is incredibly secretive about their launches, and I'm not surprised that carries over to their internal culture, but, I'm incredibly skeptical of stories told from the point of view of an HR person that has every single incentive to hype up their revolutionary new process that unleashed productivity and improved morale. Every single time I read a similar story and I had first or second hand knowledge of how things actually played out, the role of the person telling the story was massively stretched out.

Dardania 4y ago
Agreed. Also, to cite AirPods Pro as breaking the mould on a secrecy culture…it was pretty obvious that the airpod product would develop to have noise cancelling. The stakes for secrecy were much lower.

halotrope 4y ago

Lets take a moment to appreciate that obnoxious auto-playing video that covers half the screen on mobile. Bonus points for it staying there when scrolling. I am really wondering what it will take to make the web more like wikipedia and less like a casino.

visarga 4y ago
> I am really wondering what it will take to make the web more like wikipedia and less like a casino. Don't hold your breath for them to do anything, but a "reader mode" browser extension can help on your side.

mwattsun 4y ago

It'd be interesting to see a comparison of Apple's "Strictly controlled interface between groups on a need to know basis" and Amazon's "All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces. Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces." I'm guessing most companies have a more leaky abstraction approach https://gist.github.com/kislayverma/d48b84db1ac5d737715e8319bd4dd368 https://gist.github.com/kislayverma/d48b84db1ac5d737715e8319...

otterley 4y ago
The two are orthogonal. Amazon’s culture of building and intercommunicating with service interfaces doesn’t mean there aren’t secret projects in the works. For example, new AWS services are often introduced at re:Invent to the surprise and delight of both customers and employees.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I work in the consulting department at AWS. I touch a lot of different services. The service team will often tell me about upcoming features and tell me not to tell my customers without signing an NDA. I’ll be thinking about a solution to work around a limitation of an AWS service, reach out to the service team to get their thoughts and they will tell me, they are working on something similar. They will either tell me they are working on it or for me to go for it. I’ve never had an instance where I found out six months later that I wasted my time because they wouldn’t share their roadmap with me.

zebnyc 4y ago

My conversatons with my brother who works at Apple goes something like this. Me: "What are you working on?" Him: "All I can tell you is that I am working on a project which will launch later this year and you hear about it in the news."

ant6n 4y ago
Won’t he tell u what projects he did in the past?
- marcins 4y ago
  Heh.. "I worked on macOS 10.14, 10.15, 11, 12, but I can't tell you what I'm working on now, it'll launch later this year"
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ip26 4y ago
Is that supposed to be surprising? I don’t tell people about unannounced projects I work on either.
- gkop 4y ago
  There’s a middle ground. We make fun of “stealth mode” start ups and non-technical idea people demanding an NDA for a coffee chat, we should pick on the big companies too, when they take themselves too seriously (Eg. non-Apple companies copying Apple’s way of working, without recognizing what works for Apple is unique, it’s got an outlier track record over its 46 years). And, maybe you’re not as close with your brother as grandparent. Some siblings are very close.

Erikun 4y ago

What is an "HR Business Partner"?

rm445 4y ago
It's a job title in HR with a certain level of seniority. It doesn't imply that the business is organised as a partnership. It's a dumb title, but very common. I think the root cause is a lack of a general job title for a senior contributor in that field. With the debasement of the word engineer, I'm just glad they're not called senior HR engineer.
- namdnay 4y ago
  It’s not just that, it’s also the fact that they are assigned to a part of the business, as opposed to internal/company wide stuff (like the global compensation guidelines, or organizing graduate recruitment drives)

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago

They made some earbuds, how brave.

teekert 4y ago

I just can’t read this with that uncloseable ad about an electric snowmobile at the top (Firefox, iOS). It’s truly one of the most annoying ads I ever saw.

avidphantasm 4y ago

For the past five years I have wondered: what is an “HR business partner”? This seems like a recent (ca. 2015? earlier?) euphemism for HR goon, or at more charitably an HR fixer. Is this indeed a new term for an existing job, or a new role? Where dig this term come from? SHRM? B-school academics?

siva7 4y ago
Have wondered the same and it seems just to be a new modern title for someone who works in HR.
fleddr 4y ago
Some HR departments gets so large and fluffy that a significant amount of employees do "HR for HR". Internal stuff that is completely disconnected from the rest of the business. Those that sometimes actually do talk to the business are called "HR business partners".
namdnay 4y ago
HR business partner is assigned to a specific department/division/whatever of the company to be their “HR person”. If you’re in that division you talk to your HR BP, they’re the one who will do the yearly baselining exercise with the managing director etc. So basically the public face of HR for that division As opposed to the people working on company-wide stuff like salary guidelines, rulebooks, “the way we work” brochures, recruitment, etc

lulzifer 4y ago

cosmiccatnap 4y ago

Fascinating how this article got bubbled up after the unfavorable versions were posted by the people who were actually there...

rob_c 4y ago

one of the least recyclable/servicable products in history, can we all agree that this side of the device needs _serious_ attention.