4 ms·

Sorry but this sounds like LARP, who the hell wouldnt jump on a job offer from apple? Even if it doesnt work out, having Apple on your resume wouldve been an in

Sorry but this sounds like LARP, who the hell wouldnt jump on a job offer from apple? Even if it doesnt work out, having Apple on your resume wouldve been an insane career booster, telling people you got an offer from them but didnt take it sounds very unbelievable, atleast personally, I wouldnt have believed you

KomoD 3y ago
> who the hell wouldnt jump on a job offer from apple? Lots of people, including me.
- rikafurude21 3y ago
  Lots of people love being contrarian in theory. If it happened to you for real, no chance youre gonna say no to that
  - monooso 3y ago
    Not everyone shares your goals or values. I've used Apple products for years and generally like them a lot as a company, but I have no interest in working for them or any other large US tech company. The money is good, of course, but the quality of life sacrifices aren't worth it (for me). That's not contrarianism. That's understanding what matters to me.
    - rikafurude21 3y ago
      fair enough
  - financypants 3y ago
    Would you say the majority of people who claim to be contrarian aren’t actual contrarians, in your experience? I’m not sure you can infer this in general.
  - KomoD 3y ago
    > If it happened to you for real, no chance youre gonna say no to that 100% guarantee I would
  - BirdieNZ 3y ago
    There are literally hundreds of thousands of software engineers employed at companies that are of similar prestige and pay as Apple, and many of them will be on HN. If you're getting paid $500k at Netflix/Google/Meta, why work for $400k at Apple?
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Uhh no, have you ever dug into compensation that most companies that post on HN are offering? They are offering regular old CRUD enterprise level compensation and “equity” that probably won’t be worth anything
      - BirdieNZ 3y ago
        Sure, but that has nothing to do with what I said. There will be many HN users who are earning as much or more as Apple engineers, even if many are earning much less, so assuming that someone here would definitely jump at an Apple offer is not particularly reasonable.
  - Sophistifunk 3y ago
    Move to California, go back to an office for 60 hours a week, sign my life away and swear to secrecy about my thrilling position on some compiler team? Yeah I think could say no to that.
    - alephnan 3y ago
      > thrilling position on some compiler team What’s wrong with compilers?
      - Sophistifunk 3y ago
        Nothing I'd love to work on that sort of thing. The point wasn't that the kind of job is bad, but that even if you're working on stuff that shouldn't be secret, you still have to jump through all those hoops. And imagine how many middle-managers they have who think a) they're the next Steve Jobs, and b) that what drove his success was being a dick to his workmates.
        red-iron-pine 3y ago
        amen. the worst thing about STEM, IMO, is STEM people. yeah I mean you
        Sophistifunk 3y ago
        yawn I guess you're in the wrong place, innit?
    - atlintots 3y ago
      compiler enthusiasts catching stays:(
  - Centigonal 3y ago
    My biggest motivator not to work for apple is this post from Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/#!/Apple http://worrydream.com/#!/Apple
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    I had a much longer reply. But just read the story of the Mexican fisherman https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherman/ https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherma... On a personal level, this is my life now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36767599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36767599 Do you really think I would give this up in exchange for more money and more stress?
bifurcations 3y ago
Not everyone on this site is a student with nothing on their resume.
- rikafurude21 3y ago
  Interesting projection, but to respond to your point: anyone could just put in a decade at Averagecorp inc. or even just hop around and throw together a decent resume. If a random OSS side project lands you an offer from apple thats gotta be jackpot level luck.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Getting a developer job at Apple or other big Tech company isn’t a particularly difficult hurdle. If that’s a personal goal of yours treat it like trying to get into a specific college and set yourself up for success. You may not have great odds applying today, but there’s many options for improving your chances with some effort.
  - bifurcations 3y ago
    I'm now with the sibling commenter in that I can't tell if this a troll account. In case it's not, there's an extension of Cunningham's law. If you're wrong and disagreeable to a sufficiently high degree, people will just ignore or quietly ridicule you rather than try and correct you.
    - red-iron-pine 3y ago
      apple has the best marketing bots in the world.
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    Not really. I have someone reach out every couple months because they saw something I worked on that relates to the technology that team is using. If you take a framework and do something cool with it, and the people who work on it find out about it (say, because someone spotted it on social media) they will often look to see if they can hire you. If you want to improve your chances, pick a technology few people are using and make something cool with that: there’s a lot of people who are experts on UIKit but very few who understand how AirPlay works. To get scouted for the former you have to be really, really interesting.
marpstar 3y ago
Not everyone is willing to uproot their life on a whim, even for a theoretically great job and a theoretically great company.
- rikafurude21 3y ago
  Im sure "uproot your life and dedicate it to Apple" isnt on the job description and apple is very flexible with this stuff. You think all 164,000 apple employees live in silicon valley?
  - manfre 3y ago
    Apple has many large offices outside of silicon valley.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      But they don't do the same thing in every office location. Certain offices are only niche locations stemming from the other HW companies they acquired over the years. Apple si super diverse with what it does. So depending on what job you'll want to do at Apple you might have to relocate.
    - red-iron-pine 3y ago
      Apple logistical hubs for shipping and rando 3rd party acquisitions are one thing, but if you're working on a main-effort product you're either in Austin or SV. You're doing RTO, and you're signing NDAs out the wazoo. Helluva opportunity if you're young, but I'm in agreement with the parent posters that it's not the end-all, be-all. I'm far enough along in my career that I don't need the prestige line on my resume, and 100% remote somewhere I want to live is worth far, far more to me.
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    Apple is definitely not “very flexible with this stuff”.
cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
I am genuinely unsure if this is a parody comment. I am assuming that you are fairly green behind the ears? The thing about Big Tech companies is that they hire lots of developers. That’s in large part makes them Big Tech. “Having Apple on your CV” is not as prestigious as you’re making out. It doesn’t mean you have The Knowledge that makes you a ‘10x developer’ or whatever anywhere you work. In fact, it could mean that your mind has been poisoned by a Big Tech working style, and you’ve developed a bunch of habits that aren’t nearly as applicable to most other organisations. I say this as someone that’s never worked for any tech company anybody has heard of, nor any hip SV startup. It takes a particular sort of person to thrive in Big Tech. That isn’t just code for ‘really really really good’. It sounds like you still believe that it is. Plenty of ‘really really really good’ people wouldn’t do well at Apple, and plenty wouldn’t want to work there. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself ‘really really really good’, but I know that I don’t want to work at Apple. Not because I think I’m not good enough, not because k don’t think that I could keep up, and not because I don’t like their output as a company. Putting companies in a pedestal the way that you are is ultimately damaging for the industry. It fosters the increasingly cringey “get a job at FAANG!!!” culture. I’m sick of my YouTube recommendations being poisoned with “here’s how you pass a system design interview at Google” BS. I implore you to stop putting companies on a pedestal. You need only look at accountants talking about working at the ‘big 4’ to see how utterly ridiculous it can get.
- rikafurude21 3y ago
  From a developers perspective youre right, most of us here probably wouldnt be able to keep up with the amount of work it takes to thrive at apple, sure. Im looking at it from a future employers view, who sees "Apple", has an iPhone, and immediately has an idea in his head about what kind of developer you are, even if its completely inaccurate- Its all marketing. But also, immediately assuming youre not gonna make it at Apple because of what you heard about their work culture alone sounds like a quitter mindset. I mean at least try. If its not right, good riddance. Its not like having been there is gonna cost anything besides the time you invested.
  - financltravsty 3y ago
jacknews 3y ago
I have the one-time biggest computer company, I guess the Apple of it's time, on my CV, and was pretty good (still am, I think!). Currently out of work. Such things are not the panacea you make it seem.
scarface_74 3y ago
I wouldn’t accept an offer from Apple if given one because I wouldn’t want to relocate and I really don’t have any interest working for any large company at this point in my life. Heck, I never wanted to work at a large company. A chance to work remotely at AWS ProServe more or less fell into my lap and from the minute I got there I knew I didn’t want to be there more than four years. More realistically from my connections and experience I would have a better chance working in the consulting division at GCP (full time position). I wouldn’t work there either even though it would probably pay close to $100K more than I make now.
soulofmischief 3y ago
I would never work for Apple, they are an extremely user-hostile company who bankrolls off of child labor in impoverished countries.

KomoD 3y ago

> who the hell wouldnt jump on a job offer from apple? Lots of people, including me.

rikafurude21 3y ago
Lots of people love being contrarian in theory. If it happened to you for real, no chance youre gonna say no to that
- monooso 3y ago
  Not everyone shares your goals or values. I've used Apple products for years and generally like them a lot as a company, but I have no interest in working for them or any other large US tech company. The money is good, of course, but the quality of life sacrifices aren't worth it (for me). That's not contrarianism. That's understanding what matters to me.
  - rikafurude21 3y ago
    fair enough
- financypants 3y ago
  Would you say the majority of people who claim to be contrarian aren’t actual contrarians, in your experience? I’m not sure you can infer this in general.
- KomoD 3y ago
  > If it happened to you for real, no chance youre gonna say no to that 100% guarantee I would
- BirdieNZ 3y ago
  There are literally hundreds of thousands of software engineers employed at companies that are of similar prestige and pay as Apple, and many of them will be on HN. If you're getting paid $500k at Netflix/Google/Meta, why work for $400k at Apple?
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Uhh no, have you ever dug into compensation that most companies that post on HN are offering? They are offering regular old CRUD enterprise level compensation and “equity” that probably won’t be worth anything
    - BirdieNZ 3y ago
      Sure, but that has nothing to do with what I said. There will be many HN users who are earning as much or more as Apple engineers, even if many are earning much less, so assuming that someone here would definitely jump at an Apple offer is not particularly reasonable.
- Sophistifunk 3y ago
  Move to California, go back to an office for 60 hours a week, sign my life away and swear to secrecy about my thrilling position on some compiler team? Yeah I think could say no to that.
  - alephnan 3y ago
    > thrilling position on some compiler team What’s wrong with compilers?
    - Sophistifunk 3y ago
      Nothing I'd love to work on that sort of thing. The point wasn't that the kind of job is bad, but that even if you're working on stuff that shouldn't be secret, you still have to jump through all those hoops. And imagine how many middle-managers they have who think a) they're the next Steve Jobs, and b) that what drove his success was being a dick to his workmates.
      - red-iron-pine 3y ago
        amen. the worst thing about STEM, IMO, is STEM people. yeah I mean you
        Sophistifunk 3y ago
        yawn I guess you're in the wrong place, innit?
  - atlintots 3y ago
    compiler enthusiasts catching stays:(
- Centigonal 3y ago
  My biggest motivator not to work for apple is this post from Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/#!/Apple http://worrydream.com/#!/Apple
- scarface_74 3y ago
  I had a much longer reply. But just read the story of the Mexican fisherman https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherman/ https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherma... On a personal level, this is my life now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36767599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36767599 Do you really think I would give this up in exchange for more money and more stress?

bifurcations 3y ago

Not everyone on this site is a student with nothing on their resume.

rikafurude21 3y ago
Interesting projection, but to respond to your point: anyone could just put in a decade at Averagecorp inc. or even just hop around and throw together a decent resume. If a random OSS side project lands you an offer from apple thats gotta be jackpot level luck.
- Retric 3y ago
  Getting a developer job at Apple or other big Tech company isn’t a particularly difficult hurdle. If that’s a personal goal of yours treat it like trying to get into a specific college and set yourself up for success. You may not have great odds applying today, but there’s many options for improving your chances with some effort.
- bifurcations 3y ago
  I'm now with the sibling commenter in that I can't tell if this a troll account. In case it's not, there's an extension of Cunningham's law. If you're wrong and disagreeable to a sufficiently high degree, people will just ignore or quietly ridicule you rather than try and correct you.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    apple has the best marketing bots in the world.
- saagarjha 3y ago
  Not really. I have someone reach out every couple months because they saw something I worked on that relates to the technology that team is using. If you take a framework and do something cool with it, and the people who work on it find out about it (say, because someone spotted it on social media) they will often look to see if they can hire you. If you want to improve your chances, pick a technology few people are using and make something cool with that: there’s a lot of people who are experts on UIKit but very few who understand how AirPlay works. To get scouted for the former you have to be really, really interesting.

marpstar 3y ago

Not everyone is willing to uproot their life on a whim, even for a theoretically great job and a theoretically great company.

rikafurude21 3y ago
Im sure "uproot your life and dedicate it to Apple" isnt on the job description and apple is very flexible with this stuff. You think all 164,000 apple employees live in silicon valley?
- manfre 3y ago
  Apple has many large offices outside of silicon valley.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    But they don't do the same thing in every office location. Certain offices are only niche locations stemming from the other HW companies they acquired over the years. Apple si super diverse with what it does. So depending on what job you'll want to do at Apple you might have to relocate.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    Apple logistical hubs for shipping and rando 3rd party acquisitions are one thing, but if you're working on a main-effort product you're either in Austin or SV. You're doing RTO, and you're signing NDAs out the wazoo. Helluva opportunity if you're young, but I'm in agreement with the parent posters that it's not the end-all, be-all. I'm far enough along in my career that I don't need the prestige line on my resume, and 100% remote somewhere I want to live is worth far, far more to me.
- saagarjha 3y ago
  Apple is definitely not “very flexible with this stuff”.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago

I am genuinely unsure if this is a parody comment. I am assuming that you are fairly green behind the ears? The thing about Big Tech companies is that they hire lots of developers. That’s in large part makes them Big Tech. “Having Apple on your CV” is not as prestigious as you’re making out. It doesn’t mean you have The Knowledge that makes you a ‘10x developer’ or whatever anywhere you work. In fact, it could mean that your mind has been poisoned by a Big Tech working style, and you’ve developed a bunch of habits that aren’t nearly as applicable to most other organisations. I say this as someone that’s never worked for any tech company anybody has heard of, nor any hip SV startup. It takes a particular sort of person to thrive in Big Tech. That isn’t just code for ‘really really really good’. It sounds like you still believe that it is. Plenty of ‘really really really good’ people wouldn’t do well at Apple, and plenty wouldn’t want to work there. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself ‘really really really good’, but I know that I don’t want to work at Apple. Not because I think I’m not good enough, not because k don’t think that I could keep up, and not because I don’t like their output as a company. Putting companies in a pedestal the way that you are is ultimately damaging for the industry. It fosters the increasingly cringey “get a job at FAANG!!!” culture. I’m sick of my YouTube recommendations being poisoned with “here’s how you pass a system design interview at Google” BS. I implore you to stop putting companies on a pedestal. You need only look at accountants talking about working at the ‘big 4’ to see how utterly ridiculous it can get.

rikafurude21 3y ago
From a developers perspective youre right, most of us here probably wouldnt be able to keep up with the amount of work it takes to thrive at apple, sure. Im looking at it from a future employers view, who sees "Apple", has an iPhone, and immediately has an idea in his head about what kind of developer you are, even if its completely inaccurate- Its all marketing. But also, immediately assuming youre not gonna make it at Apple because of what you heard about their work culture alone sounds like a quitter mindset. I mean at least try. If its not right, good riddance. Its not like having been there is gonna cost anything besides the time you invested.
- financltravsty 3y ago

jacknews 3y ago

I have the one-time biggest computer company, I guess the Apple of it's time, on my CV, and was pretty good (still am, I think!). Currently out of work. Such things are not the panacea you make it seem.

scarface_74 3y ago

I wouldn’t accept an offer from Apple if given one because I wouldn’t want to relocate and I really don’t have any interest working for any large company at this point in my life. Heck, I never wanted to work at a large company. A chance to work remotely at AWS ProServe more or less fell into my lap and from the minute I got there I knew I didn’t want to be there more than four years. More realistically from my connections and experience I would have a better chance working in the consulting division at GCP (full time position). I wouldn’t work there either even though it would probably pay close to $100K more than I make now.

soulofmischief 3y ago

I would never work for Apple, they are an extremely user-hostile company who bankrolls off of child labor in impoverished countries.