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Retired from Apple a few years ago (at age 57). I was not obsolete. A big company like Apple, there are always things that need taken care of. I assumed with

Retired from Apple a few years ago (at age 57). I was not obsolete. A big company like Apple, there are always things that need taken care of. I assumed with iOS, Swift, etc., maybe the guys on the Cocoa team were obsolete? Of course not. That code is still there, still needs maintaining, interoperability with the new languages, frameworks, etc. I'm more surprised they want to stay on. And that is in fact why I left Apple: the job had changed, the "career" had changed. The engineers were no longer steering the ship. It had been that way when I started in 1995 though. A "team", let's say the graphics team, would figure out what API to revisit, what new ones to add — perhaps how to refactor the entire underlying workflow. The "tech lead" (who would regularly attend Siggraph since we're talking about the graphics team) would make the call as to what got priority. Marketing would come around after the fact to "create a narrative" around all the changes to the OS. I hate to say it, but many, those were the good ole' days. (And let's be clear, in the 90's, Apple's customers were more or less like the engineers, we also loved the machine for the same reasons they did — so we did right by them, made changes they would like because we wanted them too. You can't say that as convincingly for the phone, being a mass consumer device.) Marketing took the reins long ago though — especially as Apple began to succeed with the iPhone (which, someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I think was an engineer driven project initially — I mean most things were up to that point). I stuck around nonetheless though because there was money to be made and kids still to raise. When the last daughter flew the coop though, so did I.

zkirill 2y ago
I want to create a company that is like Apple of the 90's and resurrect the "bicycle for the mind". Is there any chance you would consider mentoring?
- Sophistifunk 2y ago
  There's plenty of people who want to build that thing, and most of us have a good idea how it probably should be, at least at first. The problem isn't building it, it's funding it without selling out the user.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    If you have to make a grand reveal to the world and change all of it a la Steve Jobs with a single product, you're dead in the water. But we have the Internet and crowd funding and open source these days. Which part of the thing are you most interested in building? Go build that on top of whatever's closest, open source it (yes, even hardware), and iterate from there. It's a failure of the imagination (or perhaps the wisdom of age, or the lack of the foolishness of youth) if you're blocked by the fear of selling out the user.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  I'm too cynical to be a mentor, ha ha. I too aware of all the engineering-led companies that ultimately tanked. General Magic is the first one that comes to mind. But no reason for me to mentor — really it's just let the engineers drive. Sometimes it works (or sued to in another era), sometimes it does not. Either way, it will be a fin place to work. ;-)
  - zkirill 2y ago
    Do not discount the cynic. I persist. Here is my question, for example. How would Apple and its ecosystem have evolved differently if they never adopted Objective-C? Would it be possible to accomplish everything with C and better tooling?
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
I like programming. I can still do it. What I don't like is all the bullshit around it. Primarily now the barrier is that I don't have to work, so why would I put up with abusive hazing? I mean of course, hiring processes, which have only gotten worse over time (hallmark property of the cycle of hazing). I'm not doing on-call rotations anymore. Either allow us to engineer the thing to be resilient, or pay off-duty people (a wonderful opportunity for offshore people that management is so desperate to use). Finally, I don't want to code in Python or JavaScript. As a long time programmer, it is annoying that we keep going backwards and wasting more and more hardware power. Nobody is producing anything exciting in software anymore. I can't think of a pure software company doing anything I would be excited for, because google and facebook and the like control the internet. It doesn't even pay that well anymore, and AI is just another huge excuse to drop wages by management. Apple is a fantastic example: operating systems are stagnant, hardware outside of the architecture switch is stagnant (and how much of that was simply priority access to the state of the art TSMC node tech). Nobody makes good solutions for anything anymore.
- ido 2y ago
  > It doesn't even pay that well anymore, and AI is just another huge excuse to drop wages by management. Can you expand on this? I haven’t noticed salaries going down where I’m at (only fewer open positions the last ~1.5 years due to the global economic climate - but I’m sure this is cyclical and will swing back soon enough).
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    well I'm pretty well paid for Denmark, but my wages haven't really gone up in the last few years and when I look at payment rates in Denmark I'm still pretty much at the top for programmers who don't consult - but my wage used to be the same as the average two person household in Denmark and now it is a couple hundred dollars less.
  - sakjur 2y ago
    It could be a nod to a shift into ‘do more with less’. In Sweden hospitals and schools have basically lost all their administrative staff and students per class has grown. Teacher salaries might not have gone down, but expectations are much higher, as they have less support from non-teaching staff.
CalRobert 2y ago
I wonder how many other people were at Apple from the mid-90's until a few years ago, that's an incredibly long tenure. It seems like one of the more interesting places to be during several very interesting transformations.
- ghaff 2y ago
  May you live in "interesting" times. I've had 3 jobs in the ~decade-long range. I was really ready to move on in each case. Partly I was ready for a change and partly the company had changed.
Xen9 2y ago
To separate the decision process from the outcome, is wisdom always.

zkirill 2y ago

I want to create a company that is like Apple of the 90's and resurrect the "bicycle for the mind". Is there any chance you would consider mentoring?

Sophistifunk 2y ago
There's plenty of people who want to build that thing, and most of us have a good idea how it probably should be, at least at first. The problem isn't building it, it's funding it without selling out the user.
- fragmede 2y ago
  If you have to make a grand reveal to the world and change all of it a la Steve Jobs with a single product, you're dead in the water. But we have the Internet and crowd funding and open source these days. Which part of the thing are you most interested in building? Go build that on top of whatever's closest, open source it (yes, even hardware), and iterate from there. It's a failure of the imagination (or perhaps the wisdom of age, or the lack of the foolishness of youth) if you're blocked by the fear of selling out the user.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
I'm too cynical to be a mentor, ha ha. I too aware of all the engineering-led companies that ultimately tanked. General Magic is the first one that comes to mind. But no reason for me to mentor — really it's just let the engineers drive. Sometimes it works (or sued to in another era), sometimes it does not. Either way, it will be a fin place to work. ;-)
- zkirill 2y ago
  Do not discount the cynic. I persist. Here is my question, for example. How would Apple and its ecosystem have evolved differently if they never adopted Objective-C? Would it be possible to accomplish everything with C and better tooling?

AtlasBarfed 2y ago

I like programming. I can still do it. What I don't like is all the bullshit around it. Primarily now the barrier is that I don't have to work, so why would I put up with abusive hazing? I mean of course, hiring processes, which have only gotten worse over time (hallmark property of the cycle of hazing). I'm not doing on-call rotations anymore. Either allow us to engineer the thing to be resilient, or pay off-duty people (a wonderful opportunity for offshore people that management is so desperate to use). Finally, I don't want to code in Python or JavaScript. As a long time programmer, it is annoying that we keep going backwards and wasting more and more hardware power. Nobody is producing anything exciting in software anymore. I can't think of a pure software company doing anything I would be excited for, because google and facebook and the like control the internet. It doesn't even pay that well anymore, and AI is just another huge excuse to drop wages by management. Apple is a fantastic example: operating systems are stagnant, hardware outside of the architecture switch is stagnant (and how much of that was simply priority access to the state of the art TSMC node tech). Nobody makes good solutions for anything anymore.

ido 2y ago
> It doesn't even pay that well anymore, and AI is just another huge excuse to drop wages by management. Can you expand on this? I haven’t noticed salaries going down where I’m at (only fewer open positions the last ~1.5 years due to the global economic climate - but I’m sure this is cyclical and will swing back soon enough).
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  well I'm pretty well paid for Denmark, but my wages haven't really gone up in the last few years and when I look at payment rates in Denmark I'm still pretty much at the top for programmers who don't consult - but my wage used to be the same as the average two person household in Denmark and now it is a couple hundred dollars less.
- sakjur 2y ago
  It could be a nod to a shift into ‘do more with less’. In Sweden hospitals and schools have basically lost all their administrative staff and students per class has grown. Teacher salaries might not have gone down, but expectations are much higher, as they have less support from non-teaching staff.

CalRobert 2y ago

I wonder how many other people were at Apple from the mid-90's until a few years ago, that's an incredibly long tenure. It seems like one of the more interesting places to be during several very interesting transformations.

ghaff 2y ago
May you live in "interesting" times. I've had 3 jobs in the ~decade-long range. I was really ready to move on in each case. Partly I was ready for a change and partly the company had changed.

Xen9 2y ago

To separate the decision process from the outcome, is wisdom always.