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>"Arguments at Apple are personal and confrontational. This began at the top, and it is part of the company’s culture." That sounds like a terrible environment

>"Arguments at Apple are personal and confrontational. This began at the top, and it is part of the company’s culture." That sounds like a terrible environment.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Apocryphon 14y ago
Doesn't sound too different from Microsoft's alleged "warring project teams" culture.
philwelch 14y ago
Maybe. Outright aggressive is sometimes better than passive-aggressive though, which is what many cultures turn into.
reedlaw 14y ago
It's sounds incredibly controlling, which would explain the lack of freedom on iOS and Apple's various platforms. It's not enough to own the entire ecosystem, anything outside is not allowed to run on the hardware (at least for iOS devices). Great for investors and Apple's bottom line, but horrible for consumers (e.g. this story: http://niederfamily.blogspot.be/2012/06/silencing-of-maya.html http://niederfamily.blogspot.be/2012/06/silencing-of-maya.ht...)
- fratis 14y ago
  Whether or not Apple's corporate culture is "controlling" (though I don't really understand why you're conflating 'confrontational' with 'controlling' in the first place) does not directly impact whether policies towards consumers are restrictive. Since the two seem related, I can see why you'd slip into that, but your claim is really a non sequitur. Also, that article is about a patent lawsuit being brought against a third-party software development firm. The plaintiffs probably requested that Apple take down the allegedly infringing app, and they did. Any curator, no matter how strict or liberal their policies, has the freedom to remove potentially patent-infringing content from their marketplace. (Which, for the record, isn't to say I agree that the patent is legitimate. I really hope the small developer wins.)
  - reedlaw 14y ago
    Here's just one example of the controlling nature of Apple from the article: > Andy Miller, who joined Apple as a vice president after Apple bought his mobile advertising company in 2009, asked Jobs if he could join the board of an independent company in a different business than Apple. “What?” Jobs responded. “You’re barely cutting it here,” Jobs said, which Miller understood to be relatively high praise, “and you want to go spend your time helping someone else’s company? I don’t even let Forstall out of the office,” Jobs added, referring to Scott Forstall, Apple’s mobile software chief, a high-ranking and considerably more influential executive than Miller. Needless to say, Miller declined the board membership offer.
    - taligent 14y ago
      What's controlling about that ? Expecting a board member at a critical time in Apple's turnaround to dedicate 100% of the time to Apple is hardly controlling. In fact I would deem it common sense.
      - reedlaw 14y ago
        > "I don’t even let Forstall out of the office." Maybe a joke, but one only a very controlling person could make.
      - fpgeek 14y ago
        First, 2009 (or later I suppose) was a critical time in Apple's turnaround? Second, the anecdote in question is about an Apple executive wanting to be a board member somewhere else. Plenty of executives (at companies other than Apple) are board members elsewhere, so Jobs' refusal is at least noteworthy. And since the refusal seems at least partly motivated by limiting an employee's outside interests, that does sound controlling (try replacing the subject of the conversation another professional activity that had a similarly modest time commitment). It's also worth noting that the executive in question left Apple last summer.
- rimantas 14y ago
  How comes that Apple products are leading in customer satisfaction surveys, if this is horrible for consumers?
  - freehunter 14y ago
    Because consumers don't always know what they want. They can be influenced by marketing and word of mouth (as shown in the Vista vs Mojave experiment). On another point, Facebook is by far the most popular social network, and it can hardly be argued that Facebook's policies are good for the users.
  - rprasad 14y ago
    In the same way that McDonalds leads fast food satisfcation survey, despite being undeniably bad for consumers' health.
mjwalshe 14y ago
Nothing wrong with confrontational and arguing your corner but you need to keep it professional and when a decision is made respect the collective.
imcqueen 14y ago
I bet it's refreshing once you get comfortable working there, but in the beginning it has to be a little intimidating.
raverbashing 14y ago
legend says Tony Fadell (iPod creator) threatened to quit when SJ wanted to put a x86 processor on the iPad I believe such an environment can be very important. if you have very good people Also, it's one thing to stand for your idea agressively, other, to just swear at people.
- ralfd 14y ago
  This is an interesting point. It is valuable to have this kind of engineer instead of a Yes-man. Steve Jobs was famously difficult. Certainly not the kind of boss I would want. But the turnover in his inner circle was really low. Craig Federighi who on Monday demonstrated the next OS X is a Guy from the old NeXT days. I think Jobs selected people as underlings who were able to stand up to him (sometimes).
  - philwelch 14y ago
    According to his biography, he would give an award every year to the employee who stood up to him the best.
its_so_on 14y ago
It's a terrible environment, but I bet being a supreme court Justice is also a terrible environment. It also brings out profound conclusions and vision. When Apple says that battery-life is important in mobile devices, they mean it. If Samsung says it, maybe a year later they will turn around and bring out an eight-core phone that you can play a game on for forty-five minutes before having to plug it in again. Apple isn't just opinionated: it's opinionated on hugely difficult technical issues that don't even exist in the wild yet. (As when they release a new category.) You only get that through violent discourse with egos on the line. edit: a similar thing happens at Google, but not when it comes to ergonomics or user interfaces and usability with the same hardware devices Apple makes, but instead when it comes to solving certain problems on a massive scale. The result is that Google can't really release a laptop that's as usable as a Macbook in the same domain, and for everyone, and Apple can't really solve the ops issues that it would take to bring out a Google Search competitor. There is huge amount of discourse (of a radically different nature) at both companies.
- fpgeek 14y ago
  > When Apple says that battery-life is important in mobile devices, they mean it No, they don't. They mean battery life is important in mobile devices as long as it doesn't get in the way of making them thin (among other things). After all, the modern smartphone with the best battery life is the Droid RAZR MAXX (soon to be dethroned by its international sibling the Motorola RAZR MAXX, which doesn't have the battery-life handicap of an LTE radio).
  - its_so_on 14y ago
    Apple would never release a laptop with a 1.5 hour battery (wifi web browsing). an unimaginable number of such laptops are brought out by every major brand other than Apple. (likewise apple has its standards in a phone, which is not the standard you cite, but not 45 minutes either.). Apple is opinionated on every part of the user interface and design, on usability and ease-of-use. They then go on to put their money where their mouth is, and practice what they preach. (For the most part.) It's very hard to find design decisions at Apple that seem to have 0 thought or discussion behind them. This is the norm at other companies.
exDM69 14y ago
Dear god, I would not want to work in this company. I want a job, not a religion.

>"Arguments at Apple are personal and confrontational. This began at the top, and it is part of the company’s culture." That sounds like a terrible environment.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Apocryphon 14y ago

Doesn't sound too different from Microsoft's alleged "warring project teams" culture.

philwelch 14y ago

Maybe. Outright aggressive is sometimes better than passive-aggressive though, which is what many cultures turn into.

reedlaw 14y ago

It's sounds incredibly controlling, which would explain the lack of freedom on iOS and Apple's various platforms. It's not enough to own the entire ecosystem, anything outside is not allowed to run on the hardware (at least for iOS devices). Great for investors and Apple's bottom line, but horrible for consumers (e.g. this story: http://niederfamily.blogspot.be/2012/06/silencing-of-maya.html http://niederfamily.blogspot.be/2012/06/silencing-of-maya.ht...)

fratis 14y ago
Whether or not Apple's corporate culture is "controlling" (though I don't really understand why you're conflating 'confrontational' with 'controlling' in the first place) does not directly impact whether policies towards consumers are restrictive. Since the two seem related, I can see why you'd slip into that, but your claim is really a non sequitur. Also, that article is about a patent lawsuit being brought against a third-party software development firm. The plaintiffs probably requested that Apple take down the allegedly infringing app, and they did. Any curator, no matter how strict or liberal their policies, has the freedom to remove potentially patent-infringing content from their marketplace. (Which, for the record, isn't to say I agree that the patent is legitimate. I really hope the small developer wins.)
- reedlaw 14y ago
  Here's just one example of the controlling nature of Apple from the article: > Andy Miller, who joined Apple as a vice president after Apple bought his mobile advertising company in 2009, asked Jobs if he could join the board of an independent company in a different business than Apple. “What?” Jobs responded. “You’re barely cutting it here,” Jobs said, which Miller understood to be relatively high praise, “and you want to go spend your time helping someone else’s company? I don’t even let Forstall out of the office,” Jobs added, referring to Scott Forstall, Apple’s mobile software chief, a high-ranking and considerably more influential executive than Miller. Needless to say, Miller declined the board membership offer.
  - taligent 14y ago
    What's controlling about that ? Expecting a board member at a critical time in Apple's turnaround to dedicate 100% of the time to Apple is hardly controlling. In fact I would deem it common sense.
    - reedlaw 14y ago
      > "I don’t even let Forstall out of the office." Maybe a joke, but one only a very controlling person could make.
    - fpgeek 14y ago
      First, 2009 (or later I suppose) was a critical time in Apple's turnaround? Second, the anecdote in question is about an Apple executive wanting to be a board member somewhere else. Plenty of executives (at companies other than Apple) are board members elsewhere, so Jobs' refusal is at least noteworthy. And since the refusal seems at least partly motivated by limiting an employee's outside interests, that does sound controlling (try replacing the subject of the conversation another professional activity that had a similarly modest time commitment). It's also worth noting that the executive in question left Apple last summer.
rimantas 14y ago
How comes that Apple products are leading in customer satisfaction surveys, if this is horrible for consumers?
- freehunter 14y ago
  Because consumers don't always know what they want. They can be influenced by marketing and word of mouth (as shown in the Vista vs Mojave experiment). On another point, Facebook is by far the most popular social network, and it can hardly be argued that Facebook's policies are good for the users.
- rprasad 14y ago
  In the same way that McDonalds leads fast food satisfcation survey, despite being undeniably bad for consumers' health.

mjwalshe 14y ago

Nothing wrong with confrontational and arguing your corner but you need to keep it professional and when a decision is made respect the collective.

imcqueen 14y ago

I bet it's refreshing once you get comfortable working there, but in the beginning it has to be a little intimidating.

raverbashing 14y ago

legend says Tony Fadell (iPod creator) threatened to quit when SJ wanted to put a x86 processor on the iPad I believe such an environment can be very important. if you have very good people Also, it's one thing to stand for your idea agressively, other, to just swear at people.

ralfd 14y ago
This is an interesting point. It is valuable to have this kind of engineer instead of a Yes-man. Steve Jobs was famously difficult. Certainly not the kind of boss I would want. But the turnover in his inner circle was really low. Craig Federighi who on Monday demonstrated the next OS X is a Guy from the old NeXT days. I think Jobs selected people as underlings who were able to stand up to him (sometimes).
- philwelch 14y ago
  According to his biography, he would give an award every year to the employee who stood up to him the best.

its_so_on 14y ago

It's a terrible environment, but I bet being a supreme court Justice is also a terrible environment. It also brings out profound conclusions and vision. When Apple says that battery-life is important in mobile devices, they mean it. If Samsung says it, maybe a year later they will turn around and bring out an eight-core phone that you can play a game on for forty-five minutes before having to plug it in again. Apple isn't just opinionated: it's opinionated on hugely difficult technical issues that don't even exist in the wild yet. (As when they release a new category.) You only get that through violent discourse with egos on the line. edit: a similar thing happens at Google, but not when it comes to ergonomics or user interfaces and usability with the same hardware devices Apple makes, but instead when it comes to solving certain problems on a massive scale. The result is that Google can't really release a laptop that's as usable as a Macbook in the same domain, and for everyone, and Apple can't really solve the ops issues that it would take to bring out a Google Search competitor. There is huge amount of discourse (of a radically different nature) at both companies.

fpgeek 14y ago
> When Apple says that battery-life is important in mobile devices, they mean it No, they don't. They mean battery life is important in mobile devices as long as it doesn't get in the way of making them thin (among other things). After all, the modern smartphone with the best battery life is the Droid RAZR MAXX (soon to be dethroned by its international sibling the Motorola RAZR MAXX, which doesn't have the battery-life handicap of an LTE radio).
- its_so_on 14y ago
  Apple would never release a laptop with a 1.5 hour battery (wifi web browsing). an unimaginable number of such laptops are brought out by every major brand other than Apple. (likewise apple has its standards in a phone, which is not the standard you cite, but not 45 minutes either.). Apple is opinionated on every part of the user interface and design, on usability and ease-of-use. They then go on to put their money where their mouth is, and practice what they preach. (For the most part.) It's very hard to find design decisions at Apple that seem to have 0 thought or discussion behind them. This is the norm at other companies.

exDM69 14y ago

Dear god, I would not want to work in this company. I want a job, not a religion.