4 ms·

Could you explain why you hated working there

by ivewonyoung 2y ago

sodapopcan 2y ago
They said they worked on indexing and caching.
- nvader 2y ago
  Along with naming things, the two hardest problems in computer science.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    I believe you were off by one there.
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      At least they commented, so the coding guide is satisfied.
  - latentsea 2y ago
    Actual two hardest problems appear to be 1. Tolerating working at FAANG. 2. Watching others who work at FAANG collect FAANG level salary while you don't.
    - NetOpWibby 2y ago
      The second part is what I'm dealing with. I didn't even realize I was getting nearly enough the market rate until I started looking around a few months ago. Feelsbadman.
keyle 2y ago
Having a shit job at a dream company vs. having a great job at a shit company. You can land a poor career path and sometimes you just have to take a hard turn.
atomicnumber3 2y ago
I never worked for apple, but huge companies with established, incumbent cash flows and huge moats can bear a truly, spectacularly, mind-bogglingly incredible amount of internal dysfunction while still generally going forward. This can make it really crushing to be a sensible, well-intended single person inside this beast where you have essentially no power yourself.
- ForTheKidz 2y ago
  Yes. And part of why you're paid exorbitantly at these places is to absorb, manage, and counteract this dysfunction. This can be exhausting and lonely work.
  - snailmailstare 2y ago
    Counteract might be the wrong word.. The ongoing dysfunction doesn't fall from the sky, it is largely a consequence of people prioritizing the goals they are assigned for the betterment of their group, etc.
  - nullc 2y ago
    > and counteract this dysfunction correction: and facilitate this dysfunction
  - gcr 2y ago
    this is a deeply insightful comment, thank you. i worked at a FAANG for six years and this matches my experience. there's a variety of responses: - to burn out. sometimes the flameout is spectacular, other times it's a quiet, lonely exit. - to "go with the flow." soft-quit, accept that the dysfunction is there and narrow your own expectations within it - (rarely) to productively challenge it, and -- through picking battles and careful resource management -- push through and make something truly good for yourself or your reports. this is situational. all three are often present in one career at different times.
throwawayffffas 2y ago
Just guessing here, working for a corporation, dealing with the inevitable internal bureaucracy of such an organization is soul crashing.
hansvm 2y ago
At YT, I hated that you needed two weeks of prep for the meeting to uncover two weeks of prep for the meeting where you could get preliminary access to the data source you needed to figure out if your job description was even viable. I get that you need internal controls or whatever, but just log my queries, and if I'm stalking an ex then fire and sue me. It's hard to optimize conversion rate for superchat or whatever if it's a 3-month process to find out if the source of data I plan to use is actually the right source of data. Is Apple any better? My friends on the inside say it's worse, but I'm also just one guy, and their stock is going up and to the right. Make your own decisions.
- tombert 2y ago
  Getting data, even for live systems, wasn't too hard as long as you weren't doing anything secret during a trading blackout window, which didn't seem too unreasonable to me. I didn't work with data science though, my stuff was generally limited to database queries and log messages.
- isleyaardvark 2y ago
  > and if I'm stalking an ex then fire and sue me. I agree that's really frustrating but that's probably the worst example you could use. Real "can't unring that bell" stuff.
tombert 2y ago
Oh my, how long you got? There were a ton of things, but I can really boil down to a few instances. First: The thing that really made me disenchanted with the company came down to an incident where I replied back to a previous email chain with <REDACTED> (one of the higher-ups at Apple) with a topic that wasn't directly relevant to the subject of the previous emails, and then that asshole thought it was best to complain to every single manager between me and him, which was six people. The next day every one of those managers decided to schedule a half-hour meeting explaining to me how inappropriate it was that I emailed <REDACTED> directly, instead of going through the bureaucratic channels. It was three hours of nearly-continuous meetings, all with the same subject of how bad it was to email a higher-up without first emailing every single person in-between first. Three. Fucking. Hours. They wasted basically half a day just to make sure that I didn't send an email to the wrong people in the wrong order. It was worse than that scene in Office Space. Second: There was also another incident, where my manager's manager's manager emailed me, I hadn't replied in two hours, so he called my cell phone and yelled at me for not checking my emails more frequently. I tried explaining that email was asynchronous and that if he needed my attention immediately he should message me with HipChat or call my phone, which he clearly knew how to do, only for him to tell me that I have an attitude problem. Not as bad as having my day ruined for emailing the wrong person, but still really rubbed me the wrong way. There were a lot more annoying things that happened, and my understanding is that a lot of it was an issue with my team; Apple has thousands of software engineers and I think some teams are better than others.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  There are absolutely good teams at Apple. I left a toxic one (Photos) to follow an co-worker I liked a lot who had become a manager (and his team had an opening). Honestly, it was a back-water project with just a handful of engineers on it. But my manager was awesome, my team was cool. My favorite stint at Apple was when I was working on MacOS frameworks. It was chill, you got no significant bonuses to speak of, no special attention during WWDC Keynote presentation. You just did your job and the developers were grateful for the fixes and features you enabled.
  - 2y ago
jasdi 2y ago
"They bring in a rookie, throw money at him, buy the car, the house, after a couple of years, and your kids are in private schools, you're used to the good life, they tell you the truth" Big salaries thrown at young people are bait. They don't need wild animals, but circus animals that are obedient, dependent and consistently perform tricks without too much thinking about why. Over time this involves such animals to loose all sense of self. Naturally this won't work on everyone and causes all kinds issues for both sides.
- tombert 2y ago
  I actually wasn't that young, I was 27 when I started and I was already "senior level" before I worked there. Also, the salary was good but not as amazing as people to think. When I started there in 2018, I was making $165k/year; certainly not "bad" but not spectacular. The stock grants were huge though. If I were still there I'd be worth more than a million now, I think.

Could you explain why you hated working there

sodapopcan 2y ago

They said they worked on indexing and caching.

nvader 2y ago
Along with naming things, the two hardest problems in computer science.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  I believe you were off by one there.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    At least they commented, so the coding guide is satisfied.
- latentsea 2y ago
  Actual two hardest problems appear to be 1. Tolerating working at FAANG. 2. Watching others who work at FAANG collect FAANG level salary while you don't.
  - NetOpWibby 2y ago
    The second part is what I'm dealing with. I didn't even realize I was getting nearly enough the market rate until I started looking around a few months ago. Feelsbadman.

keyle 2y ago

Having a shit job at a dream company vs. having a great job at a shit company. You can land a poor career path and sometimes you just have to take a hard turn.

atomicnumber3 2y ago

I never worked for apple, but huge companies with established, incumbent cash flows and huge moats can bear a truly, spectacularly, mind-bogglingly incredible amount of internal dysfunction while still generally going forward. This can make it really crushing to be a sensible, well-intended single person inside this beast where you have essentially no power yourself.

ForTheKidz 2y ago
Yes. And part of why you're paid exorbitantly at these places is to absorb, manage, and counteract this dysfunction. This can be exhausting and lonely work.
- snailmailstare 2y ago
  Counteract might be the wrong word.. The ongoing dysfunction doesn't fall from the sky, it is largely a consequence of people prioritizing the goals they are assigned for the betterment of their group, etc.
- nullc 2y ago
  > and counteract this dysfunction correction: and facilitate this dysfunction
- gcr 2y ago
  this is a deeply insightful comment, thank you. i worked at a FAANG for six years and this matches my experience. there's a variety of responses: - to burn out. sometimes the flameout is spectacular, other times it's a quiet, lonely exit. - to "go with the flow." soft-quit, accept that the dysfunction is there and narrow your own expectations within it - (rarely) to productively challenge it, and -- through picking battles and careful resource management -- push through and make something truly good for yourself or your reports. this is situational. all three are often present in one career at different times.

throwawayffffas 2y ago

Just guessing here, working for a corporation, dealing with the inevitable internal bureaucracy of such an organization is soul crashing.

hansvm 2y ago

At YT, I hated that you needed two weeks of prep for the meeting to uncover two weeks of prep for the meeting where you could get preliminary access to the data source you needed to figure out if your job description was even viable. I get that you need internal controls or whatever, but just log my queries, and if I'm stalking an ex then fire and sue me. It's hard to optimize conversion rate for superchat or whatever if it's a 3-month process to find out if the source of data I plan to use is actually the right source of data. Is Apple any better? My friends on the inside say it's worse, but I'm also just one guy, and their stock is going up and to the right. Make your own decisions.

tombert 2y ago
Getting data, even for live systems, wasn't too hard as long as you weren't doing anything secret during a trading blackout window, which didn't seem too unreasonable to me. I didn't work with data science though, my stuff was generally limited to database queries and log messages.
isleyaardvark 2y ago
> and if I'm stalking an ex then fire and sue me. I agree that's really frustrating but that's probably the worst example you could use. Real "can't unring that bell" stuff.

tombert 2y ago

Oh my, how long you got? There were a ton of things, but I can really boil down to a few instances. First: The thing that really made me disenchanted with the company came down to an incident where I replied back to a previous email chain with <REDACTED> (one of the higher-ups at Apple) with a topic that wasn't directly relevant to the subject of the previous emails, and then that asshole thought it was best to complain to every single manager between me and him, which was six people. The next day every one of those managers decided to schedule a half-hour meeting explaining to me how inappropriate it was that I emailed <REDACTED> directly, instead of going through the bureaucratic channels. It was three hours of nearly-continuous meetings, all with the same subject of how bad it was to email a higher-up without first emailing every single person in-between first. Three. Fucking. Hours. They wasted basically half a day just to make sure that I didn't send an email to the wrong people in the wrong order. It was worse than that scene in Office Space. Second: There was also another incident, where my manager's manager's manager emailed me, I hadn't replied in two hours, so he called my cell phone and yelled at me for not checking my emails more frequently. I tried explaining that email was asynchronous and that if he needed my attention immediately he should message me with HipChat or call my phone, which he clearly knew how to do, only for him to tell me that I have an attitude problem. Not as bad as having my day ruined for emailing the wrong person, but still really rubbed me the wrong way. There were a lot more annoying things that happened, and my understanding is that a lot of it was an issue with my team; Apple has thousands of software engineers and I think some teams are better than others.

JKCalhoun 2y ago
There are absolutely good teams at Apple. I left a toxic one (Photos) to follow an co-worker I liked a lot who had become a manager (and his team had an opening). Honestly, it was a back-water project with just a handful of engineers on it. But my manager was awesome, my team was cool. My favorite stint at Apple was when I was working on MacOS frameworks. It was chill, you got no significant bonuses to speak of, no special attention during WWDC Keynote presentation. You just did your job and the developers were grateful for the fixes and features you enabled.
- 2y ago

jasdi 2y ago

"They bring in a rookie, throw money at him, buy the car, the house, after a couple of years, and your kids are in private schools, you're used to the good life, they tell you the truth" Big salaries thrown at young people are bait. They don't need wild animals, but circus animals that are obedient, dependent and consistently perform tricks without too much thinking about why. Over time this involves such animals to loose all sense of self. Naturally this won't work on everyone and causes all kinds issues for both sides.

tombert 2y ago
I actually wasn't that young, I was 27 when I started and I was already "senior level" before I worked there. Also, the salary was good but not as amazing as people to think. When I started there in 2018, I was making $165k/year; certainly not "bad" but not spectacular. The stock grants were huge though. If I were still there I'd be worth more than a million now, I think.