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What an absolute ass was that Apple engineer ...

datadrivenangel 1y ago
For an off the books meeting with someone who was concerned about getting banned, that seems like a lot of candor. Perfectly reasonable.
- omgwtfbyobbq 1y ago
  My experience is limited, but no one I've engaged with at Apple has ever admitted fault for anything. I think it's a liability/culture thing.
- moralestapia 1y ago
  I hope we both get surrounded by the kind of people each of us prefer :)
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
nashashmi 1y ago
He was a part of Apple. So by default he was an … But he was pretty professional in the way he went about it, “no names, no company”. And “You found a security bug! Show me. But you won’t get credit”
827a 1y ago
The feeling I get reading that is that you shouldn't interpret that conversation as a verbatim quotation. Even though the author did everything possible to make it seem like it was verbatim; a hunch I get reading the entire thing is that its summarized and viewed through the author's eyes. E.g. maybe they actually said some variation of "your app is bricking iPhones? how did you get through app store review..." and the author interpreted it as "squashing his company like a bug".
dmoy 1y ago
The engineer (second convo) or the PM (first convo)?
jama211 1y ago
He did an hour of technical discussions, and found the issue. It’s not his fault apple makes him sign an employment secrecy contract so strict he has to be that careful or lose his job.
jdpage 1y ago
I might be wrong here, but based on the context, I read the "I don't want to know about your names or your company" as CYA for both parties: "I can't be legally obligated to disclose things I don't know, so please don't tell me anything you don't want Apple to know. I can't say that outright, though, so instead I'm going to say something that could be reasonably read as 'I'm busy and don't want to hear your pitch'".
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
renewiltord 1y ago
It's obviously exaggerated for humor. Has no one ever told anyone else a story before? No one talks like this. "Off-the-books" meetings are just friend-based connections. I got a bug in the Linux nvidia driver fixed that was affecting me by just hitting up an old friend. I could write that story as him saying "Keep this top-secret" if I wanted because that's just fun storywriting.
- MediaSquirrel 1y ago
  OP here: I can see why you'd think "this can't possibly be real," but I assure you that the story is real, not exaggerated. I was there.
  - renewiltord 1y ago
    So the quotes are direct and not paraphrased? Looks like I’m the one without my finger on the pulse of human interaction then.
    - MediaSquirrel 1y ago
      I mean, to be fair, these events happened several years ago. My memory is as faulty as any other human being's, but as far as I remember, this is exactly what happened. These were very memorable events that I remember distinctly. It's possible my memory is distorted, but this is literally what I believe happened to the best of my ability. Obviously, there was more to the conversation that what I wrote, but these are the actual words that I remember being said. For more context, the PM at Apple in question was a former colleague of my then girlfriend. I reached out to her to have a friendly catch up. It wasn't positioned as meeting officially with Apple. I was literally just going through LinkedIn trying to figure out who I knew at Apple. So I hit her up on LinkedIn and asked to catch up, then told her about the situation. And this is how she responded. Worth noting: English is not her native language.
      - renewiltord 1y ago
        Amusing to get the Trisolaran response to a warm intro. I suppose there’s all kinds of people in the world. Unlucky there. I can’t imagine anyone treating me like that and I’ve dealt with billionaires. Hilarious to have some L3 FAANG act like Genghis Khan.
MediaSquirrel 1y ago
Your bar is higher than mine. Unlike Apple's formal "developer evangelist" and several others I contacted, the guy actually took the time to talk to us, and I was/am grateful for that. He's a cog in a very large corporate machine. Apple is Apple. He's not the CEO. He was doing his job and did me a favor. I am grateful to him.

For an off the books meeting with someone who was concerned about getting banned, that seems like a lot of candor. Perfectly reasonable.

omgwtfbyobbq 1y ago
My experience is limited, but no one I've engaged with at Apple has ever admitted fault for anything. I think it's a liability/culture thing.
moralestapia 1y ago
I hope we both get surrounded by the kind of people each of us prefer :)

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

nashashmi 1y ago

He was a part of Apple. So by default he was an … But he was pretty professional in the way he went about it, “no names, no company”. And “You found a security bug! Show me. But you won’t get credit”

827a 1y ago

The feeling I get reading that is that you shouldn't interpret that conversation as a verbatim quotation. Even though the author did everything possible to make it seem like it was verbatim; a hunch I get reading the entire thing is that its summarized and viewed through the author's eyes. E.g. maybe they actually said some variation of "your app is bricking iPhones? how did you get through app store review..." and the author interpreted it as "squashing his company like a bug".

dmoy 1y ago

The engineer (second convo) or the PM (first convo)?

jama211 1y ago

He did an hour of technical discussions, and found the issue. It’s not his fault apple makes him sign an employment secrecy contract so strict he has to be that careful or lose his job.

jdpage 1y ago

I might be wrong here, but based on the context, I read the "I don't want to know about your names or your company" as CYA for both parties: "I can't be legally obligated to disclose things I don't know, so please don't tell me anything you don't want Apple to know. I can't say that outright, though, so instead I'm going to say something that could be reasonably read as 'I'm busy and don't want to hear your pitch'".

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

renewiltord 1y ago

It's obviously exaggerated for humor. Has no one ever told anyone else a story before? No one talks like this. "Off-the-books" meetings are just friend-based connections. I got a bug in the Linux nvidia driver fixed that was affecting me by just hitting up an old friend. I could write that story as him saying "Keep this top-secret" if I wanted because that's just fun storywriting.

MediaSquirrel 1y ago
OP here: I can see why you'd think "this can't possibly be real," but I assure you that the story is real, not exaggerated. I was there.
- renewiltord 1y ago
  So the quotes are direct and not paraphrased? Looks like I’m the one without my finger on the pulse of human interaction then.
  - MediaSquirrel 1y ago
    I mean, to be fair, these events happened several years ago. My memory is as faulty as any other human being's, but as far as I remember, this is exactly what happened. These were very memorable events that I remember distinctly. It's possible my memory is distorted, but this is literally what I believe happened to the best of my ability. Obviously, there was more to the conversation that what I wrote, but these are the actual words that I remember being said. For more context, the PM at Apple in question was a former colleague of my then girlfriend. I reached out to her to have a friendly catch up. It wasn't positioned as meeting officially with Apple. I was literally just going through LinkedIn trying to figure out who I knew at Apple. So I hit her up on LinkedIn and asked to catch up, then told her about the situation. And this is how she responded. Worth noting: English is not her native language.
    - renewiltord 1y ago
      Amusing to get the Trisolaran response to a warm intro. I suppose there’s all kinds of people in the world. Unlucky there. I can’t imagine anyone treating me like that and I’ve dealt with billionaires. Hilarious to have some L3 FAANG act like Genghis Khan.

MediaSquirrel 1y ago

Your bar is higher than mine. Unlike Apple's formal "developer evangelist" and several others I contacted, the guy actually took the time to talk to us, and I was/am grateful for that. He's a cog in a very large corporate machine. Apple is Apple. He's not the CEO. He was doing his job and did me a favor. I am grateful to him.