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I Quit: What really goes on at Apple
- mhurron 11y agoThat's a lot of words to say Apple is a corporation and acts like many others. I guess the author expected it to be like an iPod commercial when he started.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoNot true. Not all corporations are evil dystopian cults playing mind games and wasting everyone's time. It takes tremendous cash to fuel that kind of dysfunction. Most corporations cant afford to go off the rails to that degree.
- kyberias 11y agoDid someone say "ALL" corporations are evil dystopian cults? Someone said "many" though. Do you realize what is the difference between All and Many?
- baq 11y agomany implies OP's experience would be commonplace, and it most certainly isn't.
- cmrdporcupine 11y agoFrom being close to someone who worked there for many years, from the iPod-is-just-new til a few years ago, I'd say actually this culture at Apple is a product of the return-of-Steve-we're-barely-surviving Apple-austerity mode. I don't know how engineers do there, but the marketing people I knew from there worked like dogs but when the money started to rain from the iPod/iPhone/iPad sky, I didn't get the impression that they really benefited from that. I work at Google now, there is plenty of money coming into this company and hard workers (and not-hard workers) are getting a large share of that. And while it isn't a complete paradise, the company seems grateful to its workers. I can't say I got that impression from anybody I know who worked at Apple or was close to people who did.
- cmrdporcupine 11y agoI should add that from what I have heard the culture there is autocratic, and micromanaging at the top. The person I know who worked there was way down the chain working on remote and obscure stuff but had their work go across Steve's desk and be yay'd and nay'd.
- zaphar 11y agoI've worked at a few corporations and most of them are not they way he described Apple. I've never worked at Apple so what he said is hearsay for me and thus to be taken with some amount of skepticism. But the story as he shared is not at all normal or average in my admittedly biased experience.
- baq 11y agoeven if half of what's in that post is true, it's unbelievably bad. i don't know where you were working, please share so the rest of us can avoid those work camps.
- normloman 11y agoThis is not typical behavior for a corporation. I work for one, and believe me, nobody would be calling me during my wedding or giving me work to do in the hospital. If this is true, then Apple has an exceptionally poor work culture.
- pXMzR2A 11y ago> That's a lot of words to say Apple is a corporation and acts like many others. What you are actually saying is "shut up and take it." Not the best comment in response to someone voicing their concerns regarding workplace conditions. It is, however, the standard response by those who want to silence dissent.
- allengeorge 11y agoFalse. I've worked (briefly) in two large corporations, neither of which demonstrated this behavior. And, having talked to friends who work in larger companies...this is nowhere are common as you make it out to be.
- ctdonath 11y agoAgreed. Sounds like it acts like many (not all!) others. I've worked at a lot of places. I've been told that open-heart surgery would be counted as a vacation day. I've been in 3-hour meetings where a dozen executives bickered the whole time over how one toggle should be labeled. I've been where fully half the employees had been fired and continued working on the sheer grace/need of the owner. I've been given hard deadlines to complete hundreds of pages of documentation nobody would ever read. Etc...and plenty of people on HN have their own equivalent stories. Apple is a big company, and can't keep everything pristine and orderly, and still has to meet massive big-budget deadlines by every means necessary. The kicker: Apple gets results. One way or another, that system works; one company does not have one product take over fully half of an entire major electronics market unless they're doing something right.
- Chinjut 11y agoYou seem to be implicitly conflating two different senses of the word "right". I don't think it was in any doubt that this kind of behavior can be to Apple's profit(+). What's in doubt is whether it is behavior which the rest of us should put up with; market dominance is not the end-all, be-all arbiter of desirable behavior, at least not to me. (+: Some people will try to get rid of this kind of behavior purely by arguing that it in fact harms an employer's productivity (via burning out their employees). This may be tactically effective, but I think it frames the debate on the wrong terms, conceding too much of the argument at the start; it allows for just as much abuse as maximizes productivity. The reason to get rid of this kind of behavior is not fundamentally because of its impact on the employer's bottom-line, but because the people affected by it are human beings who deserve empathy and dignity regardless)
- Apocryphon 11y agoFor what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
- kzhahou 11y agoI would fain give up my imaginary "soul" in return for the whole world.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- serve_yay 11y agoOh brother.
- FD3SA 11y agoAnother perfect data point to add to Michael O`Church`s excellent series on the politics and psychology of the modern corporation. For you starry eyed youngsters, just remember that this is Apple, the world`s most profitable company. It only gets worse as you go down the list. Work for yourself. Consulting, the trades and any type of work you can do independently is far superior to dealing with wannabe Machiavellians on whose benevolence your paycheck depends. Get out of the corporate world, and do anything else. The sky is the limit.
- baq 11y agoplease excuse me for pointing out that you sound like you've drunk the consulting kool-aid yourself. in my experience it's not in any imaginable way worse down the list no matter where you look.
- michaelochurch 11y agoFor you starry eyed youngsters, just remember that this is Apple, the world`s most profitable company. It only gets worse as you go down the list. I wouldn't go that far. I mean, quite a large number of organizations are dysfunctional, but the mean-spiritedness and overt psychopathy described by the OP is fairly rare, even in Corporate America. From his description I'd guess that Apple is worse than 95% of places where people work, between the 16-hour days and the bizarre status games.
- Apocryphon 11y agoIt's a huge corporation with a huge amount of variance. But it seems that Apple, at its worst, is worse than other firms at their worst. And that's something related to the corporate culture.
- noddingham 11y agoWhoa whoa. Consulting isn't the answer. There are plenty of opportunities in both private and public sector on awesome teams with amazing management.
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- francoisdevlin 11y agoIs this for real? Can anyone else corroborate this?
- angelbob 11y agoCertainly you hear a fair bit about Apple as a high-pressure work environment. Long hours, lots of paranoia -- though by "paranoia" I'm specifically thinking of developers, and not revealing anything Apple might be working on that isn't publicly known yet. Well, and related things like tracking what buildings you enter by your badge, access to specific labs, etc. Stuff to make sure people don't know more than they should. I've worked with a lot of ex-Apple folks, and know some current Apple folks socially.
- vonmoltke 11y agoThis discussion, on top of everything I know, is making me think Apple is the bastard spawn of the DOD and a futurist cult.
- aetherson 11y agoI've known some very happy Apple employees. My sense is that the company contains great variation across its breadth, due to the extreme security among teams. When you can't even go into the next division's work-space, it's hard for a single culture to permeate across the company.
- WalterSear 11y agoSpecifically, I can't. However, I have several ex-Apple friends who have told me stories of a nightmarish work environment. The one that sticks in my mind is being sent to China for a short two week production run, and getting to return 7 months later. Her managers kindly offered to let her fly back and forth to the US over the weekend to get a change of clothes after month 3.
- kziojzwsndppqgg 11y agoFWIW, as an Apple employee I have no idea what the hell he's talking about. I've worked here 4 years and I absolutely love. my. job. I take days off to work from home whenever I feel like it. We drink at the office on occasion. I'm never harassed for not being constantly online. I don't have endless meetings. I'm constantly praised for the work I do, I get great reviews, with large bonuses. My impression from reading this article is that he either had a shitty manager (it can happen, Apple's a huge company) or his department wasn't very well-run. (It is customer service, that's never known for being a great environment almost anywhere you work.) I feel bad for the guy, in a situation he described I would've left too. Fortunately I'm not in that situation, and neither is anyone else I know here. People have their issues with small things but at the end of the day I think everyone I work with loves what they do.
- r00fus 11y agoWould like to know which division the departing employee worked in, and how long he stuck it out. I personally liken companies to a large conglomeration of small organizations - your management chain really matters. Which is why when a respected manager leaves, sometimes his/her team leaves with them (HR flight risk). I know someone who worked (works?) at Apple - she moved from a difficult arguably acidic environment to one where she feels valued and rewarded. I can relate similar stories from other companies all over the world.
- robbiep 11y agoHe says when you read what he wrote
- sjs382 11y ago> Finally now, for the first time in two years, I feel light, creative and inspired.
- jackgavigan 11y agoAccording to his LinkedIn profile[1], he was responsible for: Managing Quality Customer Experience Programs for AppleCare's technical support contact centres across APAC; including vendor and internal teams in Australia, New Zealand, thePhilippines and the USA. Vendor management and quality initiative planning and execution to ensure Apples technical support contact centres maintain the highest level of customer satisfaction & consistently deliver an exceptional standard of customer experience by measuring & analysing performance in-line with regional and global standards of excellence and technical aptitude. He was there for 19 months. 1: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencfarrell https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencfarrell
- jonhester 11y agoI work for a small company while my wife works for a large corporation. She makes more than I do, but I work less hours and don't have to deal with the politics.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- classicsnoot 11y agoassuming the story is accurate The sad part about cult mentality is that this post will probably just reinforce the dogma of the 'true' believers.
- NelsonMinar 11y agoRIP FoundationDB.
- nostrademons 11y agoOne of my friends used to work at Apple. After one particular grueling stint of 14+ hour days, management decided to give them a thank-you. In the form of vouchers. For frozen dinners. Meanwhile, all of his friends worked for Google, we got gourmet food every meal of the week as a standard perk, and we were usually home by 8 or 9 PM rather than midnight. It's sorta like "Your 'thank you' is really more like a giant 'fuck you'". He works for Google now. My cousin also works for Apple, and after complaining about crunch time and how he had to check the bug queue when I was visiting him on a Saturday, I asked him "So, how long has crunch time lasted?" He replied, "Oh, about 18 months. Makes it really hard to date when I don't get any weekends." (He's in his 40s now, still no girlfriend.)
- vdnkh 11y ago>Usually home by 8 or 9pm I assume they got into work at 8 or 9am? That's terrible. I'm really glad that I work a standard 8 hour day at my small no-name company.
- nostrademons 11y agoMore like 10 or 11. Most of my friends are late-risers (perhaps because I'm a late-riser), and Google doesn't have set hours. People have been known to roll into work around 2:30 PM as long as they get their work done.
- kelukelugames 11y agoI was interested in working at Apple so I messaged a few of my alum friends. All of them said they worked around 60 hours a week. Nope, can't pay me enough to work 60 hours a week.
- yulaow 11y agoThe irony is that, if I remember correctly for what I read in the book about the biography of Steve Jobs, in the very old apple of Jobs and the Lisa, the team leaded by Jobs was working 120 hours/week and even making t-shirt to brag about it.
- joezydeco 11y agoIt was 90 hours. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_And_Loving_It.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_A...
- yulaow 11y agoThanks, I really have to re-read that book one of these days.
- scott_karana 11y agoAnd how rich are those employees, because of their stock vesting, compared to current ones, getting paid mere salary? ;)
- pinewurst 11y agoThey were getting paid around $20K a year (ref folklore.org) at a time when that wasn't exactly munificent. I'm not even sure they had stock grants either, just promises of greatness from Steve. Idiots.
- wpietri 11y agoWe all have our weaknesses. I'd rather have contempt for the manipulators than the manipulated.
- bberrry 11y agoI would be interested to hear whether the culture in the engineering departments is similar to this.
- exelius 11y agoBut... the author worked in customer support, managing agents. Customer support in any company is like this: it's full of bobblehead managers who make work to justify their own jobs. It's a cost center, and cost centers are where you put executives who are capable, but not exceptional. This is why OP has stories about how firing people was considered heroic -- when you work in a cost center, the only thing the business cares about is getting the same results for less money. Cost centers also tend to have very toxic work environments as a result: people are constantly reminded that the business can and will go on without them. Hence the epidemic of throwing people under the bus, trying to "catch" coworkers in a screw-up, etc. You don't have to be the fastest zebra, just faster than the slowest one.
- DaFranker 11y agoAn adept representation of a limited sample of the issues surrounding customer support and similar departments. The problem is that it doesn't have to be like this. There are exceptional cases where customer support is not like this. Many of them have gained considerable benefit from investing in their customer support. One source of difficulty is that evaluation of those benefits requires very complicated (for an average middle manager) mathematics and causal modeling. There's no simple metric that measures the real benefits of good customer support, even tangentially.
- codezero 11y agoDo you, by chance, have a list of those exceptional cases? I'd love to learn more! edit: thanks everyone for these replies they're great, keep them coming!
- jklontz 11y agoGitHub: I've emailed their support desk a half dozen times over the years, and each time received a response from an engineer within minutes containing an accurate and precise answer to my question.
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- fixxer 11y agoSounds like Samsung. EDIT: No really, IT SOUNDS JUST LIKE SAMSUNG.
- dba7dba 11y agoWhat? The extreme dedication demanded by corporation from the employees? It happens pretty much in all big corporations in S Korea and also Japan.
- raspasov 11y agoI wonder how many people the author has really interacted with? Even if it was 100 individuals (which is probably unlikely) that's still <2% (I think Apple has > 5000 employees?) of the total organization. Basically a rounding error. It's very hard to make conclusions for the whole company from such a small sample. That borders discrimination/racism thinking. Not in any way trying to say that he had a pleasant experience or that his management was solid. Probably wasn't. Just hard to make conclusions for a big group from such a small sample.
- philippnagel 11y agoAccording to http://www.apple.com/diversity/ http://www.apple.com/diversity/ Apple employs about 98.000 employees.
- whyaduck 11y agoI think you're off by over an order of magnitude. Apple employs over 90,000 people worldwide. In the Cupertino area there are probably 30,000-40,000 Apple employees.
- raspasov 11y agoThanks for the stats correction, that makes my point even stronger.
- vacri 11y agoIt's very hard to make conclusions for the whole company from such a small sample. Statistically speaking, an n of 100 is a reasonably decent sample of 5000 data points. It seems to me that you're looking for excuses, as if this concept of 'dry-run' meetings only happens to be within the author's "hundred-person bubble".
- pixeloution 11y agoMy experiences at Apple are vastly different than the author's; As a developer I've never had such a low-stress position. My hours will sometimes drift over the 40-43 mark but not often.
- gscott 11y agoFrom reading about Apple I have the feeling innovation comes from the top (or from small special teams) and the rest of the organization is about pulling that innovation together. Which would make endless meetings make sense because instead of innovation you just need organization to push the innovation made by a tiny fraction of the company forward. The positive is just having Apple on your resume you will make landing a job anywhere easier. So the torture is more then worth it.
- spectrum1234 11y agoYes they are structure top down. In contrast Google is more bottoms up / crowdsourced or "Darwinian" as Elon Musk would say. Meetings are more cross functional, shorter, and to the point this way.
- AndrewKemendo 11y agoWords like ‘pressure’ kept getting thrown at me in the context of I can’t handle the pressure and “you were told at the interview it’s high pressure”. Oh lord. As though any of them have any clue about real "high pressure" work environments. Being an asshole unnecessarily isn't a high pressure environment.
- serve_yay 11y agoQuite so, but nonetheless Apple very much strikes me as a high-pressure workplace. There's a reason why they ship what they ship when they ship it.
- Retric 11y agoAn air traffic controller messes up and they risk hundreds of lives and 100's of millions of dollars in property. That's a high high-pressure workplace, Tech is just a combination of greed and poor managment.
- serve_yay 11y agoEhhh. Zooming out this far just makes the phrase meaningless in the context of tech, which seems counterproductive since as you may have noticed we tend to discuss tech around here.
- rodgerd 11y agoFine. Writing air traffic control systems is tech, and is pressure. The difference is artificial pressure driven by concerns like "I will look bad to my boss" or "or EPS might dip a fraction of a present", as opposed to "people will die".
- oldmanjay 11y agoI know that it's hard to feel the difference between condescension and having a point, so I want to let you know you're doing the first thing here.
- colechristensen 11y agoApple has, what, a hundred thousand employees? If you expect none of them to be intolerable nuts, you have a problem with scale. The thing is, if you're unsatisfied with your job, equating your personal experience with the entire company as a whole, and going on a long name-calling rant shows you as rather unprofessional yourself. I don't doubt that some Apple managers are jerks.
- pcg79 11y agoThe problem isn't when it's "some ... managers". It's when you can't go to anyone for help with those managers. Sounds like it the problem went up at least another level. That's a problem and nothing anyone should be defending.
- Apocryphon 11y agoThe culture of silence between Apple and the public extends to more than just upcoming products. Has anyone noticed that there aren't as many Apple employees participating in tech conferences, hackathons, public presentations? Even for subjects unrelated to their work? Definitely fewer than Google/Facebook/Amazon/Microsoft employees.
- jMyles 11y ago> Has anyone noticed I certainly have. I was going to bring it up if no one else did.
- MrNobody 11y agoFrom my understanding Apple effectively owns your entire output when you're employed full-time (at least as an engineer). At a recent interview I mentioned I like tinkering with code on the side and was told I'd have to give that up and stop contributing to open source. I imagine that extends to participation in the "outside world" at least to some extent. The fact that Apple developers I've spoken to spend their personal coding time (on the rare occasion it exists) on work projects only reinforces all of this. (All that said, my sample size is seven people, so I could be quite wrong in the end.)
- borgia 11y ago>At a recent interview I mentioned I like tinkering with code on the side and was told I'd have to give that up and stop contributing to open source. I faced similar in my last company (not with Apple). Now find it very difficult to get working on a side project or similar at home after having not done anything in that regard in a few years. Ideas I once had to develop are long gone. Bleh.
- johnward 11y agoIBM had us sign something that said we couldn't work on outside projects without permission. It seems like it's not that difficult to get permission. Most people just ignore it. When we got notice of the acquisition a group of devs had a lawyer come in and from what I hear the lawyer basically said "don't sign this if you want to do anything outside of work ever". I just thought this was common for these megacorps. Is that not the case? I also wonder if they can actually enforce something like that in California.
- kumarski 11y agoI've found it is easy to poach talent from Apple, Google, and other large ventures. It's not the money. It's the vision and the way they treat talent. They don't pay much deference to the consummate creators, the lifeblood of innovation. Long hours, synchronous work schedules with asynchronous dependencies, long commutes, and not an equal pay to warrant education level and mental capacity required for task at hand. I think the future may consist of Life-Work balance where one's life outside of work, is greater than their work.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoI definitely think the "startup life" culture is something a lot of people will eventually consider a downside. I recently interviewed at a place with an open floor plan, and I found that a big turn off to the position. While free lunch and dinner are nice perks, sure, they also suggest you're still at work for lunch and dinner. I want a job, not an overly-attached workplace.
- cmrdporcupine 11y agoThe best jobs I've found are at smallish companies with reasonable chance of growing revenues that are just past the startup phase, and over the initial politics that comes from growing. They have enough job security to make it comfortable but still have the opportunity for a person to make significant impact, and usually a mixture of legacy and new project code base. Some technical debt to fix from the startup-sprint phase. I've worked at net-new startups, very large companies, and companies like I've described above. I miss the comraderie of a team under a dozen people making good progress and with everyone able to make good impact without being a superstar.
- jarsin 11y agoYa I currently work 4 days a week. Because of this one simple thing about my current job it's very hard to consider leaving.
- kbart 11y ago"I think the future may consist of Life-Work balance where one's life outside of work, is greater than their work." Why future? A lot of people do that just now.
- archagon 11y agoIn "Becoming Steve Jobs", Tim Cook says the following in regards to Apple's collusion scandal: "I know where Steve's head was. He wasn't doing anything to hold down salaries; it never came up. He had a simple objective: if we were working together on something, like with Intel, where we threw everything in the middle of the table and said, 'let's convert the Mac to the Intel processor', well, when we did that, we didn't want them poaching our employees that they were meeting, and they didn't want us poaching theirs. Doesn't it make sense that you wouldn't, that it's an OK thing? I don't think for a minute he thought he was doing anything bad. And I don't think he was thinking about saving any money. He was just very protective of his employees." Ed Catmull of Pixar, a seemingly gentle person, is similarly unapologetic about the issue. Why is it that, at a certain level, intelligent company leaders seem to stop thinking of their employees as individuals and instead start thinking of them as company assets? (I don't mean this as an anti-Apple comment. In fact, I want to give Jobs, Cook, and Catmull the benefit of the doubt, in the sense that they probably did approach the issue from the perspective of doing what's best for their companies, not as a quick way to save some paltry money. But that's kind of the underlying problem, isn't it? Once you've internalized the idea that your employees are company assets — that they aren't hard workers who make the company tick, but that they literally are the company — it's easy to slide down the slippery slope towards incredibly unethical and shady dealings like collusion. I wonder how this can be avoided.)
- Zelphyr 11y agoMaybe its Dunbar's number. These executives know and interact with so many people that perhaps its quite difficult for their minds to see their employees as people. But then, I've seen that attitude in startups. The passion for the company as a whole trumps everything so the people are easily disposable to them. Which, as in so many other areas of life, is completely backwards from what they perceive as logical.
- cookiecaper 11y agoYou have to see both sides here. Employees are too quick to see this as being robbed of the opportunity to be the subject of a bidding war. Companies try not to start or escalate poaching wars because it's massively disruptive to everyone's projects. It takes a long time to replace someone and a long time to onboard someone. While it may be economically feasible to poach an employee, it's almost definitely detrimental to the entire industry's profitability to create a recruitment culture based on poaching. Since there's a strong tit-for-tat instinct when company B takes a high-value employee from company A, the companies just agree to avoid these tensions altogether. That's the big picture version that Catmull, Jobs, et al, are seeing. They're honestly not trying to keep your salary depressed this way, but they're an easy target for Justice Department lawyers that're trying to earn some street cred and "trade outlets" that are trying to earn lots of pageviews from artificially outraged workers. People believe they've been deprived of money and attention by default, so they'll eat up anything that appears superficially credible and gives them occasion to lay blame for that deprivation.
- kyllo 11y agoI had organised a day off recently where all my family were visiting me from interstate. Despite this I had agreed to dial in to one conference call as the audience attending was ‘important’. Well it seems Important but disrespectful, as the audience never even turned up, yet I was still made to ‘dry-run’ the whole meeting from start to finish for an hour and a half as if there was full attendance and interest in what I was saying. So, as the food I had prepared for my family went cold, there I was stuck on the phone role-playing a fake menial meeting to satisfy managements ego. Oh god. I would have hung up. The concept of a "dry run" for a meeting is insanely offensive and counterproductive. If a meeting needs to be scripted and rehearsed, it does not need to happen.
- c0ur7n3y 11y agoThe scripting and rehearsing seems to happen when employees pick up on the signals, from the decisions that management makes around them, that appearance and self-marketing influence promotions more than performance. It's not a on/off thing - it's a continuum from fact-based decision making to perception-based decision making. The difference is how good are the managers at seeing what's really going on and how much they care about it.
- genericresponse 11y agoI read it with a few grains of salt. I've had dry runs for meetings where I was presenting. It's pretty useful to walk through your presentation with your boss when your 3-4 level higher boss is there. I've also requested subordinates dry run when they have poor communication skills and need coaching to perform up to standard. It's not something you do with everyone there or with a meeting that just works off an agenda.
- Animats 11y agoIf your company is doing dry runs for routine in-house meetings, the management is broken.
- cbsmith 11y agoThere are meetings, and there are presentations. The latter often benefits from scripting & rehearsing, particularly if there is a large audience. What's sad is when a meeting is actually just an elaborate ruse of a presentation.
- andyman1080 11y agoOne possible explanation for his experience is that he was what they call "managed out".
- jackmaney 11y agoWhat a heartbreaking story. I'm glad that the author quit, and I'm yet again reminded how fortunate I am to have a boss who comes relatively close to understanding me and has my back.
- simonebrunozzi 11y agoThe most interesting stories about Apple, or Amazon, or a few others, cannot be told in public. Most of these former employees feel legally threatened by their former employers, and that's what prevents them from sharing more. I wish there was a way.
- abawany 11y agoGlassdoor makes for interesting reading :).
- soheil 11y agoToxic management in Silicon valley seems to be becoming a force to be reckoned with. Time and time again I hear horror stories like this and from first hand experience I can confirm all this mind playing is in fact happening by certain managers. I've worked with managers that worked at top tech companies in the Valley and their resume lists one company after another, it goes to show how easy it is for them to jump ship if things are going sour without anyone at the new company really noticing that in the interview process. There seems to be a strongly connected network of toxic managers swarming the valley more and more. It's not just Apple.
- WhitneyLand 11y agoAnother perspective is how valuable would your options have to be to stay put in such an environment? It's not always easy to walk away from a significant sum of money, even when you sense it's doing real damage. In a similar situation I didn't walk away and it took years to recover. Probably would do it again, having a family might be the deciding factor.
- api 11y agoApple has built one of the most successful businesses in the world on mostly one thing: design. (And user experience, which is design more broadly applied.) Undortunately, it seems to me that good design requires totalitarianism. Apple's products are comparatively coherent, clean, unified, and aesthetically pleasing. This is achieved via a culture of totalitarianism that extends all the way down to the device. OSX has some openness grandfathered in, but iOS shows you where Apple wants to go. ... and customers largely approve. Having used both iOS and the more open Android, I can say that while Android is more capable iOS is more of a pleasure to use. There you have it. It's something I have seen broadly in the world, and I actually find it rather disturbing. Bazaars can be creative and can offer a rich array of options and a lot of value, but only a cathedral can deliver aesthetics and usability.
- terminus 11y agoMaybe. But the real question is: is a few percentage points in difference in aesthetics and usability worth it? It is hardly curing cancer.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoDid you read the article?
- api 11y agoYes. I think you missed my point. They are the kings of design and UX. It disturbs me that their culture is this totalitarian and dysfunctional, but it doesn't surprise me in the least.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoWhy doesn't it surprise you in the least?
- Apocryphon 11y agoHis post explains it. To have good design/UX (in his opinion), you need to exercise a lot of control over your product- totalitarian control, even. Apple is great at design- therefore, the company culture to maintain that control is also totalitarian.
- dataker 11y agoI don't like to talk about it, but some tech giants are going the same path as investment banks. I left my quant job to get freedom in the Valley, but it turned out to not be so different.
- jklinger410 11y agoMy favorite from the comments section "Maybe you were just holding your phone incorrectly." xD My sides!
- faragon 11y agoIf you get no respect where you work, just quit, as soon as you can.
- pmcpinto 11y agoI believe that everything that was written in this article is true and it's really depressing to see a work culture like this. How they can retain and attract talent with this kind of culture?!
- th0br0 11y agoI once attended a hackathon in Switzerland where Apple sponsored some prizes. They had a bunch of relatively young (read mostly junior level) developers there and one 'glorious leader' management-level kind of guy. I shall never forget seeing two of the young developers following their glorious leader with ipads in their hands wherever he went.
- mwfunk 11y agoI don't get it. Why is that an unforgettable image for you?
- th0br0 11y agoOTOH, why do you perceive this as something not to be forgotten? For me, this simply shows a specific kind of dependency and hierarchy that I don't want to identify with. In my opinion, IT (especially) is a topic where knowledge (how to do X) matters less and less, because said knowledge is accessible for free anyway. All that matters is how quickly and well you can execute and whom you know. (Not that I really like the last part, but I guess that that's human)
- wellsthrowaway 11y agoWelcome to a large corporate environment! Apple isn't special.
- cognivore 11y agoLots of money means lots of asshatery. When the cycle comes around again and Apple finds themselves scrambling, this will all go away, because such people are useless.
- sudioStudio64 11y agoI think that it should be pointed out that Apple doesn't have "values". The idea that apple has "values" that it "preaches" is just wrong. That is called marketing. It's funny that people are shocked by this. This is what businesses do and it makes the weird partisanship that forms around them seem mad.
- serve_yay 11y agoNo, they have values alright. They may not be what you think they should be, or what I think they should be, but.
- retrogradeorbit 11y agoNo, they don't. People personify corporations and talk about them being evil. But they are not evil. Nor are they good. They are amoral. They lack any moral code either way. They exists purely to maximise the profit of their shareholders. That is all. No more. No less. People have morals. But corporations are not people. No matter what the courts have ruled.
- sudioStudio64 11y agoExactly. I think its weird that people think of marketing messaging as like a person communicating with them...Like somehow Apple is a quirky guy that loves music and simple Swedish furniture and just happens to be the most valuable enterprise on the planet.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- swish41 11y agoI would never hire this guy.
- 2close4comfort 11y agoIt is a shame that you finally reach a key point in your career only to find that they are not as great as they are made out to be. But it is refreshing to see that they were able to realize where they were and that it was not for them. I would think that if we ever make it to the point where people won't make these obscene sacrifices to work for (insert random SV co. name here) it might be a better place...but lets face that will never happen.
- nashashmi 11y agoGreat read! But come on, customer support is not the main body of the company, just one of the limbs. And those limbs suffer if they do not strive to be themselves and instead seek to be someone else. One phrase that I tell myself often kept coming to mind: the freedoms you don't take, someone else will, and the freedoms you don't fight for, someone else will take. This applies between government-citizen, corporation-employee, manager-managee, and head-subordinate. And do you know what happens when one hot shot takes hold of the company/department/group? Everybody seeks to emulate him and judge themselves and others in comparison to him. What happens then is like what happens to metal dust scattered on paper with a magnet in the middle. The hot shot is no longer a leader with a team, but instead a one-man army with slaves extending his rule. And some leaders will never manage creative people because they can never step out of the way.
- jmstout 11y agoI feel like he missed a big opportunity here to say, "iQuit". Just sayin'.
- serve_yay 11y agoMmm. "Clever".
- unholiness 11y agoI assume that was the intended reading.
- nemo 11y agoThere are two orgs in Apple that are soul-crushing - AppleCare and IS&T. AppleCare is a depressing meat grinder of dealing with unhappy customers with broken things. IS&T uses parasitic funding (other orgs. are "customers"), and is internally broken into competing fiefdoms and systems that are a horror to interact with. Kind of sounds like this guy was in IS&T working with AppleCare. I was in IS&T for a year, and was happy it was only a year. Other orgs. in the company are generally a lot nicer to work in, though it varies where you wind up.
- gabeio 11y agoNot to attack or defend apple or the author but he just seems like a free spirit, and from personal experience in customer support myself (also quit twice) this is just not the job for a person who travels the world that much...
- paganel 11y ago> When I started my role I missed one business trip as my wife was pregnant, fell down the stairs and had to be hospitalised – this was listed as a ‘performance issue’ on my record and brought up during a one on one with management as a major ‘miss’ on my behalf. What the fuck?! How the heck can this happen between two human beings who happen to work for the same company? I'd rather plant potatoes for a living or even go to war than having to deal with people who have no soul inside of them. Empty shells.
- kbart 11y ago"Having no soul" is considered a required attribute for a managing roles in some companies.
- ape4 11y agoHe missed a big chance not titling the article "iQuit". That bit about missing time to take care of his pregnant wife is pretty horrible.
- mathattack 11y agoAs others have pointed out, life in a cost center is very tough. People turn to infighting because it's hard to use revenue as an arbiter. Apple doesn't venerate customer support. Apple celebrates the designers and engineers. It would be more interesting if this article came from there.
- SCdF 11y agoSo what I find so interesting about this is that I've never heard the counter-argument. No one is rushing to defend Apple, or say "Yeah I work at Apple on X and I really love it". In fact, the more I think about it, I don't know of any prolific bloggers, or open source contributors, or HN commentators, or really anyone, who currently works for Apple. I know Bret Victor (worrydream) used to work there, but left IIRC because they weren't letting him do things he creatively wanted to do. Where are the Apple advocates?
- nemo 11y agoI worked at Apple for more than 10 years in various roles (have the Glass apple). Some of them were a grind, some were awesome, overall it was great and I'd do many the jobs again. A ton of the people I worked with were sharp, interesting, and entertaining. The corporate culture is generally fun, the pay could be better, but the stock options and stock purchase plan made up for it, the benefits are excellent, the food is awesome, and the campuses are generally pretty nice (some are great, some are merely good). The culture is strongly one of not talking about working at Apple while employed so not many people will discuss it online, especially if they like their jobs. The culture of secrecy is one of those things that I never was bothered by, since it's just the norm. Some orgs. are much better to work for than others, with around ten thousand employees in hundreds of teams, there's not many ways to reasonably generalize about what it's like to work there - different jobs can result in incredibly different experiences. The guy in the article was an AppleCare program manager dealing with OSV support centers, a job I'd never sign up for ever, since it's a corporate grind that's inherently tied to interdepartmental politics and squabbling with OSVs.
- kziojzwsndppqgg 11y agoI've responded elsewhere in the comments about my positive experiences (just ⌘+F) but I think the main reason people aren't typically in "public" about their role at Apple is because Apple has a secretive culture. You're just expected to not talk Apple's business, including what you work on, to anyone outside of Apple (or even people inside Apple if they're not disclosed on your project.) Trust me, complaints about this come up a lot inside Apple. I'd love to go to conferences and talk about the tech we're working on. (Even if just to get more hires!) I'd love to blog about it. I'd love to contribute to open source projects. But it's just not what we do here, in general. (Hell, I had to make a throwaway just to post this on HN.) It's definitely my biggest complaint about my job, and it's definitely kept us from being able to hire good talent.
- mtarnovan 11y ago"I used to be a police officer. I’ve held a gun aimed at a dangerous offenders head and had to choose whether or not to pull the trigger." Wait, what?
- yannk 11y agoThis line should have been the tl;dr It obliterated the little anecdotical nuggets remotely interesting in the writing.
- EdwardDiego 11y agoWhat troubles you about that statement? It may well have been a situation where the person was presenting a threat to others and he had to decide how to how much threat was being presented and how to prevent that.
- mtarnovan 11y agoI misread that as "holding a gun at someone's head", as opposed to "holding a gun aimed at someones's head". My bad. But even so, should police officers really aim for the head?
- EdwardDiego 11y ago> But even so, should police officers really aim for the head? That's a good question.
- blabla_blublu 11y agoFormer engineer @ Apple - some insight from my side. There is no one culture that pervades through the entire organization. Some software teams are chill, some are not, hardware side of things can be long hours for people. Can't really speak for customer care/marketing/retail/design. 1. I think most of us here understand that a single bad experience cannot reflect the culture in the company. Previously I was in a few other tech companies, where my experience was quite similar in nature. Some teams have inherently crappy people, leading to crappy culture. Ultimately it boils down to the manager and the members of the team when it comes to the question of fostering a culture. 2. The culture in my team(software) was mostly relaxed. Most of my colleagues did a 8-9 hour days on average. Of course, there were days(very rare) it became a 10-12 hour shift. 3. I am a firm believer in the fact that the employee needs to set the expectations straight, right off the bat. If you run the wheel like a hamster on steroids in the first few months, sucking up, staying late and trying to be the all conquering hero - the expectations are going to be centered around that. 4. I am an average Joe, who preferred to get in by 9.30 and get off by 6.00ish - I didn't sync my emails, didn't give a hoot unless it was absolutely crucial and someone called/texted me about the issue and it needed urgent attention. I am not a doctor saving people, just an engineer fixing bugs. 5. Of course my compensation/bonuses didn't go up like my friends who did the long hours, but I am absolutely cool about that. They deserved it.
- tim333 11y ago>There is no one culture It seems he worked at the Sydney office. There's a comment on his story as news.com.au "Apple HQ in Australia was no different - a big frat-house where the "in" crowd got ahead and anyone else who challenged a process was seen as a difficult employee and managed out of the business." Must be kind of hard to deal with that at a distance - It's not like Tim Cook would know who's who and doing the bad stuff. Maybe some sort of feedback tech would help.
- blabla_blublu 11y agoFormer engineer @ Apple - so some insight from my side. There is no one culture that pervades through the entire organization. Some software teams are chill, some are not, hardware side of things can be long hours for people. 1. I think most of us here understand that a single bad experience cannot reflect the culture in the company. Previously I was in a few other tech companies, where my experience was quite similar in nature. Some teams have inherently crappy people, leading to crappy culture. Ultimately it boils down to the manager and the members of the team when it comes to the question of fostering a culture. 2. The culture in my team(software) was mostly relaxed. Most of my colleagues did a 8-9 hour days on average. Of course, there were days(very rare) it became a 10-12 hour shift. 3. I am a firm believer in the fact that the employee needs to set the expectations straight, right off the bat. If you run the wheel like a hamster on steroids in the first few months, sucking up, staying late and trying to be the all conquering hero - the expectations are going to be centered around that. 4. I am an average Joe, who preferred to get in by 9.30 and get off by 6.00ish - I didn't sync my emails, didn't give a hoot unless it was absolutely crucial and someone called/texted me about the issue and it needed urgent attention. I am not a doctor saving people, just an engineer fixing bugs. 5. Of course my compensation/bonuses didn't go up like my friends who did the long hours, but I am absolutely cool about that. They deserved it.
- jaynate 11y agoThis doesn't aound any different from any other company on the planet if you look at it from this angle. The author seems overly entitled and disgruntled. Any job is what you make of it.
- classicsnoot 11y agoThank you to every poster who stayed in the world of facts, honesty, and objectivity in a thread about a potentially madly divisive topic. Medals for Bravery all around.
- hellbanner 11y ago"Drinks with colleagues revolved around the same stories told again and again " hm, anything to do with their address of "1 infinite loop"? Funny, usually infinite loops are a sign somebody fucked up.
- dougpetro 11y agoIt seems that maybe they were manufacturing mind games just to edge him out, for various reasons. But if Apple is so good at making bold moves and quick decisions, it's weird that his superiors would act so childishly toward him.
- dougpetro 11y agoIt seems that maybe they were manufacturing mind games just to edge him out, for various reasons. But if Apple is so good at making bold moves and quick decisions, it's weird that his superiors would act so childishly toward him.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoMay I suggest that when you leave a place, and it was not a positive experience, you look back on that experience, try to learn from what you experienced and generally deal with the emotional trauma of trying to fit in, in a place where you do not fit. Ben Farrell writes in his blog ... "Road Less Travelled is authored by Ben Farrell, (online alias ‘nomadic_rambler’) – Freelance Writer & Photographer – That’s me!" When I read that I thought to myself, this guy has so much passion and enthusiasm for understanding the world, it is a shame he took a job at a company that is as intensely focused as Apple is. This is the money quote for me, "Finally now, for the first time in two years, I feel light, creative and inspired. I am again an individual with my own creative ideas, perceptions, values and beliefs. It may take me a while, but from what I believe – I’m now able to express such beliefs again." I really admire Ben for sticking it out for two years. The key here is that Ben was always the individual with ideas, perceptions, values and beliefs, and it sounds like that was not what Apple was looking for in this position. I've seen it time and again where someone races home after work to play in their garage band or rebuild an engine or practice some other art. And if there peers at work are staying late to work on something they believe in at the office, well that is a recipe for a problem. I also think that if you find yourself in the situation of finally unwinding what turned out to be a painful choice in your life, its probably not the best thing to blog about it on the same day you take action on your future :-)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- FridaG 11y agosounds like apple definitely takes advantage of its prestige. if OP made >= 6 figures, this treatment seems kinda par for the course in this industry. It's sad that in order to 'make it' we can expect to receive such insensitivity at work, I certainly wouldn't stand for it, but it's frustrating that this is ultimately a first-world problem; millions of people deal with this kinda shit day in day out at shitty fast food jobs, and they get neither respect nor compensation for their efforts.
- decentrality 11y agoI've been seeing a lot of edits to the article. It seems that for now, one global network of feedback and peer review ( Apple ) is being exchanged for another ( HN ). Not good or bad, just "is" -- As with any "break up" this phase of WOOHOO+rage will crest, then the community dynamic ( refactored/lost ) will echo as loudly in the mind if not louder than the perceived freedom gained... to go work with other people, but still always people. Draconian tendencies aside, no one will ultimately satisfy as a peer or network. So, OP, enjoy the rush. High-profile exits from large names is thrilling, but then you're without a scapegoat, if there is one at all. Tomorrow will be a reality check unless self critique is harsher than pointing fingers. The whole "tell the entire world how much X company sucks" trend is pretty much played out, even/especially if the company left does suck. It's a form of therapy to do it, probably, but a lot of it feels like marketing for the next leg of a career regardless.
- jsudhams 11y agoNot sure why person would not have called ethics line or even complain local govt HR authorities(if any). The allegations seems to be definitely a harassment if the person was not paid for work to be done outside working hours(not very clear if the person was paid for midnight calls). Not sure now but when I worked in Microsoft as customer support. They really really took care of the employees, it was a cost centre and there were call centre metrics in place but employees were treated really well. Leaves given as needed, paid for extra work and an excellent customer centric but a humble culture inside the org. The dev teams appreciated inputs from support and vice versa.
- jsudhams 11y agoNot sure why person would not have called ethics line or even complain local govt HR authorities(if any). The allegations seems to be definitely a harassment if the person was not paid for work to be done outside working hours(not very clear if the person was paid for midnight calls). Not sure now but when I worked in Microsoft as customer support. They really really took care of the employees, it was a cost centre and there were call centre metrics in place but employees were treated really well. Leaves given as needed, paid for extra work and an excellent customer centric but a humble culture inside the org. The dev teams appreciated inputs from support and vice versa.
- coldtea 11y ago>I spent two years in the Apple camp managing customer service improvement for their technical support contact centres Yeah, not exactly the kind of Apple insider we'd imagined when we read the first few paragraphs... >Sixteen hour days are filled with meetings after meetings followed by more meetings. Whilst this is somewhat standard in most organisations, meetings at Apple wreaked of toxic agendas designed to deliberately trip people up, make fools of the less respected and call people out. Team spirit is non existent as ‘internal customers’ attack individuals and push agendas that satisfy their morning egos. Hours upon hours were wasted in meetings to prepare for meetings in preparation for other meetings to the point where little work actually got done. And yet, they manage to be on the top at least financiancly, if not anything else, and put out tons of good products. So either this is not the whole story, or it's mostly about the customer service department, and not the hardware and software units... >Sickness, family emergencies, and even weddings are given no respect at Apple. When I started my role I missed one business trip as my wife was pregnant, fell down the stairs and had to be hospitalised – this was listed as a ‘performance issue’ on my record and brought up during a one on one with management as a major ‘miss’ on my behalf. This kind of thing on the other hand is important whoever it's happening to. Maybe Cook instead of pretending to care for more glamorous media causes (like Indiana) and start treating his own employees (which include plenty of gays of course) better? It's quite hypocritical to be a supporter for gay marriage, and then piss on the marriages and personal life of your employees in general.
- rawoke083600 11y agoSounds awful !!
- slaxman 11y agoWow! This reminds me of my career at PwC. I was a strategic consultant to the Financial Sector there. <rant> People were measured more on how long they stayed back in office rather than how much work got done. On multiple occasions, I was contacted by the Associate Director for some 'urgent' work while I was on leave. As you can imagine, none of the work was actually that urgent. The worst was the politics to take credit for other people's work. </rant>
- rogerdickey 11y agoWhy 900 upvotes? This reads like a vengeful laundry list of excuses for essentially being fired, written by a low-performing, poor-culture-fit middle manager from an exceptionally dysfunctional team at what otherwise might be a great company. I've never worked there so can't say.
- gchokov 11y agoWell that's pretty much the case with everyone who quits a big company and goes on "his own path" adventure. It's not something specific to Apple, but I guess putting it "I quit Apple" makes you cool?
- Aoyagi 11y agoI was under the impression that this is an accepted thing for both Apple and Microsoft, while Google is the "we know what's good and you products deal with it" company.
- maze-le 11y agoWow... I expect that things are not as shiny and glamoury as they seem, but this!?!
- frade33 11y agoEver heard of 'fast-paced' work environment. Sadly I run a tiny small company, where we make it loud and clear. That it's fast-paced work environment, full of stress, haste and everything in between. Even for me as an owner, this has deteriorated my life. I run an international shipping company. And every shipment is time-definite, not because they are, because customers make it so. Such kind of job, is not for everyone, therefore we make it loud and clear, we have a lot of fun too, to compensate for it and I make it clear to my guys. Anyhow, we do not have a culture of 'disrespect' but in a fast-paced environment, moods swings are pretty common. Again it's not for everyone. Ask me frankly, 911 or Police are less stressful than we are. as you laid out., as If police job is more stressful.
- MrDosu 11y agoNews@11: Working at BigCorpXYZ is not rainbows and puppies like in the brochure. Who knew.
- br3w5 11y ago"The common language spoken being passive aggression, sarcasm and Kool-Aid fuelled stories of ‘success’ designed to manipulate and intimidate naive workers who have never experienced corporate life outside the Apple walls" Sounds like all experiences I've had with the private sector although I have had better experiences with teams and general behaviour of team mates. I think founders of companies expect everyone to have the same belief in their business as they do but with less money out of it and no real influence over the company...that and not everyone thinks the same.
- laichzeit0 11y ago> Management were inconsistent, moody and erratic. I’d often receive aggressive chats at all hours, and harassing texts every fifteen minutes asking “are you online? Your status shows you as away – are you there?”. As they saying goes, shit runs downhill. I guarantee you these guys are behaving this way because someone above them is giving them the same amount of shit.
- nomass 11y agoI don't want to offend anyone, but really Apple has become a lousy company. The single only thing that still flawlessly works is indeed the "glossy surface" (article). Their hardware, sold as rock-solid, is partly flawed. My (and thousands of other users ) Macbook graphic card broke after 12 month. The OS and their software has become bloated inconsistent and buggy. Their customer service is so bad, it even beats some of the worst telecom companies in my country. Their sales people are good looking but technically incompetent. Some of Apples technologies (Applescript, Objective-C) are just awful. I think Apple products and services are only usable, if you have a lot of money to throw around and if you don't really rely on them, but look at them as toys to play around. Using Ubuntu and Android now, I can admit that the UI is not nearly as sexy. But stuff works or can be fixed in reasonable time.
- shanusmagnus 11y agoTFA, and these comments, have made me curious -- what is the best way to get a breakdown of how much people like working for a company? I know there are job sites like Glassdoor, etc, but in those reviews everything is scrambled together. And as the comments here suggest, there could be a huge difference between what it's like to work in software development (say, doing stuff for OS X) vs. customer service kinds of things. Are there any resources that could help you get a 'fingerprint' of the work-experience at a certain company, across its various aspects?
- debacle 11y agoAsk the right questions at the interview. "Do you like working here?" "Yeah. I guess it's okay." Versus "What's the worst thing about working here?" "They stick used hypodermic needles in your urethra once a week."
- digital-rubber 11y ago"I spent two years in the Apple camp managing customer service improvement for their technical support contact centres and out of the fifteen plus years working in this industry I’ve never witnessed so many bizarre and unprofessional things, only some of which I have time to touch on here." In the next 15 years (probably sooner) you'll learn that the world is the same _everywhere_ and quiting your job at apple won't make a silly difference. I've had a ton of jobs, ALL MY BOSSES STOLE from the company. And i don't expect my current bosses to be any different. no i will not resort to such, but i stopped caring. And if i was you, i'd probably not quite my job, and simply not care about the fopping idiotic things and people i'd see around me.