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Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

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Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#51

"The running joke is Foxconn has nothing on Apple." Because joking about modern day slavery is so much better! Especially when they're your slaves.

You'd be surprised what people are willing to put up with, even when they're not literal slaves. Ben Farrell was just the tip of the iceberg. AAPL is just AMZN with better press and intra-organizational warfare that puts Ballmer-era MSFT to shame.

Great nick!

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#52
post #22

Problems like this can happen in any company and this includes Apple as well. Since Apple is one of the biggest Tech companies people are going to make a big deal about it. But it is a big failure if managers/management fail to take actions. The immediate manager should be fired in this case since he or she failed to take any action or involve HR or upper management

Why does it seem like every time someone gets offended about something there are calls for people to get fired? There are other ways to address workplace conflicts than to put heads on sticks. As reported in this article, none of these incidents are grounds for termination- not even close.

It reminds me of any number of apocryphal-but-true-enough stories I've heard over the years, which always take the same form: (1) young engineer / machinist / programmer gets rare and unfamiliar task, and makes judgement call; (2) young engineer fucks up spectacularly, causing huge loss / damage / embarrassment, to the point of fully expecting to be fired; (3) young engineer is not fired; (4) boss / manager explains "well, either way I have to pay for the damage -- I could do that and fire you, but then I'd just have to hire someone else who could do the same thing you did next week. Or I could pay for the damage and keep you, and know you'll never make the same mistake again."

Somebody who messed up but acknowledges it as a mistake, and is therefore unlikely to repeat it, may be more valuable as an employee than a random new hire who may or may not make the same mistake again in the future.

Of course, someone who makes a 'mistake' that is in fact indicative of an underlying personality flaw or tendency towards bad judgement, is a liability and best gotten rid of. The job of a manager is to decide when a person is one versus the other.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#54
post #48

The time that I worked at Apple was brutally hard work. If we're talking about work environment, I think many people reading that article have no concept of how difficult a job it is, how high are the expectations, and how many hours the average engineer is putting in there. This is a very difficult job which can be extremely stressful for a long duration of time. As a society we tend to laud grueling hard work rathe…

> None of what I read in TFA I really understand to be a hostile work environment, as the term is defined.

Your colleagues joke that someone is coming to rape you, and you're supposed to laugh? I'm not a woman, but I can imagine a woman being really hurt by such a joke. Given the fact that 1 out of 6 women in this country are victims of sexual assault[1], I think it's a joke in poor taste, and does not belong in a workforce.

[1] https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-problem

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#56
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's spent a fair bit of time in Germany and Switzerland, lol no.

How bad is it there? Care to share?

Nothing to share on companies, but women couldn't even vote everywhere in Switzerland until 1991.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appenzell_Innerrhoden

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#57
post #44

Reading stuff like this always feels weird to me. I'm the founder of a 30+ year company and, to my knowledge, this has never happened at my company. It's possible it happened and no one told me, but given my position, I would think it would eventually come around to me (I'm the COO now). I have to wonder if behavior like this follows from bad leadership. I'm not saying Tim Cook, given the case of Apple, but middle ma…

When you say, "this has never happened at my company." I am curious what you mean by that? The article describes several anecdotes which seem to me to paint a fairly broad brush.

Never at the end of a meeting at your company has an employee joked about their spouse?

Never has someone at your company ever used a violent metaphor to describe losing a sale, or the servers crashing, or learning the release just slipped another month?

Never has someone at your company been passed up for promotion and was upset because they felt that they deserved the job?

Never has someone at your company had to interview a job candidate without proper training on how to run the interview, or proper time to prepare?

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#58
post #48

The time that I worked at Apple was brutally hard work. If we're talking about work environment, I think many people reading that article have no concept of how difficult a job it is, how high are the expectations, and how many hours the average engineer is putting in there. This is a very difficult job which can be extremely stressful for a long duration of time. As a society we tend to laud grueling hard work rathe…

Not to diminish any of the other claims but I found this one to be a bit of an eye roller -

Describing another incident, she wrote, "I was walking back to my cube from the break room and passed a group of managers exiting a meeting. The Area Manager told me to smile as I walked past." "While this is a small thing, it was notable as this is one of the most commonly reported forms of subtle sexism."

No matter how hard I try, I can't fathom how that could possibly be construed as sexist.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#59
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it seem like every time someone gets offended about something there are calls for people to get fired? There are other ways to address workplace conflicts than to put heads on sticks. As reported in this article, none of these incidents are grounds for termination- not even close.

I like how Atlassian handled an incident that was different, but also included calls to fire the engineer: http://blogs.atlassian.com/2014/06/failing-values-team-indus... > I know the engineer responsible well. I hired him. I know the slide does not reflect his values any more than it reflects Atlassian’s, and he is as deeply sorry as we are. It was an error in judgment, but one the company shares responsibility for…

What was wrong with that slide?

It specifically mentioned "[his] girlfriend". Although potentially cringe-worthy, there was no generalization. The contents could have been entirely factual.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#60
post #22

Problems like this can happen in any company and this includes Apple as well. Since Apple is one of the biggest Tech companies people are going to make a big deal about it. But it is a big failure if managers/management fail to take actions. The immediate manager should be fired in this case since he or she failed to take any action or involve HR or upper management

How would you know what action they took?
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