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What It's Like to Work at Apple

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Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#31

Post by stonemetal »

borski wrote: post #27
ig1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds to me like your saying that if someone wanted to work an 8 hour day, they'd have to match what you do in (say) 12 hours ? i.e. if someone was equally productive (or even 25% more productive), but still produced less than you purely because they worked the scheduled hours, than they'd be less likely to get promotions, etc. ?

Potentially, but promotions are generally given for work that exceeds expectations; isn't this the way it should be? Producing the 'minimal expected' amount of work for a prolonged period of time (reliability) is cause for being promoted as well, I suppose, but takes more time.

So you're saying if I wanted to get promoted I should work 20 hr days? After all working 12s is expected because everybody does that.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#32

Post by matwood »

borski wrote: post #15
kenjackson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never that we _have_ to stay later, it's that we _want_ to. I hear this from people, but I rarely buy it. I'm not saying that you didn't want to stay later, but say Tim wanted to just work 8 to 5 each day, would everyone say, "Hey that's cool. We feel bad that you can't stay later, but it's 100% fine that you work 8 hours per day"? It just seems like places I've been, if a handful of sufficiently respected produ…

At least in my (admittedly short) experience there, I can't say there was much social pressure to stay late. You had deadlines, you had to do what you had to get done, and it had to be done well. How long it took you to get there or at what times of day didn't matter very much, if at all.

Giving people impossible deadlines that they can only achieve by staying late is the same thing as just forcing them to stay late.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#33

Post by borski »

borski wrote: post #27
ig1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds to me like your saying that if someone wanted to work an 8 hour day, they'd have to match what you do in (say) 12 hours ? i.e. if someone was equally productive (or even 25% more productive), but still produced less than you purely because they worked the scheduled hours, than they'd be less likely to get promotions, etc. ?

Potentially, but promotions are generally given for work that exceeds expectations; isn't this the way it should be? Producing the 'minimal expected' amount of work for a prolonged period of time (reliability) is cause for being promoted as well, I suppose, but takes more time.

It's not a matter of hours. There has to be cause for promotion, correct? Whether that is exceeding expectations (be it by working longer hours, or simply being better, etc.) or being reliable over a prolonged period of time; these are both valid reasons to get promoted. I'm sure there are others as well.

Hours are a flawed metric for engineering, usually, since different people get different amounts done in the same amount of hours. But surely there should be some meritocratic reason for a promotion?

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#34

Post by borski »

borski wrote: post #15
kenjackson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never that we _have_ to stay later, it's that we _want_ to. I hear this from people, but I rarely buy it. I'm not saying that you didn't want to stay later, but say Tim wanted to just work 8 to 5 each day, would everyone say, "Hey that's cool. We feel bad that you can't stay later, but it's 100% fine that you work 8 hours per day"? It just seems like places I've been, if a handful of sufficiently respected produ…

At least in my (admittedly short) experience there, I can't say there was much social pressure to stay late. You had deadlines, you had to do what you had to get done, and it had to be done well. How long it took you to get there or at what times of day didn't matter very much, if at all.

I never had impossible deadlines. I don't think anyone else around me did either.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#35

Post by ig1 »

borski wrote: post #27
ig1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds to me like your saying that if someone wanted to work an 8 hour day, they'd have to match what you do in (say) 12 hours ? i.e. if someone was equally productive (or even 25% more productive), but still produced less than you purely because they worked the scheduled hours, than they'd be less likely to get promotions, etc. ?

Potentially, but promotions are generally given for work that exceeds expectations; isn't this the way it should be? Producing the 'minimal expected' amount of work for a prolonged period of time (reliability) is cause for being promoted as well, I suppose, but takes more time.

Sure, I'm not disputing that, but it means that if you want to be treated like everyone else when it comes to promotions, redundancies, etc. that you're forced to work 12 hour days when at other companies you could just work 8 hour days to get equal treatment.

And remember while you like your job now, what happens if you start to like it less (or you have a family, etc.) but you can't reduce your hours otherwise you'll get penalized for it. One day you'll wake up and realize you're working for EA.

(Ref: http://andymerrett.co.uk/2004/12/09/ea-the-human-story/)

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#36

Post by msbarnett »

borski wrote: post #27
ig1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds to me like your saying that if someone wanted to work an 8 hour day, they'd have to match what you do in (say) 12 hours ? i.e. if someone was equally productive (or even 25% more productive), but still produced less than you purely because they worked the scheduled hours, than they'd be less likely to get promotions, etc. ?

Potentially, but promotions are generally given for work that exceeds expectations; isn't this the way it should be? Producing the 'minimal expected' amount of work for a prolonged period of time (reliability) is cause for being promoted as well, I suppose, but takes more time.

@stonemetal: I think what he's saying is: if you're more interested in playing this "what's the minimum number of hours I can get away with working" game than in making your customers love you, Apple isn't the right fit for you.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#37

Post by jrockway »

gamble wrote: post #26
jonnathanson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably what he means. It's the case at a lot of companies, and particularly tech companies. There's probably no set rulebook along the lines of "You will spend X years in Y position in Z department, then you will be promoted to Y+1, where you will spend another X years until Y+2," etc. That kind of structured progression seems to be going away in a lot of industries, with the notable exceptions being the bi…

If you look at company reviews on glassdoor.com, you'll notice that people either complain that their company has too many layers of management, or that there are no opportunities for advancement. I've never heard anyone claim that Apple is overly bureaucratic.

People have tried to make that claim, but Apple's Reality Distortion Field picked it up and the guilty parties were taken out back and shot.

Remember that 1984 video? Yeah.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#38

Post by n-named »

n-named wrote: post #30
kenjackson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never that we _have_ to stay later, it's that we _want_ to. I hear this from people, but I rarely buy it. I'm not saying that you didn't want to stay later, but say Tim wanted to just work 8 to 5 each day, would everyone say, "Hey that's cool. We feel bad that you can't stay later, but it's 100% fine that you work 8 hours per day"? It just seems like places I've been, if a handful of sufficiently respected produ…

http://www.apple.com/ipad/ Clearly not made by people that think this way. I doubt even higher up staff think this way. I.e. Jobs, Ive.

Why down modding? It isn't immediately apparent to me that presenting an alternate way of thinking about "extra hours "is worthy of down modding.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#39

Post by jfb »

smiler wrote: post #2

Would be great if he had expanded on the 'no career path' section - that will probably be something that most people want to know about - surely there must be different levels of developers to some extent? Moving from development to management? Any Apple employees on here like to comment?

Almost certainly he's referring to a formal career plan, of which I saw none at Apple. On the other hand, I know many engineers who have made director -- but only by switching gears to management. If you want to stay an individual contributor, you can, but "moving up" at Apple is largely confined to management. There are a handful of DESTs, but they are the exception, rather than the rule.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#40

Post by shasta »

borski wrote: post #34
borski wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in my (admittedly short) experience there, I can't say there was much social pressure to stay late. You had deadlines, you had to do what you had to get done, and it had to be done well. How long it took you to get there or at what times of day didn't matter very much, if at all.

I never had impossible deadlines. I don't think anyone else around me did either.

Presumably he meant "impossible in a 40 hour work week," so that if you're killing yourself with an 80 hour week to meet deadlines, you're not a counterexample.

Of course, there's a prevalent opinion around here that working over 40 hours a week always decreases your productivity (and not just per hour), and the people who buy into that will likely find this definition of impossible to be silly (since as a corollary, every possible thing is achievable in 40 hour weeks).

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