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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

#41

Post by j_baker »

shasta wrote: post #40
borski wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I think that's a strawman.

I personally would argue that an 80 hour week isn't the same as two 40 hour weeks. It would probably be more like a 40 hour week and a 20 hour week. The end result? You get something done sooner, but you end up putting in a lot more time than you would if you just worked 40 hours a week. It's more efficient for the company because they're getting a product faster and only paying for 40 hours worth of work a week. But it's less efficient for the employee because they're putting in many more hours in total to do the same task but only getting paid as if they were working 40 hours a week.

In my experience, working long hours is only good in the short-term. Sometimes that is necessary. But it is almost never a good idea in the long-term.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#42

Post by stonemetal »

msbarnett wrote: post #36
borski wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah just like those devs at EA. If you aren't willing to sleep in your cube then you obviously are just "doing the minimum". If making gamers love you isn't what you live for then maybe EA isn't the right place for you. Poor project planing with deadlines that can't be met without 12hr days isn't the problem. Passion, that is our problem we just have way to much of it. Cause you know if we let people have friends and do stuff outside of work then some of that Passion might leak out and we wouldn't want that to happen.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#43

Post by j_baker »

n-named wrote: post #38
n-named wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Neither do I. The problem is that you didn't present an alternate way of thinking about extra hours. You just posted a link to a product and a statement that it wasn't designed by people who don't work extra hours without much of a link between the two.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#44

Post by j_baker »

nostromo wrote: post #18
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?

The way he mentions that Apple HR confirms that there are 'no career paths' at Apple makes me think he's referring to a more regimented promotion system (a la GE).

Either that or a Google-style flat hierarchy. There may simply not be that many manager positions to get promoted into.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#45

Post by mcknz »

kenjackson wrote: post #13
borski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I only worked at Apple for about 8 months (started as a summer intern), I can completely echo this. It's never that we _have_ to stay later, it's that we _want_ to. You really have a dedication to the product because you want your customers to love you; that was the overall mindset. With a deadline, that means you'll do almost anything to meet it and succeed. As for the secrecy, you're totally right. I roomed w…

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…

Or: As a company, we really value work/life balance. It's just a coincidence that promotions go to people who value the former over the latter.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#46

Post by apike »

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?

Lack of a career path is part of why I left Apple to start my own company. The hierarchy is quite flat, and the departments are quite compartmentalized. Because of this, if you want to move up, you're probably quitting and applying to a new job that also happens to be at Apple. Of course, it was a wonderful place to work in a lot of other ways.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#47

Post by msbarnett »

stonemetal wrote: post #42
msbarnett wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@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.

Yeah just like those devs at EA. If you aren't willing to sleep in your cube then you obviously are just "doing the minimum". If making gamers love you isn't what you live for then maybe EA isn't the right place for you. Poor project planing with deadlines that can't be met without 12hr days isn't the problem. Passion, that is our problem we just have way to much of it. Cause you know if we let people have friends an…

You're doing an awful lot of projecting based on one guy's account of his friend's working hours.

The web isn't exactly swamped with "Apple Wives" blogs, so you might consider the possibility that this grave injustice that you're so worked up about is primarily occurring in your imagination.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#48

Post by TobyS95 »

Keyframe wrote: post #6
novum wrote: post #5

Secrecy: Apple's secrecy is comparable to the U.S. government's in terms of "need to know" and compartmentalization. This. My roommate is a hardware engineer on the iPad team, and he won't even confirm that there will be another iPad. He takes extra precautions when working at home - he won't take work calls if I'm in the room, and he set up the furniture in his room in an awkward fashion solely so that his computer…

Sounds like a genuine shithole/borderline slavery. Why are people putting up with this?

Spoken like someone who is punching the clock at Best Buy. If you are in a technical field that deals with anything of any significance, you will work like this for much less world changing projects. Most of the things you touch has a team of engineers that work like this behind it. It could be everyday things like bringing a subway motor , a glucose meter, or a police scanner to reality. Why? I have seen it. Actually, technical staff that work the front end of development the best work/life balance (note that I didn't say good). It the guys that work out the final kinks at the end in manufacturing or testing that really get the pressure. You or team members may not even believe in the project as you go on the death march. At least it sounds like the staff at Apple believe in the final goal.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#49

Post by applerecruit »

apike wrote: post #46
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?

Lack of a career path is part of why I left Apple to start my own company. The hierarchy is quite flat, and the departments are quite compartmentalized. Because of this, if you want to move up, you're probably quitting and applying to a new job that also happens to be at Apple. Of course, it was a wonderful place to work in a lot of other ways.

Apple is trying to hire me to do server side stuff.

It's a job that I'm pretty good at, but I'm not very excited about anymore. My thinking was that I could transfer into another group after a year, and it would be easier once I'm "in the system."

Given your statement, is it a better idea to just wait until I'm good enough at the stuff I want to do, before applying?

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#50

Post by shasta »

j_baker wrote: post #41
shasta wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I think that's a strawman. I personally would argue that an 80 hour week isn't the same as two 40 hour weeks. It would probably be more like a 40 hour week and a 20 hour week. The end result? You get something done sooner, but you end up putting in a lot more time than you would if you just worked 40 hours a week. It's more efficient for the company because they're getting a product faster and only paying for 40 hour…

I'm not going to dig up a link, but a number of people think your total productivity goes down (not just per-hour productivity, as I emphasized in my post). So if it's a strawman, it's a strawman with internet access and an HN account.

I think your personal experience matches mine - I'm more productive in my initial working hours (maybe discounting the first hour of getting in to it), and are less efficient in my later hours. But my total productivity goes up as I work more, at least up to around 80 hours/week. Whether or not that's good use of my time depends on how enjoyable the work is to me and what kind of non-work I'm coming home to that day.

I may also agree with your position on long hours being a bad idea "in the long-term", but I'd quibble with it the way it's worded. Periodically working long hours can be good for long term progress, but working long hours over an extended period of time leads to burn-out.

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