What It's Like to Work at Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#61

Post by stonemetal » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 1:41 AM UTC

msbarnett wrote: post #47

stonemetal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And his friends account that it is typical of the environment, and I have a friend who had an internship with Apple. The first rule of his startup was sane working hours no matter how passionate you are, which wasn't a rule he had before working at Apple.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#62

Post by gasull » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 2:26 AM UTC

shasta wrote: post #50

j_baker wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lat…

I dig the link for you:

http://archives.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#63

Post by davidj » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 2:26 AM UTC

A friend of mine worked at Apple as a consultant for a ERP system that ran on Windows NT and I used to pick him up all the time. They would let me walk right in no problem. I remember walking across a parking lot where there was a wine bar where he liked to hang out. Of course this was in 2000 though.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#64

Post by robryan » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 3:55 AM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #19

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…

An honest question: Why do you want to work such long days when there is so much evidence that total productive work per week doesn't increase beyond around 40 hours of work for most knowledge worker jobs, especially software development?

How about for a fixed time period, like 6 months, I remember something being posted talking about long term longer hours but I think there is more to look at here.

For instance what if I work 8 hours a day usually but a couple of times a week when I am in the zone put in 12 hours? What if I make up an extra 4 hours casually on the weekends? It'd be hard to say that there is no way to include more than 40 productive hours into a week, using any scheme.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#65

Post by philwelch » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 4:19 AM UTC

apike wrote: post #60

applerecruit wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you're not excited about something, don't do it - even at Apple.

Unless you're broke.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#66

Post by updog » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 5:16 AM UTC

davidj wrote: post #63

A friend of mine worked at Apple as a consultant for a ERP system that ran on Windows NT and I used to pick him up all the time. They would let me walk right in no problem. I remember walking across a parking lot where there was a wine bar where he liked to hang out. Of course this was in 2000 though.

BJ's is not a wine bar ;)

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#67

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 5:18 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #9

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?

Any Apple employees on here like to comment? Probably not ;-)

[deleted]

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#68

Post by FalcorTheDog » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 5:18 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #9

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?

Any Apple employees on here like to comment? Probably not ;-)

You'd be surprised ;-)

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#69

Post by krevis » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 5:31 AM UTC

updog wrote: post #66

davidj wrote: post #63

A friend of mine worked at Apple as a consultant for a ERP system that ran on Windows NT and I used to pick him up all the time. They would let me walk right in no problem. I remember walking across a parking lot where there was a wine bar where he liked to hang out. Of course this was in 2000 though.

BJ's is not a wine bar ;)

BJ's wasn't there way back in 2000, either, IIRC -- it was the Peppermill.

Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple

#70

Post by billmcneale » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 5:34 AM UTC

Keyframe wrote: post #17

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…

I worked in several situations like this - it is toxic. Where overachievers dragged all of the others into slavery (I used to do that too, until I realized what I was doing).

Yes, this matches what I have heard from several of my friends who work there. The rosy picture painted in the article doesn't mention the extreme overwork that Apple employees have to go through, although most employees appear to be okay with that.

Having said that, it's no coincidence that Apple never made it even in the top 100 of US companies to work for, they really don't treat their employees very well from an objective standpoint and any former employee who's had a chance to leave and take a step back can easily see that.

The distortion field obviously applies to Apple employees as well.