As a former Army Soldier, it was very cool to read the piece about the military. Props to Apple for taking a strong stand.
What It's Like to Work at Apple
71–80 of 82 posts
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#72Secrecy: 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…
I don't see how it isn't sustainable if you are loving it? Most people would love a job where they don't need to stay, but want to stay.
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
For the millionth time: Fortune's "Top 100 Employers" list is not an objective ranking of every employer in the US. It relies primarily on unverified employer-provided data. Many companies, like Apple, realize that it's mostly a PR game and don't bother to participate.
My experience at Apple was that working ridiculous amounts of overtime was not at all required. Most of my coworkers didn't. On the other hand, generally you wouldn't get told NOT to work a lot if you wanted to, and that's the true weakness of the company culture. If you're a workaholic, you can definitely burn yourself out. If you're not a workaholic, you'll do just fine.
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#74Secrecy: 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…
Does the compensation reflect the working hours? That is, your roomate is working at least 50% more than normal [1], does he make 50% more than people who work normal hours doing similar work?
[1] I can't comment on the industry standard because Apple is kind of a hybrid between a software and hardware company.
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
For the millionth time: Fortune's "Top 100 Employers" list is not an objective ranking of every employer in the US. It relies primarily on unverified employer-provided data. Many companies, like Apple, realize that it's mostly a PR game and don't bother to participate. My experience at Apple was that working ridiculous amounts of overtime was not at all required. Most of my coworkers didn't. On the other hand, genera…
>It relies primarily on unverified employer-provided data.
Yea, I mean Walmart scored high on that bogus list once. It's hard to imagine a worse place to work than Walmart (Offices I mean, the stores are probably as crappy as any big box retailer).
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#76Secrecy: 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…
[deleted]
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
> 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 I don't think this is true, though maybe you can find a source to prove it? What I've often heard and read is that the percentage of work falls off after a certain amount of hours per week. or put another way, working 80 hours may not give you a doubling of productivity o…
Science says otherwise: http://archives.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, actually, that wasn't usually how it worked. It was all about performance rather than time spent on-site. If you could get done in 4 hours what took me 8, you would be just as eligible for any promotions as I. Probably more-so, however, since you'd probably have worked 8 hours anyway and gotten twice as much done. ;)
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. ?
>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 ?
Which if they do this over months the 8 hour worker should be more productive over all.
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#79Reservists called up to active duty are put into a military-leave status and they remain Apple employees while Apple makes up the salary difference between their military pay and their Apple pay until they return. I wonder if other companies do this. I know by law they are required to keep those positions for active reserves but I don't think they are required to continue to pay their salary. In the past, I've worked…
I actually saw some (military contractor or related manufacturing) companies which continue to pay full salary (plus the employee gets whatever active duty salary and allowances). These companies also donated stuff like satellite links to their employee's unit so they could have Internet access.
I would probably do this at my company (even outside of defense), purely to be more attractive to NG/Reserves candidates -- a lot of them have great additional experience and training which is paid for by the government, and especially if they value their military career and security clearance, are unlikely to get involved in anything untoward.
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#80Earlier 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?
Spending 10 hours at work doesn't mean you actually work 10 hours. A lot of time is spent talking, browsing the web, thinking, reading, etc.
Not saying it's wasted time - quite the contrary - but if you want to actually work 8 hours a day, you need to spend much more than 8 hours at work.