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My Experience at Apple

ex-apple-engineer.medium.com

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Re: My Experience at Apple

#141

Post by corobo »

polote wrote: post #17

Honestly why do people think that cannot happen at Apple ? That kind of thing can happen in any company. Apple is thousands of employees, it only requires a few bad people to create a situation like that. I'm not sure though, creating a post like that is the best thing. I don't know what exists in the US, but in France, you can sue your employer for free (You don't even need a lawyer), and if you are able to show a f…

> EDIT: To the people who downvote me, seriously why ?

I can't speak for others but me personally it was because you dismissed the problem then started talking about what would happen in France.

Essentially the comment added nothing all said and done

Edit: To the downvoters of this, naw I'm kidding. Have at it.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#142

Post by rmk »

xvector wrote: post #112
libria wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - The primary lesson I learnt is that it doesn't matter if you work hard. Nobody notices, and even if they do you will likely not get anything out of it. Do your job, but don't kill yourself over it. Work-life balance is king. I think this close, but a little off. Work hard only on what matters. Join the high visibility projects and work hard on the important parts. "Nobody notices" -> that's up to you. Document an…

> Work only the good jobs. If it's not good, switch teams ASAP. I agree with this but you have to understand that it's very difficult and frightening for an inexperienced new grad or someone on a green card to do. These groups are also unfortunately the most exploited.

I do not understand why someone w/ a green card needs to be afraid of being fired. Isn't the whole point of it to firm up your status as someone who is allowed to stay on indefinitely with very few conditions, one of them being % of year spent in the US, plus not committing certain serious offences (felonies?)

Re: My Experience at Apple

#143

Post by libria »

xvector wrote: post #112
libria wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - The primary lesson I learnt is that it doesn't matter if you work hard. Nobody notices, and even if they do you will likely not get anything out of it. Do your job, but don't kill yourself over it. Work-life balance is king. I think this close, but a little off. Work hard only on what matters. Join the high visibility projects and work hard on the important parts. "Nobody notices" -> that's up to you. Document an…

> Work only the good jobs. If it's not good, switch teams ASAP. I agree with this but you have to understand that it's very difficult and frightening for an inexperienced new grad or someone on a green card to do. These groups are also unfortunately the most exploited.

Thanks for the correction. I did write this thinking narrowly as a privileged resident and I remember now not everyone has that freedom unfortunately.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#144

Post by grumple »

I have experienced abuse at the hands of supervisors (generally disrespectful / belittling behavior). You have to have a special kind of privilege to have not experienced this sort of thing. I haven't ever experienced such a pervasive environment of targeted abuse as in the OP, but it certainly sounds believable. It's the reason why unions came into being. We didn't go from being a society of slaveowners to a society of saints in the past 150 years.

I have learned hard lessons though:

HR is not there to help you. I consulted HR and a senior director about my previous supervisor's toxic behavior; not only did they do nothing, but they said they had previous complaints about them! And of course, I knew this, because I had many friends in the org, and I had witnessed the disrespect this person displayed towards others.

Collect evidence and get a lawyer if you want to stay in the org. This is the only way to protect yourself - it becomes very difficult for them to fire you in retaliation. I haven't taken this route, but I've seen others do it.

My advice would be to make plans to leave. OP was in a tough spot due to citizenship. But you have to leave toxic environments. You will not fix them, and if you could, you'd be better off quitting and starting a consultancy to fix those places. Find someplace new and be more particular about joining them.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#145

Post by rsync »

polote wrote: post #17

Honestly why do people think that cannot happen at Apple ? That kind of thing can happen in any company. Apple is thousands of employees, it only requires a few bad people to create a situation like that. I'm not sure though, creating a post like that is the best thing. I don't know what exists in the US, but in France, you can sue your employer for free (You don't even need a lawyer), and if you are able to show a f…

I downvoted you because you are complaining about downvoting.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#147

Post by asebold »

Girl I am so sorry. I 100% believe you. I worked at a Fortune 500 company (you might know one of my former coworkers named “jake”), and experienced and saw similar abuse. I feel like this mentality is indicative of big organizations.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#148

Post by extrememacaroni »

rsync wrote: post #145
polote wrote: post #17

Honestly why do people think that cannot happen at Apple ? That kind of thing can happen in any company. Apple is thousands of employees, it only requires a few bad people to create a situation like that. I'm not sure though, creating a post like that is the best thing. I don't know what exists in the US, but in France, you can sue your employer for free (You don't even need a lawyer), and if you are able to show a f…

I downvoted you because you are complaining about downvoting.

isn't that you basically complaining about his complaining about his downvoting?

Re: My Experience at Apple

#149

Post by lordnacho »

exApple-anon wrote: post #9

Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. Unlike others, I actually find this story fairly believable. When I first joined Apple, straight out of college - a good program, top three in the country - I was abused similarly. I joined a team that was on a project behind schedule. Our manager was a brusque, no-nonsense sort of dude. But he clearly had anger problems. On the team were 2 senior engineers, me, and a junior e…

I think for most people the question is whether there are reasons to think Apple's internal environment fosters this kind of behaviour.

You can imagine a company of that size has a huge number of teams, some where everything is just dandy, some with terrible issues like yours and the author's.

But is there something corporate-wide about Apple that makes you think what you went through was common, or the opposite (ie that you were unlucky)?

You can ask the same about all the large techs.

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