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My Experience at Apple

ex-apple-engineer.medium.com

161–170 of 840 posts

Re: My Experience at Apple

#161

For anyone experiencing workplace harassment, this article is a great example of what not to do. Instead, document everything happening to you with evidence, speak with HR about incidents as they arise, and if they don't take action, seek legal counsel. Doing anything else will paint you in a bad light.

You've clearly never had this happen to you. Go ahead, document everything, it's not going to matter. That's not how this works. If you do that they'll either say, "Ok, I see what you've got there. But that's not what we're here to discuss. We're here to discuss your negative attitude" or they can look at your documentation and say, "So what were you charging the time you were doing all this documentation to?", or, "So this is why you're not getting your work done. You're spending all this time on this paranoid documentation instead of doing your work".

Go to HR? Are you kidding me? First, HR is not your friend. They're there to protect the company. Perhaps sometimes your interests align with the company but that's just an accident. Second, there is no way these people are engaging in abusive behavior without HR having their backs so going to HR just risks exposing HR to accusations of abuse so now you've got an even bigger target on your back.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#162

Honestly, I want to believe anything we get out of companies and people's experiences, but this really feels... off. Maybe it's the writing, but it _feels_ like an Apple hater who never worked at the company wrote a false exposé just for the sake of it.

Here's a fun bias exercise for you: read the piece replacing Apple with a company you hate, and see if it changes how you feel.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#163
I had similar bad manager experience at $FAANG. Managers have so much control over information, narratives, and access to decision makers they control perception so most organizations are useless at properly evaluating their work.

I've seen managers ride out perpetually failing projects that haven't made meaningful progress in years, team 'decisions' that are reliably and demonstrably bad, services that cost a fortune to run and have a slew of problems and unhappy customers, and rock-bottom scores in anonymous surveys. None of this matters. Essentially your job as a manager is to take credit, dodge accountability, and expand your empire(headcount) as to maneuver yourself towards the better high-visibility projects. Just like politicians, unless they're overtly bad(and even then) it's difficult to separate them from the sprawling cybernetic organism so you just kind of shrug. Maybe a team's success is because of the manager, maybe it is in spite of them or vice versa - no way to know.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't exactly work when HR is toothless and one is seeking legal action against literally the richest company in the world and already inundated in lawsuits. Not to mention the author was on a student OPT visa- how is someone being sponsored by a company going to risk their status by suing that company?

The flip side is that Apple cannot afford to lose such a case because it would shine a very dark light on them. If you have anywhere near a solid case they will probably settle for a handsome amount.

Apple is constantly being sued at all times. I recall a manager saying that they could not delete any work emails because of possible subpoena orders. Most cases likely get lost among it all, and get no outside publicity.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#165
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted you because you are complaining about downvoting.

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7807998

> Please follow the site guidelines and don't complain about downvotes—all it does is lower the signal/noise ratio. Everyone gets downvoted. It doesn't matter.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#166
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?)

That is true. The parent probably meant to say Visa not Green Card. I can definitely relate to the feeling of being "stuck" in a bad situation while on a Visa and/or while waiting for a green card to be processed. It's such a huge relief when you finally get that freedom to move around in the job market.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#167
I don't want to comment on the content, but on the form.

In my opinion there are two reasons to write such an article:

a) To vent b) To get a message around

This article is a great and powerful vent (which also makes sense in the context of "healing journey"), but it does a terrible job at getting a message across.

Bold messages lose their impact if there are more bold messages than normal text. Also the article is missing a clear red line - I felt myself skipping multiple paragraphs and not missing out on any content.

I would be very much interested if the writer could re-write their vent into a powerful message.

This might also be a chance (regarding the "healing journey") to re-work the happenings and bring the "this is what happened!!!" into a "THIS is what happened", in the same way an emergency-centre operator deals with emergency calls. Focus on the facts, not the feelings.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#168
post #20

No way to say if this is a legit story, but I have seen this kind of thing at Intel, a subsidiary of comScore and a subsidiary of Siemens. Toxic workplaces exist, and toxic teams within divisions exist. When I saw this stuff, I was too young and inexperienced to recognize bad behavior and recognize my own power to go fish for something else. I did not have immigration issues to think about though, which adds a whole…

"I'd advise people who experience toxic workplaces or think that they are in them to consider whether they themselves are lacking in the ability to assert their own boundaries and act on those assertions when they are broken repeatedly."

That's it, blame the victim.

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