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My Experience at Apple

ex-apple-engineer.medium.com

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Re: My Experience at Apple

#211

Post by Apocryphon »

zepto wrote: post #183
daniel_reetz wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked in several highly secretive companies, including this one, and this is correct. Secrecy enables abuse.

This stuff happens in companies that aren’t secretive though. I don’t see how secrecy enables this.

Sunlight is a disinfectant. With transparency, even the largest most aloof company has to grapple to some degree with poor PR and public shaming. Amazon is well-known for having a toxic work culture even beyond its fulfillment centers, thanks to Amazon employees speaking out. And having a high-profile voice- a Tim Bray, a Susan Fowler, is also invaluable. As of yet, there isn't an equivalent to Apple, probably because its culture is so secretive that people readily self-censor themselves about what goes on in the company.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#212

Post by dreamcompiler »

Things new engineers don't know, but should:

1. HR doesn't work for you; they work to minimize liability for the company. If HR thinks the best way to accomplish that is to destroy your life, that's exactly what they will do.

2. Many SV companies, as well as groups within large, respected SV companies, only survive through exploitation. They exploit their customers, their workforce, or both. Exploitation means obtaining something of value without paying a fair price for it. Exploitation is accomplished through a variety of coercive processes like gaslighting, manipulation, instilling fear, etc. Outright lying is probably the most common coercive tactic since it's easy and there's usually no penalty for it.

If you find yourself in an exploitive work environment, you need to leave as quickly as possible. The situation is not going to get better. It's only going to get worse, and your options are two: Leave with your mental health and reputation intact or leave after they have been destroyed. There is no option 3.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#213

Post by aspaceman »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #80

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.

There’s nothing to do. Documenting wouldn’t help.

Criticizing them is the exact type of navel gazing commentary I hate about this place. You must think you’re oh so intelligent. You read a Reddit comment that said to make sure to document and email everything and now you’ll pompously make that comment under anything. You’re not actually helping.

“You see Oedipus, if you had only asked that man if he was Laius before killing them for attacking you, none of this would have ever happened.” Tragedy is about empathy and shared experience, not an instructional guide for how to live life.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#214

Post by the-dude »

sfblah wrote: post #197
the-dude wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted you because you are complaining about downvoting.

Meh. I upvoted him to cancel out your downvote. Who cares if people complain about downvotes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html :

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#215

Post by praptak »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #80

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.

Seek legal advice BEFORE speaking to HR. Seriously. If you are at the "document everything" stage, it's not the time to speak to HR.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#216

Post by carvantes »

ddevault wrote: post #137

If a company's value starts with a "B" (or... ugh... a "T"), they won't care about you. You should not give them anything of your life, because it's worth next to nothing to them. Mega-corps are life sucking leeches on employees, customers, and society as a whole. Everyone. How many horror stories is it going to take? Don't get duped by the glamour. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Uber, none of them are g…

I don't understand the allure of FAANG for residents besides the money. The thing is, for us H1B workers, we have very limited options. And these big companies have the best track record in processing GC for us. Unless these regulations got changed, and give smaller companies more chances. Given how powerful big companies are, I probably wouldn't be surprised if they also lobbied regulations against small companies hiring immigrants.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#217

Post by gorbachev »

sokoloff wrote: post #5

It’s a long, rambling post with some fairly vague and difficult to falsify accusations. I have no connections to Apple (other than as a consumer), but I could not wade through the article enough to determine if I thought there was an actual smoking gun. I suspect the story would be much more powerful if it were 1/5 as long and stuck to the material facts.

Amazing that someone who has English as a second language wouldn't write a perfectly legible blog post about a traumatic experience.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#218

Post by andrewem »

geophile wrote: post #107
raverbashing wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only answer with LOL to such offers Yes I've worked for a startup. Yes I did long hours. Yes I learned that's not sustainable and not a good way to make things work. So, no, I won't do it again.

I never understood the supposed attraction of "just like a startup, but in a big company!". That appears to mean that you will work in a small team, putting in unsustainable hours, but not receive the financial reward that a successful startup could provide. I've worked in several startups, and occasional death marches are unavoidable. They don't work month in and month out. But enduring that kind of life for just sa…

The other notable thing about “just like a startup but in a big company” (often for startups which have been acquired) is the frequent claim that the startup will be left alone by the rest of the company. Every single process and incentive is against that remaining true.

Maybe in some cases you can hope for the acquired startup to be the pet project of the acquirer’s founder/CEO?

Re: My Experience at Apple

#219

Post by cgearhart »

brokencode wrote: post #171

A company should, by policy, allow struggling employees the chance to try a different team and manager. Otherwise you never know if the employee is causing the problem or if the team is. In this situation, maybe the managers were extremely harsh on the OP, or maybe the OP was misleading in their story to sound like a victim. It’s hard to say without knowing how they’d do on another team. To force somebody out like th…

At my first job out of university I was hired into a company with a developmental program that lasted for the first 3-5 years. New engineers would do rotations for about a year to find a team with a good fit–but new engineers could also be fired pretty trivially within the first year.

During one of my rotations I worked on a project with a recent PhD graduate from a fairly renowned university–we'll call him Dave. Dave was terrible at...everything, really. He could not seem to do _anything_ right on the project, and struggled for months to make any progress at all. Eventually I wound up taking over his part of the project, and our manager basically told him "you're being let go at the end of the probationary period unless you find another team that will take you".

Dave shopped his resume around internally for the few months left in his probationary period and eventually transferred to a different group in another town a few hours away. I went to work full time for the team where I did my rotation, and a bit less than a year later my boss tells me he had gotten an unsolicited call from the director of the team where Dave transferred. Evidently, Dave was a rockstar there–like a duck in water. The director was calling to ask where Dave was recruited, and if we had anyone else like him or could help them with their recruitment pipelines to source more candidates like Dave.

All this to say: to this day I think there are a lot of reasons someone might succeed or fail in any given job. It has been my experience that finding the right team fit is hugely important, and often completely ignored.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#220

Post by zepto »

Apocryphon wrote: post #211
zepto wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This stuff happens in companies that aren’t secretive though. I don’t see how secrecy enables this.

Sunlight is a disinfectant. With transparency, even the largest most aloof company has to grapple to some degree with poor PR and public shaming. Amazon is well-known for having a toxic work culture even beyond its fulfillment centers, thanks to Amazon employees speaking out. And having a high-profile voice- a Tim Bray, a Susan Fowler, is also invaluable. As of yet, there isn't an equivalent to Apple, probably becaus…

I think Tim Bray is going a great service, but I don’t see any ‘disinfecting’ going on.

I would like to believe sunlight is a disinfectant, but I have yet to see that in the corporate world.

I think the only real ‘disinfectant’ would be the CEO realizing that it’s worth making things better for its own sake, and not just because of bad press.

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