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My Experience at Apple

ex-apple-engineer.medium.com

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Re: My Experience at Apple

#451

Post by rubicon33 »

exApple-anon wrote: post #30
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…

Some extra tidbits that didn't make it in because the edit timer ran out: - Despite the big release and herculean efforts, both of us were paid a fraction of our target bonus. This was the day I decided to move jobs. - I eventually grew some balls and told Apple to (a) pay me 2.5x during overtime (b) hire SREs for this critical service, or (c) go fuck themselves. They chose (c), which worked alright because our servi…

> 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.

Exactly this. Unless your manager has a history of giving raises and/or promotions to YOU for doing your JOB then do not assume, ever, that they will give you anything for overworking to chase a carrot on a stick.

That said if they have a history of recognizing and appreciating your work, and compensating you for extra effort, then by all means feel free to put some sweat into the work. That's a good relationship.

My rule of thumb whenever starting a new job is - Work hard for the first year, but almost never overtime. Do my job, and do it well, but don't kill myself. If manager recognizes the good work, and gives me a raise, I'll talk to them about incentive based objectives, and that I'm willing to work over time if there's a reward structure. Or, that I'm happy to continue at my 9-5 pace if that's working for them. Point is - always wait for them to make the first move. If they don't, either accept the 9-5 work for the pay, or move on to another employer that does value incentive based (bonus) salaries.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#452

Post by bdowling »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #387
bdowling wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Immigrants are typically more desperate and companies take advantage of that. An immigrant non-citizen employee who is harmed by an employer has just as much of a right to sue the employer as a citizen employee.

Have you paid attention to the behavior of USCIS employees over the last 4 years, notably towards people with backgrounds in predominantly Muslim countries (as the author of TFA appears to be)? It's not so much that you're wrong, more that it doesn't matter that you're right.

An employer-employee dispute will usually be litigated in either a state court or a US District Court (Article III court). USCIS, a federal Article II agency, has no influence over either court.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#453

Post by WalterBright »

rmk wrote: post #151
exApple-anon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some extra tidbits that didn't make it in because the edit timer ran out: - Despite the big release and herculean efforts, both of us were paid a fraction of our target bonus. This was the day I decided to move jobs. - I eventually grew some balls and told Apple to (a) pay me 2.5x during overtime (b) hire SREs for this critical service, or (c) go fuck themselves. They chose (c), which worked alright because our servi…

- 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. This has been my experience as well. Nowadays I work hard only while most of the following are true: - I'm making top dollar (good salary + equity value is high) - Work is interesting (somethin…

> Nobody notices

This is a common problem. It doesn't work to do great work and expect others to notice. You've got to promote yourself and your work. Nobody is going to do it for you.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#454

Post by xdavidliu »

generalpf wrote: post #54
randallsquared wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the rest was vague enough (and it only would be if this was a very common set of experiences), there was a screenshot of a 1-on-1 meeting time and room , so the anonymity ship has sailed.

The meeting was deleted afterwards. It’s mentioned right there in the post.

surely Apple could easily recover this information if they wanted to?

Re: My Experience at Apple

#455

Post by pembrook »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #212

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 obtain…

You’re correct on point 1, but point 2 is overly pessimistic.

The fact that the economy grows every year is proof alone that companies on the whole are generating value and not just exploiting people. The economy is not a zero sum game.

The truth is, all companies, no matter how cool their branding is, are just a collection of mostly average people. The larger the company, the more average the workforce will be. This is a statistical fact.

Inside any large organization, most of your job (no matter how technical) will be coordinating among groups of people, not creating X deliverable by yourself.

This inevitably results in the classic drama, tension, fights, camaraderie and occasional abuse you will find when you bring any group of humans together.

The X% of abusive situations that arise when you bring human animals together does not equal proof of widespread exploitation among the worlds highest paid employees. Slavery this is not.

It just means your experience in any big company will essentially be a probability game. At FAANG, you have a 95% chance of getting reasonably wealthy within 5 years, with a X% (lower) chance of abuse/toxic overwork and X% chance of dying in a traffic accident on your morning commute. The problem is nobody wants to acknowledge the potential downsides.

If you aren’t okay with this, there is of course the startup and indie hacker route.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#456

Post by derivagral »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #364
qppo wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never worked on a product where it ever made sense to be "on call." I'm an engineer, not a doctor.

If something goes catastrophically wrong at 1am, caused by some unforeseen bug in the code, who fixes it? Who diagnoses that an issue flooding the logs is not an issue with your software but something else down the line? I think it makes sense to have an on-call rota. Some people do it for a week or so. Cycle it through the team. There needs to be someone knowledgeable to call in case of issues.

Other fields have separate teams or overtime; salary-exempt isn't something an individual person can realistically negotiate against a company (imo).

Re: My Experience at Apple

#457

Post by jimbob45 »

p_l wrote: post #425
mcny wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you supposed to do if your employment contract says you’re exempt (meaning no overtime pay)?

I think this is a case of culture clash between USA, where "overtime exempt" is a thing, and most of Europe, where it is required to be paid (of course, there are cases where people end up being pressured... or like me, forgot to log the overtime hours despite secretary going around with the sheet). Of course that only applies to people working on employment contracts, not those who got seduced by "B2B" :|

It’s supposed to work both ways - I work 60 hours this week with the implicit understanding that I work 20 next week. Sure, I don’t get OT pay, but I can abide by that as long as it all balances out to 2000 hours at the end of the year.

That said, the abuse of the exemption system is arguably a pandemic in the US.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#458

Post by cunac »

mcny wrote: post #415
koonsolo wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is expected that we do at least 15 - 25% overtime without compensation Is this still a thing as a developer in the western world? If any of my managers proposed this, I would laugh, then say "ah wait, you're serious?", and then laugh some more.

What are you supposed to do if your employment contract says you’re exempt (meaning no overtime pay)?

I have a very simple philosophy `no pay no work`. It is about having self respect.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#460

Post by anonymousiam »

saagarjha wrote: post #418
anonymousiam wrote: post #189

Apple is a big company with a great reputation, but there are bad apples in every bunch. My biggest takeaway from this article is that the author should take this advice: Before you accept a position, find out what project you will be working on, and get to know the people who you will be working with. If you are being hired to replace someone who left, try to find out why they left (or were fired). I have not done m…

This can be hard to do, especially at a place like Apple where you’ll often just get a basic idea of what you’ll be working on. And how are you supposed to judge your coworkers by the hour or so you spent with them in an interview?

For a PhD level position, she should have had a good idea of what she would be working on. The fact that her manager skipped her on-boarding meeting should have been a BIG red flag right at the beginning. I cannot imagine a corporate culture where that would be acceptable or even permitted.
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