It is in the corporate DNA from the very beginning.
https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/steve-jobss-dark-pas...
My Experience at Apple
471–480 of 840 posts
Re: My Experience at Apple
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
Throwaway for obvious reasons I work for a company belonging to Accenture. I can only agree. Shareholders get +10%. Employees get nil. It is expected that we do at least 15 - 25% overtime without compensation. Project manager promises everything the client asks for. Even if they know we cannot in any universe deliver this without massive overtime. At the same time they introduce new mandatory processes to follow cost…
> Accenture Large consulting firms seems to operate this way, being basically a pyramid with endless layers of non-programming "Enterprise Architect Solution Expert". I've had folks tell me explicitly when joining these firms post-grad that their goal was not to code in two years.
Any company that has to change its name to avoid bad publicity is not worth working for.
Re: My Experience at Apple
#473Things 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…
Point number 1 is very important to never forget. No matter what level you are at, HR's job is to protect the levels above you, not help you. If you are an engineer that means an opaque shield of HR policies to protect the company and all people in your management chain. Middle manager? HR will shield the directors and VPs above you, concentrating particularly on keeping the VPs safe no matter what they do.
I always figured it was more like, they protect the company aka the group. If your interests and the company's align they are in your corner; if not then you are the "other" and their enemy. The bias towards protecting the upper ranks not being their mission statement, instead the company's interests simply more often align with the VP than the NCG.
Re: My Experience at Apple
#474Things 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…
> 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.
This is the right thing to do however for many people on a visa it has significant life consequences and financial hardship with having limited time to pack up your life and leave the country you built a life in.
I’m sure if the author wasn’t dependent on having a visa they would of left much sooner than they did. Companies know they have unfair leverage on employees dependent on sponsored visas. Employees on sponsored visas have very little options and next to no rights, in this case the author felt suicide might be their only way out.
I’ve been in a situation in a job I didn’t like with a bad manager well aware if I quit I had 90 days to find a new job or leave the country. 90 days isn’t a long time to find a new job or pack/sell all your belongings and ship to a new country without a job/place to live. I had to put a plan together to save enough money to cover the significant costs of leaving, a timeline to find a job with a deadline if it doesn’t work out to pack and go. The situation was far less stressful than the authors and I was in a good position where if the worst came to the worst I could take the financial hit and be relatively ok on the other end. Non the less it was incredibly stressful and put me in bad mental health so can completely understand why for some people they believe suicide to be a valid option.
For some people leaving is not just a case of handing in their notice.
Re: My Experience at Apple
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author is... well, I don't think interviews are going to go the way he or she thinks. To wit, reading part 1, the first paragraph boils down to "my manager was on vacation for my start date. I was provided with an onboarding buddy, who warned me that Apple is trigger happy firing folks." Para 2: manager made a likely inappropriate joke about last name. para 3: not really relevant? para 4: project was raw. para 5:…
I actually don't get what's the problem here. I manage a team and one time I booked a vacation and then we hired a guy. He quit (he was the only person to ever quit that was working under me, company is treating employees good) and said in the review that this was horrible from my side. Am I not suppose to take a vacation ever?
I've seen this attitude quite often in juniors: The manager is always supposed to be available. Not immediately answering your email so you need to follow up with a phone call? Thanks, you just interrupted my talk with my boss and his boss about our department budget, and your colleague next door could also have solved your urgent problem.
More often the reverse complaint is uttered, and because of the power differential I think that direction is far prevalent.
But ideally, both sides should learn to see each other as human beings with limited lifetime, limited availability and patience and a life outside of work. As a manager, this is a little easier to accomplish: just scold your subordinates for answering emails off hours and remind them to take their vacations seriously. They'll learn quickly to do the same for you. Everybody wins.
Re: My Experience at Apple
#476I feel extremely uncharitable but I don't see any other comments raising this - this reads like a lot like the writings of people who believe they're being 'gangstalked'. Meetings being added/removed to calendars to mess with you, an 'implied' threat being left in the notes section of a hidden slide in a presentation, meeting notes being manipulated to make them look bad, this sort of thing.
Maybe I'm just extremely lucky but I've never worked with anyone who would put in the effort for this sort of thing, even if they really disliked the person. And some of it just makes no sense - an implied murder/suicide threat, in the notes section in a hidden slide in a slideshow?
Also the formatting being a long screed with random bolding doesn't help, although that could well be a non-native speaker not realising how this appears to natives.
Re: My Experience at Apple
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Other fields don’t release new version of their product every few days. Oncall for things that are always changing is very hard to be done by people who aren’t ones making those changes. You need formal release process and expecting training for each change. That’s not how 99.99% of internet businesses work.
Re: My Experience at Apple
#478Honestly 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…
There is a tendency to give Apple a pass among the big companies. They sell actual products instead of you, the user('s data). Their logistical chain does not rely upon a system of (often fellow American) warehouse workers who are pushed to the breaking point. [The developing world workforce that actually assembles their products- that's another story, but bogus hoaxes like Mike Daisey's only add confusion and make t…
They're also hip, maintain some level of underdog cachet, and folks like their products. People wish they could be that, and tend to give a pass to the things they idolize.
You might also imagine that inside a company made of money, there's no need for anyone to be a jerk.
Re: My Experience at Apple
#479Earlier 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. 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.
A good manager should.
Re: My Experience at Apple
#480Posting 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…
Sadly, you can fill in the blank with any FAANG company with this story. I’ve heard it a thousand times. Toxic management. Sorry you went through that, sorry that was your first taste of engineering out of college. Glad you stuck with it. It’s a tough spot to be. Do you roll over and do the job your being yelled at to do even though you know any concessions are BS? Or like the senior folks, do you walk? It’s a really…
Big difference is that other FAANGs have much less secretive inside culture. That of course doesn’t prevent abuse, and horrible experiences will happen everywhere. But it’s much easier to hide and develop pockets of abuse if everything you work on is top secret.