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My Experience at Apple

ex-apple-engineer.medium.com

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Re: My Experience at Apple

#701

Post by pembrook »

cambalache wrote: post #543
pembrook wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This does not make any sense. The economy in the colonial Americas grew exponentially PRECISELY due to the explotation of people.

The economy in the colonial Americas grew exponentially because thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then millions of new people were arriving every year and creating value.

The shitty, exploitative things those humans also did back then were not responsible for the growth. Countries in the rest of the world were doing the same things back then but not growing as fast. Only 5% of the slaves taken from Africa were brought to North America.

For a further example, the US experienced its greatest upward climb during the industrial revolution, after slavery was abolished.

If exploitation was the only reason for the US’s success, then why would the US experience explosive growth after abolishing slavery?

Re: My Experience at Apple

#702

Post by p0nce »

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…

It's fun because sometimes all of your points are true at once :)

Re: My Experience at Apple

#703

Post by rendall »

Diesel555 wrote: post #619

"Unfortunately, Apple became the place that I lost feeling of physical and psychological safety and the terror that it inflicted on me has impacted me on such a core level that the painful memories and flashbacks have replaced my dreams and they will hunt me until I am alive." I really don't understand this. I'm not saying this from a perspective that they are wrong, but that I honestly don't get it, please help me u…

The author was physically assaulted by their iBuddy, who was later promoted to management, among other abuses

Edit: I misread this part. I thought she had slammed the door into her face: One day I went to use the woman restroom my “iBuddy” was there. She told me “die!” and slammed the door in my face.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#704

Post by spookster »

dlgeek wrote: post #603
hsuduebc2 wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give us additional info please?

Accenture used to be Arthur Anderson but changed the name as a result of the Enron scandal.

That’s just not true. Arthur Andersen originally spun off its consulting arm into “Andersen Consulting” under a global holding company. AA did accounting, AC consulting.

AC paid AA 15% of its profits every year. But AC was growing far faster than AA, so AA started growing another consulting arm, which was against the contract.

AC partners claimed contractual breach, and as part of the separation settlement had to change their name and distance themselves from the brand.

This was lucky given what happened with AA’s reputation later.

(Source: I worked there in that time period)

Re: My Experience at Apple

#705

Post by thinkingemote »

griffoa wrote: post #318

I dont quite remember the meeting room names in Mathilda 3 over at the Apple on Mathilda Ave, but if the MA03 (in the screenshot) refers to "Mathilda 3", then this story is totally believable. I worked at Apple and it was absolutely horrible. I remember sitting on the train and actually thinking about killing myself. Reasons were many, but mostly I just didn't fit in there, I think. I felt like people there were also…

>Always having some problem with a hand or a back or some family problem or whatever which demanded that they take days off

You now know that they too hated the place and did whatever they could to not be there, I hope. They were not "whiny little bitches" at all.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#706

Post by p0nce »

WalterBright wrote: post #508
aurelius wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good manager should.

You'll be much happier with the career results of taking care of this yourself rather than waiting for someone else to do it. I've seen too many people become embittered waiting for someone else.

This is generally true, however in a toxic workplace being effective might set you as a target for doomed projects or envy - even sabotage. You may see people getting promoted by threatening to leave rather than doing good work. You can't assume good intent in every situation sadly.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#707

Post by joe_91 »

WatchDog wrote: post #560
chromatin wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know more than one famous scientist who does this. Multiple postdocs working on the same project. Whomever gets there first gets a Cell-Science-Nature paper. The other(s) get nothing. Probably a very common abusive management style at high levels in many industries.

The personal/political aspect aside, I can think of multiple projects that could have benefited from an approach like this. I'm often astonished by the inefficiency of project delivery, particularly in large companies. Teams spending months building sub-systems from scratch, where there is an off the shelf(sometimes open source) tool that will do the same job and better. Man years of work going into chasing trends li…

Why not just find the best people for the job who can understand the needs of the project they're working on and execute correctly?

Running two teams against each other just screams of waste/bad management in my opinion.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#708

Post by acntr_employee »

spookster wrote: post #704
dlgeek wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accenture used to be Arthur Anderson but changed the name as a result of the Enron scandal.

That’s just not true. Arthur Andersen originally spun off its consulting arm into “Andersen Consulting” under a global holding company. AA did accounting, AC consulting. AC paid AA 15% of its profits every year. But AC was growing far faster than AA, so AA started growing another consulting arm, which was against the contract. AC partners claimed contractual breach, and as part of the separation settlement had to cha…

Correct. The separation did happen before the former parent was involved in the Enron scandal. Or at least before it became public.

Not that Accenture doesn't have enough scandals on their own. So they are by far not the clean guys in this tale.

I remember the German "Berateraffäre" just to state one example.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#709

Post by qznc »

aurelius wrote: post #479
WalterBright wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

When I switched to a different team a year ago, I talked with my ex-manager and asked what he considers be strengths and weaknesses. I found the answer quite funny because it was a random sample of mostly minor things. It showed my that my manager has actually no clue what I'm doing all day. He is a nice guy and wants to be a good manager but that is harder than it looks.

His biggest criticism was that 20 months earlier, I skipped him and addressed his bosses boss for some bureaucratic thing. I find that argument reasonable but it showed me that he was not aware of the full context. Either I never explained it to him or he forgot. The context is: At that time I was in a special two week task-force team where his bosses boss was officially involved as Scrum Master. As such he was officially responsible for impediments. The impediment was: We either get this bureaucracy thing out of the way today or I'm unable to participate in the task-force anymore. Given the urgency and him being our Scrum Master, I found skipping levels the right thing to do.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#710

Post by acntr_employee »

j1elo wrote: post #482
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 even had to look for what it means to "be exempt". > Exempt employees stand in contrast to non-exempt employees, which are paid minimum wage and overtime above the standard 40-hour workweek. Wow if I had heard this in a random bar discussion I would called it complete and utter bullshit. The more I read HN the more it feels like being a worker in the US is like riding a horse through the wild west; anything can hap…

From my contract, there is no overtime pay. Overtime has to be given as free time within a specific amount of time after the overtime occurred.

But for any rolling period of x timeunits (don't want to be too specific obviously) I have a specific amount of hours of overtime that the company doesn't need to compensate in free time. In my case this is ~20% of my regular time in ever rolling period.

But up to a maximum amount of overtime hours per year. This max amount is short of 10% of my yearly hours.

So in the end I have to accept about 10% overtime just already compensated with my contract.

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