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My Experience at Apple

ex-apple-engineer.medium.com

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Re: My Experience at Apple

#791

Post by efavdb »

EricE wrote: post #590
rmk wrote: post #151

Earlier 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…

>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. I dunno - I worked hard, especially early in my career and people noticing lead to four new jobs, two of which included substantial pay/benefit raises. Then again more than a bit of that hard wo…

Agree. Not always easy to be rewarded within a company. However, others will notice you do good work (assuming you can make it visible) and they’ll be a great resource when seeking next positions.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#792

Post by piva00 »

kashif wrote: post #691
periya wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, such an approach completely desensitizes the human aspect of work and treats the people working as commodities that are expendable. Engineering is hard, teams might need to go through multiple iterations/generations to get the desired results. A better investment would be to develop the right engineering culture rather than Team A vs Team B duking it out.

you are out of touch with reality. people are expendable, not pleasant but true - get a grip :) Also, try describing the "right engineering culture"

It only is that way because we make that way. There's no law in the Universe dictating that people are spendable, it's part of a system, a myth we created and live on.

Don't get too cocky against someone that has a more humane view of what's valuable to be human. Get a grip that reality has very many shades of grey.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#793

Post by AgentOrange1234 »

tdeck wrote: post #624
AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I speculate some reasons are: 1. Being able to reveal something new and surprising leads to a flurry of good press. Failing that, constant rumors about what they are working on is like free advertising. 2. Keeping something a secret until it is shipping gives competitors less time to react/plan. 3. Preventing your employees from publicly discussing what they are doing may make it harder to know whom to poach, and har…

So they're making it hard to leave, creating a distinctive in-group and air of mystery, and clamping down on information to maintain strict control of the narrative. I can't help but notice that some of these are the same reasons why cults are often so secretive.

Sure. I think there are some pretty deep parallels.

The company had been really successful. That makes it easy to trust the leadership and believe they know best.

If you’re changing the world and doing the best work of your life, maybe that’s worth making sacrifices for (overtime or whatever).

On the bright side, I’m not sure there’s any equivalent of the malevolent, sexually abusive stuff we see in cults. Hard to complain about being a well-paid engineer with good benefits, etc.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#794

Post by josto »

fredericr wrote: post #787
josto wrote: post #505

Dude go talk to a work comp attorney. You don’t have to pay up front and this is a textbook stress claim, esp if six months employment. It’s sad nobody knows their rights. Your first clue is the fact that they were pressuring you to resign. NEVER RESIGN. It sad he will be dealing with this stress for life but never thought that he should at least consult with an attorney??? THIS IS AMERICA. You think HR and those idi…

If you read the story, you know that the person here was a young woman, probably from Afghanistan, on a temp visa in the US. There is no way she's going to hire a lawyer, she's probably already back in her home country.

“Probably.” Assume much?

Re: My Experience at Apple

#795

Post by wintercharm »

GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #200
rmk wrote: post #151

Earlier 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…

Wow, Great List! The last one (juniors calling the shots) really hit home; when I worked in , I was ultimately standing on the shoulder of midgets. The worse part? As a CS grad, I knew how to do better, but: nobody with the power to change things understood how or why what I was suggesting was better(!). I've long thought about this afterward, and concluded it's that 'my world' (which includes a lot of experience, an…

Hiring Newbies to call the shots becoming a cost saving pillar that eroded work culture at Boeing is one of those things that indirectly contributed to the recent debacle.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#796

Post by microtherion »

lemonspat wrote: post #740
microtherion wrote: post #481

"If you are an Apple employee, please send this story to your upper management particularly Tim Cook." What exactly should we say? "Hey Tim, this unnamed ex-employee, working on an unnamed and extremely vaguely characterized project in an unnamed organization, is accusing unnamed co-workers, managers, and HR-representatives of perpetrating truly appalling abuses on her. You should look into this at once!" ? It's a di…

I have seen people on Twitter get angry over less information. What’s wrong with escalating this internally? We can both agree that there should be a real investigation right?

I agree. But I don't think the intermediate step of Apple employees reporting this anonymized story to Tim Cook helps much.

The original author has the option of reporting this pretty directly to Tim Cook (or, presumably, a team of minions acting as his mail filter), naming names, projects, etc. He'd be well advised to take this report seriously.

Alternatively, the author also has a number of further options. They could go to the press, as mentioned in the article. They could also find themselves a lawyer. IANAL, but the allegations, if true, would seem to constitute a constructive dismissal[0], which (apart from human decency) is a reason why Apple should have every interest to investigate the allegations.

Any of these three options would seem to me to be a promising way to get this investigated.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal

Re: My Experience at Apple

#797

Post by microtherion »

kamaal wrote: post #749
microtherion wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to know what's going on in every corner of a company as large as Apple, but open harassment certainly would not fly in our particular organization. Our team alone has engineers belonging to 4 different religions I know of (and obviously quite a few not identifying with any particular religion), and I've seen at least Christians, Hindus, and Muslims promoted to management.

>>but open harassment certainly would not fly in our particular organization. Can't comment much on Apple. But as a Muslim I've seen this in quite a few places. Both in India and the US. It's not even that much a company thing as much as it is a personal thing. Some people are just bigoted and don't like you. In fact the very sight of your existence disturbs them very deeply. And yeah, if you are better than them, it…

I can't vouch for a complete absence of hidden prejudice, and I'm sure sometimes things happen that people perceive as discriminatory (e.g. on team outings, not everybody automatically remembers the vegetarians when picking restaurants, and one person's jocular lunch banter might be stepping on the trunk / kicking the cross of another person's deity of choice, etc).

Re: My Experience at Apple

#798

Post by oconnor663 »

temac wrote: post #303
oconnor663 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The primary lesson I learnt is that it doesn't matter if you work hard. As with most things in life, there are places where it matters and places where it doesn't matter. If someone's a junior employee working in a big company, it's likely that they don't have the necessary experience to figure out whether hard work matters in their position. That's an important risk to be aware of. But the opposite advice, avoidin…

I don't know. Work fairly, certainly. Work hard ... what's the point? So in some cases you want to fast track your advancement in a direction that you like and this possible through this method, and you actually can work hard, so in this case take the chance if you want to. But that kind of situation is quite rare, I think. Also certainly do not appear to be working too lightly. But also do not appear to be working e…

> Work hard... what's the point?

I think it really depends on the person. It's a very common problem for people to procrastinate or drag their feet on the parts of their job that they don't particularly like. (Just like most students drag their feet doing homework they don't like.) But no job (or school program) is ever 100% fun stuff, and being able to delay gratification and get the unpleasant parts done is a super important life skill that not everyone has. For a lot of people, maybe most HN readers, this is basic stuff that they nailed in high school and never had a problem with after that. But I'm not sure that's the majority experience.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#799

Post by istorical »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #585
lubesGordi wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the first thing that really shocked me at my first job (startup in SF back over a decade ago). The attitude that what we're doing really matters, and if something was found broken on the weekend we'd get a call and have to come into the office. Fucking absurd hubris all throughout SV.

Why are you doing it at all if it doesn't matter?

To earn a living.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#800

Post by m23khan »

Frankly speaking, it sounds the author ended up joining a 'dud' team where the entire team is well steeped with playing politics rather than actually being productive. It happens in large companies and sometimes in small ones as well. How these unproductive teams survive is beyond me but they do.

I hope the Author realizes one thing: Never ever complain to Manager and/or HR in any company about other team member UNLESS they disclose themselves to you that they don't like that person and ask you for your negative input -- even then, keep it almost neutral / slightly negative. And if you do make the mistake of complaining, DO NOT EVER do it over email/chat/anything written -- a simple call / over-the-coffee conversation is more than enough. Based on this fact, its hard for me to fault the Senior Manager / Director / VP at Apple the Author talked about -- once this kind of thing starts, at any company it is expected outcome from Management.

From what I can deduce - the Manager and the violent co-worker were best of friends and Manager was going all out trying to protect that co-worker who was a toxic and non functioning employee. The Manager and co-worker kept on making stupid rules and confrontational policies and the Author kept on thinking she doesn't have any choice and is stuck otherwise she will get deported -- I mean, USA (or any other Country) is not a place where you would end up going in depression over for and start popping mental health pills for while contemplating suicide. I would choose my dignity and sanity even if it meant going back to Yemen or Somalia or somewhere similar. The Author could have simply started applying for jobs in lots of countries for some R&D job or post-doc position and should have left Apple.

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