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My Experience at Apple

ex-apple-engineer.medium.com

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Re: My Experience at Apple

#821

Post by lawnchair_larry »

IntelMiner wrote: post #735
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped reading when it became obvious that this was some coddled kid’s first exposure to real life. When I see words like “psychological safety”, that sounds straight out of the playbook with the Brown University “safe spaces” crap. Maybe they were saving their real bombs for the end. I’ll never know, but they are probably going to have a very difficult time adjusting to any job.

You stopped reading and formed an incredibly offensive and demeaning opinion of them, validated by something that doesn't exist?

I don’t understand what this means.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#823

Post by 3131s »

dang wrote: post #782
3131s wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs was a fucking asshole and should have died in prison along with the rest of the criminals.

Your comments have been breaking the site guidelines. Please read and follow them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . Perhaps you don't owe Steve Jobs et. al. better, but you owe this community better if you're posting here. Much better.

The quality of my comments lately is quite low, I'll give you that.

You're actually more than welcome to delete the account, aren't you guys supposed to allow that anyway under GDPR (for Europeans at least)?

Re: My Experience at Apple

#824

Post by mangamadaiyan »

OOPMan wrote: post #298
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…

Stuff like this is why I refuse to work at large companies. Shit does happen at smaller companies, for sure, but it seems like larger companies are just that much more dysfunctional that I don't want to take the risk.

I've been on both sides of the BigCo fence, and in my experience, the small companies I've worked at have been much more dysfunctional than the alternatives. A BigCo is usually a loose conglomerate of smaller fiefdoms; -much- the sanity level in your team depends on your immediate boss and coworkers. If you luck out and find the right bunch, you're set. A small company is usually a larger fiefdom than a BigCo team, and self-selects for certain bodily orifices, doormats and complexity junkies.

YMMV.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#826

Post by jldugger »

ex_Apple_throw wrote: post #649
sjg007 wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sunday calls are probably to sync up with China’s Monday mornings.

And India. My last Apple manager was always on late night meetings with India because ~80% of the Apple Online Store's work was outsourced to India. Another manager at his level had like 200-300 direct reports located in India. I actually counted the number at the time because it was so many people.

> Another manager at his level had like 200-300 direct reports located in India.

Must be hell at review time.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#827

Post by jldugger »

billy_beef wrote: post #598
refulgentis wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how this would change anything - its a function of social dynamics, not how afraid managers are of their reports

Unions come with consistent skills trainings, legal counsel, and representatives to intercede when management is treating employees poorly. This seems like a very helpful stable of support to be able to call on in situation like this one.

> Unions come with consistent skills trainings, legal counsel, and representatives to intercede when management is treating employees poorly

I didn't notice any of that when I was represented by SEIU. I had not seen a raise in 4 years, and representatives didn't even call me until after I was laid off. Found a more stable job paying 4x as much though as a result of the layoff.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#828

Post by jldugger »

trixie_ wrote: post #650
verisimilidude wrote: post #614

The real story here is that the author depended upon these jerks for his/her work visa, facing deportation back to (I assume) a less pleasant country. It sounds like everyone involved took advantage of that fact. Perhaps systemically. I've faced similarly abusive workplace cliques on multiple occasions. They're very easy to bust if you're willing to put aside your personal shame. But I never had a visa hanging over m…

It doesn’t sound like she was being taken advantage of, they obviously wanted her to leave. She was staying (and killing herself) out of fear deportation which sucks. My question is if California is at-will employment why didn’t they fire her when things weren’t working out? Is it because she went to HR?

HR reviews when a manager wants to fire someone, and ensures they have justifiable cause, rather than something more nefarious like racial animus that can lead to a lawsuit later. So if the employee is in certain protected classes, they need to dot their i's and cross their t's first.

While HR's main job is to advise and not order, this is one area where management tends to listen because in certain cases liability can become personal, and the cost is low.

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