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Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an ‘associate’

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Re: Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an ‘associate’

#101

Post by vsskanth »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #87
vsskanth wrote: post #66

Something that's not mentioned here is this refusal to even confirm what you worked on also affects people's immigration status. To approve I-140, USCIS requires a signed letter from employers confirming your title, experience and skill sets. Most companies really don't like to give these details out for some reason, and it's always a struggle, especially outside tech. People manage by contacting their managers to pa…

In that case it is interesting that the law does not mandate this. In France you get a paper with the name of the company and the dates of your employment. This is the only information a company can provide, and confirm when requested. The concept of referrals does not exist in practical terms (I had to give some once for an American company and gave good friends who said I was wonderful) - because they would not wor…

There's no law in the US unfortunately so there's no obligation on the employer to provide this information either. There is something called "The Work Number" that certain employers subscribe to for employer verification, but that is not accepted by USCIS.

Re: Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an ‘associate’

#102

Post by mindslight »

mschuster91 wrote: post #27

> official databases maintained by job verification services run by companies such as Equifax and Lexis-Nexis Sweet jesus how is that even legal?! And... why are companies outsourcing what used to be a core competence of an HR department?!

The US is a surveillance state entrepreneurial free for all. I suspect the surveillance databases we know about are only the tip of the iceberg.

"You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day. 1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now" - in a movie that was released over 25 years ago, and our society has been sleepwalking further into the panopticon ever since.

We desperately need a US version of the GDPR, one that doesn't get neutered by all of these surveillance industries interested in preserving the status quo of their anti-human businesses. In fact I'd say the US should just wholesale adopt the EU GDPR verbatim, and let the courts figure out the details arising from different legal systems. That couldn't be any more complex than interpreting all of the loopholes the corporate Parties would end up adding to newly-drafted privacy legislation.

Re: Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an ‘associate’

#103

Post by exhilaration »

kuroguro wrote: post #29
tablespoon wrote: post #3

> Apple offers a phone number employers can call to verify titles of former Apple employees. A voice recording on that line directs callers to the web site for InVerify, an employment verification service provider owned by credit agency Equifax. When The Washington Post called InVerify’s customer support number, a customer service representative said Apple is the only company he knew of that changes job titles of emp…

Think about it the other way - you could have been a janitor for Apple and your new employers would be none the wiser.

There's no way the janitors are Apple employees. Standard procedure at big companies is to hire contractors for janitorial and food services.

Re: Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an ‘associate’

#104

Post by ctheb »

A recent HN submission [1] highlighted that a surprising amount of detailed employment history is shared by employers with third parties.

When I pulled mine it said “SW Dev Eng 4”, curious to see if that’ll change to “Associate” after I quit… or if third parties track the entire title history, like they do track salary history.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29834753

Re: Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an ‘associate’

#105

Post by pbronez »

tedivm wrote: post #18

I think it's really important to note that Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies, but not only do they choose to do so they also make sure the information is wrong. Apple is, essentially, being unethical on two levels. They're selling or sharing employee information, and they're purposefully making it so that information is wrong. I want to stress this- I ask during the intervie…

> Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies

Also, those third parties don't have to take Apple's word. Equifax and Lexis-Nexis (named in the article) are selling a data product, which is undermined by Apple's bad behavior. Shouldn't these companies have an incentive to provide accurate data?

This is where it gets interesting. I looked up the products in question, and they are VERY careful to talk about streamlining workflows, and connecting you to previous employers without every making claims about the accuracy of the data provided by thos employers.

Equifax's "The Work Number can deliver an automated income and employment verification solution that streamlines the transfer of information between employers and verifier."[0] They do this "thanks to a powerful alliance partnerships with many of the top payroll and HCMs". They are clearly just sloshing data out of payroll systems into a proprietary database. You'd think they'd notice when a large employer overwrites everyone's title on their last paycheck, but they make no claims about quality control on this data.

The article specifically mentions Inverify, which is owned by Equifax. Their verification services page[2] also focuses on efficiency ("Throw it over the Fence"). They claim to "[gather] your electronic data and [upload] relevant information so you do not have to search for employee data from multiple sources." Note that there's nothing in there about quality control. I suspect Inverify exists to provide a services layer over the The Work Number data product.

LexisNexis doesn't make their offerings as obvious. I found this pdf for LexisNexis Screening Solutions[3]. They say "We have developed relationships with many employers and will make those difficult calls for you, thereby simplifying your job." One way they help make those difficult calls is that they "call and verify previous employment with each source." So that's a data quality claim, but they're still focused on just parroting whatever the upstream employer says.

You would expect that products like this would have rigorous, automated anomaly detection procedures in place. As an employer, I don't want to waste time figuring out why this otherwise great senior dev was an "associate" at Apple. I want my verification provider to, at minimum, tell me "heads up, Apple is a fickle and vindictive employer so you can't really trust this." Of course it would be even BETTER if they said "our professional assessment is they were a Level 4. We believe that because that's what the previous 200 paystubs and 4 W2 forms said before they screwed with the data after their departure."

If you're gonna build a terrifying data business, at least be good at it!

[0] https://workforce.equifax.com/resource/-/resource/employment...

[1] https://workforce.equifax.com/solutions/employment-verificat...

[2] https://inverify.net/our-services/verification-services.aspx

[3] https://www.lexisnexis.com/literature/pdfs/EXP_Previous_Empl...

Re: Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an ‘associate’

#106

Post by gaius_baltar »

froggertoaster wrote: post #30
SilasX wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Well, he went on medical leave, so we changed his title to Mainstream Medicine Denier and then Organ System Pentester." Reference: https://apecsec.org/steve-jobs-liver-transplant-controversy/

Not funny.

> Not funny.

I don't think the parent comment intended it to be funny, is sounds like a tongue in cheek criticism of an ethically suspect problem.

Re: Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an ‘associate’

#107

Post by FireBeyond »

hammock wrote: post #33
tedivm wrote: post #18

I think it's really important to note that Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies, but not only do they choose to do so they also make sure the information is wrong. Apple is, essentially, being unethical on two levels. They're selling or sharing employee information, and they're purposefully making it so that information is wrong. I want to stress this- I ask during the intervie…

>Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies, but not only do they choose to do so they also make sure the information is wrong. Apple is, essentially, being unethical on two levels By giving out wrong personal information, the argument could be made that they are protecting privacy. I do not believe saying "associate" is wrong, though. It's a term that is commonly used by HR to refer…

> "Employee" is a term fraught with legal and other liability in it's use (think Uber drivers - are they employees or contractors?). HR departments will refer to everybody as “associates” to mitigate risk. If Apple wanted to confirm employment, but not divulge titles, they could say associate.

But yet if you call these services while the person is still employed, they absolutely will divulge titles.

There's no risk mitigation happening. It's just "you're no longer one of us, we don't give a shit".

Re: Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an ‘associate’

#108

Post by eloisant »

HWR_14 wrote: post #91
wpietri wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I have read a bunch of cult-escapee biographies, as the cult dynamic fascinated me. All of them had an extreme narcissist at the center. Somehow I had never connected that with the famous tech company with an extreme narcissist at the center. But you're right, that pattern of retaliation against people who dare to leave fits perfectly here.

I mean, I don't feel like Tim Cook is an extreme narcissist cult leader, but I don't know enough about him. Of course, the fact that he hasn't mythologized himself as much as Steve Jobs did is a piece of evidence in favor of him not being a narcissist. If I had to choose a "tech company cult" it would be Tesla/SpaceX/Boring/whatever else Musk is running.

Apple was clearly a cult company when Steve Jobs was CEO, and I feel like they continued to work as they did by inertia.

Re: Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an ‘associate’

#109

Post by sumeno »

josh2600 wrote: post #70
torstenvl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a huge dick move by Apple. Ehh, I think this is a Chesteranlon's Razorfence situation. Never attribute to malice something for which you do not yet understand the purpose. HR world generally is afraid to denigrate former employees for liability reasons, and many corporate HR departments have a policy of confirming only whether an employee worked for the company, and nothing else. Choosing a vague term like…

Came here to say this. As far as I’m concerned this is a privacy protection. It’s trivial to verify someone’s position at Apple with a reference check.

> It’s trivial to verify someone’s position at Apple with a reference check.

Only if they left on good terms.

Re: Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an ‘associate’

#110

Post by tristor »

_fat_santa wrote: post #6

Wouldn't there be other ways for you to prove you were a "Level 4" or whatever at Apple and not an associate? An offer letter from Apple? Or just the totality of circumstances in general. If say you're interviewing for a "Sr Engineer" position, you're just not going to have an instance where the candidate shows experience and knowledge but doesn't get hired because some record from Lexis Nexis says that he was an "as…

> Wouldn't there be other ways for you to prove you were a "Level 4" or whatever at Apple and not an associate? An offer letter from Apple?

Having gone through this with several employers, the largest company doing this verification is HireRight. HireRight is BEYOND incompetent at every single level. They refuse documentation such as offer letters on company letterhead to prove a title. The only documentation they accept from applicants is highly sensitive tax documentation from the IRS, which of course does not contain titles but incidentally reveals compensation details they can hoover up into their database but is not relevant to the purpose they were hired by your future employer to do.

If you think credit reporting agencies in the US are Machiavellian and maliciously incompetent, wait until you deal with employment verification firms, they're worse and often the same corporate entities (as noted in the article, another large one is WorkNumber owned by Equifax). These entities put most of the work onto the candidate, display no competence or care for accuracy whatsoever, and generally deliver intentionally misleading or inaccurate results to your future employer. It's so pervasive, that my own complaints to my recruiter were heeded and understood because in their words "oh their reports are always wrong about employment history, we only pay attention to the criminal background check part."

So, in short, no you can't simply provide a valid offer letter showing the title you were hired with to prove that title or to prove a promotion.

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