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How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

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Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#21

Post by skuhn »

I worked at Apple relatively briefly, in a lead role on an Important Project that required its own form to be disclosed on it (besides the general agreement you sign to begin employment). A truly toxic work environment that I couldn't get out of fast enough once I shipped the project.

All kinds of projects at Apple have their own disclosure forms, and you are only given one to sign if it's deemed necessary to your work. My responsibilities on this project didn't entitle me to be disclosed on it, which led to all manner of hilariously frustrating guessing games as I tried to deliver on the requirements without actually being told what they were. Conversations regularly went like this: "I can't tell you that that approach won't satisfy the requirements, but I would think twice if I were you." Ultimately I think that I puzzled out what was needed and successfully delivered it, but the method was pure madness.

This wasn't even some new silver gadget launch, it was an infrastructure component to a future product launch down the road. Yet everything and anything can be given the top secret treatment.

Why is that? Running a disclosure-required project is prestigious. Being disclosed on projects is a badge of honor, almost even a high score board, and not being disclosed is used as a weapon in big or small ways.

Anything that Apple manages to ship (in my experience) is in spite of their corporate culture, not because of it.

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#22

Post by signaru »

I once worked under a research grant where the leader is trying to impress by delivering more than promised, i.e. doing a related side project that is not part of the original plan. Upon learning about this "secret" side project, this didn't please the grant giving agency so the side project was made "official" while funding remained the same. An increase in official deliverables without an increase in funding and staff was just a recipe for burn-out. Worse, the engineers that had to toil in the side project did not get as much recognition or networking as those in the official deliverable, as it was not the priority among the collaborators. On the other hand, the leader only had to demand more from engineers to appear prolific to the eyes of the public.

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#24

Post by urthor »

skuhn wrote: post #21

I worked at Apple relatively briefly, in a lead role on an Important Project that required its own form to be disclosed on it (besides the general agreement you sign to begin employment). A truly toxic work environment that I couldn't get out of fast enough once I shipped the project. All kinds of projects at Apple have their own disclosure forms, and you are only given one to sign if it's deemed necessary to your wo…

Keep in mind this attitude makes total sense to hardware engineers.

The hardware business is...

Let's just say that the difficulties you face definitely exist for hardware engineers.

But, difficulties involving negotiations plus recalcitrant South Korean factory owners are WORSE.

In "South Korean factory owner negotiations," secrecy is paramount.

Particularly if said South Korean factory owner is the biggest supplier of iPhone screens. And also makes an entire line of competitor phones to your products.

Apple's CEO, COO and "head of services" all have degrees from Duke University and 30 year careers in supply chain management. The company is widely regarded as being run by a Gang of 4, those 3 plus the general counsel.

From the outside, Apple is very much a hardware company that knows nothing about software.

The software is only good because Mac fans join the company and slave hard enough to make it that way.

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#25

Post by AlotOfReading »

wheresmycraisin wrote: post #17

Once got 2 interviews deep into a job at apple. I still have no idea wtf I was interviewing for and completely lost motivation to proceed.

It's aggravating for sure. I've cancelled interviews with them before because they couldn't confirm that I was actually interviewing for the team and product I knew I was interviewing for. The secrecy often crosses the line into silly and even disrespectful.

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#26

Post by kstenerud »

alimov wrote: post #20
lajamerr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been calling for/or expected Apple to switch to ARM/make their own chip for years and years before they actually switched. At that point people were just surprised to see Apple actually do something.

Maybe people in tech, but this doesn’t apply to (I’d like to say- Most of) their regular users

Most of their regular users don't even know what Arm or Intel is, let alone cares about it. A macbook is a macbook. The fact that it's faster is lost on most people as well, since their daily use consists of opening the browser or video conferencing or (if they have a PC) gaming.

Computers have plateaued for their current use case. The only innovation that will make a difference in the near future is AI.

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#28

Post by vlovich123 »

> He said it was so bad that engineers didn’t even know who they could and couldn’t talk to about their work.

This sounds off. When I worked there 7 years ago there was an internal website where you punch in the person’s name and it tells you about all the mutual disclosures you have. I would expect it’s integrated into Directory by now.

Also, I don’t recall AirPods development as being particularly more open considering I was in the same rough org and the only reason I heard about it in advance of launch was because I happened to be in an exec review where it was being demoed along with other forward looking products. I guess that could be considered “more open” but that wasn’t an experience many engineers got.

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#29

Post by skuhn »

urthor wrote: post #24
skuhn wrote: post #21

I worked at Apple relatively briefly, in a lead role on an Important Project that required its own form to be disclosed on it (besides the general agreement you sign to begin employment). A truly toxic work environment that I couldn't get out of fast enough once I shipped the project. All kinds of projects at Apple have their own disclosure forms, and you are only given one to sign if it's deemed necessary to your wo…

Keep in mind this attitude makes total sense to hardware engineers. The hardware business is... Let's just say that the difficulties you face definitely exist for hardware engineers. But, difficulties involving negotiations plus recalcitrant South Korean factory owners are WORSE. In "South Korean factory owner negotiations," secrecy is paramount. Particularly if said South Korean factory owner is the biggest supplier…

I agree that there is an element of logic in the process, but I also think that it's being done today to a large extent because "this is how we do things at Apple" rather than because it fits the needs of that particular project.

To your example, imagine that the full-time Apple employee responsible for negotiating with that SK factory owner also doesn't know that Apple wants the factory to produce iPhone screens. Just go sign a factory that satisfies our hundreds of requirements, none of which you know, and by the way we need it in a month and everyone else knows what is required but they can't / won't tell you.

There is just no way to get the best results when you operate that way internally.

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#30

Post by infogulch »

openknot wrote: post #14
infogulch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the counterfactual: an Apple engineering blog that routinely publishes in depth articles describing the awesome challenges that their engineering teams are overcoming in an org as vertically integrated as Apple. That would make me more hype about their products than anything.

I would personally be very interested in such a blog, but so would Apple's competitors. I've read that being too open about methods can let competitors catch up to once-unique advantages quickly, especially as it lets them design a roadmap of future features to work on. Suppose Apple had an engineering blog that released a roadmap about the M1 chips before their release. Then, Apple's laptops might not have such a ma…

Oh please. There's no need for any engineering blog to publish a company's 2 year product roadmap slides moments after presenting them to leadership, or ever. There are surely a bazillion problems solved every year at much finer detail than would be useful as a decision tree for competitors. How about OS engineering? Apps? Physical manufacturing? Logistics engineering? CAD design? At the level of detail. None of these things if covered at a small enough scope would provide competitors an undue advantage, but each would definitely inspire a young or aspiring engineer to up their game. Maybe they can just hoard the best talent with money to keep them away from competitors, but how much future and potential talent are they leaving on the table by forcing their engineers to bottle up their innate human desire to share their wisdom? It's a short-sighted local minima, they can do better.
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