How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by asdff » Sun, May 08, 2022, 5:17 AM UTC

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…

How much of an advantage are you really getting here? The first day they are sold samsung has the airpod torn apart and rendered on a computer screen with all specs known. There are no big secrets here, these aren't warheads. It didn't take long for the gas stations around me to start selling knock off airpods along side the knock off lightning cables. If you get it early vs not, its not going to make a big difference. People who want to be in the apple ecosystem will buy the airpods anyway and people who don't care about that will buy whatever alternative is on the market, probably whats on sale at the time when they look.

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

#32

Post by Fede_V » Sun, May 08, 2022, 5:17 AM UTC

I know that Apple is incredibly secretive about their launches, and I'm not surprised that carries over to their internal culture, but, I'm incredibly skeptical of stories told from the point of view of an HR person that has every single incentive to hype up their revolutionary new process that unleashed productivity and improved morale.

Every single time I read a similar story and I had first or second hand knowledge of how things actually played out, the role of the person telling the story was massively stretched out.

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

#33

Post by kstenerud » Sun, May 08, 2022, 5:17 AM UTC

frutiger wrote: post #12

raverbashing wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly Most of the stuff is "officially leaked* to some places before the new releases anyway When was the last time people were surprised by what they saw? I think it was on the iphone unveiling.

> When was the last time people were surprised by what they saw? The performance per watt and rollout schedule of Apple Silicon?

Who besides industry geeks actually cared about that?

ipod was innovative for the common man.

iphone was innovative for the common man.

ipad was innovative for the common man.

The rest? Meh.

Nowadays it's just an upgrade treadmill, consisting of "To re-pair my old watch I first need to update to the latest watch software (even though it worked fine before I unpaired it). But to update the watch software I need to update my phone software to a higher version than it supports, so now I need a new phone, which now won't work with my computer unless I update that, but it doesn't support the latest OS so now I need to buy a new computer..." For want of a nail.

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

#34

Post by _sigint_ » Sun, May 08, 2022, 5:20 AM UTC

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#35

Post by PragmaticPulp » Sun, May 08, 2022, 5:20 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

I’ve worked in hardware and I’ve worked with multiple Korean CMs and I’m still struggling to understand what you’re trying to say. I don’t agree that this makes “total sense”.

Instead of being intentionally vague, can you please just describe what you’re trying to explain without the “Let’s just say…” and other totally unnecessary secrecy? This entire thread is about how toxic and unproductive it is when people use unnecessary secrecy and vagueness, so it’s kind of ironic to read comments using unnecessary vagueness.

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

#36

Post by buildbot » Sun, May 08, 2022, 5:21 AM UTC

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…

Don’t most most big tech companies have these? At Microsoft it is pretty common for most people to be in a few “tents” (project specific NDAs). What is more rare are agreements _outside_ the in place system…

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

#37

Post by urthor » Sun, May 08, 2022, 5:22 AM UTC

skuhn wrote: post #29

urthor wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Ju…

Yes, absolutely.

Keep in mind as well, all corporate policies follow a normal distribution.

Most of the time, I find corporations never aim for 90th percentile high performance. Perfect is the enemy of cost effective.

They want "works pretty well 80% of the time. And the 20% that's balls up, make sure it's not so bad."

In your case I suspect the reason is they think "too much secrecy" has much less downside than "too little secrecy."

Now, whether that's incompetence or malice, we can never know. But those are the gears turning in the head of the Director/VP who's classifying these projects.

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

#38

Post by minimaxir » Sun, May 08, 2022, 5:26 AM UTC

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…

A software engineering blog would make more sense; it's what WWDC essentially is, anyways.

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

#39

Post by bushbaba » Sun, May 08, 2022, 5:26 AM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #33

frutiger wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When was the last time people were surprised by what they saw? The performance per watt and rollout schedule of Apple Silicon?

Who besides industry geeks actually cared about that? ipod was innovative for the common man. iphone was innovative for the common man. ipad was innovative for the common man. The rest? Meh. Nowadays it's just an upgrade treadmill, consisting of "To re-pair my old watch I first need to update to the latest watch software (even though it worked fine before I unpaired it). But to update the watch software I need to upd…

AirPods were the first Bluetooth headset that just worked and made you want to ditch the cord.

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

#40

Post by dylan604 » Sun, May 08, 2022, 5:29 AM UTC

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…

>Then, Apple's laptops might not have such a massive lead on Intel/AMD processors today

That's giving Intel a heck of a lot of credit. Intel is a massive ship moving along at full speed. They aren't the most agile of companies to say the least. Intel's x86 giant hammer convinces themselves that everything is an x86 nail. How else do you explain the fact that they are so woefully behind in the times? Apple and Intel worked together in CPUs before. Intel knows what Apple wants/needs, and refuses to give it to them. I seriously can't imagine that Apple and Intel never met about how the Intel chip just wasn't advancing, yet Intel plodded on anyways.