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How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

fastcompany.com

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

#41

Post by Tao332 »

lelandfe wrote: post #3

Original article: https://www.fastcompany.com/90748492/apple-airpods-pro-creat... First half of the article: "Teams were innovating for months in silos only to finally converge in the eleventh hour before launch, ending up in five- or six-hour-long daily meetings, causing tremendous friction and burnout. People were frustrated." Second half of the article: "regular cross-staff sessions, transparency, and shared voice…

It's pretty funny that they had to break through this insane cultural wall just to make yet another pair of headphones I don't want. I don't really think of "more headphones, but better somehow" as innovation.

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

#42

Post by skuhn »

urthor wrote: post #37
skuhn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're exactly right that companies don't want pure efficiency, and they shouldn't -- there will always be competing priorities to be weighed.

Here's the rub for me, in this particular role at this particular time in this particular company: the workload was extremely heavy, the deadlines were extremely unrealistic, the threat of failure was extreme (up to and including terminating the entire org for failure to meet objectives), and yet it must be done blindfolded and with both hands tied behind our backs.

I'm sure it isn't always like that at Apple, but that was toxic and it contributed to all sorts of toxic behaviors throughout the org. It's no wonder to me that this behavior leads to burnout across the company.

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

#43

Post by dylan604 »

lajamerr wrote: post #15
lostlogin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An N'th generation anything just won't have the same zing as it did the first few times. I agree, but the new MacBooks have had a fair bit of excitement around them. So maybe you just have to make several duds first?

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.

I seem to recall that these specific ARM comments were made on the day the announcement was released that Apple was buying the company.

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

#44

Post by menzoic »

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…

I wonder if Zero Knowledge Proofs can help this situation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof

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

#45

Post by urthor »

skuhn wrote: post #42
urthor wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're exactly right that companies don't want pure efficiency, and they shouldn't -- there will always be competing priorities to be weighed. Here's the rub for me, in this particular role at this particular time in this particular company: the workload was extremely heavy, the deadlines were extremely unrealistic, the threat of failure was extreme (up to and including terminating the entire org for failure to meet…

100%. All I'd say is that I've seen it happen at every large corporation.

At any one time a project or team gets chewed up and spat out.

Corporate one size fits all policies, and the Darwinian competition for resources, inevitably creates this.

That's just the story of corporate life in a nutshell. Shit goes wrong, you gotta get ready & job hop at the first sign of trouble.

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

#46

Post by serenitylater »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #25
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.

For real, was it their self driving division? The faux secrecy in that was astounding. Like everyone knows what is going on here just tell that the computer vision machine learning job focused on high definition video and LiDAR data is for the car, we both know it’s for the car.

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

#47

Post by changoplatanero »

buildbot wrote: post #36
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…

At fb/google the code for almost all projects is in one giant open repo that any engineer can browse.

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

#48

Post by wincy »

kstenerud wrote: post #26
alimov wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was a PC gamer but primarily use Macs for work. But I bought the MacBook Air and aside from one game (Elden Ring) every game I usually play works on the MacBook Air, some with Rosetta and some with native ARM support.

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

#49

Post by charcircuit »

menzoic wrote: post #44
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…

I wonder if Zero Knowledge Proofs can help this situation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof

Why would it?

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

#50

Post by amir734jj »

changoplatanero wrote: post #47
buildbot wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At fb/google the code for almost all projects is in one giant open repo that any engineer can browse.

But good luck figuring out how that code works. Disclosure I work at Microsoft and I work with ropes with millions of lines of code.
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