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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

#101

Post by urthor »

adastra22 wrote: post #56
esrauch wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the comment you replied to as being that vague: that are claiming that the information asymmetry with the hardware manufacturers/suppliers (including Samsung) in terms of things like price negotiations and "what's the next big thing" is more valuable than the downsides of internal engineer productivity.

Maybe? They didn’t claim anything at all. I didn’t see anything in that comment about price negotiations. Frankly I’m as confused as the grandparent as to what was being said.

I'd say the reason I was keeping it ambiguous is that I wasn't really making a point about hardware or price negotiations specifically. I'm not a hardware person at all.

I was maybe close to making a point that with supply chains, there's many reasons that might justify that kind of secrecy.

Really I just want to create empathy about non-software engineering reasons for secrecy.

Not ram home a particular hypothesis about a corporation I've never worked for. I have a habit of thinking from the perspective of corporate titans.

re: price negotiations which is my jam (3-D Negotiation and Never Split the Difference are excellent bedtime reading).

Keep in mind secrecy is often not JUST about withholding information to negotiate the best price. Sometimes the information is something the other person in the negotiation would also like you to keep secret.

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

#102

Post by siva7 »

avidphantasm wrote: post #98

For the past five years I have wondered: what is an “HR business partner”? This seems like a recent (ca. 2015? earlier?) euphemism for HR goon, or at more charitably an HR fixer. Is this indeed a new term for an existing job, or a new role? Where dig this term come from? SHRM? B-school academics?

Have wondered the same and it seems just to be a new modern title for someone who works in HR.

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

#103

Post by robertlagrant »

jrockway wrote: post #78
amir734jj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the best skill I learned at Google was figuring out how other people's code works. You read the documentation, and then you make some RPC. It doesn't work as documented. You go read the other service's logs and see an error message, but it doesn't make any sense. You search the codebase for that error message. You find that the super deprecated do not include field is mandatory; it's sent to some other servic…

People do do this. The problem is the docs never get fixed and everyone needs to do what you just did. Great if you have essentially infinite money; otherwise bad.

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

#104

Post by ClumsyPilot »

urthor wrote: post #101
adastra22 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? They didn’t claim anything at all. I didn’t see anything in that comment about price negotiations. Frankly I’m as confused as the grandparent as to what was being said.

I'd say the reason I was keeping it ambiguous is that I wasn't really making a point about hardware or price negotiations specifically. I'm not a hardware person at all. I was maybe close to making a point that with supply chains, there's many reasons that might justify that kind of secrecy. Really I just want to create empathy about non-software engineering reasons for secrecy. Not ram home a particular hypothesis a…

' I have a habit of thinking from the perspective of corporate titans.'

Thats sounds a bit presumtious, have you ever validated how accurate that perspective is? Maybe the perspective you imagine is totally different from reality.

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

#105

Post by fleddr »

avidphantasm wrote: post #98

For the past five years I have wondered: what is an “HR business partner”? This seems like a recent (ca. 2015? earlier?) euphemism for HR goon, or at more charitably an HR fixer. Is this indeed a new term for an existing job, or a new role? Where dig this term come from? SHRM? B-school academics?

Some HR departments gets so large and fluffy that a significant amount of employees do "HR for HR". Internal stuff that is completely disconnected from the rest of the business.

Those that sometimes actually do talk to the business are called "HR business partners".

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

#106

Post by RicoElectrico »

esrauch wrote: post #51
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #35

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. 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 ju…

I don't see the comment you replied to as being that vague: that are claiming that the information asymmetry with the hardware manufacturers/suppliers (including Samsung) in terms of things like price negotiations and "what's the next big thing" is more valuable than the downsides of internal engineer productivity.

Seems like very Tim Cook thing to do. But the cost on innovation... doesn't really matter to him.

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

#107

Post by namdnay »

avidphantasm wrote: post #98

For the past five years I have wondered: what is an “HR business partner”? This seems like a recent (ca. 2015? earlier?) euphemism for HR goon, or at more charitably an HR fixer. Is this indeed a new term for an existing job, or a new role? Where dig this term come from? SHRM? B-school academics?

HR business partner is assigned to a specific department/division/whatever of the company to be their “HR person”. If you’re in that division you talk to your HR BP, they’re the one who will do the yearly baselining exercise with the managing director etc. So basically the public face of HR for that division

As opposed to the people working on company-wide stuff like salary guidelines, rulebooks, “the way we work” brochures, recruitment, etc

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

#108

Post by namdnay »

rm445 wrote: post #75
Erikun wrote: post #68

What is an "HR Business Partner"?

It's a job title in HR with a certain level of seniority. It doesn't imply that the business is organised as a partnership. It's a dumb title, but very common. I think the root cause is a lack of a general job title for a senior contributor in that field. With the debasement of the word engineer, I'm just glad they're not called senior HR engineer.

It’s not just that, it’s also the fact that they are assigned to a part of the business, as opposed to internal/company wide stuff (like the global compensation guidelines, or organizing graduate recruitment drives)

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

#109

Post by baybal2 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #35
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…

> 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 ju…

I regularly work for companies working for Apple, have a number of ex-coworkers who worked, or went to work to Apple.

Lose tongues are everywhere, and Apple can't seem to keep anything secret in its China RnD unit.

Shenzhen is a city of 17M on the paper, but very few people are working in Hardware now. It's a very small industry. I feel I know more than half of all companies on somebody's resume. Most of 30-40 years olds in the industry were already working for 10+ years.

Btw Most of AirPods RnD was done in China, not California.

I would also add that hardware unit side in Apple is said to be very conservative, and a mirror image of their software team. At least in China, they hold a lifelong negative score system, where -30 is you are out under any conditions, and 15 minutes late counts as -3. They also use USB sticks to move files around, and work on offline computers to prevent leaks. Also, WinXP everywhere.

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

#110

Post by urthor »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #104
urthor wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the reason I was keeping it ambiguous is that I wasn't really making a point about hardware or price negotiations specifically. I'm not a hardware person at all. I was maybe close to making a point that with supply chains, there's many reasons that might justify that kind of secrecy. Really I just want to create empathy about non-software engineering reasons for secrecy. Not ram home a particular hypothesis a…

' I have a habit of thinking from the perspective of corporate titans.' Thats sounds a bit presumtious, have you ever validated how accurate that perspective is? Maybe the perspective you imagine is totally different from reality.

Well I don't think I'm right haha. I haven't met these people and asked them exactly what they were thinking.

But I honestly think we're very biased towards assuming our senior corporate leaders are foolish and misguided.

Saying "assuming a corporation made a smart decision, why did xxx make that decision?" is usually a very fruitful line of thought.

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