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I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

roadlesstravelled.me

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Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#51

Post by SonicSoul »

FD3SA wrote: post #7

Another perfect data point to add to Michael O`Church`s excellent series on the politics and psychology of the modern corporation. For you starry eyed youngsters, just remember that this is Apple, the world`s most profitable company. It only gets worse as you go down the list. Work for yourself. Consulting, the trades and any type of work you can do independently is far superior to dealing with wannabe Machiavellians…

you're painting with very broad strokes. I didn't like consulting as much for a few reasons. Never being treated like a true employee, having to account for my time in 15 min intervals, thin profit margins while working for intermediate company meant small to no bonuses, no benefits or perks, harder to get promoted or switch teams. Working full time (for big corps) has been great in past decade and I'm at a place where there is no micro management (from above or myself) and a carefully chosen lean team that gets things done. No complaints here!

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#52

Post by lalos »

nostrademons wrote: post #14

One of my friends used to work at Apple. After one particular grueling stint of 14+ hour days, management decided to give them a thank-you. In the form of vouchers. For frozen dinners. Meanwhile, all of his friends worked for Google, we got gourmet food every meal of the week as a standard perk, and we were usually home by 8 or 9 PM rather than midnight. It's sorta like "Your 'thank you' is really more like a giant '…

Love the comparison between getting home at 8-9pm rather than 14+ hour days, both look the same to me.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#53

Post by Drdrdrq »

detaro wrote: post #39
FD3SA wrote: post #7

Another perfect data point to add to Michael O`Church`s excellent series on the politics and psychology of the modern corporation. For you starry eyed youngsters, just remember that this is Apple, the world`s most profitable company. It only gets worse as you go down the list. Work for yourself. Consulting, the trades and any type of work you can do independently is far superior to dealing with wannabe Machiavellians…

> just remember that this is Apple, the world`s most profitable company. It only gets worse as you go down the list. I'm not convinced high profitability leads to better working conditions...

I think that was his point.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#54

Post by nostrademons »

lalos wrote: post #52
nostrademons wrote: post #14

One of my friends used to work at Apple. After one particular grueling stint of 14+ hour days, management decided to give them a thank-you. In the form of vouchers. For frozen dinners. Meanwhile, all of his friends worked for Google, we got gourmet food every meal of the week as a standard perk, and we were usually home by 8 or 9 PM rather than midnight. It's sorta like "Your 'thank you' is really more like a giant '…

Love the comparison between getting home at 8-9pm rather than 14+ hour days, both look the same to me.

Depends on your start time. 10-11 AM is reasonable in Silicon Valley (rush hour on the highways lasts until about 10:30), 8 PM is 10 hour days, midnight is 14. Figure that 8 PM includes both lunch and dinner at Google and it's like 8.5 hours of actually working, which is a lot, but I don't think it's unreasonable.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#55

Post by beamatronic »

nostrademons wrote: post #14

One of my friends used to work at Apple. After one particular grueling stint of 14+ hour days, management decided to give them a thank-you. In the form of vouchers. For frozen dinners. Meanwhile, all of his friends worked for Google, we got gourmet food every meal of the week as a standard perk, and we were usually home by 8 or 9 PM rather than midnight. It's sorta like "Your 'thank you' is really more like a giant '…

>> a thank-you. In the form of vouchers. For frozen dinners.

That sounds very odd. Was this Omaha Steaks by chance? Perhaps it was meant well.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#56

Post by jMyles »

Apocryphon wrote: post #45

The culture of silence between Apple and the public extends to more than just upcoming products. Has anyone noticed that there aren't as many Apple employees participating in tech conferences, hackathons, public presentations? Even for subjects unrelated to their work? Definitely fewer than Google/Facebook/Amazon/Microsoft employees.

> Has anyone noticed

I certainly have. I was going to bring it up if no one else did.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#57

Post by codezero »

DaFranker wrote: post #50
exelius wrote: post #24

But... the author worked in customer support, managing agents. Customer support in any company is like this: it's full of bobblehead managers who make work to justify their own jobs. It's a cost center, and cost centers are where you put executives who are capable, but not exceptional. This is why OP has stories about how firing people was considered heroic -- when you work in a cost center, the only thing the busine…

An adept representation of a limited sample of the issues surrounding customer support and similar departments. The problem is that it doesn't have to be like this. There are exceptional cases where customer support is not like this. Many of them have gained considerable benefit from investing in their customer support. One source of difficulty is that evaluation of those benefits requires very complicated (for an av…

Do you, by chance, have a list of those exceptional cases? I'd love to learn more!

edit: thanks everyone for these replies they're great, keep them coming!

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#58

Post by beamatronic »

kelukelugames wrote: post #15

I was interested in working at Apple so I messaged a few of my alum friends. All of them said they worked around 60 hours a week. Nope, can't pay me enough to work 60 hours a week.

You can pay me to work 60 hours a work, but so far no employers choose to.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#59

Post by philippnagel »

raspasov wrote: post #30

I wonder how many people the author has really interacted with? Even if it was 100 individuals (which is probably unlikely) that's still 5000 employees?) of the total organization. Basically a rounding error. It's very hard to make conclusions for the whole company from such a small sample. That borders discrimination/racism thinking. Not in any way trying to say that he had a pleasant experience or that his manageme…

According to http://www.apple.com/diversity/ Apple employs about 98.000 employees.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#60

Post by MrNobody »

Apocryphon wrote: post #45

The culture of silence between Apple and the public extends to more than just upcoming products. Has anyone noticed that there aren't as many Apple employees participating in tech conferences, hackathons, public presentations? Even for subjects unrelated to their work? Definitely fewer than Google/Facebook/Amazon/Microsoft employees.

From my understanding Apple effectively owns your entire output when you're employed full-time (at least as an engineer). At a recent interview I mentioned I like tinkering with code on the side and was told I'd have to give that up and stop contributing to open source. I imagine that extends to participation in the "outside world" at least to some extent.

The fact that Apple developers I've spoken to spend their personal coding time (on the rare occasion it exists) on work projects only reinforces all of this.

(All that said, my sample size is seven people, so I could be quite wrong in the end.)

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