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I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

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Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#111

Post by Hobotron1 »

gtremper wrote: post #67
enraged_camel wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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. Eh, it could be worse. At a previous company I worked for, one of the executives passed away. There was a funeral on a Friday, followed by reception. Guess what the lunch was on Monday at the office? The leftovers from the reception. A similar thing happened where the CEO h…

Wow, I'm all for not wasting food, but that's really tacky.

What's tacky about offering free food that no one is obligated to eat? GP might have written one of the most entitled things I've seen!

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#112

Post by kbenson »

codezero wrote: post #57
DaFranker wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Sonic.net, in the ISP market. They spend quite a bit on customer support, and use it, where they can (locally, mostly) as a feature.

Back in the day when they were reselling AT&T DSL (which they are doing again, I hear), it was a big bonus to get AT&T DSL at the same price, but not have to deal with AT&T almost ever. Let a third party deal with that and provide better service for the same cost. Win.

Full Disclosure: I've worked at Sonic.net multiple times in the past, ranging from customer support when in college, to their operations and system administration department more recently. I have fond memories of it, and count it as one of the best places I've worked, but I'm not employed by them currently.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#113

Post by adevine »

erickt wrote: post #80
codezero wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Zappos built their brand on high quality customer service: http://www.businessinsider.com/zappos-customer-service-crm-2...

Given that THREE of the responses to this question are Zappos, I'm going to venture that it's probably incredibly rare. Especially since, in Zappos case, they are essentially selling commodity products (branded clothes that you can buy from any retailer), so their only opportunity for differentiation is price or service.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#115

Post by johnward »

sdab wrote: post #37
vdnkh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Usually home by 8 or 9pm I assume they got into work at 8 or 9am? That's terrible. I'm really glad that I work a standard 8 hour day at my small no-name company.

When I worked there, it was 12pm-8pm. My friends who work there now do the same. We just get to make our own hours and being in my twenties, I like sleeping in.

I find this interesting. How do people collaborate? Did most of your team work the same hours? Do you just schedule meetings from noon-4? I would personally hate that schedule as someone with a family.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#116

Post by javawizard »

jarin wrote: post #68
beamatronic wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You'd have to pay me in time off. Preferably about 20 hours a week.

What about future time off? I'd happily work 60 hour weeks for $1,000,000/year, then retire after 5 years.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#117

Post by archagon »

cookiecaper wrote: post #97
archagon wrote: post #69

In "Becoming Steve Jobs", Tim Cook says the following in regards to Apple's collusion scandal: "I know where Steve's head was. He wasn't doing anything to hold down salaries; it never came up. He had a simple objective: if we were working together on something, like with Intel, where we threw everything in the middle of the table and said, 'let's convert the Mac to the Intel processor', well, when we did that, we did…

You have to see both sides here. Employees are too quick to see this as being robbed of the opportunity to be the subject of a bidding war. Companies try not to start or escalate poaching wars because it's massively disruptive to everyone's projects. It takes a long time to replace someone and a long time to onboard someone. While it may be economically feasible to poach an employee , it's almost definitely detriment…

Putting aside for the moment the illegality of collusion, I appreciate your take, and I think it's important to always try to see things from the other side, even if it stands against everything you believe in.

With that said, isn't the obvious solution to just raise everyone's salaries?

Also, the explanation only reinforces the idea that these executives view their employees as chips to be bartered, not free agents.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#118

Post by jboy55 »

archagon wrote: post #69

In "Becoming Steve Jobs", Tim Cook says the following in regards to Apple's collusion scandal: "I know where Steve's head was. He wasn't doing anything to hold down salaries; it never came up. He had a simple objective: if we were working together on something, like with Intel, where we threw everything in the middle of the table and said, 'let's convert the Mac to the Intel processor', well, when we did that, we did…

If you are partnering with a company, you typically can break the partnership by poaching employees. I think the biggest problem is this anti-bidding strategy extended to companys that weren't partners.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#119

Post by bbcbasic »

kyllo wrote: post #88
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…

I'd argue that this mentality is a byproduct of the concept of a "cost center" which is itself an arbitrary and toxic concept.

Definitely, as if good customer support won't help future sales and increase customer retention.

Without support and training software is kind of worthless.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#120

Post by api »

Apple has built one of the most successful businesses in the world on mostly one thing: design. (And user experience, which is design more broadly applied.)

Undortunately, it seems to me that good design requires totalitarianism. Apple's products are comparatively coherent, clean, unified, and aesthetically pleasing. This is achieved via a culture of totalitarianism that extends all the way down to the device. OSX has some openness grandfathered in, but iOS shows you where Apple wants to go.

... and customers largely approve. Having used both iOS and the more open Android, I can say that while Android is more capable iOS is more of a pleasure to use. There you have it.

It's something I have seen broadly in the world, and I actually find it rather disturbing. Bazaars can be creative and can offer a rich array of options and a lot of value, but only a cathedral can deliver aesthetics and usability.

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