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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

#131

Post by wwweston »

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…

> "He wasn't doing anything to hold down salaries"

Wow. That's... ballsy.

Sure, holding down salaries might not have been the primary motivation.

Doesn't change the fact that collusive no-hire agreements hold down salaries, and Cook and Jobs are smart enough to know this.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#132

Post by ptx »

nostrademons wrote: post #102
exelius wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is actually probably the best example of a company taking a cost center (in this case, manufacturing and logistics) and turning it into a strategic advantage. Apple wields its supply chain like a weapon. It's very difficult to compete with Apple because the world has a limited supply of high-quality parts (flash memory, LCD screens, etc.), and Apple can just outbid everyone else for the entire market supply for…

Isn't Samsung the main supplier for many of the parts used in the iPhone? And that's the reason why a.) they're in the phone business and b.) they can dominate the Android market? They took the other side of those transactions so they could learn exactly what it took to build a mobile phone, and then once they had phone-building expertise, they just need to ramp up their own production and divert some to internal use…

Samsung made phones long before the iPhone existed.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#133

Post by ThomPete »

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!

Wasn't Zappos one?

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#134

Post by Procrastes »

enraged_camel wrote: post #44
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 '…

>>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…

They've never served lunch here. Maybe we should have more funerals...

>> Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife. -- Obligatory Four Yorkshiremen[1] Python reference

Not to poke fun at folks suffering, we've all been there and it's not healthy.

The question is, what system could we put in place that would reward a positive work culture and penalize *hattery? I know Glassdoor tries, but is there a way to measure this that won't be gamed out of shape?

1. http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/jokes/monty-python-four-yorkshi...

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#135

Post by exelius »

nostrademons wrote: post #102
exelius wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is actually probably the best example of a company taking a cost center (in this case, manufacturing and logistics) and turning it into a strategic advantage. Apple wields its supply chain like a weapon. It's very difficult to compete with Apple because the world has a limited supply of high-quality parts (flash memory, LCD screens, etc.), and Apple can just outbid everyone else for the entire market supply for…

Isn't Samsung the main supplier for many of the parts used in the iPhone? And that's the reason why a.) they're in the phone business and b.) they can dominate the Android market? They took the other side of those transactions so they could learn exactly what it took to build a mobile phone, and then once they had phone-building expertise, they just need to ramp up their own production and divert some to internal use…

Yeah, but the interesting part is that for a while, Samsung was the only manufacturer capable of producing LCD screens that met Apple's specs. Apple outbid Samsung's mobile division on those parts, so that resulted in a situation where the iPhone had better screens than the Galaxy, even though the iPhone's screen was manufactured by Samsung. AFAIK Samsung still manufactures Apple's mobile CPUs (likely under heavy NDA; like when accounting firms audit each other).

But you're right, being such a critical component of Apple's supply chain has likely given Samsung inside knowledge of Apple's platforms. As a result, Apple has been diversifying their supply chain to avoid Samsung.

I don't know that plays into their dominance of the Android market though. Samsung was already the top consumer electronics brand in the world prior to the release of the iPhone, so it's not surprising that would carry over into mobile phones. It was certainly a factor, though probably not a large one.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#136

Post by timjahn »

vdnkh wrote: post #32
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 '…

>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.

Amen.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#137

Post by protomyth »

javawizard wrote: post #116
jarin wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those type of jobs do exist. People working insane hours for about 5 years then cashing out. A lot of people say they would do it, but I wonder how many would survive that type of grind.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#138

Post by cmrdporcupine »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #96
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. Not all corporations are evil dystopian cults playing mind games and wasting everyone's time. It takes tremendous cash to fuel that kind of dysfunction. Most corporations cant afford to go off the rails to that degree.

From being close to someone who worked there for many years, from the iPod-is-just-new til a few years ago, I'd say actually this culture at Apple is a product of the return-of-Steve-we're-barely-surviving Apple-austerity mode. I don't know how engineers do there, but the marketing people I knew from there worked like dogs but when the money started to rain from the iPod/iPhone/iPad sky, I didn't get the impression t…

I should add that from what I have heard the culture there is autocratic, and micromanaging at the top. The person I know who worked there was way down the chain working on remote and obscure stuff but had their work go across Steve's desk and be yay'd and nay'd.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#139

Post by pinewurst »

scott_karana wrote: post #106
yulaow wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that, if I remember correctly for what I read in the book about the biography of Steve Jobs, in the very old apple of Jobs and the Lisa, the team leaded by Jobs was working 120 hours/week and even making t-shirt to brag about it.

And how rich are those employees, because of their stock vesting, compared to current ones, getting paid mere salary? ;)

They were getting paid around $20K a year (ref folklore.org) at a time when that wasn't exactly munificent. I'm not even sure they had stock grants either, just promises of greatness from Steve. Idiots.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#140

Post by alvarosm »

eastbayjake wrote: post #129
throwaway6497 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With this negative image among developers in the Valley, how is Apple able to attract top quality engineers? They probably are not. Anecdotally, I still haven't met one single engineer who would love to work for Apple though they love using Apple products. Apple is not even on the list of all top graduating kids who wants a job in top valley firms (Google, FB, Dropbox, Twitter, AirBnB, Uber, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Quor…

Acqui-hires, amigo... swallow a company, fire the bottom 10%, give the rest offers, see who sticks around after 1-2 years. They're gobbling up companies so fast that they're running out of office space to house them all.

and they have plenty of cash to keep at it forever
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