I Quit: What really goes on at Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#181

Post by vacri » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 9:28 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #36

mhurron wrote: post #2

That's a lot of words to say Apple is a corporation and acts like many others. I guess the author expected it to be like an iPod commercial when he started.

Agreed. Sounds like it acts like many (not all!) others. I've worked at a lot of places. I've been told that open-heart surgery would be counted as a vacation day. I've been in 3-hour meetings where a dozen executives bickered the whole time over how one toggle should be labeled. I've been where fully half the employees had been fired and continued working on the sheer grace/need of the owner. I've been given hard de…

and still has to meet massive big-budget deadlines by every means necessary.

No, they don't. They have two-digit billions-with-a-b in cash reserves. They could give every human on earth a few dollars and not have to tighten their belts to compensate.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#182

Post by _ak » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 9:28 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #41

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 '…

Crunch time is fine when its uncommon and unforseen. Otherwise it is a manag3ment failure. Perhaps its deliberate failure to respect peoples personal life, but that's still a failure. I've worked plenty of places where crunch time is uncommon or nonexistent. It doesn't have to be that way.

Long crunch times are either a symptom of longterm planning failures (not hired enough people), or it's a deliberate and premeditated attempt to abuse people for cheap labour (why have 10 people do the work when 6 overworked people can do the same job?).

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#183

Post by fauigerzigerk » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 9:29 PM UTC

yulaow wrote: post #34

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.

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.

Aah such were the olden days!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1by0-nkKOTs

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#184

Post by storgendibal » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 9:29 PM UTC

beamatronic wrote: post #58

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.

Heh, 60 hours is a low intensity week in management consulting and especially investment banking. Once upon a time, a banker 2-3 years out of an MBA (say 28-30) would make $300-500K cash. The hourly rate is lower than minimum wage though (these guys used to put in 100+ hours). They did it in the hopes of landing a private equity gig that would pay them $1M+ for a 50-70 hour work week. That's a deal I would take in a heart beat, if I found the work interesting.

There was an interesting article in Fortune a while ago. The tldr was that you shouldn't get mad that Wall Street pays too much, but that the rest of corporate America pays too little. When companies are building war chests in the tens of hundreds of billions, and also feel the need to collude to prevent "poaching", you have to wonder.

The sad part is that people in technology sometimes love the work so much, that they are willing to put in more than they should on pure economic terms. The finance and consulting types are more ruthless about their own worth.

EDIT: My minimum wage comment was more about making a point. Banker types like to say they make lots of money but make less per-hour than a McDonald's employee.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#185

Post by sudioStudio64 » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 9:29 PM UTC

I think that it should be pointed out that Apple doesn't have "values". The idea that apple has "values" that it "preaches" is just wrong. That is called marketing. It's funny that people are shocked by this. This is what businesses do and it makes the weird partisanship that forms around them seem mad.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#186

Post by c0ur7n3y » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 9:29 PM UTC

kyllo wrote: post #71

I had organised a day off recently where all my family were visiting me from interstate. Despite this I had agreed to dial in to one conference call as the audience attending was ‘important’. Well it seems Important but disrespectful, as the audience never even turned up, yet I was still made to ‘dry-run’ the whole meeting from start to finish for an hour and a half as if there was full attendance and interest in wha…

The scripting and rehearsing seems to happen when employees pick up on the signals, from the decisions that management makes around them, that appearance and self-marketing influence promotions more than performance.

It's not a on/off thing - it's a continuum from fact-based decision making to perception-based decision making. The difference is how good are the managers at seeing what's really going on and how much they care about it.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#187

Post by pyre » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

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...

Zappos Anecdote: I reported a bug with handling of email addresses with a '+' in them (ended up in a URL in the email still as a plus instead of URL encoded). I gave a technical description of the issue. I got a prompt response, a notification that it was fixed, and my account was bumped up to some sort of 'premium' status (which I can't use because I'm no longer living in the US, but that's not their fault).

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#188

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#189

Post by kziojzwsndppqgg » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

francoisdevlin wrote: post #8

Is this for real? Can anyone else corroborate this?

FWIW, as an Apple employee I have no idea what the hell he's talking about.

I've worked here 4 years and I absolutely love. my. job. I take days off to work from home whenever I feel like it. We drink at the office on occasion. I'm never harassed for not being constantly online. I don't have endless meetings. I'm constantly praised for the work I do, I get great reviews, with large bonuses.

My impression from reading this article is that he either had a shitty manager (it can happen, Apple's a huge company) or his department wasn't very well-run. (It is customer service, that's never known for being a great environment almost anywhere you work.)

I feel bad for the guy, in a situation he described I would've left too. Fortunately I'm not in that situation, and neither is anyone else I know here. People have their issues with small things but at the end of the day I think everyone I work with loves what they do.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#190

Post by richthegeek » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

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…

The author is writing about his experience of 2 years of working there, and it's corroborated by others in this forum... and your problem is that he didn't verify that ALL of Apples management are arseholes? He isn't talking about ALL of them. He's talking about the ones he worked with, in the department he worked for.

Get your head out of your arse...