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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

#211

Post by lazyant »

storgendibal wrote: post #184
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.

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…

> The hourly rate is lower than minimum wage

Looks like you are one order of magnitude wrong, even at just 300K a year working 100 hours a week that's over $50 an hour.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#212

Post by genericresponse »

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…

I read it with a few grains of salt. I've had dry runs for meetings where I was presenting. It's pretty useful to walk through your presentation with your boss when your 3-4 level higher boss is there. I've also requested subordinates dry run when they have poor communication skills and need coaching to perform up to standard.

It's not something you do with everyone there or with a meeting that just works off an agenda.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#213

Post by Nicholas_C »

throwaway6497 wrote: post #107
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 '…

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…

Not a developer but I would definitely do a 2+ year stint at Apple to get the name on my resume and find out what it's like to work at one of the largest and most profitable tech companies ever. I'm sure there's an incredible amount to learn and the pay is nice as well.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#214

Post by serve_yay »

Retric wrote: post #99
serve_yay wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite so, but nonetheless Apple very much strikes me as a high-pressure workplace. There's a reason why they ship what they ship when they ship it.

An air traffic controller messes up and they risk hundreds of lives and 100's of millions of dollars in property. That's a high high-pressure workplace, Tech is just a combination of greed and poor managment.

Ehhh. Zooming out this far just makes the phrase meaningless in the context of tech, which seems counterproductive since as you may have noticed we tend to discuss tech around here.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#215

Post by usaphp »

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 '…

> we were usually home by 8 or 9 PM rather than midnight...

Wow, Is it normal? Sounds ridiculous to me, having a family at home, I can't imagine coming home at 9 PM, having a late dinner and going straight to bed to wake up the next day, not seeing my son or wife the whole day, is it like this in every big company?

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#216

Post by wpietri »

jessriedel wrote: post #196
kyllo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The concept isn't normative and it definitely is meaningful. Another way to describe cost centers is that their benefit is very hard to measure but their cost easy to measure. People know that in the limit of non-existence, the company can't survive without it, so customer support has to exist. But as long as money is used to support them with no easily measurable benefit, it will always experience strong downward pr…

All of western accounting, including the cost-reduction mindset, is artificial. It just happens to be the dominant paradigm, so many people mistake it for some sort of universal truth.

If you look at the Lean Manufacturing folks, they have their own notions of accounting. They think the mantra of, "increase revenues, reduce costs" is stupid. For them, it's "increase value, reduce waste".

A simple example: you make hamburgers. You find a cheaper supplier of meat. It's not quite as good, but the number of complaints is manageable. In the western perspective, that's a win: revenues are stable (in the short term, anyhow) and costs are decreased. But in the Lean perspective, you've probably fucked up: value is down and you haven't reduced systemic waste.

As an example of what customer service looks like from that perspective, consider this example: http://kevinmeyer.com/blog/2008/10/jke-day-2-saishunken-cosm...

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#217

Post by Spooky23 »

serve_yay wrote: post #154
astrodust wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optimal arrangement for both companies is no poaching. As soon as someone pulls the trigger and starts poaching it gets exponentially more expensive for these companies to operate. This is the Prisoner's Dilemma, plain and simple.

To even use the phrase "poaching" is to give too much to the devil. It implies that a person "belongs" at a certain organization, as opposed to being a self-interested economic actor, and that there is something incorrect or dirty or unethical or wrong about leaving where they work to work somewhere else.

The free market is only for the billionaires. You are just some resource to be exploited and expended.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#218

Post by notsony »

exelius wrote: post #84
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!

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…

> Apple wields its supply chain like a weapon...This is why Tim Cook is CEO: he was the architect of their supply chain strategy...

Really? "From 2016, {Samsung] the company will supply 80 percent of APs used in Apple devices"

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2014/11/133_168259...

Let's call Tim Cook out for what he is. A former Dell middle manager who happened to be working the supply chain when China opened up to the world. Otherwise there must be a million supply chain geniuses out there who have also figured out how to place orders using cheap labor...

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#219

Post by skizm »

throwaway6497 wrote: post #145
eastbayjake wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Acqui-hiring cannot be a long term strategy to nurture and build a strong internal talent pool. Google simply has done an outstanding job at this. Most start-up founders/employees share YC startups' cultural ethos, and will get stifled under Apple. Many of them will get demotivated, lose steam and leave as soon as their golden handcuffs expire.

With something like $150 billion+ in the bank, it might just be a long term viable strategy.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#220

Post by mark-r »

throwaway6497 wrote: post #107
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 '…

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…

I wonder if this explains the general impression that Apple's software quality is slipping over time?
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