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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

#281

Post by kybernetikos »

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.

There are quite a lot of studies that examine the difference between 'crunch mode' and 40hr type weeks. I've read that crunch beyond about 3 weeks results in less work being done per week than a 40hr week, and two months of crunch mode results in being behind where two months of 5day/40hr weeks would have got you. It also increases the risk of product failure.

Basically, if you believe that hitting a deadline is worth having overall less productivity for, you can reasonably crunch for 2 weeks, and have the third week as an acknowledged low productivity week, and it might be worth it. Anything much beyond that is counter-productive on pretty much all axes and a strong sign that management is incompetent.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#282

Post by hobs »

shostack wrote: post #210
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…

You are painting with an overly broad brush. Where I work, our Support Heroes (yes, we call them Heroes because the lengths they go to for our customers are heroic) are one of the main reasons so many of our customers love us and stick with us so long. You've probably heard that it can cost ~5x more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. An exceptional Customer Support team is your front line in fight…

I disagree. You are using your company as a counter example to all other companies, and you admit that in your last sentence. I am glad your company treats your people right, and it bodes well for your EVERYTHING.

I have worked at a dozen or so support jobs, and no matter how much the customers stayed because of the support team or how much we drove the value our clients got out of the product, we always were a cost center and treated as such.

That always meant they we got the second best of everything, were always last on the list for raises, promotions, new hardware, proper chairs, whatever. We were left out of planning, and whenever another department decided at the last minute it wasnt their job now became ours to complete forever.

The second I switched over to being a consultant and making money for people instead of helping to avoid lost revenue, their attitude changed towards me and became much more positive and friendly instead of unreasonable and demanding (both on management and customer side).

I dont even know if this is a conscious or unconscious decision, but support/helpdesk job position is reviled for a reason, and the reason is that it is an unforgiving job with little acknowledgement, pay, or chance for promotion.

It gets even worse if you are doing stuff like Apple support (I trained iphone/ipod then ios/cpu at a vendor site) and almost everything he said rang true about them specifically (and the call center management world in general.)

Apple's training team was pretty cool and one of the few saving graces, I am glad I got to hang with them in Austin, they definitely were trying to build a robust system to train people with reproducible results. It was the best training I had gotten from any corporation before or since, it was what got me into training in the first place.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#283

Post by justin66 »

astrodust wrote: post #127
serve_yay wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote is so nuts! He didn't think for a minute he was doing anything wrong. That's supposed to make me feel better ? I agree with you, the way these rich people look at employees as chess pieces rather than humans is awful. If you're so afraid of someone quitting, then address that by making it worth their while not to quit! Not with collusion for god's sake. The fact that they call someone getting a better job…

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.

> This is the Prisoner's Dilemma, plain and simple.

It's not really, but that is an enlightening comparison. Using the prisoner's dilemma as an analogy for this hiring situation, the employees aren't players (prisoners, if you prefer) at all. Which is exactly the problem.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#284

Post by beachstartup »

shostack wrote: post #244
smenko wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this supposed to be ironic?? Given, you know, the original poster's grievances.... Support Heroes?.. No?

Not at all ironic. OP was posting about how customer support is a cost center, amongst other claims. He stated that it is like this in any company. I completely disagree and have experienced the proof of that first hand. I'm a little unclear from how you worded things--was the question around the notion of firing people as heroic juxtaposed against what we call our support team (ie. Heroes)?

the original assertion that customer service is somehow a cost center is prima facie false, since there are such things as services/consulting companies, and they are some of the largest.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#285

Post by shostack »

shalmanese wrote: post #265
shostack wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all ironic. OP was posting about how customer support is a cost center, amongst other claims. He stated that it is like this in any company. I completely disagree and have experienced the proof of that first hand. I'm a little unclear from how you worded things--was the question around the notion of firing people as heroic juxtaposed against what we call our support team (ie. Heroes)?

What your example demonstrates though is how much of a difference happens when a company thinks of CS as a profit center rather than a cost center. That's great for you guys but there's lots of industries where CS genuinely is just a cost center and should rationally be treated that way, with all the attendant pathologies that go along with that.

I've heard this argument before and with all respect, I don't buy it.

Can you provide any examples of industries where there is no opportunity to turn CS into a profit center vs. a cost center? Sure it might be very difficult to model and prove out the exact impact it has on the bottom line, but I'm not convinced there are any scenarios where pissing off your customers with a poor experience is better for business than making them feel loved and, well, supported. :)

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#286

Post by jldugger »

skj wrote: post #246
Hobotron1 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

If part of your compensation comes in the form of food, then it isn't free. Of course, if it's part of your compensation, it should probably be taxed as such... maybe I should keep my mouth shut.

Food offered for the employer's convenience is non-taxable compensation.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#287

Post by clarky07 »

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

pot calling kettle black much? Getting home at 8 or 9 sounds pretty awful to me. I get that midnight is worse, but I don't think I want to work at either place. They both sound terrible.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#288

Post by [deleted] »

enraged_camel wrote: post #261
Hobotron1 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I said this in another response too, but normally we got lunch catered and it was part of the compensation. In the two scenarios I mentioned though, we got served leftovers just so the company could save a few hundred bucks.

[deleted]

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#289

Post by shostack »

hobs wrote: post #282
shostack wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are painting with an overly broad brush. Where I work, our Support Heroes (yes, we call them Heroes because the lengths they go to for our customers are heroic) are one of the main reasons so many of our customers love us and stick with us so long. You've probably heard that it can cost ~5x more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. An exceptional Customer Support team is your front line in fight…

I disagree. You are using your company as a counter example to all other companies, and you admit that in your last sentence. I am glad your company treats your people right, and it bodes well for your EVERYTHING. I have worked at a dozen or so support jobs, and no matter how much the customers stayed because of the support team or how much we drove the value our clients got out of the product, we always were a cost…

OP said:

>"customer support in any company is like this."

My post was specifically in response to that, because it was an inaccurate statement.

I'm really sorry to hear you've had such poor experiences in support. That sucks, and I realize how hard/impossible that can be to turn around from a business and culture standpoint.

Sounds like you have found a path that works better for you, so congrats!

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#290

Post by RogerL »

enraged_camel wrote: post #261
Hobotron1 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I said this in another response too, but normally we got lunch catered and it was part of the compensation. In the two scenarios I mentioned though, we got served leftovers just so the company could save a few hundred bucks.

Or, you got served leftovers because throwing food away is exremely wasteful. I eat leftovers all the time. What's the big deal?
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