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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

#301

Post by r00fus »

johnward wrote: post #115
sdab wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From working with clients in different timezones (and in a previous life running global projects) this is par for the course.

The fact that you only get 4 hours joint meeting time is just as good as if you were collaborating on east vs. west coast.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#302

Post by curiously »

edc117 wrote: post #296
curiously wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

software engineers are also a cost centers.

Depends on the role - for a COTS type of software, they are certainly not - they are revenue generating. Consultancy? Same thing. Now for internal tool development or support, sure, but how many businesses can operate without one? How many can 10 years from now? 20?

well considering we still live in the industrial age system of factory owners and factory workers (concept of managers and even lean startup has roots in car factories), I would find it very rare that a non monopoly software business would view their engineering team as profit generators.

software and everyone involved in it's development are becoming commoditized via open source or money being injected by venture capital or a non-monopolized industry over time ends up on certain standards and margin falls for everyone.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#303

Post by paganel »

> When I started my role I missed one business trip as my wife was pregnant, fell down the stairs and had to be hospitalised – this was listed as a ‘performance issue’ on my record and brought up during a one on one with management as a major ‘miss’ on my behalf.

What the fuck?! How the heck can this happen between two human beings who happen to work for the same company? I'd rather plant potatoes for a living or even go to war than having to deal with people who have no soul inside of them. Empty shells.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#304

Post by enraged_camel »

RogerL wrote: post #290
enraged_camel wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I didn't say they should have thrown it away. There are many organizations that accept food donations from private events as long as it is still fresh and in good condition.

In the funeral scenario, the problem was that the funeral was on a Friday and the food was stale and gross by the time it was served for lunch on Monday.

In the other scenario, a lot of people were offended that they were being served left-overs from a private party they weren't invited to, despite being a part of the company. The CEO not only gave preferential treatment to engineering but then went one step further and served the leftover food to the rest of the company. To me, that clearly communicates what he thinks of non-engineers.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#305

Post by noonespecial »

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 think people need to remember that Apple is a tiny, tiny innovative core surrounded by a huge bog-standard "big-corp" full of the same chimps from the Career Builder commercials that all big-corps have. If you're not part of that tiny core, you just work at Office Space.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#306

Post by clarky07 »

vacri wrote: post #168
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…

It's very hard to make conclusions for the whole company from such a small sample. Statistically speaking, an n of 100 is a reasonably decent sample of 5000 data points. It seems to me that you're looking for excuses, as if this concept of 'dry-run' meetings only happens to be within the author's "hundred-person bubble".

as noted elsewhere, apple actually employs over 90,000 people. it's less significant in that scope.

Also, while I have no doubt his experience sucked, he was also in customer service as opposed to being a developer/engineer. I suspect those areas differ somewhat. (Not suggesting it's ok at all, just that it may not be completely representative of the entire company)

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#307

Post by r00fus »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #100
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 was just very protective of his employees." The word "protective" doesn't seem apt here, as that would imply he had his employees' best interests at heart, when clearly he only had the company's best interests in mind (which is fair, given that's the job of the CEO). Try "possessive".

Using HR lingo, try "s/employees/resources/". Now it parses, neh?

I've read that book (audio) - that was one of the more cringeworthy passages of the book. What I gathered was that Tim probably felt like "hey I wouldn't do this, but it's Steve and he's my boss so I have to put a marginal defense out there".

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#309

Post by shalmanese »

shostack wrote: post #285
shalmanese wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Sure. The airline industry, for example, has been notoriously unfriendly towards most attempts at differentiation based on quality. Margins are razor thin (http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/03/travel/how-airlines-make-less-...) and customers are incredibly price sensitive. While many consumer's stated preferences are for things like more legroom and less delays, their revealed preference is they'd rather save $5 on a $300 ticket and suffer the indignities.

I would argue you're seeing the same narratives play out in the ride sharing space right now. Lyft tried to compete with Uber with their friendlier drivers vs we'll get you there faster and cheaper messaging and we'll see how long that differentiation lasts since Lyft seems to be rapidly backing away from their branding and into competing on purely on price.

Markets which are natural monopolies like Comcast also don't profit from extra CS. When your choice is shitty broadband vs no broadband, there's little CS, good or bad can do to sway your decision.

Markets where the purchaser is not the end user like enterprise sales also benefits from investing more money in sales than support. Every doctor I've ever been to has bitched at length about basic usability issues with the software they're forced to deal with but they have no real power so the software stays uniformly bad.

Markets where purchases happen infrequently. I recently had to buy a spare part for my refrigerator. Amazon didn't carry it, and the sites that did seemed uniformly low rent and amateur. I ordered from 1 site that said it was in stock and chose reasonably fast shipping. After not hearing from them for 2 days, I sent an email and they got back to me saying that due to a clerical error, it was actually out of stock and wouldn't be shipping out for another 4 days. Meanwhile, the website still listed the part as in stock. They didn't care, what's the worst I could punish this retailer for? Denying them all of my future spare fridge part purchases?

Sure, there's always exceptions to be found in all of these areas but by being the exception, you relegate yourself to a niche of the market and it becomes hard to expand outside of that niche.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#310

Post by smikhanov »

noonespecial wrote: post #305
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 think people need to remember that Apple is a tiny, tiny innovative core surrounded by a huge bog-standard "big-corp" full of the same chimps from the Career Builder commercials that all big-corps have. If you're not part of that tiny core, you just work at Office Space.

This seems to be true. And also, while internet is full of stories of "what it's like to work at Google/Facebook/etc", you will have hard time finding a similar one about Apple.

My explanation for that is that the "tiny innovative core" is way too overworked to write about themselves and everyone else is just irrelevant.

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