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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

#321

Post by Periodic »

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.

As an engineer at Google a key difference from some other companies is how few meetings I have. I have less then 10 hours of meetings per week, and they are all scheduled between 11am and 4pm. There's also plenty of less-formal meetings when I strike up a conversation with my coworkers, usually closer to 6:00 as we start to focus less and wonder more.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#322

Post by Periodic »

dennisnedry wrote: post #122
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 have the same schedule now. It's much better since you avoid the crazy traffic of the typical 9-to-5'ers and getting to sleep in is the best thing ever.

I made the mistake of moving 18 miles (San Jose) from where I work (Mountain View). Two years ago traffic wasn't bad but I swear it's getting worse. If I leave the house at 9:00 it takes 45-60 minutes to get to work. If there's a major accident or problem it can take up to 90 (happened once). Now I just don't leave the house before 10:00. My commute is less than 30 minutes and I regain 30-60 minutes every day.

I feel very fortunate to work at a company and with a team that supports my preferred schedule.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#323

Post by SCdF »

So what I find so interesting about this is that I've never heard the counter-argument. No one is rushing to defend Apple, or say "Yeah I work at Apple on X and I really love it".

In fact, the more I think about it, I don't know of any prolific bloggers, or open source contributors, or HN commentators, or really anyone, who currently works for Apple. I know Bret Victor (worrydream) used to work there, but left IIRC because they weren't letting him do things he creatively wanted to do.

Where are the Apple advocates?

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#324

Post by army »

nathanvanfleet wrote: post #243
storgendibal wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm sorry that's just frankly not possible. Even with your lowest value of 300k a year and you're hours value of 100 hours a week you're looking at ~60$/hour assuming they have no vacation or time off. Now look at the minimum wage and realize it's still many times that. I have a lawyer friend who says the same thing as you, and I seriously doubt it's so over the long run.

Hey, he's too busy working 300 hours a week to worry about things like "averages" and "mathematics".

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#325

Post by gnopgnip »

shalmanese wrote: post #309
shostack wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the Bay Area Megapath competes with Comcast by offering the same exact connection but much better service with value added options like proactive monitoring. The same physical line in the ground will get you internet access. They will almost always cost more than Comcast, but it is worth it to many people to not have to deal with automated phone systems that waste your time and ineffectual support.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#326

Post by vacri »

clarky07 wrote: post #306
vacri wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

My point is that the parent considered a sample of 100 to be too small for a population of 5000. Statistically speaking, it's a decent sample size.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#327

Post by masmullin »

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…

> how is Apple able to attract top quality engineers?

From the rumours I've heard, they pay marginally higher salaries.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#328

Post by digikata »

wpietri wrote: post #216
jessriedel wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Another topic in this vein is Throughput Accounting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throughput_accounting

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#329

Post by charlieok »

smikhanov wrote: post #310
noonespecial wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm sure apple's "tiny innovative core" is very good at what they do, and works very hard, but I suspect the reason you don't hear as much about the work environment there is that they are subject to much stricter policies concerning what they write about their employer than are employees at many other places including google and facebook.

Add to that a culture that values protecting secrets versus some notion of 'openness', and an incentive to hold onto that job if you really like it and the valuable stock options that may have come with it, and I'm not terribly surprised that you see relatively few insider stories.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#330

Post by zevyoura »

storgendibal wrote: post #230
dragonwriter wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). No, its not lower than minimum wage, even at the low end of that range, and even if they worked all 168 hours of every week. $300K / 8,760 hours a year (assuming a non-leap-year, and 24/7 schedule) = $34.24/hour Federal minimum wage is $7…

I guess my point about minimum wage was not relevant to this discussion.

No, it was relevant, but it was also false.
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