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

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#461

Post by leoc » Thu, Apr 09, 2015, 7:25 AM UTC

angersock wrote: post #331

throwaway6497 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cash is king. Citizen Kane comes to mind: You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... 60 years.

There's a difference: Apple is a public company (without an insider-friendly voting structure like Google's), and shareholder activism is a powerful force these days. (I am not an expert.) If the current approach stops delivering big profits I think the management will be hard put to resist the pressure to smash up the piñata and hand the cash to the shareholders. (That pressure already exists: http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-to-shareholders-vote-against-... ) So I think the thing protecting the status quo at Apple these days is really the flow, rather than the stock, of profits. And indeed there doesn't seem to be any sign that the apparent decline in the quality of OS X is actually hurting profits or sales yet: http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/07/29/apples-focus-on-va... .

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#462

Post by Enzolangellotti » Thu, Apr 09, 2015, 7:40 AM UTC

storgendibal wrote: post #201

protomyth wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those type of jobs do exist. People working insane hours for about 5 years then cashing out. A lot of people say they would do it, but I wonder how many would survive that type of grind.

Actually, it gets better. That's the dirty little secret that I never knew about. Investment banking used to have insane hours (100+ basically on call all the time). The idea was that after 4-5 years you leave for a buy-side gig (hedge funds, private equity) that pay you the same or more ($1-5M in your early to mid-30s) but with more reasonable hours. This is why the smartest CS/Math/EE/Physics grads from MIT etc wen…

> The idea was that after 4-5 years you leave for a buy-side gig (hedge funds, private equity) that pay you the same or more ($1-5M in your early to mid-30s) but with more reasonable hours.

That idea is now a myth, only a handful of wall-streeters break the 1-2 million mark according to various industry surveys (generally you can earn a lot more if you are a principal or a portfolio manager at a successful hedge fund, but those are outliers, the truth is that the belief everyone on the buyside is living a model and bottles lifestyle (or might be able to) is a huge misconception). IMHO, the best shot at becoming rich remains entrepreneurship.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#463

Post by gaius » Thu, Apr 09, 2015, 7:43 AM UTC

skizm wrote: post #219

throwaway6497 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

... Until the taxman catches up with them. Then it's game over.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#464

Post by asmithmd1 » Thu, Apr 09, 2015, 7:50 AM UTC

clarky07 wrote: post #299

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…

Even with your edit, you still don't get it. McDonald's employee's don't make > $50 an hour. No one can make $300k+ working at mcdonalds, even if they work 24/7. Even if you worked LITERALLY every single hour of the year (8760) minimum wage would get you to ~63.5k. That's a far cry from 300-500k Any banker type that says something like that is an asshole or is really bad at math. Assuming he's a competent banker he's…

One other possibility: Wall street banker types think minimum wage ~$100k per year

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#465

Post by asmithmd1 » Thu, Apr 09, 2015, 7:58 AM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #363

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…

Remember in this case we have two companies which decided to work together on a project and established no-poaching agreement. If you ask your friend to go out with you on a trip along with your girlfriend, would it be ok if your friend builds relationship with her during the trip and she breaks up with you? You can argue that may be your girlfriend found a better fit and you should be ok with that. OR you can argue…

Of course the more accurate analogy is you hire a prostitute to travel with you on a trip...

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#466

Post by jroseattle » Thu, Apr 09, 2015, 8:05 AM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #97

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…

You have to see both sides here. Employees are too quick to see this as being robbed of the opportunity to be the subject of a bidding war. Companies try not to start or escalate poaching wars because it's massively disruptive to everyone's projects. It takes a long time to replace someone and a long time to onboard someone. While it may be economically feasible to poach an employee , it's almost definitely detriment…

> You have to see both sides here.

Why? To understand the motivations of Jobs, Cook, Catmull, etc.? The motivations are clear. Collusion is still illegal, and "seeing both sides" is an attempt at justification.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#467

Post by tajen » Thu, Apr 09, 2015, 8:07 AM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #386

charlieok wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 'op…

This. Someone close to me worked there for 7 years. The level of secrecy is crazy. Like, dysfunctional-hard-to-do-your-work and stay-up-all-night-working-before-a-launch-because-you-are-only-finding-out-about-it-then crazy. Talking in public about your job would not end well.

Therefore I'm surprised about the OP. Sure they have a specific employment contract in place with a batallion of lawyers drooling on their preys, so what does the OP risk?

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#468

Post by rikkus » Thu, Apr 09, 2015, 8:08 AM UTC

tjarratt wrote: post #419

SCdF wrote: post #323

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 b…

I worked at Apple on OS X server in various capacities for a few years, and really loved the experience. As an open-source user and advocate, I was really sad there because they have a very hostile and defensive position about open source (which is a very reasonable stance, in my perspective). The fact that there aren't any prolific bloggers, open source contributors or HN commentators is an artifact that the company…

How is it reasonable for them to have a hostile and defensive position in relation to open source when so much of their software is either built upon or enabled by open source?

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#469

Post by jmngomes » Thu, Apr 09, 2015, 8:09 AM UTC

sswaner wrote: post #263

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!

I called Apple customer support last night for the first time ever. Called to get confirmation of AppleCare support for an iPad -- I didn't buy support :( My experience with them was the best customer support experience I have ever had. They were great. They were prompt, knowledgeable, and compassionate.

Like in call centers, the toxic people aren't the CS reps that answer your queries, but psychologically troubled managers and paper pushers.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#470

Post by jib » Thu, Apr 09, 2015, 8:15 AM UTC

shostack wrote: post #346

dietrichepp wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone says "any company", it's easy to interpret that as meaning "any company without exception". This is a very logical interpretation, but it is not necessarily reasonable to interpret it that way. My experience is that (1) most companies do a lot of things wrong (2) the respect which support receives varies from company to company as well as industry to industry, with business support taken more seriously t…

I was aware of how logically I was interpreting the statement. That said, there are many companies out there that differentiate on support, so I still feel OPs statement painted with an overly broad brush. The example I gave from where I work was simply an anecdote. No company is perfect and there will always be conflicting priorities when resources are finite (so, always). I didn't intend to plug, but since someone…

Here's my view, based on 10 odd years in various CS roles.

I think there's confusion about good/bad customer experience and what that means. Great staff doing great interactions is important, but if you focus just on that you're missing out on two important earlier layers.

No-one really wants to talk to customer support. Ever. So trying to be good at talking to people is nice, and you better be good at it when you need to or you will lose some customers (whether that be through lack of acquisition from bad stories or people actually quitting), but it's like the third level of defense, and it is arguably less important than the first two levels.

The first level is "Make sure your stuff just works". Actively work towards eliminating defects. The best product is the one that just works. People hate on Ryanair in Europe - I think it is vastly exaggerated. They get the point that having things just work is huge. They "just work" better than any other airline. They suck completely at the third level, and are only ok at the second level, but they are good at the first level. And sometimes good at first level, and good prices, is all you need.

Second level is - if things for some reason dont work, make it easy for me to fix it myself. Again - I dont want to think about your thing, I just want it to work, but if you're making me think about it by having it break, at least make sure I can do all my thinking and solving in one go - best way to do that is to let me fix it on my own. Sky broadband does a decent job of this. Their routers come with built in self-service menus rather than random error screens. Along the lines of "Something is wrong - lets start by plugging and unplugging the wires. Here's what a micro-filter is and looks like, check if you have one of those in place. Ok, lets power-cycle the router, you do that by just unplugging this wire..." 100% better than having a generic error screen or referring to online help.

Third level is - If you failed at the first two levels, make it easy and nice to talk to you. Important, not least for PR reasons, since people who failed the first two levels and also fail on the third will be really pissed off with you, but arguably less important than the first two layers, if they are done right. The other reason it is hugely important is that your improvement points on level 1 and 2 will come from 3. If your team isnt set up to continuously feed back what they are hearing from 3 and use that to improve 1 and 2, you're not going to get better.

The fourth bonus level is "f you failed the first three, at least have a decent social media setup to manage your awfulness".

A good CS organisation recognises all three levels at least, and spends time on all of them. You continually work on moving things from the third level up to the first, or at least the second, and doing that proactive work is part of what makes a good CS team.