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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

#531

Post by exelius »

dietrichepp wrote: post #342
zaroth wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what else is a cost center? Engineering. It's perceived as a massive step up from Call Center or Customer Support or QA but it's just marginally closer to revenue generation than the sales reps and can suffer many the same issues. At a previous company I managed to end up doing my software development work under a Sales title, so I could get the quota and commissions that would come with it. All of a sudden…

> a low-base / high-commission model is proven to attract and incentivize talented reps and drive out the low performers I'm interested in hearing how this is proven. I've seen incentivized sales reps close deals that damaged the company, just like I've seen "successful" marketing campaigns that eventually killed their products. If you use bookings as your metric for bonuses and then turn around and use bookings to m…

Which is why you have sales guys close the deals, and have a sales executive who is compensated based on the performance of the company to approve them and set the comp model for the sales team.

Your variable comp model can't be just a straight % commission, or else your sales reps will go chase enormous contracts that may be bad for your company. If you want to target smaller deals, weight their comp more on number of deals closed. There are hundreds of metrics you can use to judge your sales staff, and getting it right is hard. Your sales strategy needs to be driven by your business strategy, which should decided upon at the highest levels of the organization.

There is an art to creating variable comp models. You need your metrics to line up with your strategy. A star will deliver the numbers no matter what they are; while a low performer won't. The model is proven, but the details are up to every company.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#532

Post by amyjess »

wtbob wrote: post #368
amyjess wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard similar stories from people who work on oil platforms. Forgot the exact numbers, but it's something like six months you live there and work most of your waking hours, then six months vacation, and the pay is stupid high (and living on the platform while you work there means you have almost no personal expenses during that time).

that's not all that different from the deal folks get from the U.S. military; agree to work 12-on/12-off at someone else's will, for some reasonable number of months at a time ('reasonable' is determined by people who have done the same gig, once upon a time, and climbed the organisational hierarchy); in return get decent pay and extremely decent post-tenure benefits.

Yep.

And, again, personal expenses go down to almost zilch while living on-base.

My mom's boyfriend is in the National Guard. Every few years, he gets activated and deployed somewhere for a year or two. Every time he comes back, he takes the money he saved by not having to pay for anything for a year and buys himself an expensive new car. Last time, he bought a Dodge Challenger SRT8.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#533

Post by mtarnovan »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #442
mtarnovan wrote: post #337

"I used to be a police officer. I’ve held a gun aimed at a dangerous offenders head and had to choose whether or not to pull the trigger." Wait, what?

What troubles you about that statement? It may well have been a situation where the person was presenting a threat to others and he had to decide how to how much threat was being presented and how to prevent that.

I misread that as "holding a gun at someone's head", as opposed to "holding a gun aimed at someones's head". My bad.

But even so, should police officers really aim for the head?

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#534

Post by debacle »

rikkus wrote: post #468
tjarratt wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A thing can be unethical and still be reasonable.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#535

Post by jvictor118 »

tajen wrote: post #473
golergka wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the outside, it definitely looks like the closer it gets to hardware, the better engineers at Apple get. Metal is awesome, Metal shading language and recent clang progress not bad too, Swift a little bit wonky but interesting — but the quality of their customer-facing software, especially ui stuff (not design, but I engineering) is getting worse and worse. It just doesn't "just work" anymore.

> (Mac OSX UI) doesn't "just work" anymore Please, if someone can sell a Linux with the same polish as Mac OSX, and as low-administration time, I would agree to pay about $200 per year for it. I've switched away from Ubuntu after being unable to resolve a problem after upgrade two years ago (which cost me 4 days). I spend 2x more on computers for Macbooks, not because of the hardware but because of Mac OSX. I don't k…

This. Most devs I know have Macs for precisely this reason -- software, not hardware. If anything, many would prefer the hardware (diversity) offered elsewhere.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#536

Post by debacle »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #512

TFA, and these comments, have made me curious -- what is the best way to get a breakdown of how much people like working for a company? I know there are job sites like Glassdoor, etc, but in those reviews everything is scrambled together. And as the comments here suggest, there could be a huge difference between what it's like to work in software development (say, doing stuff for OS X) vs. customer service kinds of t…

Ask the right questions at the interview.

"Do you like working here?"

"Yeah. I guess it's okay."

Versus

"What's the worst thing about working here?"

"They stick used hypodermic needles in your urethra once a week."

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#537

Post by therandomguy »

seunosewa wrote: post #519
mikeash wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that analogy works. The boyfriend/girlfriend relationship is completely different from the employer/employee relationship, and the whole point of this controversy is that companies aren't supposed to be friends. Here's what I think would be a better analogy: let's say you run a restaurant in a small town. The restaurant business is booming, and you and your competitors are all expanding, to the point wh…

Employers would say such an agreement is not immoral, because it benefits them, but employees would say it is immoral, because it harms them. However, most people are employees, so yeah.

Immorality aside, it is illegal.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#538

Post by cookiecaper »

mikeash wrote: post #389
cookiecaper wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When you say "detrimental to the entire industry's profitability," I see "wages would rise to match the value contributed by employees, which would reduce the surplus that businesses can extract." If you don't want your prized employee leaving, there's a really easy solution: pay him enough to stay . If he's that valuable, then it's worth paying. Since the solution is so easy, but Jobs et al didn't want to apply that…

>I see "wages would rise to match the value contributed by employees, which would reduce the surplus that businesses can extract."

I understand that theoretically the wage would be negotiated to the point where it was no longer attractive to poach or be poached and everyone's life would continue along swimmingly. The problem is that I don't believe this would happen in the Real World. There is just too much emotion involved, and perception is too fickle, for this to work out well for anyone. The industry's productivity would be deeply damaged, not just from the high-level executive POV where you're comparing year-over-year profit-dollars-per-employee, but also from the tangible, objective POV, where it would take much longer to get things done.

There's a reason that anyone who gets caught up in a poaching war takes effort to avoid that situation from occurring ever again, and there's a reason that employees aren't going out and more actively inciting bidding wars no matter how fun it sounds in theory to have two or more companies tripping over themselves to outbid each other for you. Putting aside the actual economic realities that would be incurred, employees have real emotional needs that would be difficult to meet in a poaching culture. People need continuity and camaraderie. People need a sense of accomplishment and contribution. Those things are not going to occur if 25% of your workforce churns over to the competitor and back again every year, and like I said, while I understand the theory that the churn would eventually stop once a "market price" for the labor was stabilized, I don't think that's how it would play out in real life; I think the entities would commonly harbor feelings of resentment and betrayal, and I think many participants would adopt other combative emotional stances, that would deeply impede the industry's function.

I'll have to do some research and see if I can find some real-life data that may credit or discredit this theory.

We also need to acknowledge that anti-poaching agreements can be interpreted in various ways. My understanding is that most of these agreements bar active recruitment or incitement of sitting employees at members of the pact, but they do not bar hiring an employee away if he seeks you out. There may be exceptions and this may have changed depending on the interpretation of different persons in the HR dept. I definitely believe that refusing to hire employees who seek out employment externally due to your no-poach agreement is uncool.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#539

Post by freshhawk »

justin66 wrote: post #283
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.

> 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.

If you are looking at the players as the companies deciding to poach/not-poach then the payoffs look just like the prisoners dilemma.

That just gives you the reason why two companies would want to collude and would have to agree to collude to get the best outcome for both companies.

I agree the more important issue is as you say; the legal and moral aspects are what they are because of the fact that employees are being treated as resources or pawns. But that means that we are happy to see a prisoners dilemma dynamic here, it means that there has to be some type of collusion to make this dynamic happen. Collusion is explicit and detectable. Much better than the various other types of exploitative dynamics that are emergent.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#540

Post by nostrademons »

TheAnimus wrote: post #505
hondo77 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it must have sucked or else people would have bought it in iPhone-like numbers. Apple changed the category by figuring it out.

I appreciate it's not a good way to start a conversation, but do you mind my asking how old you are? When the iPhone launched, people like me [0] couldn't really understand it. I was a top five percentile earner in the UK, but still new to that bracket having only recently left uni. I was used to mobile phones being expensive at £400 commitment, £1800 (Uk price with minimum O2 exclusive contract) was unbelievable to…

That's what "changing a category" looks like. You build something that's worse on dimensions that existing customers care about, but better in areas that new, non-consumers care about. Because it's worse on all the existing metrics of performance, existing incumbents don't believe it's a threat until it's too late to compete.

The iPhone wasn't a platform until it had significant consumer adoption anyway...the App Store didn't open until nearly a year after launch. It turns out that being a hot fashion accessory and status symbol is actually more important for consumer adoption than speed of calling or texting.

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