Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#71

Post by CamperBob2 » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 7:50 PM UTC

bomanbot wrote: post #19

Maybe another reason why Apple spawned comparatively few startups might be that some of the areas of expertise for Apple and their employees are harder to do in startup-sized companies; namely hardware engineering and mass manufacturing innovation. Apple does a lot of work in hardware and hardware manufacturing, both areas which are pretty capital-intensive and might not lead themselves as easily to the startup world…

you cannot exactly rent a scalable 14nm chip fab from AWS to try to build it on your own and sell it market.

To Amazon's credit, I can imagine Bezos reading your comment, frowning, and muttering, "Why the hell not?"

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#72

Post by marcell » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 7:54 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #45

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #18

(I really hope I don’t offend any Apple people saying this) My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” It is not one of “Let’s conquer the world and become bazillionairres while we’re at it” — the Google culture — which is more pron…

> My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” I have a lot of friends and former colleagues who are at Apple and you're wrong about the 'go home to your family.' At least the friends I have (mostly nerds admittedly) are routinely in…

I recently left Google and I think your characterization of those two groups is accurate. There is a large group of engineers at lower levels working on mundane products who are not especially excited or empowered. I wouldn't recommend working there unless you are on a researchy project (eg. Brain), or you are focusing on things aside rom your career (eg. Many employees with families tolerate working there because of the good pay and benefits)

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#73

Post by gumby » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 7:55 PM UTC

logicallee wrote: post #48

foobarqux wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Product managers have a lot of sway Can you elaborate on what you mean to say here? Is it that PMs have a lot of influence compared to engineers?

it's actually a funny statement given the definition of a product manager... it's like saying the CEO has a lot of sway over company policy. well, yeah.

Yes, it is funny but tsunamifury explained what I meant: at many companies, especially but hardly restricted to Microsoft and Google, the PMs are internally rather than externally focused and rarely have technical experience.

Despite Apple's propaganda otherwise, I get the feeling from some of the things my friends say that the engineers have more sway over product development than Google's do.

foobarqux I hope this answer's your question too.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#74

Post by tdicola » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 7:56 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #36

bomanbot wrote: post #19

Maybe another reason why Apple spawned comparatively few startups might be that some of the areas of expertise for Apple and their employees are harder to do in startup-sized companies; namely hardware engineering and mass manufacturing innovation. Apple does a lot of work in hardware and hardware manufacturing, both areas which are pretty capital-intensive and might not lead themselves as easily to the startup world…

> rent out a scalable 14nm chip fab from AWS I was pondering the viability of almost exactly this. Could one invest in a hardware pipeline that efficiently combines e.g. 3D printing with FPGAs to create the consumer-electronics equivalent of Lulu.com's just-in-time small-batch book printing + drop-shipping. Or, in other words: you can do pretty much anything with the sensors in a modern smartphone. All most manufactu…

Wattage tried something similar but just recently shut down: https://medium.com/inside-wattage/well-we-failed-77e795e16ec...

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#75

Post by cromwellian » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 7:57 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #45

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #18

(I really hope I don’t offend any Apple people saying this) My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” It is not one of “Let’s conquer the world and become bazillionairres while we’re at it” — the Google culture — which is more pron…

> My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” I have a lot of friends and former colleagues who are at Apple and you're wrong about the 'go home to your family.' At least the friends I have (mostly nerds admittedly) are routinely in…

Working backbreaking hours with bad work/life balance is considered unGoogley. There are sometimes when people burn the midnight oil, but in general Googlers don't work 60hr weeks.

I think the primary difference may come down to a culture of secrecy. Openness breeds cross fertilization, couple that with very few restrictions on Googlers in working on side projects, open source，and collaborating outside Google and it it's easy to see why so many Googlers are lured away by the allure of startups.

As for Googlers being unhappy with their projects, there's two answers. One, google culture permits challenging your management and product vision even as far as calling out VPs, so people here are constantly voicing their criticisms instead of falling in line. That can breed dissatisfaction especially if your criticisms are later proven right.

The other is that Googlers switch products often when they get bored. It's easy for people to get unhappy when you switch from development to maintenance. I think this is very healthy，enduring people working on a product are enthusiastic. If your jet collecting a paycheck while dreaming of more interesting stuff better to go do interesting stuff.

The level of secrecy and compartmentalization in Apple sounds like hell to me.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#76

Post by ddorian43 » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 7:59 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #45

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #18

(I really hope I don’t offend any Apple people saying this) My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” It is not one of “Let’s conquer the world and become bazillionairres while we’re at it” — the Google culture — which is more pron…

> My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” I have a lot of friends and former colleagues who are at Apple and you're wrong about the 'go home to your family.' At least the friends I have (mostly nerds admittedly) are routinely in…

which is the second cash cow?

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#77

Post by santaclaus » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 8:02 PM UTC

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #18

(I really hope I don’t offend any Apple people saying this) My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” It is not one of “Let’s conquer the world and become bazillionairres while we’re at it” — the Google culture — which is more pron…

Maybe Microsoft or Amazon, but talking with and listening to interviews with former Apple employees, that definitely doesn't seem to be the case. Nitin Ganatra (who I think was head of iPhone apps) had some super interesting interviews on the Debug podcast about the early software development of the iPhone, and those cats were clocking eighty hour weeks and certainly believed they were going to upend the technology industry. Don Melton also had some super interesting info on life at Apple.

If you have a few train rides to blow, these are some super interesting looks into the internals of Apple: http://www.imore.com/debug-47-melton-ganatra-episode-i-demoi... http://www.imore.com/debug-48-melton-ganatra-episode-ii-unde... http://www.imore.com/60-melton-ganatra-episode-iii-shipping-... http://www.imore.com/debug-39-nitin-ganatra-episode-i-system... http://www.imore.com/debug-40-nitin-ganatra-episode-ii-os-x-... http://www.imore.com/debug-41-nitin-ganatra-episode-iii-ipho...

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#78

Post by philippnagel » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 8:05 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #71

bomanbot wrote: post #19

Maybe another reason why Apple spawned comparatively few startups might be that some of the areas of expertise for Apple and their employees are harder to do in startup-sized companies; namely hardware engineering and mass manufacturing innovation. Apple does a lot of work in hardware and hardware manufacturing, both areas which are pretty capital-intensive and might not lead themselves as easily to the startup world…

you cannot exactly rent a scalable 14nm chip fab from AWS to try to build it on your own and sell it market. To Amazon's credit, I can imagine Bezos reading your comment, frowning, and muttering, "Why the hell not?"

I am obviously not Jeff Bezos but I asked myself the same question.

Could such an extreme outsourcing service (not necessarily only fabricating chips) paired with the accessibility of AWS be viable? Does such a company exist?

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#79

Post by jsjohnst » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 8:05 PM UTC

javier2 wrote: post #57

jsjohnst wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've a number of friends on various teams, from WebKit, to iOS, to datacenter folks, to various app teams, and hardware teams and not one has ever consistently worked a 40hr work week. Most are easily averaging 50-60, with spurts close to or over 100 before launches. Consistently the message I've heard is people are expected to "work till its ready", so I'm not sure where you'd have heard this about Apple.

How do people do that? I'm fairly new in the game, but right after Christmas I had to work 3 weeks, about 70 hours each in a row. I was _exhausted_ after that. By the end of the third week, my head was just spinning and I went on a low morale and creative drought for 3 months... I could barely code deserialisation functions without losing focus.. So basically, how do you do it and keep sane?!

When I worked for a former employer we had mega pushes leading up to CES. There's one month, we called it Red October, where most of my team was doing 100+hr weeks for the full month. How did we do it? Combination of lots of Red Bull (as in buying it by the pallet), free meals, onsite shower, and an amazing QA team who would consistently find all the stupid bugs coded bleary eyed at 3:30am.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#80

Post by Sideloader » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 8:05 PM UTC

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #18

(I really hope I don’t offend any Apple people saying this) My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” It is not one of “Let’s conquer the world and become bazillionairres while we’re at it” — the Google culture — which is more pron…

Please...stop the madness! The trend of prefacing every criticism or, indeed, observation with an apology to the fanbois or a cheery positive "Apple is awesome, but.." statement has gone too far. It's actually quite amazing how many articles and comments follow this template. And it has to stop. The Cupertino Thought Police is not going to kick your door in and drag you to the Infinite Loop basement for a Think Different session. The Internet won't grind to a halt, you won't be named and shamed...everything will be okay!

Sure some fanbois with advanced symptoms might possibly berate you publicly or even downvote your post/article and that's it. It really is okay to not love Apple. Or point out that Apple isn't perfect. It's even okay to not own any Apple products whatsoever. Full disclosure...I do own Apple products and OS X is my daily driver of choice. But I have no emotional attachment to Apple's products, I don't buy Apple products exclusively and I do not worship at the iAlter or have a man crush on Steve Jobs.

The over-the-top reverence for Apple even by people who are far from being fanatical iCult members really is extraordinary. If you find some of their products useful, great, if their products aren't a good fit for you, that's great too. Apple is not the mafia (yet) and you owe the company nothing.