Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#101

Post by cvak » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 6:11 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #93

majormajor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it. The most disgruntled people I worked with in the past kept most of their griping off of slack or IM or email because they suspected it was logged. Is constant complaining over lunch really less effective than constant complaining in DMs? Or, if it's large channels with lots of participants - what stopped those channels from happening before? Is the idea that people who would've whined over lunch to a…

I’m pretty sure it is logged. Perhaps someone can confirm but can a sufficiently privileged user (not a Slack employee) read contents of private channels? DMs?

Private channels yes, DMs are not readable by privileged via standard UI, there probably is some way to read them though.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#102

Post by FFRefresh » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 6:20 AM UTC

There are a few bigger stories at play here (amongst many) that I see this article as an instance of:

1. Cultural 'meme' & trend that has dramatically spread throughout mostly american, urban, educated, elite/elite-adjacent spaces over the last 7-9 years that lionizes and rewards those who can claim they are a 'victim'. This meme favors certain immutable characteristics as inherently providing victimhood status. If you were born with an immutable characteristic that's held in favor by the meme, you have many advantages available to you. Nobody is supposed to acknowledge those benefits according to this meme. So you can both be objectively very privileged and also considered a mostly helpless victim of an oppressor class.

2. Internet has allowed anyone to be heard, no matter the level in the hierarchy of a company. And if you know how to use the right words according to this victimhood meme (regardless of objective victim status), you have a good chance of being rewarded both socially and professionally. This is a pathway that some take if they don't believe they'll be able to succeed by other means.

3. Increasing trend toward 'safetyism', where the concept of harm is becoming looser and more abstract. You don't need to even be objectively or provably harmed anymore to claim you were harmed and thus victimized.

Given all of the above, it's not surprising that big tech companies who operate in these elite spaces will experience 'unrest' amongst their employees. Cultural winds have created pathways for people to both legitimately and illegitimately air grievances to attempt to be rewarded socially/professionally.

(And lest anyone interpret the above as suggesting nobody is ever objectively or truly victimized, I am most definitely not saying that.)

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#103

Post by NonEUCitizen » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 6:28 AM UTC

Bud wrote: post #65

The leader of this small group of "unrest" folks, Cher Scarlett, apparently got hired in April and has worked for 8 other tech companies, according to this story. Color me unimpressed. She starts agitating after a few months of working entirely from home at a highly-paid gig? Did she even have time to get a clue about whether Apple's doing bad things or not? Or does she just kinda flit around from gig to gig looking…

"has worked for 8 other tech companies" is normal in Silicon Valley.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#104

Post by gkop » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 6:44 AM UTC

dogman144 wrote: post #57

fragmede wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An unofficial, definitely don't tell management slack would have 1000s of users before the email prohibiting it managed to finish sending to all employees. Draconian policies seem viable and like they'd work, but they require a certain amount of compliance to be effective.

These shadow IT attempts surface all the time through a vaguely competent SecOps’ team daily work, especially insider threat. Gets bragged about or picked up via MDM or DNS queries. So ya in this case the rule comes with easy enforcement.

Your comment raised some questions for me:

* Just curious, how do you enforce against, for example, a Facebook group? Would you have to totally block Facebook?

* With word of mouth an activist Slack workspace can take off on personal devices over cellular data, if the conditions are right. Is the idea of internal enforcement just to make it less convenient to participate?

* Why don’t activists use Blind to organize? Is Blind hostile to activists? How active is Blind at moderating content on behalf of companies (eg. taking down or burying activist content)?

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#105

Post by abandonliberty » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 6:48 AM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #51

"she had left Apple after spending several years fighting a decision to reassign her to a role that she said had involved more work for less pay. She said Apple had begun trying to reassign her after she complained that the company’s work on the minerals was not, in some cases, leading to meaningful change in some war-torn countries" I'm impressed that Apple let her spend "several years" fighting a reassignment. I'm…

In UK/Canada less pay is a breach of employment contract/constructive dismissal/wrongful termination, and requires the employer to pay appropriate severance.

Not sure how the law varies state to state.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#106

Post by lukewarm_pocket » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 6:59 AM UTC

We have couple of groups at Apple, that are very unhappy with the company due to WFH policy. #remote-work-advocacy channel has gone through some phases, but right now they are at the grief cycle. It's mostly wfh memes and repetitive confirmation-bias articles. Come January, we will get to acceptance phase, and those who wanted to jump ship, will jump ship.

Today, during the yearly Tim Cook's hands, wfh chat was talking smack about Apple even though they've officially gotten a response from corporate. It even spilled over to #talk-apple chat. Though, I gotta agree with some criticism. Apple has shot itself in the foot when it publicly takes political sides, and keeps a low radar on certain issues when employees expect Apple to take a stance. Overall, yes, Slack has changed a lot about Apple's culture.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#107

Post by lukewarm_pocket » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 7:02 AM UTC

Bud wrote: post #65

The leader of this small group of "unrest" folks, Cher Scarlett, apparently got hired in April and has worked for 8 other tech companies, according to this story. Color me unimpressed. She starts agitating after a few months of working entirely from home at a highly-paid gig? Did she even have time to get a clue about whether Apple's doing bad things or not? Or does she just kinda flit around from gig to gig looking…

Yeah, Cher is an interesting character. Feels like she found a passion in being a corporate activist and it's very interesting to see how her story will play out.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#108

Post by jimsimmons » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 8:47 AM UTC

russelldjimmy wrote: post #76

jimsimmons wrote: post #24

As time goes on, Apple, the de-facto emperor of tech, will lose more of its clothes. They haven't had anything new in 10 years and each year their keynotes get more typical and lacklustre. Yet, Cook is up there using all sorts of superlatives, doing cargo cult innovation.

> Cook is up there using all sorts of superlatives > keynotes get more typical and lacklustre Surely huge irony is not lost here

Each keynote is filled with superlatives. The product updates are lacklustre.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#109

Post by jimsimmons » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 8:59 AM UTC

Bud wrote: post #70

jimsimmons wrote: post #24

As time goes on, Apple, the de-facto emperor of tech, will lose more of its clothes. They haven't had anything new in 10 years and each year their keynotes get more typical and lacklustre. Yet, Cook is up there using all sorts of superlatives, doing cargo cult innovation.

I guess you missed Apple Watch (which basically invented its category and leads it by a wide margin), and AirPods (also leads its category by a wide margin), and the M1 (instantly made a joke out of Intel) and most of the history of the iPhone. Kinda makes one wonder what else you've missed. Such as, basically everything. "De facto" is not hyphenated, btw, nor did you use it correctly.

Apple Watch, like iPad, is a segment that only exists because Apple is involved in it. The fact that neither of them have serious competition is enough to show how niche the segments are. If another company made the same products, they wouldn't enjoy the similar success because they lack Apple's "status" effect.

Also, AirPods leadership isn't nearly as strong as you imply and is trending downwards [1].

> AirPods market share fell from 41% to 29% in the course of nine months, according to the latest Counterpoint data, but Apple remains well ahead of its nearest competitor, and most other big names remain in the 2-5% range.

M1 is cool, I'll admit, but it is something that has more to do with Apple's scale. Google is coming out with Tensor cores, they've had TPUs for several years now and Samsung has had custom silicon for years as well. Large companies can afford to go into chip development and they do when they get a chance. M1 at the moment is not a standout feature. Sure, it can destroy Intel CPUs in the near future and I am looking forward to it. But I see it more of as an inevitability than Apple doing something "revolutionary" as the cool kids used to say a while back. If you are a 2 trillion company, it makes sense to move chip development in house rather than paying lofty premiums to a much smaller company. Vertical integration 101. This is what Google did with TPUs because they didn't want to pay Nvidia a lot of money.

Also, why is my de facto usage incorrect (hyphenation aside)?

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2021/01/14/airpods-market-share/

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#110

Post by jimsimmons » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 9:06 AM UTC

bschwindHN wrote: post #78

jimsimmons wrote: post #24

As time goes on, Apple, the de-facto emperor of tech, will lose more of its clothes. They haven't had anything new in 10 years and each year their keynotes get more typical and lacklustre. Yet, Cook is up there using all sorts of superlatives, doing cargo cult innovation.

> They haven't had anything new in 10 years I dunno, their new M1 silicon is pretty dope. Airpod Pros are the most recent thing I bought from them and they're a pleasure to use every day. They're not at the same level of innovation that they were 10 years ago, but they're also not at zero.

I guess I am more disappointed by their lack of self-awareness and tendency to hype up really small things. Removing headphone jack, choosing lightning cable instead of usb-c, removal of fingerprint sensor in favor of much inferior face ID and largely incremental updates to iPhones over the past few years, I am not sure they are the same company they once were. I feel quite uncomfortable watching their keynotes loaded with hyperbole.