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Apple's inspirational note to new hires

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Re: Apple's inspirational note to new hires

#131

Post by wrs »

blinkingled wrote: post #86
webwright wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"they can make a great product anywhere, why with Apple?" How many software/hardware companies are making great products? I'm an Apple user (though I very much dislike the behavior of the company), but I'm hard-pressed to name any company building better products than Apple. Or even name many that are in the neighborhood.

Well, Apple is sum of its parts - it's the people that make Apple into what they are. So presumably they can build great products under different corporation? I can think of the money problem - if a great product requires the kind of money that only Apple can afford - but how many great products require that kind of money?

Oh, if only that were true. Great people can build great products only in a corporation whose culture allows (or, ideally, encourages) that to happen. Money is a lot easier to find than culture and commitment.

Re: Apple's inspirational note to new hires

#132

Post by CoolGuySteve »

mahyarm wrote: post #122
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go back through my comment history you'll see that I've written a few, but I left for the same reasons as the negative responses here. The company was making billions and I didn't even have stock options, whereas the executive team was getting paid several thousand times as much me. They always said "our pay is competitive with the valley", but it didn't feel right. It came out later that Apple and other Silic…

Do you have a blog post about your transition to finance and the differences in working and living conditions?

No, I've never had an employer that allowed blogging. And even then, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with the attention given the notoriety of my previous employers.

All I can say is that if you have a choice between a large investment bank and a hedge fund, always go with the hedge fund. They are more agile, more casual, and there's a more direct link between your activities and the organization's profit. Overall, it is more similar to tech.

Re: Apple's inspirational note to new hires

#133

Post by chauzer »

lionelhutz1 wrote: post #111

That's the great thing about a free market. You are free to do whatever you want. If working at Apple is such a piss-poor experience, and you are certain that your talents are soooo valuable to the world, then don't work at Apple and take your amazing abilities elsewhere. Certainly their must be hundreds of companies just dyyyiiing to get their hands on your unmatched grey matter. So quit bitching and work somewhere…

No one is this thread is complaining about themselves working at Apple because they don't believe in the company's treatment of their employees and their general business practices. They all already work somewhere else because of this.

Re: Apple's inspirational note to new hires

#134

Post by Karunamon »

jarek wrote: post #130
Karunamon wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something interesting and with potential. The same reason any hacker willingly takes on any project. Find what you love to do, and then find a way to get paid doing it.

Sorry, I meant specifically, as in a specific field/project jopt would sacrifice a weekend for. Working weekends seems like a good way to not get fully paid for doing what you love to do.

Then it would be different each person. I've blown more than one weekend on a couple of interesting Ruby issues which were semi-related to my employment.

What it comes back to though, is if you have the right value of "love to do", the pay becomes secondary to the problem. This doesn't mean that you let a company walk all over you of course, but that you are having a good time cash or no cash.

Generally one should expect to be compensated appropriately for weekend work :)

Re: Apple's inspirational note to new hires

#135

Post by [deleted] »

praptak wrote: post #51
chc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making this material attractive to people who would just as soon work as quants is probably not Apple's goal here. If you don't react favorably, you probably aren't what they want. (I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, just that if money is really all you can think of in a job, some companies are more OK with that and others prefer passion, and it's good that people suited for one kind don't end up at the…

> just that if money is really all you can think of in a job, some companies are more OK with that and others prefer passion, and it's good that people suited for one kind don't end up at the other. You seem to imply it's either passion or compensation which looks like a false dichotomy to me. Lots of people have passion for their work but still they're smart enough to avoid companies who treat the passion like a wea…

[deleted]

Re: Apple's inspirational note to new hires

#136

Post by crusso »

dsirijus wrote: post #84
sbuk wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No-one has said otherwise. Some people do not want to take the risks that you have. That doesn't make them any less of a person or less ambitious, it means that they have different goals and priorities to you. If you weren't so wrapped up in hubris you might actually learn something from it.

Point taken on being wrapped up in hubris. But, what I failed to get through with the reply is the explanation why HN folk (enterpreneurs) might not resonate with the Apple message which is basically a pep talk for a non-enterpreneurial job position masqueraded as the opposite ("deep waters" ~ "risk taking").

The best entrepreneurs I've worked with kicked ass whether or not they were working for "the man". Great entrepreneurs live and breathe high quality work whether they're running the company or emptying the office garbage cans.

To me, being an entrepreneur is a lot more about your propensity to excel rather than the particular role you're playing in a company.

Re: Apple's inspirational note to new hires

#137

Post by dvhh »

Drbble wrote: post #73
dvhh wrote: post #3

nice, but how many of you are ready to sacrifice your life (weekends) for a company's profit. - Curing cancer: yes - Saving lives : yes - Building an outlet for yet spending more money : no As much a I love my work, I won't love it more than my wife, or my future children.

> As much a I love my work, I won't love it more than my wife, or my future children. Steve Jobs clearly did, and wanted people with that level of commitment. Can't fault him for trying to find people willing to give him their lives.

My point is that, that was one of the reason he want a sanctioned biography, so that his children (we can defined children as being the generation living with ubiquitous Apple product such as the iPhone of the iPod, but I will stick to the family definition, adopted like he was or blood related ) know him (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2046367/Steve-Jobs-b...), he sacrificed his family life for his job.

He did great

Re: Apple's inspirational note to new hires

#138

Post by dvhh »

biot wrote: post #16
dvhh wrote: post #3

nice, but how many of you are ready to sacrifice your life (weekends) for a company's profit. - Curing cancer: yes - Saving lives : yes - Building an outlet for yet spending more money : no As much a I love my work, I won't love it more than my wife, or my future children.

Do you actively seek to minimize your work to the greatest extent possible so that you can maximize family time? Perhaps if you moved to a country with a really low cost of living, you could consult remotely for a few hours a week and spend every other waking moment constantly interacting with your family. Or is it more about balance and avoiding extremes?

Hum, even balance is a subjective view in that case, plus my answer would not probably count as much as I am one of those lazy french.

I would hope that my view is about balance and avoiding extreme, like it was the case in the game industry a few years ago.

About your suggestion, not all of us are willing to do that move ( to "cheaper" country, as we've got anchor in our live, family, friends, cars, house, pet, etc .... ), or got jobs that cannot be done remotely. I have already moved to another country, not because life cost was cheap, but because it was less stressful for me.

I am passionate about my work but I mostly focus that passion on side projects and hobby (that is for free). Not saying that mixing work and passion is bad ( I think, it is great ), but that can easily be abused ( game industry, animation industry ).

I think it is wrong to push people from the start to work on weekends (that was the way I read it), it is the fastest way to burn them out (speak of personal experience here, first company (start-up) I joined payed me ~900$ a month but I didn't care because I was motivated, worked 10am-8pm~1am including some weekends, after 5-6 years of this I was a mess, Apple is hopefully not be the same ).

Re: Apple's inspirational note to new hires

#139

Post by robocat »

dsirijus wrote: post #56
dsirijus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I had to provide credit card information to install FREE application from iTunes, and send copy of ID to Facebook to get my account unlocked (because of their obvious system-wide bug), all in one week, I gave up. I'll finish these Facebook apps I am contracted to build, wrap up iOS apps also under contract, and stick it to the man. No more of this hogwash.

I'm confirming that out of 3 iPhone users I've asked just now, 1 cannot download any apps since he doesn't have a credit card and the 'None' option is not present, and 2 other could only select 'None' AFTER they've provided the credit card information in the first place. I also belong in the second category.

Unfortunately I think Android is trying to follow in Apples footsteps. Anecdotally, after they upgraded the Market to Play (quite a few WTF experiences when that happened), they now ask for a lot more information (e.g. address) when updating credit card information. Also they made an unforgivable mistake for me in that the credit card entry on 4.0.3 was buggy - so I gave up and have stopped buying apps - I really have trouble trusting companies that make it hard for me to give them my money.

At least with Apple one can still get an iTunes card to purchase apps, without registering ones credit card. Especially important since an iPad sends your appleid in cleartext HTTP headers when connecting to the internet...

Re: Apple's inspirational note to new hires

#140

Post by easp »

kamaal wrote: post #17

>>There's work and there's your life's work. Sure there is, that is why we choose to do it for a price that makes our life rewarding and deserving of such work. Talking of work and no rewards and compensation is not very impressive these days. >>The kind of work that has your fingerprints all over it. Yes that is why commits to source code repos exists. So that users who make them are traceable. Nearly every Open sou…

This is just silly.

There are many many people who work in exploitive jobs, most don't have reasonable alternatives.

In silicon valley, there are likely many engineers who work at exploitive jobs. They likely have reasonable alternatives, but don't take them because they have hopes of a big payout.

Then you have Apple employees. They likely have reasonable alternatives to working at Apple, but they aren't their expecting a big jackpot, because Apple is an established public company. So why are they there? Most likely it's because the message of that card does speak to them. If they figure out later that it is BS, they are free to go. For all the secondhand stories I hear of how bad it is to work at Apple, I'm surprised by how few first hand stories I hear.

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