I believe that everything that was written in this article is true and it's really depressing to see a work culture like this. How they can retain and attract talent with this kind of culture?!
I Quit: What really goes on at Apple
151–160 of 566 posts
Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple
#152In "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…
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Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple
#153One of my friends used to work at Apple. After one particular grueling stint of 14+ hour days, management decided to give them a thank-you. In the form of vouchers. For frozen dinners. Meanwhile, all of his friends worked for Google, we got gourmet food every meal of the week as a standard perk, and we were usually home by 8 or 9 PM rather than midnight. It's sorta like "Your 'thank you' is really more like a giant '…
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Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
That quote is so nuts! He didn't think for a minute he was doing anything wrong. That's supposed to make me feel better ? I agree with you, the way these rich people look at employees as chess pieces rather than humans is awful. If you're so afraid of someone quitting, then address that by making it worth their while not to quit! Not with collusion for god's sake. The fact that they call someone getting a better job…
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.
To even use the phrase "poaching" is to give too much to the devil. It implies that a person "belongs" at a certain organization, as opposed to being a self-interested economic actor, and that there is something incorrect or dirty or unethical or wrong about leaving where they work to work somewhere else.
Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple
#155But... the author worked in customer support, managing agents. Customer support in any company is like this: it's full of bobblehead managers who make work to justify their own jobs. It's a cost center, and cost centers are where you put executives who are capable, but not exceptional. This is why OP has stories about how firing people was considered heroic -- when you work in a cost center, the only thing the busine…
But... customer support isn't a cost center at Apple. They sell the AppleCare extended warranty, and if you don't purchase that when you buy the product, you have to pay them by the minute for customer support via telephone.
Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
If staff are consistently having to work overtime to hit targets then there's either: - A problem with the staff - there's either not enough of them or they haven't the skills to do what is required or - A problem with the management. I've never worked in a role where incompetent people were hired and couldn't get what needed to be done done, but I've worked under plenty of incompetent management.
Even the first option is a problem with management. They either need to hire more people, fire people, or train people.
True, fair point.
Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
An adept representation of a limited sample of the issues surrounding customer support and similar departments. The problem is that it doesn't have to be like this. There are exceptional cases where customer support is not like this. Many of them have gained considerable benefit from investing in their customer support. One source of difficulty is that evaluation of those benefits requires very complicated (for an av…
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!
Apple is an example. Not current Apple, by the late 2000's Apple that saw exceptional growth. Apple was famous for being easy to replace broken products, get refounds, getting somebody smart to sell you stuff.
Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
That quote is so nuts! He didn't think for a minute he was doing anything wrong. That's supposed to make me feel better ? I agree with you, the way these rich people look at employees as chess pieces rather than humans is awful. If you're so afraid of someone quitting, then address that by making it worth their while not to quit! Not with collusion for god's sake. The fact that they call someone getting a better job…
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.
Or, people start getting paid the appropriate amount that they work, as seen by their peers and opposition.
It's kind of like a union in some regard. No wonder companies don't like it.
Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple is actually probably the best example of a company taking a cost center (in this case, manufacturing and logistics) and turning it into a strategic advantage. Apple wields its supply chain like a weapon. It's very difficult to compete with Apple because the world has a limited supply of high-quality parts (flash memory, LCD screens, etc.), and Apple can just outbid everyone else for the entire market supply for…
Isn't Samsung the main supplier for many of the parts used in the iPhone? And that's the reason why a.) they're in the phone business and b.) they can dominate the Android market? They took the other side of those transactions so they could learn exactly what it took to build a mobile phone, and then once they had phone-building expertise, they just need to ramp up their own production and divert some to internal use…
Except, you know, they've been building phones for far longer than Apple.
Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
From my understanding Apple effectively owns your entire output when you're employed full-time (at least as an engineer). At a recent interview I mentioned I like tinkering with code on the side and was told I'd have to give that up and stop contributing to open source. I imagine that extends to participation in the "outside world" at least to some extent. The fact that Apple developers I've spoken to spend their per…
>At a recent interview I mentioned I like tinkering with code on the side and was told I'd have to give that up and stop contributing to open source. I faced similar in my last company (not with Apple). Now find it very difficult to get working on a side project or similar at home after having not done anything in that regard in a few years. Ideas I once had to develop are long gone. Bleh.
At macromedia I had to list the projects I was working on outside the company - not a problem, but it needed to be done.