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

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#201

Post by kf6nux » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

fortran77 wrote: post #122

vimy wrote: post #5

If I was Tim Cook I would immediately shutdown slack and mandate everyone go back to using email. It’s always a tiny minority of activists organizing on slack who are causing a lot of the unrest in tech companies.

Tim Cook reaps what he sows. He started all this when he fired Antonio García Martínez in response to an employee petition. (Hint to Tim Cook: You should have fired each and every one of the employees who signed that petition.) He made the wrong, worst people at the company feel "empowered" and now there's no stopping them.

For those who don't remember, this fired leader wrote "Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self- regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel" and many other things similar to it.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432909/apple-petition-h...

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#202

Post by nikkinana » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 3:19 PM UTC

I wanna be a NBA player but I'm white and 75. I'm gonna sue

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#203

Post by NovemberWhiskey » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 3:20 PM UTC

yunohn wrote: post #184

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only retaliation if the employee is engaging in an exercise of their legally-protected rights. If someone is fired after complaining about sexual harassment in the workplace, that's retaliation because you have a legal right to a workplace free of such harassment. If someone is reassigned after complaining about their employer's ESG policies, you're going to have to explain to me what the nature of the legal pro…

It is quite telling that you’re sticking to the strictest possible definition of “retaliation”. A reasonable person would consider reassignment due to complaining about the ineffectivity of their role and green washing by their employer (often covered by whistle-blowing protections), as retaliation.

I'm sticking to the definition of "retaliation" in which it's actually illegal.

Please don't try to muddy the waters here by attempting to rely on the common language meaning of the word when you set up the discussion to be about the employment law meaning.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#204

Post by chmaynard » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 3:21 PM UTC

Many of us are curious to see how the pandemic and its aftermath will affect corporate politics and policies, not just at Apple but in other workplaces as well. It's tempting to draw general conclusions based on anecdotal, one-sided accounts of injustice and retribution. Perhaps there is also a bit of schadenfreude at work here.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#205

Post by pc86 » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #191

pc86 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then work with a different employee. The additional time in minimal. This is a pretty disgusting attitude, honestly. "I'm not willing to be in this store for 18 minutes instead of 16 minutes, how dare this handicapped person attempt to do their job and assist me!"

It won't take 2 more minutes to chat via text.

It's possible that you've missed the point.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#206

Post by yunohn » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #200

zozbot234 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dealing with the minerals supply chain situation was part of her job description. She can't discuss how she's practically being set up for failure? How's that not part of her work conditions?

Her responsibility to deal with the minerals supply chain situation is not open-ended; it is scoped by Apple's plans and policies. Believing your job should be something different from what your employer has hired you to do doesn't put you in a legally protected position; nor does believing that the extent to which your employer pursues a particular objective is insufficient. Complaining that your boss doesn't let yo…

> Complaining that your boss doesn't let you do something based on your own interpretation of your job description

Her job was to improve the rare mineral supply chain. Her complaint was that it wasn’t doing that. Seems like a super valid criticism, and what employees should be doing.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#207

Post by kenferry » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

szc wrote: post #112

I think this is a poorly sourced and not a reliably fact checked article. This is at least the 2nd time on HN that a report has suggested Ashley Gjovik was complaining about "toxic chemicals at work". The previous article referred to something published at "The Verge" - "her office is in an Apple building located on a superfund site" https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/9/22666049/apple-fires-senio... > Other published ar…

Are you suggesting there was not a real complaint about Ashley’s office being on a superfund site, or that you don’t find the claim credible and that therefore the nyt shouldn’t have reported it?

The complaint itself is definitely about the office. https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1438897383912394758?...

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#208

Post by golemotron » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

This is simply redirected wage pressure.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#209

Post by saagarjha » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

szc wrote: post #112

I think this is a poorly sourced and not a reliably fact checked article. This is at least the 2nd time on HN that a report has suggested Ashley Gjovik was complaining about "toxic chemicals at work". The previous article referred to something published at "The Verge" - "her office is in an Apple building located on a superfund site" https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/9/22666049/apple-fires-senio... > Other published ar…

As the other commenters have mentioned, your "technical analysis" is very wrong here. I don't want to rehash the details that the others have mentioned about why you're wrong, but I do want to take a moment to say that what you've posted is pretty much perfectly embodies why many people hate "the orange site". It's these kind of faux-objective breakdowns that really hurt the site as a whole.

I'm willing to believe that you meant well with your comment, but I think you need to realize that even when you attempt to be objective bias creeps up readily. It starts with which stories you even decide to call out. You might feel that this person is fake or lacks the position that she says she has, but fact checking this inherently involves a selection process. Remember when Hacker News decided to "check" whether Katie Bouman had "actually worked on the black hole image"? This is where problems arise, because it's obvious this doesn't happen for everyone–just people that are thought to be "fakes", which is something that is selected by decidedly subjective criteria.

The second problem is that as you go through your analysis you bake in assumptions–in this case many that are wrong–and use it to arrive at an "objective" answer. Trying to reason from your armchair and present it under a guise of factualness is the biggest problem with any kind of "rationalist" analysis on the internet, including the kind that Hacker News is unfortunately known for. Here you literally have no idea of how Apple works internally, and at one point you openly claim that her personal Twitter doesn't demonstrate "a computer 'mindset'" (how can you possibly evaluate this objectively, even putting aside questions of why her Twitter is the right way to judge this?). Trying to submit it as "technical analysis" is just wrong, period.

It's good to be skeptical, and apply your own reasoning to things you read online. But try to be mindful of which things you're choosing to apply it to, as well as any flaws of your own you may be injecting when doing your own evaluation. Hacker News should be a place of healthy curiosity and discussion, but to do that we can't possibly accept this kind of content.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#210

Post by NovemberWhiskey » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

yunohn wrote: post #206

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her responsibility to deal with the minerals supply chain situation is not open-ended; it is scoped by Apple's plans and policies. Believing your job should be something different from what your employer has hired you to do doesn't put you in a legally protected position; nor does believing that the extent to which your employer pursues a particular objective is insufficient. Complaining that your boss doesn't let yo…

> Complaining that your boss doesn't let you do something based on your own interpretation of your job description Her job was to improve the rare mineral supply chain. Her complaint was that it wasn’t doing that. Seems like a super valid criticism, and what employees should be doing.

This isn't a debate where the moral strength of the argument about the sufficiency of a particular policy carries the day - the employer gets the final say because they're writing the check. Your option as an employee is to leave.

The idea that you can demand to stay in your position and continue to pursue your own agenda is so odd. If you want that kind of freedom, you're not going to find it in corporate life.