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

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#221

Post by samhwr » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

krrrh wrote: post #97

throwawaylinux wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m going to assume that this is a serious question and try to quickly answer it in good faith. It is a serious question and I was hoping for something closer to the late 1700s vintage. I'm well aware there is a vast welfare system in place today.

Sorry I misread thinking you meant since it’s founding (until now), when has it been a welfare state. I was caught in a weak moment I guess.

I don’t quite understand your confusion - did you read his comment as “at any point since its founding [i.e. just not before 1776]”?

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#222

Post by samhwr » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

luffapi wrote: post #143

thebraxton wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that the accommodation is unreasonable doesn't mean he is a bad person. Apple has one view and he has another, one can be wrong without being bad

It’s not unreasonable at all. The person is deaf, Apple should provide any resources the employee needs to do their job. 1. It’s the right thing to do. 2. If Apple can afford multi-billion dollar toilet shaped offices, they can hire interpreters.

I think it’s a harder question than either side is willing to accept. You have someone who isn’t of much use as an employee, but by no fault of their own. It’s a horrible situation for them to be in, and it’s one we have to think about as a society, but it’s unclear why Apple specifically is obliged to provide them welfare at its own expense.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#223

Post by colpabar » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

yunohn wrote: post #161

lotsofpulp wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One should always assume a company’s efforts are posturing.

Her role was not PR, it was about actually trying to implement fair trade supply chains for rare minerals. Regardless, you are free to assume PR posturing as an uninvolved commenter on HN - meanwhile, we’re discussing an actual person’s job and complaints therewith.

Just because she did not work in PR explicitly doesn't mean she isn't doing "PR" for the company. My take is that apple does not actually care, at all, about "mitigating the impact of mining valuable minerals in conflict zones". They care about not getting caught doing things that make them look bad, and her role was to prevent that from happening, to not actually change anything. She seems to have realized this to some extent, and when she made a stink about it, they reassigned her.

To me it seems odd to stay at the company for several years after that. Something makes me think she's really just looking for more pay, because if she really cared about issues with rare mineral mining in conflict zones, she'd work for a non-profit that deals with that.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#224

Post by cmsj » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #144

sidkshatriya wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be difficult to communicate this way but I think there is a social benefit to making the extra effort for people with disabilities. Often you don’t choose to be disabled. What if you were unlucky to be disabled? Would you like your opportunities to be thoroughly reduced in life? I try to make an effort because I could have been in that employee’s shoes. I am lucky… this is the least I can do.

Further, most people will have some sort of temporary or permanent disability at some point in their life. People break their legs, get older and become deaf, or blind, etc. Interacting with people with disabilities gives us an opportunity to think about how we can make society a little better not just for them, but for ourselves in the case that we become sick, or injured, or just live to be elderly enough that part…

Yep. This is literally the lesson that is demonstrated extremely clearly by the software of, ironically, Apple. Really good accessibility support ends up being really useful to all sorts of people in all sorts of ways.

I have near perfect vision/hearing/speech and no motor difficulties, but there are several accessibility features that I enable on my Mac and iPhone because they make it easier for me to do certain things.

Even outside the software realm, examples like adding ramps to entrances instantly makes life a little bit easier for people pushing carts/strollers, which at various times is a pretty huge part of the population.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#225

Post by Bud » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 4:42 PM UTC

mikelevins wrote: post #133

Bud wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While we're picking nits, whether a pair of words used as a single lexeme should be hyphenated depends on context and style standards. For example, Apple's style standards for technical publications in the 1980s and 1990s dictated that two words treated together as a modifier (an adjective or adverb) of some other lexeme should be hyphenated. That's how "de facto" is used in the OP's text. "De facto" is Latin for "in…

I didn't say "allowable". I said "correctly"; it doesn't mean what GP appears to think it means.

As for whether de facto specifically is hyphenated, go look it up yourself. Latin phrases are not hyphenated; that's generally agreed. This is because they are easily seen to hang together as a single unit without the added help of a hyphen, so the hyphen is redundant in this case. But yes, I am aware that most pairs of words used as a modifier, as in this case, would be hyphenated. I own about eight style guides, so I wasn't just going off randomly about that.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#226

Post by luffapi » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 4:42 PM UTC

samhwr wrote: post #222

luffapi wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not unreasonable at all. The person is deaf, Apple should provide any resources the employee needs to do their job. 1. It’s the right thing to do. 2. If Apple can afford multi-billion dollar toilet shaped offices, they can hire interpreters.

I think it’s a harder question than either side is willing to accept. You have someone who isn’t of much use as an employee, but by no fault of their own. It’s a horrible situation for them to be in, and it’s one we have to think about as a society, but it’s unclear why Apple specifically is obliged to provide them welfare at its own expense.

It’s not a hard question at all. Apple has the money to easily accommodate all of their workers. It would even be a PR win. Tim Cook and the other execs are just anti-labor to their core and (don’t realize?) how clear their actions are being read by future potential employees.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#227

Post by Bud » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

iso1210 wrote: post #167

Bud wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The fact remains that Tim Cook could not do what was claimed out of his salary. Period, paragraph. Just as obvious: Tim Cook wouldn't do this if he weren't confident in his leadership. Apple stock is up more than 10x since he took over.

Tim Cook was paid $264m in 2020 [0] Apple has 4,291 employees in the entire state of New York [1] That's $61,500 per person. The average salary for an "Apple Genius" (one of the people who work at apple stores?) in New York City is $53,230 [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28573768 [1] https://www.apple.com/job-creation/ [2] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Apple_Genius/Salary...

Tim Cook's salary is what we were talking about. So no. Please don't misstate your facts especially when the source you are citing was quite clear.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#228

Post by lukewarm_pocket » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote: post #155

lukewarm_pocket wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have a feeling 0 more tech companies will hire her now that a quick Google of her name will attach her to this sort of activism. Even if you agree with some of her points regarding Apple, do you really want her coming into your company and looking for a story to tell?

I personally don't like her, but it's besides the point. There isn't much that I can do. Am I going to anonymously dm her and talk shit?

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#229

Post by Bud » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #137

Bud wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't actually know Tim Cook's salary, do you? Please stop pretending that you do. Hint: the vast majority of his compensation is, and has always been, via stock grants.

Does the argument meaningfully change if you replace the word "salary" with "compensation"? If not, please stop pretending that you made an interesting point.

Yes, it actually does, because the value of his compensation, 98% or so of which is in stock, would be worth over 10 times less right now if it were not for Tim Cook's performance as CEO. That makes a rather big difference, in my view.

It also changes the argument meaningfully in a second way: liquidity. Tim Cook can't just go sell all that stock right now, since that would cause a rather big panic and also rob him of a lot of its value. Which means he could not actually pay all those folks' salaries.

Whether my point is "interesting" is up to you. Whether it's factual isn't. It's factual.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#230

Post by cmsj » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote: post #155

lukewarm_pocket wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have a feeling 0 more tech companies will hire her now that a quick Google of her name will attach her to this sort of activism. Even if you agree with some of her points regarding Apple, do you really want her coming into your company and looking for a story to tell?

It's interesting that the take there is "don't hire people who will expose your corporate shortcomings" instead of "fix your corporate shortcomings".