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I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

roadlesstravelled.me

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Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#271

Post by shostack »

cma wrote: post #257
shostack wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all ironic. OP was posting about how customer support is a cost center, amongst other claims. He stated that it is like this in any company. I completely disagree and have experienced the proof of that first hand. I'm a little unclear from how you worded things--was the question around the notion of firing people as heroic juxtaposed against what we call our support team (ie. Heroes)?

I think by OP he confusingly meant the person in the article, not the post at the top of the thread. Support hero's would be an ironic concept in relation to that.

Ah, that makes more sense. I admittedly read and responded to his initial comment before RTFA. I can see where that might be considered slightly ironic (while simultaneously terrifying that anyone would ever describe mass firings as "heroic").

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#272

Post by gabeio »

Not to attack or defend apple or the author but he just seems like a free spirit, and from personal experience in customer support myself (also quit twice) this is just not the job for a person who travels the world that much...

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#273

Post by _trb_ »

shostack wrote: post #244
smenko wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this supposed to be ironic?? Given, you know, the original poster's grievances.... Support Heroes?.. No?

Not at all ironic. OP was posting about how customer support is a cost center, amongst other claims. He stated that it is like this in any company. I completely disagree and have experienced the proof of that first hand. I'm a little unclear from how you worded things--was the question around the notion of firing people as heroic juxtaposed against what we call our support team (ie. Heroes)?

In large companies, customer support is a cost center. This can invert in SMB scenarios.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#274

Post by sswaner »

Retric wrote: post #99
serve_yay wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite so, but nonetheless Apple very much strikes me as a high-pressure workplace. There's a reason why they ship what they ship when they ship it.

An air traffic controller messes up and they risk hundreds of lives and 100's of millions of dollars in property. That's a high high-pressure workplace, Tech is just a combination of greed and poor managment.

High pressure describes an environment that can exist anywhere, independent of the decisions to make it that way. I like to listen to a famous controller at JFK. I detect no pressure in his voice. Every line of work has a share of high pressure environments. There are likely many people who could say "You want high pressure, try teaching pre-school!"

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#275

Post by abc_lisper »

_cudgel wrote: post #226
archagon wrote: post #69

In "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…

Why is it that, at a certain level, intelligent company leaders seem to stop thinking of their employees as individuals and instead start thinking of them as company assets? I think this is directly related to the language used within most companies -- at least all those I've worked at -- to describe their employees: human resources . I think this is because people too easily conflate human resources with natural res…

While I don't agree with many of the comments here, I agree with yours specifically. I really hate the phrase human resource, like it is something that is ready for exploitation. One of the many reasons I never worked for big consulting companies is that, they look at things as problems vs resources. If the problems cannot be solved by X resources, try X+1. There they are called resources, not even human resources.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#276

Post by rogerbinns »

exelius wrote: post #84
codezero wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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…

There is some more subtlety to this too. Apple's products (like most tech companies) are made by contract manufacturers, primarily Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry). What Apple does different is to buy the equipment Foxconn needs to make the products. This means there is no financial risk in that equipment to Foxconn, and that Foxconn's other customers don't get to take advantage of the equipment.

I highly recommend following http://www.asymco.com/ where Horace Deidu does lots of analysis on the industry, with focus on Apple. Heck he can fairly accurately predict future Apple sales because of the capital expenditures mentioned in the previous paragraph http://www.asymco.com/2015/02/10/how-many-ios-devices-didwil...

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#277

Post by cmrdporcupine »

nostrademons wrote: post #250
soperj wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoted for being right. Gotta love a zealot.

I didn't downvote either of you, but I didn't respond to either of your comments because they miss the point of mine. Yes, Samsung's been making phones forever. They have not been making smartphones forever. The iPhone was a fundamentally different product category from what phone manufacturers were doing before, requiring that competitors scrap a lot of what they were doing before [1]. And Samsung had a big leg-up i…

http://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-sch-i730-verizon-wirele...

2005, 2 years before the iphone. And even called a smartphone in the review.

Touch screen keyboardless iphone clone, no. But smartphone, yes. Apple didn't invent this category, they just changed it.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#278

Post by shostack »

guelo wrote: post #269
shostack wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are painting with an overly broad brush. Where I work, our Support Heroes (yes, we call them Heroes because the lengths they go to for our customers are heroic) are one of the main reasons so many of our customers love us and stick with us so long. You've probably heard that it can cost ~5x more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. An exceptional Customer Support team is your front line in fight…

Another way to combat churn is platform lock-in, which I think is more Apple's strategy. Also the Genius bar, no other consumer tech company gives you in-person access to support employees.

There are many ways to combat churn. My point was that doing what is right to make the customer happy can be an awesomely powerful and more importantly POSITIVE weapon in the battle against churn.

Platform lock-in is a negative, customer-hostile approach. The positive alternate version of "lock-in" is "stickiness." Ie. the concept that your product/service/experience is so amazingly awesome that your customers have many reasons to keep coming back and using you.

Platform lock-in has always come across to me as a crutch for some flaw in a product/service/pricing model. I understand businesses need to manage risk and their investment in customer acquisition, but focusing on customer-positive ways to do so seems better aligned with all parties interests, no?

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#279

Post by clarky07 »

ArtDev wrote: post #229
exelius wrote: post #84

Earlier 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…

"nobody could build a phone at the same level as Apple." People have to put their iphones in bulky cases because the screens break so easily. I have dropped my Samsung Note4 so many times, and it is fine (also, the charge lasts three days. Did I mention it is really fast too?).

i haven't had a case on my iPhone in 6 years. the screens do not in fact break easily. some people are more clumsy than others. some just prefer to have a case for whatever reason. the same is true for android phones.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#280

Post by soperj »

nostrademons wrote: post #250
soperj wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoted for being right. Gotta love a zealot.

I didn't downvote either of you, but I didn't respond to either of your comments because they miss the point of mine. Yes, Samsung's been making phones forever. They have not been making smartphones forever. The iPhone was a fundamentally different product category from what phone manufacturers were doing before, requiring that competitors scrap a lot of what they were doing before [1]. And Samsung had a big leg-up i…

There were so many smartphones before the iPhone, the main thing that Apple added was touch, which allowed them to have full screens. Not like it wasn't going that way anyway, LG prototyped a phone like that a year before the iphone came out.
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