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Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

nytimes.com

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Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#281

Post by t-3 »

threecheese wrote: post #262
ekianjo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Providing an iPad to type messages on is a reasonable accommodation Doesn't that make communication slower? When I want to buy something, I certainly don't want to start chatting on a tablet to get my point across. It seems like a poor choice of position for that employee.

This is similar to being annoyed at the disabled folks who are hired to bag groceries at supermarkets; it’s not a lot to ask for us to deal with suboptimal retail experiences if it gives the disabled earning/buying power, which has a net positive effect on society in general. You have agency here; you could choose to shop somewhere else, where they would prioritize your retail experience by not hiring the disabled. B…

The self-service lanes at many grocery stores have lines even when human cashiers are available. People don't want others handling their groceries, because even fully able employees do a very poor job on average. Online shopping has exploded for similar reasons - convenience and choice for the customer trumps social good.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#282

Post by ric2b »

Bud wrote: post #229
geofft wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Really? What amazing things did Tim Cook do to single-handedly make the company 10x more valuable that another CEO wouldn't have?

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#283

Post by ksec »

colpabar wrote: post #223
yunohn wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think they do, just not at a large enough expenses or additional to their BOM.

>she'd work for a non-profit that deals with that.

She would have made a far bigger impact if she was working in Apple.

My guess is that she is like many of us who realise the PR and marketing message Apple has been sending is completely different to the work she is doing. Had Apple not been painting themselves so righteous they would not have this problem today. Steve Jobs think of environmental friendly product as tick boxes, nice to have but not something to market the hell out of it.

So when people then realise, especially in the age of doing the "right" thing. Apple is not what they think it is.

I think Apple sort of realise this, and they have since toned it down in this years Keynote. For anyone interested you should go and check Apple's keynote in the past 4 years and see the drastic difference.

If I had to sum it up, Tim Cook changed the PR and marketing direction in 2014. ( Also the year Katie Cotton stepped down ) And seriously he is not very good at it.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#284

Post by iso1210 »

Bud wrote: post #227
iso1210 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only the most pedantic arsehole would assume that money given to someone doesn't count as 'salary'

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#285

Post by iso1210 »

h4waii wrote: post #277
iso1210 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why I would need to talk to a customer service person in real life at apple. If I did (and I don't think I ever had) need to communicate my preference would be via email, or perhaps real time text chat. There's no reason someone who's deaf couldn't be on the end of those. I did however cancel a £1000 order with currys because they didn't provide anyone to talk to - by phone, email or even text chat (whic…

So this is kind of a 'dark pattern' as it makes orders harder to cancel. I think it can be intentional sometimes.

Ironically with currys the only option that seemed possible was to cancel.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#286

Post by dogman144 »

sangnoir wrote: post #275
dogman144 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These shadow IT attempts surface all the time through a vaguely competent SecOps’ team daily work, especially insider threat. Gets bragged about or picked up via MDM or DNS queries. So ya in this case the rule comes with easy enforcement.

Notwithstanding the write-itself scandal of a "privacy-champion spying on employees and cracking down on their communications" angle, you won't be able to enforce anything on personal devices congregating on off-company platforms and being spread by word of mouth (or company email, if they are feeling saucy)

You arguably can if it’s work business on personal devices. Violates an AUP and other various company regs ties to data loss and IP.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#287

Post by dogman144 »

tomjen3 wrote: post #255
dogman144 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These shadow IT attempts surface all the time through a vaguely competent SecOps’ team daily work, especially insider threat. Gets bragged about or picked up via MDM or DNS queries. So ya in this case the rule comes with easy enforcement.

In 2013 maybe. These days (and especially so at Apple) it doesn't take much skill to setup a group chat on signal - and we can assume they have personal phones. Your IT group are not going to find anything.

Small group in Signal, yes that would be hard to catch. A group large enough where this matters to think about, OPSEC would fail via non-technical hires.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#288

Post by dogman144 »

wheelinsupial wrote: post #276
dogman144 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To preface, “insider threat” is a bit of a harsh way to name the program this behavior falls under- it also covers “good” employees behaving in non-malicious but mistaken ways that will harm a company. Also, all work-related actions taking place off work devices gets covered under an AUP. So heading into this, Apple has both the program and policy to enforce a few different legal/HR actions against employees who’d go…

Do these device management tools extend to personal cell phones that have corporate software installed on them? For example, using a token that’s generated on the phone to log in to the corporate VPN while working remotely from home, would this give a company the same device management access?

It depends on what that corporate software is. Only a few of them skew towards real-time viewing of behavior. If what you’re referring to just generates a token that you then use to log onto a Vpn on a work device, that token generation is likely really limited in its access. The less like Google Auth, and the more like a custom solution the tool is, the more you have to think about device access you’re giving. I operate under the assumption any work business I do on any device is potentially logged extensively. The tools you want to be aware of installing on personal devices are “MDM” or similar, at a high level. Those get potentially large access.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#289

Post by thenanyu »

tomjen3 wrote: post #256
thenanyu wrote: post #242

Either slack will implement anti-activism features or a competitor will. Given Benioff’s public persona I’m betting on the latter. The one thing Slack has always sucked at is moderation tools.

What would those anti-activism features be? As far as I am aware workspace owners can see "private" messages, so slack isn't much use to organize.

The same types of tools that forum moderators have available to them on Reddit, HN, Discord, etc.

Low hanging items: throttle message rates, limit number of people in a chat room, bans, shadow bans, topics, delayed message posting pending moderation

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