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I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

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Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#341

Post by wingless »

brianpgordon wrote: post #94
Apocryphon wrote: post #45

The culture of silence between Apple and the public extends to more than just upcoming products. Has anyone noticed that there aren't as many Apple employees participating in tech conferences, hackathons, public presentations? Even for subjects unrelated to their work? Definitely fewer than Google/Facebook/Amazon/Microsoft employees.

I've heard that Apple is notorious for discouraging employees from having tech-oriented blogs.

I've seen Apple developers that weren't allowed to contribute to WebKit.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#342

Post by dietrichepp »

zaroth wrote: post #298
exelius wrote: post #24

But... 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…

You know what else is a cost center? Engineering. It's perceived as a massive step up from Call Center or Customer Support or QA but it's just marginally closer to revenue generation than the sales reps and can suffer many the same issues. At a previous company I managed to end up doing my software development work under a Sales title, so I could get the quota and commissions that would come with it. All of a sudden…

> a low-base / high-commission model is proven to attract and incentivize talented reps and drive out the low performers

I'm interested in hearing how this is proven. I've seen incentivized sales reps close deals that damaged the company, just like I've seen "successful" marketing campaigns that eventually killed their products.

If you use bookings as your metric for bonuses and then turn around and use bookings to measure whether the incentives are working on a per-worker basis, you'll miss a lot of negative effects. If sales starts overpromising the product, sabotaging each others' deals, or even chasing after bigger but short-term customers, you could see the metrics improve as the company falls apart. And then there's the fact that, even within a department, you'll hopefully have a group of people with diverse motivations.

That's why I'm curious about how this model has been "proven".

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#343

Post by hondo77 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #277
nostrademons wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And it must have sucked or else people would have bought it in iPhone-like numbers. Apple changed the category by figuring it out.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#344

Post by oldmanjay »

rodgerd wrote: post #239
serve_yay wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehhh. Zooming out this far just makes the phrase meaningless in the context of tech, which seems counterproductive since as you may have noticed we tend to discuss tech around here.

Fine. Writing air traffic control systems is tech, and is pressure. The difference is artificial pressure driven by concerns like "I will look bad to my boss" or "or EPS might dip a fraction of a present", as opposed to "people will die".

I know that it's hard to feel the difference between condescension and having a point, so I want to let you know you're doing the first thing here.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#345

Post by njloof »

cookiecaper wrote: post #248
archagon wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dragonwriter above offers a more informed solution: "But if a company wants to restrict 'poaching' of its employees unilaterally, it can just offer them defined-term personal services contracts with suitable compensation."

Employees don't want that. The terms of the current relationship are centered around the employee's desire for continuity and stability. Most employees do not want to be tied down to the company in a binding fixed-term commitment; how much worse would things be if people weren't free to pursue other employment whenever they wanted? How much more abuse would employees suffer if they didn't have the option of walking o…

I was under personal service contracts for 16 years. They were incredibly helpful for making long term personal decisions, such as buying a house. Who knows when you'll get laid off as an at-will employee, for reasons having nothing to do with personal performance?

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#346

Post by shostack »

dietrichepp wrote: post #338
shostack wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP said: >"customer support in any company is like this." My post was specifically in response to that, because it was an inaccurate statement. I'm really sorry to hear you've had such poor experiences in support. That sucks, and I realize how hard/impossible that can be to turn around from a business and culture standpoint. Sounds like you have found a path that works better for you, so congrats!

When someone says "any company", it's easy to interpret that as meaning "any company without exception". This is a very logical interpretation, but it is not necessarily reasonable to interpret it that way. My experience is that (1) most companies do a lot of things wrong (2) the respect which support receives varies from company to company as well as industry to industry, with business support taken more seriously t…

I was aware of how logically I was interpreting the statement.

That said, there are many companies out there that differentiate on support, so I still feel OPs statement painted with an overly broad brush. The example I gave from where I work was simply an anecdote.

No company is perfect and there will always be conflicting priorities when resources are finite (so, always). I didn't intend to plug, but since someone else in this thread accurately guessed...I work at SmugMug. We are a SaaS business, so keeping customers happy such that they never feel a need to leave aligns our business priorities very nicely with those of our customers. However it is also very much in our company's DNA.

I'm still not convinced though that a crappy customer experience is ever better than a happy one when it comes to growing a successful business that's in it for the long haul.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#347

Post by storgendibal »

dmix wrote: post #320
storgendibal wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it gets better. That's the dirty little secret that I never knew about. Investment banking used to have insane hours (100+ basically on call all the time). The idea was that after 4-5 years you leave for a buy-side gig (hedge funds, private equity) that pay you the same or more ($1-5M in your early to mid-30s) but with more reasonable hours. This is why the smartest CS/Math/EE/Physics grads from MIT etc wen…

> And all I have to show for it is stock that increased a little bit. Oh lucky guy. I've heard enough of these stories without even that. But startups are highly voluntary so I take that relatively lightly compared to corporate responsibility of Apple et al.

Lol! I was in a large tech company, so the stock was as good as cash. Since I could not get finance-level pay, I figured out how to draw lines around my work so I at least had a pretty good life outside of work. It took me a couple of years to figure that out though.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#348

Post by storgendibal »

clarky07 wrote: post #299
storgendibal wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, 60 hours is a low intensity week in management consulting and especially investment banking. Once upon a time, a banker 2-3 years out of an MBA (say 28-30) would make $300-500K cash. The hourly rate is lower than minimum wage though (these guys used to put in 100+ hours). They did it in the hopes of landing a private equity gig that would pay them $1M+ for a 50-70 hour work week. That's a deal I would take in a…

Even with your edit, you still don't get it. McDonald's employee's don't make > $50 an hour. No one can make $300k+ working at mcdonalds, even if they work 24/7. Even if you worked LITERALLY every single hour of the year (8760) minimum wage would get you to ~63.5k. That's a far cry from 300-500k Any banker type that says something like that is an asshole or is really bad at math. Assuming he's a competent banker he's…

No, you don't get it. The point is that is working insane hours worth the hourly wage you get in finance.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#349

Post by shalmanese »

shostack wrote: post #335
shalmanese wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. The airline industry, for example, has been notoriously unfriendly towards most attempts at differentiation based on quality. Margins are razor thin ( http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/03/travel/how-airlines-make-less-... ) and customers are incredibly price sensitive. While many consumer's stated preferences are for things like more legroom and less delays, their revealed preference is they'd rather save $5 on a $300…

I had a feeling you might cite some of these examples :) Admittedly the Lyft example was unknown to me--I'll have to dig in, sounds interesting. Specifically to airlines, I'd direct you to some interesting info on Southwest[1]. While TBH the case study doesn't really prove to me the causation of success by being customer-centric, it does show that they can compete in that industry with that approach and be successful…

so everyone loves to talk about Southwest but I'd say the far more representative example is Virgin America. Despite being the mesia darlings and winning all sorts of awards, it's hemorrhaged money for 6 straight years before posting a meagre profit (http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/26/business/la-fi-mo-vi...).

As you mentioned, it's always hard to separate out cause and effect but I'd argue Southwest's unique fleet and labor arrangements gave it a temporary structural advantage. Now that those advantages are disappearing, it seems to be reverting towards the mean (http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023039497045794596...).

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#350

Post by storgendibal »

army wrote: post #324
nathanvanfleet wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry that's just frankly not possible. Even with your lowest value of 300k a year and you're hours value of 100 hours a week you're looking at ~60$/hour assuming they have no vacation or time off. Now look at the minimum wage and realize it's still many times that. I have a lawyer friend who says the same thing as you, and I seriously doubt it's so over the long run.

Hey, he's too busy working 300 hours a week to worry about things like "averages" and "mathematics".

Not sure who "he" is that you are referring to here. I've never worked in finance. I was just relating what people in finance have told me.
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