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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

#371

Post by [deleted] »

shostack wrote: post #210
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 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…

[deleted]

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#372

Post by rojoca »

sytelus wrote: post #363
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…

Remember in this case we have two companies which decided to work together on a project and established no-poaching agreement. If you ask your friend to go out with you on a trip along with your girlfriend, would it be ok if your friend builds relationship with her during the trip and she breaks up with you? You can argue that may be your girlfriend found a better fit and you should be ok with that. OR you can argue…

If you sign an agreement with your friend behind your girlfriend's back you're looking out for your own interests. You're in effect controlling or limiting her choice without her knowledge.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#375

Post by rhizome »

smikhanov wrote: post #310
noonespecial wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people need to remember that Apple is a tiny, tiny innovative core surrounded by a huge bog-standard "big-corp" full of the same chimps from the Career Builder commercials that all big-corps have. If you're not part of that tiny core, you just work at Office Space.

This seems to be true. And also, while internet is full of stories of "what it's like to work at Google/Facebook/etc", you will have hard time finding a similar one about Apple. My explanation for that is that the "tiny innovative core" is way too overworked to write about themselves and everyone else is just irrelevant.

Business Insider did a few stories last year, and I seem to have lost a pretty long blog post by three or four former executives that illustrated the Apple life.

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-employees-confess-all-t...

As a person with direct experience of being affected, these stories ring true to me.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#376

Post by jingo »

kelukelugames wrote: post #192
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…

I read Isaacson's biography. Steve Jobs is convinced he never did anything bad in his entire life. Except for denying paternity, but that still took a few decades.

Perhaps the reason Jobs has been convincing to so many followers is because of the power of his own self-delusion.

It is possible he was very good at deluding himself.

Perhaps that self-delusion is contagious.

If one wants to believe something strongly enough, then maybe one can believe it.

If people want to believe that the only way to produce great form factor and ease of use in a computer is to be Jobs-like and conduct "business" like Apple, then they might believe that, even if there is a good chance or evidence this behaviour is not necessary.

It seems people have a difficult time separating the Apple products from the organization that sells them.

One may be worthy of adoration, the other may not.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#377

Post by megablast »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #110
MrNobody wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding Apple effectively owns your entire output when you're employed full-time (at least as an engineer). At a recent interview I mentioned I like tinkering with code on the side and was told I'd have to give that up and stop contributing to open source. I imagine that extends to participation in the "outside world" at least to some extent. The fact that Apple developers I've spoken to spend their per…

From my understanding, it's effectively impossible for Apple employees to have any apps listed in the App Store through personal accounts. Which, no doubt, accounts for a lot of the reason why the Xcode -> iTunes Connect -> App Store experience is so miserable.

This is certainly not true. One of the guys in charge of Apple store approval had a number of apps on the app store.

http://www.imore.com/director-app-store-apple-fart-wiz-apps

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#378

Post by patrickdavey »

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…

I think that is a failure of (all the) companies that think that way. In my opinion customer support is a crucial part of any organisation big enough to merit one. Who else talks directly to your customers on a daily basis? Do you mine the data to find out where the biggest issues are and use that to inform your feature roadmap?

I have worked in a call centre. It was an odd job, for a government department, ended up creating a sort of call logging and ticketing system for them - still used today (11 years later - but that's more an artefact of sunkworks dev in a government department than a testament to my coding skillz ;)

Anyway, my point is, those employees were told, and felt, that their service mattered, that the higherups listened to feedback etc. Excellent place to work and a very good atmosphere.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#379

Post by akshatpradhan »

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…

This is the fundamental problem with companies. Far too often we relegate Customer support to this minion role when in reality, they are our eyes and ears into the customer feedback loop. We should stop putting capable people into this role and put our exceptional people. Personally, I plan to put the customer service department under my UX Director's management. If we're to be better companies, we need empathy, and I see no better manager to instill empathy than a UX Manager.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#380

Post by geoka9 »

shalmanese wrote: post #309
shostack wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this argument before and with all respect, I don't buy it. Can you provide any examples of industries where there is no opportunity to turn CS into a profit center vs. a cost center? Sure it might be very difficult to model and prove out the exact impact it has on the bottom line, but I'm not convinced there are any scenarios where pissing off your customers with a poor experience is better for business th…

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…

> their revealed preference is they'd rather save $5 on a $300 ticket and suffer the indignities.

It's hard to believe this is true. I'd gladly pay $20 extra for a trans-Atlantic seat with more legroom and my experience shows that I'm not alone--all those "improved economy" seats are usually sold out well in advance (and they cost a lot more than $20 on a 1k extra).

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