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My Experience at Apple

ex-apple-engineer.medium.com

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Re: My Experience at Apple

#521

Post by jiggawatts »

romanovcode wrote: post #348
x0x0 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is... well, I don't think interviews are going to go the way he or she thinks. To wit, reading part 1, the first paragraph boils down to "my manager was on vacation for my start date. I was provided with an onboarding buddy, who warned me that Apple is trigger happy firing folks." Para 2: manager made a likely inappropriate joke about last name. para 3: not really relevant? para 4: project was raw. para 5:…

I actually don't get what's the problem here. I manage a team and one time I booked a vacation and then we hired a guy. He quit (he was the only person to ever quit that was working under me, company is treating employees good) and said in the review that this was horrible from my side. Am I not suppose to take a vacation ever?

You can take vacations whenever you want, but you can't hire new staff and just let them twist in the wind concurrently with you taking time off.

Holidays are planned ahead. Don't hire at the same time. Easy.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#522

Post by frongpik »

scraffa wrote: post #385

There is an Apple office populated mostly by Scientology (ProData subcontractors) folks over in Malmoe in Sweden. Maybe their management methods are leaking to SV.

That's a good theory why things turned so hostile from the start.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#523

Post by brian_cunnie »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #153
ma2rten wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got an offer from Apple. The hiring manager told me "You worked at a startup before, you'll have no problem working overtime". I didn't end up taking the offer.

I work at a startup right now and can count the number of times I've had to work overtime with a null-pointer - 0. Well run startups can still compete by making smart, focused decisions.

Agreed: well-run startups can still compete by making smart, focused decisions.

I've worked at 3 startups (5th employee, 16th employee, 2nd employee).

The first one had 80 hour weeks and burned me out after a year. The company had enough capital to stay in business, but never went anywhere, and my shares were washed out in subsequent funding rounds.

The second had 40 hour weeks and I worked there for six years. A fair-to-middling exit to Broadcom.

The third one had 40 hour weeks and I worked there for 3 years. A great exit to Google.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#524

Post by closeparen »

trap_chateau wrote: post #255
nojvek wrote: post #194

What surprises me is how abusive Amazon and Apple can get to their employees while ship fantastic products to their customers. May be the whole you need great talent and treat them well isn’t true. You just need to treat them well enough so they don’t leave and pressure them enough so they don’t crumble. At the end of the day, management is about getting the most out of your employees and that’s what they are doing r…

This take seems a bit short sighted IMO. How do you know that if the work culture was better, the product wouldn't be any different? It does seem unnecessary to strive for a perfect work-life balance for these giant companies to ship good enough products and make boatloads, though.

I work at a company where every junior PM is has a right to put any feature he wants on any piece of screen real estate. Every idea about how to build it is good. Every implementation is good enough to launch. Every launch is successful. We do not have the concept of "no." We do not have the concept of failure.

It avoids a lot of the politics and culture issues that Apple is infamous for, but I think it's also the reason our products could never be mistaken for theirs.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#525

Post by jiggawatts »

The author made a comment about GDPR privacy violations, but those are European laws that largely don't apply to American companies, especially related to internal HR matters.

While I don't want to dismiss the complaints out-of-hand, it does seem like there's just a touch of exaggeration going on.

Perhaps it's just a matter of perspective, but many of the complaints described could be chalked down to someone inexperienced being thrown into the deep end in a large organisation. E.g.: the complaint about "not knowing what I was doing for days" is almost laughable, when in my experience new hires at large orgs aren't properly informed about what they're doing for months!

The racism and physical abuse of course is inexcusable, but unfortunately all too common...

Re: My Experience at Apple

#526

Post by anonymouse008 »

fortran77 wrote: post #493
GloriousKoji wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also worked for Apple and I had a very similar experience. Management was brutal and abusive from my immediate manager to all the way up to and including the VP level. For example even though vacation hours were accrued I never got to use them unless I wanted to endure the verbal backlash of abandoning the team and my responsibilities. When the holidays came around the director would email everyone reminding us the…

> everyone was merged into another team working on something similar with new management. Meet the new boss same as the old boss I worked for Apple before Jobs died. He'd frequently have several teams working on the exact same thing, in secret, and then pick the team that met his goals the best. Sometimes the "losers" would be merged into the "winning" team, but never treated well by the winners.

Gosh - I hope that isn’t a prerequisite to greatness?

How does someone even get the human and financial capital to run projects like this? I guess your first attempt with the first founding team has to ‘hit.’

Otherwise, how can you afford to triple headcount, management, etc?

Re: My Experience at Apple

#527

Post by justinclift »

GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #200
rmk wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- The primary lesson I learnt is that it doesn't matter if you work hard. Nobody notices, and even if they do you will likely not get anything out of it. Do your job, but don't kill yourself over it. Work-life balance is king. This has been my experience as well. Nowadays I work hard only while most of the following are true: - I'm making top dollar (good salary + equity value is high) - Work is interesting (somethin…

Wow, Great List! The last one (juniors calling the shots) really hit home; when I worked in , I was ultimately standing on the shoulder of midgets. The worse part? As a CS grad, I knew how to do better, but: nobody with the power to change things understood how or why what I was suggesting was better(!). I've long thought about this afterward, and concluded it's that 'my world' (which includes a lot of experience, an…

Sounds like you're an algorithms guy, and the other coders didn't have the background needed for understanding their use?

I'm self taught, and for many years didn't know about algorithms, big-O notation, and similar. You can do a lot of stuff without that knowledge, but there are definitely some areas that require it.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#528

Post by chihuahua »

outside1234 wrote: post #346
reactordev wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, you can fill in the blank with any FAANG company with this story. I’ve heard it a thousand times. Toxic management. Sorry you went through that, sorry that was your first taste of engineering out of college. Glad you stuck with it. It’s a tough spot to be. Do you roll over and do the job your being yelled at to do even though you know any concessions are BS? Or like the senior folks, do you walk? It’s a really…

Honestly, at Microsoft, I've never seen a situation like this, and I have worked in something like 15 roles now. That might also be, for better and worse, why Microsoft folks have such long tenure at the company. Its honestly a great place to work compared to these shit shows.

I agree, in 15 years at MSFT I've had mostly good experiences. The worst I've seen could only be described as "mildly annoying".

If any manager behaved like the article described, I don't see how the team would get anything done, plus their MSFT poll score would quickly get them into trouble.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#529

Post by Aeolun »

mcny wrote: post #415
koonsolo wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is expected that we do at least 15 - 25% overtime without compensation Is this still a thing as a developer in the western world? If any of my managers proposed this, I would laugh, then say "ah wait, you're serious?", and then laugh some more.

What are you supposed to do if your employment contract says you’re exempt (meaning no overtime pay)?

Don’t work overtime?

Re: My Experience at Apple

#530

Post by imoverclocked »

microtherion wrote: post #481

"If you are an Apple employee, please send this story to your upper management particularly Tim Cook." What exactly should we say? "Hey Tim, this unnamed ex-employee, working on an unnamed and extremely vaguely characterized project in an unnamed organization, is accusing unnamed co-workers, managers, and HR-representatives of perpetrating truly appalling abuses on her. You should look into this at once!" ? It's a di…

I'm an employee of Apple and am appalled at the behaviors described in this article. I'm also unsure of what I can do to help here for similar reasons. That being said, I hope this person seeks some professional help to sort themselves out after this experience.

Not to get political but this is one reason that employment and healthcare shouldn't be so inextricably linked.

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