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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

#521

Post by tat45 »

jmccree wrote: post #300
gknoy wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize it's a little bit comical to consider customer service so highly, but I have had __consistently__ excellent support from Sonic.net, and have been a very happy customer ever since literally the first day it was installed. I have similar probably-irrationally-high opinions of In-N-Out Burger's operations. I've had such excellent service for so many years that even when I have an objectively __terrible__ exper…

Chick-fil-a is known for this. One of my family members called the store to let them know they left out one sandwich on their order. The store manger drove immediately to them with 2 free sandwiches and some coupons. That's just insanely good service for fast food.

I've always been super-impressed with Chick-Fil-A's service even though their food is sometimes sub-par. That's why I continue to return. I know I'm going to get a decent, if not great, meal, and the service will be fantastic.

The yardstick for measuring the potency of a corporate culture is consistency over time.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#522

Post by gaius »

cpach wrote: post #485
gaius wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Until the taxman catches up with them. Then it's game over.

What do you mean? Are Apple not complying with the tax law?

I mean that to continue their strategy they will need to onshore the money, at which point it will be taxed, at which point it looks far less viable in the long term.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#523

Post by theintern »

kagamine wrote: post #449
borgia wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If staff are consistently having to work overtime to hit targets then there's either: - A problem with the staff - there's either not enough of them or they haven't the skills to do what is required or - A problem with the management. I've never worked in a role where incompetent people were hired and couldn't get what needed to be done done, but I've worked under plenty of incompetent management.

Alternative 3: a problem with the law. I know 'Murica loves it's free market, dog eat dog, each man for himself ideal. But to us Europeans it looks like many US companies are no better than slave drivers. No regulation, no life for employees. On the other hand, US corps can compete with the Chinese and Koreans, there are no tech giants in well regulated European countries (are there?) because after 3 or 4 in the afte…

Not really true, Ireland has a large concentration of 'tech giants'. They may be setting up because of tax regulations but they pretty much all have sizeable engineering workforces in Ireland. Google Ireland for example employs more than 2,500 people.

If you instead mean homegrown tech giants then you have a definite point. The only European giants I can think of are Telefonica, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Nokia and SAP. It would be interesting to see the research on if the reason for that has much to do with the horrible work expectations in the US.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#524

Post by mikeash »

kziojzwsndppqgg wrote: post #407
mikeash wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple happens to have good design and happens to be totalitarian, but I don't think the one comes from the other. Apple used to be a lot less awful in this respect, but their design and usability was still great (arguably better than today).

> Apple used to be a lot less awful in this respect, but their design and usability was still great (arguably better than today). It's interesting that you say that because from everything I've heard talking to people I work with and in other departments who have been here a while, the opposite is true. The conventional thought is at least over the past 2 years or so, the stress has gotten lower. Most of this is from…

In this case, "totalitarian" refers to their level of control over their platforms and over third-party software, not their attitude toward employees.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#525

Post by Nicholas_C »

andybak wrote: post #356
Nicholas_C wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a developer but I would definitely do a 2+ year stint at Apple to get the name on my resume and find out what it's like to work at one of the largest and most profitable tech companies ever. I'm sure there's an incredible amount to learn and the pay is nice as well.

How old are you? 2 years is quite a long time to some folks.

25 years of age.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#526

Post by dragonwriter »

mcherm wrote: post #513
dragonwriter wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. If your employees are under pure default at-will employment, its not poaching to seek to hire them out from under you, because you haven't purchased a property interest in their continuing to remain your employees . And, if you have purchased such an…

> it can just offer them defined-term personal services contracts with suitable compensation. The ability to do that is HIGHLY restricted by labor laws. I'm not saying you couldn't get around it with very careful contracting... but I wouldn't want to count on it.

> The ability to do that is HIGHLY restricted by labor laws.

The ability to do that under the law is demonstrated by the fact that there are whole major industries where this kind of contracting with talent is normal. (Legal limitations tend to highly restrict the ability to get a remedy beyond money damages for breaches of such agreements, to be sure, but they don't tend to prevent the agreements themselves.)

It tends to be expensive (both in terms of what you pay the talent and in terms of the overhead associated with contracting), but if the talent is really valuable enough, that's the price you pay.

If you aren't willing to pay that price, you shouldn't complain about people "poaching" what you didn't want to pay the cost to have a durable claim to in the first place.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#527

Post by nb4hnp »

eitally wrote: post #510
dietrichepp wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

Here's an anecdote: at my company, sales reps start with an average base for their first year, then move to a low base (like 30-40k + commission + kickers) afterward. In an average year, our top sales folks have the highest comp of all but the very top (CxO and a couple EVPs) executives, usually in the 600-700k USD range. The Eastern US VP of Sales works out of the same office I do and has a $2m home. Just to give yo…

Hi, I live on less than 30k/year (base, no comissions, lol) and I'm not broke.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#528

Post by astrodust »

deegles wrote: post #228
astrodust wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optimal arrangement for both companies is no poaching. As soon as someone pulls the trigger and starts poaching it gets exponentially more expensive for these companies to operate. This is the Prisoner's Dilemma, plain and simple.

It should be expensive! Tech companies are getting a fantastic deal on their employees right now. Apple made $460k in profit per employee in 2013[1]. This to me is a failure on our (software developers) part in capturing the value we're delivering. If a company sold a widget that routinely generated $500k in profit per year each and leased it for $125k/year, would it make business sense to keep it at that price? Hell…

There's two sides here. The company making profit enables it to take more risks, try new things. The employee making a higher salary has other benefits, some of which might benefit the company, but the company itself will have to be more careful when hiring and take fewer chances both on people, products and strategy.

Imagine if Apple had to pay $300K per employee what kind of a landscape that would be. Nobody but Apple could afford to hire anyone.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#529

Post by api »

mikeash wrote: post #524
kziojzwsndppqgg wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple used to be a lot less awful in this respect, but their design and usability was still great (arguably better than today). It's interesting that you say that because from everything I've heard talking to people I work with and in other departments who have been here a while, the opposite is true. The conventional thought is at least over the past 2 years or so, the stress has gotten lower. Most of this is from…

In this case, "totalitarian" refers to their level of control over their platforms and over third-party software, not their attitude toward employees.

It's hard to keep a mentality from infecting everything.

Re: I Quit: What really goes on at Apple

#530

Post by golergka »

tajen wrote: post #473
golergka wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the outside, it definitely looks like the closer it gets to hardware, the better engineers at Apple get. Metal is awesome, Metal shading language and recent clang progress not bad too, Swift a little bit wonky but interesting — but the quality of their customer-facing software, especially ui stuff (not design, but I engineering) is getting worse and worse. It just doesn't "just work" anymore.

> (Mac OSX UI) doesn't "just work" anymore Please, if someone can sell a Linux with the same polish as Mac OSX, and as low-administration time, I would agree to pay about $200 per year for it. I've switched away from Ubuntu after being unable to resolve a problem after upgrade two years ago (which cost me 4 days). I spend 2x more on computers for Macbooks, not because of the hardware but because of Mac OSX. I don't k…

Oh, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I just wish OS X moved forward instead of backwards.
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