Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 308 posts

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#61

Post by [deleted] »

dogman144 wrote: post #57
fragmede wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An unofficial, definitely don't tell management slack would have 1000s of users before the email prohibiting it managed to finish sending to all employees. Draconian policies seem viable and like they'd work, but they require a certain amount of compliance to be effective.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#62

Post by Bud »

015a wrote: post #38
imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

Literally, nothing is unreasonable for Apple. They're among the richest companies on the planet. I'm over Corporate Equity and treating them the same as the mom & pop grocery store down the street. Yeah, it'd be unreasonable for small businesses. Its not unreasonable for Apple. Tim Cook could personally , out of his own salary, pay the salaries of every Apple employee in New York. He could give them all a 200% raise,…

You don't actually know Tim Cook's salary, do you?

Please stop pretending that you do.

Hint: the vast majority of his compensation is, and has always been, via stock grants.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#63

Post by stickfigure »

imgabe wrote: post #59
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.

We don’t always get what we want when we go out into the public and deal with other people. Sometimes I want to zip in and out of the grocery store but there’s an old lady in front of me who wants to argue about an expired coupon and it takes longer than I’d like. Such is life.

I stop shopping in places where the customer service is slow. Such is life.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#64

Post by scruffyherder »

wolverine876 wrote: post #49
temp8964 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the downvoting is because you mentioned "welfare state", and people demand more welfare hate you to say that. But thankfully downvoting is limited now.

> thankfully downvoting is limited now How is it limited?

My biggest complaint is that it makes it damned near impossible to read.

Why must it become inaccessible to people with bad eye sight? My feelings aren't that fragile

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#65

Post by Bud »

The leader of this small group of "unrest" folks, Cher Scarlett, apparently got hired in April and has worked for 8 other tech companies, according to this story.

Color me unimpressed. She starts agitating after a few months of working entirely from home at a highly-paid gig? Did she even have time to get a clue about whether Apple's doing bad things or not? Or does she just kinda flit around from gig to gig looking for ways to cause trouble? I'm guessing less of the former, and more of the latter.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#66

Post by Spooky23 »

majormajor wrote: post #50
sxp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He said that he had communicated with customers by typing on an iPad, and that some customers had refused to work with him as a result. When he told his manager, the manager said it was the customers’ right, he said....He was eventually assigned an interpreter. But by that time, he said, upper management viewed him as a complainer and refused to promote him. Using an iPad/iPhone seems to be the standard Apple polic…

Thank you, that's useful context, without having a subscription. Does it say anything about if his manager had penalized him for some customers not working with him? If management requires him to post the same numbers despite knowing that, I think that's a big problem. Otherwise, I'm not necessarily sold by his story here. (I'm curious is customers still refused with an interpreter, too. That's also going to slow thi…

Reasonable accommodation is the standard.

Interpretation varies, but hiring another employee to translate for an employee seems to be beyond that standard to me.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#67

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Bud wrote: post #62
015a wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally, nothing is unreasonable for Apple. They're among the richest companies on the planet. I'm over Corporate Equity and treating them the same as the mom & pop grocery store down the street. Yeah, it'd be unreasonable for small businesses. Its not unreasonable for Apple. Tim Cook could personally , out of his own salary, pay the salaries of every Apple employee in New York. He could give them all a 200% raise,…

You don't actually know Tim Cook's salary, do you? Please stop pretending that you do. Hint: the vast majority of his compensation is, and has always been, via stock grants.

You do know that high earners play this game to avoid the sort of tax liabilities ordinary people have to pay? They aren't nobler by taking a $1 salary.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#68

Post by krrrh »

ekianjo wrote: post #46
imgabe wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also been a customer at establishments with deaf employees and none of them ever had a sign language interpreter. Providing an iPad to type messages on is a reasonable accommodation. Customers who don’t like it can work with another employee or go elsewhere. But hiring a second entire employee who basically shadows you and does your job for you seems like a bit much.

> 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.

From my experience with a deaf employee at an Apple store, it was actually pretty efficient, because communication was precise and to the point and there was no unnecessary small talk or attempts to sell me something I wasn’t asking for. Might have been less appropriate for customers that walk in not knowing what they want.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#69

Post by dstaley »

wolverine876 wrote: post #44

> I understand the secrecy piece is important for product security, to surprise and delight customers When was the last time you were surprised and delighted by an Apple product? I think they make the world's best, and most responsible, products, but surprised by an iPhone upgrade? When was the last time they created a new category?

> When was the last time they created a new category?

Almost every current Apple product (save the HomePod) is the category defining product of it's class. The iPhone, the iPad, the M1 MacBooks, the Apple Watch, the AirPods, the Apple TV, the iMac, and the AirTags are all essentially best-in-class, and the standards-bearer for the category.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#70

Post by Bud »

jimsimmons wrote: post #24

As time goes on, Apple, the de-facto emperor of tech, will lose more of its clothes. They haven't had anything new in 10 years and each year their keynotes get more typical and lacklustre. Yet, Cook is up there using all sorts of superlatives, doing cargo cult innovation.

I guess you missed Apple Watch (which basically invented its category and leads it by a wide margin), and AirPods (also leads its category by a wide margin), and the M1 (instantly made a joke out of Intel) and most of the history of the iPhone.

Kinda makes one wonder what else you've missed. Such as, basically everything. "De facto" is not hyphenated, btw, nor did you use it correctly.

Post reply on HN