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My Experience at Apple

ex-apple-engineer.medium.com

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Re: My Experience at Apple

#711

Post by a_rana »

justpoolitics wrote: post #238

I feel sorry for anyone who has not had many years of corporate experience who enters a situation like this. Toxic survival politics at a big tech company are a triple black diamond ski slope and if you are just learning to ski, you will get murdered by making a single mistake. Knowing what I know now, human beings can behave in shockingly awful ways and politics can become extremely distorted in these environments.…

>I experienced a toxic situation myself recently, it caused me to do a lot of reading and research.

Any suggested books/readings which helped you gain more knowledge about toxic survival politics ?

Re: My Experience at Apple

#712

Post by saagarjha »

dang wrote: post #613
saagarjha wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please not call people who work in retail “underlings”?

It seems like perfectly good English to me. Please let's not micromanage each other's language. (I don't think the OP implied any particular interaction with Steve Jobs, but that's a separate issue.)

My first interpretation of "underlings" tends to have it be a somewhat derogatory term towards someone who is of some sort of lower status, which I took to assume (having much experience with this happening while working corporate and on other online forums) that retail employees were somehow lesser/less worthy of being listened to since they were generally further removed from decisions that the rest of the company made (as in, multiple interactions where I would see a conversation like "When working in Apple retail…"/"Shut up, you don't know anything, you just work retail"). The commenter has clarified their position so in good faith I would be willing to believe them but hopefully that gives you a bit more insight into why the way that was phrased was evocative of this to me.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#713

Post by griffoa »

thinkingemote wrote: post #705
griffoa wrote: post #318

I dont quite remember the meeting room names in Mathilda 3 over at the Apple on Mathilda Ave, but if the MA03 (in the screenshot) refers to "Mathilda 3", then this story is totally believable. I worked at Apple and it was absolutely horrible. I remember sitting on the train and actually thinking about killing myself. Reasons were many, but mostly I just didn't fit in there, I think. I felt like people there were also…

>Always having some problem with a hand or a back or some family problem or whatever which demanded that they take days off You now know that they too hated the place and did whatever they could to not be there, I hope. They were not "whiny little bitches" at all.

Okay, yes actually never really considered that as someone who never had a single sick day in my life. It might be....

Re: My Experience at Apple

#714

Post by BossingAround »

mancerayder wrote: post #412
exApple-anon wrote: post #9

Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. Unlike others, I actually find this story fairly believable. When I first joined Apple, straight out of college - a good program, top three in the country - I was abused similarly. I joined a team that was on a project behind schedule. Our manager was a brusque, no-nonsense sort of dude. But he clearly had anger problems. On the team were 2 senior engineers, me, and a junior e…

> In our 1:1s he told us we might not have a job if our product doesn't ship on time (we were competing with another internal team to beat them to the punch.) That sounds like behavior I've seen in banks - more the "competing with other teams" than straight job threats. It's baffling. If I'm a company, the idea of having more than one team doing the same thing in order to try to beat the other down strikes me as not…

> It's baffling. If I'm a company, the idea of having more than one team doing the same thing in order to try to beat the other down strikes me as not just counter-productive, but expensive and evidence of a broken hierarchy and culture.

Depends... If you have the resources, multiple team can achieve the same result in many ways, one possibly being vastly superior than others. If you look at large companies like IBM or Oracle, this internal innovation is often stifled by "we have whale clients X Y and Z, ask them what they want and implement that".

That said though, it can lead to duplication of efforts and pretty much the same result done twice (once for the finished product, and once for the almost finished product by team B). If you're apple with billions of dollars that you don't know what to do with, this is a viable and useful strategy (also employed by Amazon AFAIK).

Re: My Experience at Apple

#715

Post by BossingAround »

mgh2 wrote: post #259
exApple-anon wrote: post #9

Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. Unlike others, I actually find this story fairly believable. When I first joined Apple, straight out of college - a good program, top three in the country - I was abused similarly. I joined a team that was on a project behind schedule. Our manager was a brusque, no-nonsense sort of dude. But he clearly had anger problems. On the team were 2 senior engineers, me, and a junior e…

"If you are an Apple employee, please send this story to your upper management particularly Tim Cook." I doubt he will care, reflected at how he manages PR when accused of international labor abuses.

> I doubt he will care, reflected at how he manages PR when accused of international labor abuses.

Provided the article is now deleted, it seems someone cared, though in a different way :/.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#716

Post by BossingAround »

neycoda wrote: post #562
exApple-anon wrote: post #9

Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. Unlike others, I actually find this story fairly believable. When I first joined Apple, straight out of college - a good program, top three in the country - I was abused similarly. I joined a team that was on a project behind schedule. Our manager was a brusque, no-nonsense sort of dude. But he clearly had anger problems. On the team were 2 senior engineers, me, and a junior e…

"we were competing with another internal team to beat them to the punch" This is what Microsoft did, and later admitted it was bad for the products and users and teams.

> This is what Microsoft did, and later admitted it was bad for the products and users and teams.

Is there any research on the topic? Or in-depth post on Microsoft's strategy at the time?

Re: My Experience at Apple

#717

Post by BossingAround »

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 wrote: post #544
exApple-anon wrote: post #9

Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. Unlike others, I actually find this story fairly believable. When I first joined Apple, straight out of college - a good program, top three in the country - I was abused similarly. I joined a team that was on a project behind schedule. Our manager was a brusque, no-nonsense sort of dude. But he clearly had anger problems. On the team were 2 senior engineers, me, and a junior e…

may I ask what pays double that of FAANG?

> may I ask what pays double that of FAANG?

Is Apple known for having high salaries? I was under the impression (possibly wrongly, I've never worked for Apple) that they underpay their engineers, relying on the engineers' desire to work for them because of their brand.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#718

Post by bitcoinmoney »

trixie_ wrote: post #650
verisimilidude wrote: post #614

The real story here is that the author depended upon these jerks for his/her work visa, facing deportation back to (I assume) a less pleasant country. It sounds like everyone involved took advantage of that fact. Perhaps systemically. I've faced similarly abusive workplace cliques on multiple occasions. They're very easy to bust if you're willing to put aside your personal shame. But I never had a visa hanging over m…

It doesn’t sound like she was being taken advantage of, they obviously wanted her to leave. She was staying (and killing herself) out of fear deportation which sucks. My question is if California is at-will employment why didn’t they fire her when things weren’t working out? Is it because she went to HR?

Perps want to continue the abuse. It gives them happiness.

Re: My Experience at Apple

#720

Post by bitcoinmoney »

throwaway_1237 wrote: post #279

This rings so true! I interviewed for a few different teams at Apple and got an offer from one (they make you choose a team before you get an offer). There were echos of nepotism, scapegoating, and toxic treatment even during the interview process. Based on the answers I got during the “ask us some questions” portion at the end of each interview, it seemed like a very political and tense environment for a few of the…

Can you share more details so others are aware of how to sniff out or feel out some of the observations you had?
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