
I Quit: What really goes on at Apple - andrew_gs
http://roadlesstravelled.me/2015/04/06/why-steve-jobs-motivated-me-to-quit-apple/
======
exelius
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 business cares about is getting the same
results for less money.

Cost centers also tend to have very toxic work environments as a result:
people are constantly reminded that the business can and will go on without
them. Hence the epidemic of throwing people under the bus, trying to "catch"
coworkers in a screw-up, etc. You don't have to be the fastest zebra, just
faster than the slowest one.

~~~
shostack
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 fighting churn, and are an invaluable asset, not a liability. They can
also be critical to making sure your product and engineering teams are up-to-
date on everything they need to grow a successful product that your customers
want to pay for.

Unfortunately, many companies simply don't realize this or don't care because
they have a captive market (for now). I would encourage you to research more
about how customer support can be done "right" vs. "wrong." If customer
support is a "cost center" for you, you're doing it wrong.

~~~
hobs
I disagree. You are using your company as a counter example to all other
companies, and you admit that in your last sentence. I am glad your company
treats your people right, and it bodes well for your EVERYTHING.

I have worked at a dozen or so support jobs, and no matter how much the
customers stayed because of the support team or how much we drove the value
our clients got out of the product, we always were a cost center and treated
as such.

That always meant they we got the second best of everything, were always last
on the list for raises, promotions, new hardware, proper chairs, whatever. We
were left out of planning, and whenever another department decided at the last
minute it wasnt their job now became ours to complete forever.

The second I switched over to being a consultant and making money for people
instead of helping to avoid lost revenue, their attitude changed towards me
and became much more positive and friendly instead of unreasonable and
demanding (both on management and customer side).

I dont even know if this is a conscious or unconscious decision, but
support/helpdesk job position is reviled for a reason, and the reason is that
it is an unforgiving job with little acknowledgement, pay, or chance for
promotion.

It gets even worse if you are doing stuff like Apple support (I trained
iphone/ipod then ios/cpu at a vendor site) and almost everything he said rang
true about them specifically (and the call center management world in
general.)

Apple's training team was pretty cool and one of the few saving graces, I am
glad I got to hang with them in Austin, they definitely were trying to build a
robust system to train people with reproducible results. It was the best
training I had gotten from any corporation before or since, it was what got me
into training in the first place.

~~~
shostack
OP said:

>"customer support in _any_ company is like this."

My post was specifically in response to that, because it was an inaccurate
statement.

I'm really sorry to hear you've had such poor experiences in support. That
sucks, and I realize how hard/impossible that can be to turn around from a
business and culture standpoint.

Sounds like you have found a path that works better for you, so congrats!

~~~
dietrichepp
When someone says "any company", it's easy to interpret that as meaning "any
company without exception". This is a very logical interpretation, but it is
not necessarily reasonable to interpret it that way.

My experience is that (1) most companies do a lot of things wrong (2) the
respect which support receives varies from company to company as well as
industry to industry, with business support taken more seriously than consumer
support. I'd be curious to know what industry you happen to work in.

~~~
coldtea
> _When someone says "any company", it's easy to interpret that as meaning
> "any company without exception". This is a very logical interpretation, but
> it is not necessarily reasonable to interpret it that way._

Well, it's not logical at all in the common sense of the word logical. It's
like you're talking to a compiler...

In casual conversation everybody understands that it doesn't mean "absolutely
every company".

~~~
mcherm
> In casual conversation everybody understands that it doesn't mean
> "absolutely every company".

That's not true at all! There are lots of people (myself included) who tend to
interpret things very literally, and would not recognize this subtlety. So not
EVERY person understands that...

... oh. Never mind.

------
nostrademons
One of my friends used to work at Apple. After one particular grueling stint
of 14+ hour days, management decided to give them a thank-you. In the form of
vouchers. For frozen dinners. Meanwhile, all of his friends worked for Google,
we got gourmet food every meal of the week as a standard perk, and we were
usually home by 8 or 9 PM rather than midnight. It's sorta like "Your 'thank
you' is really more like a giant 'fuck you'".

He works for Google now.

My cousin also works for Apple, and after complaining about crunch time and
how he had to check the bug queue when I was visiting him on a Saturday, I
asked him "So, how long has crunch time lasted?" He replied, "Oh, about 18
months. Makes it really hard to date when I don't get any weekends." (He's in
his 40s now, still no girlfriend.)

~~~
throwaway6497
With this negative image among developers in the Valley, how is Apple able to
attract top quality engineers? They probably are not. Anecdotally, I still
haven't met one single engineer who would love to work for Apple though they
love using Apple products.

Apple is not even on the list of all top graduating kids who wants a job in
top valley firms (Google, FB, Dropbox, Twitter, AirBnB, Uber, Pinterest,
LinkedIn, Quora, other promising startups). Any software engineer who is in
the valley for a while (and heard the inside horror stories of working for
Apple) wouldn't want to work there. There is no way in hell, senior engineers
from the new age tech companies (listed above) will go to Apple. Apple will
have a hard-time poaching them. Based on this, I have to conclude that most
good engineers@Apple are candidates who have a tenure of more than 15 years
and are aging. All, relatively new Apple employees are either left-overs in
the talent-pool who couldn't make the cut to the above top firms/startups or
really B-grade senior engineers. What is Apple's strategy of thriving in a
knowledge economy, when the only asset you need are "great people" to succeed
in the long term. They probably have great hardware engineers. It is a
travesty that though they are the richest company in the world, they still
couldn't build a compelling cloud services suite which is better and cheaper
than what Dropbox, Google, Box, Microsoft can provide. This comment, will
probably ruffle a few feathers. [updated for typos/grammar]

~~~
golergka
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.

~~~
tajen
> (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 know how large is the audience for a paid workproof Linux, but I wish
someone would build it.

~~~
cpach
Yes, that would be very cool. And I say that as a happy OS X user. Competition
in that space would be good for the customers. Unfortunately all the
workstation companies went down the drain. SGI, Sun, etc. But who knows what
the future holds in store?

------
archagon
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 didn't want them poaching our employees that they
were meeting, and they didn't want us poaching theirs. Doesn't it make sense
that you wouldn't, that it's an OK thing? I don't think for a minute he
thought he was doing anything bad. And I don't think he was thinking about
saving any money. He was just very protective of his employees."

Ed Catmull of Pixar, a seemingly gentle person, is similarly unapologetic
about the issue. Why is it that, at a certain level, intelligent company
leaders seem to stop thinking of their employees as individuals and instead
start thinking of them as company assets?

(I don't mean this as an anti-Apple comment. In fact, I want to give Jobs,
Cook, and Catmull the benefit of the doubt, in the sense that they probably
_did_ approach the issue from the perspective of doing what's best for their
companies, not as a quick way to save some paltry money. But that's kind of
the underlying problem, isn't it? Once you've internalized the idea that your
employees are company assets — that they aren't hard workers who make the
company tick, but that they literally _are_ the company — it's easy to slide
down the slippery slope towards incredibly unethical and shady dealings like
collusion. I wonder how this can be avoided.)

~~~
sytelus
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 that you
and your girlfriend were doing just fine but your friend violated your trust
and lured her away destroying your precious relationship. I bet you can find
people arguing both cases as "obviously" right outcome.

PS: I'm not arguing any of the sides but I'm intrigued by this morality
problem.

~~~
mikeash
I don't think that analogy works. The boyfriend/girlfriend relationship is
completely different from the employer/employee relationship, and the whole
point of this controversy is that companies aren't supposed to be friends.

Here's what I think would be a better analogy: let's say you run a restaurant
in a small town. The restaurant business is booming, and you and your
competitors are all expanding, to the point where it's getting hard to find
qualified cooks and servers.

The cooks and servers start working to get a piece of the pie. They move
between restaurants as higher pay is offered. You desperately need more staff
and since you can't find new people, you resort to soliciting the staff at
competing restaurants and offering them more money. They do the same to your
employees. Average pay rises.

You and the other owners don't like this at all. Cooking and serving was a
minimum-wage job not too long ago! This steadily increasing pay is eating into
your profits. So you all get together and agree to put a stop to it: you won't
try to hire away their staff, and they won't try to hire away yours. Pay
stagnates, and you and the other owners get to keep more of your profits.

This is what happened with Apple and these other companies over time, only
with computer people instead of cooks and servers. Is it immoral for
businesses to collude to artificially hold down wages? I think most people
would say yes. Probably more importantly, it's _illegal_.

~~~
seunosewa
Employers would say such an agreement is not immoral, because it benefits
them, but employees would say it is immoral, because it harms them. However,
most people are employees, so yeah.

~~~
therandomguy
Immorality aside, it is illegal.

~~~
anon6622
Law aside, it is unpractical. All companies are starved for cooks, and by
collaborating to keep salaries low, they are preventing the job market from
expanding.

------
blabla_blublu
Former engineer @ Apple - some insight from my side. There is no one culture
that pervades through the entire organization. Some software teams are chill,
some are not, hardware side of things can be long hours for people. Can't
really speak for customer care/marketing/retail/design.

1\. I think most of us here understand that a single bad experience cannot
reflect the culture in the company. Previously I was in a few other tech
companies, where my experience was quite similar in nature. Some teams have
inherently crappy people, leading to crappy culture. Ultimately it boils down
to the manager and the members of the team when it comes to the question of
fostering a culture.

2\. The culture in my team(software) was mostly relaxed. Most of my colleagues
did a 8-9 hour days on average. Of course, there were days(very rare) it
became a 10-12 hour shift.

3\. I am a firm believer in the fact that the employee needs to set the
expectations straight, right off the bat. If you run the wheel like a hamster
on steroids in the first few months, sucking up, staying late and trying to be
the all conquering hero - the expectations are going to be centered around
that.

4\. I am an average Joe, who preferred to get in by 9.30 and get off by
6.00ish - I didn't sync my emails, didn't give a hoot unless it was absolutely
crucial and someone called/texted me about the issue and it needed urgent
attention. I am not a doctor saving people, just an engineer fixing bugs.

5\. Of course my compensation/bonuses didn't go up like my friends who did the
long hours, but I am absolutely cool about that. They deserved it.

~~~
tim333
>There is no one culture

It seems he worked at the Sydney office. There's a comment on his story as
news.com.au

"Apple HQ in Australia was no different - a big frat-house where the "in"
crowd got ahead and anyone else who challenged a process was seen as a
difficult employee and managed out of the business."

Must be kind of hard to deal with that at a distance - It's not like Tim Cook
would know who's who and doing the bad stuff. Maybe some sort of feedback tech
would help.

------
Apocryphon
The culture of silence between Apple and the public extends to more than just
upcoming products. Has anyone noticed that there aren't as many Apple
employees participating in tech conferences, hackathons, public presentations?
Even for subjects unrelated to their work? Definitely fewer than
Google/Facebook/Amazon/Microsoft employees.

~~~
MrNobody
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 personal coding time
(on the rare occasion it exists) on work projects only reinforces all of this.

(All that said, my sample size is seven people, so I could be quite wrong in
the end.)

~~~
aaronbrethorst
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.

~~~
megablast
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](http://www.imore.com/director-app-store-apple-fart-wiz-apps)

~~~
aaronbrethorst
I have specific knowledge of several instances where this is, indeed, true.

Your article:

Is five years old, and never claims about that the person mentioned in article
was still developing apps after being hired by Apple. In fact:

The picture displayed is from a now-defunct Seattle-centric business social
networking website, and Phillip is mentioned as being part of the "Seattle
Community," but a resident of "San Jose California."

It seems totally sensible that Apple would want to hire someone with
experience building iOS apps, and would then make them give all of those up as
soon as they're hired. Which would be identical to the experience that the
people I know have had.

I did some more digging, and:

    
    
        “Apple employees are generally prohibited
        [from publishing apps in the App Store],”
        [Evan] Doll told Wired.com. “You have to
        get a special exception from a VP.
        Otherwise, big no-no. If he was doing it
        pre-Apple then he’d have an easier time
        getting an exception,” he added.
    

[http://www.wired.com/2010/08/apple-fart-
apps/2/](http://www.wired.com/2010/08/apple-fart-apps/2/)

------
kyllo
_I had organised a day off recently where all my family were visiting me from
interstate. Despite this I had agreed to dial in to one conference call as the
audience attending was ‘important’. Well it seems Important but disrespectful,
as the audience never even turned up, yet I was still made to ‘dry-run’ the
whole meeting from start to finish for an hour and a half as if there was full
attendance and interest in what I was saying. So, as the food I had prepared
for my family went cold, there I was stuck on the phone role-playing a fake
menial meeting to satisfy managements ego._

Oh god. I would have hung up. The concept of a "dry run" for a meeting is
_insanely_ offensive and counterproductive. If a meeting needs to be
_scripted_ and _rehearsed_ , it does not need to happen.

~~~
genericresponse
I read it with a few grains of salt. I've had dry runs for meetings where I
was presenting. It's pretty useful to walk through your presentation with your
boss when your 3-4 level higher boss is there. I've also requested
subordinates dry run when they have poor communication skills and need
coaching to perform up to standard.

It's not something you do with everyone there or with a meeting that just
works off an agenda.

------
kelukelugames
I was interested in working at Apple so I messaged a few of my alum friends.
All of them said they worked around 60 hours a week. Nope, can't pay me enough
to work 60 hours a week.

~~~
beamatronic
You _can_ pay me to work 60 hours a work, but so far no employers _choose_ to.

~~~
storgendibal
Heh, 60 hours is a low intensity week in management consulting and especially
investment banking. Once upon a time, a banker 2-3 years out of an MBA (say
28-30) would make $300-500K cash. The hourly rate is lower than minimum wage
though (these guys used to put in 100+ hours). They did it in the hopes of
landing a private equity gig that would pay them $1M+ for a 50-70 hour work
week. That's a deal I would take in a heart beat, if I found the work
interesting.

There was an interesting article in Fortune a while ago. The tldr was that you
shouldn't get mad that Wall Street pays too much, but that the rest of
corporate America pays too little. When companies are building war chests in
the tens of hundreds of billions, and also feel the need to collude to prevent
"poaching", you have to wonder.

The sad part is that people in technology sometimes love the work so much,
that they are willing to put in more than they should on pure economic terms.
The finance and consulting types are more ruthless about their own worth.

EDIT: My minimum wage comment was more about making a point. Banker types like
to say they make lots of money but make less per-hour than a McDonald's
employee.

~~~
clarky07
Even with your edit, you still don't get it. McDonald's employee's don't make
> $50 an hour. No one can make $300k+ working at mcdonalds, even if they work
24/7\. Even if you worked LITERALLY every single hour of the year (8760)
minimum wage would get you to ~63.5k. That's a far cry from 300-500k

Any banker type that says something like that is an asshole or is really bad
at math. Assuming he's a competent banker he's probably not actually bad at
math and is just an asshole.

~~~
storgendibal
No, you don't get it. The point is that is working insane hours worth the
hourly wage you get in finance.

~~~
clarky07
well it doesn't help your (or their) point when they underestimate the hourly
wage by an order of magnitude.

~~~
storgendibal
I don't disagree. The point was directionally correct, mathematically
inaccurate.

------
nemo
There are two orgs in Apple that are soul-crushing - AppleCare and IS&T.
AppleCare is a depressing meat grinder of dealing with unhappy customers with
broken things. IS&T uses parasitic funding (other orgs. are "customers"), and
is internally broken into competing fiefdoms and systems that are a horror to
interact with. Kind of sounds like this guy was in IS&T working with
AppleCare. I was in IS&T for a year, and was happy it was only a year.

Other orgs. in the company are generally a lot nicer to work in, though it
varies where you wind up.

------
AndrewKemendo
_Words like ‘pressure’ kept getting thrown at me in the context of I can’t
handle the pressure and “you were told at the interview it’s high pressure”._

Oh lord. As though any of them have any clue about real "high pressure" work
environments. Being an asshole unnecessarily isn't a high pressure
environment.

~~~
serve_yay
Quite so, but nonetheless Apple very much strikes me as a high-pressure
workplace. There's a reason why they ship what they ship when they ship it.

~~~
Retric
An air traffic controller messes up and they risk hundreds of lives and 100's
of millions of dollars in property. That's a high high-pressure workplace,
Tech is just a combination of greed and poor managment.

~~~
serve_yay
Ehhh. Zooming out this far just makes the phrase meaningless in the context of
tech, which seems counterproductive since as you may have noticed we tend to
discuss tech around here.

~~~
rodgerd
Fine. _Writing_ air traffic control systems is tech, and is pressure.

The difference is artificial pressure driven by concerns like "I will look bad
to my boss" or "or EPS might dip a fraction of a present", as opposed to
"people will die".

~~~
oldmanjay
I know that it's hard to feel the difference between condescension and having
a point, so I want to let you know you're doing the first thing here.

~~~
rodgerd
How wonderfully recursive of you.

------
kumarski
I've found it is easy to poach talent from Apple, Google, and other large
ventures.

It's not the money. It's the vision and the way they treat talent. They don't
pay much deference to the consummate creators, the lifeblood of innovation.

Long hours, synchronous work schedules with asynchronous dependencies, long
commutes, and not an equal pay to warrant education level and mental capacity
required for task at hand.

I think the future may consist of Life-Work balance where one's life outside
of work, is greater than their work.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I definitely think the "startup life" culture is something a lot of people
will eventually consider a downside. I recently interviewed at a place with an
open floor plan, and I found that a big turn off to the position. While free
lunch and dinner are nice perks, sure, they also suggest you're still at work
for lunch and dinner. I want a job, not an overly-attached workplace.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
The best jobs I've found are at smallish companies with reasonable chance of
growing revenues that are just past the startup phase, and over the initial
politics that comes from growing. They have enough job security to make it
comfortable but still have the opportunity for a person to make significant
impact, and usually a mixture of legacy and new project code base. Some
technical debt to fix from the startup-sprint phase.

I've worked at net-new startups, very large companies, and companies like I've
described above. I miss the comraderie of a team under a dozen people making
good progress and with everyone able to make good impact without being a
superstar.

------
soheil
Toxic management in Silicon valley seems to be becoming a force to be reckoned
with. Time and time again I hear horror stories like this and from first hand
experience I can confirm all this mind playing is in fact happening by certain
managers. I've worked with managers that worked at top tech companies in the
Valley and their resume lists one company after another, it goes to show how
easy it is for them to jump ship if things are going sour without anyone at
the new company really noticing that in the interview process. There seems to
be a strongly connected network of toxic managers swarming the valley more and
more. It's not just Apple.

------
gscott
From reading about Apple I have the feeling innovation comes from the top (or
from small special teams) and the rest of the organization is about pulling
that innovation together. Which would make endless meetings make sense because
instead of innovation you just need organization to push the innovation made
by a tiny fraction of the company forward.

The positive is just having Apple on your resume you will make landing a job
anywhere easier. So the torture is more then worth it.

~~~
spectrum1234
Yes they are structure top down.

In contrast Google is more bottoms up / crowdsourced or "Darwinian" as Elon
Musk would say. Meetings are more cross functional, shorter, and to the point
this way.

------
paganel
> When I started my role I missed one business trip as my wife was pregnant,
> fell down the stairs and had to be hospitalised – this was listed as a
> ‘performance issue’ on my record and brought up during a one on one with
> management as a major ‘miss’ on my behalf.

What the fuck?! How the heck can this happen between two human beings who
happen to work for the same company? I'd rather plant potatoes for a living or
even go to war than having to deal with people who have no soul inside of
them. Empty shells.

~~~
kbart
"Having no soul" is considered a required attribute for a managing roles in
some companies.

------
SCdF
So what I find so interesting about this is that I've never heard the counter-
argument. No one is rushing to defend Apple, or say "Yeah I work at Apple on X
and I really love it".

In fact, the more I think about it, I don't know of _any_ prolific bloggers,
or open source contributors, or HN commentators, or really anyone, who
currently works for Apple. I know Bret Victor (worrydream) used to work there,
but left IIRC because they weren't letting him do things he creatively wanted
to do.

Where are the Apple advocates?

~~~
tjarratt
I worked at Apple on OS X server in various capacities for a few years, and
really loved the experience. As an open-source user and advocate, I was really
sad there because they have a very hostile and defensive position about open
source (which is a very reasonable stance, in my perspective).

The fact that there aren't any prolific bloggers, open source contributors or
HN commentators is an artifact that the company does not encourage anyone to
do that -- in fact, they actively discourage anyone that isn't involved in
open source work on Webkit or Obj-C or Swift from talking about their work.
For better or worse, they still have a culture of secrecy around their
products.

For what it's worth, I really enjoyed my time there and wouldn't trade it for
anything else; I worked with a lot of fabulous teams, learned a lot, and got
to build some really amazing stuff.

~~~
rikkus
How is it reasonable for them to have a hostile and defensive position in
relation to open source when so much of their software is either built upon or
enabled by open source?

~~~
debacle
A thing can be unethical and still be reasonable.

~~~
jsprogrammer
You can twist the definitions of words to anything you want.

------
simonebrunozzi
The most interesting stories about Apple, or Amazon, or a few others, cannot
be told in public.

Most of these former employees feel legally threatened by their former
employers, and that's what prevents them from sharing more.

I wish there was a way.

~~~
abawany
Glassdoor makes for interesting reading :).

------
raspasov
I wonder how many people the author has really interacted with? Even if it was
100 individuals (which is probably unlikely) that's still <2% (I think Apple
has > 5000 employees?) of the total organization. Basically a rounding error.

It's very hard to make conclusions for the whole company from such a small
sample. That borders discrimination/racism thinking. Not in any way trying to
say that he had a pleasant experience or that his management was solid.
Probably wasn't. Just hard to make conclusions for a big group from such a
small sample.

~~~
vacri
_It 's very hard to make conclusions for the whole company from such a small
sample._

Statistically speaking, an n of 100 is a reasonably decent sample of 5000 data
points. It seems to me that you're looking for excuses, as if this concept of
'dry-run' meetings only happens to be within the author's "hundred-person
bubble".

~~~
clarky07
as noted elsewhere, apple actually employs over 90,000 people. it's less
significant in that scope.

Also, while I have no doubt his experience sucked, he was also in customer
service as opposed to being a developer/engineer. I suspect those areas differ
somewhat. (Not suggesting it's ok at all, just that it may not be completely
representative of the entire company)

~~~
vacri
My point is that the parent considered a sample of 100 to be too small for a
population of 5000. Statistically speaking, it's a decent sample size.

~~~
ianamartin
To mikeash and vacri,

A sample size of 100 is equally meaningless for 500 or 5 billion if the sample
is skewed--which it definitely is in this case.

------
colechristensen
Apple has, what, a hundred thousand employees?

If you expect none of them to be intolerable nuts, you have a problem with
scale.

The thing is, if you're unsatisfied with your job, equating your personal
experience with the entire company as a whole, and going on a long name-
calling rant shows you as rather unprofessional yourself.

I don't doubt that some Apple managers are jerks.

~~~
pcg79
The problem isn't when it's "some ... managers". It's when you can't go to
anyone for help with those managers. Sounds like it the problem went up at
least another level. That's a problem and nothing anyone should be defending.

------
ChuckMcM
May I suggest that when you leave a place, and it was not a positive
experience, you look back on that experience, try to learn from what you
experienced and generally deal with the emotional trauma of trying to fit in,
in a place where you do not fit. Ben Farrell writes in his blog ...

 _" Road Less Travelled is authored by Ben Farrell, (online alias
‘nomadic_rambler’) – Freelance Writer & Photographer – That’s me!"_

When I read that I thought to myself, this guy has so much passion and
enthusiasm for understanding the world, it is a shame he took a job at a
company that is as intensely focused as Apple is.

This is the money quote for me, _" Finally now, for the first time in two
years, I feel light, creative and inspired. I am again an individual with my
own creative ideas, perceptions, values and beliefs. It may take me a while,
but from what I believe – I’m now able to express such beliefs again."_ I
really admire Ben for sticking it out for two years. The key here is that Ben
was _always_ the individual with ideas, perceptions, values and beliefs, and
it sounds like that was not what Apple was looking for in this position. I've
seen it time and again where someone races home after work to play in their
garage band or rebuild an engine or practice some other art. And if there
peers at work are staying late to work on something they believe in at the
office, well that is a recipe for a problem.

I also think that if you find yourself in the situation of finally unwinding
what turned out to be a painful choice in your life, its probably not the best
thing to blog about it on the same day you take action on your future :-)

------
r00fus
Would like to know which division the departing employee worked in, and how
long he stuck it out.

I personally liken companies to a large conglomeration of small organizations
- your management chain really matters. Which is why when a respected manager
leaves, sometimes his/her team leaves with them (HR flight risk).

I know someone who worked (works?) at Apple - she moved from a difficult
arguably acidic environment to one where she feels valued and rewarded.

I can relate similar stories from other companies all over the world.

~~~
jackgavigan
According to his LinkedIn profile[1], he was responsible for:

 _Managing Quality Customer Experience Programs for AppleCare 's technical
support contact centres across APAC; including vendor and internal teams in
Australia, New Zealand, thePhilippines and the USA. Vendor management and
quality initiative planning and execution to ensure Apples technical support
contact centres maintain the highest level of customer satisfaction &
consistently deliver an exceptional standard of customer experience by
measuring & analysing performance in-line with regional and global standards
of excellence and technical aptitude._

He was there for 19 months.

1:
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencfarrell](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencfarrell)

------
api
Apple has built one of the most successful businesses in the world on mostly
one thing: design. (And user experience, which is design more broadly
applied.)

Undortunately, it seems to me that good design requires totalitarianism.
Apple's products are comparatively coherent, clean, unified, and aesthetically
pleasing. This is achieved via a culture of totalitarianism that extends all
the way down to the device. OSX has some openness grandfathered in, but iOS
shows you where Apple wants to go.

... and customers largely approve. Having used both iOS and the more open
Android, I can say that while Android is more capable iOS is more of a
pleasure to use. There you have it.

It's something I have seen broadly in the world, and I actually find it rather
disturbing. Bazaars can be creative and can offer a rich array of options and
a lot of value, but only a cathedral can deliver aesthetics and usability.

~~~
mikeash
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).

~~~
kziojzwsndppqgg
> 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 the departure of a particular executive
(no, not Steve) who was known to crack the whip really hard on people. I also
hear those same people talk about how quality has suffered as a result of his
departure, and they actually long for the higher-stress days when they had to
work longer hours but were happier with the finished product.

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

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

------
ape4
He missed a big chance not titling the article "iQuit".

That bit about missing time to take care of his pregnant wife is pretty
horrible.

------
cognivore
Lots of money means lots of asshatery. When the cycle comes around again and
Apple finds themselves scrambling, this will all go away, because such people
are useless.

------
jonhester
I work for a small company while my wife works for a large corporation. She
makes more than I do, but I work less hours and don't have to deal with the
politics.

------
francoisdevlin
Is this for real? Can anyone else corroborate this?

~~~
kziojzwsndppqgg
FWIW, as an Apple employee I have no idea what the hell he's talking about.

I've worked here 4 years and I absolutely love. my. job. I take days off to
work from home whenever I feel like it. We drink at the office on occasion.
I'm never harassed for not being constantly online. I don't have endless
meetings. I'm constantly praised for the work I do, I get great reviews, with
large bonuses.

My impression from reading this article is that he either had a shitty manager
(it can happen, Apple's a huge company) or his department wasn't very well-
run. (It _is_ customer service, that's never known for being a great
environment almost anywhere you work.)

I feel bad for the guy, in a situation he described I would've left too.
Fortunately I'm not in that situation, and neither is anyone else I know here.
People have their issues with small things but at the end of the day I think
everyone I work with loves what they do.

~~~
Apocryphon
It's a big company, and there will certainly be diversity in experiences. But
he's not the first person to talk about such situations:
[http://oleb.net/blog/2014/09/work-habits-at-
apple/](http://oleb.net/blog/2014/09/work-habits-at-apple/)
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8389238](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8389238))

It does happen.

~~~
kziojzwsndppqgg
I'm not really sure that article even paints Apple in a bad light. Yeah, it
talks about how much you work hard, but even just listen to them:

> I mean, it’s not that it’s not fun, it’s not that it’s not fulfilling, it’s
> not that you don’t get to work around all these brilliant people. The bad
> side effect is they’re all, like, workaholic, psychotic brilliant people.

For me, one of the best things in life is the opportunity to work hard at work
worth doing. Apple gives me that, and I feel extremely fortunate.

I've been at jobs where the stress is very low and I had time to browse the
internet at all hours and didn't have much expected of me. This is 100% the
opposite of that, and I'm happier now than I ever was then. It's been 4 years
and I've never had anything close to burn-out, because I've never felt that
the work wasn't "worth it". (To me, burn out is a result of feeling like
you're not getting anywhere, and that just plain isn't the case at a company
where we consistently ship things with huge scopes, on time and to resounding
success.)

Yeah, there's exec demos, and yeah there's dry-run meetings for them, but you
know what? The execs here are fucking _smart_. Every meeting I've had with
execs has left me awestruck at the level with which someone can be
simultaneously so big-picture oriented while still being able to sweat little
details. There's a reason they got to where they are, and I really feel that
at Apple it's a true meritocracy.

It sounds like it's even harder work if you're in the direct email line-of-
sight of an exec (which I am not), and I feel for the authors of your linked
post about how hard that must be, but to me that comes with the territory of
being so close to the success or failure of a product that you are under that
kind of scrutiny. What else would you expect?

~~~
Apocryphon
"To me, burn out is a result of feeling like you're not getting anywhere, and
that just plain isn't the case at a company where we consistently ship things
with huge scopes, on time and to resounding success."

Just because a company is getting somewhere, doesn't mean you or your team or
even your org is. You mustn't overgeneralize your own positive experiences at
the company to reflect that of a majority of people working there. (Of course,
for people with the opposite experience, overgeneralization should be avoided
as well.)

It's a big company. Experiences will vary.

------
bberrry
I would be interested to hear whether the culture in the engineering
departments is similar to this.

------
coldtea
> _I spent two years in the Apple camp managing customer service improvement
> for their technical support contact centres_

Yeah, not exactly the kind of Apple insider we'd imagined when we read the
first few paragraphs...

> _Sixteen hour days are filled with meetings after meetings followed by more
> meetings. Whilst this is somewhat standard in most organisations, meetings
> at Apple wreaked of toxic agendas designed to deliberately trip people up,
> make fools of the less respected and call people out. Team spirit is non
> existent as ‘internal customers’ attack individuals and push agendas that
> satisfy their morning egos. Hours upon hours were wasted in meetings to
> prepare for meetings in preparation for other meetings to the point where
> little work actually got done._

And yet, they manage to be on the top at least financiancly, if not anything
else, and put out tons of good products.

So either this is not the whole story, or it's mostly about the customer
service department, and not the hardware and software units...

> _Sickness, family emergencies, and even weddings are given no respect at
> Apple. When I started my role I missed one business trip as my wife was
> pregnant, fell down the stairs and had to be hospitalised – this was listed
> as a ‘performance issue’ on my record and brought up during a one on one
> with management as a major ‘miss’ on my behalf._

This kind of thing on the other hand is important whoever it's happening to.
Maybe Cook instead of pretending to care for more glamorous media causes (like
Indiana) and start treating his own employees (which include plenty of gays of
course) better?

It's quite hypocritical to be a supporter for gay marriage, and then piss on
the marriages and personal life of your employees in general.

------
pmcpinto
I believe that everything that was written in this article is true and it's
really depressing to see a work culture like this. How they can retain and
attract talent with this kind of culture?!

------
dataker
I don't like to talk about it, but some tech giants are going the same path as
investment banks. I left my quant job to get freedom in the Valley, but it
turned out to not be so different.

------
sudioStudio64
I think that it should be pointed out that Apple doesn't have "values". The
idea that apple has "values" that it "preaches" is just wrong. That is called
marketing. It's funny that people are shocked by this. This is what businesses
do and it makes the weird partisanship that forms around them seem mad.

~~~
serve_yay
No, they have values alright. They may not be what you think they should be,
or what I think they should be, but.

~~~
retrogradeorbit
No, they don't. People personify corporations and talk about them being evil.
But they are not evil. Nor are they good. They are amoral. They lack any moral
code either way. They exists purely to maximise the profit of their
shareholders. That is all. No more. No less. People have morals. But
corporations are not people. No matter what the courts have ruled.

~~~
sudioStudio64
Exactly. I think its weird that people think of marketing messaging as like a
person communicating with them...Like somehow Apple is a quirky guy that loves
music and simple Swedish furniture and just happens to be the most valuable
enterprise on the planet.

------
nashashmi
Great read! But come on, customer support is not the main body of the company,
just one of the limbs. And those limbs suffer if they do not strive to be
themselves and instead seek to be someone else.

One phrase that I tell myself often kept coming to mind: the freedoms you
don't take, someone else will, and the freedoms you don't fight for, someone
else will take. This applies between government-citizen, corporation-employee,
manager-managee, and head-subordinate.

And do you know what happens when one hot shot takes hold of the
company/department/group? Everybody seeks to emulate him and judge themselves
and others in comparison to him. What happens then is like what happens to
metal dust scattered on paper with a magnet in the middle. The hot shot is no
longer a leader with a team, but instead a one-man army with slaves extending
his rule.

And some leaders will never manage creative people because they can never step
out of the way.

------
faragon
If you get no respect where you work, just quit, as soon as you can.

------
nomass
I don't want to offend anyone, but really Apple has become a lousy company.
The single only thing that still flawlessly works is indeed the "glossy
surface" (article).

Their hardware, sold as rock-solid, is partly flawed. My (and thousands of
other users ) Macbook graphic card broke after 12 month. The OS and their
software has become bloated inconsistent and buggy. Their customer service is
so bad, it even beats some of the worst telecom companies in my country. Their
sales people are good looking but technically incompetent. Some of Apples
technologies (Applescript, Objective-C) are just awful.

I think Apple products and services are only usable, if you have a lot of
money to throw around and if you don't really rely on them, but look at them
as toys to play around.

Using Ubuntu and Android now, I can admit that the UI is not nearly as sexy.
But stuff works or can be fixed in reasonable time.

------
slaxman
Wow! This reminds me of my career at PwC. I was a strategic consultant to the
Financial Sector there.

<rant>

People were measured more on how long they stayed back in office rather than
how much work got done. On multiple occasions, I was contacted by the
Associate Director for some 'urgent' work while I was on leave. As you can
imagine, none of the work was actually that urgent. The worst was the politics
to take credit for other people's work.

</rant>

------
jmstout
I feel like he missed a big opportunity here to say, "iQuit". Just sayin'.

~~~
unholiness
I assume that was the intended reading.

------
laichzeit0
> Management were inconsistent, moody and erratic. I’d often receive
> aggressive chats at all hours, and harassing texts every fifteen minutes
> asking “are you online? Your status shows you as away – are you there?”.

As they saying goes, shit runs downhill. I guarantee you these guys are
behaving this way because someone above them is giving them the same amount of
shit.

------
fixxer
Sounds like Samsung.

EDIT: No really, IT SOUNDS JUST LIKE SAMSUNG.

~~~
dba7dba
What? The extreme dedication demanded by corporation from the employees?

It happens pretty much in all big corporations in S Korea and also Japan.

------
wellsthrowaway
Welcome to a large corporate environment! Apple isn't special.

------
rogerdickey
Why 900 upvotes? This reads like a vengeful laundry list of excuses for
essentially being fired, written by a low-performing, poor-culture-fit middle
manager from an exceptionally dysfunctional team at what otherwise might be a
great company. I've never worked there so can't say.

------
andyman1080
One possible explanation for his experience is that he was what they call
"managed out".

------
jsudhams
Not sure why person would not have called ethics line or even complain local
govt HR authorities(if any). The allegations seems to be definitely a
harassment if the person was not paid for work to be done outside working
hours(not very clear if the person was paid for midnight calls). Not sure now
but when I worked in Microsoft as customer support. They really really took
care of the employees, it was a cost centre and there were call centre metrics
in place but employees were treated really well. Leaves given as needed, paid
for extra work and an excellent customer centric but a humble culture inside
the org. The dev teams appreciated inputs from support and vice versa.

------
gabeio
Not to attack or defend apple or the author but he just seems like a free
spirit, and from personal experience in customer support myself (also quit
twice) this is just not the job for a person who travels the world that
much...

------
shanusmagnus
TFA, and these comments, have made me curious -- what is the best way to get a
breakdown of how much people like working for a company? I know there are job
sites like Glassdoor, etc, but in those reviews everything is scrambled
together. And as the comments here suggest, there could be a huge difference
between what it's like to work in software development (say, doing stuff for
OS X) vs. customer service kinds of things. Are there any resources that could
help you get a 'fingerprint' of the work-experience at a certain company,
across its various aspects?

~~~
debacle
Ask the right questions at the interview.

"Do you like working here?"

"Yeah. I guess it's okay."

Versus

"What's the worst thing about working here?"

"They stick used hypodermic needles in your urethra once a week."

------
br3w5
"The common language spoken being passive aggression, sarcasm and Kool-Aid
fuelled stories of ‘success’ designed to manipulate and intimidate naive
workers who have never experienced corporate life outside the Apple walls"

Sounds like all experiences I've had with the private sector although I have
had better experiences with teams and general behaviour of team mates. I think
founders of companies expect everyone to have the same belief in their
business as they do but with less money out of it and no real influence over
the company...that and not everyone thinks the same.

------
2close4comfort
It is a shame that you finally reach a key point in your career only to find
that they are not as great as they are made out to be. But it is refreshing to
see that they were able to realize where they were and that it was not for
them. I would think that if we ever make it to the point where people won't
make these obscene sacrifices to work for (insert random SV co. name here) it
might be a better place...but lets face that will never happen.

------
th0br0
I once attended a hackathon in Switzerland where Apple sponsored some prizes.
They had a bunch of relatively young (read mostly junior level) developers
there and one 'glorious leader' management-level kind of guy. I shall never
forget seeing two of the young developers following their glorious leader with
ipads in their hands wherever he went.

~~~
mwfunk
I don't get it. Why is that an unforgettable image for you?

~~~
th0br0
OTOH, why do you perceive this as something not to be forgotten?

For me, this simply shows a specific kind of dependency and hierarchy that I
don't want to identify with. In my opinion, IT (especially) is a topic where
knowledge (how to do X) matters less and less, because said knowledge is
accessible for free anyway. All that matters is how quickly and well you can
execute and whom you know. (Not that I really like the last part, but I guess
that that's human)

------
WhitneyLand
Another perspective is how valuable would your options have to be to stay put
in such an environment?

It's not always easy to walk away from a significant sum of money, even when
you sense it's doing real damage.

In a similar situation I didn't walk away and it took years to recover.
Probably would do it again, having a family might be the deciding factor.

------
mathattack
As others have pointed out, life in a cost center is very tough. People turn
to infighting because it's hard to use revenue as an arbiter. Apple doesn't
venerate customer support. Apple celebrates the designers and engineers. It
would be more interesting if this article came from there.

------
decentrality
I've been seeing a lot of edits to the article. It seems that for now, one
global network of feedback and peer review ( Apple ) is being exchanged for
another ( HN ). Not good or bad, just "is" \--

As with any "break up" this phase of WOOHOO+rage will crest, then the
community dynamic ( refactored/lost ) will echo as loudly in the mind if not
louder than the perceived freedom gained... to go work with other people, but
still always people.

Draconian tendencies aside, no one will ultimately satisfy as a peer or
network. So, OP, enjoy the rush. High-profile exits from large names is
thrilling, but then you're without a scapegoat, if there is one at all.
Tomorrow will be a reality check unless self critique is harsher than pointing
fingers.

The whole "tell the entire world how much X company sucks" trend is pretty
much played out, even/especially if the company left does suck. It's a form of
therapy to do it, probably, but a lot of it feels like marketing for the next
leg of a career regardless.

------
dougpetro
It seems that maybe they were manufacturing mind games just to edge him out,
for various reasons. But if Apple is so good at making bold moves and quick
decisions, it's weird that his superiors would act so childishly toward him.

------
gchokov
Well that's pretty much the case with everyone who quits a big company and
goes on "his own path" adventure. It's not something specific to Apple, but I
guess putting it "I quit Apple" makes you cool?

------
maze-le
Wow... I expect that things are not as shiny and glamoury as they seem, but
this!?!

------
frade33
Ever heard of 'fast-paced' work environment. Sadly I run a tiny small company,
where we make it loud and clear. That it's fast-paced work environment, full
of stress, haste and everything in between.

Even for me as an owner, this has deteriorated my life. I run an international
shipping company. And every shipment is time-definite, not because they are,
because customers make it so.

Such kind of job, is not for everyone, therefore we make it loud and clear, we
have a lot of fun too, to compensate for it and I make it clear to my guys.

Anyhow, we do not have a culture of 'disrespect' but in a fast-paced
environment, moods swings are pretty common.

Again it's not for everyone. Ask me frankly, 911 or Police are less stressful
than we are. as you laid out., as If police job is more stressful.

------
FridaG
sounds like apple definitely takes advantage of its prestige. if OP made >= 6
figures, this treatment seems kinda par for the course in this industry.

It's sad that in order to 'make it' we can expect to receive such
insensitivity at work, I certainly wouldn't stand for it, but it's frustrating
that this is ultimately a first-world problem; millions of people deal with
this kinda shit day in day out at shitty fast food jobs, and they get neither
respect nor compensation for their efforts.

------
Aoyagi
I was under the impression that this is an accepted thing for both Apple and
Microsoft, while Google is the "we know what's good and you products deal with
it" company.

------
classicsnoot
Thank you to every poster who stayed in the world of facts, honesty, and
objectivity in a thread about a potentially madly divisive topic. Medals for
Bravery all around.

------
classicsnoot
_assuming the story is accurate_ The sad part about cult mentality is that
this post will probably just reinforce the dogma of the 'true' believers.

------
mtarnovan
"I used to be a police officer. I’ve held a gun aimed at a dangerous offenders
head and had to choose whether or not to pull the trigger."

Wait, what?

~~~
EdwardDiego
What troubles you about that statement?

It may well have been a situation where the person was presenting a threat to
others and he had to decide how to how much threat was being presented and how
to prevent that.

~~~
mtarnovan
I misread that as "holding a gun at someone's head", as opposed to "holding a
gun _aimed_ at someones's head". My bad.

But even so, should police officers really aim for the head?

~~~
EdwardDiego
> But even so, should police officers really aim for the head?

That's a good question.

------
MrDosu
News@11: Working at BigCorpXYZ is not rainbows and puppies like in the
brochure. Who knew.

------
hellbanner
"Drinks with colleagues revolved around the same stories told _again and
again_ " hm, anything to do with their address of "1 infinite loop"? Funny,
usually infinite loops are a sign somebody fucked up.

------
jaynate
This doesn't aound any different from any other company on the planet if you
look at it from this angle. The author seems overly entitled and disgruntled.
Any job is what you make of it.

------
rawoke083600
Sounds awful !!

------
FD3SA
Another perfect data point to add to Michael O`Church`s excellent series on
the politics and psychology of the modern corporation.

For you starry eyed youngsters, just remember that this is Apple, the world`s
most profitable company. It only gets worse as you go down the list.

Work for yourself. Consulting, the trades and any type of work you can do
independently is far superior to dealing with wannabe Machiavellians on whose
benevolence your paycheck depends.

Get out of the corporate world, and do anything else. The sky is the limit.

~~~
noddingham
Whoa whoa. Consulting isn't _the_ answer. There are plenty of opportunities in
both private and public sector on awesome teams with amazing management.

~~~
bduerst
Consulting is just a different beast.

You get a lot more freedom and typically a higher pay, but sometimes
management uses consultants to be the fall guys or hires consultants to
confirm their existing decisions. It takes a lot of business savvy (read:
empathy) to understand why you're really being hired as a consultant.

I don't think OP here would be happy consulting. (Just my 2 cents.)

------
jackmaney
What a heartbreaking story. I'm glad that the author quit, and I'm yet again
reminded how fortunate I am to have a boss who comes relatively close to
understanding me and has my back.

------
mhurron
That's a lot of words to say Apple is a corporation and acts like many others.

I guess the author expected it to be like an iPod commercial when he started.

~~~
ctdonath
Agreed. Sounds like it acts like many (not all!) others.

I've worked at a lot of places. I've been told that open-heart surgery would
be counted as a vacation day. I've been in 3-hour meetings where a dozen
executives bickered the whole time over how one toggle should be labeled. I've
been where fully half the employees had been fired and continued working on
the sheer grace/need of the owner. I've been given hard deadlines to complete
hundreds of pages of documentation nobody would ever read. Etc...and plenty of
people on HN have their own equivalent stories. Apple is a big company, and
can't keep everything pristine and orderly, and still has to meet massive big-
budget deadlines by every means necessary.

The kicker: Apple gets _results_. One way or another, that system _works_ ;
one company does not have one product take over fully half of an entire major
electronics market unless they're doing something right.

~~~
Apocryphon
For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his
soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

~~~
kzhahou
I would fain give up my imaginary "soul" in return for the whole world.

------
swish41
I would never hire this guy.

------
jklinger410
My favorite from the comments section "Maybe you were just holding your phone
incorrectly."

xD My sides!

------
serve_yay
Oh brother.

------
NelsonMinar
RIP FoundationDB.

