

I wanted to work at Apple really bad, and now not so much - jpgleeson
https://medium.com/@jordan_asante/i-wanted-to-work-at-apple-really-bad-and-now-not-so-much-f5f8c807d868

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compostor42
>On boarding was super bumpy, and they had so many passwords, accounts, and
logins that it took nearly a month just for me to get on the server. There
were meetings all the time which were disruptive to everyone’s productivity

Got a chuckle out of this and then realized I've been working exclusively for
megacorps and had nearly forgotten not every place is like this.

 _You merely adopted the bureaucracy...._

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NumberSix
A few thoughts.

As has been noted a number of times on Hacker News and other Internet forums,
job interviews are not particularly reliable either for employers or
employees. Most people can behave reasonably for the duration of a typical job
interview or even an unusually long and thorough interview process.

There is probably a positive correlation between your impression of a
potential new job from an interview and what actually will happen but it is
far below a perfect 100 percent correlation. My educated guess is that the
coefficient of correlation is something like 0.2 or twenty percent.

At least in the computer field, in my experience, there is a high infant
mortality rate, with many people encountering a serious problem and indeed
leaving or being fired within the first ninety days of a new job -- and even
more new employees within six months. A good rule of thumb is to treat the
first six months as a trial or probationary period both for the employee and
the employer.

The key question with a job is "is it working for me?" It is easy to confuse a
company's success and name recognition with your interests. Some companies are
successful entirely or in part because they are exploiting their employees.
And even if in general this is not true for your employer, your individual
situation may be bad for you.

A good rule of thumb is to put up with a bad situation until you have found
something else. It is _almost_ always easier to find a new job with a job.
However, there _are_ exceptions and psychologically abusive situations can
cause significant permanent harm, both psychological and physical -- think
high blood pressure and other longer term physical effects of stress.

In general, it is probably unwise to post a blog article with details of why
you left a job, especially negative comments on your former employer. It is
likely to raise questions about you, if not a red flag, in the minds of
potential future employers. What if you post a blog article about them? Having
said that, there are certainly exceptions to this general rule as well.

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taylodl
So the author discovered Apple isn't the land of unicorn farts and then
abruptly leaves in a huff? Sure, it sounds like he had a bad boss but neither
he, nor by extension we, have learned anything from this experience. For
example, did the boss favor employees and treat the contractors poorly? That'd
be valuable insight. Is Apple bogged down in process? Have they not adopted
agile development practices? That'd all be interesting to know. But we got
nothing. More sadly, the author got nothing. All he knows is he had a bad boss
at Apple and since he never gave anyone a chance to rectify the situation we
have no idea if this is typical or atypical of Apple nor how Apple handles
these situations.

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gknoy
It sounded like the meetings and rigid work hours were troublesome, but the
main thing was the boss's constant insults. That's not professional behavior,
and should absolutely have been brought to HR's attention. (It makes me
thankful to always have had such good bosses.)

I agree, the author could have done many things better. There has to have been
a way out which would have preserved a good professional relationship with
coworkers and his recruiter. It's easy to see, though, how one might be so
disheartened by the organization's (perceived) failure to recognize such toxic
behavior by a manager, and so just feel like walking away was the best thing
to do.

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marssaxman
I've always chosen the "tough it out" strategy when dealing with bad
management and/or toxic social environment at work, but over the long run I
can't say it's done me any good. Those jobs never worked out no matter how
much effort I put in, and in two cases the psychological stress was
significant enough to degrade my productivity for over a year after leaving.

From what I can see, if you're a new hire stuck with a bad manager, your best
bet really is to bail out as fast as you can. HR is not your friend, no matter
what they tell you, and you're simply not going to win a fight with your
manager unless you have connections and an in-company reputation strong enough
to bring down pressure from above. Perhaps the author of this article could
have chosen a just slightly more graceful way of leaving, but I just can't
fault his decision to pull the ripcord as soon as he realized the plane was on
its way down.

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serve_yay
Oh wow, I would never take a pay cut to work somewhere as strenuous as Apple.
I don't think I would ever work there at all, but certainly not for _less_
money.

