
What It’s Like to Work Inside Apple’s ‘Black Site’ - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-11/apple-black-site-gives-contractors-few-perks-little-security
======
jasode
This story is about the non-Apple employees that work at the subcontractor
Apex.

To generalize, the title can be _" What It’s Like to Work Inside Company X's
subcontractor."_

Similar stories about subcontractors with less benefits & perks were written
for Microsoft, Google, Amazon. Subcontractors are always going to be "2nd
class citizens" compared to real employees of the client company. The
phenomenon is not specific to the tech industry. Even a workers cooperative
like Mondgragon outsources work to subcontractors and those non-employees
complain about not being able to participate in Mondragon's benefits.

The "subcontractors" that have the same level (or higher level) of prestige
and respect as the client company would be consulting companies like McKinsey
or Bain.

~~~
brianpgordon
Does the big tech company bear no responsibility for shifting as much work as
it can out to subcontractors in order to cut costs? It seems to me that
they're knowingly using the subcontracting mechanism in order to get away with
offering Apex's 24 hours of paid leave per year, insufficient bathrooms, and
other appalling conditions without tarnishing their sterling reputation. It
says right in the article that Apple reviewed the Apex site and thought it was
fine.

If big tech companies want to own up to being heartless mercenary capitalists
who will wring every drop of sweat out of workers and spit them out as burned-
out husks with no savings at the age of 35, hey, that's the system we live in.
But something seems off when they want to have their cake and eat it too– that
is, they want to seem like inspiring, human-friendly forces for good, but
quietly use the glow from that reputation to get away with subcontracting away
a huge amount of their labor to people working in miserable conditions.
There's a reason that some labels moved away from sweatshop labor: it's bad
press. If Apple is going to effectively use sweatshop labor (through a
contractor, whatever) they should have to eat the bad press. Don't defend it
as just the contractor's fault. It's literally the exact same situation as a
clothing sweatshop.

~~~
badpun
You know, unless you're VERY careful about your shopping, you're also using
sweatshop labor (to manufacture your clothes, electronics etc.).

Also, I don't think that Apple is especially covert about them being a
(heartless) business like everybody else. Steve Jobs even said, in response to
a question about bringing manufacturing back to USA: "We're in the business of
making phones, not in the business of employing people". It was clear that
people were mainly just means to an end for him.

~~~
jrumbut
I think it's better to advocate for improvement without practicing it than it
is to not practice it and not advocate.

Better to do one thing right if that's the best you can pull off!

~~~
badpun
> I think it's better to advocate for improvement without practicing it than
> it is to not practice it and not advocate.

Isn't that the definition of hypocrisy?

------
andr
This was a weirdly meandering, clickbaity article, because the only piece of
news is that they found this building and talked to a few people inside of it.
What is the article advocating for? Is it for Apple to pay $100/hr for data
tagging or move those jobs abroad and pay $5/hr? I'm not sure.

7 million people live in SF Bay Area, and of those only about 800,000 work in
technology [1]. An article like "hey, look, someone sorta-kinda works for
Apple, but doesn't make $300,000/yr" is incredibly ignorant for the reality of
the majority of Bay Area residents. If you take a teacher's lifetime financial
growth path, it'll look bleak, compared to a recent grad at a FAANG. However,
that won't generate as many clicks.

[1] [https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/10/tech-job-growth-
slows...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/10/tech-job-growth-slows-in-bay-
area/)

~~~
throwwy20190213
>This was a weirdly meandering, clickbaity article, because the only piece of
news is that they found this building and talked to a few people inside of it.

The article very explicitly uses terminology to imply that the report is about
an intelligence community black site. The article says this explicitly:

> Workers say managers instructed them to walk several blocks away before
> calling for a ride home. Several people who worked here say it’s widely
> referred to within Apple as a “black site,” as in _a covert ops facility._

It says it is widely referred to within Apple as a covert ops facility. (It
doesn't say jokingly referred to that way.) In addition it uses the word back
door in the second paragraph, which is really evocative. It says:

>From the outside, there appears to be a reception area, but it’s unstaffed,
which makes sense given that people working in this satellite office—mostly
employees of Apple contractors working on Apple Maps—use the back door.

An editor who didn't want to evoke this would change it to secondary entrance,
or simply, "don't use the main entrance". They wouldn't use the term back
door. Bloomberg isn't some tabloid.

For better or for worse, people are missing that the article calls this a
"covert ops facility" (using those exact 3 words) similar to room "Room 641A"
\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A)

Finally, the suggestion to walk several blocks before hailing a ride doesn't
make sense in any normal employee context. The article is calling this an
intelligence community site, says so very explicitly, and puts that term in
the title.

Reference:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site)

\--

NOTE: I got mod approval to post this response, since I am doing so from a
throwaway, but not to break the site guidelines.

------
seanyesmunt
While the conditions weren't nearly as bad as those in this article, I
experienced some of this as a contractor for Walmart at their Sunnyvale
office.

On Thanksgiving, they had a special lunch prepared for everyone that had to
come into the office (mostly just to monitor and be ready if anything went
down). There were emails and signs, everyone was excited about it. When I went
down with my team, they stopped me and a couple of other contractors at the
door and said we couldn't go in unless we were full-time employees. There was
no mention of that anywhere. We had to go get lunch somewhere else.

A couple of times a year they would buy movie tickets for everyone at a nearby
theater. At lunch, the full-time staff would leave to go watch a movie for a
few hours while the contractors stayed in the office.

Both of these weren't really a big deal, but they definitely made you feel
like you were a second class employee.

~~~
puzzle
As unfortunate and depressing as it is, a lot of that is required or strongly
encouraged by the IRS. Otherwise, it starts treating the contractors as actual
employees: [https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-
contr...](https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-contractor-
designation)

Sadly, the entire point is that they are not employees, let alone second class
ones. In the end, it boils down to the perennial question of how much of your
work is done by employees and how much by vendors. And it always leads to
awkward situations. (Quite a few of those when I was an employee at Google and
something I don't see as much anymore, luckily.)

~~~
learc83
This is almost definitely not about the IRS--or at least it is only to the
extent that Walmart might use that as an excuse. It's very likely that Walmart
is already treating them as de facto employees with scheduling and management
practices. Letting them eat at Thanksgiving isn't likely going to be to be the
straw that tips the scales to employee.

IRS: here's a list of things that can be evidence you are using contractors as
employees.

Walmart: OK we'll ignore every single one of them except that we won't provide
them with health insurance, we won't withhold tax, and we won't let them eat
Thanksgiving dinner or go to the movies.

There is a massive problem with employers skirting the law with respect to
this, but companies don't care because enforcement isn't consequential enough
to make them care.

~~~
nemothekid
I thought the whole reason companies care this much is because it enforced.
The go to example of what happens when you treat contractors like employees is
what happened to Microsoft where they got sued for breaking this line.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-
findlaw-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-dont-
treat-c/dont-treat-contractors-like-employees-idUSTRE53063S20090401)

~~~
learc83
That happened in 1989/1990\. The regulatory landscape has changed a lot in 30
years.

Also I'm not saying it's never enforced, I'm saying the enforcement isn't
consequential or consistent enough to convince companies to stop treating
contractors like employees.

------
mouzogu
I have worked as a contractor for Apple. I have to say that my personal
experiences have been generally positive. Although I am only working with them
at certain periods so it's not like I'm a "full-time" contractor so I can
understand the frustration of being in that kind of position.

Overall, I found them to be very accommodating and concerned with our needs.
They treated us well. There has never been any expectation on my part that I
would be receiving any regular employee benefits. I felt like Apple treated us
better than our actual employer/sub-contractor and if there was anything good
coming to us it was from Apple and not our sub contractor.

The only thing I can relate to is the toilet situation. For some reason Apple
has offices that can accommodate 100s of staff with literally 3 toilet
cubicles to go around. The toilet door is like a conveyor belt and I often
have to go several times until I can find an empty cubicle. Whoever designed
these offices severely underestimated the allocation of toilets.

~~~
eatbitseveryday
Never heard a toilet stall referred to as a 'cubicle' before. A cubicle is
where my desk is located, and that is not in the bathroom :)

~~~
chrisseaton
Might be British English as it sounds normal to me.

------
crazygringo
> _Workers say managers instructed them to walk several blocks away before
> calling for a ride home._

Huh? Why? Zero context and zero explanation given.

This article seems pretty sensationalist... when it's just describing the
entirely normal practice of contracted employees.

I mean, seriously... complaints about lines for the men's room after lunch?
Spoiler alert: (non-contract) employees of big tech companies encounter those
too. All the time, from personal experience. Or that the color of one's badge
is a "sad grey"? Give me a break.

Yes there are some arguably valid arguments to be made against the prevalence
of contract workers in modern America... but this article ain't it.

~~~
woud420
>complaints about lines for the men's room after lunch? Spoiler alert: (non-
contract) employees of big tech companies encounter those too.

Interestingly enough, that's one of my biggest complaint working @ Bloomberg.

~~~
puzzle
At Google, things got so bad in some Mountain View buildings, where few were
contractors anyway, that they started adding fancy bathroom campers in the
parking lots.

I always wanted to find out if there was any relationship to the signs that
warned people not to urinate in the showers...

------
shereadsthenews
I've worked at a number of famous tech giants and none of them have enough
men's bathrooms. I'm not sure that lines for the bathrooms are the strongest
point of this article.

~~~
sigfubar
_screams into a pillow_

My least favorite job was at an investment bank where men outnumbered women
100:1. Urinals were always clogged with garbage, toilets were left unflushed,
and sinks regularly filled up with human waste.

~~~
stygiansonic
Sinks? What sort of waste???

~~~
saagarjha
Do you really want to know?

------
oxymoran
So their complaints are that they have to work in a bland looking office with
an under stocked vending machine and there are lines for the bathroom. You are
all so out of touch with regular people it’s ridiculous.

------
chrisseaton
Comparing lack of access to a gym to a being in a 'black site' (location where
lack of oversight of security services has been allegedly used to facilitate
torturing people) is truly stupid.

------
paultopia
I'm really curious about something. Most contractor jobs seem to be
meaningfully distinct from the work that direct employees are performing,
whether it's stuff like security and cafeteria, or stuff that is too
specialized, like short-term needs (this is the Bain thing).

But how does it come about that companies have both direct employees and
contractors carrying out identical tasks in their core business? In the
valley, this question amounts to: how does it come about that companies have
both direct employed and contractor devs? What is it about the developers that
causes them to land on one track rather than another; what is it about the
products that companies are building that causes them to decide to staff one
with direct employees and another with contractors?

Does anyone have some insight into this? This is the part of the contractors
in the valley story that strikes me as really weird---the market rate for a
package of skills in a firm ought to be more consistent than it it seems to be
given the contractor/direct thing.

~~~
bradknowles
It's hard to find good people.

It's not uncommon to have more work in a given area than you have employees to
do that work. So, you hire contractors to fill in.

But are contractors allowed to do all the things that employees can do? If
not, then you've just created a whole new series of problems for yourself.

Been there, done that. On both sides of the fence, multiple times.

~~~
asdff
Why hire a contractor with the same skill set over an employee with the same
skill set?

------
fredsted
Seems like the answer to the question in the title is: Not that bad.

------
jccalhoun
This is nothing new and hardly unique to the tech industry. Back in the 90s I
worked summers at a factory that made door latches for Honda, Chrysler, and
Nummi. About 1/3 were "temporary employees" employees of Manpower even though
some people were there for over a year. Same job lower pay and no benefits.

------
Aloha
I worked for Ericsson for three years as a contractor (two tours), I looked at
it as a leg up - but eventually you either fail out, or you build up enough
confidence in yourself, that you know even if this job goes away - you'll find
another, and if you don't, you don't.

This sounds like poor oversight (and policy) on the apple side however - and
apple should be making sure that all employees are treated well - and
contractors are employees, just indirect ones.

------
dmitriid
I honestly stopped reading at this:

> The restrictions were just one of many reminders of the contractors’
> inferior status, right down to the apple design on their ID badges. For
> direct employees, the apples were multi-colored; contractors got what one
> described as “sad grey.”

Really? Really? Even Bloomberg knows how much of BS this is:

> It’s common for companies to distribute different badges to contractors

~~~
bradknowles
The badging at Apple and what you're allowed to do on the basis of your badge
color, is the second-worst that I've ever personally experienced.

The worst was when I was a government civilian, working in the Pentagon, and I
had a security clearance. The badges made it very clear who had what level of
security clearance, and that governed where they could go and what they could
do.

But at least the US Government had a pretty good reason for the way they
treated people in that way.

~~~
Aloha
Can you give me an example of how apple was so bad?

------
nodesocket
> Vending machines to be understocked, and to have to wait in line to use the
> men’s bathrooms.

Oh the horror! Somebody alert OSHA. Come on Bloomberg, I know outrage stories
generate the most clicks and profit for you, but this is getting absurd.

------
Animats
It's map editing. Big deal. Why is this a big secret? And why is it even in
Silicon Valley? It should be someplace with a labor and housing surplus but a
job shortage.

------
ausbah
the seedy underbelly of being a "tech employee"?

------
thisisweirdok
>“It was made pretty plain to us that we were at-will employees and they would
fire us at any time,”

most employees across the country are at-will, do people not know this?

------
JohnJamesRambo
I was hoping it would look cool and was disappointed to see it was the same
glass and trash metal building we see in strip malls.

