
Bret Victor on working at Apple. - endergen
http://worrydream.com/#!/Apple
======
hebejebelus
The title really should be changed to reflect the actual message (or lack of
one). Nowhere in the post does he say that he __didn't __have a good time
working at Apple. Nowhere does he advise not working there (like the title
suggests).

From what I infer, anyway, his actual message is that he can't show what he
worked on at Apple - not that it's a bad place to work.

~~~
schrototo
That's what I also thought at first, but the second question of the FAQ on the
site lends itself to the interpretation that working at Apple was a "mistake".
But yeah, the title is somewhat editorializing...

~~~
tjogin
Well, that, or it could also mean that the mistakes are the reasons none of
his products are available on the market today, and therefore he can't show
them off.

------
gokhan
Looks like there are more to this story. The Departure one is really creative
:)

<http://worrydream.com/#!/Freedom>

<http://worrydream.com/#!/Departure>

Great site, overall.

~~~
freshfunk
That departure one is excellent.

------
JonnieCache
The post is almost content-free, we all know apple is secretive.

But that website is a _work of art,_ although it does crawl in chrome on my
current-gen mac mini.

If the guy doesn't like apple, I doubt he'd have much trouble finding work
elsewhere.

EDIT: re-reading, I see that he has.

~~~
unwind
Just to provide a counter-point, from a usability point of view I found that
article terrible.

On the 1920 pixels wide screen at work, more than half the horizontal width
became buttons (previous and next). As soon as the mouse pointer was outside
the white background for the linked-to article, a click lead to navigating
away from the article.

It took me at least two or three times of wondering where the fsck the article
I was reading went, before I realized what was going on. Apparantly randomly
clicking on what looks like (and ought to be) passive whitespace is a bad
habit, on today's web.

~~~
JonnieCache
_> On the 1920 pixels wide screen at work, more than half the horizontal width
became buttons (previous and next)_

I think my adoration may have been influenced by the fact that my monitors are
in portrait orientation.

And I use a trackball. I'm a sucker for contrarianism. Maybe I should start
using visual studio?

~~~
lallysingh
Please, a little consideration. I just finished breakfast, and it was tasty.
I'd prefer to keep it down.

------
Tyrannosaurs
Man signs contract containing NDA _before starting work_ then seems to object
to the fact that he's being held to an NDA.

If he made a mistake surely it reflects on him rather than Apple?

If you don't like the terms, don't sign the contract. If he's good enough to
get a job at Apple I suspect it wasn't his only option.

~~~
thristian
I'd guess he expected a 99% failure rate in exchange for a few highly polished
gems that might be featured in a MacWorld keynote, or at the very least make
it into a shipping product he could show off to his family and or friends.

I think anyone should be allowed to feel disappointed at a 100% failure rate
over three years, no matter how many NDAs they signed.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
He was working in highly conceptual R&D, he could have worked there for
decades and never had anything reach the public in any recognisable form, let
alone make a MacWorld keynote.

If you want public recognition it's not a great area to work in regardless of
the company.

------
Argorak
Hate to say it: thats not even an Apple problem. Almost every corporate
research division works like this. A lot of ideas go there to die.

~~~
alwillis
True that. It’s not like the web is full of prototypes and ideas from other
high profile companies except Apple.

Haters are going to hate…

------
jamesaguilar
If only someone had warned him of their secretive culture before he started.

~~~
andrewguenther
Is a warning even necessary? I am fairly certain every company works this way.

~~~
nl
Umm.. no they don't

Many companies _encourage_ people to talk about their work. See, for example,
Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Twitter etc.

Obviously they have some restrictions - but nothing like Apple.

~~~
follower
Google certainly doesn't encourage people to talk about their work--it's one
of the things that puts me off the thought of working there.

~~~
space-monkey
<http://www.google.com/events/io/2011>

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
There are 25,000 Google employees, how many of them do you think are attending
IO (total attendance 5000), let alone speaking there.

That's a stage managed corporate event announcing new products and
initiatives, it's no more a display of openness than Steve Jobs' keynotes.

------
yankeeracer73
I'm sure for someone in this position it could get pretty frustrating to work
at a place like Apple. On the one hand, you could invent something that could
end up being used on a device used by hundreds of millions of people. On the
other hand, that bar, purposely, is insanely high, so the likelihood that will
happen is low. Corporate security aside, that just seems like the nature of
the game at a company that values (and delivers) on a world class user
experience.

------
antidaily
This dude is a bit more than a designer:
<http://worrydream.com/VisualizingEdgeWeights/>

------
nupark2
On the other hand, I can point to portions of Mac OS X and iOS that are
shipping today and say: I made that.

Not only was the experience of working at Apple incredibly valuable from a
technical standpoint, but from a business standpoint it's something instantly
recognizable to others.

------
BrainScraps
The document linked below is easily the least important page on the whole
site.

But without it, I would have never read the rest of it, so thank you. I think
I just spend about 50 minutes getting schooled by Mr. Victor. Amazing
concepts.

(everything I just typed feels trite after the sweeping visions imparted in
the literature on that site. Seriously. I'm going to bed.)

~~~
endergen
Exactly. I'm a huge fan. He's tackling complex problems and trying his best to
do something about it. Working at Apple you'd think would be a good approach.
But his work for Al Gore is likely a better starting point to evangelizing his
points. Especially when he's unconstrained by NDAs.

------
basseq
Honestly, it sounds like a pretty interesting job, but reminds me of the adage
about choosing between doing something awesome and being to tell no one, and
doing something (more) mainstream and telling everyone.

Sounds like he'd prefer the latter. And maybe he's right, at least from a
portfolio perspective.

------
sambeau
This is just the nature of the business. I have nothing in my portfolio from
2007 until now. None of my work is as interesting or potentially valuable as
anything I might have done at Apple - mostly UIs for games then UIs for banks.
But all of it is under NDA.

------
wildmXranat
Somehow it comes as no surprise to me that he's been 'Inventing shit'. Carry
on; get a job, create one for yourself. That apple stamp of approval on your
resume helps and we know Apple is run like a death star.

~~~
fredoliveira
I'll bite. Define the workings of the death star. Or rather, define how you
see the workings of the death star in a way that helps me comprehend your
definition of how Apple is run.

The things I've read all point to Apple being pretty much a great place to
work, except that because of its secrecy not a lot (if anything in many
projects) can be shared outside their walls. This is, if you think about it,
one of the main reasons why they enter a market and lead it. One might
disagree with their methods and the extreme secrecy, but it's also working out
pretty darn well if we look at the numbers.

~~~
CognitiveLens
Hence, like the death star. It would have rocked the empire (market) if the
rebels hadn't stolen the plans.

------
smountcastle
How long are such NDAs legally enforceable? If I sign the NDA and work at
Apple for month am I prohibited from ever discussing ideas developed under NDA
during that month? Has there been any meaningful test of this in court? What
if Apple releases a product that incorporates aspects of the ideas but not all
of them? Is Bret still unable to speak of his work (even if he limits it to
the aspects publicly disclosed by Apple)?

------
antrod
I dont see the big deal. Apple is Apple. Hopefully he learned a ton and will
take it with him to his next startup where he will be able to blog about it.

~~~
dexen
From the FAQ at the bottom of the article:

    
    
      Q - Oh, okay, I thought you had made some sort of mistake.
      A - Yes, exactly.
    

The ``yes, exactly [[i've made some sort of mistake]]'' doesn't refer to the
empty box itself...

------
ThomPete
Please change the title. No way does Bret state that you shouldn't work there.
Just that he can't show you anything.

~~~
stefs
Q - But that box is empty! It's an empty box!

A - Yes, exactly.

Q - Oh, okay, I thought you had made some sort of mistake.

A - Yes, exactly.

~~~
latch
I'm not sure how so many people are missing this. Not reading through or
simply not getting it?

~~~
giblaz
When something is left up to interpretation, no matter how obvious, many will
simply not get it.

------
geuis
It would be awesome if Bret wasn't using so many CSS3 effects on his site,
causing my iOS browser to crash repeatedly.

~~~
omaranto
I don't get why you mentioned Bret at all, I think you must have meant that
you wished your browser wasn't so crash-prone.

------
hhjj
<http://worrydream.com/Apple/> for javascript impaired people.

------
cabalamat
Didn't read due to crap web design.

~~~
chalst
Why, the beautiful all-black page I get loading it without js enabled is quite
elegant. I might well not have _read_ the page, but I certainly _appreciated_
it.

~~~
j79
It's just the hash-bang links that break with JavaScript disabled. If you
visit the home page with JavaScript disabled (or IE-enabled, heh...), you're
actually good to go: <http://worrydream.com/Apple/>

Personally, I think it's a gorgeous site; An amazing example of interactive
front-end web development. It amazes me to think that just a few years ago,
the only real option for this interactivity would have been Flash.

~~~
chalst
It's less broken, say, than Twitter, where many legacy non-#! links became
redirects to #! links.

But the whole thing is like the thinking that "This site works best with IE
5.0" -and, naturally, is crippled for everyone else- is a reasonable approach
to web design. And at least those sites warned us about what the pain they
caused and why - this UI is more like visiting a Flash-only webpage in 1998.

Have these guys never heard of the noscript tag? No, wait: weirdly enough,
Bret Victor actually uses the noscript tag to govern which CSS file is loaded.
That is, no doubt, why the featureless black webpage I am presented with is so
uniquely appealing a featureless black webpage.

Telling NotScripts to temporarily allow Javascript to look at the site shows a
website with very nice graphic design and awful usability. Which is very much
what I expected.

Javascript often offers the same usability experience as Flash. That's why I
disable it by default.

