
Legendary Apple Engineer Gets Rejected for Genius Bar Job - pavornyoh
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/jk-scheinberg-apple-engineer-rejected-job-apple-store-genius-bar-2016-9
======
hoodoof
It goes the other way too. The older I get, the less inclined I am to work for
any company. I just no longer believe in really any corporate mission. I'm not
inclined to work hard for anyone except me. Most companies seem to be doing
things that are either uninteresting or trivial or silly.

I was super ambitious and worked super hard for other people when I was
younger and now why the heck should I do that for some other company?

~~~
gozmike
Funny, the older I get, and the more businesses I become involved with - the
more I realize that even the silliest, most trivial problem on the outside
takes relentless execution and talent to make successful.

With age, came the wisdom that I am best when supported by a team of people
who take up the fight alongside me. The challenge then, becomes to inspire,
reward and treat my collaborators with the respect and dignity that they
deserve.

------
aluminussoma
I have wanted to run an experiment of famous programmers or computer
scientists applying to jobs at Google/Facebook/Etc (under an assumed identity)
and seeing if they get rejected. My hypothesis is that there would be several
notable rejections.

Unfortunately, I do not not anyone well enough to conduct this experiment.

~~~
asuffield
(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an
SRE at Google.)

We expect and accept a high false-negative rate. Our interview process is
optimised for zero false-positives at the cost of many false-negatives. This
is a deliberate choice. So yes, I would expect to see a significant rate of
rejections of people who are clearly qualified.

The sort of people that we want to hire are likely to come back for another
try anyway, and the long-term effect of this process seems to be doing what it
was supposed to.

~~~
joosters
I've often heard this, and it seems a poor excuse for a terrible interview
process/terrible hiring figures. Why do you not try to improve your interview
process to lower the false-negative rate? Doing so in an intelligent way need
not raise the false-positives rate (unless you somehow believe that the
interview process is already perfected by Google...)

~~~
asuffield
I am not allowed to share our data with you about how well the process is
performing.

But I would like to point out that of the two of us, only the one who _doesn
't know_ is suggesting that we have "terrible hiring figures" or a "terrible
interview process".

~~~
asuffield
Hi, downvoters who aren't commenting.

What exactly is your objection to this post?

~~~
PhantomGremlin
I didn't downvote, but I'll take a shot at answering. Your post had a touch of
condescension, sort of: "well I work at Google and you don't, so I obviously
know better than you ...".

Kind of reminds me of this HN comment and rejoinder:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079)

    
    
       Did you win the Putnam?
    
       Yes, I did.
    

You generally don't know the history of the people you're interacting with
here on HN, so it's not always appropriate to act so smug about where you
work.

~~~
mwpmaybe
That thread is amazing. My favorite part is the inventors of Tarsnap and
Dropbox basically saying to each other, "oh hey, I'm working on the same thing
as you!"

~~~
cperciva
That's a bit of a mischaracterization. Drew said that he was working on the
same thing as me; I didn't respond, because my response would have been "no,
you're not; I'm building a _secure_ backup tool" and I didn't want to
antagonize people any further.

------
WhitneyLand
As some one in their 40's I'm really hoping this situation will improve.

One bad thing is there does not seem to be much social stigma against this
kind of discrimination. You could engage in it, talk about it with friends,
and probably not raise a eyebrow.

~~~
imron
If this is a worry, you might wish to consider starting your own business.

Take control of your life rather than just let it happen to you.

~~~
Noseshine
I did that. Then I fond out I'm terrible at business - because I don't want to
sell anyone anything. I don't want to "network" to try to push products or
services to people. Note that I'm pretty social, I have no problem at all with
presenting (in fact I love it) and talking to people (quite the opposite). I
just don't want to do it for the purpose of extracting payment and pushing
products or services.

I think your advice is good only for some very few people. You also forget
that the vast majority of businesses fails. Would you give somebody investment
advice in an investment product known to get you big losses? Because that's
what this is, even aside from personal suitability.

Not to mention this: What happened to specialization? one of THE keys of human
success. But these days everybody is expected to savvy at business, finance,
long-term planning (privately financed pensions), investment. I claim the
world would be much better off if people were not being forced into things
they are neither good at nor like doing. I think corporations or smaller
options to work together in a group (firms, but also NGOs and other
organizations) where a huge step forward. Now whenever somebody fears (and for
good reasons) they might not find a place in an organization they are told
that going it _alone_ is the way to go. No it isn't. Those developments IMHO
are a step backwards in human development.

.

The one thing I _do_ like about seeing people try to start their own is
because often they will become reasonable and good human beings. I've seen
successful and smug high-level employees who think when people are not
successful it's just their own fault for the most part. Then they try to start
their own business, very confidently. When they were in an important place in
the hierarchy of the corporation everybody wanted to talk to them! Evidently,
they were important and popular human beings.

Every single one of those guys came down to earth within the first three years
of their business. I've had people that I already had almost given up on,
talking to them became more and more painful, become very nice and reasonable
people again. Going out on your own sure helps getting in touch with reality,
so there's that.

I know several people with the business finally going quite well now - but oh
my god are they close to burnout. On the other hand, visiting them and talking
to them now is fun again, they are back to seeing themselves as mere mortals.

------
vegetablepotpie
On face value this story seems ironic, but there’s a lot of questions in my
mind. What is the skill set overlap between an Apple engineer and an Apple
genius? Although Mr. Scheinberg’s experience may be useful in addressing
technical issues, would a retired engineer be able to comfortably transition
to a customer service role at Apple?

~~~
revelation
There is no required skill set for the Genius bar job, it's a very entry level
support job.

Apple releases zero of it's internal support documentation, so there pretty
much can be no applicant with experience unless they previously worked in an
Apple support position, which surely is a very low percentage of people they
hire for these positions.

~~~
microtherion
There may be no required _technical_ skill set, but you better bring some
rather advanced _people_ skills (Not really _sales_ skills, nobody at an Apple
store works on commission). From what I've seen, the job looks quite demanding
in terms of customer interaction; I don't know JK Scheinberg to judge how he
would do on this, but putting it all down to age discrimination seems to be
jumping to conclusions a bit.

------
X-Istence
My local Apple store has a bunch of older people working in the store. They
are often just as knowledgeable as the younger kids running around, and have
all kinds of cool stories to tell about how things "used to be done".

I actually prefer to work with one of the older people when making my purchase
because I don't feel nearly as rushed and it seems to me to be a lot more
personal...

~~~
canada_dry
Marketers have been falling over themselves to get a piece of the 14-24yo
market.

Um, hello... the biggest market with the most disposable income (and growing
bigger every year) is in the >45 segment.

Companies that don't refocus their efforts on this segment won't survive the
next 5-10yrs IMHO.

~~~
mooreds
To play devil's advocate, the difference between these two groups is not just
their disposable income, it is their buying habits. The habits of 14-24 year
olds are far less set than those of the older generations.

If you look at life time value, hooking a 14 year old on your brand (of soda,
chips, shampoo, whatever) has high LTV, whereas a 45 year old will just plain
buy less X.

Of course it does depend on your market. I bet the luxury car market ignores
the 14-24 year olds.

~~~
canada_dry
Sure, back when industries weren't on an endless cycle of cost cutting and
when consumers (esp. 14-24yo) actually had an attention span, LTV was
something marketers could rely on. Today the younger the consumer, the more
fickle which equates to no loyalty and endless churn.

------
pipio21
You could be a great engineer but horrible in sales, or dealing with troubled
customers like in this case.

Just because companies have the ability to discriminate you, does not mean you
can accuse them of age discrimination that is based on your prejudices, not on
reality.

------
Angostura
So, how is he chatting with people who may know irritating little about their
iPhones etc? What are his people skills like?

------
Mikeb85
So? It's a sales job, not an engineering job.

~~~
doodpants
The Genius Bar is tech support, not sales.

------
peter303
Ive seen a older sales people in some Apple stores. A good sales manager knows
customers relate to people their own age.

~~~
WhitneyLand
I don't want that. I want sales people who are smart, know the products inside
and out, and do not lie.

~~~
AstralStorm
The last point is at odds with actually selling you Chinese phones and laptops
in a fancy case...

------
Mithaldu
Do american interviewers actually say, entirely unqualified, "we'll be in
touch", and then never actually send ANY follow-up?

------
wtbob
Weird, the text is an inch wide. Given that the three inches of whitespace on
either side of the text haven't changed width, I guess we know which part of
their site Business Insider think is most important.

------
koolba
Besides the sanctity of old people as a reliable voting block, why is age
discrimination a problem? If companies are stupid enough to not hire good
candidates, or under pay the ones they do hire, then they'll lose out against
the better companies that don't do those things.

Plus, it's my understanding[1] that it's not discrimination to refuse to hire
someone for being "too young" or "too inexperienced". How is that not
discrimination if the bright eyed youngster is equally qualified?

[1]: _If there 's someone with the appropriate legal background, please
correct me if I'm wrong._

~~~
WhitneyLand
>why is age discrimination a problem?

1). Same thing that's wrong with racial discrimination and LGBT
discrimination, etc.

2). It's illegal.

3). It's stupid and hurts our economy by making it less efficient.

4). Reverse age discrimination: This is wrong and inefficient also, but
unfortunately legal. If you face this it's highly annoying but there are
strategies to work around it. It might require changing jobs but you can
usually find someone who appreciates your talent if it is truly something
special.

~~~
koolba
> 1). Same thing that's wrong with racial discrimination and LGBT
> discrimination, etc.

Honestly I think those laws are all bullshit too. If people want to be racist
assholes they're going to do it anyway and all this does is create work for
lawyers. Vote with your minds and wallets and go work for places that treat
people fairly and shop at places that do the same.

> 2). It's illegal.

That's not a valid reason as to whether something is a problem. At one point
it was illegal for woman and blacks to vote, did that make it "good" to have
those laws?

> 3). It's stupid and hurts our economy by making it less efficient.

The government's track record of making anything more efficient through
legislation is effectively zero.

> 4). Reverse age discrimination: This is wrong and inefficient also, but
> unfortunately legal. If you face this it's highly annoying but there are
> strategies to work around it. It might require changing jobs but you can
> usually find someone who appreciates your talent if it is truly something
> special.

If that's acceptable remediation for young people faced with the same issue in
reverse, why do those other classes you mention need special treatment? Why
can't gays, minorities, and old people "work around it"?

------
dogma1138
Could also be easily a case of being overly qualified of them not even taking
the application seriously because if some one sent a CV that looks like his to
any entry level tech support / sales support position they would most likely
assume it's a gag.

Overall hiring overqualified people is a problem, they might never be happy
and they can easily undermine the structure of a company even unintentionally.

This is like hiring some one like Wozniak to do entry level programming at a
company hell undermine everyone from the team leader upto the CTO just for
being who he is.

~~~
azakai
Age discrimination and not hiring "overqualified" people are overlapping
problems. Older people can often be described as overqualified.

It's also unclear whether being overqualified is actually a problem, which you
assumed as true. See for example

[https://hbr.org/2010/12/the-myth-of-the-overqualified-
worker](https://hbr.org/2010/12/the-myth-of-the-overqualified-worker)

> research shows that overqualified workers tend to perform better than other
> employees, and they don’t quit any sooner.

~~~
dogma1138
Again age discrimination is also something easily thrown out.

And overqualification simply cannot be dismissed as you easily point out, the
studies that have been conducted a are both contradictory and in your case
completely misleading.

Being "overqualified" by possessing an above average intelligence and being
more highly educated than the average employee in a menial position such as
retail or sanitation is one thing, being overly qualified in a technical field
in a highly competitive market is another.

Taking on a considerably more experience engineer than the average for an
entry level job might end up good, but it also might not end up that well, you
can see it a lot during the recession people needing work accepting lower
paying jobs which they overqualify for and they leave as soon as they find a
better place.

so no "> research shows that overqualified workers tend to perform better than
other employees, and they don’t quit any sooner." isn't universally true, it
can be true for certain circumstances but this isn't even the level of
overqualification we are talking about.

------
Hydraulix989
This reminds me of the outrage when Uber kicked Sebastian Thrun off its
platform when he worked as an Uber driver offering people rides in his Model S
(founder of Google X, inventor of the modern "self-driving" car).

I think all you have to do is say the legendary engineer is "over-qualified"
for this position -- I mean, you can't jump to age-ist conclusions right away
when Michael Jordan applies to play high school basketball.

------
hoodoof
Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are no good at
everything.

\- Moe from "The Simpsons"

~~~
Noseshine
That is a straw man. You are arguing against if someone would have complained
that "seniors" don't get _every_ job. But the subject is discrimination, they
get _less_ jobs after 50.

------
Pica_soO
Does age discrimination even uphold for remote work?

------
steaminghacker
so, they didn't bother checking his cv?

