
Apple iOffer (Offer letter done the Apple way) - sbhat7
http://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2009/10/unboxing-you-won-see-on-gizmodo-or.html
======
johnnybgoode
That does indeed look very nice. I've heard some not-so-great things about
actually being an Apple employee, though. Can anyone comment?

~~~
chrisrhee
I contracted on-site in Cupertino for a year. They have 35,000 employees, so
if you're looking to join a tiny start-up where everyone is 23 years old and
best friends, you're not going to find that at Apple. Actually, I used the
large crowds of employees to my advantage and basically "snuck" into the
offices every day for the last few months I worked there when my security
badge stopped working (long/uninteresting story.)

I've never worked for a big corporation, but working for Apple is probably
like working for any other company with that size of a workforce. Some people
love their job, some people are bored and a lot of it depends on which
group/department you're in. I was a little turned off by the cubicle/office
farms in some of the buildings, which are probably setup like that due to
security.

I saw Steve Jobs a few times at the cafeteria. But he did not yell at me. Or
anyone else.

~~~
gjm11
_and basically "snuck" into the offices every day for the last few months_ :
In the unlikely event that you haven't already read
<http://www.pacifict.com/Story/>, you should. As should anyone else who
doesn't immediately know what story that is from what I just said. It's
simultaneously inspiring and horrifying. (More of the former.)

~~~
edw519
One of the reasons I come to hn so much is for motivation when things get
tough (which is often). I don't think I've ever read anything here that
motivated me more.

This is already on my bulletin board. So the next time I opt for the "easy way
out", I can look at this and remind myself not to be such a wimp.

Just a few of the gems inside:

 _The three of us spent the next six hours editing fifty thousand lines of
code...It would have taken weeks for any one of us working alone._

 _Since that left no managers in the loop, we had no meetings and could be
extremely productive._

 _"This doesn't suck" (high praise in Apple lingo)._

 _This feedback loop created an ever-increasing spiral of productivity._

 _It is a cliche in our business that the first 90 percent of the work is
easy, the second 90 percent wears you down, and the last 90 percent - the
attention to detail - makes a good product._

 _The secret to programming is having smart friends._

 _I gave a twenty-minute demonstration, eliciting "oohs" and "ahhs."_

 _programmers are the least qualified people to design software for novices._

 _...we were in full crunch mode, working sixteen hours a day, seven days a
week...If this story were a movie, you would now see the clock hand spinning
and the calendar pages blowing away in the wind._

 _...it was a macho computer guy thing - we had never shipped a million copies
of software before_

 _I answered to no one, and no one had to do anything I asked...We were
hackers, creating something for the sheer joy of making it work._

~~~
Create
The Graphing Calculator Story.mp4 54:26 - 3 years ago goog://

I find the story to be just the opposite: such behaviour of The Corporation is
not motivating at all, in the productive sense. It is rather motivating to do
something completely different from productive coding/work.

~~~
unalone
He's talking about the behavior of the employees who made the program.

~~~
zacharydanger
And _he's_ talking about the insidious behavior of Apple.

~~~
Create
I think you('ll) enjoy the play:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_&_Guildenstern_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_&_Guildenstern_Are_Dead_%28film%29)

------
aw3c2
_This is, as it appears to be, a small, light folder with a few pieces of
paper in it. Easily under a pound, it feels lighter than an iPod._

Steve Jobs is the messiah and Apple his gospel.

------
rayboyd
Company that is renowned for its brand-centric business practices uses branded
paperwork.

It must be a slow news day.

~~~
unalone
Did you see the headings on those pages? "Ah, paperwork." "Ready, Set, Go."
Details like that fascinate me. It suggests that even when making a document
that very few people see, Apple sweats the small details.

Also, it's not branded paperwork. It's _well-designed_ paperwork. There's a
difference, though I suppose if you're the sort of person who still thinks a
Mac is just a "branded computer" we'll have to disagree here.

Also also, I'm going to rant a second at you, because Apple is _not_ brand-
centric. I've got a Samsung phone that uses AT&T. The word Samsung appears
three times on the phone's hardware, the word AT&T twice. When I open the
phone, the AT&T logo is on the front screen and the back screen, and then it
remains in the top bar no matter what I do. THAT'S branding for you. It's
desperate, ugly branding. Meanwhile, if I total up ALL the Apple products I
have with me, and that's a power cord, a laptop, an iPod touch, and an iPod
cord, the Apple logo appears a total of three times, once a product; the name
Apple appears a total of three times, once a product; I see the Apple logo
briefly when I start up my Macbook Pro, but not when I open my iPod touch.

Mac products are very _not_ branded, compared to their competitors' products.
The thing is, Apple's brand has a _reputation_ , unlike Samsung/Motorola/Nokia
or Dell/HP, and so when you see an Apple logo it means something. When you see
a Windows logo plastered on the _front_ of your laptop you don't call it
"brand-centric" because nobody cares about the Windows brand. So when people
complain about Apple's logo being ubiquitous on their product, I scoff,
because the complaint's really that Apple made stuff good enough that people
recognize the name Apple over their competitors.

~~~
rayboyd
Let's be clear. My comment was made in jest at this subject appearing on HN
and not at Apple. This was in no way suggested.

\----

Branding is much more than logo and where it is placed on an object. It is an
entire experience targeting the consumer, employee and stake holder. It is
entirely about product recognition and generating brand equity, which in turn
provides real value to the business. Apple are masters of this. These
documents are sample proof of this at work. It is all part of the Brand
Experience.

Apple are about as brand-centric as it gets. They are a case study on how to
manage a brand properly.

Perhaps next time you should familiarize yourself with the concept of branding
and all it entails before you direct an unnecessary and ill advised rant (your
words) at me or anyone else. Familiarity of the individuals background and
knowledge of the subject might also be a good idea.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand>

I wrote this on my 24" iMac by the way.

------
known
Dick Hardt's brilliant presentation on Identity 2.0 is on similar principles.
<http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/>

------
joezydeco
Okay, so what do their bong letters look like now? I've got one from the 1991
recession that's pretty nice. Let's compare!

------
daniel-cussen
It's very classy and has good production value. Really reminds me of the
Caltech letter of admission.

------
timdorr
And yet us iPhone developers get the shaft. I can't help but think whatever
part of the corporate culture that breeds this kind of stuff got cut off near
the iTunes Connect department.

~~~
unalone
Okay. Tim. I understand why you're mad about the iPhone development situation.
I would like to offer you, however, the following points to give you a teensy
bit of perspective:

* 99.9% of all applications submitted are approved without controversy.

* The App Store is still new. It's slightly more than a year old. Therefore, it's still got glitches in its processes, very obviously.

* For something so young, it's exploded in use. Two billion app downloads in just over a year? That's insane. That's so insane I doubt anybody can quite process it mentally.

* Therefore, every small error in Apple's process has been magnified to the point it looks like a gaping wound.

* Apple is certainly working on this, and putting a lot of effort into it.

* Apple won't TELL you they're working on this until they've already come up with what they believe is an iron solution, because Apple doesn't like admitting their ideas don't spring fully-grown from the head of Zeus.

* Apple's got an amazing track record, and so it's logical to think that within a year or two they will figure out how to suck a lot less. That's a reasonable amount of time to give them.

* No excuse about "I can't make a living reliably until they fix this", because anybody insane enough to try and make a living from a brand-new piece of software ought to at least know the risks they made.

~~~
boucher
Do you work on the iTunes Store or in the Apple Developer program? If not, I
question the authority of your "99.9%" claim.

As far as all of the other arguments, they are very touchy feely. "The App
Store is new" but it's built on top of a store that's been around for 7 years.
And that store already processes billions of transactions annually, so those
numbers don't strike me as crippling.

I don't know what Apple is or isn't doing, but I do know what they've admitted
to publicly, and I do know dozens of (well respected) developers who have had
issues with the app store. I also know that Apple has lied about the store in
the past. So, I think some criticism is deserved here.

As far as relating it to the employee paperwork, that was absurd. They've been
using the same paperwork for years. It's completely unrelated.

~~~
unalone
Selling an mp3 file is different from selling a bundled application that
contains a slew of different features and functions. Apple has a whole bunch
of things they _don't_ want appearing on applications, because they want to
control the coding environment. A song requires no control. An app requires a
lot. So no, this isn't something that's been around for 7 years—though I
recall iTunes store having its own problems when it launched.

 _I do know dozens of (well respected) developers who have had issues with the
app store._

Dozens out of thousands of developers. 99.9% _might_ have been a stretch, I
don't know the exact numbers. 99% wouldn't have been.

 _So, I think some criticism is deserved here._

There's a difference between criticizing Apple and hijacking a conversation
about something entirely different to rant about the App Store. There are
critical essays about the latter every day or two. We can complain about Apple
there.

