I guess I’m just old school but I come from a time when I’d be fired for any negative public or even internal comments. And I’m ok with that.
I’d rather just quit than try to change a company this way. Or I’d just work into leadership and make executive decisions.
Or I’d start a company and do it my way.
I just don’t see leadership being convinced by me complaining on Twitter or starting an internal complaint slack channel. It’s good for complaining or winning a lawsuit, but don’t think it’s going to organically make change.
It’s sad this person lost their job, but seems reasonable to get fired if you delete things off company equipment when you’ve been directed not to do that.
People are okay with that because they're in a position to not have to care. Perhaps apple is correct in that this was because of deleting things they were not supposed to - but individuals advocating for a culture of "apple can do whatever because it's a company" is nodding along to union busting talking points.
Tech sector has been very fortunate in the past to not have to unionize, but now as the workforce grows exponentially, wealth is concentrated, salaries relatively decrease, jobs become commoditized, and companies are overall too big. Most new devs today are not going to see the same autonomy. Devs are slaved in plenty of jobs already, and no they don't make enough nor can they just drop and make a startup using someone else's money. Those things are the top of the 1% of workers.
It's demonstrated time and again that outrage at companies works. Marketers run the show, and they don't like bad publicity. In this case it's probably not enough to do anything. Apple has their fingers in too many pies and people can't afford to drop their lock in ecosystem.
I don’t think this is what I would advocate for. Me not bitching on Twitter is not the same as me not allowing Apple to do whatever they want.
Smart engineers leaving is a big deal, even for Apple. There are ways to deliver constructive criticism. I’ve done it many times, sometimes successfully. And it never involved leaking to the press or talking bad about my org.
I think there are needs for corporate governance and don’t like the “you’re either with us or against us” or equating not speaking publicly with condoning or allowing behavior. There are many other options.
> The very same Apple employees who were demanding that Apple fight Texas’ new abortion laws were also demanding that Apple support Palestine — where abortion is 100% illegal.
I can find no articles linking Janneke Parrish to opinions on Palestine, so I'm not sure how that's relevant.
(and of course this is a vapid test for sincerity of beliefs. Are all people who want to ban abortion but supportive of Israel similarly insincere and disingenuous?)
> if union is generally flatten the salaries to make me receive less for others more
Who says that’s what will happen? Tom Cruise is a member of SAG, do you think he gets paid SAG union rates?
Union busters in tech have done a fantastic job of convincing engineers that all unions are blue-collar. Which is funny, because you only have to look to Hollywood to see unions like SAG, the DGA, and the WGA which exist to protect all workers from exploitation and not cap compensation at all.
It’s the work rules that make a lot of American unions distasteful to workers. A lot of people just don’t want to work in a place where people routinely say stuff like, “that’s not my job, union rules.”
The Wizard of Speed and Time is a great film about how difficult it is to be an independent creator in Hollywood due to the costs of getting anything started. The unions make it very hard to bootstrap anything without massive financing.
There are two sides to that. I was representing a German union institution inside our org for one simple reason. The employer had gone out of his way to ignore what peoples responsibilities were and showered them with work that wasn't there's and then tried to punish them for pushing back. Usually the reason people respond with this is not my responsibility is because they have been burned by doing things that wasn't theirs. It's a cultural issue and the solution which you describe is a crappy generic solution to a cultural problem.
That said the very same union would frequently respond with that's not our responsibility when I pointed them to take up actual legal issues that they were responsible for.
A lot of the old union representatives were there for decades with no desire to change anything and enjoying the good relationship they had built with the leadership.
At the end of the day any human organization that grows too big seems to end up in its own lazy comfort zone, whether it's the employer side or the employee representing union side.
The thing about forming your own union is that major unions also have big lobbying institutions saying that their union is the only thing with real power, while the other side has their own lobbying groups pressuring workers into believing that all unions are bad.
Unions in Germany are also a pain in the bottom when they are populated with incompetent people who want to show how important they are.
Adding any security technology is a nightmare because they have an obsession about being spied on.
Take a standard EDR: the security team just wants the company to be safe from hackers. The unions think that all they wish is to spot on them. What will happen is that the company will crash after repeated hacks and they know they will be the last to be fired because they are there to protect people...
Of course this is just une side, unions are fantastic when they actually do their job and this is thanks to them we have the Labour Law we have. It is just that the people today are not the same as the ones who actually cared.
Fully agree, but I recently had the thought that DLP actually to some extent is to shut down law enforcement and whistleblowing into companies shady behaviour.
Take for example machine learning algorithms, a lot of the actual model definition you could just copy yourself even when there is DLP. What you can't take with you is the source data and the labeled data.
DLP allows you to prevent people from leaking sketchy and incompetent leadership from investors, SEC and law enforcement. I get the logic behind it, but most of the actual critical stuff you can just take with you in some fashion or another. The situation is obviously a bit different when you're talking hardware manufacturing, CAD models etc.
Funny thing about unions. If you form your own union, you get to write the rules. The agreement with the employer is a matter of negotiation, but the operation of the union is entirely the prerogative of the union as long as it's legal.
Don't want to operate a holywood-style guild? Then don't.
In reality there are almost no unions operating in tech spaces. The world is our oyster, and the only way to let huge unions into the industry is by voting them in. It's a space ripe for disruption.
I want to add that disruption is what huge unions excel at, so if anybody wants to keep them out of tech, the best approach might be to fill the space they'd otherwise sweep into unchallenged with a compelling organization.
Always insane to see tech workers claim that labor unions are inherently flawed and unable to innovate upon, when so much of Silicon Valley's own rhetoric is about disrupting everything else under the sun.
I don’t like absurd rules and unions seem like an out of touch project manager to the extreme. This may not be true.
But I don’t see this as a problem in tech that needs to be solved. The barriers to entry and exit are so low to me as a programmer that I think organizations already have to compete to hire and keep me. So any unions wouldn’t do much to help me and seem like an extra layer of bureaucracy that would stop me from having fun while I work.
Guild is some exception, not so common in unions. Always it end up more like typical aflcio union. I also have made some switch between front end and back end in job, have done some security job and back to normal developing, all these are usually harder in unions. Maybe in theory it is not required but in practice it is almost always this way.
Also I have started prior tech company, it would have been hugely difficult if i had to make negotiations with unions.
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because it's not a zero sum game? those union busting talking points keep you focused on your less-fortunate colleagues and and not the obscenely wealthy guy screwing the both of you over.
But if i turn over to a union there is small assurance i will not take some pay cut. I doubt people making so much are top of bargaining priority list, probably more rank-and-files level are their focus. And then I have turned over my rights to majority, so it is suck up what my coworker wants or leave. It is similar for employer, i must suck up what it want or leave, but I already known these terms are okay with employer. Since i am not in majority bracket of workers this probably is not good.
Is this trolling? Either way, I hate this self-centered comment.
Have you considered that a union could be good for all employees? What about setting minimum salary requirements? Maybe ensuring more of a company's profits are paid out to its workers?
nice, it only took two comments before we got to the "my paycheck very big, union very bad, why I join union? tomorrow will be like today, I will always be big paycheck"
Because he can do well regardless of how much you do or do not care for him.
Many people would very much appreciate it if other members of society cared less about them. Care is not required for humans to participate in a mutually beneficial society.
Not being harassed at your workplace should be the norm, not some luxury benefit that you move to a different company for. Pressure for better working conditions always comes from workers themselves, rather than management, because the priorities are simply different.
I'm assuming you come from a time where strong unions were still a thing. They were a hard-won victory for workers' rights, and a necessity to improve working conditions. Without them, any complaining employee was simply fired, because it's much cheaper for the organization to fire a few employees than to acquiesce to their demands. The latter is precisely what's happening here.
Maybe it’s just my opinion but there is a world of difference between being forced to work on a factory floor for 16 hours without a break and “The company didn’t denounce…” or “my company is making me return to office…”
Perhaps they have other grievances but I guarantee they pale in comparison to what the labor movement worked to solve years back.
I wish I could go back in time and tell a younger version of myself the steps needed to work at a FAANG.
I unfortunately never had the right guidance to get there and hopefully my kids one day will. I can’t complain as things worked out —- but still.
I see these employee issues pop up from time to time and I guess I just don’t understand it. I’m not trying to be cruel to the people speaking out.
Just I truly don’t understand it. Ungodly money. Ungodly benefits. Working interesting problems everyday. Changing the world. Impacting millions of lives. The best of some of the best teams.
No job is perfect and whatever beef exists at Apple right now is 1000x better than some of the trash jobs out there and what some jobs are like in the real universe. It’s not to say Apple should go without ridicule or improvement.
Just an outsider perspective who sees Lannisters killing each other in their perfect castle.
Not advocating anything. Just hard to imagine walking into Apple and having a tough time or not enjoying it. I suffered much worse for much less in my life.
Cheers to everyone trying to improve things though.
> Ungodly money. Ungodly benefits. Working interesting problems everyday. Changing the world. Impacting millions of lives. The best of some of the best teams.
The pay is good, but the rest of it is not as good as you make it out to be. There are exceptions, but for the most part projects, teams and impact are usually pretty low.
My experience is that the least interesting work of my entire career happened during my times at FAANG corps. They have too many overqualified people and too little difficult work to do, so more than anything you just end up playing code games, and "showing impact" by convincing people to adopt new restrictive policies and whatnot.
If you want real tough, new, interesting work, join a startup or a non-tech company where you can have true impact. Alas the pay will be shit in comparison, that's the tradeoff.
Better, start your own startup. These days anyone who can build a weekend demo and talk coherently for 45 minutes to an investor can raise a few million. Not even throwing shade or joking, it's a literal free money fiesta right now, at least until interest rates go nonzero (which will be soon).
Apple has a toxic side covered up by silence that is unique among most tech companies.
And you want to talk about ungodly money and ungodly benefits, yet there are suicides at Facebook and Amazon. Not to mention in investment banking. All of these things come at a cost.
That there are hard jobs everywhere and hard jobs are… hard?
I would also bet stats show suicide rates are higher in other industries.
These are some of the most balanced and progressive organizations between pay and lifestyle.
If your golden ticket is so toxic go get a job that is not at 1/3 the pay. You’ll still be richer than most and I would bet many still find a way to be miserable.
Not all FAANG companies are the same, and your carefree experience does not overwrite others’. You cannot presume to know the experience of companies that encompass tens of thousands of individuals, with untold number of departments and teams. So you were on a low-stress team. Bully for you.
> Changing the world. Impacting millions of lives.
This sentence misses "for the better". Good payment and benefits are easy to achieve as an engineer, good problems/tech is also not hard if you look enough. Sorry if you had bad experiences, but it's not like there is a cruel world out there outside of FAANG, as your comment makes it seem. They may have more to give due to sheer scale, but after a limit, good goals are equally if not more important.
And it's at least doubious that the monopolistic, walled garden data-harvesting world that they build can provide those.
The term FAANG was created in 2013 which is not that long ago. FAANG didn't really become a super "hot" place to be until after the 2009-2011 recession. Looking back, everything is often crystal clear 20/20 vision.
"Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future." - Yoda.
I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me
But I don't, I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see
What's my name, what's my station? Oh, just tell me what I should do
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful and say, "Sure, take all that you see"
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me
And I don't, I don't know who to believe
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see
If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak
Yeah I'm tongue-tied and dizzy and I can't keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?
And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf
I'll come back to you someday soon myself
If I had an orchard, I'd work 'til I'm raw
If I had an orchard, I'd work 'til I'm sore
And you would wait tables and soon run the store
Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn
If I had an orchard, I'd work 'til I'm sore
If I had an orchard, I'd work 'til I'm sore
Someday I'll be like the man on the screen
> I’d rather just quit than try to change a company this way.
What if you found every other company were the same way?
> Or I’d just work into leadership and make executive decisions.
There are much fewer leadership positions than people in those companies. It can't be the general recommendation that if you want to make your workplace better you have to compete for one of a handful of positions.
That's like telling somebody living in a monarchy that if they want influence over their lives, they just have to marry into the royal family.
> What if you found every other company were the same way?
Then make your own company, or failing that, start to think critically about why every company is structured in the way it is. Maybe others have tried it your way and it didn't work?
> That's like telling somebody living in a monarchy that if they want influence over their lives, they just have to marry into the royal family.
Luckily, because of the freedom this country offers us, the solution is instead to (per the metaphor) go to another of the million monarchies, create your own monarchy, or, yes, work your way up in the monarchy. If you decide to start causing chaos and sowing discontent in your current kingdom, then you may be kicked out of it.
to continue in that metaphor, it's worth noting that here and most anywhere with something resembling "the freedom this country offers" was formerly a monarchy in which people thinking critically about the way it was structured started causing chaos and sowing discontent, so they could try this other way that people didn't think would work. say about that what you will.
it's not surprising that efforts are being made today to decentralize power within the private sphere and create broader rights and democratic management of capital. it's the place people feel most pressure in their lives today, feel the most helpless, and unable to act in their own interests or make their own way.
and of course people who are invested in the current system of management will make arguments that it is perfectly rational and any other system cannot work.
maybe everyone trying this will get kicked out. but i don't think that will discourage or prevent groups like this, because that doesn't kill the motivation. it's simply selection pressure for tactics that are more decentralized, more direct, popular, faster, and harder to shut down.
> it's not surprising that efforts are being made today to decentralize power within the private sphere and create broader rights and democratic management of capital.
So does Joe the plumber whom you hired to fix the sink now have rights to determine how your household is run? Does he and Jimmy the electrician (who wired up the place) get to vote on who can live in your house or what the household budget should be spent on?
if Joe the plumber came to my house every day to plumb for me the way i asked, and i handled his healthcare and bought him all his pipes and tools, and he depended on me and i on him by the terms of our agreement, yeah i should probably listen to him if he has a concern
if he and Jimmy and the thousand other dudes that apparently come to my house every day all have feelings about something, it might end up looking like a democratic process
but it would be really silly to run a huge business like that out of my home. good thing Joe and Jimmy only come by once in a while and don't give a fuck what i do here.
anyway, strawmen like yours or mine are irrelevant, materially it's clear that workers in large companies are seeking to reform governance processes of those companies and gain more control. they will probably continue to try regardless of anyone else's opinion of it, they are systemically incentivized, because more control would benefit them.
I didn’t say anything was scary did I? I wasn’t necessarily trying to say it was like torture. It just sounds like something Bernie Sanders would say. It’s not socialism, it’s democratic socialism.
I mean I’m fine with a democracy on the board of a company, I just don’t think it is wise to have everyone be on the board.
My larger point is that "democratic management of capital" doesn't have to mean socialism of any kind, it can mean worker co-ops, which can exist in social democratic, free market capitalist, hell even ancap utopian conceptions of stateless libertarian societies. It's just a management style.
> I mean I’m fine with a democracy on the board of a company, I just don’t think it is wise to have everyone be on the board.
Some companies are co-ops and have made it work. It depends, and is perhaps worth trying more.
i don't think anyone would disagree that currently widespread models of management don't involve democratic processes.
a lot of the activism internal to large companies today is in direct response to perceived failures of management, and seeks to demonstrate broad internal support for specific actions. they would be satisfied if they had an institutional remedy instead of just petitions to the "king"
Or, use your freedom to stay where you are and try to change things. You can't pull the freedom card to tell some one they should do something else. Its not consistent.
> If you decide to start causing chaos and sowing discontent in your current kingdom, then you may be kicked out of it.
You are right. It's hardly surprising. Most revolutions fail. Yet as outsiders we can appreciate the try, cheer on, or maybe even help (like the French did?) Maybe one day that help will be returned.
Your question makes no sense. Not every company is the same way. There are other companies with different cultural values and employment policies. Apple doesn't operate any company towns where there are no other employers.
That’s true. I still think it is better if we just accept that “they’re the boss”. I don’t want their job, I don’t want a vote on the board, that’s more responsibility then I can handle. They’re the boss and they decide. If they’re unethical, or treat people like shit, I’ll quit. I haven’t yet had a manager, CEO, or board has forced me to quit.
> I guess I’m just old school but I come from a time when I’d be fired for any negative public or even internal comments. And I’m ok with that.
In the US, people have protected rights to discuss and push for changes in their working conditions, and to organize, thanks to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
I know right. I seem to remember the late 1800s and early 1900s where unions were fighting to take care of that stuff. Is that not old ways? Are 'old ways' only occurring in a specific time period?
> if you delete things off company equipment when you’ve been directed not to do that.
That's just Apple's claim.
And you don't seem to have noticed that employees also have rights. It's up to you if you willing to give up yours, but don't devalue others who don't stand idly by and watch giant corporations do whatever they want.
It's devastating that this is the top opinion coming from here. The "If you don't like it just leave" stance, whether talking about working for a company or living in a country, is so dismissive of the people who see issues and have the courage to try and change things to make it better for others.
It’s effective. As a programmer I frequently dismiss stupid, ineffective ideas. I don’t dismiss people, I dismiss their dumb ideas.
And actually, I try to improve and build with ideas.
These types of approaches seem dumb and ineffective so it’s odd to me that people would try them and be surprised at the outcome.
Doing a dumb thing doesn’t mean that I’m courageous. Conflating all dumb things with right things is weird to me.
Again, not to be old personish, but it’s ok to point out and not applaud ineffective, counterproductive techniques.
If someone comes to you and says “my goal is to improve apple” and the explains their plan to complain on Twitter and organize complaint groups inside apple, I think you would tell them that that approach is not likely to be effective (ie “dumb”). That doesn’t mean the person is bad or anything. Just that their plan is not good.
Also, using hyperbolic language like “it’s devastating” is weird to me. If this is devastating, then I want to find ways to protect you from truly devastating things in the world. It’s a great thing to be so privileged that internet discussions that you don’t agree with are devastating.
The idea the companies should be able to do whatever they want to their employees and if the employees don't like it they should leave seems common here. But I think a lot of people are really fed up with that attitude and it's a big reason why we're in the midst of the Great Resignation.
As GDP's go, Apple is the 8th largest country on earth by market cap. I know this is a bad equivalency, but they have VASTLY outsized influence with those 80,000 employees because of the wealth they generate.
With recent moves like Walmart creating in-house health care options, and Salesforce offering to move people out of Texas because of their abortion laws, our late-stage capitalism is morphing into the cyberpunk dystopia predicted by sci-fi writers 30-40 years ago. It's starting to matter more what company you work for, rather than what country you live in.
”The GDP is the total of all value added created in an economy. The value added means the value of goods and services that have been produced minus the value of the goods and services needed to produce them, the so called intermediate consumption."
The market cap of a country (with people, companies, land, resourc s,...) is 10-100x it's GDP, just like the market cap of companies has a multiplier over its revenue.
I agree with firing for negative public comments, but firing for negative internal comments is pretty stifling - unless those negative comments are also abusive of course.
Agree, I am confused why the surprise that somebody bad-mouth an employer publicly and get fired for it. Ask, if you were in a business, you have a problem employee who will not stop talking to press to make a public damage against your reputation. How can you handle this when this employee will not stop? Said person is now working against your company interests and not for.
This is a big cultural disconnect. What you interpret as "bad mouthing" is actually an indication of corporate health, a mechanism for self-correcting behaviour, and pruning bad management practices that cause behaviour to deviate from objectives. However, your views are not uncommon, people like to hide their misbehavior, and it's always a challenge to root those people out.
Agreed. And Apple had a reputation for organizational health. Something went wrong. Perhaps, they scaled quickly and the leadership brought in at that time did not grasp the science behind Apple’s organizational health. Since when did Apple become the Navy? Just leave? Some of us dreamed as children to work for this company. In that dream I didn’t envision being sexually harassed and hr shielding the harasser or being paid 20% or more less than my male peers. This isn’t just an Apple issue, but they do set the example for many other companies in tech and out. As an admirer of the innovation of Apple, subpar organizational health promotes stagnation.
Its not criticism that is any problem. Its going to press to try to force some change when you are not getting entirely your way. This is a bad thing. Correct answer if this person was seriously in the interest of Apple would be write letters to shareholders/board if management has ignore the concern.
No it's not lmao. It's that the institution is the one who fills out your fucking paychecks. If I pay you to clean the kitchen, but you want to clean the bathroom, and I tell you to clean the kitchen and not clean the bathroom or you're fired, and you decide to clean the bathroom, what exactly do you think should happen?
They're not working against the company's interests. They may be working against the interests of individuals in management. For public companies like Apple - and arguably for any company larger than a sole proprietorship - those aren't the same thing.
(It is still true, of course, that management has the power to fire you and therefore picking fights with management is generally not good for your career. But that's a cold practical observation, not a statement about merit. There's a significant difference between losing a political fight and working against the company's interests.)
It’s hard for us to determine what’s in the company’s best interest. It seems to me that the ex-employee was being counterproductive, but what do I know.
The organization is the best equipped to understand the best interests over a single employee.
The challenge is that many fired employees will think they are right and the company was wrong. If there’s lawbreaking then maybe a judge will decide.
It’s like asking prisoners if they are guilty. They all say not guilty. And some are right and the institution was wrong. But typically the institution is right.
With private companies that’s the trade off. Management will decide and fire.
To the many people coming here to comment about why she had personal apps on a work phone: Some Apple employees are reportedly required to link their personal iCloud with their work account/devices.
It's not "required", the office culture is just one that encourages employees to dogfood new features and whatnot on their daily drivers. It's not uncommon for Apple employees to make new regular Apple IDs for work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28242037
It's fair to say that combining personal data with work data won't end well.
Shouldn’t you probably degoogle or deapple your online stuff before working for a competitor? I know that’s a high bar, but there’s probably a point between lowest rung worker and VP where it makes sense professionally/personally.
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My dude, I am neither the author nor the quoted source of the article I linked. Dial it down a notch hey? Also, your other comments are pretty extensively addressed in the same article.
No, but you have cited an article and source that has been proven to be incorrect on the topic. You went to the effort to find said piece of information but skipped the next search result on google where tons of apple employees say 'nahh thats bullshit' 'yeah you can, but you dont have to, most managers tell you not to and only an idiot would do that'
I looked for contrary articles and didn't see any. If you have some handy, posting links to them would add a lot more to the conversation than randomly spewing invective at me.
It is a fact that many people "live on" their work devices as if they are their personal devices. I havent ever heard that be a requirement though, it just happens to be the way people use it
I understand Apple wanting to maintain their culture of secrecy about their products but their PR and HR people should know that the culture certainly does not have to extend to internal personnel issues.
Why should we trust them when they do stuff like this? Even if she was acting improperly w.r.t. company proprietary information I'd have thought that competent PR folk would know to never fire someone in a position like this because there's no way the company can look good in the aftermath.
> Even if she was acting improperly w.r.t. company proprietary information I'd have thought that competent PR folk would know to never fire someone in a position like this because there's no way the company can look good in the aftermath.
This is something I do wonder about. We've seen a fair number of cases recently of tech companies firing people who've publicly agitated for changes in the company culture and always claiming, "Oh, no, it's because they were leaking confidential information, it has nothing to do with them being activists." And, okay, I guess that's possible in each and every case, but as you said, not a good look.
Exactly. It is a bandaid, tear it off. You’ll work extra hard for a news cycle or two, rather than allowing an angry employee to poison your other employees for however long. And they’ll be let go eventually anyway.
No, but it puts-off people from considering Apple as a potential employer.
I'm not a member of any notable minority group so I'm not really affected, but if a female colleague asked me their opinion of Apple as an employer then I'd point them to articles like this.
I’m curious how Pokémon Go and her (presumably personal) Robinhood account were pertinent to whatever investigation they were conducting. Regardless, I find it hard to believe she “deleted” anything. Removed it from the phone, perhaps, but I’m willing to bet Apple is more than capable of accessing whatever investigative information they need on the phones they provide to their employees.
> I’m curious how Pokémon Go and her (presumably personal) Robinhood account were pertinent to whatever investigation they were conducting
Her work phone is pertinent to the investigation, and I'm more curious how she thought it was a good idea to have her personal Pokémon Go and Robinhood accounts on her work phone.
Edit: Incoming downvotes but this will stand — a work phone is not your phone! You should not be trusting it as such, and should not expect personal privacy on it (and the ability to delete things from an investigation). She worked at a tech company that made phones; there's no plea to ignorance here.
Promotes isn’t requires , though. I’ve read that before as well, but the language around it has always suggested that employees can get away with having a second phone.
Depends what "promotes" means. They don't provide separate Apple accounts for employees, so among other things, if you don't link your personal account to your work phone you're either paying twice for any services or working with a hampered phone.
What do you mean by they don’t provide separate Apple accounts? You sign up for an Apple ID, you don’t wait for it to be provided to you. For example my employer doesn’t provide a work Github account… but while I have the option to use my personal one, I can also sign up for a separate one.
Or do you mean to say that they can detect when an employee tries to sign up for a second account under the same personal info, and so then the sign up fails? If it is this, couldn’t they just obscure their personal info and use a second credit card in the second account? Not a US citizen but it seems unbelievable that Apple could legally compel its employees to use their personal accounts at work.
> For example my employer doesn’t provide a work Github account… but while I have the option to use my personal one, I can also sign up for a separate one.
Apologizing for being the Well Actually Guy, but GitHub's terms of service include the line "One person or legal entity may maintain no more than one free Account". If your employer doesn't provide a work account for you or use Enterprise GitHub, then technically you can only have both a personal and a work account if one of them is paid. My suspicion is that GitHub doesn't go out of their way to enforce this, but it's there.
As far as Apple IDs go, there's absolutely nothing that prevents you from having multiple ones, though, no. I think I've had work Apple IDs in the past. You can also have separate Apple Store accounts and Apple ID accounts (which I do, although that's something of an accident of history in my case). While I've logged into my Apple Store account on a company-owned device so I could use some of my personal applications (ones that would be appropriate for work, for the record), I would absolutely not want to log into my personal Apple ID -- the one that accesses my personal mail, calendar, iCloud Drive, etc. -- on a company-owned device.
The problem with that is when you sign a work contract with your employer, there's typically a clause there that also says something along the lines of, "whatever uses you may have of company resources becomes the property of the company".
So clearly, there can be a delineation of personal vs. corporate entities there if I don't elect, for example, to use my personal Github account versus my work Github accout, which I signed up for using my company email address. If under that scenario, the company cannot claim ownership over my personal email account, then clearly my person is not the same legal entity as my employer and I can keep both free accounts without violating Github's T&C, isn't that correct?
IANAL and all the requisite disclaimers, but GitHub explicitly recommends that you use one free account for both personal and work stuff, and there's fairly granular organization-level access controls built into the platform to keep those things separate. If I have a personal GitHub account and FooBarCo adds me to one of their GitHub organizations, that does not magically make any repos I have access to that are not part of their GitHub organization the legal property of FooBarCo.
My employers have made AD-account for me. For explicitly use for work. I don't see no reason why Apple shouldn't have similar work account by default inside their own systems. Not having one seems like failure of corporate processes.
My personal policy on something like Robinhood is it's OK if it's tied to my benefits, so 401(k) or RSUs; expecting to engage in benefits activity on a work device is reasonable. I also expect that any company spying into those apps/websites is overstepping bounds, though I'm not sure how this would hold up in court. Robinhood is also more a legal Bovada than Fidelity though, and of all apps, it's not especially pertinent.
The apps are immaterial, she deleted things off her phone during an investigation. The reporting here is to make you think Apple is crazy for doing so, "Apple fired her for deleting a kids game app? What a bunch of weirdos."
I would certainly delete personal information if present on said phone, don't want some other corporate freaks to go through my stuff. Fuck it, I would have done it if instead of Apple it had been the Securitate (I'm from Romania, grew up as a kid in the '80s), and come to think of it this advice of "obey your corporate masterlords" is kind of depressing in itself. We don't have to obey.
Well take this moment as a reminder, that is their property you are storing your very private information on and thus it is now their very private information.
It's a mistake to have personal information on the phone in the first place. Deleting such could be obstruction of the internal investigation at best, and destroying evidence at worse (remember that you don't decide what's admissible as evidence, the courts do).
You would need to delete the app for all your personal data to actually get wiped from your device. Otherwise things like photos, bank data, whatever are just sitting there in the cache directories for snoops to pull off the phone
That’d be my rule 100%. But apple apparently requires personal apple accounts be signed into on company provided devices by employees. It does sort of make sense as they want to be sure of company secrets.
In an earlier thread about this same topic[1] someone that claimed to have gone through Apple's onboarding process explained that they were told (approximately) "Log in with an Apple ID. You can use an existing one, should you have it."
So I think it's less a case that they're required to use a personal ID and more that they don't make explicit the fact that they can create & use a distinct one.
Sorry, how does it make sense? Except after a lot of gaslighting? And maybe not by you, but I also feel the arguments of "don't put personal things on your work phone" and "don't delete [personal things] off your work phone" are getting blurred easily in this whole comment section.
...that can't be right. I wouldn't let them come over from work and rummage around my house either as a condition of working there, you'd have to be addled to accept anything like that.
What? Nobody from today's generation would let them rummage about their houses either, would they?
Although it's true I could see a generation that grew up on the internet understanding it better than the generation who always use it through a phone.
Along with a file sharing app where she could have moved basically any data (google drive) yes? Not a good look for her. This was work device, I am surprised people still have not learned that no personal thing can ever touch work device.
Some Apple employees are reportedly required to link their personal iCloud with their work account/devices, so there's probably no bright line there. It could have been a personal device that was linked to her work account, or a work device linked to her personal iCloud.
Keep your work phone separate from your personal phone: This simple dictum has served me well. Enmeshing your work and personal lives on the same device, complete with MDM policies, can wreak havoc, and it’s not just about maintaining boundaries between work and personal time.
My decision to carry two devices has proved to be a lifesaver during the pandemic wherein boundaries between life and work have been blurred almost to oblivion.
There were some comments about a similar situation a while back. It seems Apple gives you an iPhone. It seems like a perk but it’s hard to keep your “personal” Apple accounts separate from you “work” ones.
There was a Twitter tread about how some woman’s photos are now owned by Apple because her phone was involved in some legal action.
Sorry, but taking nude photos on a company phone is asking for trouble. Who would be stupid enough to do something like that?
Moreover, who would be stupid enough to trust their work phone for anything personal? I don't even log into my bank accounts on work equipment. I assume all my work equipment is totally compromised with spyware.
In my country your workplace is not allowed to go through your personal files stored in your work devices. A folder named "personal" is a good enough legal protection to store all the nudes you want as long as it doesn't take all the space on the device.
> You know how apps work right? Nothing has actually been deleted.
Nothing was deleted, but Apple doesn't have access to her private Google account so they can't see what she has there. I doubt Google will cooperate with Apple over this, so from Apple's perspective she could have deleted evidence.
If she had changed her Google password it would have the same effect, because the access token would have been revoked. Are you saying that would also be deletion?
Perhaps you don't understand litigation? Apple will get discovery, and the court will order Google to supply the files, and revision history, which they will do.
How many people are involved in this AppleToo thing? It's hard for me to get a handle on just how significant any of this is in the scope of the whole corporation. I clicked through a few links in the article and see various numbers, 15 people, 200 people, 500 'instances'.
Only those with the most secure job prospects would take the risk to report, so you have to estimate the denominator -- what proportion of the boldest and most privileged employees report, and what can we infer about the wider company from this?
How many is the numerator? That's all I'm asking; do you even know? There is a pretty big difference between 15 and 200. Which of those is more accurate? Is it even either of those?
What good is 'estimating' (read: bullshiting) another denominator if I don't even know what the numerator is?
Unless company is doing something clearly illegal I think that publicly advocating against the company is not something you can do as an employee. You'd have to do that internally, however difficult.
If you want to do public things, you'd have to do it from the outside.
Perhaps, but what evidence leads you to that conclusion? The only facts that the article mentions are that she was fired for what Apple claims is the destruction of evidence related to an ongoing investigation, and what coworkers say is organizing a group to discuss internal issues. Seems like he-said/she-said right now, not “obvious retaliation”. Further evidence welcome.
You don't need full blown unions to have some pretty basic employee protections and rights. They'd help fight for, and protect abuses of said rights, but aren't necessary.
> Apple Maps program manager Janneke Parrish was accused of deleting files that reportedly included the apps Robinhood, Pokemon GO, and Google Drive, and by doing so, impeding an investigation. According to The Verge, Apple staffers believe that the firing is actually retaliation for her work organizing the group that talks about conditions within the company.
Both can be true. She might have done something that was a fire-able offense (or at least something in the grey area that can be tolerated) yet Apple was looking for an excuse to get rid of her.
It’s a measure of how broken our political system and citizenry is that so many young people look to the giant companies they work for the rights and privileges and space for self-expression properly secured by government.
> Janneke Parrish was accused of deleting files that reportedly included the apps Robinhood, Pokemon GO, and Google Drive, and by doing so, impeding an investigation.
Because what they found (most likely Gdrive) would have also gotten Janneke embarrassed, fired, and/or subject to criminal sanctions lol.
Now instead Janneke gets to make Apple look like the unilateral aggressor, at least temporarily. It was the best chess move.
I should have started the IBMtoo movement. That place was rancid with harassment. My boss told my director not to come to work with a cane and to stay home until her (degenerative) illness was healed.
And here was I thinking my boss was being kind and caring to me when he told me to go and spend time with my wife in hospital. He even phoned me later in the day to see how we were doing.
Turns out he was being a piece of shit and if this guy was on the jury I could have cleaned him and the company out.
I think you do not hate corporations just for the sake of it. There is money in the outrage business. Every movement can be sabotaged by people who have their own self interest t the forefront. It is easy to hide bad behavior under emotional issues.
It's fair to assume that every firing is done for a reason/as a result of a problem, and having evidence of the reason being immoral is important if we're going to be a responsible "court of public opinion".
HN as a whole only very recently started to "beat" on Apple. Before 2021 it was a lot of "well maybe there are two sides to Apple curb stomping both devs and users."
My direct experience is that there is a lot of skepticism about Apple on HN, much of it warranted, some of it (in my opinion, obviously) careening into unwarranted cynicism. But my observation is that comments critical of Apple that are most likely to get downvoted are ones with a clear subtext of "anyone who uses Apple products is an idiotic corporate shill who doesn't know anything about technology and it is my solemn duty to preach the anti-Apple gospel." If you come in with a chip on your shoulder, people will be inclined to knock it off.
Just another anecdote - I regularly see commenters decrying the walled garden, etc. always with the addendums that they’ve abandoned all Apple products, don’t use Google search, and use Linux on their Thinkpad instead of Windows. I notice so often because I have a lot of doubts about the veracity of those statements.
I've never seen a struck out anti-Apple comment that didn't spend the majority of the comment preemptively complaining about downvotes and disagreement.
I’d rather just quit than try to change a company this way. Or I’d just work into leadership and make executive decisions.
Or I’d start a company and do it my way.
I just don’t see leadership being convinced by me complaining on Twitter or starting an internal complaint slack channel. It’s good for complaining or winning a lawsuit, but don’t think it’s going to organically make change.
It’s sad this person lost their job, but seems reasonable to get fired if you delete things off company equipment when you’ve been directed not to do that.