>Of course, every employee at Apple knows the culture of the company, so it's not like it should be any surprise.
I used to work at Apple (both at the retail stores and briefly in Cupertino) and, out of all the jobs I've had, it's still my favorite corporate culture. It's the only company where I felt like I wasn't just a number. It wasn't uncommon for opportunities to open up for people all throughout the company and, as long as you weren't stealing or doing something else (like leaking info) that could harm the company, there seemed to be a mutual respect between upper management and even low-level employees.
> More than 50 of the company’s 80 or so employees worked for Apple at some point.
I understand how/why this happens, but as an engineer who's not an Apple "alumnus" (ugh), I would never work at a place like that. A company needs diversity in more ways than one.
> the place was packed with workers that were friendly, responsive, and truly wanted to help you
Ignoring the union question, they are paid to smile at you, doesn't mean they all are happy to work there in anyway. They are strongly encouraged to be "friendly, responsive" and appear "to truly want to help you" by management, it's an act.
I have hard time believing anybody would think most Apple store employees genuinely feel that way when they have to deal with douche bag clients and suffer terrible management all day long. Source is myself.
> This was part of the internal culture during my time at Apple.
From a management perspective, how do they handle the people side of that - keeping good people on the team and keeping them motivated to do something extraordinary?
People don't like spending time on unsuccessful projects and don't want their names associated with them, and don't want to work extra hard on something that won't come to fruition.
Maybe Apple management has enough internal reputation that employees are willing to take that risk (but even Apple management has flops - the car seeming to be a recent example). But that doesn't feel like a sufficient explanation to me.
"I spent two years in the Apple camp managing customer service improvement for their technical support contact centres and out of the fifteen plus years working in this industry I’ve never witnessed so many bizarre and unprofessional things, only some of which I have time to touch on here."
In the next 15 years (probably sooner) you'll learn that the world is the same _everywhere_ and quiting your job at apple won't make a silly difference.
I've had a ton of jobs, ALL MY BOSSES STOLE from the company. And i don't expect my current bosses to be any different. no i will not resort to such, but i stopped caring. And if i was you, i'd probably not quite my job, and simply not care about the fopping idiotic things and people i'd see around me.
It's high time this has happened. Certain large tech companies with abusive cultures have been open secrets for years (Ballmer-era stack ranked Microsoft, PIP culture at Amazon). But Apple's secretive, authoritarian nature has kept it under wraps for decades.
Apple is a huge corporation and there is a large degree of variation within it. But when things are toxic there, they can get very toxic. Middle managers can have a lot of leeway there, and HR is about as powerless as you can imagine. There is not much room for dissent against decisions there, forget "think different". The product schedule is all-important and can also be very stressful to work under. It's a situation that Apple employees can only sympathize with one another, but not much else.
> I'm still surprised that he was hired by Apple (one of the world's most secretive companies), after disclosing so many secrets of a former employer.
That's a good point that hadn't occurred to me before. It would not be surprising if whoever made the final decision to fire him did it for that reason.
> Management's goals are often counter to those of the employees. Whereas workers want good pay, flexibility, work/life balance, and so on. Management wants control, pay people less, have them work more, and so on. Many managers pretend they care about what the workers want, only to force on to them what they want. People pick up on that bait and switch after a few times. Again, speaking generally here, this isn't universal, but it is common.
Yes, there are companies that behave this way. And there are many companies that don't. As you say, it's not universal.
The question is: What kind of company is Apple?
I honestly have no idea. But to assume, universally, that all companies will renege on their hybrid work commitments is much too cynical for me.
I didn't hear an argument in there, but obviously I disagree with your conclusion - it absolutely speaks volumes.
Steve Jobs is largely responsible for creating the culture at Apple, so please explain how it does not reflect on their culture when he is accused of scheming against employees?
Do you really want to work at a place that has a culture that includes scheming against employees?
> It's confusing that folks are upset about this. If it doesn't work for you, don't work for Apple.
While you are indeed free not to work for Apple (that is what I do!), policies in FAANG companies have significant influence on smaller companies who tend to cargo cult them without much thinking. That is how we end up with leetcode-style interviews, now I'm afraid we all might end up back in office, only even worse one than before where you don't even have assigned table in the open-space.
FWIW, as an Apple employee I have no idea what the hell he's talking about.
I've worked here 4 years and I absolutely love. my. job. I take days off to work from home whenever I feel like it. We drink at the office on occasion. I'm never harassed for not being constantly online. I don't have endless meetings. I'm constantly praised for the work I do, I get great reviews, with large bonuses.
My impression from reading this article is that he either had a shitty manager (it can happen, Apple's a huge company) or his department wasn't very well-run. (It is customer service, that's never known for being a great environment almost anywhere you work.)
I feel bad for the guy, in a situation he described I would've left too. Fortunately I'm not in that situation, and neither is anyone else I know here. People have their issues with small things but at the end of the day I think everyone I work with loves what they do.
> He said that he had communicated with customers by typing on an iPad, and that some customers had refused to work with him as a result. When he told his manager, the manager said it was the customers’ right, he said....He was eventually assigned an interpreter. But by that time, he said, upper management viewed him as a complainer and refused to promote him.
Using an iPad/iPhone seems to be the standard Apple policy, but this employee objected.
> Having left, I forgot what it was like to be able to focus on something other than Apple. Incredibly toxic atmosphere on the inside. I work at a fast-paced startup and still work on average 10/hours a week less than at Apple.
Maybe it was because I worked there only during the pandemic, but I never really felt the emotional impact of Apple's toxicity. I could of course tell it was there, and if I actually cared about getting promoted or getting higher pay, I might have felt more stressed.
For example, after pointing out some areas where I thought a proposal could be improved, from that point on I just wasn't ever invited to any more design or strategy meetings. It's like I was just cut out from everything because I had the audacity to criticize something from some senior schmuck with tenure, and I wouldn't grovel and kiss whoever's ass I needed to in order to be "allowed" in those meetings from that point forward.
In hindsight I was glad I torpedoed myself right off the bat after I joined. Not actually ever having to be around any of those people in meatspace probably helped, but it was really easy for me to sit in my office at home and plug away undisturbed on the pet projects that I felt were interesting and worthwhile. What I created actually was helpful, but it was totally designed, written, and delivered in a silo. I collected my salary and stock for a year, added Apple to my resume, and then hopped on to another company with higher comp and a much healthier culture.
Now at this new place, everyone is falling all over themselves to have me in their design and strategy meetings. <shrug> Fare thee well, Apple. I hardly knew ye.
> They've lost their iOS development team, but kept the employees who think that spending their work hours pulling customer names from their production environment to make fun of them is a good use of their day. So much winning!
Perhaps they’ve kept the employees who accepted management’s statement about the event and wanted to move past the issue.
>I was an Apple employee for nearly 13 years, and I loved helping people get the most out of their Apple products. All of that ended about 6 months ago when Apple showed me its true colors. [...] I told him that yes I had in fact helped a friend with a data transfer (something Apple does for free) and that I had helped him on my own time. He told me that I had just admitted to a major conflict on interest, and that an official investigation in to my actions would now start, two days later I was suspended.
Maybe I'm missing some context but it seems like something huge has to be omitted from author's narrative.
There's just no way Apple Inc's ~137000 employees are all saying to friends & family, "nope, sorry, I can't help you with your iPhone/iPad/iMac because it's a conflict of interest and I'd get fired."
> and observe that everyone who's worked with that person shows up regardless of the org chart
Too bad it's only a handful of people.
Well, maybe less than a handful because most of the people you saved in the past 3 years have moved on to another company or another role. They're not here for you anymore.
However the manager got that power instantly since the minute he joined, by virtue of the position. It's not an apple to apple comparison indeed.
I've worked at a few corporations and most of them are not they way he described Apple. I've never worked at Apple so what he said is hearsay for me and thus to be taken with some amount of skepticism. But the story as he shared is not at all normal or average in my admittedly biased experience.
I used to work at Apple (both at the retail stores and briefly in Cupertino) and, out of all the jobs I've had, it's still my favorite corporate culture. It's the only company where I felt like I wasn't just a number. It wasn't uncommon for opportunities to open up for people all throughout the company and, as long as you weren't stealing or doing something else (like leaking info) that could harm the company, there seemed to be a mutual respect between upper management and even low-level employees.
reply