I worked for Apple retail in San Francisco. Being an early retail employee in the Bay Area, we had very close ties to Cupertino. I worked when Steve was still alive.
* Retail management in my store ruled by fear. I heard from other stores across the US this was the same as well.
* Promotions were handed out to those who kissed ass the hardest. Even if they were unqualified or cheated on promotion exams, if they brown nosed enough they got promoted.
* The goal for every retail employee was to eventually make it to Cupertino and work for the corporate side of things. Either Genius support or logistics in Elk Grove.
* Those who I knew who made it to Cupertino shared similar experience to the author’s post.
Apple comes off as a happy family friendly company, when in reality behind the scenes it’s a rule by fear culture.
thank you for this detailed post - I believe that you and others like you became enablers for a darkside of management at Apple. However with clarity and time you are re-balancing yourself.
source: directly worked at Apple in Santa Clara and Cupertino
Apple is in Cupertino, the author was an Apple executive, and was likely privy to enough firings to recognize what the prelude to his own sounded like.
>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.
Whoa! I was a "Mac Specialist" at the University Village apple store in Seattle, WA for about a year. The management was not abusive _at all_. It had a great vibe to it, it was a friendly environment, and it was relaxed for the most part (other than black friday... and Christmas...).
The only thing in this entire article I read that was true (for my experiences) was the pay. I worked there for a year and did not get a pay raise once (but to be fair I didn't ask for one, I was young), but new hires were coming in getting paid a few dollars more per hour than I was, which frustrated me. But it didn't frustrate me enough...
Anyways, if everything that is said in this article is true, then good for Lynnwood Apple Store Staff to stand up! Great for them! But if its not true, and "fastcompany.com" didn't check their facts right, then what a terrible thing to post...
This is wholly-fabricated nonsense. I worked at Apple for 5+ years and, besides for knowing what actually happens in these situations, there are a couple of dead giveaways that "Tom" was never an Apple employee (or, at least, not in Cupertino).
I think this has a lot to do with it. I worked at Apple for four years, and the most successful (promoted) managers all tried to emulate the managerial attributes they believed Steve embodied: Hard nosed, demanding, callous, ridiculing failure, and they all thought they had his product sense too. They attempted to be Steve-clones all the way up the chain to Craig (who was actually a really decent guy, and didn't, at least to me, act like a Steve-clone himself). They were consistently rewarded for this behavior, so that kind of behavior became known as the way to go places at Apple. I remember having [careful] conversations with my manager where I essentially asked, "Do I have to be a raging asshole to get rewarded here? Because that's all I see--raging assholes get the promotions and equity refreshes."
There were other managers who were not toxic, and knew how to develop a team and reward/motivate them, but most of them stagnated and never went anywhere promotion-wise.
I also found the place very clique-y. There was definitely a small in-group, with the rest in the out-group, and it seemed to have nothing to do with tenure, seniority, or level. They would have their own private off-sites to do who knows what. I think they called it Top-100 or something while I was there. Everything was siloed and secret so you could never be sure.
EDIT: Reading the article, I see the cliques were specifically mentioned. I have no doubt the author is for real.
Toxic management in Silicon valley seems to be becoming a force to be reckoned with. Time and time again I hear horror stories like this and from first hand experience I can confirm all this mind playing is in fact happening by certain managers. I've worked with managers that worked at top tech companies in the Valley and their resume lists one company after another, it goes to show how easy it is for them to jump ship if things are going sour without anyone at the new company really noticing that in the interview process. There seems to be a strongly connected network of toxic managers swarming the valley more and more. It's not just Apple.
Just wanted to add some corroborating info. A friend worked in the Apple hardware group, at a fairly high level. It burned them out pretty bad, to the point where they had to see a therapist. I didn't quite believe what they told me at the time. This posting brought back those memories.
Yeah but with apple you hear people loved working there even if jobs was harsh. Looks like there's a balance between getting the most out of people and just creating a toxic work atmosphere.
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.
I moved over to Silicon Valley fairly late (in 2018), and I was immediately shocked at how frowned upon... even disincentivized technical knowledge was at the management level.
To the extent that people started removing hard numbers from their presentations and replacing them with smiley faces.
Needless to say, I left and that company TANKED.
I think Steve Jobs said something about A people versus C people... well he was right (even though he was bullshitting, b/c as we all know, Wozniak had the A team at Apple, and Jobs at the C team)
I feel really terrible for the employees who work at these stores, thinking they are working for Apple. I think about how I felt when I got a job I really wanted at that age, and the joy they must have felt when they were hired, and telling all of their friends and family that they were Apple employees.
Look at the photos of the employees. They look so sincere and earnest. I can only imagine the disappointment they will feel one day when they find out they're working for a con man.
I'd love it if this story ended with "and then Apple, seeing how badly Kunming wanted to have an Apple Store, came along, built a real one, and hired all the employees at the new, legitimate store."
You are spot on. This is hardly a surprise to anyone who has been watching, and I personally just made a little bit of money on my bet he would get fired :) Time to share my understanding. My connection: I used to live off Legacy Drive in the Deerfield neighborhood in Plano and hence have heard some second-hand accounts about his behavior.
If you read anything about this guy's tenure at the company, it becomes apparent he was riding someone else's coattails at Apple and possibly at Target... because all he did was copy org structures from Apple to graft them onto JCP without understanding why or how they worked at Apple. He lacked basic retail understanding and was a typical middle-road MBA pointy-haired boss. I just wish I understood how I could get hired to fail like he and so many other execs do -- the pay is so much better! The joke is clearly on me.
He was no different than a 'Senior dev' copy-pasting a bunch of Stack Overflow Java code in your team's C environment. Guess what, it was convincing at first but doesn't work ("what do you mean C has memory leaks?").
His approach failed for many reasons, but most succinctly the failure is because JCP is a discount brand and Apple is a premium brand. So far our understanding of retail is that premium and discount stores operate differently. He thought he could take premium behaviors and apply them to discounts (in fairness, this is what he took credit for at Target, but having talked to people in MN it seems that credit was JCP PR to explain how he got hired).
My favorite moves from this guy (recalling from memory, apologies for not providing HN-worthy citations):
-- When it became clear JCP was't getting traction with the new promotion structure ('best price' nonsense) last summer he blamed and fired his good friend and longtime colleague who he personally brought to JCP. He had worked with the guy for years, and somehow the execution of a bad idea was the problem. He took no responsibility and charged ahead. Very quietly he started dismantling his bad ideas.
-- He stopped discount sales altogether. At a discounter. Without explaining or convincing others that they would have cheaper prices than competition.
-- He stopped clearance altogether. Most of my purchases at JCP over the years have been from clearance, so people like me had zero reason to step inside the store ever again.
-- He never moved to Plano so he could keep attending church in CA, and he only flew to the HQ 3 days a week (on average). Plano has an equivalent denomination church, and I imagine his CA community would understand the absence. Few people at the company HQ had a chance to talk to him in person. I don't understand how you can turn around a billion-dollar corporation remotely.
-- He encouraged teams not to talk to each other and be secretive, because somehow that led to a better customer experience when everyone was confused. He asked some teams to report directly to him. JCP doesn't build consumer products, they build store layouts and discount structures. The secrecy was stupid when you consider he managed remotely and was a communication point-of-failure. Some 'incubator' teams were allowed full access to disrupt normal operations, and my understanding is that there was quite a bit of friction that led to much lower productivity.
-- The store-within-a-store concept was an udder failure. However, all public reports are that sales/sq-foot were higher in these store-within-a-store and therefore we were to infer a success. The real story is JCP took its best selling items, put them in the innovation, and sure enough they continued to be well-selling. Of course the per-sq-foot space sold better when the best selling items are concentrated. However, sales for the items dropped worse at a store-within-a-store once re-arranged alongside the rest of sales. If you are curious about this pattern in general, you should watch what happens to Best Buy and Samsung with their new store-within-a-store experiment. I personally don't believe retailers should turn themselves into malls :)
-- They had a small layoff where they targeted HQ people who watched too much YouTube. The packet inspection company had a PR-like piece in the WSJ advertising how well it worked to target those shirking employees. The narrative makes sense except the positions eliminated were predominantly _fashion buyers_, who most likely were watching fashion shows and aspiring fashion makers on YouTube because travel budgets had been cut that same year.
-- The Martha Stewart trial is beyond stupid and short-sighted. I think he should have found an up-and-coming who could produce similar quality but CHEAPER products rather than overpay for a has-been brand. There is a reason that Macy's is not giving Martha as much floor space as she expected.
So, this rodeo has been extremely fun to watch, and I sincerely hope the next chapter for James Cash Penny's store is brighter. It is a good company with good people. It should be focused on the founder's values: good value and fair prices.
For folks that have worked with Apple, since the 1980s, it’s sort of surreal, to see this happening.
We remember Apple as this scrappy, scruffy outfit, struggling to stay alive.
We never dreamed that they would ever get to the place, where they would be sued as a monopoly.
I remember the old WWDCs, when you could just walk up to anyone at Apple (including Steve), and just start chatting. If you did talk to Steve, he might not be so nice, responding, but you didn't have bodyguards or bouncers.
Those days, they are long gone.
I have a friend that worked for Apple for a while. He told me that his onboarding training had a special section on dealing with "The Principals."
Basically, if you passed Tim or Craig, or somesuch, in the hallway, you were to act as if they weren't there. Avoid eye contact, don't say hi, no nods, etc.
I didn't work there, but for all you old-timers, I attended the Brass Ring job fair at the Santa Clara convention center, early 1997 before Jobs rejoined.
I distinctly remember the Apple recruitment booth was empty, vs all of the high-activity booths around them. I remember it vividly because it was sad seeing how far they had fallen, people weren't interested in even talking to the recruiter.
Imagine getting a job at Apple in 1997 and never selling a share. I know some people that have been at Apple for 12+ years and are planning on retiring next year, they are multi-multi-millionaires just from regular stock grants.
* Retail management in my store ruled by fear. I heard from other stores across the US this was the same as well. * Promotions were handed out to those who kissed ass the hardest. Even if they were unqualified or cheated on promotion exams, if they brown nosed enough they got promoted. * The goal for every retail employee was to eventually make it to Cupertino and work for the corporate side of things. Either Genius support or logistics in Elk Grove. * Those who I knew who made it to Cupertino shared similar experience to the author’s post.
Apple comes off as a happy family friendly company, when in reality behind the scenes it’s a rule by fear culture.
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