30 days ago I was an Apple employee
twitter.com
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It looks a lot like this is a mental health issue rather than actual wrongdoings at Apple. What she is doing now might really harm her ability to ever get hired again by a company in SV.
And no, a lot of people didn't see that as professional feedback.
B) they have no context on working with her, listening to her presentations, and her previous dialogues with her manager
Her entire MO starting with her apartment housing “scandal” is to be a resilient victim fighting the oppressors. As you dig in you can quickly see she’s a nutcase who wants issues and a blind detached twitter army backing her to validate her despite none of these people actually having any real context to what’s going on.
Look at this thread and her twitter bio. She’s trying to wear victimhood on her sleeve as a primary identity. Why post this random thread rehashing everything you’ve already posted a million times and all the press you’ve tried to put out? She WANTS to be a giant victim. Remember we’re talking about being fired; no one physically abused her, no one poisoned her, etc. Yet you’d have to assume as much given she doesn’t want to move on with her life. If you read the commments she gets on twitter it’s clear she’s getting what she wants from them (encouragement and sympathy), but ultimately she’s shooting herself in the foot. Who would ever want to hire her again, or provide her housing (after her whole anti-apartment rant toxicity rant)?
America doesn't give a shit about corporate culture even when they're toxic and actually illegal. She has a full right to keep talking about it and keep bringing attention to it.
Your defense, even though you're just a basic employee, is pathetic and tone deaf. As a random employee you have absolutely zero idea of what's happening at the scale of a company like apple. Claiming otherwise is disengenous.
There needs to be a federal investigation of these claims at apple, and if found that she was lying then we could make claims like this.
I also said nothing about my role; your attempts to discredit me are against HN guidelines, are assumptions on your behalf, irrelevant to the discussion, and are quite rude.
Was this necessary?
Because it would affect my perception of your comment, I must ask, do you work at Apple, and are you the person, or closely related to the person this is about?
Remember the loaded language of "nut case" and insinuating mental health problems is not OK.
It easily could have been a joke rather than malicious… perhaps she had a ton of work to do and this radar was a tongue-in-cheek way of acknowledging that.
That’s the problem with these pieces of “proof” — when it’s one sided and completely devoid of commentary from the other people involved, it’s easy to spin a story one way or another.
In fact, looking at that and her editing choices only further confirms to me she’s grasping at straws and it’s not at all what it purports to be publicly.
Let’s look at the facts with this:
1. She blacks out context and parts from the beginning that tag this as a joke task.
2. She comments on this right away, so it’s not hidden from her.
3. If you’re trying to abuse a co-worker, are you really going to do it not only with permanent record, tagged as a joke, but also comment “MUAHAHAHAHA”? Like some generic evil villain?
Notice she doesn’t give ANY context around this, who the people are, and what this could possibly be referring to. When you look at this with all the other “evidence” across her claims at Apple and beyond, she had negative credibility in my mind.
Keep in mind her job category (from what I can surmise about these people) is one that involves a ton of work and corralling cats. Apple is notorious for high ambitions which can stressfully lead to a lot of work, and the timing of this is around product announcements when people work their asses off. I just don’t see it.
Your boss doesn't always have to give you perfect feedback I don't think, just like you might not always show up to work on your A game.
It's just interesting to watch this evolution in SV and facinating to hear that this is such a terrible piece of feedback.
Many / most professions have feedback that is far more direct and blunt.
If what Apple is doing is representative of how companies deal with things in SV, then good riddance. There are plenty of companies not in SV that don't intimidate employees.
Which is it?
I don't blame Apple at all for getting rid of her. She comes across (even while giving her side of the story) as unhinged and awful to work with. I have to wonder if maybe this is an ongoing mental health crisis or something.
My comment doesn't say it's okay for Apple to be toxic, fighting with employees is a norm, or that she did know. My comment is differentiating the hypothetical "If you know it is toxic and you work there you are not a victim" from the victim blaming "You shouldn't have been wearing that".
Of course, the same could be said of other large corporations.
Further I’d suggest if you’re an engineer where only one company in the world can employ you, and you’re not getting fuck you money from it, you’ve done it wrong.
No one is saying Apple is inherently guilty, but it has assumed a societal perception of inherent innocence, skating by with lack of inspection while other tech giants have not. And all that wealth correlates to power and influence, does it not? And generally it should behoove us to inspect the powerful and influential.
For too long any criticism of Apple has been easily shut down, even though they’re not even the plucky underdog on the verge of bankruptcy they once were!
Not invested in the topic at all but somehow people are trying ad-hominem against me to protect apple. You know, this only reinforces my suspicion that apple is beyond toxic, likely crossed over the criminal boundary!
@dang , if you see this, please look into these people's behavior on this post.
Is this a joke? Google has been on the front page here a few times for questionable behavior alleged by (former) employees
Source: she thinks it's okay to take a creep-shot of a colleague's computer screen and post it on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1426572384736202758
Ashley "caught" her officemate doing something naughty, y'all.
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In the OP thread she complains the Superfund site hasn't been tested for 6 years. What such sociopaths conveniently leave leave out is whether it's a legal requirement to test it within 6 years. It's not. Such tests cannot be conducted on the whim of an employee.
Look at the scrollbar on the right. It is vertical in the picture, but not parallel to the edge of the screen, defying perspective.
Interesting that she chose to be upset about them looking at a diagram of a very old single-shot rifle or shotgun.
Assuming you are right (a big assumption) cutting off her health insurance is one poor way of handling the situation. This is a very dark side of employer provided health insurance in systems that don’t really have socialised healthcare.
In the organization I work with, we commonly offer to pay COBRA premiums for several months for employees whose behavior appears to be in the context of a mental health crisis, yet they persist in engaging in threatening behaviors and would rather separate than take medical leave.
This unfortunately is related to the lack of insight that is common during symptom exacerbations of serious mental illness, but we feel it is our last option to try to A) help the person recover even if they don't work with us anymore and B) hopefully help attenuate any threat they may pose to themselves or our organization.
How often is this happening? Or are you in a massive organisation?
This excerpt from their GoFundMe makes it seem like this is the person who's unhappy and silent on every team theyre on, and only decides to "get one back" when they finally get let go after the employer has exhausted all attempts at finding a team they can be productive on.
> I worked at Apple for six years. I experienced misconduct and abuse on every team I was on, but I pushed through it. I knew if I spoke up about it, my career in tech would be over.
Regardless, I empathize with this person losing their job, and hope they can find a career where they can be happy and productive.
Unfortunately, this person is better of finding a job elsewhere and trying to live their lives. Not a fight they can win.
[1] https://www.teamblind.com/post/Apple-Toxic-Work-Environment-...
his sentence was clearly speculation, and not a "claim". The people here suggesting mental health issue are on much thinner ice
Fortunately he took me seriously and had a lot of growth in a short period of time. He's been at his last job for 15 years and moved to the head of his department and gets a bit of a laugh now when he hears that people working for him think he's a moron.
- You won't get higher-end jobs due to low EQ
- Lower-end jobs, you'll be surrounded by people who, relative to you, are morons
There are lots of other situations like this, and it's tough. I've rarely found myself in this position, but part of that is luck. College pedigree and early resume slots make a big difference. I have friends who were less fortunate.
It's worth noting that the high IQ / low EQ example above is relative -- this can be a FAANG-level tech person working for an average tech firm, a mediocre programmer working tech support, and all the way down. There's a very deep pit of crappy jobs, all the way down to a pretty good mathematician I knew who ended up driving a bus.
"Low EQ" can also be a proxy for other things which would preclude a higher-end job, from being an immigrant with poor English skills (or otherwise facing discrimination), to complex distractions (e.g. having serious health problems, a litigation, or a family situation, or otherwise).
The big shocker here isn't Apple getting rid of someone who rocked the boat too much, that's a given in $bigcorp.
It's the allegation of Apple breaking in to someone's home & impersonating the police. Now that i find shocking.
Big if true.
They certainly have the money and the expertise to do it. If this is at all a concern, what is this forum doing to prevent that from happening?
https://www.gawker.com/5856260/apples-sleazy-secret-police-l...
What is more likely, a big company is breaking into employees home and impersonating the police, or Apple has employed somebody with an undiscovered mental illness?
TLDR, nothing happened because they didn't break the law
Too many things about Apple invite scrutiny on a legitimate basis, like lapses in privacy or their 'dont complain to the press, it never helps' policy for application developers. In this age of enhanced always on connectivity there are going to be a lot of complaints, some true and some misguided, and treating each vague criticism (I choose the word vague because an accusation that remains nonspecific inspires skepticism) with a full investigation is a drain on resources that could be otherwise devoted to the overt egregious transgressions currently in process, like the ones I mentioned before.
The reality is that most companies probably should be under more scrutiny, especially the largest ones in the world. They have such massive amounts of power that society needs to make sure the power isn’t being used to harm society. IMO, this example isn’t why we should start putting Apple under scrutiny, but a reminder to continue doing so. It reminds us that bad things are happening at even the most respected companies — whether or not every report ends up being substantiated.
If she would lie about these things, how are we to believe anything else she says?
I'm not saying this specific person is right, but if the argument in the comments of "if everyone you work with is a moron, then maybe the problem is you" is true (and I think it can be) then we must consider that some of these stories are true and some people (and it appears to be often women) are being treated abysmally at work.
If Apple can scan people's photos (just in case there's something nasty there) then they should welcome government investigation of their workplaces (just in case).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27914062
All this says to me is that the facts are not on your side. But hey, let’s just ignore those and launch personal attacks on each other.
Is this the bay area? You can't move an inch of contaminated soil without a HUGE hassle, so I'm kind of curious ignoring apple how people were being allowed to be exposed in their office without adequate safety to a triple superfund toxic waste dump. Building inspector, planning clearance? No one caught this?
Why are you invested so much in this?