Apple fires leader of AppleToo movement
appleinsider.com
appleinsider.com
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.
(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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
That’s probably the best euphemism I’ve heard since “enhanced interrogation techniques”
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.
> 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"
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 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.
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.
It's like asking a person to leave a country, instead of trying to make it better.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -JFK
And a decent gdp.
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."
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...?
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 "like we did in the old days" way of doing stuff, you watch on Mad Men, was pretty unkind to a lot of different folks.
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.
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.
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.
Sounds miserable!
In all seriousness, it’s awesome and better than most.
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.
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).
Based on my own experience (albeit outside the US) the salaries don't differ much from their non-FAANG counterparts at the top of the market.
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
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.
"Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future." - Yoda.
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.
Perhaps they have other grievances but I guarantee they pale in comparison to what the labor movement worked to solve years back.
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.
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.
https://www.theverge.com/22648265/apple-employee-privacy-icl...
It's fair to say that combining personal data with work data won't end well.
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.
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.
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 already put-off my its culture of secrecy.
I highly doubt apple will lose any sleep over not handing you or the 'female colleague' you cite a 6/7 figure salary each year.
I think a good rule as an employee is "if instructed to hand over your phone as part of an investigation, don't delete stuff before doing so."
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.
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.
Delete it now, dont put any more on
https://www.sbnation.com/platform/amp/2015/7/28/9060211/tom-...
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.
Seems pretty useful when you want to fire someone on a technicality /s.
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.
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.
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?
https://www.theverge.com/22648265/apple-employee-privacy-icl...
That's a big fuckin' nope and likely illegal.
> Employees could pause during onboarding and say they want to create a new Apple ID specifically for work or use a different phone. But most do not.
This "Apple forces you to link personal with work" meme keeps coming up but it's evidently not entirely true.
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.
Update: punctuation
Especially if your employer owns the phone or pays the bill.
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.
It’s hard but keep this stuff separate.
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.
People won trials against companies in the past.
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.
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.
What good is 'estimating' (read: bullshiting) another denominator if I don't even know what the numerator is?
If you want to do public things, you'd have to do it from the outside.
True whistle-blowing notwithstanding.
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.
I think Apple's just ahead of the curve. Things have gotten too soft, they need to tighten things back up to stay competitive for the future.
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.
She could log out of her Google account remotely without ever touching that phone.
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.
FB, Goog, Amazon, MS fire an employee -> they are terrible companies.
HN’s biases are infuriating.
Replace Apple with Facebook or Google and everyone will have their pitchforks out.
We regularly BEAT on Apple.
Obviously the app we all noticed was...Google Drive in that list!
/Edited: I forgot, we also bag on them constantly about WFH, and their piss poor record with bug bounties. There are probably some I'm forgetting.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Everyone with strong feelings on $topic thinks the community is biased against their views.