Apple’s Frontline Employees Are Struggling to Survive

Their change in KPI to NPS. And cost cutting measures during the past 10 years.

I would have thought things would improved, and in some area it did as Deirdre is finally opening more Apple Store. Something that was nearly halted under Angela. But it looks like the people management isn't quite back to where it was in Steve Jobs era. After all she came from Operation, working under Tim Cook at one point.

> When his paycheck arrived in May 2021, he found it was just $23, due to health insurance deductions. He couldn’t afford to pay rent. When he contacted Apple’s corporate payroll team, he said the response was, “We’ll look into it.”

This part was kind of shocking for me.

Sounds like every "year-end review" I've ever been involved with in my professional life. Every job I've ever had has required an annual summary of "accomplishments" which incentivized a lot of the wrong things. Fixing bugs and removing tech debt aren't measurable "accomplishments", so they're avoided or done as fast as possible to move on to a "feature" that sounds good on a year-end review.

My first real job was sales with a bonus tied to NPS. It’s punitive bullshit and everyone involved knows it.

We used to just ask people for a 9 or 10 if the experience was even remotely positive, because otherwise you get a bunch of happy customers who give a perfectly reasonable 8/10 and end up inadvertently costing you a bunch of money.