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Comment by mulmen | Hacker News Reader

I rarely (never?) see Apple engineers posting in these threads. With other big tech organizations some kind of insider insight is occasionally provided.

Is Apple’s culture of secrecy that strong? Is it a sense of superiority? Is it embarrassment? Are they just not here?

As a mid-career engineer with highly marketable skills and an inbox stuffed with job offers the only two companies I would never entertain an offer from are Facebook and Apple.

Facebook because their fundamental purpose for existence is harmful to society and Apple for their perceived (or actual?) engineering incompetence.

I don’t really have a sense for the kind of engineer that works for Apple. With other big tech orgs I have some sense, even if informed almost entirely by tech forums.

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I believe it’s considered a durable offence to give out secret information at Apple. Similar, with few exceptions, Apple employees are not allowed to contribute to open source projects.

It’s a shame really, because otherwise I think I’d quite like working at Apple. Their laser focus on product is right up my street.

>I rarely (never?) see Apple engineers posting in these threads.

You mean on HN? Oh they do, From JSC to Webkit Engineers. Mostly on technical discussions.

Maybe I’m just not reading the right threads then. It’s all a perception.

Maybe you're not checking the right commenter's user bios ;]

Yeah maybe I’m holding it wrong.

They just dont mention they are working on Safari / Webkit. So if you know their handle you will notice them.

Why does (near) silence equate to incompetence?

My perception of Apple’s (software) engineering capabilities comes from being their customer and using their products daily.

This might be different if I had some perception of what was happening internally or how problems are approached. But from what I see nobody at Apple cares. So the silence contributes to the perception of incompetence by not counter-acting it.

As engineers, we all know that there are different circumstances. Sometimes they are technical, sometimes political. I would say we should always assume goodwill, unless proven wrong. This is irrespective of whether we talk about Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook or any other company.

> As engineers, we all know that there are different circumstances. Sometimes they are technical, sometimes political.

Agree. I'm just curious what it is at Apple. Their hardware seems fine, even excellent. But the software is really not at the same level. So I wonder how that happens.

> But from what I see nobody at Apple cares. So the silence contributes to the perception of incompetence by not counter-acting it.

There isn’t silence though. The world doesn’t begin and end at Hacker News. Head over to Twitter, for instance, and you’ll see plenty of Apple developers talking about their work. Or join the WebKit mailing lists or Slack. Or join the Swift forums.

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