Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an ‘associate’
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
WaPo says this can be a 6 figure difference in compensation but frankly why should a future employer get to know how much I make? Maybe I’m a level 3 but deserved to be a level 4. Maybe I’m a level 5 but actually a level 2 that’s just really good at office politics.
If I want my employer to know what number Apple assigned me, I’ll tell them.
EDIT: Telling companies a Level 5 engineer was an associate if associate isn't a superset of Level 5's is shady, and I can't defend Apple on that point. From what I read of the article that wasn't clear to me. They do say the title is generally linked to more junior roles but that's relative and you can still be old, experienced and well-paid but if you're not a manager I might consider that an associate.
> If I want my employer to know what number Apple assigned me, I’ll tell them.
Literally this article is about employers being like "hmm you told me this number but we don't believe you because Apple says its wrong"
Might have been a problem in the past, but now you can point them to this article.
Background checks are frequently done by specialized 3rd party companies of varying levels of quality that don't communicate directly with the applicant, and have a lot of leeway to interpret if candidate was misrepresenting their past. You may not have the opportunity to point them to this article after being told a blanket "We regret to inform you that in accordance to clause 2(c) on the offer letter, we are withdrawing the offer of employment due to a verification failure during the background check."
I also can’t imagine verifying or asking HR to verify someone’s level or salary. They’d start questioning if I understood the point of the interview.
The whole prior salary thing is very touchy now, and in some states potential employers aren't allowed to ask.
The company my wife works for will only confirm whether an employee was employed at a given date, or not. No salary information. No titles. Nothing other than a yes, or no.
You dont need to when you can just look this up. Plenty of services offer this now. You're salary is pretty much public info. [1]
This is pretty common. My state is pretty liberal in terms of what's allowed legally, but even as far back as the 90s, the official party line in most shops was that you couldn't say more than "Joe was employeed here between 19xx and 19xx". And that's assuming you, as a persons former manager, were even supposed to take the call. Many shops had a "refer all inquiries to HR" rule and would only tell them the same basic answer.
Unofficially, a common tactic was (and I believe still is, if recent experience is anything to go by) to to exploit the use of "personal references" as opposed to former Employers. Hope (or 'suggest') the candidate used a former co-worker as a personal reference, and then on the call ask things like "On a personal level, given the opportunity, would you look forward to working with Joe again?" Anything less than an enthusiastic "oh definitely" was a polite tip off that Joe was not someone you wanted in your shop.
Hi, checking in. Your current/previous salary is no business of your future employer. You don't have to share it, and it shouldn't form the basis of your future salary.
If this seems alien, or improbable to you, people can and do learn how to tactfully steer conversations away from disadvantageous topics.
Still a trend I'm seeing is occurring in negotiation. Specifically "do you have a counter you want us to match? prove it with an offer letter"
orthogonal but still related.
My approach when dealing with future salary is to tell them my previous job paid me ((what I want from next job) - X %). Previous salary doesn't appear in the equation.
It's also not clear to me from the article that Apple is changing the person's level when they leave. I read the article as saying they just don't share titles. And I'm not even clear that the information is shared at all until end of employment.
A manager and director can be doing the same job, but the title matters in terms of their compensation and potential title at their next job.
I think people put a lot of stock in these databases which are updated voluntarily by employers. When it matters it’s double checked anyway. If a background shop can’t get an answer from Apple in a week it’s a bad background shop, because that’s literally automated (and the last copy I requested from a CRA had my title correctly reported by Apple, including my seniority level).
I hate dismissing the claim and I’m not. Rest assured I believe this tomfoolery to be on brand. There’s just more nuance to this, I think, and it’s even more interesting if it’s intermittently impacting formers. Could this be the result of the “do not rehire” box being checked in Merlin? I know mine isn’t, and I also know that it is often (quietly) checked when people depart, and that might be the difference.
Apple lying at all is bad. It doesn’t matter to who. It’s potential liability if a candidate gets wind of it, but if these folks are going after the NLRB to address the concern, I suspect it means their lawyer told them they don’t have a case (probably because Apple confirmed their role accurately to the investigation in question regardless of what the credit reporting database says, I would guess).
Since we're speculating, my take is that having the NLRB investigate the issue first and finding Apple was being punitive would bolster their civic case, and give them more leverage in the eventual settlement - they'll skip from having to prove Apple caused harm directly to how much harm was done.
Besides, outsourcing the investigations to the NLRB would cost them less (discovery is expensive!), and the NLRB has a clear mandate and can't be bogged down by appeals and other forms of delaying legal warfare. The NLRB is also likely to cast a broader net, and better resourced.
I went to the NLRB because the law that was being violated was the NLRA, and I was filing charges on behalf of others, not just me.
HireRight will check InVerify AND The Work Number, and if you pull your reports from there (which I have), you can see that for yourself.
But that doesn't seem to be what's happening.
It's clear that "associate" means "they worked here but we won't tell you what as, ha ha". That's not lying! That's just not telling. And it's no reason for a future company to be suspicious.
I don't think that's clear. And if that's the message they want to send why not just confirm employment but not state a level?
How I and my colleagues got hired and makes 100% sense to me:
1. Skim their github
2. Ask questions about their stuff on github or some past work they shared
3. Give them a realistic task and a week to solve and push to github. Evaluate it - very easy to gather the motivation and skill.
4. Evaluate performance for a month or two. If they say what they are it will appear immediately.
Of course some psychopathic companies want you to solve shit on the spot, which is kinda fine if it reflects actual work culture.
Some of it is “can you perform”
Some of it is assessing how little they can get away with offering you, if they decide to hire.
If a new employer wants to know my level at a previous employer, I’ll tell them. If they want proof then 1) that’s pretty weird but 2) they can give my manager a call.
But if I don’t tell them my level, then I don’t want anyone else to tell them either.
Wait until you find out that credit agencies already has this info separately.
It was recently here on HN. Look for “work number”.
I think you're being overly flippant. Every single job I've applied to[1] has done an independent background check[2] - which included calling/emailing past employers and verifying the details I told them meshes with their records on title and duration of employment. Discrepancies here can cause delays, or even cost one an offer, as happened the former Apple engineer in the article. I wouldn't be as dismissive as you are, as the consequences can be quite dire; also I cannot think of any positive reason for the practice, except to punish those who leave Apple. I hope the NLRB and courts throw the book at them.
1. At companies with headcounts ranging from low hundreds to tens of thousands
2. Including international calls across timezones. The investigators - often a 3rd party - are diligent, but often clueless/ignorant when the particulars of a case are different to what they are used to. This has caused delays for me in the past, and it was expensive for me because I had quit my old job after accepting the offer, and was unemployed for longer than I had planned.
Maybe that's your personal definition. Generally, 'associate' is the title you will get if you get an entry level retail job. There's nothing 'wrong' with the title if that's what Apple internally called everyone.
If they change it when you leave(specially if it turns out that they do that when you leave in bad terms), that's malicious.
Ultimately, this means that: you say you are a Senior Software Engineer (or whatever title Apple internally uses); the new prospective employer tries to verify and it comes back as an "associate".
i.e. they think your Apple experience was working some entry level job in one of their stores and you are trying to claim you were an engineer.
To approve I-140, USCIS requires a signed letter from employers confirming your title, experience and skill sets.
Most companies really don't like to give these details out for some reason, and it's always a struggle, especially outside tech. People manage by contacting their managers to past coworkers to attest this.
This is intended as a general observation and not about AAPL (I can't attest to what happens there).
Naturally, you can see how this puts pressure on visa employees to leave on good terms and be compliant knowing you might not be able to extend your visa otherwise.
In France you get a paper with the name of the company and the dates of your employment. This is the only information a company can provide, and confirm when requested.
The concept of referrals does not exist in practical terms (I had to give some once for an American company and gave good friends who said I was wonderful) - because they would not work.
All this is closely regulated by law.
I'm sure it's different for secretarial roles, leadership roles, etc, but for the bulk of people it seems like the usual career path is up through the normal military, and officially they remain in the military. (I also knew some linguists - normally of somewhat exotic languages like Arabic or Russian – who were taken aside at Oxford or Cambridge and asked if they were interested in working in intelligence.)
You're advised not to wear company swag and all company-provided transport (buses) are required not to say or write the name of the company when picking up employees. You're also advised to avoid giving a precise Linked In profile. Even your role makes you a phishing (or worse) target.
You'd get frequent opsec training refreshes explaining all the new tricks and how such and such got roped in from their SM presence.
I would also pass on any company that needs references to my job title because their dystopian background check through the infamous Equifax says I'm an associate, even with a software engineering background, haha that part was beyond silly.
it‘s like saying „i have a pilot license“ if you don't
it‘s like saying „hey wanna buy this iphone? its totally not a fake!“ when you know it‘s fake.
This is only for 3rd party databases.
Could they be doing this title change, at least in theory, as an information security measure? Competitors and journalists could potentially corroborate (or have an easier time corroborating) leaks if they can verify that a former employee is the position/level they claim to be.
I worked briefly at Apple as contractor doing some professional services integration type stuff in the datacenter space, and one thing that struck me was how secrecy seemed to ooze it's way into super unexpected places. This was to the point that I wondered if an infosec team had a hand in designing some of the systems I was working with that were way closer to the power lines than they were to the products they were designing. This was also around the time that I was reading about Apple's "Worldwide Loyalty Team" and how they would plan operations to catch people leaking.
As an aside, does anyone know how accurate the reporting was/is on the "Worldwide Loyalty Team"? Looking back it seems absurd, to the point where it makes more sense to me as a myth than fact.
Why give them benefit of doubt now?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...
In this case, though, why not replace the job title with "Employee"?
One (non-tech) company I worked at had a pretty stringent policy of always referring to "associates" rather than "employees". I don't exactly know why; maybe some kind of branding or psychological thing, like "you're part of the family" instead of "you're working for us". It admittedly does sound a little more pleasant.
It's not credible from a fact-checking analysis. For reference, the publication that broke the news was Gizmodo [0]. The major issues are:
i) The source of the information is not identified on the record, and is just listed as "Tom" (no last name).
ii) There is only one anonymous interview for the article, and no supporting documentation referenced in the article to justify the claims.
iii) No other publication appears to verify the information independently, such as Apple Insider [1], for such a major story. This includes newspapers that maintain a reputation for fact-checking and responsibility (e.g. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal), where it should should be feasible to verify if this was widely known within Apple.
[0] https://gizmodo.com/apple-gestapo-how-apple-hunts-down-leaks...
[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/09/12/15/apples_worldwide_...
Instead making everyone associates is like an error propagating far from it's call site until an exception (this article) is raised.
I want to stress this- I ask during the interview process of every company I work at whether they share employment information with the credit bureaus and most say no. I've worked at startups and a couple of larger companies. What Apple is doing here seems purely vindictive.
I'm also not sure how this is legal- it seems like it would fall under defamation laws. I would personally be willing to sue over this (but I've never worked for Apple).
By giving out wrong personal information, the argument could be made that they are protecting privacy.
I do not believe saying "associate" is wrong, though. It's a term that is commonly used by HR to refer generically to anyone who works for a company. If you haven't encountered it, it may feel foreign to you, especially since Apple is a retail company and you may be conflating it with "retail associate." That's not what it means though.
"Employee" is a term fraught with legal and other liability in it's use (think Uber drivers - are they employees or contractors?). HR departments will refer to everybody as “associates” to mitigate risk. If Apple wanted to confirm employment, but not divulge titles, they could say associate.
Similarly, Starbucks uses "partners." Do you really think a barista is a part-owner in Starbucks and that's why they're called a partner?
That said "associate" is arguably vague.
"We confirm that this person worked for Apple, ending on [date]. By policy, we don't discuss any further details."
"We do not have records that this person worked for Apple."
It's very clearly implying they had a job with the title "associate".
If this has been an ongoing practice for a while and an agency is not aware of it, then it is a bad agency to work with.
Yeah I have a very different opinion of that situation.
It is not. It implies an entry level/unskilled/probationary position.
You would call a person who works tier 1 support an associate, or works the cash register in an Apple store, or a person whose job title reads "Software Engineer" and had been with the company for 2 months. You would not call a person whose job title reads "Software Engineer" and had been with the company for 18 months an associate.
If you've got a stack of applicants and one of them comes up with some bullshit like their previous employer claims their job title was Associate and they claim their actual job title was Software Engineer, that means I either have to do legwork to figure out what's actually happening, is this person lying about their experience etc, or just hire someone else. It's not a disqualifying characteristic, but if the resume says one thing and the background check says a different thing, that's a red flag. Sometimes the red flag is nothing, basically all of us have had a scumbag for an employer at various points in our careers, who's might to lie about us to future employers just because they're spiteful. But red flags have to be chased down and verified before you can hire someone with red flags on their resume.
Right now, in 2022, I would just hire them if they had a pulse, red flags or not. But when the next recession happens? And we've gone through three rounds of layoffs, and only now are positions opening up in onesies and twosies and there are 40 applicants? I'm just going to discard the 30 resumes with red flags. Among the 10 remaining resumes I'm gonna interview the 5 who went to the best schools and had the most experience.
But either way, two things can be bad at the same time
But yet if you call these services while the person is still employed, they absolutely will divulge titles.
There's no risk mitigation happening. It's just "you're no longer one of us, we don't give a shit".
Is that actually the case?
They're not obligated to, you're right. But it's not exactly endearing of a company that has any gratitude whatsoever to its employees. But then again, from a company that was more than happy to engage in multiple illegal acts to collude to avoid poaching, to collude to keep salaries artificially deflated, I'm not entirely surprised.
Also, those third parties don't have to take Apple's word. Equifax and Lexis-Nexis (named in the article) are selling a data product, which is undermined by Apple's bad behavior. Shouldn't these companies have an incentive to provide accurate data?
This is where it gets interesting. I looked up the products in question, and they are VERY careful to talk about streamlining workflows, and connecting you to previous employers without every making claims about the accuracy of the data provided by thos employers.
Equifax's "The Work Number can deliver an automated income and employment verification solution that streamlines the transfer of information between employers and verifier."[0] They do this "thanks to a powerful alliance partnerships with many of the top payroll and HCMs". They are clearly just sloshing data out of payroll systems into a proprietary database. You'd think they'd notice when a large employer overwrites everyone's title on their last paycheck, but they make no claims about quality control on this data.
The article specifically mentions Inverify, which is owned by Equifax. Their verification services page[2] also focuses on efficiency ("Throw it over the Fence"). They claim to "[gather] your electronic data and [upload] relevant information so you do not have to search for employee data from multiple sources." Note that there's nothing in there about quality control. I suspect Inverify exists to provide a services layer over the The Work Number data product.
LexisNexis doesn't make their offerings as obvious. I found this pdf for LexisNexis Screening Solutions[3]. They say "We have developed relationships with many employers and will make those difficult calls for you, thereby simplifying your job." One way they help make those difficult calls is that they "call and verify previous employment with each source." So that's a data quality claim, but they're still focused on just parroting whatever the upstream employer says.
You would expect that products like this would have rigorous, automated anomaly detection procedures in place. As an employer, I don't want to waste time figuring out why this otherwise great senior dev was an "associate" at Apple. I want my verification provider to, at minimum, tell me "heads up, Apple is a fickle and vindictive employer so you can't really trust this." Of course it would be even BETTER if they said "our professional assessment is they were a Level 4. We believe that because that's what the previous 200 paystubs and 4 W2 forms said before they screwed with the data after their departure."
If you're gonna build a terrifying data business, at least be good at it!
[0] https://workforce.equifax.com/resource/-/resource/employment...
[1] https://workforce.equifax.com/solutions/employment-verificat...
[2] https://inverify.net/our-services/verification-services.aspx
[3] https://www.lexisnexis.com/literature/pdfs/EXP_Previous_Empl...
If their information about me might be wrong they can charge me to keep an eye on it.
In general the number of data vendor products is inversely proportional to the quality of the data they can provide.
in other news, they definitely do not have any of the logical data quality checks, usually they rely on the client to do theor own checks
What is unethical though is the wholesale surveillance and monitoring without any kind of control by those who are being surveilled and monitored, regarding their "employment history" (not all that different than how slave owners would "horse trade" slaves). I realize that many will find that hyperbolic, but in essence it is the same thing going on, the force with the power is negotiating and conversing and managing their resources without those resources being aware, having any input, or being able to even object to it being done. Those resources that are treated like that are not just cattle that may have desirable traits, or slaves that have a stout back, they are humans … Human Resources.
I keep trying to get people to understand that the reality of the matter is that what we call salvery was never actually ended, it was simply pivoted because the ruling class realized there was a far more efficient, effective, lower cost, less hassle and wildly more profitable way of achieving the same exploration … just abstract the means and methods of control with money, regulations, incentives, etc. Why spend all day trying to force people to work against their will where you get marginal returns from a small set of human resources, when you can just construct a system where you can get major increases in returns from a/the majority of society.
It is not a coincidence that this evolution from industrial and agricultural slavery started shortly after the Civil War in the USA. Now we have whole global corporations run by like self-governing slave hives, including a very similar foreman/overseer structure that trickles down to the lowly digital field workers in the code factories, call centers, and cheerful retail stores.
as·so·ci·ate (n)
1. a partner or colleague in business or at work.
2. a person with limited or subordinate membership of an organization.
3. joined or connected with an organization or business.
- Source: Google search results fed by Oxford Languages
I suspect that this is really what Apple is doing; but that some accident of circumstance required them to provide a very generic title. Perhaps they can't confirm employment without some kind of title, and that title's now been twisted out of context?
FYI: The practice mildly makes sense. Many employment issues are highly subjective, so a large company might decide that saying anything about a former employee is a liability, so they'll only say the minimal possible facts: "Yes, X is a former employee from [date range.]" Or, "No, X never worked for us."
Anyway, this is not what Apple is doing. They are downgrading everyone by default, which is akin to providing false information about a former employee.
If you have never worked at a company that case employees "associates" this may feel foreign to you, but rest assured it's extremely common and not something to get your ego in a knot over.
There is zero truth to this statement. Perhaps job families can be matched (engineering vs sales, manager vs IC). Other than that, it’s impossible to equate. I’ve seen a VP of Engineering at a startup start as a junior engineer at a FAANG.
This is a fringe case.
In turn, there are widely available spreadsheets where you can find the equivalent levels across dozens of companies, most popular of which are FAANG.
Well if you totally ignore the concept of scale, sure. It sounds like your "VP of Engineering" at a startup was actually a junior engineer not doing anything you'd expect a VP to really do... like manage a complex hierarchy of departments, managers, and special projects.
Further, nobody is "bending over backwards" to defend anybody; they're writing their own take on what happened. You're asked by the guidelines to assume good faith in other commenters.
It’s the title change that seems weird and vindictive. It’s not like Apple has to report a title at all to external databases.
But the database field we’re taking about is Job Title. And Apple knows what it is; they populate that field with actual job titles for current employees, and they use such databases themselves to check their own applicants.
If your point is that “associate” is an overloaded term, acknowledged. But don’t expect me to believe Apple doesn’t know that. They use it in junior titles themselves.
If they don’t want to provide it for former employees they could blank the field or supply a value like “Not Provided” which would have been even more clear about what is going on.
To add another anecdote: I work for a non-FAANG big tech co, which also provides former employees the 1-800 number that a new employer can use to verify employment; they do not reveal tiles or salary. As a manager, I cannot provide a reference for former employees.
When you state "employee title: Associate", you are conveying[1] that the title "Associate" Is A Thing at Apple, and the former employee had that title. And if (as is the case here) it is the most unadorned title anyone can have at Apple, then their title was the most unadorned one. If that's not actually the case, that does seem like "lying about their level".
So I'd say there's a big difference between not answering about title, vs making something up and affirming the made-up thing was had.
[1] to any reasonable person until you explicitly clarify otherwise
It sounds to me like Apple is just another tech company that doesn't confirm titles, and that their generic word for "employee" is "associate". That is not a weird Apple thing; if you go out into the Fortune 500, you'll find a bunch of other companies that do the same thing. Contra this article, "associate" does not in fact mean "low-level employee".
Edit: I'm "posting too fast", and this seems like a trivial point, so, in advance of being able to make a new comment:
The relevant "point" here is not about what is or isn't SOP at any company, which I was never disputing.
I was making a point about how they should convey employee status and whether Apple(etc)'s practice counts as "lying about your level".
To summarize:
1) It's fine to have a policy of "never disclosing employee titles".
2) If you go that route, then you should simply not comment when asked about an employee title, and give "n/a" for a field requesting it.
3) Saying, "Employee title: Associate" is not doing that, because it's falsely asserting their holding of a title -- and that title's (false) reality -- that they do not hold.
If you don't dispute any of that, great! If you do, I'd love to hear that commentary, on which it would be orthogonal to bring up what is or isn't SOP at any company.
We all know that different companies work differently. How rare is what Apple does, and what harm does it cause? The article includes a tangible example of such harm. Can you share any insight that is specific to this practice? I know you’ve worked in the hiring space.
And you know what other word unambiguously means 'employee'? That wouldn't cause this sort of clamor? Yes, 'employee' is that word.
I'm an "associate" at the company I work for and I'm certainly not junior. I certainly don't take offense at considering myself as an associate.
In specific contexts, e.g. an associate vs. a partner at a law firm, it has a different meaning but it's also a very common term to refer to all employees at a company.
I think some of the blowback you and others are getting for saying 'associate is just employee' is because to many people, 'associate' does have a negative connotation compared to 'employee', and Apple has a history of being hostile to labour; Not to mention that if they really wanted to protect privacy, they could just do what most companies do -- confirm dates of employment, and possibly if they're re-hirable at Apple. Its not unfair to assume Apple isn't doing this out of the benevolence of their hearts.
I certainly understand that this context may be less familiar than the different use of "associate" at perhaps the more familiar VC firm or law firm, retail store, etc. But it's my educated guess that this former context is the one in which Apple is using associate.
Does Amazon call their SDEs and SREs associates as well? If not, then they're still setting up a pecking order.
(As an aside, I can accept calling your employees associates, or something cute like colleagues or outfitters, depending on the nature of the business. But Starbucks calling their employees partners rubs me the wrong way. That one does just seem like gaslighting.)
Most companies have one or more people titled as such, yet not all of them employ the Vice President of the USA.
I don't know how it works if you accept the NDA and get promoted within.
Every employer should be ready to resolve "discrepancies" that come back without any negative thoughts about the potential employee. If they can't or won't do that, I don't think you want to work for them.
A few years ago, I was involved in a spinoff and they decided that all the employees would need to go through a background check. Of the ~90 people, something like 10 people (>10%!!!) had weird stuff that turned out to be completely wrong. For example, one person was reported to be currently in prison 5 states over. Some others were "we can't verify this person ever worked for ABC Corp". We were ABC Corp.
Most of these background check companies, they'd say of course there are a lot of Mike Smiths around, but Patty Jones? No no, there has only ever been one Patty Jones in all of human history.
That was after their initial email to me:
"Hi, we're about to start your background check. Just want to confirm that this is the correct email address for you?
Are these also the correct details for you? [And proceeded to list Full SSN, address, DOB]."
Like, I'm really rather glad that this actual _was_ the correct email address. But in any case I was furious. On both counts.
In credit to my employer, once I reviewed these two things with them, they fired the background check company.
Having gone through this with several employers, the largest company doing this verification is HireRight. HireRight is BEYOND incompetent at every single level. They refuse documentation such as offer letters on company letterhead to prove a title. The only documentation they accept from applicants is highly sensitive tax documentation from the IRS, which of course does not contain titles but incidentally reveals compensation details they can hoover up into their database but is not relevant to the purpose they were hired by your future employer to do.
If you think credit reporting agencies in the US are Machiavellian and maliciously incompetent, wait until you deal with employment verification firms, they're worse and often the same corporate entities (as noted in the article, another large one is WorkNumber owned by Equifax). These entities put most of the work onto the candidate, display no competence or care for accuracy whatsoever, and generally deliver intentionally misleading or inaccurate results to your future employer. It's so pervasive, that my own complaints to my recruiter were heeded and understood because in their words "oh their reports are always wrong about employment history, we only pay attention to the criminal background check part."
So, in short, no you can't simply provide a valid offer letter showing the title you were hired with to prove that title or to prove a promotion.
This all occurred after I had accepted the job offer and took a long and stressful time.
Same situation for me, which is especially problematic because it's standard practice for offers or start dates of employment in the US to be contingent on the return of a clear background check within the first 30-90 days. Which means you might have already started onboarding to the new role and still be fighting with HireRight (has happened to me 3 times in ~18 years). More annoyingly, HireRight's own databases don't refer to previous points in time when you've corrected their errors, so each time starts from square one.
It seem my prior employers were providing information down to gross and net pay PER pay cycle, with details about my medical, dental and vision insurance coverage [!!]
This is from Equifax, the company that got hacked and lost PII, and they are getting extremely detailed information!
There’s a real skill in saying exactly zero while at the same time hitting a home run of $YEAR’s bullshit corporate talking points.
It's the 2022 form of "Your call is important to us, sit tight and someone will be with you shortly." It is a viable strategy straight out of the 2022 playbook because it works to "placate and wait" while the news cycle moves on to the next scandal-du-jour.
Unless apple signed a contract with another party that promises accurate and historical internal job title disclosure, this is the fault of the validation services who a promising something they’re not able to deliver.
It’s extends confidential internal data, without context and exposes the company to litigation risks otherwise avoided by a firm ‘no comment’ policy.
For employees at an officer or director level, their job titles are already disclosed via mandatory SEC and other required disclosures.
I wish all companies just submitted "Previously worked here" as your title, for all former employees, which would nullify the privacy intrusiveness of this data.
The problem is that Apple supplies the job title, but sometimes it is the incorrect value.
Reference: https://apecsec.org/steve-jobs-liver-transplant-controversy/
I don't think the parent comment intended it to be funny, is sounds like a tongue in cheek criticism of an ethically suspect problem.
Plus, the extra joke of framing his "exploitation of the organ system's rules" as "pentesting", since "well, he found ways that a rich person could jump the queue...".
My earlier comment on this kind of "insight framed as a joke" (interestingly enough, also in the context of Apple): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24506073
https://www.livescience.com/16551-steve-jobs-alternative-med...
HR employment verification is usually outsourced since businesses want to reduce costs. I'm surprised anyone from HR returns calls or emails when other company is asking for references or employment verification in any timely manner.
The background-check forms you sign are not for this, they're primarily for legal permission to check your credit history.
So basically, if your new employer checks your title before you leave Apple, you're fine?
This is a huge dick move by Apple.
The "monetize everything to the max" policy of encouraging developers to test their new pre-release M1 chip + OS and software for $500 and then after they return their DTK they offered a $200 store credit.
The pettiness of continuing to charge 30% fees in one way or the other when they have been ordered by the courts to open their restrictions.
The constant sabotage of everything related to repairing their products many times making their own stuff shittier.
And now the "Either you are a faceless Apple minion, or your existence is a mere footnote".
It's the Apple we all know and love.
Ignoring the fact you completely missed the point of the DTK, this is factually wrong. The store credit was $500.
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/05/apple-dtk-credit-for-de...
It was "upgraded" to $500 after much uproar.
We heard your feedback regarding the 200 USD appreciation credit mentioned in our last email. Our intention was to recognize the tremendous effort that you have put into creating amazing universal apps. By partnering with us early, you showed your commitment to our platform and a willingness to be trailblazers.
So instead of the 200 USD credit that expires in May, we are giving you a 500 USD Apple credit and extending the time you can use it to get a new M1 Mac through the end of the year.
This is from a year ago, Feb 6th 2021
So we are in agreement it was $500 that Apple ultimately offered? Great. Glad we cleared that up and what I said was correct.
> There's no way the janitors are Apple employees. Standard procedure at big companies is to hire contractors for janitorial and food services.
Maybe so, but retail clerks definitely are Apple employees, so the point stands.
Personally, the word "associate" by itself brings to mind Walmart store workers [1. If I didn't know about this practice of Apple's, and an applicant's job title came back as "associate," I would raise suspicions that they were trying to pass off a stint in Apple retail as something grander.
Correction: ...and an applicant's job title came back as "associate," it would raise suspicions...
> you were a senior
Also, there isn't senior at Apple and their roles are not a public API. They can change. If Apple says my role was "level 5" what does that mean to the new company?
Because people lie, constantly. And while most of time they they might not be, it happens often enough that companies pay people to background check applicants. It's not good, but it's seemingly necessary, or at least desired.
> Also, there isn't senior at Apple and their roles are not a public API. They can change. If Apple says my role was "level 5" what does that mean to the new company?
Dunno, but a hiring manager for a tech firm probably knows better than me or you. Either way, obfuscating your previous role isn't a good thing.
The new company interviewed me. They can decide if I'm qualified or not.
> The new company interviewed me. They can decide if I'm qualified or not.
And they may decide you're not qualified, because they thought you lied when you didn't. Lying is one of those things that's often an instant dealbreaker.
They very likely can do that, but if they think you're lying for some reason, that doesn't matter.
It's totally plausible that some shitty software engineers have trouble getting hired and may settle for other work in the interim. If they're unethical, then they may lie about that. One or two interviews may not detect a lot of issues someone like that may have.
Somehow I had never connected that with the famous tech company with an extreme narcissist at the center. But you're right, that pattern of retaliation against people who dare to leave fits perfectly here.
Most corporations try to do this in the long run; it’s arguably inherent in the concept of incorporation, which is etymologically and legally the creation of a new “person.”
Even if it starts with an iconic founder, in the long run the company itself must become the object of loyalty to survive. Comms, HR, and marketing teams spend tons of effort to create a corporate personality and culture. (Note the root of the word culture.) Apple famously set up their own “university” to develop and instill their culture.
Loyalty to the company, distrust of outsiders, personal adherence in a “mission”: these are not things specific to or invented by Apple. Although the specific vindictive tactic of hiding titles is one that I’ve not heard of before.
You've got me going through the ABCDEF in a new way: http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html
Ehh, I think this is a Chesteranlon's Razorfence situation. Never attribute to malice something for which you do not yet understand the purpose.
HR world generally is afraid to denigrate former employees for liability reasons, and many corporate HR departments have a policy of confirming only whether an employee worked for the company, and nothing else.
Choosing a vague term like "associate" (which simply means "employee," as compared to "partner" or some other term that suggests an ownership stake) aligns with that reasoning decently well. While it may not be ideal, and may not support truthful claims of relative seniority, it's a bit of a stretch to say that it was done with any malice.
EDIT: Apparently some people strongly disagree. If you disagree, might I ask what evidence you have of malice?
It’s trivial to verify someone’s position at Apple with a reference check.
Only if they left on good terms.
As an obvious example, if a POC experienced frequent racism at a company they might leave a company without having anyone they would want to use as a reference even though THEY weren't the problem.
Do you mean "Chesterton's Fence"? I get no hits for "Chesteranlon's Razorfence" or "Chesterton's Razorfence."
That is a pretty remarkable corruption of the term, though. Or are you trying to coin a term?
> HR world generally is afraid to denigrate former employees for liability reasons, and many corporate HR departments have a policy of confirming only whether an employee worked for the company, and nothing else.
> Choosing a vague term like "associate" (which simply means "employee," as compared to "partner" or some other term that suggests an ownership stake) aligns with that reasoning decently well.
Except that's not what "associate" does -- it's a job-title term associated with low rank. It would have been far more obvious to use "employee" if they wanted a vague term that simply meant employee or something like "title not provided" if they wanted to make it clear what they were doing.
It also sounds like they do load the correct title to this database while the employee is still employed at Apple (otherwise, what would they change when they leave), so it doesn't seem like they're mainly concerned about "confirming only whether an employee worked for the company." If they were, why not just give everyone a generic title in the DB from the start?
It's a merging of Chesterton's Fence and Hanlon's Razor
>> Or are you trying to coin a term?
> It's a merging of Chesterton's Fence and Hanlon's Razor
Given that's a neologism that was literally introduced here, it probably should have had bit more of an introduction. Infix compounds are really weird in English.
I was just answering the question you asked because I happened to see the context.
What if Apple went the other way, and artificially inflated the level? Every engineer is "Senior engineer level XIV". Or, they could be evil and tie the level entered to the conditions of leave. If you sign a bunch of non-competes and non-disclosures etc, you get marked 2 levels up in this db.
One of my employers used to let us pick our own titles. We couldn't say "CEO", of course, but if you'd like to be "Super staff engineer IV" or "Solutions Architect III" you could. They didn't care as long as you helped out and did a good job.
Some time ago, I listened to a podcast (might be NPR) that talked about an employee, who left a financial firm, couldn't find a new job. Every opportunity to which he applied, either rejected him with unconvincing reasons or ghosted him. Later he found out that his previous manager poisoned the well in some shady database to make sure his life outside that job will be miserable.
Pretty darn evil. It's even worse because if he sues them to correct the "mistake", then that also makes newer employers less likely to hire him ("he likes to litigate with his employers, and we don't want trouble"), unless they are actually reasonable and dive in to understand what exactly happened.
I can imagine there being some HR system that does this automatically as a default for employees that don't have a title at Apple anymore.
Hmm.
What if Tim leaves? Or has he signed a permanent contract? Is he afraid to leave?
When I pulled mine it said “SW Dev Eng 4”, curious to see if that’ll change to “Associate” after I quit… or if third parties track the entire title history, like they do track salary history.
Generally wherever you apply will make a leveling determination based on your interview and the skills you demonstrate there. Nobody I've seen relies on your past employers representation of your level when making a leveling decision.
Claiming an offer was rescinded because of a job title mismatch -- I've never heard of that. It's very likely the employer did some research while waiting for the reference check to come back. Being able to conclusively say why the employer rescinded the offer is just speculation.
HR is supposed to be "Human" Resources, not "We punched your ID number into a computer and it told us you're undesirable."
Or worse — companies that buy into systems that automatically screen applicants. If your company is so overwhelmed by incoming job applicants, then hire more HR people. Or maybe do what people have done for the last 500 years — "Sorry, but we're not hiring right now."
Automated resume screening systems are rarely correct, and while they may filter out a percentage of unqualified applicants, they also routinely filter out the best people for the job. That's why every job counselor tells you the best thing to do is to find a human being in the company to make contact with.
It's not universally true, but I've seen it enough, to believe that the name influences the way people think about it.
Of course, this becomes an issue when you don't have good rapport with your manager and don't have proof of employment saved.
Promotions and job transfers usually come with title change and/or offer emails with them as well.
In fact, I've always been prepared to say "no" to contacting previous employers, as it's just annoying. And as someone who has hired hundreds of people, I've never been called to verify someone's previous employment.
It may happen out there, but from my own experience, it feels like an edge case.
Sweet jesus how is that even legal?! And... why are companies outsourcing what used to be a core competence of an HR department?!
"You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day. 1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now" - in a movie that was released over 25 years ago, and our society has been sleepwalking further into the panopticon ever since.
We desperately need a US version of the GDPR, one that doesn't get neutered by all of these surveillance industries interested in preserving the status quo of their anti-human businesses. In fact I'd say the US should just wholesale adopt the EU GDPR verbatim, and let the courts figure out the details arising from different legal systems. That couldn't be any more complex than interpreting all of the loopholes the corporate Parties would end up adding to newly-drafted privacy legislation.
I think GDPR here in Europe really woke up the feeling that this kind of data shouldn't exist without explicit approval from the person which PII belongs to. This is beyond fucked up in my data privacy minded worldview.
Am I (a random internet guy) allowed to call the company you claim you currently work for on LinkedIn, and ask them whether you work there in such and such a position? Can I ask them how much they pay you?
Sure, I can ask, but can they answer? Is all or some of that really privileged information? There are two parties in your employment, and both own the information. Are you prohibited from telling others you work there or how much they pay you? If not, why would the employer be prohibited from telling others?
That being said, if the employers actually benefit (even in a collusive way) from sharing that information in such a manner, I'm not sure how to argue that they shouldn't be able to do that.
So this definitely could be read into several ways.
When you get out of FAANG, titles becomes even more irrelevant. What's a Programmer VI compared to a senior associate consultant?
I think this is part of the reason why we have the 'show me what you know' interviews. Degrees, Titles, past experience maybe get you in the door, but you still need to pass the tech interview for the role.
What’s official about those databases? Aren’t these just “best effort” results from those companies?
(I also think this kind of service should be opt-in for (former) employees, if not outright forbidden, but that’s another story)
I recently grabbed a copy of my work report from theworknumber.com (basically equifax) and noticed that for some employers my title was listed as associate.
Didn't think anything about it much at the time, but seeing this article sparked my memory.
How would that be standard?
Omission would be nice, especially across the board, but that's not what this is. They put me in a position where I had to prove I didn't lie.
If there's a law that employers cannot ask for your previous job title, that's great, but employers shouldn't be allowed to furnish fraudulent data either.