> Ehh, I think this is a Chesteranlon's Razorfence situation. Never attribute to malice something for which you do not yet understand the purpose.
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?