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Comment by tinalumfoil | Hacker News Reader

If Apple considers level 1 and 5 to both be associates and doesn’t share more than that that’s… fine?

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.

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Future employers will ask your level and if Apple tells them something different they're going to think you're lying. I can see it being problematic when applying to Government or enterprise roles. They will do their due diligence and might rescind an offer if they find a discrepancy.

My external title (which is also what's on my resume) has generally not corresponded to my official HR title--which I might not even know off the top of my head. There's this weird fixation on specific levels associated with technical roles at the big tech companies which mostly doesn't exist anywhere else outside of the very highest levels.

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.

Titles are important for pay reasons, as they correspond to pay bands. People that say titles don't matter are probably already making outsized compensation and don't find it important because their resume speaks for itself.

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 wouldn't dispute your point that titles are important, but would ask, should they be? It doesn't seem that they really mean much at a lot of places, or are sometimes even given out in place of compensation. One anecdote I can think of is my company hired a front end developer right out of a bootcamp. After a few months he went on to a job at a large sports apparel manufacturer with the title of Senior Engineer. He was competent and a sharp guy, but come on, Senior with less than a years worth of professional experience.

I’ve been investigated by federal and state governments nine times (welcome to contracting) since leaving Apple, up to and including a full SSBI, and have never heard a word about a discrepancy. Ever. Public sector, private sector, HireRight, nobody has ever flagged it, and I know what that looks like because others have been. HireRight in particular is sensitive to job level or title differences in what you report as part of their investigation, and again, it’s never remotely been an issue.

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 to the federal or state government etc doing background checks is quite different than sharing incorrect information to private systems.

I specifically mentioned the private sector twice. I go back and forth, and I only started off with government because it was contextual where I was replying. It has never happened to me in either context and I left Apple quite acrimoniously.

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).

> I suspect it means their lawyer told them they don’t have a case

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.

That’s a better take than mine. Good read.

I can assure you many lawyers have told me I do have a case.

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.

One can debate whether companies in general should use "associate" to refer to all their employees given that it has a specific meaning in some contexts, e.g. Big Law. Nonetheless, many companies do so. (Probably because employee has some specific legal meaning.) So it's not lying to basically say they worked here. I expect that many companies do this and it seems entirely appropriate.

If they always said Associate then that might be perfectly fine. Changing periods roles in their last pay period isn’t simply referring to everyone as an employee.

If you get your InVerify or Work Number report, and it does not say associate, you would be an anomaly. InVerify told me it's really obnoxious because they have to keep a special process in place for Apple employees to get their actual job titles. The problem, of course, is that The Work Number, does not do this, which is who Sterling is partnered with instead of InVerify.

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.

what was you investigated for?

> Future employers will ask your level and if Apple tells them something different they're going to think you're lying.

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.

>It's clear that "associate" means "they worked here but we won't tell you what as, ha ha"

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?

They're submitting this data to Lexis-Nexis. It's not about employers calling Apple to verify the info. Lexis-Nexis most likely requires a title and Apple is changing it after people leave.

That exact allegation, that an offer was rescinded, is the subject of a lawsuit mentioned prominently in the article.

The problem is that some employers DON'T understand that is what's going on and come to the conclusion that you're lying.

I'm really curious why employers care at all about your past employment. To me it always seem just a an advertisement if that.

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.

> I'm really why employers care at all about your past employment

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.

I cannot wait to check back in with you when you're trying to get a new job and negotiating salary.

> 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"

> 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.

> 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."

You may not have direct communication with the decision maker in such situations. The company that does the checks will just mark the exception and push to recruiter. Then depending on organisation a hiring manager may be making the final decision without you even knowing there is a variance. So there will be times when you can point no one to the article.

If your potential employer is fickle about such idiosyncrasies, then that's their shortcoming, not Apple's.

Maybe, but my experience working mostly at smaller companies is that nobody really cares. If you say you’re a level X they’ll say, “okay prove it. Demonstrate through your accomplishments and knowledge you’re a level X” not “Prove it. Show us your documentation, citizen.”

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.

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.

> in some states potential employers aren't allowed to ask.

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]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29834753

That's not public.

It's essentially public for any serious employer doing background checks or verification.

> 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.

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.

> I cannot wait to check back in with you when you're trying to get a new job and negotiating salary.

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.

People do manage to do so. In fact I work with folks to help them find the right words for this situation and others.

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.

That's not a new trend.

The fact that previous salary has anything to do with future salary comes from the same swamp of misinformation like "it's illegal to discuss your salary with your peers."

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.

In my 4 negotiation experiences, my results when not offering a competing/previous salary have always been better than when a company tries to match a competitor. When a company tries to match, they want to offer the bare minimum over the competition (which often is a minimal increase if the competition is your current company). When I name my own salary companies offer me what I want to be paid.

I work for a company with hidden internal levels and the only title is “Software Engineer”. It works fine.

Associate is just another word for employee. I don’t see why Apple should be contributing data to these shady databases of prior salaries and levels.

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.

Apple doesn’t consider them to be associates though, that’s the point. Their job titles at Apple AND in the databases are accurate up until they leave the company and only then is their title demoted to Associate.

I can see a weird sort of logic to Apple. Why would they share their judgement about the level of an ex-employee with a potential rival company (rival in case of talent perhaps also product)? Let the employee say "I was Level 5 @ Apple" and have the hiring company verify that the person is at whatever level that implies. Why should Apple allow its rivals piggyback on its own levelling system?

Undermining everyone who leaves is cult leadership behavior.

Counterpoint: accurately ascertaining an engineer's capability is their secret sauce, why should they be obliged to share that information with anyone?

If that were really the goal then they would never publish the information in the first place. Instead they are apparently scrubbing it _after_ they leave. That's not preventing another company from using the data when hiring you away, that's being petty and erasing you from their history for the most part.

Who's publishing it? Apple is not sending out a list of who's at which level. You need to bring evidence if you're claiming otherwise. Products like Work Number are based on inference or direct observation of these titles through payroll integrations or other exhaust.

Read the article. This is about Apple submitting this data to private companies like Lexis-Nexis and then changing it when employees leave.

You are mistaken: Apple is not submitting that data, that's not how these products work. These data products are collected via scraping, other software integrations (e.g. payroll), or sometimes calling for employment verification, not from first party submissions. An accurate org chart of a company is valuable private knowledge, no company is just exporting it so that anyone with a few thousand dollars can get a copy.

Much better said than in my parent comment, cheers!

correct, and this practice is sickeningly widespread.

Sickeningly widespread, brazen, and shameless. Eg https://a16z.com/2016/06/23/options-timing/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...

> why should a future employer get to know how much I make?

Wait until you find out that credit agencies already has this info separately.

It was recently here on HN. Look for “work number”.

> If I want my employer to know what number Apple assigned me, I’ll tell them.

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.

> if you're not a manager I might consider that an associate.

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.

I don’t know about Apple but at the other FAANGs level is a made up thing that sorta correlates to comp and experience. You can have inexperienced people at a principal or staff level and highly experienced people at a lower level. Depending on your region someone in NYC at a lower level might be bringing more comp than someone in a rural area at a higher level. It all comes down to what you can negotiate, what role you’re applying to, and how experienced the interviewer(s) think you are.

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