Secrets at Apple's Core [Entire Talk] | Hacker News Reader

Secrets at Apple's Core [Entire Talk]

ecorner.stanford.edu

36 pointsmindcrime12 comments

Pretty interesting talk, though he paints Apple in a glamorous way. However, in the Q&A he does address the real culture of Apple. Apple is a culture of work. You put in long hours, you don't get very flexible vacation, you don't really have a work-life balance, and if you work on a major product you'll be sent to China to suffer in a factory for 3 weeks every other month. I've heard the burnout rate is high and the average number of divorces amongst its employees who have stayed longer than 5 years is 3. Also, Apple isn't an angel abroad. They put their vendors in tough positions and exert their power of scale and cash where it can benefit them most.

What do you mean by "suffer in a factory"? FWIW, I worked for a Silicon Valley company that sent me to China on a regular basis to solve problems on the factory floor and/or in the engineering offices nearby - I'd spend a few weeks in China, then come home for a week or two, then go back again - and it was one of the most fascinating experiences of my career. There was no "suffering" at my factory so far as I could tell. The factory environment was generally optimized for getting work done and foreign visitors were pretty much immune to the few mild annoyances the local workers were subject to (such as having to go through security when exiting the factory floor - we had a badge that got us around that. And we had access to nicer bathrooms.)

Sorry, my comment wasn't very well formulated. I actually was trying to be slightly sarcastic and over-dramatic to make a point. The point being, Apple seems to demand quite a bit from its employees, such that they are required to make sacrifices other companies do not usually require. For me, flying 14 hours to be away from friends and family and not allowed to go anywhere but the factory and the hotel in which you stay seems like suffering. To others, that could quite possibly be the best experience of their lives. To each his own I guess.

Why do you believe an Apple employee wouldn't be allowed to go anywhere but the factory and the hotel? Not that there's necessarily a lot to do in the area, but are you saying they couldn't go out to lunch at a nearby hotpot restaurant? Or at least schedule their return so that there's a weekend to explore Hong Kong on the way back?

Me and my coworkers did a bunch of weekend excursions whenever we were in or passing through Hong Kong such as: hiking up to see the Big Buddha of Lantau Island, having dinner at Igor's (a monster-themed restaurant), seeing the local amusement park, finding a private Thai "dinner club", taking the ferry to Macau to play blackjack, seeing museums to get their take on the local history, or just wandering around to find food or souvenirs (the "Temple Street night market") or illegal software (the "Golden Arcade") or video games that hadn't come out in the US yet (Dance Dance Revolution was HUGE there in 1999)...

Also, I sometimes scheduled my trips to fly to Hong Kong with a stopover at Narita Airport so I could stay in Tokyo with a friend and take a few days of my vacation time there with my company having paid all my travel expenses.

If you like exploring bits of China and the surrounding area, having a business excuse to be going there a lot is awesome. Even if the neighborhood of the factory itself is a bit boring - and it is - the journey there and back can be fascinating. Especially if you like your coworkers - both the ones from your home company and the ones you meet at the factory - and have tried to learn a bit of the local languages. I even had fun interacting with the girls who were working on the line doing electronics assembly - I taught them some magic tricks and brought pictures I'd taken on prior trips and we tried to have interesting conversations despite the language and other cultural barriers.

How does that last statistic work? If I work there longer than 5 years, I'm likely to have 3 divorces in my lifetime?

Its not a fact, obviously. I was semi-joking. I'm just saying I've heard anecdotal evidence of people's marriages falling apart while working at Apple for long periods of time.

Sorry I didn't pick up on it. I thought maybe part of that sentence was missing.

The data doesn't prove a causal relationship in the direction you imply, or any direction at all, only a correlation. For exampke, it is possible that the kind of people that tend to choose to work at Apple are prone to marital problems because they obsess over their work and put it ahead of their non-work life.

I'm 20 minutes into it and enjoying it. Adam Lashinsky does have some interesting observations.

Yeah, I found a gem or two in there the first time I went through it. I didn't take notes though, so I'm planning to go back through again when I can focus on it (I was listening at work at the $dayjob first time around) and take some notes.

Regarding crapware preinstalled on computers:

"Apple doesn't insult it's customers in the first ten minutes with its product."

There is a reason it's called crapware.

When asked if Apple could been located elsewhere:

"Apple is headquarter-centric....maybe it could have been in Boston, but Steve's feet would get cold when he walked around."

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