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Comment by aschobel | Hacker News Reader

I've been working at Apple for almost 12 years. While secrecy is indeed paramount, once a tool is internally blessed, we collaborate normally using it. Keynote collaboration is actually pretty standard nowadays.

Opinions are my own and do not reflect those of my employer.

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Not to mention that blanket statements about Apple are absurd. I was a developer there for a decade, and every group was different.

I love reading articles that purport to tell the public how things at Apple work. They're almost always laughably full of shit.

Didn't the article say some floors require keys for different offices and sometimes filing cabinets.

That implies every floor is different which matches what you are saying.

Most of the stories that have come out felt like they were the image Apple wanted to give. It started with Apple going after missing iphone that was left at a bar. We've heard those working on latest design for the next iphone were sequestered away from the rest of the company. I've always thought it was marketing spin and I'm glad we have an ex-apple employee confirming this. Back in the 'Lisa' days Apple did split and silo divisions, Apple did closely guard new iPhone designs with very few leaks happening but the rest of the mythology is more marketing.

I think you are drawing the wrong conclusions here. I have never worked at Apple, but know many people that have. Every team is different but the overarching theme is that they are very secretive internally, especially around hardware. They are so secretive that someone I know was working on a project that their own manager wasn’t allowed to know about.

Was it like a temporary assignment to another team? Did the manager at least know what team that was? Or have any idea when the employee is going to return full-time to the tasks of their primary team?

Apple uses functional organizational structure. Every product needs a cooperation of all functions to produce results. So engineer on os team working on drivers could be working on driver for the new hw part, but other team members including their manager are not necessarily disclosed on that hw.

Anecdotally, the two times in my career I have had a project like that, apple was the customer.

Anything Apple gets attention. But any large organization does various forms of segmentation. Many of these stories are “true”, but also bullshit.

I worked for a company that did some work for the federal government. Boring stuff. Their compliance rules essentially required that we firewall the folks with operational access to their data from the rest of the company. We included the physical offices in that to avoid certain expenses and controls companywide.

> Not to mention that blanket statements about Apple are absurd

It isn't absurd as what GP mentions was imported into Amazon by Dave Limp, a former Apple C-suite. It was a terrible culture shock for most of the ICs in my team being reorg'd reporting in to Limp, after Steve Kessel (of Kindle fame), the previous leader, went on a sabbatical.

What do you risk by not giving that disclaimer?

The company claiming something you said, even out of context, could be interpreted as coming from the company. If you choose to disclose you work for a company, you become a spokesperson for that company unless you disclaim those words (even then, there are other considerations to make regardless of whose opinion is being expressed, because you linked yourself to the company.).

By putting that, they decrease the likelihood of reprocussion in the workplace for things said outside of the workplace.

You can still get in hot water for anything you say that ties back to you or the company regardless if you disclose who your employer is.

This is the grey-area that corporations typically carve out in a social-media policy so that employees can engage in discussions around their employer without being on behalf of their employer.

It's still a perilous position to put yourself in as an employee. Innocent and innocuous things can always be misunderstood or misinterpreted.

What happens when you use that disclaimer and are self-employed though?

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