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Comment by diskzero | Hacker News Reader

Apple employee pre, during and post Steve. I was in a lot of meetings with VPs whose tasteless suggestions were shut down immediately with the usual Steve critiques attached.

My recollection is that Eddy Cue got the most critiques, Phil Schiller the least and the rest were in between. Eddy would push back and still get shut down.

When Steve left the last time, it was knives out between these guys with Scott Forstall taking a fall as Tim Cook got ultimatums from everyone including Jony. I imagine loud voices with bad taste are pushing Tim hard. Apple can be an investor darling but Tim has needed to consider an exit and find a strong successor that knows what made Apple great in other ways.

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> I was in a lot of meetings with VPs whose tasteless suggestions were shut down immediately with the usual Steve critiques attached.

Was it common for lower-level employees to take part in C-suite meetings and arguments?

Sounds like he’s been around awhile, might not be as lower-level as you think.

Well, I think it would be odd for an ex-VP to be posting on HN for us plebs.

From chummy nerd fora we arise, and to chummy nerd fora we shall return…

Apple was fairly flat under Steve and meetings could have a fair number of interested parties involved. I can recall numerous weekly UI meetings with several of the people listed above there. Also note that Jony, Eddy and others weren’t always high level. Steve handed out his harsh comments regardless of concern for your level. Steve was a micromanager and was involved in anything that the user came in contact with and more.

To directly address your question, the answer was yes in that if you developed a feature, a demo, or anything Steve wanted to see, you would end up in a forum with a bunch a various levels of employees.

Thinking of C suite meetings happening when Steve was around cracks me up. Steve was always on the move, making edicts, rejecting things, walking into offices, having lunch with people, etc. There was no Jira, Confluence, Agile or any of that. It was a fight to ship by an imposed date or die trying.

> Phil Schiller

Rings a bell.

>Tim Cook asserted his control over the company, putting his own personnel in place, and now his authority is absolute. Even those few others who remain from the Jobs era, such as “Apple Fellow” Phil Schiller, are overridden by Cook

https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2025/5/6.html by way of https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/05/23/apple-turnaround/

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