Only Apple Can Abolish the Job Application | Hacker News Reader

Only Apple Can Abolish the Job Application

loitery.substack.com

5 pointsmchannon4 comments

> Every technology company says it wants “rock stars.”

This might offend some people, but tech companies and managers do not want rock star programmers. If you're a "rock star" 0.25x programmer, then your job will always be lost to the boring 1x jobbers that apply for the position. Rock star hires constitute less than 5% of the workforce in the places I've worked at.

I know that Apple's got a reputation for "Think Different" and all that, but it really sounds like OP is upset at not getting their dream job, and now they're taking it out on Apple like it's their fault somehow. If you think Apple's hiring process is a catastrophic failure, you probably shouldn't mourn the lost opportunity to interact with the rest of their bureaucracy and management. A good "Never meet your heroes" lesson for the 21st century.

I’m literally arguing they should get rid of a big chunk of that bureaucracy, so why would I mourn missing out on it?

"Maybe Apple just doesn't want you" assumes, incorrectly, that Apple has enough information to know that. I'm not in their funnel for them to decide they don't want me. Apple has no clue.

That's what I'm saying - why get mad at Apple's hiring process if you disagree with their philosophy? A couple angry engineers aren't going to overrule an executive decision like a company's hiring process. You're not going to get leverage over Apple's management hierarchy, if you do change things then they can always switch it back.

Apple made trillions of dollars without cold-calling random professionals to fill their seats. From their perspective, hiring engineers through applications gives them a lot more leverage than going down a list and negotiating terms with each person they selected.

The whole job application/interview process is more of a legal/HR compliance thing, than a creative decision process. Apple gives their legal department just as much leeway as they get in any conglomerate, if not more, so it's not likely to become less bureaucratic any time soon.

If they could abolish cutting corners on displays, that would be great. I don't mind Apple doing things their own special way, but when everyone else copies them, it gets annoying, especially so in a market that doesn't have many options.

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