Apple Employees Are Sending Out Resumes Like Never Before | Hacker News Reader

Apple Employees Are Sending Out Resumes Like Never Before

businessinsider.com

34 pointsrainmaker2327 comments

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"Two Anonymous 'Venture Capitalists' We Talked to Say They've Noticed More Apple Resumes Than They Noticed Earlier"

Come back when you have some actual numbers, you terrible, terrible journalist.

Business Insider does not practice journalism. It is more like People Magazine for business.

I wouldn't mind if Business Insider links were blocked from HN.

Sounds like a good reason to flag the article.

Yea, it feels more like when you start noticing the same make of car after you buy one yourself

It really doesn't surprise me. When I was hiring folks from Apple I was always surprised to learn 1) just how poorly paid rank and file employees are there for a bigco, and 2) how poorly almost all of these stars were treated there. Almost 100% of them talked about being screamed at, jerked around, or otherwise abused in some way or another by management.

I think the poor pay and beat down management are coming home to roost.

Why would they put up with being screamed at? Is the glamor of working at Apple worth it?

They don't -- not in this economy and this point in the hiring cycle.

Being screamed at isn't so bad. Lets say you are working on the moon landing in 1968, it's a year to go and the management are screaming at you to fix the floating point processor so they can actually hit the right spot on the surface. Would you just go work for TI on a new calculator or just get on with it?

Personally, I'm not bothered by things like passionate management. I'm happy enough when they understand what I'm doing well enough to care about screaming.

> Personally, I'm not bothered by things like passionate management.

I've had "passionate management" before. For me, I've realized that that translates to "I'm not going to be comfortable pointing out that you're demonstrably wrong when you're all passionate in my face." It's not a leadership style I like at all.

I very much realize that this may be on me, which is why I qualified my translation.

If they understand the, and they are right, and they are thinking about the company's best long term interests, then why do they need to scream?

so you think apple is doing something comparable to the moon landing? i don't think so.

The answer to your question seems obvious, but only superficially. I've worked at a lot of tech companies of various sizes, and I've never been yelled at. I'm sure I'd rather be at a place where I did get yelled out every once and a while if we were creating great products compared to some of the rudderless places I've been where no one believed we were creating anything worthwhile.

But I did leave the rudderless companies, but it's rather hard to determine if the place you are interviewing will be fulfilling and successful before wasting a year or so there.

So if I were at a place where I was yelled at, yet they were creating highly successful products, I might just put up with the yelling. Maybe I have a high tolerance, I was in the Army and did go through bootcamp, or maybe success makes a lot of things more bearable and the alternative isn't that attractive.

IMO being yelled to create someone else's vision and being paid relatively poorly seems like a poor tradeoff.

In tech it is actually common, imho, to have respectful and well-paying work environments. And there's a lot of good product to work on, even if they don't have the cult following.

I'm sure the stock options at apple are far from the label "paid relatively poorly".

"And there's a lot of good product to work on"

It's hard to tell from the outside if the place you are going is a well functioning organization that will satisfy a long term career.

Stock price went from like 75 to 700 in like 4 years so yeah, for most of them, the screaming was worth it. My old roommate went from kid from poor family with debt who would have never considered owning a home to paying cash for a home. He was pretty unhappy but I imagine this kind of makes up for it.

Mostly it's people who play politics at large co get's the big bucks. The real stars leave to start their own company or consult.

  | Gruber says: "The consensus among the people I’ve spoken to
  | is that this is in no way a "rats leaving a sinking ship"
  | scenario, but rather the inevitable churn of talented
  | people capitalizing on the success of the company."

I guess the issue is whether or not the people that he's spoken to are biased against wanting to believe that the ship is sinking.

Also, if this is the 'inevitable churn,' then why is it even worth talking about? Why is Gruber stating that it's, "the single biggest problem that Apple faces?"

> I guess the issue is whether or not the people that he's spoken to are biased against wanting to believe that the ship is sinking.

And whether Gruber himself is biased against wanting to believe that the ship is sinking.

I can say from personal experience that Apple started losing people the moment they released the App Store but refused to allow employees to participate. They created an incredibly exciting platform for development and then locked their best people out of it. No wonder some of them left.

The problem is now magnified because today there is much more uncertainty in regards to Apple's future. Jobs is gone, Forstall is being moved out with no obvious successor, Google/Android is taking the lead, the stock price is stagnating, iOS is losing its edge, PC sales (including Apple's) are slowing ... it looks like it could be the beginning of another "beleaguered" era soon. Who would want to stick around for that?

That's a fair point. If Apple allowed their employees to publish on the App Store, do you think it would be fair to other developers that the same people working on the technology they use to make Apps have this exclusive insight to the direction and future of the technology?

You mean like all the developers competing with bundled apps?

That's a valid concern, however departing employees have been telling Apple this is an issue in their exit interviews pretty much since the day the App Store went live. After all this time they should have been able to come up with some level of compromise solution.

> Gruber says: "The consensus among the people I’ve spoken to is that this is in no way a "rats leaving a sinking ship" scenario, but rather the inevitable churn of talented people capitalizing on the success of the company."

In other words, no news here?

Welcome to the magical world of link bait, where "yeah it happens" and two mysterious sources who are probably totally legit, 4rz honestly totes legit are enough for DEATH OF APPLE-NETCRAFT CONFIRMS IT headlines to start circulating.

If it bleeds, it leads.

This is the type of "journalism" that instills fear into the market to manipulate Apple's stock price.

Already going the way of Microsoft...

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