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Comment by selmnoo | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate that Cook shares the personal story of encountering clansmen, challenging them (at such a young age), but man there are some serious stretches of truths in the rest of the video. At 4:12 he says he found Apple and Steve Jobs to believe advancing humanity through the equality of all its employees. Is he serious? Not even any sign of cognitive dissonance while he says it? He was the COO, he had to have known something about the terrible things that were going on. It wasn't over nothing that nytimes pondered the question that if Jobs were alive today, whether he would be in jail or not ( http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/business/steve-jobs-a-geni... ).

As a tech person I'm excited and impressed by Apple products, but let's not forget the serious wrongs they have done and continue to do. I personally choose to vote with my dollars and stay away from Apple for this and other reasons.

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> At 4:12 he says he found Apple and Steve Jobs to believe advancing humanity through the equality of all its employees.

Yes, it's clear revisionism.

For example, Jobs didn't believe in donating to charities. The first thing he did when he rejoined Apple after the NeXt debacle is to cancel all charity donations. After his death, restoring charities was one of the first things that Tim Cook did.

There's also ample evidence that Apple treated its employees very poorly, especially compared to the other Silicon Valley companies (for example, Jobs refused for years to provide commuting shuttles to its employees despite heavy complaints and internal petitions).

There is a reason why Apple has never been even in the top 100 companies to work for.

> Jobs refused for years to provide commuting shuttles to its employees despite heavy complaints and internal petitions

What could be the reason behind Jobs refusal for this facility?

Jobs didn't believe in coddling employees. For him, the chance to work on amazing products (or in support of those products) with amazing people was ample enough reward.

Apple pays well.

Shuttles on the other hand, are a controversial elitist perk.

> Apple pays well.

A company requires more than 'pays well' to be a great company to work for, if that's what you're suggesting.

> At 4:12 he says he found Apple and Steve Jobs to believe advancing humanity through the equality of all its employees.

Well, your comment doesn't seem to contradict that point, to be fair.

- Donation policy doesn't relate to employee equality.

- Shuttles: Jobs himself didn't use a shuttle. Employee equality checks out.

You can treat people equally without treating them well. Yes they may have been harmed by the no poaching agreements but if gay, straight, black, brown and white were otherwise treated well and equally that is something that I could easily imagine someone could feel proud of.

The crimes in the listed article don't seem that terrible, the exceptional thing about them compared to other companies seems to be the direct CEO involvement and brazen lack of subtlety and subterfuge with which they were done. I'm not saying that these actions were right or that they shouldn't be punished but if you feel that way about Apple I wonder what your thoughts are about Samsung.

Out of interest what tech companies do meet your ethical requirements?

The no poaching agreement went all the way up to the top at Google as well. In fact Google even fired a recruiter for trying to hire someone from Apple, yet they seem to get a free pass in these discussions for some reason.

It's the same effect as the Chinese factory workers conditions all over again. Forget that workers at the Microsoft and Samsung factories have worse conditions and lower pay, the story is all about Apple, as always.

I mean didn't the no poaching agreement come from Apple?

It came from multiple companies collaborating to create it.

By definition, you need more than one entity to agree.

You need more than one entity to agree. You need one entity to suggest it.

I'm sure you must have a really good reason for so heavily implying that it was apple. Go on. Enlighten us. What makes you so certain?

Apple paints itself in a different light than Microsoft or Samsung, which is one of the reasons that people focus on their flaws more than those of MS or Samsung...

Oh, of course. It's okay to kill migrant workers, as long as I don't create pretty products. Apple is like any other company, it doesn't matter how they paint themselves. What matters is the peoples lives that are being ruined.

> Oh, of course. It's okay to kill migrant workers, as long as I don't create pretty products.

Comments like this are not conducive to anything other than trolling or ranting. It might leave you feeling better/good about yourself, but it doesn't help to change the world around you in any meaningful or at least positive way.

I in no way claimed that it was 'ok to kill migrant workers.' I offered an explanation for why people focus on Apple more than other companies. When someone (Apple) paints themselves as 'hip' and 'progressive' (via marketing), people will fall over themselves to point out hypocrisy when they find it. It's just the way that people work.

I don't believe Apple has any migrant workers. Do you mean Foxcon?

What light is that?

In fact Google even fired a recruiter for trying to hire someone from Apple

Get your facts straight: that particular recruiter went to a top VP at Apple, offered them the COO position at Google which didn't exist. Once Google CEO learned of that, yes, they fired that super-pro-active recruiter. This is an instance of a mad recruiter who'll promise the moon to get someone interested in a bogus position. Firing sounds like a reasonable answer to such behavior.

EDIT: I got Apple and eBay confused, as pointed out by comments below. The Apple firing did happen as well, in the now infamous "smiley email".

Where did you get that information?

The original report on that story says “a Recruiter for the ‘Google.com Engineering’ team formerly known as the ‘Site Reliability Engineering’ team” nothing about COO or any other exec position, just engineering. — http://pando.com/2014/03/25/newly-unsealed-documents-show-st...

1) the incident you are referring to was between Google and Ebay. Apple wasn't involved at all. http://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-...

2) The incident involving Google and Apple was between a recruiter and an engineer at Apple. Not some VP, executive, etc. http://pando.com/2014/03/25/newly-unsealed-documents-show-st...

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