Myths About Apple Design, From An Ex-Apple Designer
fastcodesign.com
fastcodesign.com
As a result of my efforts, I am more skilled, and consequently enjoy a more lucrative position than I otherwise would. If I were a mediocre developer I could earn half as much as I do, or less. My nights & weekends developing software for my employer are investments in myself.
No offense, but if they were investments in yourself I think you'd be either:
A) Moonlight for $$
B) Working on a startup idea you were thinking about [you are on HN after all]
The skill gain from doing stuff for your employer for $0, at least to me, doesn't seem equal to the return from things that my benefit me financially one day.
Also, not everyone has, or wants to execute on, startup ideas. Some people don't want to be founders. Some people don't want the stress, the responsibility, etc. I sure don't. I have a nice job where I can do experimental things with small/medium-sized infrastructure, I have a much higher budget than I would in a startup, I get a steady paycheque and vacation time, and a lot of awesome coworkers.
So all the stuff I've done at my job, like the parent post, is investment in my skills. The things I've built here, the technologies I've learned, the failed experiments, all of it contributes towards my professional skills much more effectively and more efficiently than doing it in my spare time, for a contract, or for a startup idea.
Society loses. Friends and family lose. Health is probably compromised. Other businesses lose from the employees not being able to spend their money as frequently.
Maybe I wouldn't be so critical of it if we in American had the same amount of days off as other first world countries.
Fundamentally, is 60+ hour weeks sustainable, even if you love your job? Many in HN might view burnout, or an unwillingness to work 60+/week, as a personal flaw. But there's also another camp that argues consistent overtime produces a poorer product in the end. Personally, I notice a dip once I've worked 50+ hours/week for a couple weeks. I come into work mentally tired & get far less done.
Sure, an easy approach to compensation is "how much of his time/life did he sacrifice to work?" It's also by far the most common. Additionally, the people who signal that they're working hard in through self-promotion tend to take home more bacon. I understand human beings are emotional creatures, but in the vacuum of commenting on how much people should be compensated for hours on the job in a white-collar brain-intensive task, I think there should be more nuance than "Pay = hours * rate".
For some people that is a form of motivation, and even a form of compensation. Doing graphic design at a PR agency for a cereal campaign, even if it pays more money and gives more vacation time, might be less attractive to people than a harder, more demanding job that confers the above benefits.
It's also important to look at the entire career. Busting her ass at Apple for 6 years might set up a young designer to get taken very seriously if she decides to move to another company, or start her own. That would be less true if she was a junior designer working hourly for Brauny paper towel company (or whatever).
No. Don't take a job under the premise that it has good experience and will set you up for a later higher paying job with another company. That's a a myth. Get better at negotiating your salary now.
You should never take the mindset to to defer your salary in exchange for experience. Get paid what you're worth.
I certainly would never tell someone to take a crappy job because of visibility, but if you're getting paid enough, then highly visible work is a 'nice to have'.
It's obviously not a myth that each job can help you get the next. Else why does anyone prepare a resume? Or do an internship?
Major? Can you give some examples where a line engineer at one of the big companies has personally done something through their work that has had a major impact on society? "Wow, you work at a cool place" is small talk and prestige, not something that has a societal impact; something that inherently changes the way people interact with and/or perceive each other.
If anything turns out to be Apple's downfall, it is embodied in this paragraph. In most companies, to beat your competitors, you first have to defeat the other corporate divisions. The presence of Steve Jobs probably prevented this and resulted in a significant part of Apple's competitive advantage. The key here is not Steve Jobs per se, but that a single individual could champion particular ideas and see them through to completion without opposition and interference.
Amazon currently enjoys something like this, I suspect.
Jobs also permitted silos; for example under Jobs, iOS and OS X were largely separate teams. Cook seems to have taken a major step toward dissolving those silos by dismissing Scott Forestall and consolidating all design under Ive and all software under Federighi.
Based on the recent iOS and OS X previews, it looks like Apple divisions are working very well with one another right now.
Jobs also permitted silos; for example under Jobs, iOS and OS X were largely separate teams.
Neither of those are counterexamples. While Jobs had different units compete, that competition was constructive in the sense of supplying multiple options which the leadership could then choose from. (Toyota also does this.) This is different from the passive-aggressive sabotage one often sees in big corporations.
Also, "silos" were used to foster new development. I suspect they were used to insulate groups from the passive-aggressive fratricide one sees in large corporations.
From Isaacson's book: he closely controlled all of his teams and pushed them to work as one cohesive and flexible company, with one profit-and-loss bottom line. “We don’t have ‘divisions’ with their own P&L,” said Tim Cook. “We run one P&L for the company.”
That framework breaks unless 100% is used.
I knew about the unagi. But salmon, too?