My Experience at Apple
ex-apple-engineer.medium.com
ex-apple-engineer.medium.com
Unlike others, I actually find this story fairly believable.
When I first joined Apple, straight out of college - a good program, top three in the country - I was abused similarly. I joined a team that was on a project behind schedule.
Our manager was a brusque, no-nonsense sort of dude. But he clearly had anger problems. On the team were 2 senior engineers, me, and a junior engineer that had just completed his internship and was on a work Visa.
As the project got closer to the deadline, and the scope increased, the manager got agitated. In our team meetings, he would start yelling at us. People down the hallways would stare at us with those "looks." In our 1:1s he told us we might not have a job if our product doesn't ship on time (we were competing with another internal team to beat them to the punch.)
The two senior engineers decided they'd had enough and quit the team. The manager told us to work overtime (no overtime pay, but we had to for fear of our job). He promised us that if we did it that we would get a month of vacation on him, and that he could secure it for us.
The product released. After countless nights of overtime we did it. Our manager left, our guarantee of a month of vacation evaporated, and for the next three months, us two junior engineers were left on 24/7 primary/secondary on-call for a critical service. It was a nightmare. Calls at 3 AM, 6 AM, on weekends.
Our manager got a promotion and is fairly high up at Apple now.
Horrible experience. I left for a new company that pays me nearly double.
- Despite the big release and herculean efforts, both of us were paid a fraction of our target bonus. This was the day I decided to move jobs.
- I eventually grew some balls and told Apple to (a) pay me 2.5x during overtime (b) hire SREs for this critical service, or (c) go fuck themselves. They chose (c), which worked alright because our service was pretty stable.
- The primary lesson I learnt is that it doesn't matter if you work hard. Nobody notices, and even if they do you will likely not get anything out of it. Do your job, but don't kill yourself over it. Work-life balance is king.
- Only my first manager at Apple was an asshole. My last manager was a kind and genial person.
In the end the team was meet with a hostile takeover; everyone was merged into another team working on something similar with new management. Meet the new boss same as the old boss. A good number of people ended up leaving the company shortly after that.
One more thing, you can also include me as another data point for getting pay doubled after leaving Apple.
It’s a tough spot to be. Do you roll over and do the job your being yelled at to do even though you know any concessions are BS? Or like the senior folks, do you walk? It’s a really hard choice.
Does Apple not have manager feedback mechanisms?
I really hope you will go public about this experience and share it, Apple aren’t the “virtuous” company as they pretend to be.
Another funny thing I remember from that experience is that they gave new hires t-shirt which says "Journey is the reward". So it's not "Money is the reward" but some mythical "journey". Apple is so full of shit.
I doubt he will care, reflected at how he manages PR when accused of international labor abuses.
You can imagine a company of that size has a huge number of teams, some where everything is just dandy, some with terrible issues like yours and the author's.
But is there something corporate-wide about Apple that makes you think what you went through was common, or the opposite (ie that you were unlucky)?
You can ask the same about all the large techs.
That sounds like behavior I've seen in banks - more the "competing with other teams" than straight job threats.
It's baffling. If I'm a company, the idea of having more than one team doing the same thing in order to try to beat the other down strikes me as not just counter-productive, but expensive and evidence of a broken hierarchy and culture.
In fact, I would wager that not a single VP or higher at any major tech co isn’t a self-serving, backstabbing asshole. You simply don’t get into those types of positions on merit alone. You need to play the game.
That type of environment, where it’s almost impossible to do good work because you constantly need to be watching your own back is so unappealing to me that I can’t fathom why anyone with self worth would work at a FAANG. Perhaps it’s because they don’t know yet, but Blind exists, and it’s more horror stories than not.
Not having to deal with office politics and deranged managers is worth a hell of a pay cut imo.
One problem was that he worked with a lot of H1-B coworkers. So management would push, and they feared for their ability to stay in the country, and when he got there, people would just just suck it up. His first day, calls at 1am 2am 3am. He left.
So a year later they cajoled and talked him into another job. He was given assurances and when he got there, basically the same culture slapped him in the face again. sigh.
What this intentional? I worked at a company that similarly had three projects that were "competing" with each other, unofficially. It was more like three different teams working on a spellchecker, all with different upper engineering management VPs or directors vying for more influence in the organization. Many other teams standing by were not choosing what project to integrate with because we didn't know which would be completed first (or if they made a choice, it was because VP / director told them they had to).
In any case, it seemed silly, and worse, it revealed a lack of vision or leadership in upper management to just choose one of these projects instead of having multiple people working on the same thing, which would inevitably lead to two projects being canned and some number of engineers feeling demoralized and quitting.
This is what Microsoft did, and later admitted it was bad for the products and users and teams.
I hope Tim Cook sees this and takes swift action to make things right with you, hold others accountable, and ensure processes are changed to prevent this from ever recurring.
If Apple refuse to take actions, I will interview with major media outlets describing the experience in more details and I will release a list of all individuals involved from senior management to the HR director and all the evidence as public record.
And let this be a reminder to everyone else that HR isn't there to help you - it's there to help the company.
In this kind of environment it almost feels like one needs to record everything that's happening in order to defend themselves. Cops use cameras, maybe it's time for employees to start wearing them too. Maybe.
I found this out, because at the company at which I worked, managers kept making verbal commitments, then gaslighting me about them. I could never get them to commit in writing, and my own "reflection" emails (the standard advice about this) were worthless. I considered walking around with a little digital recorder in my pocket.
But many states have explicit laws against surreptitious audio recording. I suspect that comes from politicians being caught with wires (yeah, I'm a cynic).
That's why, if you get a surveillance camera that also records audio, they will usually have a card in there that tells you to post notices if you switch on the audio recorder.
To wit, reading part 1, the first paragraph boils down to "my manager was on vacation for my start date. I was provided with an onboarding buddy, who warned me that Apple is trigger happy firing folks." Para 2: manager made a likely inappropriate joke about last name. para 3: not really relevant? para 4: project was raw. para 5: onboarding buddy was not super helpful with onboarding. It may well have been the case that onboarding buddy was not an expert on the project, or that OP was hired because of his or her specific expertise on this project. etc.
For better or worse, I don't think going public with this story is going to be viewed as anything but a he said / she said mess. None of which means I think Apple treated him or her well, or that the team wasn't a mess, or anything else.
It may well, however, come up when googling the author's name for quite a long time. That's an additional factor to think through. It may be the best outcome for the author is to leave this behind, seek some therapy to help move on, and get a job at a company that doesn't treat him or her like this.
Copied text: https://pastebin.com/Db3aAmdb Google Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wKj2VsK...
The way this post structured now, beginning with fairly unspecific complaints about the hiring process, who invited whom to lunch, etc. makes the author come across as a young high-drama individual even though it ramps up to more serious matters.
Remember you only have a couple of paragraphs to set the hook and get the reader on your side in a piece like this. Not even your SO or mom want to read the full wall of text about how you were mistreated, let alone internet strangers.
The world is cruel. And you have people keep telling you to be positive and not be cynical when you are young. Except when you step into the society, it was a culture shock and the exact opposite happens. And Apple is possibly the worst culture shock on its kind.
That is not saying Apple isn't wrong. But cracks are starting to appear everywhere. Although it may take another 10 years before those cracks becomes large enough to be vulnerable.
* Retail management in my store ruled by fear. I heard from other stores across the US this was the same as well. * Promotions were handed out to those who kissed ass the hardest. Even if they were unqualified or cheated on promotion exams, if they brown nosed enough they got promoted. * The goal for every retail employee was to eventually make it to Cupertino and work for the corporate side of things. Either Genius support or logistics in Elk Grove. * Those who I knew who made it to Cupertino shared similar experience to the author’s post.
Apple comes off as a happy family friendly company, when in reality behind the scenes it’s a rule by fear culture.
Steve Jobs actually interacted with retail underlings?!
Just like any other company.
I was a manager for 25 years, at a renowned corporation, that wasn’t fun, but didn’t have too much of this kind of thing.
When I became a manager, my personal vow was to “be the manager I always wanted.”
Contrary to popular mythology, this was not “Become a doormat.” As anyone that worked for me can tell you, I could be quite firm.
But that was the exception; not the rule.
Kindness and empathy pay huge dividends, as a manager —as long as they are “for real.” In my experience, artificial empathy gets detected quite quickly, by the types of folks we manage (smart ones).
But this should not be considered just an “Apple” problem. It happens everywhere, and, unlike in the movies, where the villain always gets their comeuppance, the perpetrators often thrive, establishing ugly corporate environments.
Sadly, their bosses are often quite aware of how bad they are, but they “get results,” and results are the bottom line.
Maybe I'm just extremely lucky but I've never worked with anyone who would put in the effort for this sort of thing, even if they really disliked the person. And some of it just makes no sense - an implied murder/suicide threat, in the notes section in a hidden slide in a slideshow?
Also the formatting being a long screed with random bolding doesn't help, although that could well be a non-native speaker not realising how this appears to natives.
I'm obviously not qualified to diagnose anyone, especially from reading a single blog post. But have any of the other commenters stopped and considered whether it rings true that her coworker shouted "Die!" at her on her way to the bathroom? Or does that sound more like something that someone with, say, paranoid schizophrenia would say?
- fully random bolding
- long, rambling, not entirely coherent (understandable given the subject matter, of course. however, the author also has a PHD?)
- inconsistent naming, e.g. iBuddy
- broad conclusion that doesn't fully match the content
- a nondescript screenshot which doesn't implicate anybody
- separated into 5 segments ("parts"), although the segments aren't narratively meaningful
- a huge list of accusations (of varying degrees of believably) interwoven as though they were more related textually rather than contextually
I hope it's not GPT-3, and that if this is true the victim gets their due justice, but it's worth consideration.
I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of behaviour is endemic in organisations that use a stack ranking system [0], as Microsoft did in the past.
P.S.: I am not implying Apple uses stack ranking.
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What exactly should we say? "Hey Tim, this unnamed ex-employee, working on an unnamed and extremely vaguely characterized project in an unnamed organization, is accusing unnamed co-workers, managers, and HR-representatives of perpetrating truly appalling abuses on her. You should look into this at once!" ?
It's a difficult situation for the original author; I understand their desire to remain anonymous for their protection, and I understand their wish to have their allegations investigated, but I don't see a good way to reconcile these two goals, and especially not a good way to recruit allies for the second goal.
Not to get political but this is one reason that employment and healthcare shouldn't be so inextricably linked.
Toxic survival politics at a big tech company are a triple black diamond ski slope and if you are just learning to ski, you will get murdered by making a single mistake.
Knowing what I know now, human beings can behave in shockingly awful ways and politics can become extremely distorted in these environments.
The only way to survive a situation like this is to not react emotionally and to take an extremely neutral and objective approach. Do not become a threat or a problem, keep your opinions to yourself, carefully observe the Personalities and structure and understand who they are and why they are acting this way.
Do not engage in gossip or any negativity. Do not complain or criticize or raise questions.
You do not know the pressures, history or forces causing the behavior of your management and if you become the problem you are cooked.
I experienced a toxic situation myself recently, it caused me to do a lot of reading and research.
My peers who remained positive and optimistic and polite and non threatening or competitive survived the environment fine. They made a mental decision to be positive.
If you find yourself in this persons situation you had better keep your mouth shut until you can find a new place to go or you will get killed off by your peers and your management.
Once you have some experience, it's really nice to know you can get another job, what a good job looks like, have a green card, and have enough money saved up to be able to get out of a bad situation.
I've also worked in very toxic environments but nowadays I'm not surprised by anything anymore. People ask for uncomfortable/impossible accomplishments? Just explain in a very objective way what needs to be done, where the projects is at and how much effort it is normally. Also I highly encourage people to study the Jira boards (or whatever tool you use), chances are it's full of non-sense but also might contain hard facts how long tasks really take by other more established team members. This will make you confident on what the real metrics are and see what is a nonsense request and what not.
When people say slightly insulting things it's also best to not be emotional, say nothing or if you feel creative to respond with a respectful but tough response. In any case, it's normal to switch every 2 years and in larger shops there are enough unexpected but safe opportunities to tell about this nonsense. (E.g. when quitting)
Also I strongly agree with not speaking to HR/managers, it usually just gets worse (=stressful) the more you do it.
Any suggested books/readings which helped you gain more knowledge about toxic survival politics ?
I've seen managers ride out perpetually failing projects that haven't made meaningful progress in years, team 'decisions' that are reliably and demonstrably bad, services that cost a fortune to run and have a slew of problems and unhappy customers, and rock-bottom scores in anonymous surveys. None of this matters. Essentially your job as a manager is to take credit, dodge accountability, and expand your empire(headcount) as to maneuver yourself towards the better high-visibility projects. Just like politicians, unless they're overtly bad(and even then) it's difficult to separate them from the sprawling cybernetic organism so you just kind of shrug. Maybe a team's success is because of the manager, maybe it is in spite of them or vice versa - no way to know.
It's unfortunate that workplace abuse is so easy to do and hard to fix. She called their bluff when they told her they could easily replace her, after she spoke up about the treatment. They were shocked that she would actually leave. I was so proud of her.
A bummer about Apple as well is that because it is such a popular company, largely due to its well-regarded and often exciting and innovative products, there are always lots of people lined up ready to take your place. As a result, they can get away with paying in prestige (rather than a fair market wage) and demanding excessive (and anti-productive) time commitments.
Perhaps it's changed recently, but the myth of dual career ladders has been a major problem at many companies; basically to increase your salary it's almost mandatory to go into management, or to leave for another company. HR and management will point to highly paid individual contributors, but it's largely a pyramid with very few people at the upper ranks, and they do their best to hide and obfuscate the pay scale.
Many tech companies also love college hires because they usually lack the ability to negotiate pay, have few outside responsibilities such as children or a spouse, and often lack a concept of work-life balance. After they quit due to burnout they are easily replaced.
I still think it's nuts that Tim Cook wants his team to have calls on Sunday nights. There's really nothing that can't wait until Monday morning - it's just a stupid bit of the culture of anti-productive overwork and demands for proof of loyalty to a company that will never repay it.
For those who find themselves in one, the biggest stress comes from the fact it’s hard to leave. The abusers know this, of course, and they know that the more abuse they pile on, the harder it gets to leave.
There is no easy answer, but I’ve seen it done to many people and those who’ve come out of it okay are those who just left. They had to get another job, yes, but in many cases the company where the abuse occurred is no longer having fun when the victim leaves, so they’ll just respond to a reference request with ‘yes they worked here from X to Y with this title’ and you’ll never have to deal with them again.
The 'colleagues' in this story sound like they got themselves into a cushy position where they could coast off of the hard work and hopefulness of a new hire, drain them to the point of complete burnout, and then either fire them or let constructive dismissal take its course while they wait for fresh meat.
The things a group of nasty individuals can do when put together is truly saddening, and I hope the author of this post finds a better job where they are treated as a human being.
In this situation, maybe the managers were extremely harsh on the OP, or maybe the OP was misleading in their story to sound like a victim. It’s hard to say without knowing how they’d do on another team.
To force somebody out like this without taking every reasonable opportunity to help them improve, especially for a rich company like Apple who can afford to try, is deeply disgusting and is a failure of their HR policies.
During one of my rotations I worked on a project with a recent PhD graduate from a fairly renowned university–we'll call him Dave. Dave was terrible at...everything, really. He could not seem to do _anything_ right on the project, and struggled for months to make any progress at all. Eventually I wound up taking over his part of the project, and our manager basically told him "you're being let go at the end of the probationary period unless you find another team that will take you".
Dave shopped his resume around internally for the few months left in his probationary period and eventually transferred to a different group in another town a few hours away. I went to work full time for the team where I did my rotation, and a bit less than a year later my boss tells me he had gotten an unsolicited call from the director of the team where Dave transferred. Evidently, Dave was a rockstar there–like a duck in water. The director was calling to ask where Dave was recruited, and if we had anyone else like him or could help them with their recruitment pipelines to source more candidates like Dave.
All this to say: to this day I think there are a lot of reasons someone might succeed or fail in any given job. It has been my experience that finding the right team fit is hugely important, and often completely ignored.
I’ve personally landed crap managers at 2 of the FANGs, both the worst managers I’ve had in my career by a long shot. I’ve also seen fantastic managers at one, and uh, mediocre at best but well intentioned at the other.
I have had almost a half decade to put it behind me and have perspective on it, and it made a better manager.
But the other lesson from this is also that if this starts happening -- drop everything and find a new job -- it is not worth it no matter what.
I think exposure to abuse normalizes some of the behaviors of abuse. So those who were used to that environment might act the same without a second thought. You see this even with behaviors that might be relatively harmless like being exceptionally cynical or critical.
I'd say go for it.
I like Apple products (most of them), but this is nuts, and those people must be punished, up to the level that allowed it.
Unfortunately golden parachutes mean that certain levels and above will just get a repositioning and laught it off at worst...
I really don't understand this. I'm not saying this from a perspective that they are wrong, but that I honestly don't get it, please help me understand it. My response is about ambition related stress.
I've had experiences in war torn countries and seen those that are drastically less fortunate than the author. For the author to say that they have terror and flashbacks that will hunt them.... is this just a perspective thing? The author mentions twice he had been in a war related country.
Is it a self imposed stress to do well that is greater than the stress that those in poverty and war stricken countries deal with? Is it all relative? I feel like there is real stress involved with ambition from reading this.
I mean this honestly, I read this post and feel this is a first world problem post. What am I missing?
Author is literally from a war-torn country and would have had to go back if they were fired. This situation was explicitly part-and-parcel of their bullying.
A twist on the Shakespeare quote: It’s not always better to have loved and lost, sometimes people would rather never have loved at all.
Edit: I misread this part. I thought she had slammed the door into her face: One day I went to use the woman restroom my “iBuddy” was there. She told me “die!” and slammed the door in my face.
Each time I'm downvoted.
The Apple Shiny Aluminum Corporate Distortion Field.
Approaching HR or higher ups at the company doesn't feel like an approach that is likely to bear fruit. It sucks, because it should, but reality is that you're likely to be labelled a problem — especially if it's your word against a team that is as closely knit as this one is described.
I have to wonder whether gritting your teeth and trying to get through it is a better approach (that is, if you want to stay). There is something about being friendly, eager, unemotional, and unopinionated that tends to placate the jerks.
You only have to do this as long as it takes to escape to a more emotionally supportive situation. A couple good review cycles, and you can wave goodbye.
I realize that this may not be possible depending on your situation. Just an anecdote.
In any case, I hope the author lands on their feet. Don't let it get you down.
Any journalist reading this - please engage with this person and help them.
I've faced similarly abusive workplace cliques on multiple occasions. They're very easy to bust if you're willing to put aside your personal shame. But I never had a visa hanging over my head during these confrontations.
I don’t understand what you mean. How do you ‘bust’ them?
That should be about ten times easier on a software developer salary than on anything else, so consider yourself lucky.
But I had “fuck you” money saved. It had been my dream to work at Apple, but after 6 months I called it quits, told that asshole where to stick his job.
My biggest takeaway from this article is that the author should take this advice: Before you accept a position, find out what project you will be working on, and get to know the people who you will be working with. If you are being hired to replace someone who left, try to find out why they left (or were fired).
I have not done much moving around in my (long) career, but I have many friends who have. There are plenty of jobs out there, but many of them are tainted by toxic people or cultures. During your interview process, find out what you can. If you come away with any concerns, trust your feelings. If uncertain, raise your concerns and seek more information before you accept an offer. You will either come away with more concerns, or you will find out that your concerns were unfounded.
Any big company hiring a new PhD grad should do their best to make the new employee feel welcome as part of the team. It seems that there were plenty of warning signs in this case, but as this was the author's first work experience, she either missed them or did not recognize their significance.
It's a shame that the visa process and ITAR rules compounded the problems described.
I'm a bit confused about the end of this article where she writes; "If Apple refuse to take actions, I will interview with major media outlets describing the experience in more details and I will release a list of all individuals involved from senior management to the HR director and all the evidence as public record."
She no longer works for Apple, and probably doesn't want to ever work there again, so why the threat, and why the ultimatum? Why not just go public with all of the names and documentation? They already did their best to damage her reputation and career. Why should she hold back?
I'd definitely check with a lawyer on this. I think one could get into serious legal trouble when publishing names
- “You are a skinny kid with no experience. Nobody cares about what you do. Just put your head down, shut your mouth or get yourself fired”.
- “You escaped a war zone; it is obvious you have many mental problems. ”
- “Just leave Apple before they kick you out. This is exactly what happened to the previous guy we fired.”
- “My husband worked for FBI and I can get you deported on a cargo boat if I want.”
- “How much do you drink? Do you do drugs?”
> I had no interaction with my manager and she was refusing to have regular 1:1 meetings with me and was not responding to my emails.
Seriously, this is the most common red flag in these stories. Not having regular 1:1 meetings (when that's supposed to be a thing) and slow/no communication is an _immediate_ GTFO, do not look back, it is not going to get better.
WSJ did so much diligence with the Theranos story. Years. They’ve also released a book explaining what went into their analysis and how they approached taking down a big dog like Theranos. Not saying Apple is same as Theronas, mind you; the point is that newspapers such as WSJ do thorough investigations compared to some random anon account on Medium.
I’ve just become increasingly aware of misinformation after this the US elections drama. I take everything with a grain of salt.
"Trust but verify" --Ronald Reagan
There used to be a saying, "Don't believe everything you read on the internet." Somehow it's been forgotten.
Not saying the article is false or contrived. I'm saying we just don't know since it's anonymous, and therefore I take it with a grain of salt.
If you are in a situation like the one described, my advice is: _just leave_. It's not worth it: it's not worth the money, it's not worth the feeling of "failure", it's not worth the fear that you won't find anything better. Just leave. If you have some friends at that job, don't worry: they'll understand.
Don't be afraid of not finding anything else: we're very lucky in this regard, software engineering jobs are relatively easy to find. And "there may be many unexpected feasts ahead of you".
I have learned hard lessons though:
HR is not there to help you. I consulted HR and a senior director about my previous supervisor's toxic behavior; not only did they do nothing, but they said they had previous complaints about them! And of course, I knew this, because I had many friends in the org, and I had witnessed the disrespect this person displayed towards others.
Collect evidence and get a lawyer if you want to stay in the org. This is the only way to protect yourself - it becomes very difficult for them to fire you in retaliation. I haven't taken this route, but I've seen others do it.
My advice would be to make plans to leave. OP was in a tough spot due to citizenship. But you have to leave toxic environments. You will not fix them, and if you could, you'd be better off quitting and starting a consultancy to fix those places. Find someplace new and be more particular about joining them.
It is the exact same treatment the author describes in the article. Ignoring the substance of what he says and criticizing typographic or subjective stylistic mistakes. I am astonished that you can't see that.
May be the whole you need great talent and treat them well isn’t true. You just need to treat them well enough so they don’t leave and pressure them enough so they don’t crumble.
At the end of the day, management is about getting the most out of your employees and that’s what they are doing right?
I couldn't watch office space for years after - it was too much like real life.
It does seem unnecessary to strive for a perfect work-life balance for these giant companies to ship good enough products and make boatloads, though.
Not because I think it’s common at Apple in particular, but because it’s common in companies of almost any size and in almost any industry.
It should be better at Apple. They do in fact lead in many areas of improving corporate behavior, but I have actually never heard of them leading in this area, and everyone I know who has worked there makes it sound little different other than the scale of what you work on and the pay, from any other corporation.
It’s one of the reasons I have never seriously thought of working for Apple myself.
I hope Tim Cook reads this and takes it seriously.
My heart breaks for this person. They ended up on a team filled with people exhibiting borderline personality disorder traits, entrenched and protected by corporate interests. Literally my worst nightmare. Compound this with the other factors in this situation (first job, immigrant status) and it's truly horrible. I feel so bad for them.
... At the same time, this is somewhat universal to most (not all) companies to some degree, especially tech. And the more important the work, the more stressful the environment often is.
Could be way off on this, but just my impression is that since they are a newly graduated PhD working at their first job, am wondering if the shock of that first position (which was also at Apple, who is known to be very demanding), was a bit too much to handle - and if you also have a bad lead, you're in for real trouble. Apologies to this person as I wasn't there and have no real idea on what happened, but the workplace is a tough environment more often than not.
Know this only an estimate, but in my humble opinion, Glassdoor is generally in the right ballpark when it comes to a company's actual culture (how it treats its people), and 4.2 for Apple is really good - did a contract job at Stubhub a few years back, which when I worked there was a 2.8 (it's now a 3.3). And yeah, it was really that bad. The politics and scapegoating were the most intense I've ever seen (got caught up on the wrong side of this majorly myself. Felt like I was in one of those targets at those Carnival games where people line up to take shots at you).
Yeah, and tech is ruthless but, as another person said, typically in the Bay Area it usually isn't abusive about it. In the socially aware Bay-Area, they often won't tell you directly that they have an issue with you like they do on the East Coast, but through silence and innuendo - you'll feel it before they actually tell you they're not happy.
And sorry to hear about this person's visa issues, the stress this has caused my foreign friends is immense. Hope they're okay!
There is tough love, there is pressured work environment, however this is none of that. Even if half of this is made up or exaggerated, its out and out bullying.
it is your responsibility as a work colleague to put a stop to this sort of stuff. I have been bullied and I'm never standing for it again. So if I see shit like this happen near me, they fucking know about it.
The most important thing you need to remember is this: just because they are big company it doesn't mean they can treat you like shit. Work your hours, no more, no less, use their free perks, fucking push back when they take the piss.
It sad he will be dealing with this stress for life but never thought that he should at least consult with an attorney??? THIS IS AMERICA. You think HR and those idiots are going to help you??
Anyone who has to deal with this crap, call an attorney!
- that they would have been able to find let alone retain a lawyer out of grad school
- that they knew enough about workers compensation law to event think of that option
- that they somehow understood the existence of recourses beyond HR in a highly secretive and litigious company
- that they weren't terrified that this could lead to long term stigma and stifle their career which is crucial to their ability to remain in the U.S.
I say this as a white European who was under an [OPT][1] and somehow managed to find a company willing to sponsor its renewal. Even for me the process was opaque and terrifying and I'm extremely lucky that no one tried to take advantage of the situation. Had I fallen into the kind of toxic nightmare described in the post, it would also would have felt insurmountable.
Most employers don't understand work visas and really don't care to but those who do surely understand the leverage they have. Even people on work visas often struggle to understand their rights since BY DESIGN they are dependent on employers for their ability to remain in the country. If you lose your job under most work visas, you need to find a new job immediately or pack up and go home regardless of the circumstances.
Initially, there are [safeguards][2] to prevent wage discrimination for visa workers, but eventually after receiving a work permit, before its renewal, or before an employer accepting to sponsor a green card application, the baseline level of fear you're under effectively reduces job mobility for visa workers. Not being able to "quit and just get a new job" like most U.S. residents because their current one is utterly toxic, visa workers have to interview, secure a new employer, initiate a work visa transfer, all with unpredictable delays in transfer processing from USCIS which routinely leads to companies rescinding job offers because the USCIS is too slow (we're talking months and years) to adjudicate requests.
The idea that someone under an OPT would launch a workers comp suit against Apple for emotional abuse is sadly very far-fetched to me. The OPT worker likely be quickly out of a job and their unemployment grace period (90 days for OPT, 60 days for H-1B) would quickly run out as interviewers for prospective jobs would ask "What made you want to leave Apple after such a short time?"
[1]: https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/students-...
In my opinion there are two reasons to write such an article:
a) To vent b) To get a message around
This article is a great and powerful vent (which also makes sense in the context of "healing journey"), but it does a terrible job at getting a message across.
Bold messages lose their impact if there are more bold messages than normal text. Also the article is missing a clear red line - I felt myself skipping multiple paragraphs and not missing out on any content.
I would be very much interested if the writer could re-write their vent into a powerful message.
This might also be a chance (regarding the "healing journey") to re-work the happenings and bring the "this is what happened!!!" into a "THIS is what happened", in the same way an emergency-centre operator deals with emergency calls. Focus on the facts, not the feelings.
It's an especially horrible idea if you're in a vulnerable position like being here on a visa. Many vulnerable people, including some of my close friends, are being taken advantage of by megacorps, and have very few options. Stay away! It is not your dream job.
I suspect the story would be much more powerful if it were 1/5 as long and stuck to the material facts.
They know that when it comes to the illegal stuff - you do it off-the-record. Then it just become "he said, she said", which is very difficult to prove.
They are experts at gaslighting, which ties in with the point above. Not only can the invalidate your claims about (difficult to prove) verbal abuse, but they can actually turn it against you, by claiming that you're obviously mentally unstable / hearing things due to workload / not fit for the job / etc.
Especially for narcissists, they tend to be very good at forming networks and friendships which benefit them - and in turn can produce cliques like this.
They know what buttons to push in the organization, to cover their own ass, and make the other party look incompetent. This includes creating extensive paper trails, frequent meetings to establish some opinion on a person, and what not.
Prolific abusers are hard to catch because they are very good at it, and because they create (or join) environments which are chaotic, and tie in multiple people on the abuse (whether want it or not - pretty much in the same way that bullies in school rarely do the bullying themselves, but form groups to do it).
In this case, it's even worse - because there's such an extreme imbalance of power. On one side you have a fresh hire, without any permanent VISA, completely dependent on the job. On the other side, you have established bullies in clique, with decades of employment in the company.
And not only that - it all happened within a company that enforces a strict culture of non-disclosure. It's hard to go public with information which may include explicitly confidential work/data.
What I read described an Apple that is completely alien to me. I have never seen or even heard of anything even remotely like this team or the behavior described.
Worse, at the time of writing this is the second highest response!
e: at least the comment got reshuffled while I wrote that, seriously though..
It's not the job of junior engineers from foreign countries to write perfect Medium posts.
Also the article was chock full of facts, there were facts in every sentence.
1. HR doesn't work for you; they work to minimize liability for the company. If HR thinks the best way to accomplish that is to destroy your life, that's exactly what they will do.
2. Many SV companies, as well as groups within large, respected SV companies, only survive through exploitation. They exploit their customers, their workforce, or both. Exploitation means obtaining something of value without paying a fair price for it. Exploitation is accomplished through a variety of coercive processes like gaslighting, manipulation, instilling fear, etc. Outright lying is probably the most common coercive tactic since it's easy and there's usually no penalty for it.
If you find yourself in an exploitive work environment, you need to leave as quickly as possible. The situation is not going to get better. It's only going to get worse, and your options are two: Leave with your mental health and reputation intact or leave after they have been destroyed. There is no option 3.
This is the right thing to do however for many people on a visa it has significant life consequences and financial hardship with having limited time to pack up your life and leave the country you built a life in.
I’m sure if the author wasn’t dependent on having a visa they would of left much sooner than they did. Companies know they have unfair leverage on employees dependent on sponsored visas. Employees on sponsored visas have very little options and next to no rights, in this case the author felt suicide might be their only way out.
I’ve been in a situation in a job I didn’t like with a bad manager well aware if I quit I had 90 days to find a new job or leave the country. 90 days isn’t a long time to find a new job or pack/sell all your belongings and ship to a new country without a job/place to live. I had to put a plan together to save enough money to cover the significant costs of leaving, a timeline to find a job with a deadline if it doesn’t work out to pack and go. The situation was far less stressful than the authors and I was in a good position where if the worst came to the worst I could take the financial hit and be relatively ok on the other end. Non the less it was incredibly stressful and put me in bad mental health so can completely understand why for some people they believe suicide to be a valid option.
For some people leaving is not just a case of handing in their notice.
Exploitation is common in many companies. For me this stems from information asymmetry. Employer knows the job market, knows the salary spread, knows all internal salaries. As an employee you do not have these insights and need to trust the employer to be fair.
As we probably all know information asymmetry makes efficient and rational markets to break down.
Not sure what a potential solution would look like.
That's what I've learned too. HR is an extension of the legal department. To be fair, their true job is to treat humans as resources.
These days, they're sometimes rebranded as the "People Team"!
The fact that the economy grows every year is proof alone that companies on the whole are generating value and not just exploiting people. The economy is not a zero sum game.
The truth is, all companies, no matter how cool their branding is, are just a collection of mostly average people. The larger the company, the more average the workforce will be. This is a statistical fact.
Inside any large organization, most of your job (no matter how technical) will be coordinating among groups of people, not creating X deliverable by yourself.
This inevitably results in the classic drama, tension, fights, camaraderie and occasional abuse you will find when you bring any group of humans together.
The X% of abusive situations that arise when you bring human animals together does not equal proof of widespread exploitation among the worlds highest paid employees. Slavery this is not.
It just means your experience in any big company will essentially be a probability game. At FAANG, you have a 95% chance of getting reasonably wealthy within 5 years, with a X% (lower) chance of abuse/toxic overwork and X% chance of dying in a traffic accident on your morning commute. The problem is nobody wants to acknowledge the potential downsides.
If you aren’t okay with this, there is of course the startup and indie hacker route.
I'm staying at [large SV company] for now BECAUSE OF their reputation of hiring smart engineers, so that I will be able to hopefully get a gig at a more employee-friendly company later in life. New grads that were in my position often don't have much of a choice, and being offered the ability to pay off my student debt almost immediately at 22 seemed irresponsible to pass up. It's been 4 years and my mental health has degraded for sure (and the work I am doing is not glamorous in the slightest) but my savings are piling up and the thought that this is only temporary (and will give me a nice financial cushion) will keep me going until it's unbearable.
Eventually the one making the promises will either not be around or find that they don't have the resources to fulfill the promise. They may quit when they figure this out, if they haven't already been let go once they've established their status as scapegoat.
If something matters to you, make sure you get the new bosses to announce it in front of people. Be aware that you should have already thought at least briefly about the wording of your resignation letter prior to doing this.
I hope the Author realizes one thing: Never ever complain to Manager and/or HR in any company about other team member UNLESS they disclose themselves to you that they don't like that person and ask you for your negative input -- even then, keep it almost neutral / slightly negative. And if you do make the mistake of complaining, DO NOT EVER do it over email/chat/anything written -- a simple call / over-the-coffee conversation is more than enough. Based on this fact, its hard for me to fault the Senior Manager / Director / VP at Apple the Author talked about -- once this kind of thing starts, at any company it is expected outcome from Management.
From what I can deduce - the Manager and the violent co-worker were best of friends and Manager was going all out trying to protect that co-worker who was a toxic and non functioning employee. The Manager and co-worker kept on making stupid rules and confrontational policies and the Author kept on thinking she doesn't have any choice and is stuck otherwise she will get deported -- I mean, USA (or any other Country) is not a place where you would end up going in depression over for and start popping mental health pills for while contemplating suicide. I would choose my dignity and sanity even if it meant going back to Yemen or Somalia or somewhere similar. The Author could have simply started applying for jobs in lots of countries for some R&D job or post-doc position and should have left Apple.
I probably will never truly understand the sufferings and misery of the author. However, the author perhaps was expecting the environment to be challenging in a positive way, with interesting work and motivated colleagues. Unfortunately for the author, the team was complete opposite of it. Recognizing such environments is also a valuable office skill, because then you can decide for yourself if you would like to basically do nothing alongside the team or leave for greener pastures. Being new to the team and trying to make a positive change immediately will only create resistance from the peers and may lead to abuse described in the article.
Paradoxically, doing nothing and being conformant with the team nature would have led to positive reviews and much, much less overall misery.
I started working for Apple a few years ago as a software engineer, after leaving a job that I liked, thinking that working for the biggest tech corporation to ever exist would be the next logical step. I don't work in California, and instead work for a satellite office in the northeast US.
People in California appear to lack the ability to understand that the northeast is three hours ahead of them. As a result, it's not uncommon for me to have meetings that go on until 9:30pm, multiple times per week. I have brought this up to my manager (and his manager (and his manager)) multiple times, asking if they can schedule meetings a bit earlier, and they say they'll "look into it". Apparently they've been "looking into it" for two years now.
Apple ostensibly supports "personal development", which would be great in theory, but anything involving this involves manager approval. While they're usually ok with you going to conferences, I tried getting approval for tuition reimbursement (which is advertised on the people/hrweb site). My direct manager said "ok", but his manager said that he's afraid that me going back to school and completing my degree would be "too big of a distraction from work", and will not be approving my request.
My job is ostensibly "individual contributor", but most of what I do is read emails, and copy and paste Java from one file to another. When I told my manager's manager that I didn't find the work enjoyable, and that I would like to be given another project, his response was that I simply "don't understand how cool the project is".
My situation is substanially less horrible than the OP's post, I don't have any visa issues or anything and I can fairly easily quit, and I probably will quit fairly soon. Still, that's a difficult thing to do, my stock packages are still vesting. Oh well.
With the rise of evaluating company stocks based on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) shareholders should start demanding that companies publish anonymized statistics on number of HR cases reported and how they were handled. Workplace abuse can happen everywhere but larger companies like Apple need to double-down and start showing that they are handling it.
This _might_ sound utopian. But shareholder value is about the only thing companies like Apple care about.
Apple held a modicum of respect in my book for stepping up to protect privacy. Reading a piece like this tears that away. I’m reminded that Apple is yet another gigantic tech company. The ends doesn’t justify the means. Great products doesn’t justify abuse.
I'm not sure though, creating a post like that is the best thing. I don't know what exists in the US, but in France, you can sue your employer for free (You don't even need a lawyer), and if you are able to show a few emails showing abuse, there is like almost 100% chance the company will loose
EDIT: To the people who downvote me, seriously why ?
That's mind boggling, especially since all accounts paint Steve Jobs as being an massive asshole manager, and company culture gets set by examples at the top.
https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-jerk-2011-10
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/books/steve-jobs-lisa-bre...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidcoursey/2011/10/12/steve-j...
If the company can be the biggest and most profitable, and build the best products, it sure as hell can figure out how it expects people to be treated, since there is already such a culture of controlling what information is leaked to the public.
Edit: I hold Apple to a special standard because it creates some of the best products that I pay a premium for. I expect the people and culture to be no less and unimaginable best of breed like the M1 chip and the A14 chip.
In the U.S. there are many employment lawyers who will represent harmed employees on contingency, meaning that they will only be paid if the case results in a judgment or settlement for the employee. An individual can technically sue without a lawyer but that is usually a terrible idea.
I can't speak for others but me personally it was because you dismissed the problem then started talking about what would happen in France.
Essentially the comment added nothing all said and done
Edit: To the downvoters of this, naw I'm kidding. Have at it.
I have no real judgment on this guy. But I’ve seen plenty of people straight up not prepared for the real world get hit hard and it’s never ever their fault.
I find the lack of admitting any fault anywhere to be suspicious, esp when we know there are always two sides.
"This is while the rest of the team were taking weeks and months to complete a task that takes an hour, were on vacation or just out of office or out of touch. The time they were out of office was more than 2 months in one year!"
Sounds like you were perceived as a threat to the career stability of people who have been there a long time, have figured out how to coast, and don't want a spotlight shone on their general area. This is not intended to be a justification of any part of what you experienced, but this does sound like it wasn't all personal.
That is some serious psychological issue right there.
The victim also seems to be in a very bad emotional state wherein they may interpret things poorly as well, I wonder what the other side of the story was? There's enough there that I don't doubt bad behaviour, but there's also some odd points in there - if they asked her to 'resign' then that's actually a polite way of being fired. Why didn't they just fire her? Seems odd.
That would make a fun case to look into.
Finally: why do Senior Directors and VPs accept this? What kind of VP wants this kind of garbage going on under them? Why not dump the manager? Odd.
I have seen corporate bullshit (including someone getting bullied into suicide) and believe every word. This deserves to get attention.
Please follow-up on your last paragraph.
Sincerely,
A less courageous soul
If this was a post thrashing Google, it would already have over 300 upvotes, and "necessary" comments how there are already people who are "de-Googling" their life...
I mean there are already skeptic comments regarding the author's intentions and experience?
The fact is that out of all FAA(M)NG companies, work experience in Apple is by far the least known online, some might even say it has tendencies with a cult...
Just remember that HN is all about tribalism. The show is more important than the substance. You’ll need to fall in love with performance art if you want your points to be known. And language, for that matter.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing, personally. People are allowed to hate google but not apple, and vice versa.
But! You’re also dead wrong. The story is substantive enough that we’re both reading it. Most of the top comments are echoing the story. And we’re all having a nice round of “managers suck.”
Apple is a big target with a decades of history in online advocacy debates. It’s not hard to criticize Apple on HN, every Apple thread has significant critiques. There are often defenders too, however, which is also fine.
Apple's cult following is treated as a religion by its fans. I see this with religions or cults that attack others who criticize them with similar tactics: denial, obfuscation, manipulation, deflection, shaming, name-calling, threats, etc.
Aside from technical criticisms - which the tech community in HN values and encourages, a different and recent example is that of long time labor abuses. The initial articles have not gathered enough attention, but once they did, you start to notice some user burying and flagging. They have just recently resurfaced due to more evidence being discovered.
Apple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570247
Tesla: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25360432
Sometimes you have to punch your way into brainwashed people's minds to make them see the truth (ex: overwhelm them with evidence).
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal...
Apple bashing is objectively a sport here.
My heart goes to you anon! Don’t think that your career is over! There’s many other places in the world you can start afresh and have great quality of living and better protections such as Europe and Canada.
The question that's more important: is it common, and is it an accepted tradeoff in the company culture.
To those that are expressing disbelief that this happened: even if half of it is made up, its still unacceptable. The reason to not ignore this is that one day, this superteam of arsehole might be in your life.
Seems like the author is going to expose more details about his story including names if things do not change at Apple. I just wonder, how will he know? He is not working at apple any more.
If they want this to be quiet, they are very able to reach out. Or not.
I would say: lawyer up and make them pay through the nose. Once that happens 1) all the people involved in this will get canned / have a really bad time 2) Apple will put some kind of measures in place to prevent this kind of abuse.
Also, hello Apple HR? Wtf are you doing? I understand you give 0 fcks about the employee, but your job is to protect the company? Spoiler Alert: by this story existing you have failed miserably.
Toxic workplaces exist, and toxic teams within divisions exist.
When I saw this stuff, I was too young and inexperienced to recognize bad behavior and recognize my own power to go fish for something else. I did not have immigration issues to think about though, which adds a whole other dimension to getting stuck in something like this.
One time I saw this guy in the company softball league charge the pitcher over whether a pitch was a strike or a ball. It was absolutely not okay and the senior manager in the division said the guy was a "teddy bear" and "had kids" and that I needed to drop it.
I learned later that he was a major producer in sales engineering for the company's leading product.
Sometimes you get unlucky and are placed in a group like this. Powerful engineers probably have more control during the interview stage, and some companies can be good at getting rid of bad behavior. However results and loyalty can outweigh bad behavior.
Something that people should think about is their ability to manage emotional barriers. This isn't something I was taught growing up, but I hope young people are more familiar about asserting these today.
If people take advantage of you in your personal life, and you have the bad luck of being placed into a workplace with predatory personalities, they will take advantage of you there. Since that is your livelihood, it can be scary.
I'd advise people who experience toxic workplaces or think that they are in them to consider whether they themselves are lacking in the ability to assert their own boundaries and act on those assertions when they are broken repeatedly.
If you are not able to do this, use your health insurance to seek professional help because you'll need this ability in professional and personal environments for the rest of your life. Better to learn about yourself now than later.
If you don't have health insurance, there are communities on reddit and elsewhere that support people dealing with emotional abuse. Which is basically what this stuff is. You can learn a lot by reading and anonymously participating in these communities.
If at all possible get professional help even if it means cash out of pocket, because your mental health is among the most valuable investments you can make.
"previous harassment history at Apple as well as criminal history and arrest" .... I am really skeptical of this. Does anyone have insider information to corroborate such a claim?
Make sure to disable JavaScript.
My serious (and absolutely not mean-spirited) advice to OP: see a psychologist and talk to him about it, especially about all the "hidden signs" you supposedly received from colleagues.
Additionally, I really hope that they now have learnt to separate themselves emotionally from their workplace. I know that it might've been a stressful (e.g. visa issues), but one should never let themselves get to a point where they cry about a workplace issue in their Christmas/NYE break. It's just a job, after all.
- OR - http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eK_CIq9...
I might be reading into this, but "dream jobs" are likely to disappoint. I've seen it happen a few times.
These companies don't even select for talent anymore; they just select for psychopathy. If you're not a psychopath, you will not last in such company, no matter how good you are.
I'm surprised that they're not all strangling each other in there...
Do not expect rosy experience at any company ever.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210102002234/https://ex-apple-...
Dunno about anyone else, but this really doesn't add up for me. I can't imagine that happening in real life. It doesn't make sense.
That threw me off the whole story. Hoping it's real, though.
The story is no longer available. Wondering what happened.
https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/steve-jobss-dark-pas...
Thanks for sharing your story in such detail. I hope you'll be doing well.
Surely anyone looking at OP's team from afar could spot the dumpster fire, if only the data were available.
Welcome to Amazon warehouse work...
While I don't want to dismiss the complaints out-of-hand, it does seem like there's just a touch of exaggeration going on.
Perhaps it's just a matter of perspective, but many of the complaints described could be chalked down to someone inexperienced being thrown into the deep end in a large organisation. E.g.: the complaint about "not knowing what I was doing for days" is almost laughable, when in my experience new hires at large orgs aren't properly informed about what they're doing for months!
The racism and physical abuse of course is inexcusable, but unfortunately all too common...
The secrecy and compartmentalization at Apple enables this sort of stuff to happen more often. This wouldn't happen as much at a place like Google with a perf review system calibrated across the company where the manager has little control.
There was a well-known incident at Apple where there was an entirely team that quit, except for a handful of folks who were dependent on the company for their visas and would have had to sell everything and leave the country if they also quit at that time.
on the other hand, i see alot of people agreeing that apple is terrible. so in these situations it really is he-said she-said
If I were the author, I would start interviewing with other companies after the first week.
The best they can do in this situation is a lawsuit from multiple victims, former employees, backed by paper trail (emails, etc.).
Edit. I'd add, that companies like Apple don't care about employee troubles, but they care about bad publicity. Call that director out, make Apple realise that he's a net negative for their PR, let Apple boot him out and destroy his reputation: with such track record and publicity, no company would want to hire him and deal with his reputation. Those who don't recognize the law, should be judged without the law.
any mirror for reading the original content?
But you seem to be freaking out even at not getting on-boarded immediately or that you don't have detailed explanation of what you will be working on the first day, or that you're not immediately invited to all the meetings. I work at Autodesk. This is completely normal, it takes a couple of weeks to start on a team and not everything is clear, especially if a key person just left. This isn't a job at Burger King where everything is clear. Also, nobody is going to structure their vacations around you. Some head count is getting allocated, and then filled, often with huge delays, and that person arrives at a certain date, and while people know it's coming, it's not necessarily a good time for anyone, it is forced on us. It's troublesome to onboard the intern or new employee and it gets past around like a hot potatoes sometimes. And no, often there isn't any documentation. I've onboarded probably over 50 people over 20 years.
It sounds like you arrived after the project was just sent in a tailspin and people are having meetings just to figure out WTF is the state is the state of project, and you shouldn't have expected to be invited to all those meetings, as you have nothing to contribute as junior and the people probably weren't sure of anything. It's normal. Also, that iBuddy yapping about the previous guy getting fired? We can't know the context, have you thought that person was hugely stressed about it too and sharing that earnestly? I mean, they're on the sinking project as well? And at least she's talking to you and putting you in the context of the team. Insensitive, perhaps, but again the world isn't going to rearrange around you.
At one point in the story, you're clearly falling into a depression, and seeing everything dark. A manager repeatedly cancelling and re-scheduling a meeting isn't a plot to harass you: it happens a lot to busy people, we don't know what kind of crisis he's dealing with. During this whole thing, you just assume that everyone is just taking off, missing work, and focused on you. These people might actually be going through crisis on their own and having to put out fires left-and-right.
This last bit, where you get a meeting in a locked abandoned building you think nobody should have access to, and you ask the senior director to leave because he wasn't invited: You realize that's paranoid thinking and crazy behavior, right? When you need to have a HR-type meeting with an employee, you have it in a private place -- for the employee's benefit! It's for you that it's in a private place, away from other people's prying eyes. Then, of course, the whole point of the meeting is to have the senior director talk to you, that's what the meeting is, he didn't show up unplanned. He's not on the invite so that you're not too stressed on the way. The idea that they're keeping it secret and deleting the meeting from the calendar to hide it is just paranoid delusions perhaps caused by depression. It's the way it's done. These meetings are happening because you're in deep shit, it's very rare. The director is offering you to leave on our own so that you can leave with your head up and on your own terms, and not have the record of having been fired. It's a kind of curtesy. This might sound horrible -- but firing someone is a last resort.
Now, don't get me wrong. I've hired people from india, china, singapore, and other places. I have no doubt that you have suffered inappropriate comments and racist behavior. But we don't know the full story! I've had to fire people as well, who seem to do a lot of work, but a lot of useless work that needed to be redone, or get stuck into rat holes for week without asking questions. These people all thought they were doing as best, and got multiple warnings and "PIPs" (Performance Improvement Projects, as you know) as they could and no doubt had a lot of fingers to point after they were let go. It's always other people's fault.
I think what this person missed was that the iBuddy was their real manager all along. And once it became clear that the person would not cooperate with the iBuddy, they became the "problem employee" and were railroaded out.
Not justifying the abuse. They should have explained more clearly what was happening or transferred. It's also always more difficult when there are cultural and language barriers; they needed to take a more generous approach and explain things. And instead, they seem to have decided in the first couple days that they weren't going to give this person any slack.
I was hired in similar circumstances. I replaced someone who was fired. I had an "informal" manager, who ghostwrote my reviews and did everything my real manager would. Eventually my real manager was fired and the iBuddy became a manager of a new politically favored team.
It also looks like this person was hired on directly to a secret project. That's a really rough way to start at Apple. That may explain why they didn't give any slack and why they were really cagey with giving them access to project resources. It also sounds like the project was not going well, which also removes room for error.
They must have gotten a bad first impression and that spiraled into a negative feedback loop, since no-one was helping this person into the culture or explain what they were doing wrong. For example, when the real manager got back from vacation, they probably heard bad things from the iBuddy about this person's first couple days. And rather than trying to course correct, the real manager solidified the idea that this person is dangerous to the project and may cause problems for them. Again, this person was being turned into the "troublemaker employee" unnecessarily.
I can also corroborate the clique-iness. Retention is better at Apple than other companies (ie. people work there longer on average than other companies). And my experience is that combined with the secret projects and avoiding the bureaucracy is that you learn who will cooperate to get things done and who wont. And it is critical to your success to only work with people who cooperate and to avoid or even sabotage people who won't.
There were some other faux-pas here and there that definitely didn't help things. The author seems to have reached out to people without consulting the iBuddy or their manager. That's a huge no-no and again explains why they were on the shitlist. Also, they refused to hand over data citing GDPR. That was another bad call. The author was right to bring up GDPR and explain that they were in violation. But they should not have refused to give up the data. They may be correct on the merits, but it's a death sentence to them personally. Once management decides, you shouldn't be surprised if your reviews / employement is impacted for resisting, even if you are morally right.
So again, not excusing the abuse. What happened to the author was terrible and unnecessary. Some Apple specific stuff contributed to it: the high stakes secrecy, clique-iness, and informal power structures. But it sounds like this person also was not familiar with corporate politics and made a lot of faux-pas. With better management, they could have been taught how to navigate Apple's culture.
I worked at Apple and it was absolutely horrible. I remember sitting on the train and actually thinking about killing myself. Reasons were many, but mostly I just didn't fit in there, I think.
I felt like people there were also a bunch of whiny little bitches to be honest. Always having some problem with a hand or a back or some family problem or whatever which demanded that they take days off. There were a few people whom I felt were probably talking some shit behind my back, but I couldn't really believe it until I read this story. It was just a horrible horrible place and I can also recognize that thing about having a predecessor, who was apparently a "bad person" and thus had to be terminated.
Every other day I would have people telling me how great a place it was and how lucky we were to be working in a place so big while still having that startup feeling. I have worked at startups and I always just imagined to myself that 40 year old "dude" who refuses to grow up. That is Apple..
Never again.
I got dragged through the whole white boarding experience also for the first time and it was fun enough, but in hindsight, they should just have asked me if I would suck Steve Jobs dick, if he came in that door. The answer to that question alone would have provided them with enough information about whether I would have been a good hire or not.
I am 45 and have never every experienced a work place like that. Always had positive feedback and never had any problems with colleagues.
Instead, document everything happening to you with evidence, speak with HR about incidents as they arise, and if they don't take action, seek legal counsel.
Doing anything else will paint you in a bad light.