Why I Retired From Apple | Hacker News Reader

Why I Retired From Apple

donmelton.com

300 pointsswilliams63 comments

"But if there’s anything I do aspire to, it’s being a writer. ... I’m not vain enough to think it’s my snappy prose that drew the visitors. It was the subject matter."

Don (if you're out there reading this), your blog has almost single-handedly returned me to using an RSS reader. Yes, initially this was for your Safari/WebKit war stories, but please stop being so humble. You've won the technical-yet-engaging lottery -- please take advantage of this for those of us who fail in one (or both) categories.

Thank you so much. I am humbled by that, sir. I will take your advice to heart.

Parent said to stop being so humble.

Not reflecting on Don who I don't know but I've always wondered if people who go out of their way in trying to appear to be humble are reacting to the disgust that they feel when others aren't appearing humble.

Stuff like this:

"I think it was a shock to my son to see how I was regarded at work. Of course, that didn’t mean he started respecting me at home but, hey, a man can dream."

and this:

"At my core, I’m just a tinkerer who got very lucky."

Edit: What I mean is that Don (appears) to be going out of his way to say "aw shucks I'm not special I got lucky" and "I'm well respected but my kid still gives me problems just like yours does". The bragging of the first sentence "shock to my son to see how I was regarded" is tempered by the 2nd sentence. (Same with the tinkerer/got very lucky in other words I'm no different then you are we are all equal but I got lucky so don't hate me..)

Personally, I'd say just take them at their word: this is how they actually feel. Not everyone is trying to win some kind of popularity contents with every sentence they write. While he may have been trying to temper his 1st sentence, as you say, I'm going to just believe he is being genuine here and means exactly what he says. I don't think he is really going out of his way here.

Yeah, there was nothing devious there. I hope.

The line about my son was partly to annoy him since he, unlike my wife, reads my blog. And we punk each other like that all the time.

It might be a learned skill.

Be humble -> People react positively -> Act more humble as a consequence.

In the end you get frequent "humbleness" injections like in his writing. Nothing wrong with that, just interesting to see.

> I've always wondered if people who go out of their way in trying to appear to be humble are reacting to the disgust that they feel when others aren't appearing humble.

I can’t speak for Don, but for me it’s always been an attempt to communicate three things:

1. I am not inherently smarter or more talented or in any way “better” than you 2. My accomplishments come from long hours and hard work 3. Even after taking #2 into consideration, I probably wouldn’t be where I am without all of the dumb luck I’ve stumbled upon over the years

> in other words I'm no different then you are we are all equal but I got lucky so don't hate me..

It’s the opposite for me: don’t make me a hero! I’m just a guy who had some ideas and saw them through to the best of my abilities- something you can do too.

Agree with you totally! I am not pretending to be humble..It is just there is not so good about me to brag about..I also want to add:

4) I have weaknesses too. If you know all of my weaknesses, you probably won't think so highly of me.

My take on it is this.

You can only improve if you recognize your faults. People who have become exceptional, are the type that consistently improve, who therefore constantly recognize their limitations.

Thus when I see humility from people I respect, my default assumption is that this is not false modesty - I am getting a glimpse of the process that made them into people I respect.

Not always true. However it has proven true often enough that it remains my default assumption.

D'oh! Yep. Noted.

Well, I say stay humble :) Not many people of your caliber manage to keep this honorable quality. For which I humbly respect you :)

This, I think, is what drives writers to drink. It helps them push through potentially crippling doubt in the quality of their work.

Don, I'd recommend you read 'On Writing' by Stephen King, if you haven't already. It's one of the single best sources of advice for writers. Truly dynamite.

Yes, I have that one and I agree — excellent book.

Don, I'll second the notion that you're already a very fine writer! I'd be happy to chat writing with you any time you'd like.

Institutionalizing weekly deadline panic on Sunday night seems like a horrible idea to me. Nothing wrong with passionate people working many hours for what they love per se. But something in me thinks that marginalizing all those people who are good at what they do but like to have a little bit of life outside work can't be good business practice. You can love your job as much as you like, it will never make up for not getting to see the world beyond your office building and the scenery of you daily commute.

Edit: I hope they at least have a vacation policy in place that makes up for this madness.

"Maybe I was just tired.

And when you’re responsible for so many people, you owe them more than that. Better to step aside and let others have their turn. So I did."

All too often we see managers hold onto jobs and effectively stifle others with poor management, but it's refreshing to see someone think about the good of the company.

EDIT: and the good of the people for which he was responsible (thanks nsmartt)

I'd amend that he was thinking of the good of the people for which he was responsible.

edit: wording

I would hazard a guess that if they were all paid as well as him, they would retire too.

Some of them did. But the decision to retire is not always about the money.

I'd like to think that most people who become wealthy enough to have the option of retiring early are motivated by something other than money.

What makes you think that? I would think that those motivated primarily by money are overrepresented among early retirees, if only because people motivated primarily by something else (helping people, changing societies, becoming the best by some criterion) will focus on that goal. Getting rich is something most people have to aim at.

People don't always just work for money.

Tell that to Ballmer.

Yes, please someone tell that to Ballmer. :)

I didn't work for Don, but as an engineer in another part of the company. I too was able to retire (at age 49).

It makes me sad that the stock options that made my retirement possible won't be available to the next generation of engineers because of bad tax law (Sarbanes-Oxley).

How does that follow exactly ? Aren't RSU's an option (like at Google) to reward employees with stocks (but not stock options) ?

The original options we had weren't restricted. Also, most of them were at a lower strike price since Apple wasn't highly valued then.

Typically you get a much smaller number of RSUs than options. Though there's no strike price. So RSUs are often worth more if the stock doesn't move much, but worth a lot less if there is a huge run-up.

Much better answer.

The benefit of RSUs to the company is not just that they are worth more if a stock doesn't move much, but that they retain value when a stock drops. This avoids the trap where a company has a dip in value, and suddenly all of the people you were trying to keep golden handcuffs on have nothing keeping them there. So they start leaving, which causes you real problems.

The downside is exactly what you say - the potential upside on options is massively greater than RSUs.

Am I missing something? You still have the same problem with RSUs. RSU value can decline enough that your staff may feel they're no longer getting fair comp and move on.

It can, but it is a lot harder.

If your stock price dips 20%, odds are that most of the stock options you've given out in the last couple of years are now out of the money. But your RSUs retained 80% of their value. 80% of a golden handcuff is a lot better incentive to stay than 0% of one. However Wall St can easily drop your stock price 20% based on nothing real.

Of course, but if your stock price drops by 25% or so then the RSUs still maintain most of their value. If you were issued $400,000 of RSUs and they're now worth $300,000 - that's still a powerful incentive not to leave before they vest.

On the other hand, if you're issued stock options with a strike price of 10% or so below the market price when they were issued, a 25% drop means that they're completely worthless.

I'm not too familiar with the implications of Sarbanes-Oxley-- is this a dig at the SJobs options backdating scandal?

I've been thinking about all the great things that have happened within tech companies in the last few decades, and it seems clear to me that a couple of centuries into the future, some of these events will be hallmarks of history. I don't think it's crazy to say that Tim Berners-Lee will eventually reach the same stature of Gutenberg.

Unfortunately there aren't many 'historians of technology' so people like Don Melton are doing an invaluable work to record the inner culture where technological revolution is taking place. Nobody is better suited to write history than those who made it happen. All the best to Don in his new adventure :)

It really depends on how things progress. Apple might be in the history books as a "shining example of how tightly integrated hardware and software works so well"; or as "the last big attempt which showed that in the long run closed systems never work". It could really go either way from here.

How these events are remembered is going to be very coloured by how they are perceived after the event.

I think the historical perception bias you're talking about is why so many people dismissed Apple's attempt to enter the phone market as doomed from the start. Hence Ballmer's famous quip "I like our business model" when the iPhone came out.

Steve Job's analysis of the situation in the 90s was quite different. He put Apple's failure to capture the mass market back then to Apple leaving a price umbrella under which Windows could grow to dominate the market, and stated that Apple would make sure not to do that with what we now call iOS devices. I think Apple's strategy is to lower prices as required to maintain a viable market share, but keep them high enough to dominate in terms of profit share.

It may well turn out that the business model (licensed OS versus integrated hardware/software) doesn't actually matter all that much.

I think the dichotomy you express is probably already a thing of history. The concepts of hardware and software as separate markets made sense when it was still possible to buy hardware that was not run by software.

Today even "hardware" companies like Nokia or Samsung do quite a bit of sophisticated software development, and "software" companies like Google and Facebook build datacenters and server hardware.

You can't even buy a car or TV without a few million lines of code these days.

After reading so many "I'm leaving company X because try all suck" posts, this was such a nice read. The author didn't leave because he hated everyone, or because he felt very the business model was evil, or because he was tired of being worked like a dog, he left because e did his part and was done.

While I know it internally, it's always nice to read someone saying, "I did my part, I did it well, and I'm leaving on good terms, with no regrets." This post gives me more hope for myself.

I think it depends a lot on when you leave. If you work past the point of being done with it, you really start to hate it. And then it's very easy to blame everybody and everything else, rather than your decision to stay past the point where you loved it.

I get why people do that, though. Sometimes they love something and want to fight for it. Sometimes they have to keep working if they want their kids to keep eating. Sometimes they just don't notice that moment where they crossed the line.

So kudos to him for knowing when to quit.

Yes, to actually catch the point where you should leave is the hardest thing. Kudos that there are people out there who can. So there's still hope!

I can't help but connect this: "When I looked inside myself, I didn’t see ambition or even drive to continue. I’m not sure how that happened."

with this: "It’s Sunday night as I publish this. That means it’s a working night for most managers at Apple. Even more so for Director-level personnel like I was."

I used to be a sysadmin, and I loved it. After a few years working lots of hours in a high-pressure role for financial traders, I was, like Don, just done. I had nothing left for that. In retrospect, that was burnout.

It may be harsh to sum up this article in a single word, but I recognise this as "burnout". It's not uncommon, and it affects people in different ways, but is usually accompanied by a (sudden?) drop in ambition.

What you see as 'burnout' I see as closure.

Don accomplished pretty much everything he wanted to, and more.

Why continue running laps around a familiar track when you could go someplace else?

Closure — that's actually a very good way to put it. I didn't feel burned out. Just tired and complete.

But I was very fortunate to have the means to retire. Many who experience burnout don't have that choice. Which is another reason there's such churn in this business.

As a manager, one thing I always watched for were the signs of burnout. I always said I spent way more time coaching people to pace themselves than to work harder.

I would agree, this is more closure than burnout.

I had the same thing happen to me with sports. I played soccer at a very high level (semi-pro) and although I knew I would never make the pros, I already accomplished what I set out to do. After so many years of working hard and finally getting there, you wonder what else you want to do now you've surpassed your own goals. For me, it was the same thing, I just walked away from the sport. My life as a soccer player was complete and it was time to move on.

I can already tell in 5 years, your mind will never cast doubts over your decision. Few people get to the level you were at and leave without a few doubts in their mind. Kudos to you for leaving with a clear conscious and mind.

Don. How big was your team?

Not that big. About 140 I think. My admin would know for sure.

Burnout is accompanied by a drop in ambition. But not all drops in ambition indicate burnout.

@donmelton thanks for the article, What are hours per week you would say you worked? How many hours did engineers in your team put from best to worst? Just curious as to how apple work culture was.

> I refer to myself here as a “recovering programmer.” That simply means I no longer pursue engineering as a primary activity. And that I’m self aware enough to know that I’ll occasionally fall off the wagon and start coding again.

Slightly off topic:

Is there such a thing as an ex-programmer? Do you know any previously dedicated programmer that went cold turkey on any programming whatsoever?

If there is, I've never met one. :)

before I even got to the part about being a writer, I was reading the post thinking "damn, this guy is a good writer. Smooth, clear, and to the point, while still letting the ideas manifest within the reader." Literary writers can get too engrossed in their prose, I like to think this style comes from a great engineer and designer. No surprise the writer worked with Apple

You don't actually tell us why you retired from Apple beyond "The truth is I was done." Or did I miss it?

I mean, that might be the only reason you've got... but I'm not sure why this would be interesting to an audience of people who don't know you personally. On the other hand, it seems to have been, so what do I know.

"I think it was a shock to my son to see how I was regarded at work. Of course, that didn’t mean he started respecting me at home but, hey, a man can dream."

Ouch. Not sure this sort of public comment would help matters any.

My son, unlike my wife, reads my blog. That's in there just to tweak him. We punk each other like that all the time.

I certainly hope that working Sunday nights and traditional corporate structures where we refer to co-workers below us as "minions" is not something the new generation of engineers aspire to.

This sounds like the typical toxic corporate work environment of people grabbing for "power."

I'm pretty sure his use of the word 'minions' is meant to be ironic.

But there's a kernel of truth

My former minions probably think that. :)

I, for one, am happy to be able to say that I was one of Don's minions. :)

Yeah well, find me one current employee who isn't afraid for their dear life to openly comment on working there without using an anonymous/throwaway account.

That demonstrates a workplace of fear.

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