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exBarrelSpoiler

300 karma · joined September 15, 2016

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exBarrelSpoiler··on Mental health impacts of a big tech job
Well, after Google purchased Nest, there were all of those tales about the difficulties of integrating that startup into the parent company. Tony Fadell founded Nest, and he brought Apple's culture into it, and that style definitely did not gel with Google's more laidback environment.
exBarrelSpoiler··on Mental health impacts of a big tech job
It's more that Apple's lows might be lower than those in other big tech companies, because conditions at Apple are permitted to get as bad as they are.
exBarrelSpoiler··on Mental health impacts of a big tech job
No, to some degree it is Apple. No doubt any larger corporation has its share of worse offenders. But some of the toxicity that exists within Apple is specific to its DNA. The secrecy, siloing across departments and teams, obsession towards not just customer satisfaction but ironclad schedules, middle managers allowed to act like warlords, maybe even the legacy of Jobs' abusive behavior baked into the corporate DNA- that's all uniquely Apple.
exBarrelSpoiler··on Mental health impacts of a big tech job
Apple is a very old and heterogeneous company that flies by the skin of its teeth and there are engineering and organizational practices that would make the most hardcore Mac Addict blanch.
exBarrelSpoiler··on Mental health impacts of a big tech job
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-death-idUSKCN0XP383
exBarrelSpoiler··on Apple workers collecting stories of abuse, injustice in workplace
It's high time this has happened. Certain large tech companies with abusive cultures have been open secrets for years (Ballmer-era stack ranked Microsoft, PIP culture at Amazon). But Apple's secretive, authoritarian nature has kept it under wraps for decades.

Apple is a huge corporation and there is a large degree of variation within it. But when things are toxic there, they can get very toxic. Middle managers can have a lot of leeway there, and HR is about as powerless as you can imagine. There is not much room for dissent against decisions there, forget "think different". The product schedule is all-important and can also be very stressful to work under. It's a situation that Apple employees can only sympathize with one another, but not much else.

exBarrelSpoiler··on Bad Apple*
They might be getting paid over six figures, yet they're still infinitely poorer than '90s cubicle drones for not having personal offices. AGM discounts how much the present generation has lost.

Besides, it's not as if the food is free.

exBarrelSpoiler··on Bad Apple*
He sounds like a hard-hitting, abrasive writer. He would do well as a gossip columnist, gonzo journalist, or writer in the redpill/"intellectual dark web" scene. But this sort of vitriolic writing that gets personal enough to call Shopify's CEO nerdy and bespectacled is unbecoming of an executive. "He wouldn't be writing it if he was still employed at Apple", you say. Maybe, but clearly some coworkers think he'd still be holding people in the same disregard as he had already revealed in his prior writings.

Maybe he should try being a full time blogger. He's got the same vaguely misanthropic and nihilist tone of The Last Psychiatrist. He could amass quite the cult following.

exBarrelSpoiler··on Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes
You just contradicted yourself

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24569102

exBarrelSpoiler··on How Apple Is Working From Home
Depending on the org, that's definitely believable. Jobs' legacy has a dark side that people are unwilling to talk about, save for scant few "employees speak out" exposes that break out every few years. It's a massive company and experiences vary across the board, but Apple is definitely one of the more austere and abuse-prone members of FAANG. Amazon is reputedly toxic, as well.
exBarrelSpoiler··on Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations
Just how meritocratic is the selection of corporate leadership anyway?
exBarrelSpoiler··on Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations
And then leave a few years after that office building is opened. Solid exit.
exBarrelSpoiler··on Socrates Was Against Writing (2011)
Julian Jaynes didn't even think that Socrates had a unicameral mind, so it's not as if he was operating with the same psychology as modern man:

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=...

https://www.julianjaynes.org/jjsforum/viewtopic.php?t=346

exBarrelSpoiler··on An Apple Developer for 10 Years
 should just go ahead and buy him out, and integrate Windmill's capabilities into Testflight. They probably will eventually anyway. There was just an article yesterday about Sherlocking.
exBarrelSpoiler··on Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?
Anyone who's worked at both Amazon and Apple want to compare the two?
exBarrelSpoiler··on How Apple is paving the way to a ‘cloud dictatorship’ in China
The cruelest part of this whole farce- Apple might not get very far in China even with government sanction.

WSJ: "Why the iPhone Is Losing Out to Chinese Devices in Asia"

Google link: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Why%20the%20iPho...

exBarrelSpoiler··on iMac Pro review: Hard to upgrade, but holy Jony Ive it’s fast
And yet, now that they've climbed to the top of the heap built on planned obsolescence and chasing after relentless growth quarter after quarter, maybe it's time for them to use their wealth and influence to shape the market more thoroughly. Instead of simply continuing to chase more growth for the sake of the board's approval.
exBarrelSpoiler··on How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software
Vorrath.
exBarrelSpoiler··on How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software
The role of EPMs has been known to the public for some time:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-role-of-an-engineering-pro...

exBarrelSpoiler··on How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software
Like any large org, quality standards vary from product to product, just as they do from team to team.
exBarrelSpoiler··on How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software
QA being divided between Craig and Kim didn't help, either. Nor the organizational wars.
exBarrelSpoiler··on How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software
The primitive state of tooling in some corners of a sprawling corporate empire would make your head spin.
exBarrelSpoiler··on How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software
The comment was half-right in describing the situation radar-obsessed culture (Radar-Driven Development?)

It places the blame on EPMs because EPMs are just the bearer of bad news, middlemen who carry out the whims of the UI Gods and VPs. The original commenter couldn't see those above the EPMs, the ones overseeing the BRBs and other inquisitions.

exBarrelSpoiler··on 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?
She may be a plagiarist, but that doesn't mean the author of this post isn't also a bully who should be likewise questioned. There are extremists on both sides, the truth is in the middle, etc.
exBarrelSpoiler··on “Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product”
Imagine if Solaris could be used as a kernel for a mobile OS...
exBarrelSpoiler··on Read Apple CEO Tim Cook's Email to Employees About Charlottesville
Regardless of the merits or flaws of either identity, it is a fallacy of false equivalence to claim they are of equal threat to the public safety. Antifa are a rowdy thuggish reactionary youth subculture that only shows up to rallies, neo-Nazis are a real danger that have been tracked by law enforcement officials for decades.
exBarrelSpoiler··on Another neo-Nazi site, Stormfront, is shut down
Sam Hyde is currently facing an International Court of Justice war crimes tribunal on the charges of being a Tired Unfunny-Ass Meme. No one should underrate the danger of this washed up pathetic villain.
exBarrelSpoiler··on A Jordan Bookseller’s 24-Hour ‘Emergency Room for the Mind’
He's also an upstanding citizen.
exBarrelSpoiler··on Airbnb Employees Speak Out About Bullying and ‘Toxic’ Work Environment
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342994

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12502336

https://mic.com/articles/154788/apple-employees-say-their-me...

exBarrelSpoiler··on Airbnb Employees Speak Out About Bullying and ‘Toxic’ Work Environment
Maybe the positive stories are from those who have experienced survivor bias
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