For me (even if they would offer me a job, which they probably would not) the second worst would be the extreme secrecy and the worst would be the absolute prohibition of outside projects, even open source unless it were explicitly my job.
Wait, what? If you work at Apple, you are absolutely prohibited from having outside projects, even open source projects that are explicitly not a part of your job?
That's so surprising to me that it feels like it can't possibly be true. The best hackers all have some kind of open source projects, and Apple feels very supportive of open source work. How could they attract the best talent unless they were fine with people building open source projects?
Apple is quite supportive of Open Source in an official capacity. I would actually say that the best talent almost certainly does not work on Open Source projects in their spare time (though quite a few talented people do get paid to work on Open Source projects). The "best talent" tends to have other hobbies outside of coding -- well-rounded individuals make better team members, especially when working with non-technical team members. A lot of young engineers don't appreciate this until they're older.
I remember reading in the Walter Isaacson's biography. Jobs would purposefully underpay or deny bonuses to top employees, especially top contributors to the products.
This kind of a behaviour comes puts up a giant red flag. Do only as much as what it takes to not get fired.
https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-amazons-own-numbers-reveal-sta... (independent)
https://www.revealnews.org/article/behind-the-smiles/ (joint article with The Atlantic)
I'm not stating that Apple is good (just look at Foxconn suicide rates as proof that it's an evil company), but it's generally speaking the lesser of three evils here.
What are you counting, and how are you counting it?
Why do you think the rate of death at Foxconn is any different to any other large manufacturing company?
Suicide is a leading cause of death in every single country in the world (albeit it doesn't always appear to be so because of the way it's counted) and so when you have a very large employer you're going to see many deaths in their workforce.
Every death by suicide is a tragedy for that person and their loved ones, but I'm not seeing anything that says Foxconn have unusually large rates of deaths.
You're welcome to participate on Hacker News if you want to submit stories and post comments about topics that gratify your intellectual curiosity. That is, you'd be welcome to participate as a true community member. But single-purpose accounts aren't allowed here, and certainly not single-purpose accounts for corporate agendas.
None of this is new; Apple has always been like this (even in the Jobs 1.0 days).