Apple is not even on the list of all top graduating kids who wants a job in top valley firms (Google, FB, Dropbox, Twitter, AirBnB, Uber, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Quora, other promising startups). Any software engineer who is in the valley for a while (and heard the inside horror stories of working for Apple) wouldn't want to work there. There is no way in hell, senior engineers from the new age tech companies (listed above) will go to Apple. Apple will have a hard-time poaching them. Based on this, I have to conclude that most good engineers@Apple are candidates who have a tenure of more than 15 years and are aging. All, relatively new Apple employees are either left-overs in the talent-pool who couldn't make the cut to the above top firms/startups or really B-grade senior engineers. What is Apple's strategy of thriving in a knowledge economy, when the only asset you need are "great people" to succeed in the long term. They probably have great hardware engineers. It is a travesty that though they are the richest company in the world, they still couldn't build a compelling cloud services suite which is better and cheaper than what Dropbox, Google, Box, Microsoft can provide. This comment, will probably ruffle a few feathers. [updated for typos/grammar]
Two days ago I said aloud to a screen ", OS X is turning into Windows".
I moved to OS X 5 years ago, and recently I realised that a lot of my assumptions about Windows are no longer true. Now, I contemplate moving back.
The problem with OSX now, as I see it, is that as Windows irons out the problems that made *nix users dislike it, OSX seems to be allowing those problems (both engineering and usability) to creep in.
Please, if someone can sell a Linux with the same polish as Mac OSX, and as low-administration time, I would agree to pay about $200 per year for it. I've switched away from Ubuntu after being unable to resolve a problem after upgrade two years ago (which cost me 4 days). I spend 2x more on computers for Macbooks, not because of the hardware but because of Mac OSX.
I don't know how large is the audience for a paid workproof Linux, but I wish someone would build it.
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/dell-updates-linux-po...
You would, everyone else would download the CentOS equivalent, and as consumers we don't need the assurances of first-party enterprise support.
Most of the cash from overseas operations is overseas which is legal.
You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... 60 years.I don't want to work there, as I know people who have and it sucked, but, I can see the appeal for some. Also one person I know who did a stint there got some rather obscenely large amounts of cash.
I met several current and former Apple employees. Many of them are extremely talented.
Based on my anecdotal experience, that doesn't show Apple has any problem attracting top quality engineers.
I know Apple recently poached a bunch of people from one of the above-named companies.
From the rumours I've heard, they pay marginally higher salaries.
Based on this, I have to conclude that most good
engineers@Apple are candidates who have a tenure of
more than 15 years and are aging.
I assume they got into work at 8 or 9am? That's terrible. I'm really glad that I work a standard 8 hour day at my small no-name company.
We just get to make our own hours and being in my twenties, I like sleeping in.
I feel very fortunate to work at a company and with a team that supports my preferred schedule.
I'm in California and I try to get meetings scheduled for the late morning or early afternoon. 11am meetings are totally reasonable for anybody on the west coast, and it's not too hard to convince people in (for example) New York to not schedule meetings for before 10am their time. On the rare occasion that I need to make a 6am phone call with somebody who's a real go-getter on the east cast, I'll just bite the bullet and show up at 6, and then take off around 2.
On the other hand, I used to work in a bakery, so waking up at 7am is still sort of like sleeping in for me. But there's nothing like finishing your day at 330; I love it.
Is that considered good? I run a small company and - also as a developer - I'd really like to get meetings down to 3 or 4 hours a week.
I've been trying to get my boss to reduce the 2-3 hours a week of meetings I have to attend.
The fact that you only get 4 hours joint meeting time is just as good as if you were collaborating on east vs. west coast.
I work 6am to 3pm, and I still get stuck in traffic pretty regularly.
- A problem with the staff - there's either not enough of them or they haven't the skills to do what is required
or
- A problem with the management.
I've never worked in a role where incompetent people were hired and couldn't get what needed to be done done, but I've worked under plenty of incompetent management.
If you instead mean homegrown tech giants then you have a definite point. The only European giants I can think of are Telefonica, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Nokia and SAP. It would be interesting to see the research on if the reason for that has much to do with the horrible work expectations in the US.
Well, that's not entirely true. Unfortunately, in Portugal, it's more like 6PM; 7/8PM for tech jobs. And no tech giants here, also. :)
Basically, if you believe that hitting a deadline is worth having overall less productivity for, you can reasonably crunch for 2 weeks, and have the third week as an acknowledged low productivity week, and it might be worth it. Anything much beyond that is counter-productive on pretty much all axes and a strong sign that management is incompetent.
Long crunch times (more than two or three weeks) are strong evidence of deliberately abusive management, who are willing to lower productivity below what it would be with a 40-hour work week for the sake of their egos.
Eh, it could be worse.
At a previous company I worked for, one of the executives passed away. There was a funeral on a Friday, followed by reception. Guess what the lunch was on Monday at the office? The leftovers from the reception.
A similar thing happened where the CEO had a party at his house for the engineering department. No one else was invited. The following day, company lunch was leftovers from that party.
Looking back, I wish they had simply given us frozen dinner vouchers rather than shitty food.
>> Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife. -- Obligatory Four Yorkshiremen[1] Python reference
Not to poke fun at folks suffering, we've all been there and it's not healthy.
The question is, what system could we put in place that would reward a positive work culture and penalize *hattery? I know Glassdoor tries, but is there a way to measure this that won't be gamed out of shape?
1. http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/jokes/monty-python-four-yorkshi...
In the funeral scenario, the problem was that the funeral was on a Friday and the food was stale and gross by the time it was served for lunch on Monday.
In the other scenario, a lot of people were offended that they were being served left-overs from a private party they weren't invited to, despite being a part of the company. The CEO not only gave preferential treatment to engineering but then went one step further and served the leftover food to the rest of the company. To me, that clearly communicates what he thinks of non-engineers.
Of course, if it's part of your compensation, it should probably be taxed as such... maybe I should keep my mouth shut.
Wow, Is it normal? Sounds ridiculous to me, having a family at home, I can't imagine coming home at 9 PM, having a late dinner and going straight to bed to wake up the next day, not seeing my son or wife the whole day, is it like this in every big company?
pot calling kettle black much? Getting home at 8 or 9 sounds pretty awful to me. I get that midnight is worse, but I don't think I want to work at either place. They both sound terrible.
That sounds very odd. Was this Omaha Steaks by chance? Perhaps it was meant well.
Edit: OK I see from other comments that those Googlers are doing 12pm to 9pm and it is flexible so doesn't sound so bad.
He works for Google now.
My cousin also works for Apple, and after complaining about crunch time and how he had to check the bug queue when I was visiting him on a Saturday, I asked him "So, how long has crunch time lasted?" He replied, "Oh, about 18 months. Makes it really hard to date when I don't get any weekends." (He's in his 40s now, still no girlfriend.)