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Strange Guardian article finds a few people who don’t want to work at Apple, presents it as news

guardian

I’m a fan of the British newspaper The Guardian, whose news coverage and features are often excellent (disclaimer: I’ve written a few articles for it myself), but a piece it ran last night is just plain bizarre. It attempted to explain the company’s slowing salestemporary or not – by suggesting that software engineers no longer want to work there.

Tellingly, Apple is no longer seen as the best place for engineers to work, according to several Silicon Valley talent recruiters. It’s a trend that has been happening slowly for years – and now, in this latest tech boom, has become more acute.

The evidence presented for this? One freelance developer, one unnamed “startup executive,” one software designer and two recruiters. Among the reasons given are the culture of secrecy (doh!) and the fact that “Apple notoriously doesn’t serve free food, which was unusual in 2012 and, in 2016 Silicon Valley, shocking for highly prized and pampered engineers accustomed to perk.”

The one sensible reason given was that some engineers want to work on new stuff, rather than the latest iteration of an already successful product. This is true, but it’s hardly news that one employer isn’t for everyone …

Photo: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images via the Guardian

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Comments

  1. Mark Cormack - 8 years ago

    Don’t worry Apple, I’ll still come work for you if no one else wants to, I pay for my daily lunches already.

  2. Neil Quinn (@neilq5) - 8 years ago

    I was looking for a job in Software Development, and didn’t want a job going in my local council, time to capitalise on this with an article, Ben!

  3. A Dimension Of Mind - 8 years ago

    Wish Apple News would stop serving me articles from The Guardian. Journalism there now amounts to talking to people that to me as an employer sound like asshats no one would hire, whining that they wouldn’t want to work at a top-tier technology company. They shouldn’t worry, no one will ask them.

    This nonsense is floating around the web now saying Apple have a recruitment crisis, Apple is doomed, the usual garbage. Yes they’re building campus after campus to house no one for nothing of course, sigh.

    • t7ler (@t7ler) - 8 years ago

      FYI, they are building only one campus (AKA Campus 2) to extend and partly replace their current premises. It will be able to hold up to 12 000 people. Apple has around 70 000 employees, (Microsoft -for comparison- has over 120 000).

      I am an Apple Certified Support and Deployment specialist. I have been doing this for over a decade (started around the time the first iPod went into the market). I have to confess that even though my company is a Mac OS / iOS developer and I am not a programmer myself. Despite that – In my experience – the quality and the level of reliability of Apple produced software has been free falling for some years now. The solutions are much less robust and seem not to be well thought through. When I started this work, it wasn’t a strange occurrence that a client would call complaining about some strange behaviour. The technician on call would just laugh into the phone and responded that Apple’s don’t do anything like that – and he was right! Then he proceeded to figure out where in the keyboard did the client spill his coffee and what can we do about it.

      Now, I need to explain decades long Apple users that they indeed need to switch off and on the Mail.app in order to see the emails from the last day or two. Then we need to solve the customary mail database issues. I need to explain company clients that although the Server.app does provide a Jabber service (an open source chat server), the native chat clients aren’t compatible across Mac OS X versions, therefore he will need to insure that all the macs in their companies run on same Mac OS X version (now released every year), or better yet use 3rd party client (Adium does well). They can’t understand it – isn’t Apple the best? Well, you’ll be much better off with Slack or Rocket.Chat!

      The Mac OS X operating system has been going down since 10.7 (Lion). The native server solution is useless (my favourite author on Apple software, Charles Edge, claims the latest version of server is only good for home use – the one place where you really don’t need a server in the first place – if you really do, Synology is going to do much better job than Mac mini “server”). The Photos aren’t upgrade of iPhoto (downgrade really), the native office suite (used to be called iWork, now Pages/Numbers/Keynote) has compatibility issues even on same OS X version. A forgotten dmg of iWork09 trial still residing on Softpedia is the only help here. Most had to switch to Libre Office, Google Docs, M$ or 3rd party DTP solutions. iOS is heading in the same direction, only a bit slower.

      On the other hand, I have lived through creation of Ping, Apple Maps, Apple Music, News and several other nonsensical endeavours that all come from the same misguided idea, that since there is a better, older, more thought through and robust platform independent solution, an Apple only service will definitely succeed! I suspect this had to cost ridiculous amount of man-hours of the best developers they have on board. Let’s not mention the Watch – or the car for that matter :D.

      On every earnings call, Tim repeats that Apple doesn’t have any problems with with it’s creativity and/or sw development. In my view – if he was crying for help any louder – the windows would be shaking.

      As for me, the old Apple XSERVE machines are still running great (they don’t make them as they used to). VmWARE vSphere works on them better than any Mac OS X ever did (and is free in basic version). I run all required services from Debian virtualizations and am in process of looking for a work in a non-apple or hybrid environments as a regular admin. Apple is done & gone. Luckily, majority of people still confuse quality & outlook with current stock quotes. I appreciate that, because that way, I am much more employable ….

      • t7ler (@t7ler) - 8 years ago

        My girlfriend just read my post and countered that I am an evil hater and that I am not objective because nobody ever calls me to let me know that everything works fine – they usually call my superiors. That might be true. Still, if you would please

        1) pull out your iPhone, make a note in notes.app, delete the note and then recover it
        2) switch on your Mac device, take a bluetooth dongle and explain the OS X that this is its new default blue tooth receiver

        Am I right?

  4. alanaudio - 8 years ago

    I think that a guy who tends to turn up at 11am and take odd days off is unlikely to be Apple’s first choice. I work in an industry where we occasionally encounter prima donnas who have those sort of attitudes. They are rarely effective team members and tend to have an initially bright but brief career.

    As a freelance worker, I appreciate the flexibility that it affords me, but I’m also acutely aware that the client needs to be completely happy with the work that I do. Employers don’t need to fire freelancers if they don’t do what’s expected of them, they simply don’t engage them for the next job.

  5. tomtubbs - 8 years ago

    This bit made me laugh: engineers not being allowed to talk brag the secret in the works projects they might work on is getting in the way of engineers bragging to help their social statuses.
    It’s kind of true – but who would want engineers that can’t keep their mouths shut for important confidential work, and that might leak stuff through their LinkedIn / social media bragging?

    “A pain point for a lot of people with Apple is they can’t talk about what they’re working on, which hinders your social status in a way,” said Troy Sultan, the founder of tech recruiting startup IDK Labs. “You want to put on your LinkedIn that you’re working on the latest iPhone, but you absolutely can’t. It’s interesting Apple can retain top talent at all. I don’t know how. They keep you sort of locked up.”

  6. PhilBoogie - 8 years ago

    +1 on the disclaimer.

  7. nicklewis - 8 years ago

    I’ve been approached by an agency to work at their UK Headquarters as a front end developer. I turned it down twice despite the guy making the rather obvious statement of “Are you mad? Apple! Apple on your CV and it will open up a world of new opportunity!”

    Reason I burned them away was because the money on offer was a joke. Well below the normal contractors day rate. Less than half because of the attitude, it’s not the money that is important because you’ll be working for Apple.

    It pissed me off and made me get quite cross with the agent who kept on pestering me. Some months passed and he approached me again.

    Now I love Apple products but why are they like they are? Soon they’ll have no staff!!!!!

  8. spyintheskyuk - 8 years ago

    Guardian like the BBC have gone from early supporters of everything creative and Apple when it was the underdog, to being at the forefront of unsubstantiated hit pieces seeming for the sake of it. Both in their liberal leanings hate the idea of a company being so successful and making so much money let alone daring to be aloof and at least to some elitist. The fact that they themselves suffer from some of those criticisms (except the making money one) always escapes the smug. And hell are they smug.

  9. mytawalbeh - 8 years ago

    I would love to work at Apple “it’s the ultimate dream”. You should see the company I work for !
    You know nothing Guardian.

  10. Graham J - 8 years ago

    9to5Mac finds strange Guardian article which finds a few people who don’t want to work at Apple and presents it as news, and presents it as news.

Author

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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