<story><title>How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro</title><url>https://www.fastcompany.com/90748492/apple-airpods-pro-creation</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>skuhn</author><text>I worked at Apple relatively briefly, in a lead role on an Important Project that required its own form to be disclosed on it (besides the general agreement you sign to begin employment). A truly toxic work environment that I couldn&amp;#x27;t get out of fast enough once I shipped the project.&lt;p&gt;All kinds of projects at Apple have their own disclosure forms, and you are only given one to sign if it&amp;#x27;s deemed necessary to your work. My responsibilities on this project didn&amp;#x27;t entitle me to be disclosed on it, which led to all manner of hilariously frustrating guessing games as I tried to deliver on the requirements without actually being told what they were. Conversations regularly went like this: &amp;quot;I can&amp;#x27;t tell you that that approach won&amp;#x27;t satisfy the requirements, but I would think twice if I were you.&amp;quot; Ultimately I think that I puzzled out what was needed and successfully delivered it, but the method was pure madness.&lt;p&gt;This wasn&amp;#x27;t even some new silver gadget launch, it was an infrastructure component to a future product launch down the road. Yet everything and anything can be given the top secret treatment.&lt;p&gt;Why is that? Running a disclosure-required project is prestigious. Being disclosed on projects is a badge of honor, almost even a high score board, and not being disclosed is used as a weapon in big or small ways.&lt;p&gt;Anything that Apple manages to ship (in my experience) is in spite of their corporate culture, not because of it.</text></comment>
<story><title>How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro</title><url>https://www.fastcompany.com/90748492/apple-airpods-pro-creation</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>88913527</author><text>&amp;gt; Secrecy is a value it held dear, to preserve the “surprise and delight” for customers.&lt;p&gt;I think the last time I felt this way about an Apple Event was the launch of the iPad. Not only are they burning out engineers, they&amp;#x27;re optimizing for a value that isn&amp;#x27;t part of their secret sauce anymore. I expect innovation, but not surprise. An N&amp;#x27;th generation anything just won&amp;#x27;t have the same zing as it did the first few times.</text></comment>