<story><title>My Experience at Apple</title><url>https://ex-apple-engineer.medium.com/my-experience-apple-5d8b6205cb56</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>reactordev</author><text>Sadly, you can fill in the blank with any FAANG company with this story. I’ve heard it a thousand times. Toxic management. Sorry you went through that, sorry that was your first taste of engineering out of college. Glad you stuck with it.&lt;p&gt;It’s a tough spot to be. Do you roll over and do the job your being yelled at to do even though you know any concessions are BS? Or like the senior folks, do you walk? It’s a really hard choice.&lt;p&gt;Does Apple not have manager feedback mechanisms?</text></item><item><author>exApple-anon</author><text>Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.&lt;p&gt;Unlike others, I actually find this story fairly believable.&lt;p&gt;When I first joined Apple, straight out of college - a good program, top three in the country - I was abused similarly. I joined a team that was on a project behind schedule.&lt;p&gt;Our manager was a brusque, no-nonsense sort of dude. But he clearly had anger problems. On the team were 2 senior engineers, me, and a junior engineer that had just completed his internship and was on a work Visa.&lt;p&gt;As the project got closer to the deadline, and the scope increased, the manager got agitated. In our team meetings, he would start yelling at us. People down the hallways would stare at us with those &amp;quot;looks.&amp;quot; In our 1:1s he told us we might not have a job if our product doesn&amp;#x27;t ship on time (we were competing with another internal team to beat them to the punch.)&lt;p&gt;The two senior engineers decided they&amp;#x27;d had enough and quit the team. The manager told us to work overtime (no overtime pay, but we had to for fear of our job). He promised us that if we did it that we would get a month of vacation on him, and that he could secure it for us.&lt;p&gt;The product released. After countless nights of overtime we did it. Our manager left, our guarantee of a month of vacation evaporated, and for the next three months, us two junior engineers were left on 24&amp;#x2F;7 primary&amp;#x2F;secondary on-call for a critical service. It was a nightmare. Calls at 3 AM, 6 AM, on weekends.&lt;p&gt;Our manager got a promotion and is fairly high up at Apple now.&lt;p&gt;Horrible experience. I left for a new company that pays me nearly double.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>meekrohprocess</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think so. I&amp;#x27;ve worked at other FAANG companies which had these sorts of posts written about them, and I&amp;#x27;ve witnessed plenty of situations that I would call &amp;quot;abusive&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;But what I read in this article was beyond the pale. I never felt like anybody adjacent to any of my roles might have cause to fear for their physical safety. Reviews were used as political tools and occasional sources of psychological abuse, sure, but people still got marched out quickly if they stopped acting like empathetic human beings towards their peers.</text></comment>
<story><title>My Experience at Apple</title><url>https://ex-apple-engineer.medium.com/my-experience-apple-5d8b6205cb56</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>reactordev</author><text>Sadly, you can fill in the blank with any FAANG company with this story. I’ve heard it a thousand times. Toxic management. Sorry you went through that, sorry that was your first taste of engineering out of college. Glad you stuck with it.&lt;p&gt;It’s a tough spot to be. Do you roll over and do the job your being yelled at to do even though you know any concessions are BS? Or like the senior folks, do you walk? It’s a really hard choice.&lt;p&gt;Does Apple not have manager feedback mechanisms?</text></item><item><author>exApple-anon</author><text>Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.&lt;p&gt;Unlike others, I actually find this story fairly believable.&lt;p&gt;When I first joined Apple, straight out of college - a good program, top three in the country - I was abused similarly. I joined a team that was on a project behind schedule.&lt;p&gt;Our manager was a brusque, no-nonsense sort of dude. But he clearly had anger problems. On the team were 2 senior engineers, me, and a junior engineer that had just completed his internship and was on a work Visa.&lt;p&gt;As the project got closer to the deadline, and the scope increased, the manager got agitated. In our team meetings, he would start yelling at us. People down the hallways would stare at us with those &amp;quot;looks.&amp;quot; In our 1:1s he told us we might not have a job if our product doesn&amp;#x27;t ship on time (we were competing with another internal team to beat them to the punch.)&lt;p&gt;The two senior engineers decided they&amp;#x27;d had enough and quit the team. The manager told us to work overtime (no overtime pay, but we had to for fear of our job). He promised us that if we did it that we would get a month of vacation on him, and that he could secure it for us.&lt;p&gt;The product released. After countless nights of overtime we did it. Our manager left, our guarantee of a month of vacation evaporated, and for the next three months, us two junior engineers were left on 24&amp;#x2F;7 primary&amp;#x2F;secondary on-call for a critical service. It was a nightmare. Calls at 3 AM, 6 AM, on weekends.&lt;p&gt;Our manager got a promotion and is fairly high up at Apple now.&lt;p&gt;Horrible experience. I left for a new company that pays me nearly double.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ineedasername</author><text>You can put just about any company in the &amp;quot;Apple&amp;quot; role here. A bad manager anywhere can cause a workgroup to turn toxic. I&amp;#x27;ve seen it happen literally everywhere I&amp;#x27;ve ever worked, though luckily only 1st hand at one location. (Actually there was one exception: working at a Barnes &amp;amp; Noble during college. I&amp;#x27;d heard horror stories about other locations while I was there, but the store I worked at was run by an extremely good manager who cared for her employees and fostered that attitude in her assistant managers as well. It was also the most profitable store in the region, probably not a coincidence)</text></comment>