I work there presently, and this is 100% correct. I mentioned a union to a co-worker -- outside of work and suddenly I am getting harassed due to performance.

Things like going outside of our troubleshooting documentation to fix an issue (I told the customer to restart safari)

Being scored by a manager who has zero idea of how technology works, and trying to make me admit I am wrong about doing X, or Y.

Being harassed when I am not at work because their system stated I was still logged in and in an idle state. I hadn't even logged in that day, and the time frame was off that it would even be possible.

Gaslighting, bullying, harassment. It's disgusting when you see the image apple tries to put out -- but on the inside they're a bunch of bullies who are terrified to say anything in writing. But will most certainly call you into a meeting to chastise you.

Always tripped me out that sociopathy and economic success seem to be so correlated in our society, EG there was that research that suggested that CEOs are among the professions with the most sociopaths/psychpaths. I don't know if "sociopathy should not be rewarded but punished" is a hot take.

>I spent 10 years working at Apple. You could write several books about the darkness that envelopes the psychology of Apple. From store level to executives, I saw a fair amount of unethical and sociopathic behavior in that decade. Impressive and terrifying.

I've been working at Apple for 7 years, my experience has been basically the exact opposite of what you describe. Admittedly when I talk to the Career Experience (CE) folks we host for 6 month internships from the retail stores, the experience of working in retail sounds pretty grueling and awful, and has gotten much worse over the past 10 years. So like, that's a dark side, but I don't think its Apple-specific. Also, none of them can imagine leaving, because any other retail is worse (less choice in hours, much fewer benefits, less certainty in pay, etc).

But within corporate, like, sure, you can find empire-building and micromanagement and inept management and racist managers who hire exclusively foreigners from their home province…but you can find that in any large company. Most folks seem to care about what they do, care about customers' experience, and care about trying to have an overall positive impact. Management that I've worked with (up to VP level) has been occasionally kooky but always with their heart in the right place. My experience is that we'll go way out of our way to make sure that changes we make to improve supply chain integrity (ie not conflict minerals) or achieve eco-friendly goals are REAL improvements rather than just something we could claim without it making any actual difference. Like, tens of millions of dollars just that I've seen in my little corner of Apple to ensure the impact is real.

On the personal front, I fucked up majorly last year, my personal life exploded in a really nasty way, and I basically stopped working for a few months, didn't show up and didn't tell anyone much of anything, which was right during performance review season. My management basically made a formal note in my performance review that was like "we know iamthewaffler can do better and we're committed to getting them back on track" and they were like "hey let us know what if anything you need, also we have all these benefits that enable you to take a few weeks paid off if you're struggling, and you should definitely use them, just please let us know how we can support you, people get worried when you go dark". I feel very supported. So, I dunno. No real sociopathic or unethical behavior to report. I saw way more fucked up shit working in tort litigation with lawyers, and WAY more fucked up shit working in two hardware technology startups.

Just out of curiosity, how have you been able to interface with both store level dynamics and also executives? Seems like that sort of experience is quite uncommon. I have much more breadth at Apple due to my role than is typical, but I'm still not commonly interacting with anyone outside of engineering and above director-level (with the exception of our CEs).

7 years for me, The empty promises of career advancement were second only to the constant bickering and backstabbing. At one time being actively asked to report on people saying negative things about the management.

I wish they’d enforce antitrust laws. I prefer iphones over androids & that’s basically the only options. Stick with a product I don’t like or a company that’s unscrupulous because there’s no meaningful competition

While I worked there they fired people for not smiling during all-store meetings… it seemed like a loose-cult at times because everyone seemed to be brainwashed by Apple (the examples sound petty to type them out but it definitely was an odd experience)

In like 2003 my highschool computer teacher showed us the movie “pirates of Silicon Valley “. That movie immediately turned me off of apple because If even a fraction of what is portrayed in that movie is based on real events then the core of the company is irredeemable.