I’ve been fortunate in my career to never have worked for tyrants. Sure, I’ve worked for some bozos, but never someone who got their kicks from intimidation. Or someone who yelled at me while spraying spittle in my face. Or someone who threatened to fire my sorry ass unless I did this or that by some impossible deadline while sacrificing my family and social life, or my health.
I’ve never worked at Apple.
It’s very disturbing to hear in the press the latest in a long history of stories of mental cruelty inflicted upon your employees or contractors. The latest being about the Foxconn employee who allegedly committed suicide over losing an iPhone prototype, and pulling the iPhone app VoiceCentral by Riverturn. Pretty dissimilar events, which indicates how diverse the culture of fear is within Apple. Or, at least that’s the way it looks.
We’ll probably never find out the truth about why the employee of one of your contractors committed suicide, or perhaps was killed (although that seems a bit excessive). Pundits have been speculating about just how fearful that guy had to be so that the only way out was suicide. Or how fearful Foxconn had to be to order a hit (yeah, right). All speculation, so let’s set this aside momentarily.
The second recent story involves your pulling the iPhone app, VoiceCentral, from the app store resulting in 100% of the refund being charged to the developer at your discretion. Not because customers were dissatisfied and Riverturn deserved it, but because you arbitrarily and with almost no notice, yanked the app leaving the developer holding the bag. And there’s no appeal.
When I talk about the culture of fear in this case, it’s not the fear that iPhone developers should rightly have about investing — actually, gambling — development dollars on a product that is then submitted to a release process in Apple that is similar to flipping cards into a hat.
The fear I’m talking about is your poor employee, Richard. If this conversation is even remotely accurate then let me stop addressing Apple and talk directly to Richard.
Dear Richard,
I’m so sorry to hear about your conversation with Riverturn. It must have torn your guts out to have been forced to make a call like that. To come off looking like a total asshole when it’s not you, it’s your manager and maybe even his manager that should have made that call. But they were too cowardly and didn’t have the balls to talk directly to a developer who will be severely impacted by what appears to be a frivolous decision. And you had to tell Riverturn that they could not talk to the sociopath responsible for pulling the app.
You didn’t say that your boss was listening in on the conversation to get his jollies but was too chickenshit to get on the line. You’ve got nerves of steel, man. I’m impressed. Or were you just terrified of losing your job. That’s not something to take lightly in this economy.
I hope you made it home safely after that call and weren’t too impaired to drive while thinking about what a shitty thing you were forced to do. How many calls like that a day do you have to make? It’s going to be rough when you reflect on this call and realize that you had a choice. You could have told your boss that this was a morally wrong thing to do and that he should make the call, but you caved. You had your reasons. Good ones I’m sure. And don’t worry about being alone. History is full of people who set their morals aside in order to protect themselves.
That probably sounds like I’m coming down on you, but I’m not. You’re just a poster-boy for the culture of fear that appears to be rife within Apple. I just hope you haven’t been so brainwashed that you feel that what you did — no, what Apple made you do — was acceptable.
Oh hell man, it’s just a friggin’ iPhone app. It’s not like you killed off a cure for cancer. The good folks at Riverturn will survive. So will Apple and so will you. If you’re being bothered by what you’ve done, or reconsidering working at a company like Apple that has been getting so much bad press lately for good reason — then think of yourself as a surgeon. You’re a highly talented individual working for the greater good who’s contributed a lot, but just had one patient die on the operating table. Shit happens. You pull yourself together and move on. It’s not your fault the hospital gave you a chainsaw instead of a scalpel.
Now let me direct my comments to the people responsible for all the lunatic decisions happening within the app store … I’m sorry for calling you sociopaths because I know how the truth can hurt sometimes. You’re not in the same league as the good people in the financial industry who caused a global recession, but you do dominate your industry. Well done.
I’m not going to tell you to get your act together and to create a win-win for the developers and Apple. You either believe you’re doing the right thing or you’re terrified of the consequences of trying to bring sanity to Apple.
The culture of fear starts at the top.
