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Apple Fires Five Employees for Downloading Leopard
BuzzardsBay writes "The good folks at VARBusiness are quoting a ThinkSecret report that claims five Apple employees got canned over the unauthorized downloading of the Leopard OS. According to the article: one of the employees says:
"Because we had the character to tell the truth and to face the consequences of our actions, we were terminated. If we all lied and denied it would we still be working at Apple today? Even more so, is that the kind of person that Apple wants working for them?""
congratulations, you faced em.
How we know is more important than what we know.
TFA makes it clear that the fired employees worked at Apple's retail stores.
Is that the type who steals or the type who thinks being honest about their crimes absolves them of punishment?
You must not have RTFA. The very first sentence:
Five workers at Apple Computer's retail stores have been fired for downloading preview copies of Mac OS X 10.5, dubbed "Leopard," which the company distributed to developers two weeks ago, an Apple enthusiast Web site reported Tuesday.
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
From the article: "The next-generation operating system, which is scheduled to ship early next year, were previewed by Apple executives at the Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco during the week of Aug. 7-11. " So it seems the terminated employees were fired for downloading an advance copy. Whoever uploaded it in the first place is probably looking at some sort of repercussions as well. If they can be found.
Oh no, not again.
Honestly who is suprised by this? Dur they would have fired you. Back when you interveiwed for min wage jobs and they asked you, "is it ever 'ok' to steal from a company you work for?" ... heres a hint.. DON'T SAY YES!
Biting the hand that feeds you does not typically result in extra treats or praise. Jesus, kids.
Would Apple have continued investigating? How would they have investigated? According to the ThinkSecret article this is based on http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0608retailleak.htm l? there may be dozens more people getting fired fairly soon.
Good on Apple. The product isn't done yet, so it doesn't deserve to be seen.
Oh no, not again.
since they are only retail store employees, it doesn't make much sense to fire them just for that. I mean they did minimal to spread it out there (other than being leechers along with a few thousand others).
It seems like they are enthusiastic about the product which is a good thing on a sales team, unless, of course, they start recommending people hold off until Leopard comes.
Could someone explain the exact reasoning behind this? I could imagine its simply the same mentality as the RIAA would show if an RIAA employee confessed to downloading songs off the internet - which makes it much more understandable (if their own employees can't serve as rolemodels, who can, right?)
"All of us know that we violated our NDA and ethics policy. Therefore, because we had the character to tell the truth and to face the consequences of our actions, we were terminated," said one of the fired employees, who spoke with Think Secret on condition of anonymity.
If you are full well aware that you violated the Non-Disclosure agreement -- in addition to the ethics policy -- you signed when you came on board, then, well, you should be full well aware of the fact that all you can expect is to be fired over it. NDAs are sort of a big deal for companies. Ethics, on the other hand, are a big deal unless if you have enough power.
The summary left out a big piece of information, in my opinion. They were just retail employees, not developers. I was puzzled why some developers at Apple *didn't* have Leopard at first.
"All of us know that we violated our NDA and ethics policy. Therefore, because we had the character to tell the truth and to face the consequences of our actions, we were terminated,"
How about the lack of character you showed by violating the NDA in the first place. If you had any character (or ethics) you would have obeyed the obligations of the contract you signed.
On your next job application where it asks "Why did you leave your most recent job?", now you can write "I was fired because I was fucking stupid."
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Were they fired because their download of a torrent included providing pieces of the torrent to others in the swarm? Aside from that they were not acting maliciously and had a reasonable interest in getting an idea of what they were going to be selling. Or is getting a sneak peak at their own product illegal? I don't get it. Were they supposed to buy it in-house instead? Where is the ethical problem? Except for the mechanics of the download, which suggest they added an infinitesimal amount of bandwidth to an existing swarm, why are they feeling guilty and Apple calling them guilty? Considering iTunes is a major Apple service I would actually like to have sales people be aware of what is on BitTorrent and suggest adding more content to their service. I would pay money for the BBC's Doctor Who if iTunes let me download it quickly through them. Considering I am in the market for a new Mac in the next 2 months I am curious about this and not happy with Apple's treatment of people. I wonder if the people who didn't come forth are glad, or are waiting for the other shoe (lawsuit) to drop.
Would Dreamworks have fired office staff if they had been talking about downloading a hot new Dreamworks movie via BitTorrent like "Over the Hedge"? What if the movie was still unreleased like "Dream Girls", or "Flushed Away" or "Transformers: The Movie". Even though it'd be bad publicity for DreamWorks to fire employees who are enthusiastic believers about their own products, it'd be worse to give them a wink and say "That's okay" if they really want secrecy.
Whether I agree or disagree with Apple's PR department about the wisdom of offering Leopard preview releases to developers only, that's the choice they made. It's not up to me, even if I were an employee of Apple, to try and change that policy or think that I'm somehow exempt from it. Apple's discouraging developers from talking about releases they have on Apple developer mailing lists even. It's doubtful that they'd make exemptions from their closed lips policy for staff in the Apple retail stores.
Apparently "facing the consequences" now means crying about it like a kid, and kicking up dust hoping that someone will feel sorry that you were terminated for such trivial matters as breaking NDAs and being unethical towards your employer.
on waving their right of protection against self-incrimination.
We sometimes forget how good we have it.
Downloads are not just accepted, they are encouraged.
From an ethical perspective, you have two things:
1. Employee does something that runs counter to the company's stated policy in an important way. Bad employee - no biscuit.
2. Employee tells the truth when lying might have saved their job. Good person - refused to lie even when lying seemed to be of benefit.
There's no reason to mix these two - they're separate actions. One's a mistake, one's a sign of character. So of the mistake, you say "oh shit, that was really stupid, I wish I hadn't done that." And of the truth-telling, you say "yay, I'm glad I did that."
When you try to mix the two, it wrecks the good taste of telling the truth. Don't regret doing the right thing. Just take this lesson forward and try to avoid doing the wrong thing in the future.
--Speaking as one who was burned by exactly this kind of thinking in high school, and wasted a lot of emotional energy on it.
...that they didn't get sued. Which is probably what will happen if Apple finds any guilty employees that didn't admit.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
You are another Stephen Crane fan I see judging by your sig. :-)
Jonathanjk.com
See this. Apparently a recent Ubuntu upgrade screwed up the X server. Aren't I glad I don't bother installing updates! (Actually, I just use the computer as a synthesiser, and don't use one of the ubuntuized desktop enviroments, so I have to manually grab updates)
I have freaks! I did something right...
If people admit to having done something, in particular something that would otherwise go undetected, they have expressed remorse and almost certainly realized that their action was wrong, which means they are likely not going to do it again. Therefore, a good part of the purpose of any consequences has already been achieved. So, in that case, "accepting responsibility" does indeed mean that the people involved should face significantly less severe consequences than people who lied and were found out.
That's an entirely different situation many politicians and corporate leaders are in: they often "accept responsibility" for things simply because they can't hide them anymore, and there is usually no remorse or realization involved that their actions were wrong. In those cases, "accepting responsibility" is a meaningless gesture.
I find your cynical attitude and unthinking approach to ethics reprehensible.
If you see a story somewhere else and you haven't seen it here submit it.
Don't complain about slashdot not posting things when (almost) every article is based upon user submission.
liqbase
That's all there is to corporate ethics policies, nothing more and certainly nothing on which anyone should being using to judge a person's character.
As for violating Apple's NDA - sounds like they used bittorrent to get a copy of the software from someone else who had originally made it public. That means they did not themselves take an internal copy from Apple and redistribute that. They only did what any other person on the net was capable of - go to a public website like isohunt and use the public information to get into the public torrent for the files.
Because bittorrent makes you a redistributor as well as a simple downloader, I am sure they are technically in violation of Apple's NDA - but realistically their employment at Apple had nothing to do with their downloading of a copy.
Thirdly - Apple, or rather whatever uptight member of lower middle management who actually made the call to fire these guys, is cutting off their nose to spite their face. Any retailer should be ecstatic to have store employees as interested in their own products as these guys (kids?) are. How many times have you all gone to best buy, or compusa or circuit city, etc, etc and been told absolute bullshit by some ignorant "sales associate?" When you've got employees that are so into your own products that they hunt down pre-release versions on the internet just check out for themselves, you need to keep them around, not fire them for trivialities.
Last and probably least, but it made me chuckle, did anyone else notice the plagarism at VAR Business? Their link to the story at ThinkSecret includes an unnecessary "?www.reghardware.co.uk" in the URL, which is another computer news website. Looks like a violation of corporate ethics policy to me.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Reminds me of a joke that went somewhat like this:
A businessman was teaching his son about ethics and the ethical dillemas in busines, "Let me give you a practical example, son. See, there's this old friend and business associate of mine, whom I loaned some money to last year. So yesterday he came around and gave me my money back. When I counted the money, I noticed that two banknotes were stuck together, and he had given me a hundred dollars more than he owed me. Which, of course, raised the ethical problem: should I tell your mom too about the extra money, or not?"
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There was a couple in the apple store next to me looking at a mac book talking about playing back some of the movies they had ripped for traveling. They were new to the apple world so wern't sure if they could play them back. I told them about some of the multimedia apps other than quicktime (handbrake, vlc). The employee quipped "I'm not supposed to talk about those" half joking and wandered away..
hmmmmmmm
What *IS* it with Apple people!? And I don't speak merely of users of Apple, but I'm beginning to think ALL people involved in their seemingly exclusive club. Are they somehow brainwashed? Brain-dead? "...because I told the truth..." YES you idiot. Pleaing guilty for a lesser sentence only SOMETIMES works in a criminal court. And really, since the only punishment a company can give is termination, guess what they give?
And this confusing idea of connecting "downloading while an employee" with "embezzlement"? Are you f***ing serious?! If nothing else illustrates the difference between theft and infringement, this comparison should.
I'm wondering now if their "warm, soft and fuzzy" user experience has tainted their expectations of the world. Do they really think they live in such a world?
Hasn't anyone noticed that the Apple logo has a bite taken out of it? It has a piece missing. Would you, in the real world, ever buy an apple that has literally been bitten from? Doubt it. Perhaps this is the starting point of the dementia. Or maybe it's the strange "happy" looks on the faces of Apple users that cause other people to want to join their brain-dead club? Maybe it's a combination of different types coming together for different reasons... all of which are largely *imaginary*. Or maybe the Apple logo is symbolic of their minds... you know... a piece is missing?
It should be unsurprising to anyone that I am a Linux user. I am a sysadmin type who administers Linux, Windows and Apple computer systems.... (and other stuff too) So it's not like I'm inexperienced with Apple and "just don't understand." I see the whole realm of thought and behavior. Apple users really DO "think differently" and it's at the very least, a little troublesome.
real world #'s
one is $2.00 worth of office supplies
the other is the companies flagship product...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Regardless of company policy, employee handbooks, or other such administrative nonsense, if a company wants to keep you, they will - kill the manager's wife, sleep with his dog, but if you're valuable, it'll be overlooked.
On the other hand, if they want to get rid of you, they don't need a reason, and if some silly law says they do, they'll get one - inappropriate use of company resources (you checked headlines on slashdot once while at work), tardiness (you were 30 seconds late to a meeting), or spreading insider information about the company (someone overheard you telling your wife that you'd had a bad day at work). These and more have all been used to fire undesirables. In these circumstances, your only real recourse is to use the 'ee handbook against them - specifically, they have to enforce all rules equitably or the company leaves itself open to a discrimination lawsuit.
Just don't expect to continue working there, regardless of the outcome of such a suit.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
Another example of Jobs & Co. being a bunch of dicks and his buttboys supporting him on Slashdot.
Did these guys "upload" Leopard to the internet, or did they just find it on the 'Net and "download" it. So many people seem to fail to realize that there IS a difference!
These guys presumably worked in the retail store.... Know where else you could work for 8 bucks an hour part time (to avoid giving you benefits of course) and get treated like crap? Well anywhere honestly, but go work at wal-mart, UPS, or any restaurant.
The feeling I get is that if you aren't in development over there at Apple, you aren't really going to advance up the chain very much. I wouldn't worry about it.
Are people upset because the employees were fired even though they told the truth? Or are they upset because those fired employees should have had the right to download any software in existence without paying for it and without any repercussions?
Many years ago I was arrested (erroneously, but no matter) and while awaiting my turn in court I got to see the previous night's arrests being arraigned. There had been a prostitution raid, and a number of women were brought into court. One by one they would approach the bench, plead guilty, get fined $500 and be released. One woman, indignantly denying being a hooker, said she was only on her way to the corner store for groceries when she was arrested. When she pleaded not guilty the judge set bail at $1500 and remanded her to custody. Her response: "Wait a minute! If I'm guilty I pay $500 and go home? If I'm innocent I pay $1500 or go to jail? I plead guilty!" The public defender tried in vain to dissuade her, but to no avail. The judge accepted her guilty plea and she went home.
The moral: I don't know.
I am not sure of the exact starting point, but I know that iBooks from about 4 years ago had a model specific installer which came with them. Actually was a bit of a pain in the ass to deal with. Of course the store-bought version of OS X works universally on Macs.
And no serial # is required on any OS X install except for Server, as people have mentioned. You are mistaken or just full of shit to say otherwise.
Since when is point release a "next-generation operating system"?
RTFA!
They didn't download a COMPETITIVE OS. They downloaded a copy of an unreleased product made by their own company!
Next time, have some idea of what you're commenting on before you open your mouth. (or engage your [defective] chair to keyboard interface!)
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
Why on earth are Apple employees downloading a preview copy of an Apple OS that has been handed out to thousands of developers? That would seem like carrying water to the sea. It seems silly not to give your own employees a copy for free, especially if they want to play with it in own free time. You would get much better feedback than from a third party and employees are bound by much stricter secrecy than third party developers. Steve Jobs has trust issues.
This sig is just as redundant as the rest of this posting
It's a little silly to have fired them- they're employees downloading the thing off the Internet; it's concrete proof that their IP was being infringed upon. Now, the people can "not recall", etc. if they so chose because they're no longer favoring their now former employer.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Since this is a civil trial, if enough perponderance of evidence is flung your way by the defendant and you
can't address the same; you still typically lose the case.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I have to believe that it's been submitted multiple times. It's been all over other sites like digg. Besides, it's a big enough story that Cmdr Taco himself should post it, as he frequently does other stories. Face it - slashdot simply refuses to cover the story because it's a negative story regarding Linux.
"If we all lied and denied it would we still be working at Apple today? Even more so, is that the kind of person that Apple wants working for them?"
Ummm... so it doesn't matter if you break the rules as long as you confess before your boss finds out? Seriously, just because you confess, it doesn't mean that all should be forgiven.
Heck, I'd commend the five and give them promotions. No, make that two promotions! By conciously doing something that explicitly violated their company's policies and then having the honesty to admit that they did something wrong makes these people heroes in my opinion and they should be promoted to management. It takes a lot of balls to do something wrong, admit it, and then expect to be an exception to the rules and consequences. Let's hear it for these five heroic whiners!
Erik http://yakko.cs.wmich.edu/~rattles
You had something to hide
Should have hidden it, shouldnt you
Now youre not satisfied
With what youre being put through
Its just time to pay the price
For not listening to advice
And deciding in your youth
On the policy of truth
Well... not exactly, but this does remind me of the Simpsons (after 15 years, doesn't everything?)
Mr Burns is thinking of firing Homer for being massively obese and unable to work properly, but Mr Smithers cautions against it with the line "think of what the papers will say!" Mr Burns can only imagine headlines like "Another Smart Move By Burns."
This case is one where I can't imagine any situation where these ex-employees look good. They did something they knew was wrong beforehand, and they knew the consequences of their actions would be dismissal, and yet they still did it and spoke about it while at work.
Yes, it's naive enthusiasm - they wanted to get a headstart on their job and be even better - but they still did something wrong in full knowledge of the consequences. I feel sorry for them, but would sack them myself if I was their manager.
And that'd be the right thing to do.
Owning up is the easy bit. Taking the consequences is hard. When you make a mistake, you've got to do both if you're honest.
No "Jobs" for these guys:)
Sorry, I tried stopping myself
Microsoft put the "sucks" in "success".
In violating the NDA to which you agreed, you're an idiot.
In admitting your wrongdoing, you're honest.
You're an honest idiot. You're idiotically honest.
Either way, you're an idiot, and the consequences of your idiocy is termination.
(I'd say 'QED' at this point, but I'm sure someone here will rip this up...)
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
I don't know about other countries but even in the Netherlands where we are used to being protected by law from being fired (in many ways), stealing from the boss still is and always has been een sufficient reason for "ontslag op staande voet".
I have Mod points but I just have to skip it for this story.
Is it just me that finds this whole thing strange???????
Here are these store employees so excited about this new apple product, that they download and install it to see what it is like, so they can rave about the "Superiority" of Apple. And they are doing this "product research" in thier own time. They stole NOTHING from apple. They already paid for the computers, they could not buy the OS... Apple lost nothing.
If anything apple should have said, "a one week suspension for breaking the law, now here is the official copy that you SHOULD HAVE ASKED FOR, now go and do some beta testing for us".
True of Apple, but what about BiC?
Apple has a policy like most buisnesses about copyrights. These people broke it so they got fired. They fessed up to it, they have character. That is all.
Congratulations on being honest enough to admit your were cheating your employer. Now you have the opportunity to pay for your actions with your jobs.
No of course apple (or any company) wouldn't want employees lying to them. They also wouldn't want employees leaking their software you freaking dumbasses.
You know the proverb "two wrongs don't make a right", right? Well, the thing is, one wrong and one right STILL doesn't make a right. And those sacked employees were lucky, because Apple is quite the lawsuit-trigger-happy company. It could've been worse.
Anybody at Apple who's "working on" Leopard in any sense already has access to regular weekly builds of the whole OS. They couldn't get their job done otherwise. In general, this software distribution is limited to people who actually have a NEED to run pre-release software. Giving out early releases of OS software to anybody at the company that's merely CURIOUS about it would be counter-productive.
Early builds of any software are going to be buggy, more or less by definition. Some of those bugs are going to be really bad - erasing disks, corrupting documents, leaving your Mac unbootable, etc. The loss of productivity isn't going to be worth it for "regular users" until the OS is pretty far along.
-Mark
I wrote a reply to a similar question earlier:c id=15972803
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=194869&
The key point is that anyone at Apple who has a good reason to be running early builds of Leopard already has access to it. Because early OS builds are buggy, people who don't need to run them as part of their job probably shouldn't run them at all. Retail Store employees have no plausible reason to be running pre-release versions of an OS that isn't shipping for 6 months to a year.
Apple aren't in the justice business and it's not their role here to dole out punishments. They fired these staff because they clearly have no respect for Apple's IP and yet many of Apple's assets are IP. Apple can't afford to employ such people. End of story. You can read into it all kinds of metaphysical garbage about the nature of punishment and justice and shades if grey, but it's all irrelevant.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
People get fired ALL the time for minor screw ups. Apple does it and suddenly their the big ol' evil corporation. WTF?
Seriously, they screwed up, they lose their jobs. Why should they get to keep them? What reason does Apple have to believe that they wouldn't just do it again?
"Because we had the character to tell the truth and to face the consequences of our actions, we were terminated. If we all lied and denied it would we still be working at Apple today? Even more so, is that the kind of person that Apple wants working for them?"
Welcome to the Corporate World, guys.
When you try to mix the two, it wrecks the good taste of telling the truth. Don't regret doing the right thing. Just take this lesson forward and try to avoid doing the wrong thing in the future.
wow, I think that's about the most intelligent thing I ever heard on slashdot..
People note that that blurb forgets to mention these were retail employees, not actual developers. Others respond, saying there's no difference, the consequences would be the same.
But they wouldn't be!
Here's what would happen if it had been a developer at Apple who did this:
A long shadow would rise on the wall, over their LCD monitor. They'd swivel around in their chair, and Steve Himself would be standing there, in a spitting rage. He'd slap them full across the face, spinning them back around, and shout, "How DARE you do this to me! Pick up your crap and get out of my company! Leave your iPod at the door, and peel that 'Apple' sticker off your car, and when you get home, think long and hard about what you've done, and go work for Creative or something!!" Then he'd storm out, kicking the door aside, muttering under his breath.
But from that point on it'd be about the same, yeah.
is that these employees are actually surprised. Last summer I worked at an Apple retail store and quit after a month realizing that I hated sales, but I would have never talked about or admited to using anything that Apple wasn't currnetly selling. Right after I got hired I asked two of the full-timers about the transition to intel. They sort of looked at each other uncomfortably and said I would have to look online. Any time anybody came in asking how to get music off their ipod you had to tell them to look around on the Internet. It was pretty clear to me I would have been fired if I told them I was using a pirated copy of any Apple software or running unreleased products.
They were downloading copies from the Internet, not leaking software they'd acquired in their jobs.
I want to know how they caught them, or even suspected them of such a thing. More than likely they were bragging about it at work or whatever. But how the heck would Apple know what these guys were doing at home in their own time? Have the juristdiction of employers grown excessively? Reminds me of high school when they try to control and punish you for things that you did outside of school. Of course undermining your employers flagship product by seeding it isn't something that you can really expect to be take lightly.
It sounds like Apple doesn't want stupid people working for them.
I'm sorry, telling on yourself is just plain stupid. I'd have fired them too.
The incentive to tell the truth in the first place is being able to look at yourself in the mirror.
If you're an absolute moralist with a stick up your ass, you gotta do what you gotta do. Given the probable proportion of disposable income these guys spent on Apple products, they'd have no more reason to feel guilty over downloading copies of unreleased software than I would for downloading a serial for Quicktime Pro, when over the last four years I've bought 4 Macs and 7 iPods.
Yep, I work for Microsoft, and we have wide ability to download all kinds of internal software, releaess and unreleased, even some stuff that isn't announced. We're all being constantly encouraged to use Vista at home and at work as beta testers.
:).
And we can even talk about it on Slashdot after
Apple makes some great products, but it doesn't sound like that fun place to work, honestly.
My video compression blog
Like many other have said, it's an unreleased version of OSX. Apple owns it, Apple specifically said "you shouldn't have it yet". Also what would preaching the superiority of a product that the congregation couldn't purchase do? It would make them hold off from buying a mac NOW. Preaching about it to customers before it's released will have no good effects over preaching to them at the time of release. Plus i seriously doubt Apple would give them a copy if they asked.
The article says 'admitted,' not 'came forward.' They got busted, and THEN came clean. Sheesh, it's really no wonder they got fired.
*biew biew*