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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?""
Is that the type who steals or the type who thinks being honest about their crimes absolves them of punishment?
More like if you use the same penalty for those who tell the truth as those who lie and get caught, you remove all the incentive to tell the truth in the first place.
Would Dreamworks have fired office staff if they had been talking about downloading a hot new Dreamworks movie via BitTorrent like "Over the Hedge"?
I'd fire anyone at any company for watching "Over the Hedge."
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'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As for violating Apple's NDA - sounds like they used bittorrent to get a copy of the software from someone else who had originally made it public.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.
Oh c'mon! WTF is wrong with you all? Is the world so black and white in Slashdot that if someone protests about being punished too hard, they can only be advocating no punishment at all?
The (ex)Apple employees are protesting that they came clean and yet endured the same punishment they'd have endured if they had not come forward but been caught anyway. The complaint is not that they were punished at all, it's that the punishment was excessive and gives nobody any incentive to be honest.
And they have a point. And this not about murder, where arguably the action is so severe that the appropriate punishment should always be dealt, it's about a case of copyright infringement. Yes, there's room for Apple to take a more lenient line with truth tellers than with those who lie. Especially when given the case is ultimately about whether an employee can be trusted with the company's proprietary inside information, the issue of whether they lied or not in an investigation is actually relevent.
Apple has arguably over-reacted. And whether it did or not, it has most certainly cut off its own nose to spite the face of others. Firing is an expensive act. Apple can expect to lose the productivity the fired employee would have given to the company during the time it recruits and trains the replacement, and recruiting is hardly cheap either. Further, it has made its own future investigations harder because it will not get the cooperation of employees who see themselves as ultimately loyal.
Apple can hire and fire whoever they want, for whatever (legal) reason. But that doesn't make this anything other than, at face value, assuming there's not more to it than TFA, a dumb decision. And certainly, the logic Slashdotters promote of "IF THEY HATE THERE PUNISHMANT, TEHY MUST FINK BEENG PUNICHED IS RONG!!1" is utterly irrelevent and idiotic.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
We all know Apple is incredibly protective of their IP. Part of that IP is keeping everyone from just being able to get a copy of what they have in development, so as to keep some things closed and hidden until *they* want to talk about it.
Note: I AM an Apple employee, and I would expect that if I did the same, I would face the same punishment. Apple's new hire training actually goes over all of this, and states exactly the punishment for doing anything against their policy. Part of that policy is that if you use or divulge unreleased software or information without the proper authority, you *will* be fired, at the least. I'm sure if they wanted to, they could have taken this much further.
Think here for a minute, these guys downloaded an illicit copy of Leopard, knowing that just that was grounds for being fired, *and then* proceded to talk about it at work, where they were overheard. Surprising to me would be if they *didn't* get canned.
I hate sigs...
It is this inability to read and comprehend what someone else has actually written, instead insisting on merely glancing at their words and assuming they say what you expect, that makes me despair for the future of society.
Let's do some reading.
What you claim: "You act as if they have a God-given-right to work at Apple."
What he really said: "Apple can hire and fire whoever they want, for whatever (legal) reason."
What you claim: "What we have now is the whining of somebody who doesn't like that he is being held accountable for his own actions."
What he really said: "The complaint is not that they were punished at all, it's that the punishment was excessive and gives nobody any incentive to be honest."
Welcome to the wonderful world of the straw man argument, where answering people's points is too hard, so you just pretend they said something stupid instead and tell them how stupid they were to say it. You've got a bright future ahead of you in politics.
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.