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Apple Fires Engineer After His Daughter's iPhone X Video Goes Viral (engadget.com)
"In a brutal reminder of the secrecy tech companies enforce on employees, Apple recently fired an employee after his daughter posted a video of the iPhone X," writes long-time Slashdot reader HockeyPuck. Engadget reports:
His daughter took down the video as soon as Apple requested it, but the takedown came too late to prevent the clip from going viral, leading to seemingly endless reposts and commentary... [I]t's important to stress that this wasn't a garden variety iPhone X. As an employee device, it had sensitive information like codenames for unreleased products and staff-specific QR codes. Combine that with Apple's general prohibition of recording video on campus (even at relatively open spaces like Caffe Macs) and this wasn't so much about maintaining the surprise as making sure that corporate secrets didn't get out. Apple certainly didn't want to send the message that recording pre-release devices was acceptable. All the same, it's hard not to sympathize -- the [radiofrequecy] engineer had poured his heart into the iPhone X, only to be let go the week before the handset reaches customers.
In a new follow-up video, the former Apple engineer's daughter says "I had no idea this was a violation," adding that her father "takes full reponsibility for letting me film his iPhone X." Here's some more quotes from her video.
In a new follow-up video, the former Apple engineer's daughter says "I had no idea this was a violation," adding that her father "takes full reponsibility for letting me film his iPhone X." Here's some more quotes from her video.
- "I made this little innocent video that was just supposed to be a fun memory of me and my family... It suddenly went viral, and I have no idea how my video got so much attention considering how many other iPhone X videos there are out there from other YouTubers..."
- "At the end of the day when you work for Apple, it doesn't matter how good of a person you are, if you break a rule, they just have no tolerance. They had to do what they had to do. I'm not mad at Apple. I'm not going to stop buying Apple products. Rules are in place for the happiness and for the safety of workers, and my dad takes absolutely full responsibility for the one rule that he broke."
- "It was an innocent thing, and to be honest I think Apple is going to do a much better job from here on out in addressing the rules and making sure that everybody is aware of the rules. And it was an innocent mistake, and he fully apologizes."
- "We're not angry. We're not bitter. My dad had a really great run at Apple, and he appreciates that company for everything they did for his career. My dad's gonna be okay... And yeah, I don't think he deserves this, but we're okay. We're good."
- [She breaks into tears when defending her father from critical commenters on YouTube.] "Apple really did like my dad. And they let him go. Because -- because he broke a rule. So my advice to people out there is to just not overlook rules when you're in the workplace or when you're in school or when you're at home."
iPhuckedup
He is lucks they only fired him. Apple is extremely aggressive when it comes to this type of thing. He is also lucky that he is out now. My current company, and many others would never hire someone from Apple who was there for more than 5 years and they are most like a person who was a heave coolaid drinker and thinks they are better than everyone else.
I worked for an Apple "Partner" in the past. My God, the hoops they had us jump through were insane. We eventually told them, thanks, but no thanks.
The experience of dealing with Apple is the reason while to this day, I refuse to buy Apple branded anything. Biggest bunch of self righteous smug motherfuckers I have ever met in my professional career.
If that leak gave opponents a 1 month head start, that month represents 1 month of lost lead.
And while she might pretend to be sorry, she's really trying to get attention with the 'sorry video' too. A private sorry to her dad is needed, and he needs to do a sorry to his boss at Apple if this is intended to soften Apple's view. A public video is not the appropriate forum for apologies, and it sounds like its intended to shame Apple for its hard line more than a genuine apology.
On the plus side, you didn't leak top secrets to the Russians and then block Congregational and Senate backed sanctions against Russia (the deadline for implementing the sanctions has long passed and Trump has not implemented the Russian sanctions). But that just shows how Republicans put party above country.
This is one of those situations were you feel sorry for the guy, but at the same time he brought it on himself. It's like the guy who was fired by Nintendo for doing an unauthorised interview. At least the Apple guy has skills, and probably a lot of money, while the Nintendo guy worked in localisation and had an English degree. He likes now sells Nintendo Switches in BestBuy.
This is an example of bad things happening to good people. It was an accident. It seems neither father nor daughter blame Apple. Indeed, I get the impression that Apple acted because they felt the credibility of their rules needed to be protected, not because they thought there was any malice involved in posting the video.
I feel sorry for them. They seem like a fine family.
Yo, Apple .. the competition is not going to steal some idea off a YouTube video literally a week before the product is in people's hands. This was shown after the product was announced. Sorry but nobody was hurt by this. Second there was no willful disclosure of any trade secret because the iPhone X was already announced. Third, don't lie to me with the "no exceptions" BS that rules have to be followed regardless of circumstance. Apple should suck it up it really should. They suffered no loss, and even if they did they are a mega corporation they can absorb it quite easily. Someone broke into my Benz when I parked it on the street stupidly and had some cash easily visible in it. I didn't go crying to the cops, I just let it go because one it's too much hassle and second maybe some dude needed to feed his family. Why can't Apple be like that? As for you âoebut but the contract, the NDA, the rules!â idiots: I 100% guarantee if you were in a plane crash in the woods and needed a first aid kit to as save your friends you would break the law and break into a cabin to steal first aid supplies. And what about the guy in Las Vegas who stole a truck to drive victims of a shooter to the hospital? So do you honestly I think that driver should be charged with theft? Fact is saying something is against âoerulesâ shouldnâ(TM)t come up in any argument. Letâ(TM)s talk about ethics.
her father "takes full reponsibility for letting me film his iPhone X."
Responsibility Accepted Captain Needa. The level of response from Apple seems about right to me. You can be sure the people with pre-release hardware have the potential consequences of leaks explained to them very clearly. And not for no reason: this leak probably cost Apple way more money than they would have paid this employee even had he worked for them his whole life.
SE is very good. The ginormous ones don't interest me..
its one of those sad moments where everybody lose for no good reason.
The employee lost his job, sure, but Apple loses what seems to be a good employee, has to deal with any information leak in the video, has to deal with morale issues with close colleagues in the fired employee department.
Should Apple had ignored this incident and let the employee go with just a warning, that would set an awful precedent for the company, which would make any future incidents like this more likely/damaging.
welp, if there is anything positive coming from this is that the kid -- and probably a lot of other kids -- are now familiarised with non-disclosure agreements.
"life is a joke, and someone is laughing at me"
Back when I first joined the company in '02, one of my colleagues explained to me what product secrecy was worth to us in dollar terms. We had just gotten the iMac G4 on the cover of Time magazine, because it was news. It was news, because it was a secret. You can't buy the front cover of Time as an ad placement, but if you could, it would be worth tens of millions of dollars.
Apple has always gotten vast amounts of press attention, worth hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of dollars, because of the secrecy. If some guy drops the ball on maintaining that secrecy and keeps his job, then more people are going to get sloppy about it, and that pisses away a massive benefit to the shareholders.
Sucks for him that he didn't take the NDAs seriously, but Apple did the right thing in showing him the door.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Watched the video expecting it to be a 12-year-old, but no, it's a grown woman. How on earth could she not have known that she'd get into trouble for posting this before release? Did she think she was entitled to a world exclusive hands-on preview of the device because her dad is an Apple engineer?
Simply put, it's the father's fault for letting his daughter handle an employee device. Letting family use a top-secret company prototype is reasons enough for dismissal, but the family member then posting videos to YouTube of this *unreleased* product really takes the biscuit.
Apple have done some terrible things (e.g. getting the police to raid Gizmodo after they legally acquired a pre-release iPhone) but I see no issue with this firing. The fact that the daughter posted a follow-up video really says it all. Let me guess, she wants to be a social media star?
it's hard not to sympathize
Those hurt corporate feelings. So touching. And adorable. They should have the right to burn down the family house as a compensation for their obvious suffering.
Apple 1997: "Think different"
Apple 2017: "just not overlook rules when you're in the workplace or when you're in school or when you're at home"
In a new follow-up video, the former Apple engineer's daughter says "I had no idea this was a violation," adding that her father "takes full reponsibility for letting me film his iPhone X."
In that case, why are we even seeing this non-story at all? If he takes full responsibility, then clearly he expected to be fired for being careless with Apple's prototype, and there is literally nothing to report here. We are only hearing about it because he is irresponsible!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Guy is stupid
Guy gets fired.
Just because somehow a new gadget is involved, doesn't make in news, only for the yellow press perhaps.
"Apple really did like my dad."
Apple is a company. A company cannot like or dislike something. Any emotions you ascribe to a company are actually the emotions of whoever is in charge. You change the leader and the emotions of the company can reverse in a minute.
People often make this mistake of "trusting a company" or "believing in a company". You can trust the current leaders, but you can't trust a company. A company is not a person, it's a legal construct. Personifying companies too much only results in disappointment.
Sorry to go all old-man-yells-at-cloud up in here but today's generation is all about looking for ways to be noticed any way they can. Her apology video demonstrates that - she's beaming with pride about how her video was trending before it was taken down. People used to only earn recognition by either achieving something through hard work. YouTube and social media has provided them shortcuts to that status.
I know it shouldn't matter, but reading this it does. If she's 8, 9 or 10 I feel more sympathetic than if she's 19 or 25. All the article says is "daughter", a daughter can be any age, and a little kid may not understand, a teen looking to cause trouble or an adult looking to make a name for themselves. It changes the dynamic of the story reading this depending on how old I imagine the daughter to be. If they didn't want to give her age, then grade school, high school, college could have been used, just to frame it.
So you're telling me that in all the decades that Apple has been around, someone finally filmed some stuff and posted it on the Internet to only have the father be fired for? Let's "face" it, the X is creepy as hell and they don't want the risk of their own whistleblowers.
Apple is the best company E-V-E-R!!!
This isn't like spilling coke on a keyboard. She probably cost the family $150K+/yr over this stupidity. Guess she will go to the community college instead of Stanford now.
If they just posted all their code to github and developed in the open, none of this would have happened.
Apple, you are THE BESTEST!
6s plus is very good. I got used to the size, feels normal now and my old iPhones seem tiny. Bigger screen helps my eyes too. I don't care for the newer ones. I love my headphone jack and Touch ID.
but there is a point where she shows the camera shes recording with. There is now way Apple didn't know this was happening. You cant hid that camera to well.
They broke the NDA.
Should consider themselves lucky Apple didn't decide to also sue them for that.
You don't want to know how they're made. A few years back, made the mistake of going to work for an outfit doing Apple tech support. Thought I would be doing something with computers. And I would have been, pushing extended warranties mostly. They fired me after about ten days, but I have to admit to having a problem with being so dishonest for so little remuneration. Some people are cut out to be Apple types and some aren't.
SE is good because it's a 5S with new guts. Still has a headphone jack. Sometimes "newer" is not "better". This is true on the software side as well. Fuck, I'd still be running iOS 8 if I could.
Damn, she's hot! It's great that she grew out of her adolescent blueberry phase.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
They had to do what they had to do. I'm not mad at Apple. I'm not going to stop buying Apple products. Rules are in place for the happiness and for the safety of workers
That's just a little creepy.
If you agree to not disclose what youâ(TM)re working on donâ(TM)t let your kids play with it. Doctors and lawyers donâ(TM)t show kids their client files and documents. Engineers shouldnâ(TM)t show their kids their confidential work. Duah.
[I]t's important to stress that this wasn't a garden variety iPhone X. As an employee device, it had sensitive information like codenames for unreleased products and staff-specific QR codes.
And we are supposed to believe that all of that was hidden in the meta data of the video that she took? Why else should that matter, unless that information was somehow available to the millions who saw the original video? Sorry, calling bullshit on that.
I would love to see NK Kim, get a stolen IPX from china, and make a video of it :)
He takes resoonsibility? Of course. Heaven forbid she own her mistake herself. That generation is a flipping disaster. And good job, dad. There is no way he didn't know this was a no-no - why did his daughter, whom again, HE is the parent of, have her phone in a restricted area in the first place? They are both pathetic.
Look at the knuckle-dragging scum justifying Apple's actions in this comment section. They use the same 'logic' as the millions of cultists who are apologists for male and female genital mutilation- and indeed I bet all these male Apple apologists were mutilated by their parents shortly after birth.
Tribal psychology is always the same- and sadly it works on the least valuable members of any society. And the psychology is exploited by the most ruthless alphas, who in their personal lives would never ever follow the 'corporate' philosophy. Slavery is for the drones.
PS the same dribblers supporting Apple and saying Apple had to do this are the same dribblers supporting the demonisation of Russia daily on this site. A coincidence? I think not!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Shopping solves all my problems"
The video was shot in the Apple cafeteria, with her dad.
Dad was well aware of the video being made and was a participant.
That bideo was painful to watch
Rules are for people who think with their a$$
Being fired is never a âoeoh well next timeâ event. The rent is due on the first. I would hope dad gets a job soon.
Wording and sentences in this and previous videos seems differ greatly. My guess would be, that they had agreement to avoid litigation and one of the demands is to show how fair and great Apple is sacking the engineer cause of RULES.
this is apple we are talking about. The kings of manipulation. Its publicity stunt to get people talking abut a newly released iToy. Im sure the sacrificial engineer will be compensated for his loyalty to the cult.
I use to work for APPLE, and my promotion to another department in another company was staged as being fired. I was intentionally carrying secret bogus information to defectively plant into a competing company, where I was accepted with open arms like Mr. T in a fried chicken restaraunt-brothel.
I bet that 'daughter' is on Apple payroll, while the dad gets the job he wanted and Apple farts bad tech in their leaked NDA's. You can't get fired by Apple, really, everyone moves on to something 10x better.
test your might!
Really? In a market where there's a shortage of qualified and experienced engineers and developers
This is true.
Tech people have literally gone into other lines of work because of the lack of jobs.
This is also true.
Can you truly see why these two things can not be true at the same time? Read carefully the original line, then think about the people who cannot find work...
Ongoing consolidation in the tech industry means that there are ever-less jobs
Ongoing consolidation, while at the same time Amazon alone does things like hire hundreds to work on Alexa. While at the same time companies continue to be born at a fevered pace.
As the original poster said, there's a shortage of *qualified* and experienced developers...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I worked as a contractor for Apple for a year or two. It sucked balls. Their software sucks, their API's suck, their management sucks. It was "suck" all the way down. In the end I wasn't able to make happen what they wanted to happen due to their fucked up API's. I literally said "I can't do anything else with this shit" and told them to get lost. I lost a little money but in the end I gained money by having future contracts not supplied by egotistic assholes with no skill. Fuck that! I never worked long-term for them again except for 2 or 3 instances where they paid 3 times the going rate to fix something "right now" that their in-house idiots couldn't understand. The whole place is full of underskilled children.
Oh and whomever modded me a troll is an Apple fanboi!
I watched the video and she used a camera filter to squeeze the height of the video, making the iPhone X look short and thick like an iPhone I.
Use 'who/whoever' where you would use he/she.
Use 'whom/whomever' where you would use him/her.
"Him modded me a troll" is ungrammatical.
And they let him go. Because -- because he broke a rule. So my advice to people out there is to just not overlook rules when you're in the workplace or when you're in school or when you're at home."
And another complacent worker bee is born.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It did contribute to building excitement for the iPhone X. Tim Cook's Apple seems to have forgotten about how to create a buzz around a new product launch.
Last I checked, there was no Preview button in Slashdot's mobile view.
Well, you're supposing people are always rational in their hiring decisions.
They pretty much are; just not how you think.
There's a lot of emotion and "gut" thinking involved in most hires
That is the ultimate in rationality, because your subconscious is much better at judging the quality of a human being quickly than you are, especially in terms of working with them over a long period of time. It's the same brain performing intellectual thought as it is issuing snap assessment of character.
Almost never have my initial impressions of a co-worker, been mistaken in the long run. You subconscious knows when someone is diligent, or trustworthy, or any number of other qualities much better than does your "rational" brain which has only a page or two listing experience and perhaps a half hour or hour chat, only marginally technical in nature.
Take ageism
Sorry but ageism (like so many things) isn't really an issue outside of Silicon Valley (if even there). After having worked with countless older developers I have come to the conclusion that like so many claims of victimhood, cries of ageism are generally made by workers who over years, did not stay current, did not stay sharp, did not stay productive or are not pleasant to work with...
So you do have engineers leaving the fieldM
But again, you don't have QUALIFIED engineers leaving the field, at least not because they cannot find work... if anything because of the pull of other interests.
So again, what you have is a very real shortage of qualified (not mediocre) developers and engineers, which are badly needed everywhere I look.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Obviously if he wasn't at least one of those (s)he'd be ok.
Too bad the EVIL is NOT unusual. That's just how corporations work in their mindless and soulless pursuit of infinite profit.
Spent a while searching through this promising topic in search of funny or insightful comments. Remarkably disappointing. There was a recent article with a little wayback machine for old Slashdot articles, and each time I tested it I seemed to find much more humor and insight in the ancient history of Slashdot.
Actually I regard this topic of being fired for theoretically threatening profits as a religious issue:
There is no gawd but profit, and Apple is profit's prophet.
That's as in #1 profit according to Forbes for 2016. Lesser prophets include Gilead, the google, Exxon, and some gamblers.
The priority is money, not principles or people. Rather like #PresidentTweety, eh? I think that prioritization tends to produce evil, but your mileage may differ. I think good programmers naturally tend to put principles first, insofar as programs are just instantiated abstractions.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
"This new generation has no respect for their elders" -- 4th century Greek text
He can't say it to her.
As a teen, she can't even imagine taking responsibility for her actions. Likely as an adult she won't either.
There were two failures, and the larger one rests on her dad. They teach "we will sue you to the fullest extent of the law" in orientation there. Jobs was famous for his militancy about IP. He knew his career was on the line.
There are clearly communicated rules about cameras and filming. She couldn't get on campus without knowing that. She knew too. She broke a rule that she knew about, she filmed, and she put it on youtube.
It is devastating. It is too terrible to face. About a million dads (and moms) split into Intel, Honeywell, IBM, google, hp, samsung, facebook ... all don't break this rule. They know the cost and they keep from crossing that line.
Is in his daughter's video the iPhone x didn't break. They did a better job advertising the phone than Apple's official keynote.
If I had mod points I would have modded you troll too. You are responsible for people you bring into an environment, you are responsible for company secrets entrusted too you. Said Child is also an Adult (not a little kid), regardless the father is responsible for ensuring she doesn't have access to corporate secrets while he escorts her on campus and ensuring she isn't filming etc. I dislike apple as much if not more than anyone and don't have a single apple product, but in this case they are 100% in the right.
A company is not a person, it's a legal construct.
I don't disagree with the general tenor of your post, but this was slightly unfortunate. A company is not a human being ...
Not to be pedantic, but just for the next time you express your (very valid) point: It was "unfortunate" because the very "legal construct" in question is the legal construct 'person.'
Being a person is the defining attribute of a corporation (as against other species of company, which could be a natural person trading as XYZ Co, partnerships, etc where the responsible persons are humans), [The other usual feature of a corporation is limited liability (hence 'Ltd.').] A (legal) person is that which can, inter alia, enter into a contract in its own name (and thus sue and be sued). Most adult humans are persons as well: natural persons as opposed to corporate persons.
But I agree with your sentiment .... A corporation is not the kind of person you want to put your trust in.
Does anyone actually believe her bs? She said she noticed it trending and still didn't delete it until Apple contacted her? You got taken for a ride.
Apple's marketing gimmicks get weirder each year.
i mean all the sweat shops in China and now just going out of control firing people for showing a product that is already being sold ,, thats BS
See what happened to GM and what is happening to GE.
Fuck you! You're an insensitive prick!
"If it's not yours, don't touch it. Ask for permission."
So how much do you think she made by having a viral video on YouTube? How much more will she make now that they are giving a "second life" to the video by re-linking to it?
That said, I am actually getting increasingly turned off by Apple as a company. The arrogance and the bad customer service is starting to grate on me (and we have eight different Apple devices in my house hold). I think my next purchase will probably be a Samsung. Not saying they will necessarily be any better, but at some point, Apple has run out of second chances.
They did him a favor in firing him. His career was over at Apple, anyway. No one would have ever trusted him again.
That any of you would condone this bullshit by apple? WTF has happened to this world? And that girls stupid fucking pitiful post, wtf was that? My dad apologizes? Fuck her as well.