Slashdot Mirror
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."
She's a kid who explained she didn't know she broke a rule, and her father takes full responsibility for not informing her so that the rule wouldn't have been broken. It was his job, his workplace, and his decision to bring his daughter to work... and didn't tell her not to film the visit, nor did he stop her at any time while chaperoning her through sensitive areas to inform her to stop filming/delete the video / not post it online for others to see. This was all on the parent, not the child. He may as well have brought a film crew into the R&D area. What moron doesn't have a "what not to do while on this trip" conversation with their child before going into a sensitive area? Who in their right mind would think a kid of this day and age wouldn't have a phone on them and wouldn't be using it for social media unless you explicitly told them to put the thing away or took it from them? How hard is it to tell your own kid NOT to take any photo or video while at daddy's super secretive workplace? Or to at least smack the device out of their hands when you see them holding it up filming?!?!?
Guy deserved to be fired and made an example of, but still sucks for everyone -- Apple loses an otherwise good employee and he loses a sweet job... and a family is impacted by it.
also, you mean *sore and *college , though butts soaring through the air and expensive photo collages are interesting images to invoke.
"a butt so soar she can't sit for a week."
Go back to the 1920s and stay there.
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?
you know these Silicon Valley types
The guy allowed a breach of NDA. That's a fundamental rule in any shop that deals with products that ship more than 10 units per production round. He'll never work at that level again, as far as the big end of Silicon Valley is concerned, his name is mud.
[Sorry, this signature is unavailable in your country/region]
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.
its one of those sad moments where everybody lose for no good reason.
You don't seem to understand that Apple sells hype. This engineer interfered with Apple's cloak of mystery, which is one of the biggest ways they enhance their perception of value. Without smoke and mirrors, Apple is just another manufacturer of trinkets from whom the magic escaped long, long ago. Apple literally does not give one tenth of one shit whether they have the best RF engineer. Remember "holding it wrong"? That guy is an interchangeable robot to Apple. Secrecy, on the other hand, is valuable. You can't put the smoke back into the capacitor.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why should it _cost_ them money? It's free press, and creates a buzz for the product, leading to increased sales, leading to more profit.
Apple spends orders of magnitude more than this guy's [former] salary on advertising, and a big portion of that is controlling the timing of the release of information. When this one engineer allowed his daughter to take pictures of this one device, it will have resulted in actual work (which costs actual money) for other employees. It may have affected media spend, where lots of zeroes on the ends of numbers are commonplace. When the left hand and the right hand don't cooperate, it becomes difficult to pull off a magic trick, and magic is Apple's differentiating factor. At the end of the day, the competitors' devices accomplish all the same tasks, so Apple isn't competing on the basis of competence. They're competing on the basis of image, and part of that is keeping wraps on their prototypes so that they can maintain secrecy, so that they can in turn control the message.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
She's a kid
Not a kid.
Just childish.
Except that beatings don't work. You get the same bad behavior, just now it's done in secret with care taken that the parents don't find out about it.
It's definitely not the way to raise children that grow into proper adults. There's a reason why there are so many restrictions on that stuff that didn't exist back in the '20s.
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.