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.

• "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."

Comments

X employee

[turkeydance]

iPhuckedup

Re:X employee

[K. S. Kyosuke]

No more iPhones for the daughter, though. She'll get a Lumia for Christmas.

Re:X employee

[KiloByte]

She'll get a Lumia for Christmas.

As they're in US, that's illegal. 8th Amendment.

Re:X employee

[jarkus4]

8th amendment only applies to government so he is free to punish her this way.

Re:X employee

[Ramze]

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.

Re:X employee

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Why? Sitting for a week isn't good for you anyway. You're supposed to have a walk every now and then.

Re: X employee

[Anonymous Coward]

Ladies and gentlemen! I present to you.... (drum roll)... The Problem With Today's Society!

Ever wonder why children do stupid shit and behave like out of control monsters? There's a parenting strategy for that, and the guy above me is selling the handbook.

Re:X employee

[Anonymous Coward]

"butt so soar"

So how high will her butt be soaring?

Re:X employee

[BlacKSacrificE]

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.

Re:X employee

[Anonymous Coward]

She's a kid

Not a kid.

Just childish.

Re:X employee

[GrumpySteen]

Going by her YouTube videos, she's an adult with her own house, her own husband (who already graduated from college) and a Pilates studio that she's selling (or sold) because she prefers to make movies.

Her father isn't likely to be deciding anything about what phone she buys, she's probably done with education and hitting an adult (even your child) is assault, which is a punishable crime even if the victim doesn't want to cooperate in pressing charges.

Re:X employee

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, he just wont work for an evil company again, this rules out Apple, Google, and a number of others. Facebook it's hit or miss but this wouldn't be a great start.

Ignoring that as for RF engineering he will have no trouble finding work but maybe less hip products than the X.

Re:X employee

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Your comments sound fascist and unduly harsh to me. That's extremely disturbing. The fact that people actually upvoted this comment is even worse.

If this post is any indication, we're headed to a dreadful future where people defend undue punishment for "breaking the rules". That is the essence of a totalitarian society.

Re: X employee

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:X employee

[Anonymous Coward]

TBH, this is just a case of Apple being assholes. The iPhone X is being released in a few days, the competition isn't going to be able to steal any of the technology and implement it faster because of the leak.

This is just a case of Apple wanting to be control freaks about their marketing and general assholes.

OTOH, when you work for the company of the douchebag hipsters, you should expect this kind of treatment.

Re:X employee

[Hal_Porter]

Societies with corporal punishment of children produces adults who are keen to go abroad and conquer new territory.

Beat your children for ze Fatherland!

Re: X employee

[Anonymous Coward]

Spanking is beating, it has all the same problems associated with it. You're training the kid to equate getting caught with being punished, not necessarily the connection between doing something wrong and being punished.

What's more, the parents that use violence as punishment are usually not terribly bright to begin with, which means there's an excellent chance that they couldn't explain why the rules were how they were.

When all is said and done, punishment is rather pointless if you're not also doing the work of making sure that the kids understand what the desired outcome is and why. In most cases, you're better off rewarding good behavior than trying to punish bad behavior.

Re:X employee

[Anonymous Coward]

hitting an adult (even your child) is assault

Complete horseshit. If you actually hit someone then it's battery not assault.

Re:X employee

[BasilBrush]

It's more even that that. The dad appears in the video, and is at one stage demoing animated emojis to his daughters camera. He just didn't seem to be aware that this was a problem himself.

Re: X employee

[Anonymous Coward]

How does disrespecting your kids teach them anything but insecurity?

Re: X employee

[Anonymous Coward]

sadly hitler had involvement with the church and people that coddled him rather than disciplining him, perhaps he could have turned out different if he had had a few swift kicks up the jaxy when he was young.

Re:X employee

[mysidia]

chaperoning her through sensitive areas to inform her to stop filming/delete the video / not post it online for others to see.

Naw.... If the company is seriously concerned about people filming/taking pictures in certain areas, they would do what other companies do that are concerned about these things and have a strong security presence, bringing the guest in would have clear ground rules spelled out on that very day, and they would detect a kid coming in filming things in about 2 seconds, And some random kid wouldn't even get in the building without acknowledging security requirements verbally and signing for a visitor badge.

If they're in places where the general public has access to (No security presence restricting access to employees), then they can't reasonably hold the parent responsible as an employee for their kid having access to that place and filming things there --- now filming the iPhone X is another matter, But "violation" for filming by the kid should require that some sensitive and not already publicly-available knowledge or information was exposed.

Re:X employee

[torkus]

Actually, having and enforcing rules instead of literally hiring babysitters for adults to 'remind' them not to do things they already know are wrong...is pretty stupid IMHO.

Most of the people reading this thread know that Apple is hugely secretive about unreleased products despite not (likely) ever having worked for Apple. Someone who DID work for them couldn't possibly have been unaware...and having babysitters is ridiculous. Sucks he got fired and all, but it's also not unexpected.

Re:X employee

[ilsaloving]

That is the essence of a totalitarian society.

If it looks like a rose and smells like a rose...

You do realize that business has worked this way for a while now, yes? *Especially* companies like Apple. Hell, we as people now *define* ourselves by our brand choices, to the point of hating people who prefer the "opposite" brand.

Re:X employee

[ChrisMaple]

It's unfortunate that your command of English is so poor that your post was funny.
Would her flying buttocks have been a part of her now unaffordable art project?

Re:X employee

[KingBenny]

bummer ..
another reminder : save the planet, don't breed sapients

He is lucky

[pablo_max]

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.

Re:He is lucky

[Calydor]

Somehow I doubt that's a requirement from the company that starts their product names with a lowercase letter, then capitalizes the second.

Re: He is lucky

[lokedhs]

I've read the sentence you quoted multiple times, and I still can't see anything wrong with it. Perhaps you are unaware of the expression "jumping through hoops"?

Re:He is lucky

[jcr]

Cool story, bro.

-jcr

Re:He is lucky

[bzipitidoo]

Firing is still harsh. Plus, if he was an important employee, it will be costly to replace him. It's possible he was already on the edge, one more mistake from being fired, and this was the last straw. But it doesn't sound like that at all. His daughter could be totally mistaken, her parents could have spun a big illusion to keep her from worrying, but she claims Apple liked him.

Apple could have docked him some pay. Have him not get the bonus, accept a pay cut, even demand he take an unpaid leave of absence. Summarily firing him sends all kinds of bad messages, like that they think great engineers grow on trees and everyone leaps at the opportunity to work for the great, mighty Apple, and that they don't care about morale and expect the rest their employees to drink deep of the company Koolaid that this firing was totally justified. Must be a stressful place to work, a worse sweatshop than most top tech companies, many of which have a bad reputation that way.

There's also a small risk this could backfire on Apple. Apple's fans and customers could feel bad about what happened, and punish Apple for it. Apple is acting just like you say, smug and self-righteous, and that too could become part of this issue which comes back to haunt them. I doubt this though. Their customers probably will never notice, and that's a shame.

Re:He is lucky

[jcr]

she claims Apple liked him.

Entirely possible, but showing the device to his daughter was already a firing offense. He might have skated on that if she hadn't gone on a public forum to blab about it, but once it was all over YouTube, Apple had to let him go.

-jcr

Re:He is lucky

[war4peace]

So don't hit it until you're sure?

Re:He is lucky

[Freischutz]

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.

Really? In a market where there's a shortage of qualified and experienced engineers and developers your company would not hire a an engineer who worked for one of the most successful device manufacturers on the planet for years because he is a 'Cool Aid drinking' .. 'self righteous smug motherfucker' ... 'who think he's better than everybody else'? If I was hiring engineers I would not turn my nose up at a dyed in the wool Android developer if he was qualified and an experienced coder even though I am no particular fan of the Android OS or Google. Same goes for Microsoft developers, I may not like Microsoft as a company but their engineers and developers are not radioactive space zombies who breathe in oxygen and exhale mustard gas. Apart from being a generalisation of ridiculous proportions, that whole post is mostly just a steaming pile of fanboy whining that make you sound like the love child of a drama queen and a snow flake, you really should get over yourself.

Re:He is lucky

[drinkypoo]

Firing is still harsh. Plus, if he was an important employee, it will be costly to replace him.

Apple doesn't have important employees any more. If they did, maybe they would have some magic, but they don't. It's replaceable cogs all the way down.

Apple is acting just like you say, smug and self-righteous, and that too could become part of this issue which comes back to haunt them. I doubt this though. Their customers probably will never notice, and that's a shame.

Keeping the prototype out of the hands of others was part of his job, and he didn't do it. As it so happens, it was a part of his job that Apple takes seriously. This is not news or surprising to anyone. His willful disregard for his employer means that he should be fired.

Re:He is lucky

[drinkypoo]

Really? In a market where there's a shortage of qualified and experienced engineers and developers

What? Who told you that? There's a surplus of them. Tech people have literally gone into other lines of work because of the lack of jobs. Ongoing consolidation in the tech industry means that there are ever-less jobs, not more. Loads of those open positions are not designed to be filled; they are designed to justify outsourcing. Apple has probably got literally filing cabinets full of resumes and databases stuffed with application data, they will be able to replace this guy (assuming he wasn't redundant and they won't bother) tomorrow.

Re:He is lucky

[Junta]

I'm not the parent poster, but at a company that has dealt with Apple.

At least in a business relationship, they are quite abusive to their vendors. Of course, every company is as abusive to their vendors as they can afford to be, and Apple's position is such they can be really abusive.

Beyond that, they would also put out crazy requirements that would cause expensive work to meet, and then select a vendor that didn't meet any of those requirements because ultimately the only metric that matters is cost. This wouldn't be so bad if they did not insist up front that these things were a hard requirement and not doing them would mean disqualification. The only time my business 'won', it meant bidding under cost, foolishly thinking that would kickstart the relationship, but no. We are also in the list of companies that go for the greener pastures in the market and happily ignore apple, as there is plenty of money to be made elsewhere.

The thing is I wonder how their long term quality will be, if this is their attitude. As they ignore their requirements for cost savings, and more and more companies learn that bidding under cost isn't going to work, what happens to Apple?

Re:He is lucky

[serviscope_minor]

This is not news or surprising to anyone. His willful disregard for his employer means that he should be fired.

Meh: it's just a phone. An expensive one, sure, but still just a phone.

The government generally has a much more pragmatic attitude: they have been doing it longer and the secrets are more important (life or death in some cases). What they have found the hard way by bitter experience is if you massively crack down on rule breakers then you give people a really satrong incentive to cover up when they fuck up.

That actually tends to compound things and make bad mistakes really really bad.

Re:He is lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you asleep during the last 15 years? Do you not recall Apple obliterating Think Secret? If anything, Apple's reaction to what anyone conscious during the last 15 years would have known was a dumb thing to do, was mild, merely termination, no charges. I don't agree with Apple's methods, but I recognize them, and I am aware of their MO, and this awareness makes your post obtuse.

Re: He is lucky

[sound vision]

My guess as to why Apple was so horrified over this particular leak is that it showed the new iPhone being played with as a child's toy. Apple has reason to be particularly sensitive about this model - they see the hype train is losing steam, as well as the sales figures. I know that whenever I hear "iPad", the images that come to my head are of kids smearing their fingers all over one trying to punch the monkey, or my last workplace literally bolting one to the wall as an example of corporate waste (although that was certainly not their intention). Spotting an iProduct in these places doesn't promote the image Apple wants for their brand.

Re:He is lucky

[thegarbz]

It's possible he was already on the edge, one more mistake from being fired, and this was the last straw. But it doesn't sound like that at all.

There are zero tolerance rules for even the best out there. The better companies enforce them equally on all employees.

Apple could have docked him some pay. Have him not get the bonus, accept a pay cut, even demand he take an unpaid leave of absence. Summarily firing him sends all kinds of bad messages

That depends on the circumstances. If there was clear policy that was broken and the punishment was end of employment then firing him sends all kinds of GOOD messages, like the ones that say "we stand by the rules we set". I'm not sure about this case specifically but Apple is quite well known for this kind of thing.

drink deep of the company Koolaid that this firing was totally justified. Must be a stressful place to work

You're making a lot of completely unjustified assumptions.

Apple's fans and customers could feel bad about what happened, and punish Apple for it.

Apple fans and customers happily let the company shit on them, tell them they are holding things wrong, let their devices bend in their pockets, and do things *directly* to them, and they don't punish Apple. No one will care about one guy getting fired. Most people won't even know. Of those who do know, most won't remember this happened tomorrow.

Re:He is lucky

[v1]

I think it's not just about repercussions, but also about sending a message. Every now and then someone takes a step WAY over the line and Apple has to give them a public flogging to remind the rest of the employees that they need to take that NDA they signed very seriously.

People complaining about Apple being nasty..... no, not really. If Apple had filed a lawsuit against this guy, then OK that's taking it too far. But they ARE within their right to do so. So anyone that says they "took it too far" isn't looking at how far they can go. He's in breech of contact, and has caused harm to Apple that they can probably prove some value of in court. I think this guy got exactly what he deserved, no more, and no less.

I wonder has everyone forgotten the last time this happened? The guy that left a prototype iPhone at a bar? It's not like Apple hasn't been periodically reminding people how seriously they take their trade secrets. This engineer was well-aware of it and was still careless.

I bet the next engineer to take a prototype home will have this in mind when his kid begs him to show off his prototype. And that's precisely why Apple had to do it.

Re:He is lucky

[quantaman]

Firing is still harsh. Plus, if he was an important employee, it will be costly to replace him. It's possible he was already on the edge, one more mistake from being fired, and this was the last straw. But it doesn't sound like that at all. His daughter could be totally mistaken, her parents could have spun a big illusion to keep her from worrying, but she claims Apple liked him.

As the saying goes, the graveyard is full of indispensable people. I'm sure he was a good employee, but he will be replaced.

Apple could have docked him some pay. Have him not get the bonus, accept a pay cut, even demand he take an unpaid leave of absence. Summarily firing him sends all kinds of bad messages

Firing him sent exactly the message they wanted, leak company secrets and you get fired.

Apple more than any other IT company is a marketing company, the secrecy that surrounds their new products is part of their marketing campaign. That means you need to be extremely harsh on someone who leaks anything because a single screenshot can spill the beans on a major new product announcement.

Re:He is lucky

[drinkypoo]

Meh: it's just a phone. An expensive one, sure, but still just a phone.

No, that's the point. Apple's selling hype, not just phones. And he gave the hype away for free. All that leaves is a phone, and lots of companies are able to sell those.

Re:He is lucky

[alexo]

brand an apple logo into his forehead...

So you're saying Harry Potter worked for Opel?

Re:He is lucky

[HornWumpus]

His daughter generated unscheduled hype. Messing with Apple's carefully laid plans.

Depending on just how viral the video went, she might have earned a few years worth of bay area engineer's salary. She would have had to have the parts in place with youtube etc.

I doubt it was very lucrative, just not enough fanbois.

Re: He is lucky

[sound vision]

Wow... That just makes the whole story even sadder.

Re:He is lucky

[BasilBrush]

I suspect your dislike of Apple isn't shared by your company at all. It'd be a pretty dumb move for a technology company not to hire Apple developers if they were available and affordable.

Re:He is lucky

[Trailer Trash]

I have a different view. Ever notice how every single time Apple releases a big new product there's a controversy? Remember when some Apple employee forgot their prototype iPhone in a bar?

I think he was going to leave, anyway, and the PR folks put together a cool scenario where he got fired because of his daughter's video. And now people on Slashdot are talking about Apple and iPhone X. Or, go fully cynical with me - she's not his daughter, he never worked at Apple and they're both simply paid actors.

I don't believe the story, frankly. Had they canned him they would almost certainly have demanded some sort of "gag order" in the final terms. I just think it's a publicity stunt that worked wonderfully.

Re:He is lucky

[Aighearach]

Funny, as a native speaker with a high standardized English comprehension level I was also curious what was wrong, mostly just so I could laugh at the false-pedant. Unfortunately, it was just typos and not even entertaining.

Re: He is lucky

[Brockmire]

Very similar dealing with Indian companies like Tata. Some of the requirements were nonsensical, yet the competition wrote something down on the RFP so we had to play the game. They don't give a shit that they bankrupt their partners, not realizing they are fucking useless and need the hand holding support.

Re:He is lucky

[Aighearach]

Apple doesn't have important employees any more.

Presumably a radio frequency engineer is doing QA on their implementation of the radio chip's reference design, so easily replaced. Secrecy is most of the job, the only reason to even do it in-house when production happens somewhere else.

Re:He is lucky

[Aighearach]

The government generally has a much more pragmatic attitude

Yeah, secure points of entry.

It is the engineer's fault because they don't have site security; but in a perfect world somebody else would have prevented the situation and he wouldn't have to be good at it.

Re:He is lucky

[gravewax]

Showing friends and family would be a sacking offense, this went well beyond that. I would say they had absolutely zero choice here as they could not risk setting a legal precedent that you can get away with such a massive breach of your employment contract.

Re:He is lucky

[jcr]

I read the NDAs I signed, sparky.

-jcr

Re:He is lucky

[fyzikapan]

Firing is not harsh. It's the standard at big tech companies. I guarantee I'd have been escorted off campus had I handed over piles of SEMs and TEMs to non-employees.

Re:He is lucky

[Gussington]

At least in a business relationship, they are quite abusive to their vendors. Of course, every company is as abusive to their vendors as they can afford to be,

I think this is more at the big end of town, where even a typo can cost millions of dollars. This is why I moved out of big business into medium sized. You still have enough money to do cool stuff, but you don't have as many over-ambitious fuckwits trying to shit on you at every opportunity. Now my vendors are more like partners. We work together and most people behave like adults.

Re:He is lucky

[Gussington]

Summarily firing him sends all kinds of bad messages.

It sends the most important message Apple cares about, confidentiality is more important than your job.
Given how much Apple despises leaks, this was the only course action they could take and maintain their position. Therefore it's the right one.

Re:He is lucky

[Ash-Fox]

Really? In a market where there's a shortage of qualified and experienced engineers and developers

I definitely experience this issue regularly in business.

There's a surplus of them. Tech people have literally gone into other lines of work because of the lack of jobs.

Someone who has a PHD in computer science but applies to work in for example a datacenter systems architect role but has no knowledge or qualifications in the work, not even as a passing interest or hobby is of no use. They get informed they don't have the experience or knowledge for this particular work and what they need for it. Someone with just a computer science PHD can't get a science R&D job because the requirements for one involves having degrees in the other sciences and mathematics, so they end up going into some other non-IT fields all together.

This is why we have such a large amount of people who counted to be in the tech industry and why they are undesirable to most companies that require tech workers.

Loads of those open positions are not designed to be filled; they are designed to justify outsourcing.

As someone who does a lot of consultancy and contractor work, the biggest reason I find companies outsource is not necessarily cost, but the immediate need to get something done, particularly when you don't have the right culture, business knowledge or the right people to perform the work.

Re:He is lucky

[eam3]

There's also a small risk this could backfire on Apple. Apple's fans and customers could feel bad about what happened, and punish Apple for it. Apple is acting just like you say, smug and self-righteous, and that too could become part of this issue which comes back to haunt them. I doubt this though. Their customers probably will never notice, and that's a shame.

I doubt it as well. In the ultimate case of irony, Apple fans are no different than the people under Big Brother's rule in the 1984 Macintosh commercial. They will buy and worship anything Apple regardless of what they do. They will be lining up like sheep to buy the latest iPhone, price be damned, because Apple had the courage to include an innovative new feature that Samsung introduced on their phones a year of two before. And a lot of the Apple users I know look down their noses at anything that doesn't have their precious logo on it. I have nothing against Apple products, still have a G5 somewhere in my house and owned an iPad and iPhone for a couple of years. It's the brainwashed users that get on my nerves.

Re:He is lucky

[Plumpaquatsch]

Of course if anything you said was actually true, you'd be in a lot of trouble now.

Re:He is lucky

[UnknowingFool]

Summarily firing him sends all kinds of bad messages, like that they think great engineers grow on trees and everyone leaps at the opportunity to work for the great, mighty Apple, and that they don't care about morale and expect the rest their employees to drink deep of the company Koolaid that this firing was totally justified. Must be a stressful place to work, a worse sweatshop than most top tech companies, many of which have a bad reputation that way.

It wasn't like his daughter secretly filmed it. He knew and allowed his daughter to film at Apple which was already against rules. He also let her film his iPhone X which was a prototype. Then she posted it on YouTube.

Re:He is lucky

[UnknowingFool]

Yes, he is in breach of contract, which is why he was fired. But what actual harm was done to Apple by this?

So it's okay to breach rules as long as no one is harmed? What kind of message does that send to other employees? You can break the rules all you want if no one gets hurt?

Re: He is lucky

[UnknowingFool]

And if you ignore someone breaking multiple rules then don't rules become meaningless? Also the phrase that is ignored is "this time". This time, no immediate harm was a result.

Re:He is lucky

[david_thornley]

On /., there's no editing after you hit the 'submit' button.

Except that hitting the "submit" button is the only way to see mistakes in what you've written. That's my experience, anyway.

Re:He is lucky

[david_thornley]

Hey, at least you don't have to jump through hoops to be a pedantic asshole...

You don't know very much about us, do you? The hoops we have to jump through. Knowing the difference between similar words, knowing what "affect" means as a noun and "effect" as a verb, that's just the start.

Re:He is lucky

[david_thornley]

Do we know that no harm was done? TFS says the video revealed sensitive information.

Re:He is lucky

[david_thornley]

Meh: it's just a phone. An expensive one, sure, but still just a phone.

With, according to TFS, sensitive information on it. If it hadn't been for that, all the video would have done is screwed up a carefully planned marketing campaign.

The government generally has a much more pragmatic attitude

If you're referring to inadvertent mishandling of classified information, the government doesn't prosecute for the reason you give. Firing someone or revoking a clearance is considered a reasonable punishment, although it doesn't always happen. (This is from what I was able to find out.)

Also, this would not be considered inadvertent mishandling, since the video was intentionally made and put on Youtube. Do this with classified information and you will find yourself in prison.

It's business

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

An unfortunate incident

[Mostly a lurker]

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.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[Cyberpunk Reality]

Not to target you personally, but "the credibility of their rules needed to be protected" is a stupid and lame reason to fire someone. In the long run, *rule* is completely irrelevant. What's important is the goal the rule is trying to achieve - not leaking any product info early.

Now, maybe pour encourager les autres firings will actually achieve that. But I doubt it. From what I read, they're firing him for making a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, even big ones. The key is to keep employees who learn from their mistakes, so that you don't end up paying the cost of a different employee maing the same mistake again. Now, maybe this was one of several incidents (and they don't need to all be leaks), but I didn't see any evidence of that.

What it really send a message about is a draconian corporate culture. It tells other employees to live in fear. And random fear at that. Robert Powell, the engineer who lost a prototype iPhone at a bar years ago, still appears to be employed there according to LinkedIn. So now it looks more like a campaign of terror than "rule enforcement".

Re:An unfortunate incident

[Anonymous Coward]

It was an accident.

This was no accident. She was filming the whole ordeal with a fat DSLR on the Apple Campus with her father and lots of other Apple people around. The video is also heavily edited, underlined with music and all that other typical Youtube vlogger stuff. This was not a case of "woops, two seconds of iPhone X footage slipped into a snapchat", this was a vlogger very deliberately showing of the shiny new phone and everybody being aware of her doing it. I am surprised that Apple even let her carry that DSLR around there in the first place.

Accidentally breaking an NDA can happen, but this is as far away from an accident as you can get.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[drinkypoo]

This is an example of bad things happening to good people.

Apple are shit, the engineer is a lame for ignoring the wishes of his employer (which hey, is his job) and his daughter is a spoiled brat for putting her never-going-to-go-anywhere social media reputation over her father's employment. Point at the good people.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[drinkypoo]

Not to target you personally, but "the credibility of their rules needed to be protected" is a stupid and lame reason to fire someone.

In a vacuum, that might be true. However...

In the long run, *rule* is completely irrelevant. What's important is the goal the rule is trying to achieve - not leaking any product info early.

...but he did. He totally did that thing. And even if it's not serious, it interferes with Apple's most important product — the veneer of capability and competence. When holes are punched in that, Apple suffers, because it's all they've got. They don't have technical superiority, they don't have unique features... all they have is their name, and the value of that is based on things like sphincter control.

From what I read, they're firing him for making a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, even big ones. The key is to keep employees who learn from their mistakes, so that you don't end up paying the cost of a different employee maing the same mistake again.

Apple does not have any critical employees. Literally anyone at Apple could get hit by a bus tomorrow without impeding the operation of the company. The days when Apple depended on would-be superstars to do anything but give presentations are long over and Apple is now just banging out new iterations by formula, and there are people lined up ten deep to step into every role Apple's got, desperate for a paycheck. Keeping a prototype secret is clearly and obviously very important for Apple; Apple has a long history of taking this issue very seriously. Nobody who has trouble remembering this should need Apple to "do a much better job from here on out in addressing the rules and making sure that everybody is aware of the rules" because anyone with two brain cells to rub together ought to be fully aware of the rules by now.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[leonbev]

Sorry, but I really blame "Daddy" for getting himself fired here. He should have known that the second he handed that iPhone X employee prototype over to his kid (Who was filming it ON Apple property nonetheless!), he just made a huge NDA violation that could get him fired. A simple "Yo, dummy, stop filming this!" would have probably been enough to stop him from getting in serious trouble, or even a "Don't be an idiot and post this on YouTube".

We all know how paranoid Apple is when it comes to secrecy, and he really should have known better. He should be happy that he works for Apple and not one of the three letter government agencies. Something tells me that you would get prison time if you got caught handing one of their phones over for someone to look at.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[serviscope_minor]

Apple does not have any critical employees.

In fairness, no large organization can. Any institution over 70 years old has almost certainly had every "important" employee beyond a certain point die whether from accident, illness or simple old age. Likewise even important employees have other things in their life which even if not death will pull them away from the company at little notice.

This is why large organisations appear inefficient. They have to have redundancy otherwise they'd be in bad trouble. Apple has 116,000 employees (according to google who are never wrong). That means that a one in a million event per employee per day happens once every two weeks or less.

Small organisations don't have this, but they can collapse if a key person leaves. The inefficiency is hidden from view however.

Not defending apple here, just commenting on the general nature of bigger organsiations.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[thegarbz]

and everybody being aware of her doing it.

Being aware and giving a shit are two different things. It's amazing to see how far you can get with quite obviously breaking rules without someone stopping to speak up to you.

It's amazing how much you get away with if you show the confidence of someone who is supposed to do what they have. I remember at once chemical plant I worked at I occasionally have to take pictures. If I'm using my phone I get stopped every 5 minutes by someone asking to see my photography permit. When I brought in my DSLR and a tripod, not a single person questioned me.

Similarly walking through one company's plant without hearing protection on, I got pulled up straight away (even though it was a quiet area). Same company different site which I wasn't familiar with I walked into the plant protected area after turning down the wrong street. I was in suit and tie, people everywhere. No one dared to question the "important looking" person.

An obvious breach of the rule often look so deliberate that they may not be breaches of the rules.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[HornWumpus]

If only it was that good. You're forgetting the peter principle and its corollaries. Large, not young, organizations are _far_ less efficient than you explanation can account for.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[HornWumpus]

This is a skill everybody should get down while still young enough to be charged as a minor.

'Walk like you own the joint!'

Practice in intimidating places. Take trophies like the (police chief's/bishop's/judge's/principal's) desk nameplate. Sure, there are cameras everywhere now. Jr high school is the age to do your chutzpah practicals.

You will learn the importance of costume.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[serviscope_minor]

Oh sure. I mean that that puts an upper limit on their efficiency. Even with magic pixie dust that fixed all the communication problems, Peter principle magnets and etc they'd still need considerable redundancy and appear inefficient.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[dgatwood]

He probably assumed that since it had already been announced (I assume), and members of the press had already gotten to play with them in person, there was nothing still secret. The question I have is this: did the video actually contain any meaningful secrets? If not (and nothing in the articles implies that it did), then while Apple might technically be within their rights to do what they did, I seriously question the wisdom of doing so. After all, employees learn from mistakes, so he almost certainly wouldn't make a similar mistake in the future even without firing him. Thus:

• The punishment seems grossly disproportionate to the crime.
• The punishment appears to be purely about vengeance rather than preventing future harm or gaining justice.
• To the extent that the firing "serves as an example to others", it also creates a hostile work environment that encourages nearby employees who can get work elsewhere to do so.
• Their competition is likely to hire this guy immediately and without hesitation, so they've hurt themselves and helped their competitors.
• Unless he was a high-level employee, he probably wasn't under any non-solicitation agreement, and I'd expect a lot of his former coworkers to jump ship. Thus, they've created the perfect conditions for brain drain.

Just because you can fire someone for something, it does not follow that you should. And I think somewhere along the lines, perhaps Apple management forgot that. As Saint Thomas Aquinas put it, justice without mercy is cruelty. Food for thought.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[0123456]

"To the extent that the firing "serves as an example to others", it also creates a hostile work environment that encourages nearby employees who can get work elsewhere to do so."

Oh, what a load of crap. Sensible people know that letting their kids take videos of unreleased products and put them up on Youtube without permission is... not something you do. Ever.

Every company I've worked for would have considered that a sacking offence.

Re: An unfortunate incident

[Brockmire]

A guy with "punk" in his handle is going to preach about rules? GTFO.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[dgatwood]

Sensible people know that letting their kids take videos of unreleased products and put them up on Youtube without permission is... not something you do. Ever.

Why not? The product has been announced, which means that it is no longer secret. Journalists have used it, written about it, published videos of them using it, etc. Sensible people would assume that letting their kids do the same thing is okay, so long as the build of the OS on that device doesn't have any features that haven't been publicly announced yet. There's no plausible way that the company could be harmed by it, so a sane, rational employee would assume that it falls within reasonable behavior. Feel free to disagree, but you're going to need a better reason than "the product was unreleased".

Re:An unfortunate incident

[UnknowingFool]

What it really send a message about is a draconian corporate culture. It tells other employees to live in fear. And random fear at that. Robert Powell, the engineer who lost a prototype iPhone at a bar years ago, still appears to be employed there according to LinkedIn. So now it looks more like a campaign of terror than "rule enforcement".

Only if you equate all actions as equal. The other engineer lost a prototype phone. This engineer allowed his daughter to film at Apple (which is clearly against the rules) AND showed her a prototype (which is also clearly against the rules) AND allowed her to film said prototype phone. It wasn't something out his control or accidental. See the difference?

Re:An unfortunate incident

[HornWumpus]

Old orgs have massive redundancy in incompetence.

Why government is so irreparably broken, it doesn't naturally go broke and get replaced every century or so.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[serviscope_minor]

Old orgs have massive redundancy in incompetence.

they have massive redundancy in everything.

Why government is so irreparably broken,

That's begging the question "is the government irreparably broken?" to which I would say no.

it doesn't naturally go broke and get replaced every century or so.

First, the government really is too big to fail. When governments fail, people tend to die in large numbers. Thing is there's no such thing as "no government". When one disappears and a power vacuum occurs it's almost instantly filled with some sort of de-facto government, and almost always one worse than the one it's replacing.

Also, there are organisations much older than 100 years. In fact there are organisations much older than your country.

Re:An unfortunate incident

[drinkypoo]

Apple does not have any critical employees. Literally anyone at Apple could get hit by a bus tomorrow without impeding the operation of the company.

This is not true. This is how you get products that drop calls if you hold them the way people would naturally hold them.

Has it escaped you that the fired employee was an RF engineer? That might literally have been his fault, depending on how long he's worked for Apple.

Responsibility Accepted

[jaa101]

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.

Re:Responsibility Accepted

[jaklode]

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.

Re:Responsibility Accepted

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:Responsibility Accepted

[mark-t]

While I agree that Apple's response was entirely appropriate, I sincerely doubt that this leak actually cost them very much money except what they may have spent trying to get the video taken down.

Re:Responsibility Accepted

[ChrisMaple]

Apple is now competing on the basis of viciousness. I've never been a fan, but up until now I would at least consider buying their products, and wouldn't try to dissuade others from buying. No more.

Re:Responsibility Accepted

[drinkypoo]

Apple is now competing on the basis of viciousness.

Apple has long been a publicly-traded corporation that doesn't give one tenth of one shit about humans.

I've never been a fan, but up until now I would at least consider buying their products, and wouldn't try to dissuade others from buying. No more.

So just to be clear, walled gardens, holding it wrong, overcharging, and slave labor weren't enough for you, but they fire one fuckup engineer and that's the straw?

Re:Who cares. It's just a phone

[cowdung]

SE is very good. The ginormous ones don't interest me..

lose-lose situation

[hagnat]

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.

Re:lose-lose situation

[bzipitidoo]

That's why I was suggesting docking his pay. Surely there is some middle ground between a warning and a firing? He doesn't get off scot-free, and Apple doesn't have to go through the large expense of replacing him.

What's with management at so many companies acting like mindless, soulless bureaucrats? Rules is rules. no exceptions! Might as well replace them all with AIs, since they seem to lack discretion and a human touch.

Re:lose-lose situation

[drinkypoo]

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.

There's a reason for those NDAs.

[jcr]

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

Re:There's a reason for those NDAs.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't think assholes can be insightful?

Prince.

Re:There's a reason for those NDAs.

[OzPeter]

You don't think assholes can be insightful?

Prince.

Sheesh .. it's amazing what goes for critical thinking around here.

1. The OP made a statement about Apple enforcing its NDAs. Like them or hate them, if they are legal and you don't comply with them, well sucks to be you.

2. The 1st AC called the OP a fucking asshole. That was not an insightful comment, that was an Ad Hom pure and simple because there was no argument as to why the AC disliked/disagreed with the actual contents of the OPs spot.

3. The 2nd AC points out this same line of reasoning.

3. Thus in your reply to the 2nd AC, without any substance from the 1st AC, your contention that "Assholes can be insightful" is purely a red herring. It has nothing to do with the OPs post or the 2nd AC's post. It appears to only exist for the sake of you justifying calling someone an asshole because I dunno .. Free Speech??? (and heads up .. that last part was sarcasm)

So does this make me an asshole too?

Re:There's a reason for those NDAs.

[Aighearach]

I refuse to even sign NDAs, and even I would have fired the guy.

Re:There's a reason for those NDAs.

[jez9999]

Sucks for him that he didn't take the NDAs seriously, but Apple did the right thing in showing him the door.

Apple are the richest bunch of fuckers in history. They don't need to earn millions. They should be giving away the iPhone for free. The fact that they aren't is a damning indictment of capitalism.

Re:There's a reason for those NDAs.

[ChrisMaple]

Do you think Apple is paying them to say "It's our fault, Apple is great." or threatening them?

Re:There's a reason for those NDAs.

[ChrisMaple]

An "ad hominen (abusive)" is an argument of the form "You're evil, therefor your conclusion is wrong." Calling the OP a fucking asshole is just an insult, and doesn't even rise to the level of an ad hominem.

Re:There's a reason for those NDAs.

[jcr]

Yeah, lemme know how Kim Fat Ass's Juche Phone is coming along, dipshit.

-jcr

Why is his daughter still posting?

[kronix1986]

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?

Re:Why is his daughter still posting?

[dwywit]

It almost makes me wonder if the whole fuss was manufactured for publicity....

Nahhh, Apple wouldn't do that.

Never.

Re:Why is his daughter still posting?

[hcs_$reboot]

On the other hand, that video also looks like an elaborated ad for the iPhone X.

Re:Why is his daughter still posting?

[stephanruby]

Let me guess, she wants to be a social media star?

Well, now she has to become a social media star. There is no going back.

Her dad's unemployment is certainly not going to cover the rent in Silicon Valley.

It will cover food and a few expenses, but that's about it.

Re:Why is his daughter still posting?

[thegarbz]

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?

Did she read, sign the NDA, go through training, know in detailed the device was secret and not to be published?

You're criticising someone who doesn't know something when they also can't know something. Unless her dad specifically told her anything where was she supposed to get this information from? "Oooh dad gave me his phone to play with, I better second guess him and go ask Apple's legal department!"

The buck stops with the last person required to be in the know. The family member is fully vindicated by the fact that she was (almost certainly) not covered by the NDA.

Re:Why is his daughter still posting?

[willy_me]

Apple have done some terrible things (e.g. getting the police to raid Gizmodo after they legally acquired a pre-release iPhone)

Acquiring stolen property is never legal - unless, by chance, you are the original owner. Just because Gizmodo paid for it does not make it legal.

Re:Why is his daughter still posting?

[thegarbz]

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 needed a follow-up video to get to that conclusion?

Re:Why is his daughter still posting?

[supernova87a]

Not only that, but after having gotten her dad fired, she feels the need to post yet another video about it. This is some kind of internet addiction / alternate internet-fueled reality / inability to just shut up and be quiet for a while when you've gotten slapped to the ground. How many lessons does it take?

Re:Why is his daughter still posting?

[edx93]

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?

She never signed the NDA, and 99.999% likely she never even read it. He, on the other hand, did. It was his lack of judgment that caused these issues, not her entitlement (which, from my brief glimpse of the video, doesn't appear to be any different than most millenials).

Re:Why is his daughter still posting?

[Swave An deBwoner]

Even better, the apology clearly tells viewers that the moral of the story is to obey rules.

Think Affluent

Re:Why is his daughter still posting?

[Aighearach]

How many lessons does it take?

Seventy times seven. And they still don't learn.

Re:Why is his daughter still posting?

[david_thornley]

(e.g. getting the police to raid Gizmodo after they legally acquired a pre-release iPhone)

Nope; at that point the phone was stolen property.

Assuming the person taking the phone didn't, say, assist the engineer in losing the phone, the person had three legal choices of who to give the phone to: the owner, the place where it was lost, and the police. Selling the thing to Gizmodo for $5K was certainly illegal and probably a felony. Buying it may have been a felony, and was certainly illegal.

What a difference 20 years makes

[vittal]

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"

Takes full responsibility?

[drinkypoo]

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!

News for nerds

[nospam007]

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.

Re:News for nerds

[Aighearach]

Slashdot can't even afford yellow pixels!

In Soviet Slashdot, press yellows you!

wrong

[matushorvath]

"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.

Re:wrong

[Aighearach]

I always fire people I like, too.

The "look at me" generation

[JoeyRox]

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.

Re:The "look at me" generation

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's not recognition, it's attention. I have been shocked at just how much some people crave attention, and how satisfying it is for them to get it. People will hit themselves in the nuts with a hammer and set themselves on fire to get attention. I always knew that there were attention whores out there, but I had no idea just how bad it was. Please not I'm not saying all people, and I certainly enjoy getting likes whenever I post to social media. But damn, they really take it not just to the next level, but to several levels above that. We're in a new era and we're far from figuring out how humans are going to handle this instant positive attention for negative behavior.

Re:The "look at me" generation

[thegarbz]

People used to only earn recognition by either achieving something through hard work

Not sure if you don't understand history or you don't understand people, but since the dawn of the human race people have earned fame, recognition and importance through blind luck, critical social connections, or inheritance / ancestry. People who achieved this through hard work are incredibly rare.

but today's generation is all about looking for ways to be noticed any way they can. ... People used to only earn recognition by either achieving something through hard work.

I know you didn't intentionally contradict yourself but you managed to congratulate her for her efforts. She's putting work and effort into a follow up video to promote the windfall she got. Maybe be less angry at the next generation and realise they aren't that different.

Re:The "look at me" generation

[JoeyRox]

The difference being that "blind luck, critical social connections, or inheritance/ancestry" are passive states of being whereas my comparison was for volitional actions, ie a lifetime of work vs spending an hour recording a video of a prohibited product disclosure.

Re:The "look at me" generation

[HornWumpus]

She's apparently a 20 something 12 year old. That was the GPs point, there are lots of them. They are the best reason to avoid facebook but love it at the same time. Just like AOL of old, it serves a good purpose.

It remains no excuse for her dad. Unless she filmed it with a pen camera.

Re:The "look at me" generation

[thegarbz]

ie a lifetime of work

I'm downgrading my original comment. People achieving something through hard work is incredibly rare. People achieving something through a lifetime of effort are non-existent.
Even among the people who achieved something through "hard work" their achievements boil down to a handful of specific moments that suddenly elevate them to a point where they can capitalise on other achievements, and making that moment in an hour recording a video is far more effort than most successes actually get.

You're trivialising a single moment of her efforts ignoring her other many videos she uploaded in her quest for fame along with god knows what else she's doing other than playing with Youtube (people craving attention rarely limit themselves to one platform).

Re:The "look at me" generation

[Aighearach]

Darn clouds! Stop beaming like that and rain or something.

Re:The "look at me" generation

[Gussington]

I have no mod points that that is post of the day.

Re:The "look at me" generation

[ChrisMaple]

People achieving things through hard work are the rule, not the exception.

I'm comfortably retired after a career of hard (mental) work. I made some nice things. I know many other people who can make the same claim, all middle class. All that is "achieving something."

Re:The "look at me" generation

[thegarbz]

Oh okay, if you calculate making it through to the end of the rat race an achievement then sure let's go with that. Send me your email address so I can send you an auto-generated participation award.

How old is she?

[rjejr]

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.

Re:How old is she?

[thegarbz]

It changes the dynamic of the story reading this depending on how old I imagine the daughter to be.

She's a grown up if you watch the video, but really the more important question is: why? How does the dynamic of the story change? The age, gender, or relationships have no bearing on the case in question which is generalised to: Person who signed NDA gives thing under NDA to person who has not signed NDA in breach of the NDA, and person who has not signed NDA posted it on the internet likely due to not being told about the NDA.

Re:How old is she?

[rjejr]

To me, the dynamic changes, b/c a kid may not know any better, a teenager may be trying to get her father fired b/c he made her break up with her boyfriend or something, a grown woman may be trying to promote her Youtube site. Also, how involved the father is with the situation. Was he even aware of the posted vid? I read the article summary and the article, no where did it mention her age and I do think it's relevant. Maybe not her specific age, but little kid, teenager, or adult matters.

Re:How old is she?

[thegarbz]

I still don't see it at all relevant. Breaking an NDA doesn't make it better because it's a kid vs an adult trying to get Youtube hits (in this case the latter).

Focusing on this is missing the issue. Missing the issue is what causes people to direct anger in the wrong place and Slashdot is full these posts right now: damn kids, damn people promoting their site, damn Apple instead of the only single issue that matters: damn idiot who has just been punished for breaching an NDA.

Re:How old is she?

[gravewax]

It doesn't matter as regardless of the age the father should not have
a) allowed his daughter to access a employee prototype
b)allowed his daughter to film on campus with said prototype
c) after filming not telling his daughter if you post this online we are fucked.

She is an adult, but even if she was a kid it is still his responsibility to ensure she is doing the right thing. So little kid, teenager, adult, old woman is completely irrelevant.

Re:How old is she?

[LinuxIsGarbage]

It doesn't matter as regardless of the age the father should not have
a) allowed his daughter to access a employee prototype
b)allowed his daughter to film on campus with said prototype
c) after filming not telling his daughter if you post this online we are fucked.

  She is an adult, but even if she was a kid it is still his responsibility to ensure she is doing the right thing. So little kid, teenager, adult, old woman is completely irrelevant.

Checking the video it's obvious she's filming. On one scene the phone is on the front facing camera and you can see the SLR. It's not like she was discretely running a cameraphone without her father's knowledge. In another scene she's talking to the camera in front of her father "This is the new iPhone ten".

My company isn't a "tech company" nor as leading edge as Apple, but when I have visitors I don't let them film anything in the workplace, and people have been fired for posting pictures / videos to social media.

iPhones are like hot dogs

[boudie2]

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.

Is she reading from a script?

[SlaveToTheGrind]

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.

Re:Is she reading from a script?

[fahrbot-bot]

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.

And she's wrong. Most rules, and especially these rules, are in place for the profitability and security of the company. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but she needs to learn this lesson sooner rather than later.

Re:Is she reading from a script?

[Aighearach]

If she hasn't learned it now, maybe just make a note that not everybody can learn things.

Re:Too bad

[mark-t]

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.

Irrelevant.

Second there was no willful disclosure of any trade secret because the iPhone X was already announced.

Announced, yes. Released? No.

As for you "but but the contract, the NDA, the rules!" 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 "rules" shouldn't come up in any argument. Let's talk about ethics.

What the fuck are you talking about? The girl wouldn't have been doing anything unethical if she hadn't made the video, and the ex-employee wouldn't have been doing anything if he hadn't allowed his daughter to have access to it. It certainly wasn't some kind of ethical obligation that anyone had here to break any rules here, so trying to compare this situation to one of your above to examples clearly indicates a lack of understanding about why the guy was actually fired

The point is that he *DID* allow his family to have access to confidential information (specifically, he permitted them to have access to the actual device which had not yet been released without explicit authorization from Apple), and even if no harm was actually done by this particular incident, it has shown that he cannot be trusted to respect the confidentiality that his employer requires. Apple may had announced that the device was being released, but that is not the same thing as actually having released it already and for people to have physical access to it.

Here is the full video

[lhaeh]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

"Shopping solves all my problems"

In the iCafeteria

[Anonymous Coward]

The video was shot in the Apple cafeteria, with her dad.
Dad was well aware of the video being made and was a participant.

P R Scat

[LifesABeach]

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.

Whoosh

[SuperKendall]

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...

Re:Whoosh

[hey!]

Well, you're supposing people are always rational in their hiring decisions. There's a lot of emotion and "gut" thinking involved in most hires, so much so that I think of rationality as a kind of competitive advantage.

And by the way irrationality is a two way street when it comes to employment. Take ageism. If you believed that employees and employers were entirely rational it wouldn't be a problem. An older employee would take a lower paid engineering job rather than an even lower paying non-engineering job. And faced with the reality of ageism a smart employer would go bargain hunting for experienced older employees.

So you do have engineers leaving the field while there is a shortage of people with their skills, usually ones over 40. If hiring decisions (and job acceptance decisions) were made by expert systems which found the cheapest (best paying available) fit of skills to requirements, ageism wouldn't exist.

Re:north korean version

[HornWumpus]

China is bootlegging obsolete network protocols?

We should sabotage them, send N Korea a Netbeui.

A drone gets her wings.

[fahrbot-bot]

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.

Buzzkill

[mhlo]

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.

No Preview on mobile

[tepples]

Last I checked, there was no Preview button in Slashdot's mobile view.

Re:No Preview on mobile

[war4peace]

Maybe, but the Preview button only helps with proper tag closing. Spelling should be even easier on mobile, because the keyboard features take care of that (through autocorrect - not perfect but it's a prop).

Re: No Preview on mobile

[war4peace]

I'm talking about autocorrecting misspelled words and you're talking about next word prediction.
Different things.

Gut feeling is rationality at work

[SuperKendall]

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.

Still cruel and unusual. Also EVIL.

[shanen]

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.

Re:Still cruel and unusual. Also EVIL.

[david_thornley]

In other words, no matter how strict and important the secrecy is, don't do anything to the guy that leaked big-time?

Re:Still cruel and unusual. Also EVIL.

[shanen]

In other words, you think the child who made a mistake deserves to suffer so the soulless corporation can increase the hoopla and fake buzz around a slightly improved smartphone. Did you ever do anything that caused some sort of problem for your parents? Of course not.

Me? Mostly I think children make mistakes and should learn from them. Ditto parents. The massive penalty for her childish enthusiasm may well traumatize her for life. Also, I think our hardware is running away from us and the software continues to reek like the big dogs' m0es. I also think you're probably some sort of troll, but I don't really care about the details of your disordered priorities.

Re:Still cruel and unusual. Also EVIL.

[david_thornley]

You're letting your prejudices run wild here. Apple has a right to operate as it sees fit, regardless of your personal feelings about Apple and hardware and software, and Apple spends a lot of money on carefully orchestrated PR. Apple establishes rules for its employees, like any other company, and needs to enforce these rules.

The daughter isn't getting the blame, the father is. The daughter is not getting fired. As a parent, you need to either supervise your child or keep your child out of certain situations. If you give your child the opportunity to take videos the child should not be taking and then post them to Youtube, you've failed as a parent. If you don't react fast when the child climbs on the arm of a dinette chair with castors and swivels to reach the sharp knives, well....

Not to mention that the "child" is apparently over 20 and married, and, in general, old enough to know better, and that the parent apparently cooperated in this. For flagrantly disregarding basic security rules, the parent's firing is completely reasonable.

Re:Still cruel and unusual. Also EVIL.

[shanen]

Your comment is quite insane. Apple has absolutely NO "right to operate as it sees fit". At least not until after they bribe the politicians sufficiently to eliminate all laws and regulations. Perhaps they can eliminate my moral considerations at the same time?

Troll identified. Further comments from 598059 go straight to the Z file.

Re:Chicken shit move

[gravewax]

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.

Re:Chicken shit move

[DaMattster]

Fuck you! You're an insensitive prick!

Viral Videos = $$$

[sampson7]

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.