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

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: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.

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: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: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.

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.