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Apple Went Rotten After Steve Jobs' Death, Former Engineer Claims (siliconvalley.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Bay Area Newsgroup:
Apple turned against customers and its own employees after the death of co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, a fired Apple engineer claims in a lawsuit. "No corporate responsibility exists at Apple since Mr. Jobs' death," Darren Eastman alleged in a lawsuit over his termination and patents related to his work at the Cupertino tech giant... Eastman, who is representing himself in court, started working as an engineer for Apple in 2006, largely because Jobs was interested in his idea for a low-cost Mac for education, and wanted him hired straight out of graduate school, Eastman said in the filing. Eastman claims to have invented the "Find my iPhone" function. When Jobs headed Apple, he told Eastman to notify him of any unresolved problems with the company's products, and employees in general were expected to raise such concerns, Eastman said in a lawsuit filed Thursday in Santa Clara County Superior Court.
That changed after Jobs died in 2011, he claimed. "Many talented employees who've given part of their life for Apple were now regularly being disciplined and terminated for reporting issues they were expected to (report) during Mr. Jobs tenure," Eastman alleged in the filing. "Cronyism and a dedicated effort to ignore quality issues in current and future products became the most important projects to perpetuate the goal of ignoring the law and minimizing tax. Complying with the law and paying what's honestly required is taboo at Apple, with judicial orders and paying tax (of any kind) representing the principal frustration of Apple's executives... Notifying Mr. Cook about issues (previously welcomed by Mr. Jobs) produces either no response, or, a threatening one later by your direct manager," Eastman claimed.... "There's no accountability, with attempts at doing the right thing met with swift retaliation."
Eastman even claims one Apple employee was fired for reporting toxic mold in the building, and alleges that employees were intentionally fired just before their stock options were vesting. In fact, his entire lawsuit is over just $165,000 worth of Apple common stock, plus $326,400 in damages, $32,640 in interest -- and resolution of an alleged patent-ownership issue.
Apple "declined to comment on the claims made in the lawsuit."
That changed after Jobs died in 2011, he claimed. "Many talented employees who've given part of their life for Apple were now regularly being disciplined and terminated for reporting issues they were expected to (report) during Mr. Jobs tenure," Eastman alleged in the filing. "Cronyism and a dedicated effort to ignore quality issues in current and future products became the most important projects to perpetuate the goal of ignoring the law and minimizing tax. Complying with the law and paying what's honestly required is taboo at Apple, with judicial orders and paying tax (of any kind) representing the principal frustration of Apple's executives... Notifying Mr. Cook about issues (previously welcomed by Mr. Jobs) produces either no response, or, a threatening one later by your direct manager," Eastman claimed.... "There's no accountability, with attempts at doing the right thing met with swift retaliation."
Eastman even claims one Apple employee was fired for reporting toxic mold in the building, and alleges that employees were intentionally fired just before their stock options were vesting. In fact, his entire lawsuit is over just $165,000 worth of Apple common stock, plus $326,400 in damages, $32,640 in interest -- and resolution of an alleged patent-ownership issue.
Apple "declined to comment on the claims made in the lawsuit."
Mr. Jobs is dead son...WE the board of directors NOW run Apple. Get use to it. Now, it is ALL about profit and stock price, NOT producing the best product available.
Companies are usually started by people who actually care about the company. Once they leave they are replaced by managers and MBA and accounting types who are in it to make money for themselves. I won't pretend that company founders aren't interested in making money too, but they usually want more out of it. Just look at Apple and Microsoft: not much going on once the founders left. The companies still make mountains of money though, because that is the focus.
Of the two Steves that founded the company, Steve Jobs was the one who lacked ethics. This idiot idolized the wrong Steve. You would think, since he claims to be an engineer, that he would choose to idolize a fellow engineer and not an amoral salesman.
Dumb. Lawyers exists because they are the "engineers" of the law, and know how it works (inside and out). It is ridiculous to try to do a job where you have zero experience.
- As for Apple, it never surprised me their corporate culture would return to the Apple of Pre-Steve Jobs (pre-1997). The old Apple Board drove themselves to the same bankruptcy that killed Commodore and Atari in 1994/96 respectively, and now that board is back in power.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Welp, regardless of whether or not the case has merit, he's screwed on many levels:
1) "Eastman, who is representing himself in court"
2) Apple has more lawyers on staff than many companies have it total employees.
3) Even if he somehow had a strong enough argument to compensate, they'll win just by drawing the case out indefinitely so that he can't afford to keep pursuing it.
I notice the complaintant is talking about a bunch of different unrelated things. It's clear to me that he's mad, and he's mad at Apple, but he seems pretty unclear about what he is mad about.
In my experience, a pissed-off person who is whining about this and that and "they did this to me" and "they're assholes" and "they won't let me keep complaining about the products all the time" and on and on shouldn't be taken too seriously until they calm down and you figure out what exactly they are actually mad about.
Like when he didn't like you in the elevator? The same one who demeaned and cursed people? The same one who had his little circle of trust and once Cook broke it the iphone and every other product at apple improved within a year, sales went back up and the stock shot up?
Right now, they are reversing that trend. There are increasing numbers of variants for their phones and tablets, and I doubt Jobs would be happy with it.
Sadly, it is also true. Look at their high end line of "pro" products, both laptops and desktops. Everything is soldered, bolted, then welded to the motherboard. There is absolutely no way for anyone to do an upgrade. Buy a machine with 8 GB of RAM? Too bad. That's all you'll ever get unless you buy a new machine with more RAM.
The sad thing is Apple could make mincemeat of Microsoft if they had better, configurable hardware. Slightly lower prices wouldn't hurt either.
Instead, as this engineer relates, Apple is now all about making money rather than providing a good product.
Seen this any number of times during my own tenure there. This guy was fired. He didn't leave voluntarily. Nevertheless it's clear he cares very deeply about the fate of the company he no longer works for, and is no longer welcome at. He wants the company to continue pushing towards the vision he had when he was hired there: Things "just work", surprising new must-have combinations of technology appearing every couple of years, and a clearly obsessive perfectionism behind every product design, and release, and support life cycle.
He believes he still fights for those values, and therefore the company higher-ups are corrupt idiots for firing him, and now since he knows he will never be coming back he is instead embarking on a personal crusade to draw attention to the corruption - the departure from the vision - he perceives at every level.
The company is crawling with people like him. Obsessively perfectionist live-to-work people who believe in the flattest, most democratic corporate structure possible, because that's the best way to gather and act on feedback. And they're not wrong. But they're also not perfect _people_. And chances are this guy was fired for something much more prosaic than a grand conspiracy of shareholders. He was probably fired for being an insufferable dick and annoying too many people for too long.
Take your massive paychecks and your massive stock holdings and go sit on the beach for a while doing nothing, and cool off, man, then go snag a job at almost literally any other tech company on Earth since you have Apple on your resume now. And quit your bitchin'.