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Apple Went Rotten After Steve Jobs' Death, Former Engineer Claims (siliconvalley.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the core-products dept.

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."

33 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Get use to it by p51d007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. That isn't suprising by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:That isn't suprising by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Really though, is it worse now than under Steve "holding it wrong" Jobs, who was well known for treating engineers badly and being an all around ass?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:That isn't suprising by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2

      They could at least FEEL that it was better with Job's RDF active, which is why they're complaining now.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    3. Re:That isn't suprising by 605dave · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As a life long Apple user and someone who once thought MS was evil, I am actually going to defend MS a bit here. Microsoft has changed for the better under Nadella and done things I never thought I would see MS do. They have embraced open source in a real way, they have moved away from trying to lock everything to Windows to a platform agnostic strategy. Having Balmer leave (he was a founder) was the best thing that ever happened to MS.

      --
      Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle. - Plato
    4. Re:That isn't suprising by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Jobs was a famous asshole, but it sure seemed like he actually cared about having a good product. Sure, his "good" was about fashion, but that's what worked for Apple (there's a reason 2 of the 10 richest CEOs are fashion moguls). And while Apple phones seem to be in a downward spiral, quality-wise, they're still way better than Samsung on that front.

      Personally, I prefer a phone with a high-quality headphone jack, no "notch", and no exploding battery, but then I'm a nerd with no fashion sense at all.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    5. Re:That isn't suprising by quanminoan · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't recall which book it was (I think "Becoming Steve Jobs"), but I found it interesting that while everyone essentially agreed he was tough to work for he also had a lot of compassion to go with the assholery. One striking passage said everyone involved in the Macintosh development looked back at it as some of the best years of their lives despite how grueling it was. I think personally why people tend to admire him despite his negative traits was the overwhelming fact that he cared and didn't stand for mediocrity.

    6. Re:That isn't suprising by Bongo · · Score: 2

      I wonder if Jobs would have accepted the notch.

      I get the impression (as random guy in the street) that Jobs was a designer, in the sense of trying to make something awesome and gasp-worthy. And I was taught that design is a discipline, whether that's making clothes or bridges. But that dedication to a product is what, from the stories, made him succeed and fail so spectacularly, be it the Mac cube or the iPhone.

      But I also suspect that the world is now too complicated for even a Jobs to handle, relying on their own singular design vision. Which is why Apple is now more a team thing. The notch may suck but it would have blocked too many projects if a Jobs had vetoed it. And Apple has managed some big ecosystem projects, like Apple Pay, and their custom A series chips. And it surprises me how many people have an Apple Watch.

      Anyway, I'm typing this on an updated 4 year old iPhone so I don't feel like Apple are ignoring their customers.

  3. Nice to have confirmation... by ChrisKnight · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This has been pretty obvious from the outside, but it's nice to have confirmation from the inside. Innovation at Apple is dead. 'Pro' products have become a synonym for Expensive, while lacking the features pro users came to depend on. There are a number of things Jobs would not have tolerated: 1) Dongles. He would have fired anyone who tried to replace all the ports on a pro laptop and suggested users buy dongles. 2) Grinding out new products and releases on a deadline, quality be damned. He had no problems dragging out a release date until a product was perfect. 3) Micro-iterations flogged as innovation. Can anyone here imagine Steve Jobs wiggling a mouse and proclaiming that the pointer getting bigger was an Innovation only Apple could bring you? I've been an Apple user since the 80's, and a 'fanboi' since the early 2000's, but I may be typing this post on the last Mac I'll ever buy if Apple doesn't get their heads out of their arses. Sadly, with the way they are raking in money hand over fist, their current approach is being vindicated by the market and the Apple we once loved is never going to re-emerge.

    --
    -- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
  4. What a delusional retard by macraig · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:What a delusional retard by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It has nothing to do with SJ's ethics. SJ's personality kept a lot of people with personalities like his in line. Now, it's a lot of cutthroat people stabbing each other in the backs to get ahead. Tim just isn't enough of an a**hole to stomp that behavior into the ground, and until someone does, Apple will continue to have serious problems.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    2. Re:What a delusional retard by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And just to be clear, I'm not saying all of Apple's teams are that way. I know plenty of Apple managers (at least I assume they're still Apple managers) who are great people. Unfortunately, it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the barrel, and as soon as you let enough of those sorts of people bubble up in the ranks, things start to turn sour. That's why I also know multiple Apple managers who have left Apple post-Steve, in large part because of the toxic corporate culture that has taken over.

      The real problem, to be honest, is that any suitably large company will eventually become a toxic work environment unless employees from the bottom all the way up to the top actively work to keep that from happening. Apple's problem, in particular, is that it tends to promote for the wrong reasons — not because people are good leaders, but because people took credit for "hits" (whether earned or not). That sort of meritocracy doesn't really work for choosing managers. The best managers are not the people who created the tools that became the most popular, but rather those who know how to lead—how to get the best work from the people under them. That's almost completely unrelated to the outcome of projects that those people are working on, which is mostly dependent on whether the idea itself was good, how it was marketed, and other factors entirely outside the control of those managers.

      Second, Apple doesn't take into account personality at all, which means cutthroat people who claim credit for things their subordinates did are more likely to get promoted higher in the ranks, and people who pass on the bulk of the credit to those subordinates get left behind. As the expression goes, "Only cream and bastards rise."

      Third, Apple's corporate culture also doesn't put a high enough price on learning from mistakes. When things go wrong, they tend to look for someone to blame, for a safe place to point their fingers, rather than looking at it as an opportunity to improve their processes to prevent such failures from happening in the future. This results in, among other things, a lot of good people getting terminated or asked to resign for no good reason, a lot of institutional memory being lost, and a near complete lack of follow-through in preventing the next poor slob who holds that job from running into the same problems. And that right there is, IMO, the main reason that Apple's quality seems to be actively slipping, rather than getting better.

      Fourth, Apple's corporate culture makes internal mobility hard. You basically interview for a new team in the same way that an external candidate would. This can lead to people getting stuck in a rut because changing jobs seems so daunting. And if an employee gets blamed for things going wrong, internal mobility becomes even harder, because each employee's annual review is prepared by his or her immediate manager, whose word is rarely challenged, even if unfair.

      These are all problems that Tim Cook needs to solve sooner rather than later. If left to fester, they will only get worse.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    3. Re:What a delusional retard by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2

      Of the two Steves that founded the company, Steve Jobs was the one who lacked ethics. This idiot idolized the wrong Steve.

      Jobs did have a hardon for snuffing out quality problems. Say what you want about him but his OCD about getting things just right sometimes penetrated corporate bureaucracy. And infuriated plenty of people.

      This guy knows what he's talking about, but that doesn't mean you have to like Jobs more than Woz.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    4. Re:What a delusional retard by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Say what you want about him but his OCD about getting things just right sometimes penetrated corporate bureaucracy.

      Jobs had a disturbing lack of vision. He killed the Newton. If not for that, Android might have been an also-ran, instead of the dominant force in the mobile market.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  5. I wouldn't say rotten by bobstreo · · Score: 2

    Going from a monomaniacal, obsessive, detail crazed, micro managing leader to a bunch of financially obsessive, stockholder pleasing managers will always be a painful transition.

    If you look at corporate culture at Apple, it probably was best in the Apple II days. Macs seemed to introduce a different mindset and approach to the way they did business.

    The first time Jobs left (was forced out) Apple, things went south pretty quickly.

    Now Apple seems to be milking the dead cow, with no real innovation, just small improvemets on products that seem to be aging poorly.

    1. Re:I wouldn't say rotten by bobstreo · · Score: 2

      Apple engineers, in a fit of desperation, will dig up his glass coffin and attempt to harness what remains of his reality distortion field. It won't work.

      They'd have better luck hooking up his spinning in the grave corpse as a power source.

  6. You can see it in their product lines by barrywalker · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Anybody else remember Apple's product lines in the early 90s? What a fucking disaster. What did Jobs do when he came back? Slashed and simplified them. Made it easy to figure out which product you needed.

    You can see that happening again now that Jobs is gone. Each product has more and more variations with stupid model numbers.

    Enjoy the gravy train while it lasts. I'm writing this on the last MacBook I will ever own (mid 2014 pro) and still have an iPhone 6s I will use until it dies. After that, I'm moving away from Apple products.

    1. Re:You can see it in their product lines by Tom · · Score: 2

      This.

      I went to Apple when the first Intel devices came out, because I thought "if that OS X everyone tells me good things about doesn't work for me, I'll just install Linux".

      I never did. And I never looked back. And one of the reasons is that I saved countless hours of research and brainfucking. How much time I spent before figuring out just which notebook to buy, or just which components to upgrade in my PC? I've looked at the Android market now and then, just as I looked at the pre-smartphone smartphone market (Nokia Communicator, etc.) and the post-Palm Pilot PDA market. It's impossible to make a decision! There's a million devices with a billion tiny differences half of which they don't ever tell you unless you read them on obscure tech sites.

      Apple made it easy. There's two desktop systems each in 3 configurations (small, medium, large, easy to get) and there's two lines of notebooks. Here you are. There's one line of smartphones, with 2 or 3 different memory sizes.

      I loved my MacBook Pro. I still love my MacBook Air despite it's getting aged. My Mac Mini was a wonderful media station and later got used as a simple desktop computer (for web and email), and I love both my iMacs, the old one which is still doing great despite being ancient now and the new one from last year which is just amazing.

      And while I sometimes think a "gamer version" with a VR-ready high performance graphics card setup would be great, I don't really miss it that much, and I wouldn't want Apple to deliver 20 different lines with 50 different options.

      And the iPhone? I don't want an XS-RPT-6SX. I want an iPhone. Mine is the SE because I prefer the smaller form factor. A choice of size and a choice of memory, that is a good strategy. I don't need an additional option of gold and diamonds (people who want that buy Vertu anyway). Or of colourful plastic (people who want that buy Huwai anyway).

      Apple under Steve Jobs put itself in its own market, and that made it successful. It intentionally did not try to compete with everyone else. Todays shareholders need to understand that despite its size, Apple can not take on everyone else in every segment of every market. It needs to be its own market, that is what it is good at.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  7. Re: Hypocrite p51d007 here to whine about Apple. by tacarat · · Score: 2

    The cult remembers two Apples. Apple with Steve and Apple without. One nearly killed itself, one did far better.

    --
    "Common sense will be the death of us all"
  8. Can't fix by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apple is broken and can't be fixed, the problem is soldered in its core and 3rd party repairs won't work.

    1. Re:Can't fix by quonset · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  9. representing himself in court by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:representing himself in court by Daltorak · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      You know what's really weird? The guy's reasons for representing himself:
      1) He has no money because he hasn't worked since 2014, and
      2) His attorney had a stroke, and he can't afford another one

      Okay, yeah, maybe finding new work might be a little difficult if you were just fired from Apple after working there for 8 years for unprofessional conduct, but..... four years of unemployment? Come on. If you're an engineer who's good at what they do, and you live in Northern California as he does, surely you should be able to get a new job.

    2. Re:representing himself in court by commodore64_love · · Score: 2

      > Lawyers would only take the winning side.

      No. Lawyers have a professional obligation to represent their client, even if they know the client is guilty. (Besides most lawyers make you pay the fees, even if the case is lost.)

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  10. Come on by Anubis350 · · Score: 2

    Apple loved dongles *long* before Jobs passed away, he OKd tons of dongles, he also was responsible for deprecating tons of ports and such, which were met with the exact criticism you have now (âoeremoved a pro feature!!!???!!â). And as far as ergonomics goes, some of us remember the hockey puck mouse among other things... Iâ(TM)m a big Apple fan, and I like their products, but anyone who thinks those partixular things are new, or not something Jobs would have done needs to have their memory checked (I will say, however, that i doubt Jobâ(TM)s would have been ok with the port bifrication they have now where lightning headphones cant be used on macs)

    --
    "goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
  11. I hope his goal wasn't to win by dbrueck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:I hope his goal wasn't to win by ghoul · · Score: 4, Insightful

      He knows he cant afford lawyers as good as Apple and hence cant win in court. He aims to embarress Apple into settling and for that a story about the little guy representing himself works much better.

      --
      **Life is too short to be serious**
  12. Which one? Complaining about everything by raymorris · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  13. The same Steve Jobs who fired people on sight? by known_coward_69 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  14. Re:You're saying PowerPC was a fucking disaster? G by rl117 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The problem wasn't PowerPC hardware. The problem was that the product lines were confusing. They had dozens of models which were all too similar. It made it hard for people to decide what they wanted. Jobs cut that back. How many iMac variants were there? How many iBooks? The bare minimum to differentiate based upon requirements. It made it easy to sell to people, and easy for people to be satisfied they had made the right choice.

    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.

  15. Methinks he doth complain too much by garote · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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'.

  16. honestly, it's really simple by seebs · · Score: 3, Funny

    Apple's success came from emulating the visionary design choices Jobs made.

    They are currently building all their products in emulation of his last visionary design choice: "Get thinner and thinner until you can't do your job anymore."

    --
    My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
  17. A whole lot of nothing... by bkmoore · · Score: 2
    I read the article and couldn't figure out why or when this engineer was allegedly fired; only that he's representing himself and suing Apple for 735 shares of stock that he believes he is owed. Did Apple steal his patents? Did Apple claim ownership of work he did outside of Apple? Did Apple fire him for reporting a quality issue or a legal issue? Nothing... Just a lot of complaining about Apple's culture.

    I once worked as a low-level engineer at a company with what I believed to be a similarly "rotten culture". You have three options: (1) find a job at a better company, (2) start your own company, or (3) change careers / retire. There is no justice in this world and as a low level engineer, you are not in a position to change corporate culture. My advice is to smile, be a model employee and very quietly work behind the scenes on your exit strategy. When you leave, take the minimum notice, be professional and don't burn any bridges. Forgo any snarky comments, shake your bosses hand and thank him or her for the opportunity to work there. Leave with your respect and reputation intact. The bottom line is that nobody has to work at Apple or at any other company. You are the master of your own fate. Just remember that when your company starts treating you like you have to work there and decides to see how much they can screw you over.