After Apple

It’s an often-told story that when Jobs went around finding his first batch of suckers, his sales pitch was to ask them if they wanted a job, or to change the world. After working at Apple for any length of time you realize that this effectively means, “Would you like a salary you can live on, or are hopes and dreams good for you?” Pity the sucker that took that job, for he changed the world and ate crackers and soup.

What Steve really meant, though, outside of stiffing the poor bastard, was that Apple concentrates on creative talent and hutzpah rather than on the meager details of business or life. What matters is the gem, the gold, the shiny new thing that’s going to change the world, and all that little stuff that’s needed to get that done, well, some other fool’s handling that, working the magic, making it work so that you can work on The Next Big Thing.

Sadly, that bohemian view of what it is to work in the age of computing never quite left California.

The Myth of California

While working in Austin in a decent variety of jobs I was left with a feeling of being a bastard stepchild that no one wanted, especially the mother. AppleCare was an afterthought, an addition, an apology to the users. We received Apple paychecks and benefits, but, in the end, weren’t Apple enough to really be respected for what many of us could do. Now, a lot of people in Austin, I’m not kidding, are working at Apple while they wait for their bands/music to take off. I can’t begin to name, even with all four limbs, the number of musicians I knew in AppleCare Austin. The rest, though, were displaced technical workers of the sort so familiar in technical support. Quite a few had talent, and quite a few thought that their Apple job would lead them to better things in Apple.

The better things were not in Austin, however. The better things were things like high-level response and readiness, product QA, and development. Austin housed gruntwork, mostly, and while more than a few heroes exist in Austin, you’ll talk to them if you call at the right time. Which is to say, they weren’t hired to be heroes, they’re just trying to show those that might care that they can do it. Rather like a high school athletic team that knows there’s a recruiter watching, everyone worth their salt is showing off and tacking lines onto their resume, trying desperately to get out of Apple Austin and into Apple proper, Apple California.

It takes someone about ten attempts at getting out there to realize it’s simply not going to happen, except in the very extreme cases of talent displacement. I can count on one limb the number of people that I know of that made it out there and every last one should never have been in Austin to begin with — no one started small and worked up to it. AppleCare was not a potential for advancement, it was the end of the line for what it was. So many people came in with the idea that once they started working for Apple that they’d be able to move up and get out there — a vision the managers loved to talk up to get people to shine that were really obviously good workers. Very shortly thereafter, they’d find themselves in group after group in honest advancement until, one day, they see the ceiling approaching, but they’re moving too fast to avoid it. A promotion later to something a little above tier two and their face is pressed right up against the glass, with the green, green grass and smoke-topped mountains of Cupertino on the other side.

I was very lucky during my time at Apple Austin to have been placed in a job where I went out there regularly for a period of time. It’s a whole other world, one I hope I don’t forget. If there had been a slight chance that I would have gained a technical job that actually covered my bills, I would be out there today instead of in an Austin startup. Sadly, all the offers were really just insane for the economy out there, even if I accepted a two-hour drive to work from a 600 sq. ft. apartment. That was a real pity, too, because it was a great place to live and work, with some really great people that I was working with. I just wouldn’t have been able to pay the outrageous real estate prices and pay any manner of bills with the same paycheck. Eating two weeks out of the month wasn’t a very attractive offer.

Grabbed by the Apples

This is part of a larger problem with how Apple handles talent, and it’s really disturbing if you sit and think about it for any length of time. In Austin, workers are put in a position to get lots of information and possibly (slim chance) see things before the rest of the world can see them. People get to work for a company that many of them really love and be a part of something that a lot of them have always wanted to be a part of. In return, Apple knows they can pay sub-standard wages for exceptional talent. Why?

Why, you’re an Apple fan working for Apple, of course. Why would you leave? What would possess the single, young male computer geek to give up his iPaycheck and access to more information about his favorite fruit company than he would ever have in the outside world? Sanity, yes, but we’re already talking about a person that really, really loves the product. Enough to pass up other jobs and work a low-end job for that company. Be it in AppleCare or Apple Retail, the treatment is the same: you’re working for Apple, so since you love it so much we can pay you less than you’re worth and you’ll hang on. You’ll stay because you want to change the world, push the platform, show people the light about what a Mac really is and how the rest really can’t compare. And when the fruit rots off the tree, another one will appear, just as fanatic as the last.

Ever wonder why you rarely see the same face twice in an Apple Store sales floor?

Apple knows that it can drop its wages down to levels where the retail workers would get more at the Gap across the way, or that phone agents would make $2-4 more an hour working for Dell just a little up the road. It knows that while certain people won’t take them up on it, enough fanatics will that they won’t mind the money, bad job, bad business decisions, or the step-child treatment that California gives him. They know he’ll have that dream that, someday, he’ll show them what he’s worth and they’ll move him up, up, up, and out to work on Mac OS X, or iLife, or some other really cool project out in California. They know this, and keep encouraging people to apply for the jobs and try their best to do it, knowing the entire while the chances are under 1% that he’ll succeed and that they can hang on to him another three months, at least, while he’s waiting for an answer.

The myth is heavy within Apple that Apple wants to hire internally as much as possible. This is half-true. Apple apparently wants to hire internally for local positions. If you’re within Apple, applying in another state, and a person already exists at the other end (Apple or not) that’s remotely qualified, you’re not in the race.

Yet they push the myth and keep people on at gruntwork wages because they can. They know their employees are generally strong fans of their products, and they price them accordingly. Because, you know, you’re helping Apple to change the world. You’re pushing the greatest platform in the world out there and getting people who’ve never used computers to use them, love them, and bring them into their lives. Money, it’s a fleeting thing. That satisfaction you feel when you help a customer love their product surely outweighs the fact that you can’t afford to fix your car … right?

The sad thing is, many won’t see it until they leave and look back. Any given worker won’t notice how no one he knew around him could really pay all his bills and how everyone, everyone was waiting for the end of the year and a percent or two hike, and retail workers were clamoring for bonuses to pay bills (not anymore, as bonuses are entirely gone now a pissed-off birdie recently told me). No one within will see that no one within (who is not in sales) can really make it well without a second income. He won’t see it, either, until he leaves and does make it on a single income with someone that appreciates his talent for what it’s worth. As the trend goes, though, that person will not be an Apple-lover, for that man is trapped and screwed.