After Apple

I went to the opening of the new store at The Domain in Austin recently. It’s the second one in Austin and the second opening I went to. Although, curiously, I had more access to the store as a non-employee than I did as an employee, which is kind of odd.

Which is to say that I was able to get in to the soft opening as a guest as well as arriving early enough to be one of the first to enter on the real opening day. It’s kind of worth it, this place is huge. The word going around the employees is that this is Apple’s largest 45’ store that’s not a flagship store, and when you see inside you realize how entirely plausible that is. It’s huge.

Here’s the opening video and a Flickr photoset of the better photos of the opening.

You’ll never see it like this again.

One of the things that really annoyed me when I worked in AppleCare was the Knowledge Base. We were told when we started working there that it was the end-all and be-all of troubleshooting knowledge, but most of the time it came up with printer cleaning articles for an LW 16/600 rather than the answer to your question. In addition, the beast was slow. Very slow. Slow enough that if you used it on a call the other person would think you were “slow” for having to think that long. A lot of times, you felt like it.

The folks that had been working there for any amount of time before my class came in showed us that the Tech Info Library (TIL) was still online, internally. It was the precursor to the Knowledge Base and, yet, was more advanced, supporting boolean searches, and was both fast and accurate. So, the KB simply fell into disuse among internal users. Time and time again we were told not to use the older server and that it would go away someday, but, honestly, when something works you use it.

Then, one day, they stopped updating the TIL servers with new documents. While this was annoying, we wound up searching one and then the other instead of relying on the KB for everything. It really didn’t phase us. It was still only marginally slower to search the TIL and then the KB because the TIL was more accurate and faster, and it usually had the answer.

Seeing that that plan didn’t kill the practice, there were then the meetings. Some of the KB people came to our team meetings, then some of us went to theirs. Sometimes there’d be a survey or two, or some very unlucky soul would go around asking how it could be better, only to be greeted with the obvious, “Well, the article search could actually find articles, maybe?” We thought this was just general harassment and an attempt at understanding the social reasons for using old technology rather than that new-fangled piece of crap they were forcing on us. We thought wrong.

is by not working for Apple.

The ol’ finances were looking a little thin 8 months after I’d left. Yes, they were a couple of good opportunities I was working on, but they sorta fell through, and I was jumping from temp assignment to temp assignment. I also found out that Apple-qualified people here in Malaysia had a tough time looking for a job, due to the fact that the almighty MCSE ruled supreme.

I was keeping an eye at Apple in Malaysia after I left, and they never did get a replacement for me. So one day, I thought, what if I worked for them on contract?

Being on contract, I would not be an Apple badged employee. I would just be another guy who did stuff, like the janitor or the guy who fed toner into the copy machine. Except that the pay was much better.

So far I’ve been on retainer for 3 plus months, and life is good. I do presentations on Apple products and I conduct training for customers. And best of all, I no longer have to take responsibility for Apple, who merrily shoot themselves in the foot every once in a while.

is by not working for Apple.

The ol’ finances were looking a little thin 8 months after I’d left. Yes, they were a couple of good opportunities I was working on, but they sorta fell through, and I was jumping from temp assignment to temp assignment. I also found out that Apple-qualified people here in Malaysia had a tough time looking for a job, due to the fact that the almighty MCSE ruled supreme.

I was keeping an eye at Apple in Malaysia after I left, and they never did get a replacement for me. So one day, I thought, what if I worked for them on contract?

Being on contract, I would not be an Apple badged employee. I would just be another guy who did stuff, like the janitor or the guy who fed toner into the copy machine. Except that the pay was much better.

So far I’ve been on retainer for 3 plus months, and life is good. I do presentations on Apple products and I conduct training for customers. And best of all, I no longer have to take responsibility for Apple, who merrily shoot themselves in the foot every once in a while.

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.

They kicked me out right before I left.

I joined the retail division as a “creative,” some ethereal position where I was promised I would get to “create” all day (hence the name) and train people how to be create as well. I was so desperate to work for the company that I had always loved that I agreed to work part-time. I joined some truly amazing people, and some really obnoxious people.

The first few months, management didn’t know what to do with Creatives. If we weren’t selling, then we were wasting payroll, in their minds. Why we made more than a specialist is beyond me, if that were the case. Lots of discussions later, management left us alone to do what we were told by corporate to do.

Six months later, we get a new manager. The manager immediately plays favorites and changes things just for the sake of change — you know the type — alpha dog pissing on everything just to mark his turf. All the while, he played that fake-cheerleader rah-rah bullshit.

He invented a position (“lead creative”) that still doesn’t exist, and talked about nothing but numbers — how can I personally sell more .Mac? (This isn’t Best Buy, buddy; I’m not a salesman. I’m here to teach.) The person who was named “lead creative” was the one I called the “Creative on the Mount.” Enough said.

Several years ago I heard the announcement that Apple would work with a contractor group in Bangladore and open up an Indian call center for AppleCare. The first words uttered in the room are, for the most part, not repeatable, but the groans and wails made one think someone had died. Thus began the great experiment.

For years, other companies had been outsourcing their labor to India for a dime on the dollar, at worst. Many companies had succeeded in doing this with minimal backlash from their customers, so it would appear that Apple felt it was time to try it, seeing as everyone was used to the idea from other companies. So they hired a firm, sent some folks out to train them, and then brought them online some time later. Shortly after that, every last human in AppleCare knew it was a mistake.

No one could understand them. Not the phone agents here, or the customers calling. I know I couldn’t get a word out of them that was remotely understandable. People who talk to these folks face-to-face forget that the telephone has the quality of an AM radio station — much is lost. It was not uncommon (and in my dealings with AppleCare post-departure, still isn’t) for the American agent to ignore everything the Indian agent did and just start over because he just couldn’t understand what had already been done. There are case notes, sure, but their written English wasn’t much better.

They kicked me out right before I left.

I joined the retail division as a “creative,” some ethereal position where I was promised I would get to “create” all day (hence the name) and train people how to be creative. I was so desperate to work for the company that I had always loved that I agreed to work part-time. I joined some truly amazing people, and some really obnoxious people.

The first few months, management didn’t know what to do with Creatives. If we weren’t selling, then we were wasting payroll, in their minds. Why we made more than a specialist is beyond me, if that were the case. Lots of discussions later, management left us alone to do what we were told by corporate to do.

Six months later, we get a new manager. The manager immediately plays favorites and changes things just for the sake of change — you know the type — alpha dog pissing on everything just to mark his turf. All the while, he played that fake-cheerleader rah-rah bullshit.

He invented a position (“lead creative”) that still doesn’t exist, and talked about nothing but numbers — how can I personally sell more .Mac? (This isn’t Best Buy, buddy; I’m not a salesman. I’m here to teach.)