After Apple

I joined Apple because I thought that it was the coolest computer company ever. I left because it wasn’t.

Do allow me to explain.

First kiss

It may have been a trade show in 1986. There was a Mac running MacPaint. I held the mouse and drew a Mac on the Mac’s screen. The sales guy there said, “Hey, you drew a Mac!”

Dating

In 1989, I was in my first year at University of Science, Malaysia. They had 512K Fat Macs in the lab. First lesson – how to use a mouse. We spent half an hour just clicking and dragging stuff around. It was fun.

In my second year we did programming in C and Pascal. That was fun as C and Pascal syntax was similar yet different (Why doesn’t this work? Oh, you don’t use == in Pascal).

Third year, I was sent to Uniphone for industrial training. Woot! They had yea Macs, but my programming efforts were not great. In the end I ended up mostly doing technical writing. However that was the year I asked (Well, actually pleaded, cajoled, begged, cried, whined etc) my parents to buy me a Powerbook 100. I loved it to bits. Carried it with me everywhere, brought it to lectures. 4 hour battery life, baby. Instant on. Dig on it awhile.

Fourth year, back in the U. The little PowerBook and I set up a printing business together, along with a StyleWriter (The original model that used Canon inkjet cartridges).

After graduation, I received a PowerBook 165c as a graduation present, along with a Color Stylewriter that I purchased myself.

Engaged

After graduation I wanted to join Uniphone Apple so much. No dice. Oh well.

First job was as a lecturer at Informatics Institute. Moving right along, my second job was as a salesperson at a small computer shop called Z’tronic Computers. So I sold PCs and Macs. I was their entire Mac department. Sales, Technical Support, Consulting, Staff training… I did it all.

Third job, working for an Internet Service provider. Did Mac technical support and put together a dialler software. Met the General Manager of Apple in Malaysia during a Mac user group meeting. Asked him for a job.

Marriage

I joined Apple in 1999, staff number 43339, Employee #2 at Apple Malaysia. My GM was still under contract at that time. Employee #1 was a nice guy, ex Canon, called Allan Choy.

Over the period of 5 years, I was pretty much doing everything – sales, presales, technical support, on sites, presentations, events, managing demo units and driving stuff around. Intern 101, you might say.

Why?

You tell yourself that things would get better, this is common to all startup companies. You tell yourself that you are helping to change the world. But you can’t keep on telling yourself this forever. Mostly, you hear someone inside you telling you that the reality is very different from the mental picture of Apple that you had when you joined.

My colleagues?

There was the General Manager, and he was God. Thou shalt obey and thou shalt loveth Me. Other colleagues had as much work as I did, so we all retreated into our little fallout shelters, venturing out to get food and water.

They are not bad people (GM included). But they are people. And after a while at Apple, they became (me included) a little less than human.

By the fourth year, I was jaded, cynical and bad tempered.

By the fifth year, I was making plans to leave. I had gone up as far as I can (Senior System Engineer) and it doesn’t look like there was going to be a lot of changes for the next 20 years. I also perceived that I was losing myself. I did not want to be defined by what I did.

Divorce

I handed in my resignation in November 2005 and left Apple on 31st December 2005. Since then I’ve been keeping myself busy doing training, presentations and consulting.

I want to go back. Like an old convict just let out of prison, you want to go back to where you were part of the system, where you know how things worked.

But I will not go back. One of the lessons that I have learned is that there is always an easy way and a hard way out. And most of the time the hard way is better.

Lessons Learned

Apple is a company, much like any other. Better than some, worse than others. Get over it.

Being good with systems and computers counts for nothing if you can’t be good with people as well.

You ignore friends and family at your peril. You may end up with neither friends nor family.

Keep work and personal life separated.

Remember you are a human being.

Thanks for reading. We’ll have some funny next week.