Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired--and Secretive--Company Really Works by Adam Lashinsky Read Free Book Online Page A

This electronic guide lists each employee’s name, group, manager, location, email, and phone number, and might include a photograph.
    Apple employees don’t need an organization chart to know who is powerful, of course. The executive team, a small council of advisers to the CEO, runs the company, assisted by a cadre of fewer than one hundred vice presidents. But rank doesn’t always confer status at Apple. Everyone is aware of an unwritten caste system. The industrial designers are untouchable, as were, until his death, a tiny group of engineers who had worked with Steve Jobs for years, some dating to his first stint at Apple. A smallgroup of engineers carries the title of DEST, distinguished engineer/scientist, technologist. These are individual contributors with clout in the organization but no management responsibilities. Otherwise, status fluctuates with the prominence of the products on which one works. As the success of the iPhone and iPad grew, the coolest faction of the company was the software engineers working on Apple’s mobile operating system software, known as iOS. Hardware engineers and, grudgingly, product marketers connected with the devices ranked high in the pecking order, followed by people in the iTunes, iCloud, and other online services organizations. Employees associated primarily with the Macintosh, once the cocks of the roost, were considered second-rate in the Apple hierarchy by this time. In terms of corporate coolness, functions such as sales, human resources, and customer service wouldn’t even rate.
    With silos being the norm at Apple, the surprise is the silos within silos. “There are no open doors at Apple,” said one former employee. Security badges allow an employee into only certain areas, and it isn’t uncommon for employees to be able to go places their boss cannot. Some areas are even more secretive than others, and this has nothing to do with special projects. An example is the famous industrial design lab where Apple’s designers work. So restrictive is the access to the lab that few Apple employees have ever seen inside its doors.
    I n his best-selling book
Incognito
, neuroscientist David Eagleman writes about the deleterious impact of a culture of secrecy. “The main thing to know about secrets,” he says, “is that keeping them is unhealthy for the brain.”People want to tell secrets, he explained, and have a strong natural tendency to do so. Apple solves this problem by keeping its employees in the dark as much as possible. But it also begs the question of the happiness of Apple employees.
    By and large, Apple is a collaborative and cooperative environment, devoid of overt politicking. The reason for the cooperation, according to former insiders, is the comhe , is thmand-and-control structure. “Everyone knows that seamless integration between the various parts is key to making the magic happen,” according to Rob Schoeben, a former vice president who oversaw product marketing for software applications. “At Apple, teams work together constantly. Steve will rip your nuts off if you didn’t,” he said while Jobs was still alive. Under Bill Gates, Microsoft had a reputation for being a political infighting nightmare, the implication being that Gates liked the results of the survival-of-the-fittest mentality.
    Apple’s culture may be cooperative, but it isn’t usually nice, and it’s almost never relaxed. “When you’re on the campus, you never get the feeling that people are slacking off,” said an observer with access to Apple’s upper ranks. “The fighting can get personal and ugly. There’s a mentality that it’s okay to shred somebody in the spirit of making the best products.” Apple’s high standards come into play. “The pressure to be perfect is the overriding concern,” said one ex-executive. “And it’s hard to be perfect.” Another former insider described the all-too-common stories executives told of having personal time off ruined