Bedawyn
Apr 15, 2004, 04:08 PM
My faith in Apple's ability to make decent business decisons has plummeted since I read the MacBytes/Reuters article a moment ago.
I don't know enough about how for-profit boards or shareholding works to know how powerful "ratifying" an auditor really is. I do know that, in years and years of temping at dozens of companies, I have never worked with any organization with such pervasive incompetence as KPMG LLP. I never worked with any organization that had such a pervasive sense of the executives caring nothing about their employees or their clients or any sense of ethics or anything but their own well-being -- oh, I'm sure worse companies exist, but none that I can speak to directly.
The nearly six months I spent there, I still years later refer to as the Project from Hell. I spent the last four months begging to be taken off the project, despite getting paid more there than anywhere else, and left that temp agency in large part because they wouldn't replace me. It was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the thread about "your worst job ever", and yes, it was a worse job than my high school days working fast food, than the restaurant where sexual harassment was part of the management training, than the months I spent working 80-hour weeks selling ugly clothing to pregnant teenagers and the months I spent selling books for a company whose home office handed down rules that bore no relation to reality at the front line. It was unimaginably bad.
And not because of the work. The work was the same editing I did for other companies -- maybe other companies didn't give me the documents late then try to blame it on me when the work wasn't done on time, but hey, a deadline's a deadline regardless of the reason. The work was fine. But the miasma of desperation and incompetence and upper-level selfishness was inescapable. Even the people I _liked_ there were incompetent, when it came to the actual work they were supposed to be doing. And every single person I knew there, with the possible exception of the Evil Bitch who gave us our orders, was desperately looking for a new job. Usually people look down on temps, but there they _envied_ me, because I could tell the Evil Bitch, no, that's not in my contract, I'm not doing it. My departmental supervisor there pulled me in to back him up with _his_ supervisors, on the grounds that because I was an outside contractor, they might actually listen to me when they didn't listen to him. It was bad enough that when their name showed up in the papers linked to ethics questions last year, I wasn't in the least surprised, and when their logo showed up on a building last month in a sweeping camera shot of LA, I instinctively went "Ewwww!"
I really really wish I could remember details of what made me think they were incompetent at their core business of auditing and accounting as well as at general business organization and treating people decently, but it was too long ago. I do remember I went home most days shaking my head in shock and disgust that this company was submitting and apparently being awarded government proposals. I mean, think about it, it was _years_ ago and I'm _still_ ranting and raving about it. That's got to be pretty bad. And the thought that _these_ guys are handling any portion of Apple's business needs is truly truly frightening.
I don't know enough about how for-profit boards or shareholding works to know how powerful "ratifying" an auditor really is. I do know that, in years and years of temping at dozens of companies, I have never worked with any organization with such pervasive incompetence as KPMG LLP. I never worked with any organization that had such a pervasive sense of the executives caring nothing about their employees or their clients or any sense of ethics or anything but their own well-being -- oh, I'm sure worse companies exist, but none that I can speak to directly.
The nearly six months I spent there, I still years later refer to as the Project from Hell. I spent the last four months begging to be taken off the project, despite getting paid more there than anywhere else, and left that temp agency in large part because they wouldn't replace me. It was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the thread about "your worst job ever", and yes, it was a worse job than my high school days working fast food, than the restaurant where sexual harassment was part of the management training, than the months I spent working 80-hour weeks selling ugly clothing to pregnant teenagers and the months I spent selling books for a company whose home office handed down rules that bore no relation to reality at the front line. It was unimaginably bad.
And not because of the work. The work was the same editing I did for other companies -- maybe other companies didn't give me the documents late then try to blame it on me when the work wasn't done on time, but hey, a deadline's a deadline regardless of the reason. The work was fine. But the miasma of desperation and incompetence and upper-level selfishness was inescapable. Even the people I _liked_ there were incompetent, when it came to the actual work they were supposed to be doing. And every single person I knew there, with the possible exception of the Evil Bitch who gave us our orders, was desperately looking for a new job. Usually people look down on temps, but there they _envied_ me, because I could tell the Evil Bitch, no, that's not in my contract, I'm not doing it. My departmental supervisor there pulled me in to back him up with _his_ supervisors, on the grounds that because I was an outside contractor, they might actually listen to me when they didn't listen to him. It was bad enough that when their name showed up in the papers linked to ethics questions last year, I wasn't in the least surprised, and when their logo showed up on a building last month in a sweeping camera shot of LA, I instinctively went "Ewwww!"
I really really wish I could remember details of what made me think they were incompetent at their core business of auditing and accounting as well as at general business organization and treating people decently, but it was too long ago. I do remember I went home most days shaking my head in shock and disgust that this company was submitting and apparently being awarded government proposals. I mean, think about it, it was _years_ ago and I'm _still_ ranting and raving about it. That's got to be pretty bad. And the thought that _these_ guys are handling any portion of Apple's business needs is truly truly frightening.
