Apple's Secrecy Extends to Putting New Employees on Fake Projects

[MacRumors]

In his new book, Inside Apple, Adam Lashinsky details the process undergone by new hires at Apple, noting that many of them are hired without knowing the exact project they are working on that they are frequently put through a testing period working on a different project in order to provide time to evaluate their trustworthiness.

For new recruits, the secret keeping begins even before they learn which of these building they'll be working in. Despite surviving multiple rounds of rigorous interviews, many employees are hired into so-called dummy positions, roles that aren't explained in detail until after they join the company. The new hires have been welcomed but not yet indoctrinated and aren't necessarily to be trusted with information as sensitive as their own mission. "They wouldn't tell me what it was," remembered a former engineer who had been a graduate student before joining Apple. "I knew it was related to the iPod, but not what the job was." Others do know but won't say, a realization that hits the newbies on their first day of work at new-employee orientation.

As noted by Business Insider, a former Apple engineer confirmed that piece of information during the Q&A portion of Lashinsky's recent talk at LinkedIn (video clip via Fortune), going even farther to note that new hires are even sometimes placed on fake products during this probationary period.

A friend of mine who's a senior engineer at Apple, he works on -- or did work on -- fake products I'm sure for the first part of his career, and interviewed for 9 months. It's intense.

Lashinsky's tidbit on new hires is just one facet of his lengthier coverage of Apple's strict secrecy, part of which has been republished for Fortune as a look into how Apple's organizational structure maintains the company's security. His full 50-minute LinkedIn talk is also available on YouTube.

Article Link: Apple's Secrecy Extends to Putting New Employees on Fake Projects

[Frosticus]

I really must read this book - read the first chapter as a sample on iBooks and still have a copy of the Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson to read too... Not enough hours in the day...!

[Kilamite]

I'd love to know what the fake projects were.

"Today guys, we're going to reinvent the toilet."

[talkingfuture]

Thats amazing, although a good way of evaluating their work without making mistakes on a 'live' project.

[allpar]

"Thats amazing, although a good way of evaluating their work without making mistakes on a 'live' project."

And yet, we have Lion and countless other examples of people making mistakes on "live" projects.

[dr Dunkel]

"The new hires have been welcomed but not yet indoctrinated and aren't necessarily to be trusted with information as sensitive as their own mission."

Quite telling.

[ILikeTurtles]

It must be a complete thrill and a total nightmare to work for Apple.

[DESNOS]

Great way to test for leaks.

[Blakjack]

I always thought about it, but now I am convinced that Apple is a branch of the CIA.

EDIT: I was only joking guys...Geeeez

[carboncow]

Originally Posted by allpar

"Thats amazing, although a good way of evaluating their work without making mistakes on a 'live' project."

And yet, we have Lion and countless other examples of people making mistakes on "live" projects.

please you act like a new OS never has an issue or more...Lion is far from Vista status and with the exception of a couple changes I didn't like and a handful of bugs...it's just fine, Leopard 2.0. Relax...

[Andronicus]

Finally! A new post. I swear MacRumors just shuts down on the weekends. It's like a 9-5 job! Please post on the weekends, macrumors!

On topic: it's insane how secretive apple can be. Insanely awesome.

[xlii]

North Korea could learn from these guys. Fake products... I never would have guessed it.

[samcraig]

Originally Posted by carboncow

please you act like a new OS never has an issue or more...Lion is far from Vista status and with the exception of a couple changes I didn't like and a handful of bugs...it's just fine, Leopard 2.0. Relax...

Who mentioned Vista or made any comparison? The OP just said that Lion is an example where mistakes were made.

[rhinosrcool]

Originally Posted by ILikeTurtles

It must be a complete thrill and a total nightmare to work for Apple.

Yeah, wow.

[allpar]

I tried Lion. It's not a Leopard II. You want fundamental mistakes? Screwing around unnecessarily with the user interface counts to me. Hiding the part of the file dialogue that lets you see the list of hard drives counts.

Yeah, a few bugs always sneak through. These are not bugs, they're fundamental design errors. Macintouch has a huge discussion with both sides chiming in, and I really don't think the "get over it" side has much to go on.

Just because Microsoft makes mistakes, doesn't mean Apple doesn't. That's like claiming I should love Adobe customer service because it's slightly better than Intuit's.

[jamesryanbell]

Originally Posted by ILikeTurtles

It must be a complete thrill and a total nightmare to work for Apple.

That's pretty much exactly what I thought when I saw the vid.

[jadot]

Originally Posted by Andronicus

Finally! A new post. I swear MacRumors just shuts down on the weekends. It's like a 9-5 job! Please post on the weekends, macrumors!

You should cut down, and then slowly try to re-integrate into the real world.
This story satisfied your 'need' for something (anything) Apple related?
Wow.

[HangmanSwingset]

"Alright newbie, we need you to go to the store and buy some elbow grease and headlight fluid."

[rwilliams]

Originally Posted by ILikeTurtles

It must be a complete thrill and a total nightmare to work for Apple.

My thoughts exactly. It seems like the shelf life for employees would be short because many people couldn't handle the constant paranoia and hassle of working at Apple (though one can understand WHY the company is like that). And interviewing for 9 months? There's no job in the world that I want that badly.

Originally Posted by Andronicus

Finally! A new post. I swear MacRumors just shuts down on the weekends. It's like a 9-5 job! Please post on the weekends, macrumors!

If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say that the people running this site like to have a real life on the weekend and do things other than post to a website. Crazy, I know.

[whooleytoo]

It's all rather moot. As soon as you're relying on external companies for components - or in particular - for the entire manufacturing, assembly & packaging process; you completely lose control of product secrecy.

And with the volumes that Apple needs in advance of the product launch; and the time the manufacturers need to manufacture those units; we're not just talking about handing designs to external manufacturers in the last couple of weeks of a project, but rather many months ahead of the launch.

How often has Apple recently launched a product that was a complete surprise to all observers? Exactly.

[nick_elt]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Originally Posted by Andronicus

Finally! A new post. I swear MacRumors just shuts down on the weekends. It's like a 9-5 job! Please post on the weekends, macrumors!

On topic: it's insane how secretive apple can be. Insanely awesome.

What news is going to come out on the weekend? Most of their sources will be 9-5. Ever thought about that?

[GenesisST]

Originally Posted by Andronicus

Finally! A new post. I swear MacRumors just shuts down on the weekends. It's like a 9-5 job! Please post on the weekends, macrumors!

Some people have lives, you know!

[koobcamuk]

I wish "new employees" rather than "new hires" was used.

[mave1969]

Isn't it pretty much accepted that the "Asteroid" Garage Band audio breakout box that brought down Think Secret was, in fact, such a fake project designed to catch leaks?

[KdParker]

This is not surprising for anyone that has worked as a developer on high profile initiatives.