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Apple Accuses Former Employee of Stealing Vision Pro Secrets
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One of the reasons I left Silicon Valley is the revolving door mentality of the whole sector. A LinkedIn profile is always 1 year here/2 years there/1 year here/3 years there. Very few people last more than two years it seems. At the major company I worked at, I was forced to lay off 5 workers in my department at the same time we were hiring a Game of Thrones actor and a stadium packing music act for advertising and entertainment. This was part of a 3000-person cutback that year, but yet the employee numbers stayed the same. One out, one in. It's a damn fantasy world out there with no connection to reality or desire to build a long term workforce.
Ranked: Worst Companies for Employee Retention (U.S. and UK)
Top tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, and Meta lead the list of companies with the worst employee retention in the U.S.www.visualcapitalist.com
And what, are retail employees some dirt? Are you nitpicking now? Every employee counts, big and small high and low. Apple's internal "culture" is very, very demanding for what it's worth. A lot of bigger tech companies are treating their employees a lot better. Apple used to be top notch with all their benefits and discounts and prestige that comes with having Apple in your CV, but those days are gone since at least Covid era and Apple's stubborn stance against WFH. I know what I'm talking about, if you don't, you don't need to argue with me.
Imagine getting a new job and being fearful of your current employer and how they'd treat you if you told them where you are going. Imagine wanting to save work you created over the years as "portfolio pieces" and copying those things to your drives. Imagine your past employer, the most valuable tech company in the world, sues you for doing any of the above.
Now think back to the last time you changed jobs. I bet many of you have done everything above.
Now think back to the last time you changed jobs. I bet many of you have done everything above.
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You have some data on that or just being racist?
Since he already has the job with Snap, he should have no problem showing Apple what data he took. You know, since it was just portfolio pieces and certainly not confidential code or trade secrets.
I think they caught him differently, no need for spyware. Good old CIA method: divide your employees into groups, tell them multiple different contradictory news, “insides” or stories, and see which one leaks to press. Then narrow down your search and chose the group from which the info came, repeat until you find one single person
Apple is not a charity. If you make something — anything — while on company time or otherwise being paid to do so, the thing you made is the company’s property.
And you should waste no “understanding” for the employee here. He needed Apple or he would have done the work on his own. Apple deserves compensation for this. And the work almost certainly reflected more than just his own contribution. Moreover, he clearly knew what he was doing was wrong if he was changing file names to evade detection.
No, not really. Apple would only claim your work if they feel like it could harm their position in relation to their rivals, in other words, if they can benefit from your work. It could be work he’s done at home not on company’s time but had it saved on company’s laptop, it could be number of things. Let’s just swallow the narrative as we always do instead, why think 😄
After 7 years of working there and suddenly losing all his loyality to the company does smell like something just isn’t right with this story. I want to know the whole story.
I'm all in favor of locking up far, far fewer people than we do in the US. But if we can lock somebody up for stealing an iPhone or two, then I don't see why this guy shouldn't get locked up as well.
If he’s an exempt employee (i.e., doesn’t clock in and out) then his relevant work at home also belongs to Apple. This is not a grey area legally, although there can be difficult factual questions. Also, you are incorrect that Apple would merely claim work to harm rivals — if they operate like a typical large company (and I think most would agree that they are at least that aggressive), they would claim ownership over all work within the scope of the employee’s responsibility.
As to your second paragraph, this happens all the time — I see these cases very regularly. A hotshot employee — or one who envisions himself a hotshot — gets a new job and wants to impress. The easiest way to hit the ground running (if one is unethical) is to borrow from your prior work for your prior employer. Or, as often happens, to borrow from prior work that was available to you even if it was not your prior work (for example, a project on which you were one of many contributors, a shared database relevant to your new role, etc.).
That’s probably because Apple operates a lot of retail locations whereas Google does not. Retail associates don’t tend to keep LinkedIn profiles:
Yes, but still, Apple has a high employee turnover rate. I remember times when even retail employees stayed longer than engineers. Things changed after Cook took over.
I respectfully disagree, while its true lots of people want to work for Apple, it is just work, just a job, better offers exist else where. They've been around 164,000 staff since 2020 so its more or less one in one out.
That's what I'm saying. People are very quick to judge without thinking past the headline.
I would say the majority of companies would not have a problem with this as long as it was only your work that that you copied but in the cases we have heard about over the years with Apple, employee's are not just taking files of their own work, they are taking files from work they have not done.
An ex-Apple engineer working on the Apple car project stole self driving car technology having agreed to take a job with a car company in China 4 months prior to leaving China.
Apple have been burnt before and it is therefore no surprise they have put in place ways and means of checking if employee's are taking files from Apple.
The UK's BBC does.
Ex-Apple engineer accused of stealing self-driving car secrets
The 35-year-old suspect allegedly downloaded large amounts of data before fleeing to China.
www.bbc.co.uk
The article states it is the 3rd time Apple have caught ex-Apple employee's of stealing tech for China. Further down in the article it names who the employee's are, all Chinese. The guy who stole car tech, Weibao Wang fled to China before he could be arrested.
I have not provided this to start a debate. I have provided this to show the poster that the claims being made by another poster are valid due to the accusation being made against the other poster.
Apple is content to steal from others but how dare someone steal from them.
What unreleased tech (other than the GUI from Xerox PARC, but that was a bit of a free-for-all thing) did Apple steal, pray tell?
It’s one thing to copy ideas from your competitors after the fact and mix them up, improve upon them, etc., it’s a completely different one to outright steal data related to unreleased devices.
It’s one thing to copy ideas from your competitors after the fact and mix them up, improve upon them, etc., it’s a completely different one to outright steal data related to unreleased devices.
The UK's BBC does.
Ex-Apple engineer accused of stealing self-driving car secrets
The 35-year-old suspect allegedly downloaded large amounts of data before fleeing to China.
The article states it is the 3rd time Apple have caught ex-Apple employee's of stealing tech for China. Further down in the article it names who the employee's are, all Chinese. The guy who stole car tech, Weibao Wang fled to China before he could be arrested.
I have not provided this to start a debate. I have provided this to show the poster that the claims being made by another poster are valid due to the accusation being made against the other poster.
That doesn’t prove anything.
The article doesn’t enumerate how often people who weren’t Chinese have stolen data from Apple.
It shows that people have stolen data from apple for china, it doesn’t show that ONLY Chinese people steal data from apple
Probably because electronic discovery hasn't been completed yet so Apple hasn't decided if they will press charges, and if so, which charges they will push for.
Apple can’t press charges. They can only report that they believe a crime had been committed.
It’s up to the District Attorney to press charges.
Apple can decide which charges they want pressed, aka deciding to press charges, but the DA will be the one to bring those charges to court and prosecute the guilty party.
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