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I wanted to work at Apple really bad, and now not so much.
Walking out on my dream job.
About
a month ago, after years of designing in various industries, making
websites for small-time clients, working at failed and debatably
successful startups, and fiddling with random side projects, I had been
offered an interview at Apple. I couldn’t believe it. I had just totally revamped my portfolio,
and I was now actually good enough to be considered as a candidate at
Apple. In my eyes, Apple is, hands down, the most highly-regarded
company a designer could work for.
They set an
interview date, and I started to brace myself for a bunch of gotcha
questions and hard design problems that I would have to whiteboard in
front of a design team. I had also assumed such a big company would take
many rounds of interviews to make a final decision. I was pleasantly
surprised when I only had to interview with three people for less than
an hour, and the interview was pretty standard. I drove back to SF from
Cupertino, and I replayed the interview in my head. It seemed like it
went well, but I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. I didn’t want to be
disappointed if they rejected me.
It
turned out it did go well. I received a call the same day, and they
told me I knocked it out of the park. They offered me a contract
position as a mobile designer. Wow! I was so ecstatic that I had
screamed when I got off the phone. My parents and family were super
excited when I told them the news. I had posted the news to Facebook,
and I had never gotten so many likes and congratulations on anything
before. I got more likes when I announced that I got a job at Apple than
when my daughter was born. People that I friended years ago and never
talked to since were sending me messages. I changed my title on Twitter,
and suddenly people started following me that probably never would have
a week before. People were so excited for me that I decided to
celebrate with drinks one night, and the turnout was amazing. It felt so
great to have people want to celebrate this achievement with me.
I
couldn’t sleep the on the nights leading up to my start date. I was
nervous and excited. I felt like getting an offer from Apple had
validated my talent as a designer. I thought about the long, unorthodox journey
that lead me to Apple. I wondered, “What does this mean for my career?
What will I be working on? Where will this take me? Will I ever finish
the iPhone app I’ve been working on on the side?” I had so many questions.
Then
I started. I immediately was uneasy about the rigid hours and long
commute, but at least I could be one of those notorious tech people
whizzing to and from San Francisco on a private bus with wifi (I’m
especially intrigued by the bus thing because I grew up in San Francisco
and have seen the cultural and economic shift that’s resulted from this
tech boom and the last. Now ironically I was one of the techies who
some people think is ruining the city.) I hardly (hardly meaning never)
saw my daughter during the week because the hours were so inflexible. I
had also taken a substantial pay cut, but I figured I was making a
long-term career investment by working for such a prestigious company.
On boarding was super bumpy, and they had so many passwords, accounts,
and logins that it took nearly a month just for me to get on the server.
There were meetings all the time which were disruptive to everyone’s
productivity, but they seemed to be a necessary evil in a company that’s
so large with such high-quality products. It was all a bit bothersome,
but nothing that would be a big problem in the long-term I thought.
Then
my immediate boss (known at Apple as a producer), who had a habit of
making personal insults shrouded as jokes to anyone below him, started
making direct and indirect insults to me. He started reminding me that
my contract wouldn’t be renewed if I did or didn’t do certain things. He
would hover over my back (literally) like a boss out of Dilbert and
press me to finish some mundane design task that he felt urgently needed
to be examined. He was democratic about his patronizing and rude
comments, but it didn’t make me feel any better when he directed them
towards my team members. I felt more like I was a teenager working at a
crappy retail job than a professional working at one of the greatest
tech companies in the world.
I
tried to tough it out and look at the bright side of things. I was
working at Apple with world-class designers on a world-class product. My
coworkers had super sharp eyes for design, better than I had ever
encountered before. I loved the attention to detail that Apple put into
its design process. Every single pixel, screen, feature, and interaction
is considered and then reconsidered. The food in the cafe was great,
and I liked my new iPad Air. But the jokes, insults, and negativity from
my boss started distracting me from getting work done. My coworkers
that stood their ground and set boundaries seemed to end up on a shit
list of sorts and were out of the inner circle of people that kissed the
producer’s ass. I started to become one of those people that
desperately wanted Friday evening to arrive, and I dreaded Sunday
nights. Few of my friends or family wanted to hear that working at Apple
actually wasn’t so great. They loved to say, “Just do it for your
resume.” or “You have to be the bigger man.” or “You just started. You
can’t leave yet.”
This
morning I got up a bit later than usual, and I missed the one Apple bus
that stops by my house. I ended up driving to work in slow traffic. I
was thankful I didn’t have to drive every day. But I was still thinking
that I’d rather be taking my daughter to her preschool like I did on
some mornings before I started at Apple. I got into work and immediately
had to go to another meeting. It went fine, and then I got back to my
desk. Without so much as a hello, my boss hit me with another weird
low-blow insult wrapped up nicely as a joke. I tried to ignore it and
get back to work, and I realized I just couldn’t focus at all on my job.
I was too caught up thinking about how I should deal with the
situation. Should I put in my notice? Could I make it to the end of my
contract? Could I switch to a different team? How could I find a new job
if I was always stuck in Cupertino? Maybe I should bop my punk boss in
his nose? No don’t do that, Jordan.
Then
at lunch time I wiped the iPad data clean, put the files I had been
working on neatly on the server, left all their belongings on my desk,
and I got in my car and drove home. I left a message for my boss and
told him he’s the worst boss I had ever encountered in my entire
professional career and that I could no longer work under him no matter
how good Apple might look on my resume. The third party company that
contracted me is furious because I’ve jeopardized their relationship
with Apple, and of course they feel that I’ve acted highly
unprofessionally by walking out. I’m not really proud of myself for
doing that, and I do feel terrible for destroying the long relationship I
had with the recruiter who helped me land the interview. This is all an
especially difficult pill to swallow because I was so excited to work
for Apple. I’m not sure if this will haunt me or not, but all I know is
that I wanted to work at Apple really bad, and now not so much.
*Edit.
Many people have noted that I should have reached out to HR. It’s
debatable if it would have helped the situation, but I didn’t feel there
was anyone to turn to. It was unclear who exactly I even worked for or
who I should share my grievances with. I was contracted by one company,
yet paid by another contracting company, and then I worked at Apple. To
this day, I never once encountered anyone from HR while at Apple, as I
wasn’t technically employed by them. Also, as I stated, the coworkers
who spoke out against my boss seemed to be ostracized from his inner
circle. I didn’t want to be on his shit list too. Furthermore, I
mistakenly believed that I should just suck it up and take it one day at
a time. But I reached a breaking point and ended up leaving in a way
that I did not plan on.
The alleged
yakuza connections between Japan's talent agencies, who have overseas
offices and business deals, has caught the attention of the US
government, which forbids interaction or profit sharing with yakuza
associates. US government officials would not comment on the record but
said on background, “It's a subject of concern and we are discussing it
on several levels.” ヤクザと海外で事務所を置いたりビジネスを行ってる日本の芸能事務所のつながりは、ヤクザとのつきあいや利益供与を禁じている米国政府は大変注目している。米国政府関係者は公式には述べてないが“それは重大な懸念対象であり我々はいくつかのレベルで議論している。”という。 http://www.fccj.or.jp/number-1-shimbun/item/273-beauty-takes-on-the-beasts.html below the belt 発言・批判などが相手の痛いところを突いた、 個人的なことに立ち入り過ぎの
