Based on this comment, it sounds like engineers are more like line workers.
"EMs at Apple are powerless to push back. Every engineer's performance is tied to the number of Radars fixed and closed. Every EM's performance is tied to their team's total Radars fixed and closed, so they have an incentive to keep everyone focused on the prize."
Always take comments like that with a grain of salt.
The people who feel they are being ignored or feel they aren't being used to their full potential are going to look for someone or something to blame.
I'm sure there is some amount of "higher number of fixes is better" going on (any larger company has it), but i've seen poor team members read into things like this way too much in order to justify why they aren't doing well in comparison to others.
It may be true that apple weighs stats like that too heavily, but we aren't going to get a good picture of how heavily they weigh them from a few anecdotes.
Never saw or heard anything about my performance being tied to the number of radars I fixed or closed, and I never heard anyone else I worked with say that either. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, like every big company there are managers who are good, and managers who don't really get it.
Thanks for the perspective Klathmon and objclxt. The person's comment hits a fear of mine that people still draw the false analogy of manufacturing for software development.
"EMs at Apple are powerless to push back. Every engineer's performance is tied to the number of Radars fixed and closed. Every EM's performance is tied to their team's total Radars fixed and closed, so they have an incentive to keep everyone focused on the prize."