If Apple considers level 1 and 5 to both be associates and doesn’t share more than that that’s… fine?
WaPo says this can be a 6 figure difference in compensation but frankly why should a future employer get to know how much I make? Maybe I’m a level 3 but deserved to be a level 4. Maybe I’m a level 5 but actually a level 2 that’s just really good at office politics.
If I want my employer to know what number Apple assigned me, I’ll tell them.
EDIT: Telling companies a Level 5 engineer was an associate if associate isn't a superset of Level 5's is shady, and I can't defend Apple on that point. From what I read of the article that wasn't clear to me. They do say the title is generally linked to more junior roles but that's relative and you can still be old, experienced and well-paid but if you're not a manager I might consider that an associate.
Future employers will ask your level and if Apple tells them something different they're going to think you're lying. I can see it being problematic when applying to Government or enterprise roles. They will do their due diligence and might rescind an offer if they find a discrepancy.
I’ve been investigated by federal and state governments nine times (welcome to contracting) since leaving Apple, up to and including a full SSBI, and have never heard a word about a discrepancy. Ever. Public sector, private sector, HireRight, nobody has ever flagged it, and I know what that looks like because others have been. HireRight in particular is sensitive to job level or title differences in what you report as part of their investigation, and again, it’s never remotely been an issue.
I think people put a lot of stock in these databases which are updated voluntarily by employers. When it matters it’s double checked anyway. If a background shop can’t get an answer from Apple in a week it’s a bad background shop, because that’s literally automated (and the last copy I requested from a CRA had my title correctly reported by Apple, including my seniority level).
I hate dismissing the claim and I’m not. Rest assured I believe this tomfoolery to be on brand. There’s just more nuance to this, I think, and it’s even more interesting if it’s intermittently impacting formers. Could this be the result of the “do not rehire” box being checked in Merlin? I know mine isn’t, and I also know that it is often (quietly) checked when people depart, and that might be the difference.
I specifically mentioned the private sector twice. I go back and forth, and I only started off with government because it was contextual where I was replying. It has never happened to me in either context and I left Apple quite acrimoniously.
Apple lying at all is bad. It doesn’t matter to who. It’s potential liability if a candidate gets wind of it, but if these folks are going after the NLRB to address the concern, I suspect it means their lawyer told them they don’t have a case (probably because Apple confirmed their role accurately to the investigation in question regardless of what the credit reporting database says, I would guess).
> I suspect it means their lawyer told them they don’t have a case
Since we're speculating, my take is that having the NLRB investigate the issue first and finding Apple was being punitive would bolster their civic case, and give them more leverage in the eventual settlement - they'll skip from having to prove Apple caused harm directly to how much harm was done.
Besides, outsourcing the investigations to the NLRB would cost them less (discovery is expensive!), and the NLRB has a clear mandate and can't be bogged down by appeals and other forms of delaying legal warfare. The NLRB is also likely to cast a broader net, and better resourced.
One can debate whether companies in general should use "associate" to refer to all their employees given that it has a specific meaning in some contexts, e.g. Big Law. Nonetheless, many companies do so. (Probably because employee has some specific legal meaning.) So it's not lying to basically say they worked here. I expect that many companies do this and it seems entirely appropriate.
If they always said Associate then that might be perfectly fine. Changing periods roles in their last pay period isn’t simply referring to everyone as an employee.
If you get your InVerify or Work Number report, and it does not say associate, you would be an anomaly. InVerify told me it's really obnoxious because they have to keep a special process in place for Apple employees to get their actual job titles. The problem, of course, is that The Work Number, does not do this, which is who Sterling is partnered with instead of InVerify.
HireRight will check InVerify AND The Work Number, and if you pull your reports from there (which I have), you can see that for yourself.
> Future employers will ask your level and if Apple tells them something different they're going to think you're lying.
But that doesn't seem to be what's happening.
It's clear that "associate" means "they worked here but we won't tell you what as, ha ha". That's not lying! That's just not telling. And it's no reason for a future company to be suspicious.
They're submitting this data to Lexis-Nexis. It's not about employers calling Apple to verify the info. Lexis-Nexis most likely requires a title and Apple is changing it after people leave.
My external title (which is also what's on my resume) has generally not corresponded to my official HR title--which I might not even know off the top of my head. There's this weird fixation on specific levels associated with technical roles at the big tech companies which mostly doesn't exist anywhere else outside of the very highest levels.
It's also not clear to me from the article that Apple is changing the person's level when they leave. I read the article as saying they just don't share titles. And I'm not even clear that the information is shared at all until end of employment.
Titles are important for pay reasons, as they correspond to pay bands. People that say titles don't matter are probably already making outsized compensation and don't find it important because their resume speaks for itself.
A manager and director can be doing the same job, but the title matters in terms of their compensation and potential title at their next job.
I wouldn't dispute your point that titles are important, but would ask, should they be? It doesn't seem that they really mean much at a lot of places, or are sometimes even given out in place of compensation. One anecdote I can think of is my company hired a front end developer right out of a bootcamp. After a few months he went on to a job at a large sports apparel manufacturer with the title of Senior Engineer. He was competent and a sharp guy, but come on, Senior with less than a years worth of professional experience.
> Might have been a problem in the past, but now you can point them to this article.
Background checks are frequently done by specialized 3rd party companies of varying levels of quality that don't communicate directly with the applicant, and have a lot of leeway to interpret if candidate was misrepresenting their past. You may not have the opportunity to point them to this article after being told a blanket "We regret to inform you that in accordance to clause 2(c) on the offer letter, we are withdrawing the offer of employment due to a verification failure during the background check."
You may not have direct communication with the decision maker in such situations. The company that does the checks will just mark the exception and push to recruiter. Then depending on organisation a hiring manager may be making the final decision without you even knowing there is a variance. So there will be times when you can point no one to the article.
In my 4 negotiation experiences, my results when not offering a competing/previous salary have always been better than when a company tries to match a competitor. When a company tries to match, they want to offer the bare minimum over the competition (which often is a minimal increase if the competition is your current company). When I name my own salary companies offer me what I want to be paid.
Maybe, but my experience working mostly at smaller companies is that nobody really cares. If you say you’re a level X they’ll say, “okay prove it. Demonstrate through your accomplishments and knowledge you’re a level X” not “Prove it. Show us your documentation, citizen.”
I also can’t imagine verifying or asking HR to verify someone’s level or salary. They’d start questioning if I understood the point of the interview.
I also can’t imagine verifying or asking HR to verify someone’s level or salary. They’d start questioning if I understood the point of the interview.
The whole prior salary thing is very touchy now, and in some states potential employers aren't allowed to ask.
The company my wife works for will only confirm whether an employee was employed at a given date, or not. No salary information. No titles. Nothing other than a yes, or no.
> The company my wife works for will only confirm whether an employee was employed at a given date, or not. No salary information. No titles. Nothing other than a yes, or no.
This is pretty common. My state is pretty liberal in terms of what's allowed legally, but even as far back as the 90s, the official party line in most shops was that you couldn't say more than "Joe was employeed here between 19xx and 19xx". And that's assuming you, as a persons former manager, were even supposed to take the call. Many shops had a "refer all inquiries to HR" rule and would only tell them the same basic answer.
Unofficially, a common tactic was (and I believe still is, if recent experience is anything to go by) to to exploit the use of "personal references" as opposed to former Employers. Hope (or 'suggest') the candidate used a former co-worker as a personal reference, and then on the call ask things like "On a personal level, given the opportunity, would you look forward to working with Joe again?" Anything less than an enthusiastic "oh definitely" was a polite tip off that Joe was not someone you wanted in your shop.
> I cannot wait to check back in with you when you're trying to get a new job and negotiating salary.
Hi, checking in. Your current/previous salary is no business of your future employer. You don't have to share it, and it shouldn't form the basis of your future salary.
If this seems alien, or improbable to you, people can and do learn how to tactfully steer conversations away from disadvantageous topics.
The fact that previous salary has anything to do with future salary comes from the same swamp of misinformation like "it's illegal to discuss your salary with your peers."
My approach when dealing with future salary is to tell them my previous job paid me ((what I want from next job) - X %). Previous salary doesn't appear in the equation.
Associate is just another word for employee. I don’t see why Apple should be contributing data to these shady databases of prior salaries and levels.
If a new employer wants to know my level at a previous employer, I’ll tell them. If they want proof then 1) that’s pretty weird but 2) they can give my manager a call.
But if I don’t tell them my level, then I don’t want anyone else to tell them either.
Apple doesn’t consider them to be associates though, that’s the point. Their job titles at Apple AND in the databases are accurate up until they leave the company and only then is their title demoted to Associate.
I can see a weird sort of logic to Apple. Why would they share their judgement about the level of an ex-employee with a potential rival company (rival in case of talent perhaps also product)? Let the employee say "I was Level 5 @ Apple" and have the hiring company verify that the person is at whatever level that implies. Why should Apple allow its rivals piggyback on its own levelling system?
Counterpoint: accurately ascertaining an engineer's capability is their secret sauce, why should they be obliged to share that information with anyone?
If that were really the goal then they would never publish the information in the first place. Instead they are apparently scrubbing it _after_ they leave. That's not preventing another company from using the data when hiring you away, that's being petty and erasing you from their history for the most part.
Who's publishing it? Apple is not sending out a list of who's at which level. You need to bring evidence if you're claiming otherwise. Products like Work Number are based on inference or direct observation of these titles through payroll integrations or other exhaust.
You are mistaken: Apple is not submitting that data, that's not how these products work. These data products are collected via scraping, other software integrations (e.g. payroll), or sometimes calling for employment verification, not from first party submissions. An accurate org chart of a company is valuable private knowledge, no company is just exporting it so that anyone with a few thousand dollars can get a copy.
> If I want my employer to know what number Apple assigned me, I’ll tell them.
I think you're being overly flippant. Every single job I've applied to[1] has done an independent background check[2] - which included calling/emailing past employers and verifying the details I told them meshes with their records on title and duration of employment. Discrepancies here can cause delays, or even cost one an offer, as happened the former Apple engineer in the article. I wouldn't be as dismissive as you are, as the consequences can be quite dire; also I cannot think of any positive reason for the practice, except to punish those who leave Apple. I hope the NLRB and courts throw the book at them.
1. At companies with headcounts ranging from low hundreds to tens of thousands
2. Including international calls across timezones. The investigators - often a 3rd party - are diligent, but often clueless/ignorant when the particulars of a case are different to what they are used to. This has caused delays for me in the past, and it was expensive for me because I had quit my old job after accepting the offer, and was unemployed for longer than I had planned.
> if you're not a manager I might consider that an associate.
Maybe that's your personal definition. Generally, 'associate' is the title you will get if you get an entry level retail job. There's nothing 'wrong' with the title if that's what Apple internally called everyone.
If they change it when you leave(specially if it turns out that they do that when you leave in bad terms), that's malicious.
Ultimately, this means that: you say you are a Senior Software Engineer (or whatever title Apple internally uses); the new prospective employer tries to verify and it comes back as an "associate".
i.e. they think your Apple experience was working some entry level job in one of their stores and you are trying to claim you were an engineer.
I don’t know about Apple but at the other FAANGs level is a made up thing that sorta correlates to comp and experience. You can have inexperienced people at a principal or staff level and highly experienced people at a lower level. Depending on your region someone in NYC at a lower level might be bringing more comp than someone in a rural area at a higher level. It all comes down to what you can negotiate, what role you’re applying to, and how experienced the interviewer(s) think you are.
Something that's not mentioned here is this refusal to even confirm what you worked on also affects people's immigration status.
To approve I-140, USCIS requires a signed letter from employers confirming your title, experience and skill sets.
Most companies really don't like to give these details out for some reason, and it's always a struggle, especially outside tech. People manage by contacting their managers to past coworkers to attest this.
This is intended as a general observation and not about AAPL (I can't attest to what happens there).
Naturally, you can see how this puts pressure on visa employees to leave on good terms and be compliant knowing you might not be able to extend your visa otherwise.
In that case it is interesting that the law does not mandate this.
In France you get a paper with the name of the company and the dates of your employment. This is the only information a company can provide, and confirm when requested.
The concept of referrals does not exist in practical terms (I had to give some once for an American company and gave good friends who said I was wonderful) - because they would not work.
There's no law in the US unfortunately so there's no obligation on the employer to provide this information either. There is something called "The Work Number" that certain employers subscribe to for employer verification, but that is not accepted by USCIS.
I've seen some people use a combination of payslips and offer letters as evidence to submit to USCIS but its rolling the dice, since it really depends on the immigration officer looking at your file. Some are OK, some aren't.
Reminds me of the practice of Translations.com / Transperfect, one of the largest language services providers. Their HR policy is to not allow employees to name the company in any online space, social media or otherwise. So when you see staff on LinkedIn, for instance, their employer will invariable say "Leading language service provider" or similar. These seem to be completely unreasonable policies, to me, that in effect are demanding that basic facts are ownable by the company.
After some military contractors in some countries got targeted and hurt, most European defence companies started asking their employees they don't advertise who you work for and where, especially in the Internet, and especially on social media.
You're advised not to wear company swag and all company-provided transport (buses) are required not to say or write the name of the company when picking up employees. You're also advised to avoid giving a precise Linked In profile. Even your role makes you a phishing (or worse) target.
You'd get frequent opsec training refreshes explaining all the new tricks and how such and such got roped in from their SM presence.
People who I know who have worked in intelligence have a career history on linkedIn which says they worked in diplomatic service or something similar. If you think about it, it makes sense given they would need to have such a cover job to get visas and so forth. You can't show up at some posting and try to explain "Yes I know my LinkedIn says '2005-2015 Secret Intelligence Service' but now I'm actually a legitimate diplomat".
Way back when but assume this is still the case, there were positions in the CIA (in DC, i.e. not agents) where you officially worked for someone like the Navy and weren't supposed to tell people you worked for the CIA. I was offered such a position but didn't take it.
Yeah, this is my experience too, at least in the UK. We had a close family friend whose father, the patriarch of the family, worked for 'the Army' his whole life. It was only after he died that they discovered - somehow - that it was actually 'intelligence' work.
I'm sure it's different for secretarial roles, leadership roles, etc, but for the bulk of people it seems like the usual career path is up through the normal military, and officially they remain in the military. (I also knew some linguists - normally of somewhat exotic languages like Arabic or Russian – who were taken aside at Oxford or Cambridge and asked if they were interested in working in intelligence.)
Like the other person said: relative to 'plain' Western European languages – like French, German, Spanish, or Italian – yes, they are. There are some languages in the world which are more exotic, but Arabic and Russian are indeed somewhat exotic to us.
I imagine that native or fluent English speakers are less likely to be fluent in those languages than other western European languages. So, yes, they're "exotic" or at least less common in that sense.
Sounds like when you leave Apple you are free to give yourself a title promotion since they wipe all that info.
I would also pass on any company that needs references to my job title because their dystopian background check through the infamous Equifax says I'm an associate, even with a software engineering background, haha that part was beyond silly.
„i leveraged prior experience in ultra-scalable real-time systems at the edge with my people skills to produce X“ type of bullshit is different than „i had this very specific role at a large and known company that is only assigned to people that have demonstrated high levels of skill“, the latter is plain fraud if not true.
it‘s like saying „i have a pilot license“ if you don't
(Just to throat clear ahead of time... I obviously find what Apple is doing super shitty. I just want to find some reason besides "Apple bad" for why they would do this.)
Could they be doing this title change, at least in theory, as an information security measure? Competitors and journalists could potentially corroborate (or have an easier time corroborating) leaks if they can verify that a former employee is the position/level they claim to be.
I worked briefly at Apple as contractor doing some professional services integration type stuff in the datacenter space, and one thing that struck me was how secrecy seemed to ooze it's way into super unexpected places. This was to the point that I wondered if an infosec team had a hand in designing some of the systems I was working with that were way closer to the power lines than they were to the products they were designing. This was also around the time that I was reading about Apple's "Worldwide Loyalty Team" and how they would plan operations to catch people leaking.
As an aside, does anyone know how accurate the reporting was/is on the "Worldwide Loyalty Team"? Looking back it seems absurd, to the point where it makes more sense to me as a myth than fact.
This was my first thought. Apple is notoriously secretive, even internally. They likely see this as a way to prevent folks from reverse engineering through job titles what former employees were working on. (Agreed that it's super shitty and likely overkill, but I think this is a better explanation than outright trying to screw former employees.)
In this case, though, why not replace the job title with "Employee"?
>In this case, though, why not replace the job title with "Employee"?
One (non-tech) company I worked at had a pretty stringent policy of always referring to "associates" rather than "employees". I don't exactly know why; maybe some kind of branding or psychological thing, like "you're part of the family" instead of "you're working for us". It admittedly does sound a little more pleasant.
Using "associate" or something along those lines is extremely common. It does seem a bit more pleasant and it also steers clear of employee vs. contractor legal distinctions.
I've worked in a couple of different industries, and from what I've seen an associate is generally a title for junior staff. After a few years, most graduate some type of specialist or project management job title.
This wasn't the case for the company I worked at. It applied to everyone of every rank. Not as a title, but just a general descriptor used in place of "employee" or "personnel".
I'm not going to make a judgment call on why but it does seem feasible that their system could have a drop-down for title, there is nothing generic in that list, so someone decided to use "Associate".
>As an aside, does anyone know how accurate the reporting was/is on the "Worldwide Loyalty Team"? Looking back it seems absurd, to the point where it makes more sense to me as a myth than fact.
It's not credible from a fact-checking analysis. For reference, the publication that broke the news was Gizmodo [0]. The major issues are:
i) The source of the information is not identified on the record, and is just listed as "Tom" (no last name).
ii) There is only one anonymous interview for the article, and no supporting documentation referenced in the article to justify the claims.
iii) No other publication appears to verify the information independently, such as Apple Insider [1], for such a major story. This includes newspapers that maintain a reputation for fact-checking and responsibility (e.g. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal), where it should should be feasible to verify if this was widely known within Apple.
Exactly this has happened. People have long inferred various things about long-term Apple projects, such as self-driving cars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_electric_car_project), based on the hires they've made (including acquihires). Coupled with Apple's noted paranoia, I can well see this being the reason why they would refuse to disclose someone's team, or even their specialism or seniority.
If it is for secrecy then why not delete the information and inform those who ask they do not hold such information? The issue was the discrepancy when a third party tried to verify, and I'm sure third parties would quickly learn to work around the fact?
Instead making everyone associates is like an error propagating far from it's call site until an exception (this article) is raised.
less about screwing the competition, more about hindering their ability to learn about development through trawling resumes. The more I try and describe it, the weaker it sounds in my head, but the idea is you could get some info on what Apple is doing by looking at resumes referencing Apple, then corroborate what you saw by checking former position with those firms.
I think it's really important to note that Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies, but not only do they choose to do so they also make sure the information is wrong. Apple is, essentially, being unethical on two levels. They're selling or sharing employee information, and they're purposefully making it so that information is wrong.
I want to stress this- I ask during the interview process of every company I work at whether they share employment information with the credit bureaus and most say no. I've worked at startups and a couple of larger companies. What Apple is doing here seems purely vindictive.
I'm also not sure how this is legal- it seems like it would fall under defamation laws. I would personally be willing to sue over this (but I've never worked for Apple).
It's a really good point about Apple willfully using an Experian service as part of this strategy. As to defamation, I don't think that's clear. Apple is intentionally using the term to be as legally vague as possible about how it externally reports its past connection to its ex-payees. This is mostly liability management, essentially saying less that can't be called false, instead of the defamatory tactic of saying more that is not true.
as·so·ci·ate (n)
1. a partner or colleague in business or at work.
2. a person with limited or subordinate membership of an organization.
3. joined or connected with an organization or business.
- Source: Google search results fed by Oxford Languages
This kind of vague hedging in communication for legal purposes is pretty longterm characteristic of the organization. It's the "say absolutely nothing after termination that can be dissected in court later" school. The school has adherents all over the place.
While I agree it’s probably not defamation and is just meant to say as little as possible, there’s no way this would be the end all in court - apple surely keeps the original records internally so a court case could easily find your original title.
Well said- it's as much or more to try to provide minimum reasoning to allow a party to bring them to court as influence proceedings in court. But the lack of statements made after termination is undeniably helpful to parties with this kind of MO if things end up there.
> Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies
Also, those third parties don't have to take Apple's word. Equifax and Lexis-Nexis (named in the article) are selling a data product, which is undermined by Apple's bad behavior. Shouldn't these companies have an incentive to provide accurate data?
This is where it gets interesting. I looked up the products in question, and they are VERY careful to talk about streamlining workflows, and connecting you to previous employers without every making claims about the accuracy of the data provided by thos employers.
Equifax's "The Work Number can deliver an automated income and employment verification solution that streamlines the transfer of information between employers and verifier."[0] They do this "thanks to a powerful alliance partnerships with many of the top payroll and HCMs". They are clearly just sloshing data out of payroll systems into a proprietary database. You'd think they'd notice when a large employer overwrites everyone's title on their last paycheck, but they make no claims about quality control on this data.
The article specifically mentions Inverify, which is owned by Equifax. Their verification services page[2] also focuses on efficiency ("Throw it over the Fence"). They claim to "[gather] your electronic data and [upload] relevant information so you do not have to search for employee data from multiple sources." Note that there's nothing in there about quality control. I suspect Inverify exists to provide a services layer over the The Work Number data product.
LexisNexis doesn't make their offerings as obvious. I found this pdf for LexisNexis Screening Solutions[3]. They say "We have developed relationships with many employers and will make those difficult calls for you, thereby simplifying your job." One way they help make those difficult calls is that they "call and verify previous employment with each source." So that's a data quality claim, but they're still focused on just parroting whatever the upstream employer says.
You would expect that products like this would have rigorous, automated anomaly detection procedures in place. As an employer, I don't want to waste time figuring out why this otherwise great senior dev was an "associate" at Apple. I want my verification provider to, at minimum, tell me "heads up, Apple is a fickle and vindictive employer so you can't really trust this." Of course it would be even BETTER if they said "our professional assessment is they were a Level 4. We believe that because that's what the previous 200 paystubs and 4 W2 forms said before they screwed with the data after their departure."
If you're gonna build a terrifying data business, at least be good at it!
I don't necessarily agree that what they are doing is unethical. It seems more a preservation of their business practices. Which is understandable and actually the ethical thing to do since Apple has no obligation to help others, including competitors. There is also an argument that what they are doing is the ethical thing to do by not feeding data into yet another mass surveillance and control system to manage and control people's lives. Imagine you defy or upset the regime … poof … your official employment history says you have no history and are a liar. You are a non-person now.
What is unethical though is the wholesale surveillance and monitoring without any kind of control by those who are being surveilled and monitored, regarding their "employment history" (not all that different than how slave owners would "horse trade" slaves). I realize that many will find that hyperbolic, but in essence it is the same thing going on, the force with the power is negotiating and conversing and managing their resources without those resources being aware, having any input, or being able to even object to it being done. Those resources that are treated like that are not just cattle that may have desirable traits, or slaves that have a stout back, they are humans … Human Resources.
I keep trying to get people to understand that the reality of the matter is that what we call salvery was never actually ended, it was simply pivoted because the ruling class realized there was a far more efficient, effective, lower cost, less hassle and wildly more profitable way of achieving the same exploration … just abstract the means and methods of control with money, regulations, incentives, etc. Why spend all day trying to force people to work against their will where you get marginal returns from a small set of human resources, when you can just construct a system where you can get major increases in returns from a/the majority of society.
It is not a coincidence that this evolution from industrial and agricultural slavery started shortly after the Civil War in the USA. Now we have whole global corporations run by like self-governing slave hives, including a very similar foreman/overseer structure that trickles down to the lowly digital field workers in the code factories, call centers, and cheerful retail stores.
It feels gross to change an employees' official title without at least notifying them and getting them to sign an acknowledgement. I work in big tech, and this is one of many reasons why I wouldn't apply there. (Mostly, their work culture is #1)
>Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies, but not only do they choose to do so they also make sure the information is wrong. Apple is, essentially, being unethical on two levels
By giving out wrong personal information, the argument could be made that they are protecting privacy.
I do not believe saying "associate" is wrong, though. It's a term that is commonly used by HR to refer generically to anyone who works for a company. If you haven't encountered it, it may feel foreign to you, especially since Apple is a retail company and you may be conflating it with "retail associate." That's not what it means though.
"Employee" is a term fraught with legal and other liability in it's use (think Uber drivers - are they employees or contractors?). HR departments will refer to everybody as “associates” to mitigate risk. If Apple wanted to confirm employment, but not divulge titles, they could say associate.
Similarly, Starbucks uses "partners." Do you really think a barista is a part-owner in Starbucks and that's why they're called a partner?
Since it will be widely known among peer organizations that Apple has this policy, the presence or absence of the "Associate" title achieves this, in effect, does it not? I think it's unlikely someone seeking a 600K job will be mistaken for having been a retail employee.
And in that scenario, Apple is the bad actor for referring to a non-C-suite employee as an associate, not the employer who fired someone over unverified information and poor assumptions?
I'd argue that false data doesn't achieve this, it just confuses everything. Using an analogy in programming terms, it would be like `job_title <- Maybe "NULL"` whereas they really ment `job_title <- Nothing`.
No it doesn't. It clearly could mean that, but it literally just means the person has associated with the company. I don't know why they'd use language that could create that confusion, but it's not straightforward dishonesty.
> It's a generic term that is commonly synonymous with employee.
It is not. It implies an entry level/unskilled/probationary position.
You would call a person who works tier 1 support an associate, or works the cash register in an Apple store, or a person whose job title reads "Software Engineer" and had been with the company for 2 months. You would not call a person whose job title reads "Software Engineer" and had been with the company for 18 months an associate.
If you've got a stack of applicants and one of them comes up with some bullshit like their previous employer claims their job title was Associate and they claim their actual job title was Software Engineer, that means I either have to do legwork to figure out what's actually happening, is this person lying about their experience etc, or just hire someone else. It's not a disqualifying characteristic, but if the resume says one thing and the background check says a different thing, that's a red flag. Sometimes the red flag is nothing, basically all of us have had a scumbag for an employer at various points in our careers, who's might to lie about us to future employers just because they're spiteful. But red flags have to be chased down and verified before you can hire someone with red flags on their resume.
Right now, in 2022, I would just hire them if they had a pulse, red flags or not. But when the next recession happens? And we've gone through three rounds of layoffs, and only now are positions opening up in onesies and twosies and there are 40 applicants? I'm just going to discard the 30 resumes with red flags. Among the 10 remaining resumes I'm gonna interview the 5 who went to the best schools and had the most experience.
> "Employee" is a term fraught with legal and other liability in it's use (think Uber drivers - are they employees or contractors?). HR departments will refer to everybody as “associates” to mitigate risk. If Apple wanted to confirm employment, but not divulge titles, they could say associate.
But yet if you call these services while the person is still employed, they absolutely will divulge titles.
There's no risk mitigation happening. It's just "you're no longer one of us, we don't give a shit".
The company involved stated that if the person was currently employed, they would give the job title (and that while their service would report 'Associate' post employment, if someone cared enough to clarify, they would be able to call them, give identifying information, and they would be able to get job titles from historic data).
So this isn't a case of Apple fucking past employees over. It's just a case of them not wanting to give the titles to Experian. What a lot of hullabaloo over nothing.
Or anybody. So any ex-employee could potentially fail a background check / employment verification check (as at least one person here has). Because Apple, previously happy to say "Yes, this person works here as a Senior Product Manager" now says "Eh, sure. They were associated with the company."
They're not obligated to, you're right. But it's not exactly endearing of a company that has any gratitude whatsoever to its employees. But then again, from a company that was more than happy to engage in multiple illegal acts to collude to avoid poaching, to collude to keep salaries artificially deflated, I'm not entirely surprised.
There are reasons for privacy, which include discrimination based on that information. Discrimination based on incorrect information is just as harmful.
I remember when I interned at Intel, on the way out I asked about references and I was told, very nicely, that Intel's official policy is to only confirm employment.
I suspect that this is really what Apple is doing; but that some accident of circumstance required them to provide a very generic title. Perhaps they can't confirm employment without some kind of title, and that title's now been twisted out of context?
FYI: The practice mildly makes sense. Many employment issues are highly subjective, so a large company might decide that saying anything about a former employee is a liability, so they'll only say the minimal possible facts: "Yes, X is a former employee from [date range.]" Or, "No, X never worked for us."
You're really bending over backwards here to justify really bad behavior. Apple is actually bringing on liability by lying about what people's titles really were. They aren't saying "nothing", they're actually defaming their previous employees by lying about their level.
They're not "lying about their level". Contra the article, the term "associate" does not in fact mean "junior employee"; I can think of huge companies where everyone's formal title is "associate" regardless of seniority, in the same way that Bell Labs did MTS.
Further, nobody is "bending over backwards" to defend anybody; they're writing their own take on what happened. You're asked by the guidelines to assume good faith in other commenters.
I have to disagree. If they don't want to give titles, they should ... not give titles. That is, give no information for that field/query. If the system requires it, do something like "n/a".
When you state "employee title: Associate", you are conveying[1] that the title "Associate" Is A Thing at Apple, and the former employee had that title. And if (as is the case here) it is the most unadorned title anyone can have at Apple, then their title was the most unadorned one. If that's not actually the case, that does seem like "lying about their level".
So I'd say there's a big difference between not answering about title, vs making something up and affirming the made-up thing was had.
[1] to any reasonable person until you explicitly clarify otherwise
Starbucks calls all its employees "partners". Are they misleading future employers in the opposite direction?
It sounds to me like Apple is just another tech company that doesn't confirm titles, and that their generic word for "employee" is "associate". That is not a weird Apple thing; if you go out into the Fortune 500, you'll find a bunch of other companies that do the same thing. Contra this article, "associate" does not in fact mean "low-level employee".
Starbuck refers to their employees as partners in addition to an actual title. (I worked for HEB in high school, which did the same thing.) If they genuinely had no titles for anyone beyond partner, then yes, that would be fine. Apple doesn't work like that.
Edit: I'm "posting too fast", and this seems like a trivial point, so, in advance of being able to make a new comment:
The relevant "point" here is not about what is or isn't SOP at any company, which I was never disputing.
I was making a point about how they should convey employee status and whether Apple(etc)'s practice counts as "lying about your level".
To summarize:
1) It's fine to have a policy of "never disclosing employee titles".
2) If you go that route, then you should simply not comment when asked about an employee title, and give "n/a" for a field requesting it.
3) Saying, "Employee title: Associate" is not doing that, because it's falsely asserting their holding of a title -- and that title's (false) reality -- that they do not hold.
If you don't dispute any of that, great! If you do, I'd love to hear that commentary, on which it would be orthogonal to bring up what is or isn't SOP at any company.
It doesn't support your point. It supports the original commenter's, who points out that not confirming internal titles is SOP at a bunch of companies.
But Apple does supply job titles for current employees. It’s only after someone departs that they change the value to something confusing.
We all know that different companies work differently. How rare is what Apple does, and what harm does it cause? The article includes a tangible example of such harm. Can you share any insight that is specific to this practice? I know you’ve worked in the hiring space.
I've worked with government organizations and military organizations where titles are "analyst" or "specialist". It even lists such on the business cards and pay stubs.
They may as well say all former employees are Vice Presidents then, if it makes people feel better. It's just as meaningless as saying all former employees are "associates".
To add another anecdote: I work for a non-FAANG big tech co, which also provides former employees the 1-800 number that a new employer can use to verify employment; they do not reveal tiles or salary. As a manager, I cannot provide a reference for former employees.
It's a generic word that means "you worked here". Which is the point of the parent comment: it's a way of confirming that someone was an employee without revealing their title, a la Intel.
If Apple or Walmart want to use “associate” internally as a euphemism for “employee,” because they think it sounds nicer or something, obviously they can.
But the database field we’re taking about is Job Title. And Apple knows what it is; they populate that field with actual job titles for current employees, and they use such databases themselves to check their own applicants.
If your point is that “associate” is an overloaded term, acknowledged. But don’t expect me to believe Apple doesn’t know that. They use it in junior titles themselves.
If they don’t want to provide it for former employees they could blank the field or supply a value like “Not Provided” which would have been even more clear about what is going on.
Additional titles can sometimes be used to determine business strategy or product development, Apple can be ultra secretive about both. I suspect that would be part of the official rational for doing it.
Associate, in the USA at least, has a strong connotation of a junior position. As the article points out, there are plenty of examples of associate being used to describe a more junior position.
And you know what other word unambiguously means 'employee'? That wouldn't cause this sort of clamor? Yes, 'employee' is that word.
What if they were a contractor? Or were both an employee and a contractor over the course of their time there?
I'm an "associate" at the company I work for and I'm certainly not junior. I certainly don't take offense at considering myself as an associate.
In specific contexts, e.g. an associate vs. a partner at a law firm, it has a different meaning but it's also a very common term to refer to all employees at a company.
Well if we're going to anecdata, I've held jobs where I started as 'associate' and was promoted to something resembling 'software engineer.' Similarly, in the one where they liked to refer to everyone as associates, that was never a term used in any of the contracts which needed to actually use the word that defines someone as being employed by the company -- employee.
I think some of the blowback you and others are getting for saying 'associate is just employee' is because to many people, 'associate' does have a negative connotation compared to 'employee', and Apple has a history of being hostile to labour; Not to mention that if they really wanted to protect privacy, they could just do what most companies do -- confirm dates of employment, and possibly if they're re-hirable at Apple. Its not unfair to assume Apple isn't doing this out of the benevolence of their hearts.
What are you considering anecdata? The US's two largest employers (Walmart and Amazon) and Marriott use "associates." Target, Hilton, Qdoba and other companies use "team members." Starbucks uses "partners." Hyatt uses "colleagues." Cabela's uses "outfitters." Cringe for sure, but not using "employee" is more common than many think.
I certainly understand that this context may be less familiar than the different use of "associate" at perhaps the more familiar VC firm or law firm, retail store, etc. But it's my educated guess that this former context is the one in which Apple is using associate.
Do these companies consistently use associates, or is there a division between say hourly and salary, or retail vs back-office employees? (I am specifically excluding things like directory and C-level positions because those tend to be much more specialized contracts.) For example, Trader Joe's has Crew Members for the average retail workers, and Mates/Captain for the manager level. Just the titles alone implied a hierarchy.
Does Amazon call their SDEs and SREs associates as well? If not, then they're still setting up a pecking order.
(As an aside, I can accept calling your employees associates, or something cute like colleagues or outfitters, depending on the nature of the business. But Starbucks calling their employees partners rubs me the wrong way. That one does just seem like gaslighting.)
I work for a moderately large software company. We absolutely refer to everyone as associates if we're referring to everyone who works for the company. (Naturally everyone has specific titles as well, which may not be what they refer to themselves on their business cards/at conferences/Linkedin/etc.)
With your company, if a potential employer called up and asked what my job title was (and lets assume your company would give out that info) would they say what my job title was, or would they say I'm an associate?
I have no idea what our HR would give out if someone called to verify I worked there. I would actually have to look up my official HR level anyway as it's something I never use and wouldn't put on a resume anyway.
Thank you for a supporting viewpoint. Amazing the amount of downvotes I've gotten in this thread, from people who I have to imagine have just never come across this term used in that way.
I was under the impression the problem was Apple was representing the person as a current employee, but I think I am wrong about that. If apple is confirming correct dates of employment, then I would have to retract.
the employee's title while working there doesn't represent any liability that I can think of, and changing it post employment and lying about their title to anyone inquiring seems like a liability instead. Seems like they're trying to sabotage people's careers if they leave apple.
Title is nothing subjective. In fact, titles and levels can be matched between two companies easily.
Anyway, this is not what Apple is doing. They are downgrading everyone by default, which is akin to providing false information about a former employee.
> Title is nothing subjective. In fact, titles and levels can be matched between two companies easily.
There is zero truth to this statement. Perhaps job families can be matched (engineering vs sales, manager vs IC). Other than that, it’s impossible to equate. I’ve seen a VP of Engineering at a startup start as a junior engineer at a FAANG.
Well if you totally ignore the concept of scale, sure. It sounds like your "VP of Engineering" at a startup was actually a junior engineer not doing anything you'd expect a VP to really do... like manage a complex hierarchy of departments, managers, and special projects.
"Associate" is not a downgrade. It's a generic title that means "employee" and literally everyone (except maybe named officers in the legal filings) is an associate.
disagree. If I leave a company I am have no role there - I am not an associate, a customer service rep, or an engineer. What was I during my employment is a question of fact that can be answered without liability, but changing my title and lying to inquirers about what it was might be a liability.
No one is saying you weren't a CSR, or an engineer, or anything else. They simply aren't providing that i for around. Instead, they are confirming employment, calling you an employee.
If you have never worked at a company that case employees "associates" this may feel foreign to you, but rest assured it's extremely common and not something to get your ego in a knot over.
instead of giving the working title while there, they lie and say you're an associate when you aren't when not employed by apple, and weren't when you were there, because your title wasn't associate. It's either a lie or sabotage, and neither way good for the employee.
Software Engineer 1, Software Engineer 4... Often the title is bestowed to keep someone in a pay grade. ("Oh, we are really strict about salaries and only pay market rate. Everyone within the same title gets paid the same... But I think I can get you promoted to rank 22.")
Wouldn't there be other ways for you to prove you were a "Level 4" or whatever at Apple and not an associate? An offer letter from Apple? Or just the totality of circumstances in general. If say you're interviewing for a "Sr Engineer" position, you're just not going to have an instance where the candidate shows experience and knowledge but doesn't get hired because some record from Lexis Nexis says that he was an "associate" at Apple prior to coming here. Something like that I feel would get resolved in conversation very quickly.
> Wouldn't there be other ways for you to prove you were a "Level 4" or whatever at Apple and not an associate? An offer letter from Apple?
Having gone through this with several employers, the largest company doing this verification is HireRight. HireRight is BEYOND incompetent at every single level. They refuse documentation such as offer letters on company letterhead to prove a title. The only documentation they accept from applicants is highly sensitive tax documentation from the IRS, which of course does not contain titles but incidentally reveals compensation details they can hoover up into their database but is not relevant to the purpose they were hired by your future employer to do.
If you think credit reporting agencies in the US are Machiavellian and maliciously incompetent, wait until you deal with employment verification firms, they're worse and often the same corporate entities (as noted in the article, another large one is WorkNumber owned by Equifax). These entities put most of the work onto the candidate, display no competence or care for accuracy whatsoever, and generally deliver intentionally misleading or inaccurate results to your future employer. It's so pervasive, that my own complaints to my recruiter were heeded and understood because in their words "oh their reports are always wrong about employment history, we only pay attention to the criminal background check part."
So, in short, no you can't simply provide a valid offer letter showing the title you were hired with to prove that title or to prove a promotion.
I checked my data on The Work Number [1], and see that my prior employer shared details on pay, overtime and even Bonuses received!
It seem my prior employers were providing information down to gross and net pay PER pay cycle, with details about my medical, dental and vision insurance coverage [!!]
This is from Equifax, the company that got hacked and lost PII, and they are getting extremely detailed information!
Just went through hire right for the second time in my life -- interestingly they do now warn you to redact your income information from the w-2s they require.
Me too. HireRight was somehow completely unable to contact some of my previous employers. Situation resulted in me visiting old offices in person for proof of employment to satisfy HireRight.
This all occurred after I had accepted the job offer and took a long and stressful time.
> This all occurred after I had accepted the job offer and took a long and stressful time.
Same situation for me, which is especially problematic because it's standard practice for offers or start dates of employment in the US to be contingent on the return of a clear background check within the first 30-90 days. Which means you might have already started onboarding to the new role and still be fighting with HireRight (has happened to me 3 times in ~18 years). More annoyingly, HireRight's own databases don't refer to previous points in time when you've corrected their errors, so each time starts from square one.
You can try (especially if you know ahead of time) but background check is done by a third party. Recruiters and interviewers don't care until background check flags it. You can try to be upfront about it, but it just creates a weird situation and they will defer to the 3rd party background check anyway.
Any evidence you may share with the background check company is not present on the final background report (since it might contain salary information which would be illegal i guess). It's a little bit like credit reporting, if your bank misreports in a few places you are f*ed.
I had a background check at an employer, not for a sensitive position, who, when unable to verify employment, found my Facebook and reached out to someone on there (who happened to be my partner) to see if they would "confirm" what they knew to be my job.
That was after their initial email to me:
"Hi, we're about to start your background check. Just want to confirm that this is the correct email address for you?
Are these also the correct details for you? [And proceeded to list Full SSN, address, DOB]."
Like, I'm really rather glad that this actual _was_ the correct email address. But in any case I was furious. On both counts.
In credit to my employer, once I reviewed these two things with them, they fired the background check company.
3rd party background checks are notoriously noisy. Companies that expect them to be the Word of God are, at best, naïve.
Every employer should be ready to resolve "discrepancies" that come back without any negative thoughts about the potential employee. If they can't or won't do that, I don't think you want to work for them.
A few years ago, I was involved in a spinoff and they decided that all the employees would need to go through a background check. Of the ~90 people, something like 10 people (>10%!!!) had weird stuff that turned out to be completely wrong. For example, one person was reported to be currently in prison 5 states over. Some others were "we can't verify this person ever worked for ABC Corp". We were ABC Corp.
Most of these background check companies, they'd say of course there are a lot of Mike Smiths around, but Patty Jones? No no, there has only ever been one Patty Jones in all of human history.
Yes, what I imagine would happen is that the background check company will contact you, you'll send them your last paycheck with your title on it and be done with it.
Titles are almost never on paychecks, so there wouldn't be any such thing as a "last paycheck with your title on it." Also, a paycheck contains pay information, which is something you cannot legally be required to provide to a new/prospective employer, which the background check company is acting on behalf of.
Your new employer can believe you? If they are hiring simply based on a couple words from a different company, then there is going to be risk for them.
> “We are and have always been deeply committed to creating and maintaining a positive and inclusive workplace. We take all concerns seriously and we thoroughly investigate whenever a concern is raised and, out of respect for the privacy of any individuals involved, we do not discuss specific employee matters,”
There’s a real skill in saying exactly zero while at the same time hitting a home run of $YEAR’s bullshit corporate talking points.
With the way outrage flows unchecked these days can you blame them? Someone can be a C-level one day and the focus of bad press the next day, and the entire world holds their brand accountable. Everyone has a non-binding, non-committal relationship to their employer, and the employer is all too happy to cut-and-run to save face by the plausible ability to say "not our guy", or "this is just a support tech".
It's the 2022 form of "Your call is important to us, sit tight and someone will be with you shortly." It is a viable strategy straight out of the 2022 playbook because it works to "placate and wait" while the news cycle moves on to the next scandal-du-jour.
Apple, a company notorious for secrecy, may have very legitimate reasons for canvassing employee job titles to a single innocuous string.
Unless apple signed a contract with another party that promises accurate and historical internal job title disclosure, this is the fault of the validation services who a promising something they’re not able to deliver.
Wow, I was about to post in support of this, but surprisingly this seems like a wildly unpopular opinion on HN! Honestly, I wish all companies did this. The less information out there in databases about me (or the more obfuscated), the better. People should not be able to just "request" personal information like this from some 3rd party data provider. It's none of a prospective employers' business what my full title was, what salary I made, what department I was in, or any of that.
I wish all companies just submitted "Previously worked here" as your title, for all former employees, which would nullify the privacy intrusiveness of this data.
I agree, I find the whole "DB of past employers, title, salary, etc" to be quite disgusting. Furthermore if you are just using your past title to swing a new job then I question your ability. Prove that you can perform at the level you want to be hired at. If companies are too stupid to find a way to test for that (or too stupid to have a probationary period to find people that made it past initial screens) then that's not a company I care to work for. Hire me because I have the skills you need, not because I held some made-up rank at another company.
Those aren't mutually exclusive. I was criticizing him, while also using humor in the process. That is, given that they'll change titles while you're on leave [1], these are funny-but-fitting titles they could have given him.
Plus, the extra joke of framing his "exploitation of the organ system's rules" as "pentesting", since "well, he found ways that a rich person could jump the queue...".
Annoying as it may be, a big chunk of responsibility here lies with the data aggregators and the hiring companies. How many times do you have to find out that all ex-Apple employees get the title 'Associate' before you just exclude that from your database? How many times do you disqualify a good candidate because you can't resolve their title at Apple before you realize it isn't a good filter?
I never understand these database checks and reference checks anyway. How many times have consumers had to notify the credit agencies of errors on their credit report? Who really goes requesting records on what Lexis Nexus and work number have on them much less correct any errors? I know folks that have database records where they are concurrent working three jobs in two different states but no one brother to correct.
HR employment verification is usually outsourced since businesses want to reduce costs. I'm surprised anyone from HR returns calls or emails when other company is asking for references or employment verification in any timely manner.
Yeah how is this not the big story here? I had no idea there was a public database employers could use to look up everything about me. Can I check this database to make sure my records are correct and who do I talk to if they’re not? This is pretty wild
Yes, this is why one should not lie about one’s former salary. I have lost candidates over this; HR caught them in a lie and blocked them on integrity grounds.
Maybe if companies didn't attempt to lowball candidates this wouldn't be an issue? My past compensation is none of a new company's business, all that matters is the number I'm willing to work for. Since companies refuse to give salary ranges often (see: number of jobs not available to people in CO) I see no reason to come to the table at a disadvantage.
Why would I tell them what my previous salary was though? I'll tell them what I want to make. If that's not enough then I guess we weren't a good fit. When I interview people, previous salary has _never_ been a question.
No it's a database aggregate with information from banks, card companies, and other business you've interacted with. It's not always accurate since not all companies report anything or everything to these companies. Many companies outsource a portion of their HR serveries to third-party and thus there are databases of where individuals work.
> Apple offers a phone number employers can call to verify titles of former Apple employees. A voice recording on that line directs callers to the web site for InVerify, an employment verification service provider owned by credit agency Equifax. When The Washington Post called InVerify’s customer support number, a customer service representative said Apple is the only company he knew of that changes job titles of employees when they leave. Apple also changes titles for employees who have taken a leave of absence, the person said.
So basically, if your new employer checks your title before you leave Apple, you're fine?
This is Apple's DNA and much more in recent years.
The "monetize everything to the max" policy of encouraging developers to test their new pre-release M1 chip + OS and software for $500 and then after they return their DTK they offered a $200 store credit.
The pettiness of continuing to charge 30% fees in one way or the other when they have been ordered by the courts to open their restrictions.
The constant sabotage of everything related to repairing their products many times making their own stuff shittier.
And now the "Either you are a faceless Apple minion, or your existence is a mere footnote".
> The "monetize everything to the max" policy of encouraging developers to test their new pre-release M1 chip + OS and software for $500 and then after they return their DTK they offered a $200 store credit.
Ignoring the fact you completely missed the point of the DTK, this is factually wrong. The store credit was $500.
I just checked my emails and it was always $500 credit offered after returning for me, so maybe some DTK folks were offered $200? Either way, it ultimately was $500 however by your own admission, even if initially stated to some as $200.
Thanks again for participating in the Universal App Quick Start Program.
We heard your feedback regarding the 200 USD appreciation credit mentioned in our last email. Our intention was to recognize the tremendous effort that you have put into creating amazing universal apps. By partnering with us early, you showed your commitment to our platform and a willingness to be trailblazers.
So instead of the 200 USD credit that expires in May, we are giving you a 500 USD Apple credit and extending the time you can use it to get a new M1 Mac through the end of the year.
>> Think about it the other way - you could have been a janitor for Apple and your new employers would be none the wiser.
> There's no way the janitors are Apple employees. Standard procedure at big companies is to hire contractors for janitorial and food services.
Maybe so, but retail clerks definitely are Apple employees, so the point stands.
Personally, the word "associate" by itself brings to mind Walmart store workers [1. If I didn't know about this practice of Apple's, and an applicant's job title came back as "associate," I would raise suspicions that they were trying to pass off a stint in Apple retail as something grander.
But if someone wants to verify your role (which sounds reasonable), contacts Apple and they say you were an associate while you said you were a senior, that's gonna cause problems. And apparently is.
Why do they need to verify my role? The new company interviewed me and can decide if I qualified for the job and if they want to pay me what I am asking. Most likely the new company is simply trying to pay me as little as possible.
> you were a senior
Also, there isn't senior at Apple and their roles are not a public API. They can change. If Apple says my role was "level 5" what does that mean to the new company?
Because people lie, constantly. And while most of time they they might not be, it happens often enough that companies pay people to background check applicants. It's not good, but it's seemingly necessary, or at least desired.
> Also, there isn't senior at Apple and their roles are not a public API. They can change. If Apple says my role was "level 5" what does that mean to the new company?
Dunno, but a hiring manager for a tech firm probably knows better than me or you. Either way, obfuscating your previous role isn't a good thing.
Sometimes, companies fact check what interviewees say. Things like verifying employment, salary, title, etc. This can lead to inconsistent results as mentioned in the original article, when your claimed job role/title and what Apple says after you left don't match anymore.
> The new company interviewed me. They can decide if I'm qualified or not.
And they may decide you're not qualified, because they thought you lied when you didn't. Lying is one of those things that's often an instant dealbreaker.
> If they can't tell the difference between an "associate" and a software engineer I'd say I dodge a bullet then.
They very likely can do that, but if they think you're lying for some reason, that doesn't matter.
It's totally plausible that some shitty software engineers have trouble getting hired and may settle for other work in the interim. If they're unethical, then they may lie about that. One or two interviews may not detect a lot of issues someone like that may have.
You have a privilege; relevant parties believe your resume without needing to verify it. This behavior by Apple is disproportionately harmful to those without this privilege (eg. people on certain visas).
For legal reasons many companies will only say if someone worked there or not. Giving any more specific feedback is not something that is done at the companies I've worked at.
Leaving a cult is the ultimate sin in most cults, so it is not surprising at all. Any Apple employees reading this that want out, here’s a guide for help.
Wow. I have read a bunch of cult-escapee biographies, as the cult dynamic fascinated me. All of them had an extreme narcissist at the center.
Somehow I had never connected that with the famous tech company with an extreme narcissist at the center. But you're right, that pattern of retaliation against people who dare to leave fits perfectly here.
I mean, I don't feel like Tim Cook is an extreme narcissist cult leader, but I don't know enough about him. Of course, the fact that he hasn't mythologized himself as much as Steve Jobs did is a piece of evidence in favor of him not being a narcissist. If I had to choose a "tech company cult" it would be Tesla/SpaceX/Boring/whatever else Musk is running.
The narcissistic personality at the center of Apple’s culture today is Apple itself. Even Cook speaks in near-reverential tones about the company he leads.
Most corporations try to do this in the long run; it’s arguably inherent in the concept of incorporation, which is etymologically and legally the creation of a new “person.”
Even if it starts with an iconic founder, in the long run the company itself must become the object of loyalty to survive. Comms, HR, and marketing teams spend tons of effort to create a corporate personality and culture. (Note the root of the word culture.) Apple famously set up their own “university” to develop and instill their culture.
Loyalty to the company, distrust of outsiders, personal adherence in a “mission”: these are not things specific to or invented by Apple. Although the specific vindictive tactic of hiding titles is one that I’ve not heard of before.
Ooh, that's an interesting take. The notion is basically that Apple has gone from "cult" to "church", where it has transcended the reliance on a central personal figure?
Just to be clear, I'm speaking about Jobs who was by most accounts an abusive narcissist. Cook is currently CEO, sure, but Jobs is still a central character. As I'm sure you know, sometimes cults survive the death of their leaders.
Tim Cook could just be the Miscavige to Jobs's Hubbard. The charismatic, narcissistic cult leader often has a bulldog of a right hand man who enforces order and compliance, keeping the cult together even after the leader is gone.
Ehh, I think this is a Chesteranlon's Razorfence situation. Never attribute to malice something for which you do not yet understand the purpose.
HR world generally is afraid to denigrate former employees for liability reasons, and many corporate HR departments have a policy of confirming only whether an employee worked for the company, and nothing else.
Choosing a vague term like "associate" (which simply means "employee," as compared to "partner" or some other term that suggests an ownership stake) aligns with that reasoning decently well. While it may not be ideal, and may not support truthful claims of relative seniority, it's a bit of a stretch to say that it was done with any malice.
EDIT: Apparently some people strongly disagree. If you disagree, might I ask what evidence you have of malice?
Not every negative departure is the departee's fault.
As an obvious example, if a POC experienced frequent racism at a company they might leave a company without having anyone they would want to use as a reference even though THEY weren't the problem.
It's not just employee degradation, companies don't want to give information about employees for many reasons. Businesses don't want poachers coming into their yard stealing employees. There's fraud and identity theft risks, not just to the employee but the company as well. Businesses don't want others outbidding them on contracts and personnel. And finally, what's the return on investment for former or current employers to spend time detailing their previous and current employees? Are customers going to pay them extra? Will shareholders be happy Wal-Mart gives reviews to the retailer across the street about departing employees during a labor shortage?
> Ehh, I think this is a Chesteranlon's Razorfence situation. Never attribute to malice something for which you do not yet understand the purpose.
Do you mean "Chesterton's Fence"? I get no hits for "Chesteranlon's Razorfence" or "Chesterton's Razorfence."
That is a pretty remarkable corruption of the term, though. Or are you trying to coin a term?
> HR world generally is afraid to denigrate former employees for liability reasons, and many corporate HR departments have a policy of confirming only whether an employee worked for the company, and nothing else.
> Choosing a vague term like "associate" (which simply means "employee," as compared to "partner" or some other term that suggests an ownership stake) aligns with that reasoning decently well.
Except that's not what "associate" does -- it's a job-title term associated with low rank. It would have been far more obvious to use "employee" if they wanted a vague term that simply meant employee or something like "title not provided" if they wanted to make it clear what they were doing.
It also sounds like they do load the correct title to this database while the employee is still employed at Apple (otherwise, what would they change when they leave), so it doesn't seem like they're mainly concerned about "confirming only whether an employee worked for the company." If they were, why not just give everyone a generic title in the DB from the start?
>>> Ehh, I think this is a Chesteranlon's Razorfence situatio
>> Or are you trying to coin a term?
> It's a merging of Chesterton's Fence and Hanlon's Razor
Given that's a neologism that was literally introduced here, it probably should have had bit more of an introduction. Infix compounds are really weird in English.
Am I the only one surprised these sharing databases even exist?
What if Apple went the other way, and artificially inflated the level? Every engineer is "Senior engineer level XIV". Or, they could be evil and tie the level entered to the conditions of leave. If you sign a bunch of non-competes and non-disclosures etc, you get marked 2 levels up in this db.
One of my employers used to let us pick our own titles. We couldn't say "CEO", of course, but if you'd like to be "Super staff engineer IV" or "Solutions Architect III" you could. They didn't care as long as you helped out and did a good job.
It's unsettling that these behind the scenes database/cliques exists.
Some time ago, I listened to a podcast (might be NPR) that talked about an employee, who left a financial firm, couldn't find a new job. Every opportunity to which he applied, either rejected him with unconvincing reasons or ghosted him. Later he found out that his previous manager poisoned the well in some shady database to make sure his life outside that job will be miserable.
> Later he found out that his previous manager poisoned the well in some shady database to make sure his life outside that job will be miserable.
Pretty darn evil. It's even worse because if he sues them to correct the "mistake", then that also makes newer employers less likely to hire him ("he likes to litigate with his employers, and we don't want trouble"), unless they are actually reasonable and dive in to understand what exactly happened.
Wow, I would hate this. When I left Google, I had just been promoted to L6 (staff) SWE, and I delayed my departure by 2 weeks in order for my promo to take effect. I did this primarily so that I could list the new level on my resume and have it seen as accurate in the future. And also so that if I decided to re-join Google, I'd come in as an L6.
There is an internal page called epitaphs which lists your title/level when you departed. So any current employee could check "for a friend". Or at least this was the case in 2015 when I left.
Apple also was involved with the really shady no-compete-clause stuff for former employees, so this does not surprise me, but I don't know if I am ready to attribute this to malice yet -
I can imagine there being some HR system that does this automatically as a default for employees that don't have a title at Apple anymore.
So, uh, if you leave apple you could just put "Directly Responsible Engineer/Principal Engineer" on linkedin and... nobody could verify it, and apple wouldn't have the data to prove you wrong anymore?
A recent HN submission [1] highlighted that a surprising amount of detailed employment history is shared by employers with third parties.
When I pulled mine it said “SW Dev Eng 4”, curious to see if that’ll change to “Associate” after I quit… or if third parties track the entire title history, like they do track salary history.
> And those titles help determine how much Apple employees can make when they leave the company for another job.
Generally wherever you apply will make a leveling determination based on your interview and the skills you demonstrate there. Nobody I've seen relies on your past employers representation of your level when making a leveling decision.
Is it possible Cher's offer was rescinded once the employer googled her and discovered that hiring her would be a potential nightmare? I was in a Slack room she was in during an all-hands meeting and I remember that it wasn't my favorite interaction to watch. Can't really say more about it, but if I were a hiring manager, even if my company did everything perfectly -- I'd worry about hiring an employee that is prone to very publicly airing real or imagined dirty laundry with the media and/or being aggressively activist among other employees. Really wouldn't want the drama.
Claiming an offer was rescinded because of a job title mismatch -- I've never heard of that. It's very likely the employer did some research while waiting for the reference check to come back. Being able to conclusively say why the employer rescinded the offer is just speculation.
If this causes companies to re-think their reliance on automated hiring practices, I'm OK with that.
HR is supposed to be "Human" Resources, not "We punched your ID number into a computer and it told us you're undesirable."
Or worse — companies that buy into systems that automatically screen applicants. If your company is so overwhelmed by incoming job applicants, then hire more HR people. Or maybe do what people have done for the last 500 years — "Sorry, but we're not hiring right now."
Automated resume screening systems are rarely correct, and while they may filter out a percentage of unqualified applicants, they also routinely filter out the best people for the job. That's why every job counselor tells you the best thing to do is to find a human being in the company to make contact with.
For a group of people who, in the main, disdain credentialism there is a lot of focus on titles here. My resume probably doesn't have any of my formal HR titles. I couldn't tell you what my current formal title is with any certainty.
I think this is _mostly_ a non-issue, as providing an offer letter and a paystub from that period of employment usually sidesteps background check verification issues like this. This is why I always save my offer letters and the first paystub. (You can lose access to them after you leave) Failing that, a candidate can usually contact a manager after their departure to verify job title and such.
Of course, this becomes an issue when you don't have good rapport with your manager and don't have proof of employment saved.
Promotions and job transfers usually come with title change and/or offer emails with them as well.
This fits cleanly into my recent hiring experiences. I can't remember a new employer ever contacting an old employer to verify employment. I've worked in SF for 20+ years now... and currently work for an SF based financial entity. They did a background check, as is normal in this industry, but that was it.
In fact, I've always been prepared to say "no" to contacting previous employers, as it's just annoying. And as someone who has hired hundreds of people, I've never been called to verify someone's previous employment.
It may happen out there, but from my own experience, it feels like an edge case.
The US is a surveillance state entrepreneurial free for all. I suspect the surveillance databases we know about are only the tip of the iceberg.
"You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day. 1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now" - in a movie that was released over 25 years ago, and our society has been sleepwalking further into the panopticon ever since.
We desperately need a US version of the GDPR, one that doesn't get neutered by all of these surveillance industries interested in preserving the status quo of their anti-human businesses. In fact I'd say the US should just wholesale adopt the EU GDPR verbatim, and let the courts figure out the details arising from different legal systems. That couldn't be any more complex than interpreting all of the loopholes the corporate Parties would end up adding to newly-drafted privacy legislation.
It surprised me much more to know that there are databases maintained by the likes of Equifax about persons' complete employment history, job titles and all...
I think GDPR here in Europe really woke up the feeling that this kind of data shouldn't exist without explicit approval from the person which PII belongs to. This is beyond fucked up in my data privacy minded worldview.
Exactly right! There is PII data out there that refers to us but we can't access and can't correct and can't deny the use of to others. This seems like a pretty big privacy thing that needs to be corrected.
Am I (a random internet guy) allowed to call the company you claim you currently work for on LinkedIn, and ask them whether you work there in such and such a position? Can I ask them how much they pay you?
Sure, I can ask, but can they answer? Is all or some of that really privileged information? There are two parties in your employment, and both own the information. Are you prohibited from telling others you work there or how much they pay you? If not, why would the employer be prohibited from telling others?
There's an entire sea of difference between confirming or refuting a fact of employment that has been put forward during a hiring process, as part of a screen, and sharing everything with anyone who asks, including those shady characters over there who asked every employer to share everything about everyone simultaneously because their business is about building a database and selling access to it.
That being said, if the employers actually benefit (even in a collusive way) from sharing that information in such a manner, I'm not sure how to argue that they shouldn't be able to do that.
I'm with you. As an American, my data is bought and sold before I'm even old enough to sign papers legally consenting. I don't like it and I want it to stop.
I imagine this has a lot to do with the variability around titles in such a large organization. Many teams will use "titles as compensation" or otherwise have wildly different metrics for what constitutes a particular level, even if there is technically a single corporate level policy. Should a new-grad hire that makes senior in 3 years be considered on paper at the same level as a 15+ year senior dev? Probably not, and this seems like a pretty equitable way to solve that problem.
The fact that Apple can't/won't explain this practice is strange, but on surface seems not dissimilar to a former (maybe current) practice of Boalt Law (a US top 10 school) which does not publish graduate rankings (e.g. "top of their class") as they view themselves as "if you were good enough to graduate from Boalt, you are good enough, period."
So this definitely could be read into several ways.
I took full advantage of my @apple.com address when I was in sales at the Ala Moana store. Hard to believe the webmail software at that time was Squirrelmail.
Looking back at my career, I don't think this would have impacted me in any way. I've found titles to be meaningless this industry. They may hold some weight in FAANG companies only because folks know what an amazon L5, microsoft 62, google, facebook E4, etc. are. There's even a handy website [1] to compare them.
When you get out of FAANG, titles becomes even more irrelevant. What's a Programmer VI compared to a senior associate consultant?
I think this is part of the reason why we have the 'show me what you know' interviews. Degrees, Titles, past experience maybe get you in the door, but you still need to pass the tech interview for the role.
Titles are stupid, I agree. I've had varying titles throughout my career and they've never meant anything, all I care about is the compensation, call me whatever you want. In larger companies I understand the reasoning behind them a little more but outside of FAANG they really don't matter. I've even worked at places that had SE 1, SE 2, Senior SE levels, the compensation has zero ties to those titles. I know for a fact there were SE2's that made a lot more than the seniors (and no, this wasn't just some overlap in compensation tiers, there were no compensation tiers, just made up titles).
I'm not sure this is exactly Apple, or certainly not only Apple that is doing this.
I recently grabbed a copy of my work report from theworknumber.com (basically equifax) and noticed that for some employers my title was listed as associate.
Didn't think anything about it much at the time, but seeing this article sparked my memory.
There's a database? It feels collusion-y. "We don't trust what you're telling us. We might end up paying you too much. Let's consult the database and see if you're actually a Level 5 Wizard.
So if someone wants to build up their resume, can they not work at an Apple store for a year or two after graduating then make up a fancy job title and description that will get their foot in the door anywhere else?
Apple is not the bad guy here. The bad guys are the incompetent employment verification agencies and the employers who rescind offers based on their competitors refusal to divulge irrelevant information.
Except that it's not standard at all. Apple is the only company that reportedly does this. I have worked in a lot of jobs over my 21 years of working, and every single job has the correct title EXCEPT for Apple. InVerify AND The Work Number both said that Apple is the only company that does this.
Then, IMO, all those other companies are the ones people should be complaining about, not Apple. No employer should share employment details beyond "he worked here" with third parties for any reason.
I'm complaining about Apple because they cost me more than $10,000 in wages by being the only ones who LIE.
Omission would be nice, especially across the board, but that's not what this is. They put me in a position where I had to prove I didn't lie.
If there's a law that employers cannot ask for your previous job title, that's great, but employers shouldn't be allowed to furnish fraudulent data either.
WaPo says this can be a 6 figure difference in compensation but frankly why should a future employer get to know how much I make? Maybe I’m a level 3 but deserved to be a level 4. Maybe I’m a level 5 but actually a level 2 that’s just really good at office politics.
If I want my employer to know what number Apple assigned me, I’ll tell them.
EDIT: Telling companies a Level 5 engineer was an associate if associate isn't a superset of Level 5's is shady, and I can't defend Apple on that point. From what I read of the article that wasn't clear to me. They do say the title is generally linked to more junior roles but that's relative and you can still be old, experienced and well-paid but if you're not a manager I might consider that an associate.