Jef Raskin is dead. A lot of folks credit him with much of the inspiration for the original Macintosh. Yet he left Apple in 1982. Leaving Apple is not uncommon. Apple is not a place for people who aren't yes men or women. Apple is place to keep your head down and treat everything you hear from corporate as gospel.
Not only that, but there is no bad news in the world of Apple. There is plenty of covering your rear and very little decision making outside of a handful of people. It's hard to be a star at Apple since all the star power is focused on one person and questioning his ways or decisions is a good way to leave the company early.
What strikes me most about Apple is that when you are part of Apple, Apple seems to be the center of the universe. When you leave Apple, you realize that outside of Apple people, Apple barely exists. Sure lots of people buy iPods, but in spite of the supposed halo effect of the iPod, Apple does not really exist except in the minds of Apple people.
And in those minds of dedicated Apple people, hope spring eternal. Apple can beat Linux. Microsoft will fail. I can remember all the stories about how the PowerPC then the G3, then the G5 would finally give Apple leadership in the industry. There was no way that Intel could get a Pentium to run in a laptop. That's Apple reality inside the company.
The reality is that Apple makes great products. A number of people, myself included, enjoy them every day, but Apple computer products will have a hard time being reaching the greatness that they once achieved because the competition enjoys the benefit of all talent that Apple drives away.
You can be great at Apple as long as your thoughts are a clone of one of the executives or if you are willing to give up the idea of any suggestion being taken seriously unless it comes from on high.
Apple products paved the way with a tremendous number of innovations, but as much as I hate to admit it, they are not nearly as indispensable as they were three to five years ago. Yes, Windows and Linux have made huge strides and Apple keeps going round and round in its self-contained world. Once in a while a new innovation pops out, but often even those die of neglect.
In some ways Apple is like a cult (this is not news). You have to drink the kool aide to be able to survive. The sad part is that often the only way to leave Apple is employees are given a dose of hemlock. I cannot even count the Apple employees that I know who have gone on to be not only successful in other technology companies but to be successful by taking away market share from Apple. I can remember it being said, "Once an IBM man always an IBM man." I found that out to be true in my days of sales. You could try to switch over an institution to Apple and it wasn't the IBM sales people that killed you, it was the ex-IBM employees who would ever so subtly destroy your opportunity.
I have yet to see in my twenty years of selling Apple an ex-Apple employee really help turn a deal for Apple. Most ex-employees have some fond memories, most of which tend to revolve around some of the great people that they knew and worked with, but rarely do you ever heard of anyone with fonds thoughts for Apple the company. It all comes down to the disrespect for individual employees that is rampant at Apple. It's all about Apple, never about the employee.
So to survive you have to give up on yourself and give all to the company which many employees who absolutely love the technology are willing to do. Apple has some of the most dedicated employees you will ever find in a company, but great employees who eventually get driven away can only take you so far.
Getting out of the self-contained Apple world and breaking through to a new level of success would also mean getting down in the trenches and fighting for market share with competitors that many at Apple headquarters consider beneath them since they don't believe their products are in the same league. Of course how Apple judges products is a little different than the way most enterprise customers judge products. If Apple could really partner with large customers if would make a huge difference across all of their markets. Unfortunately I think Steve only wanted to win the battle of who is the coolest technology billionaire, and he won that long ago.
Winning market share would mean paying lots of attention to customers. It would require empowering and developing long term employees who stay very close to those customers. One of the measures of Apple's disdain for its own employees is how often Apple brings in whole new management teams as opposed to developing internal candidates. The only managers that survive at Apple long term are ones who have hidden themselves by never making waves which means making the decision that they will do whatever it takes to keep their job even if means sacrificing employees or colleagues to the whims of a capricious corporation. Since you have no waves at Apple you have only the best of yes men and women.
Perhaps my next post will be on Apple's theory of employee development which might be better called "how to outsource your management teams." A good subtitle is how to make certain that former employees leave without good feelings about Apple.
"Love The Products, Hate The Company". How many times have Apple employees heard that from customers, integrators, independent dealers, partners, and even Apple's own employees?
I think about companies whose products & services I love, but also make it an extraordinary pleasure to do business with, the epitome of excellent customer service. So, in the theme of Columbia J-School Darts & Laurels, here's my Orchids & Onions list.
Orchids:
1. USAA
2. Netflix
3. American Express
4. Clubcorp
5. BMW
6. Starwood (in person at one of their properties, but not web or telephone)
7. Hertz
8. Washington Post
9. Virginia DMV (surprise, surprise)
10. Nordstrom
11. Home Depot
Onions
1. United
2. Apple (obviously)
3. Fry's
4. Best Buy
5. Circuit City
6. Bose
7. Costco
8. Petco
Posted by: Stephen | March 01, 2005 at 08:32 AM