[HN Gopher] Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an 'associate'
___________________________________________________________________
Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an 'associate'
Author : semiquaver
Score : 304 points
Date : 2022-02-10 13:29 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| piva00 wrote:
| 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.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Ok, but let's back it up one step.
|
| 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?
| yebyen wrote:
| 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.
| yebyen wrote:
| 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.
| thfuran wrote:
| Equifax has _way_ more than just employment history.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| 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.
| browningstreet wrote:
| 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.
| notRobot wrote:
| https://archive.fo/SBHpF
| blamazon wrote:
| https://archive.ph/SBHpF
| trenning wrote:
| 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.
| tester756 wrote:
| How about being asked to screen shoot part of employee
| agreement
| Wiseacre wrote:
| I'm sure a non-zero number of ex-Apple interns will try putting
| "Senior Software Engineer" on their resume for a $350,000
| director gig at a startup.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| and risk going to prison for fraud?
| waffle_maniac wrote:
| The easiest way to get 20% more at a new gig is by inflating
| your salary by 20% at your old gig.
| nojito wrote:
| Where does it say that they wipe it?
|
| This is only for 3rd party databases.
| pc86 wrote:
| Which are the only databases used for verification, unless
| you're going back to Apple.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| 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.
| vsskanth wrote:
| 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.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| 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.
|
| All this is closely regulated by law.
| vsskanth wrote:
| 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.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| In that case can't you prove this via your pay slips? Or
| your tax filings?
| vsskanth wrote:
| 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.
| nojito wrote:
| This article has nothing to do with employer/employee requested
| job verification.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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 a huge dick move by Apple.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| 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".
|
| It's the Apple we all know and love.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > 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.
| mh- wrote:
| It was $200 initially, then increased to $500.
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/05/apple-dtk-credit-for-
| de...
| [deleted]
| PedroBatista wrote:
| No, I'm quite right.
|
| It was "upgraded" to $500 after much uproar.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| 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.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| 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.
|
| This is from a year ago, Feb 6th 2021
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > 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
|
| So we are in agreement it was $500 that Apple
| _ultimately_ offered? Great. Glad we cleared that up and
| what I said was correct.
| Maxburn wrote:
| I can't think of a legitimate reason for it other than to
| create problems for people that leave Apple. That practice
| sounds pretty dirty.
| progforlyfe wrote:
| Why would anyone worthy ever leave Apple? Such a thing would
| be so... unclean.
| kuroguro wrote:
| Think about it the other way - you could have been a janitor
| for Apple and your new employers would be none the wiser.
| exhilaration wrote:
| There's no way the janitors are Apple employees. Standard
| procedure at big companies is to hire contractors for
| janitorial and food services.
| tomcam wrote:
| Maybe the parent poster was exaggerating a teeny bit for
| your viewing pleasure
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> 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.
|
| [1] https://corporate.walmart.com/galleries/associates
| tablespoon wrote:
| > and an applicant's job title came back as "associate,"
| I would raise suspicions
|
| Correction: ...and an applicant's job title came back as
| "associate," _it_ would raise suspicions...
| torstenvl wrote:
| > _This is a huge dick move by Apple._
|
| 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?
| titoCA321 wrote:
| 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?
| josh2600 wrote:
| Came here to say this. As far as I'm concerned this is a
| privacy protection.
|
| It's trivial to verify someone's position at Apple with a
| reference check.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Have you done this? Because the article says it is not
| trivial.
| davidcbc wrote:
| > It's trivial to verify someone's position at Apple with a
| reference check.
|
| Only if they left on good terms.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| If no one will offer an opinion on a former employee,
| then you have the information you need.
| davidcbc wrote:
| 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.
| josh2600 wrote:
| If you spent 2 years somewhere and can't find a single
| person to even confirm that you worked the position
| you're asserting, something's wrong.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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?
| ncallaway wrote:
| > Do you mean "Chesterton's Fence"? I get no hits for
| "Chesteranlon's Razorfence" or "Chesterton's Razorfence."
|
| It's a merging of Chesterton's Fence and Hanlon's Razor
| tablespoon wrote:
| >>> 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.
| bradly wrote:
| I worked at Apple and I'm okay they do this. My role is my
| information to share. I don't need that sitting in some
| database in perpetuity.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| I can understand that- its odd that they offer the phone
| number but don't provide accurate information on it, though.
| Why offer the hotline at all?
| bradly wrote:
| 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.
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| 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.
| bradly wrote:
| 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?
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| > Why do they need to verify my role?
|
| 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.
| bradly wrote:
| > Because people lie, constantly.
|
| The new company interviewed me. They can decide if I'm
| qualified or not.
| kingaillas wrote:
| 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.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> Because people lie, constantly.
|
| > 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.
| bradly wrote:
| If they can't tell the difference between an "associate"
| and a software engineer I'd say I dodge a bullet then.
| gkop wrote:
| 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).
| bradly wrote:
| You are correct and thanks for bringing this up. I didn't
| think about how it affects people with different
| constraints than my own.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.wikihow.com/Leave-a-Cult
| wpietri wrote:
| 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.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| 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.
| bitwize wrote:
| 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.
| wpietri wrote:
| 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.
| eloisant wrote:
| Apple was clearly a cult company when Steve Jobs was CEO,
| and I feel like they continued to work as they did by
| inertia.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| 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.
| wpietri wrote:
| 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?
|
| You've got me going through the ABCDEF in a new way:
| http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html
| lupire wrote:
| 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.
| pfortuny wrote:
| So this is exactly like in sects? You leave and automatically you
| just "were not that important"... Even if you were the CEO?
|
| What if Tim leaves? Or has he signed a permanent contract? Is he
| afraid to leave?
| [deleted]
| knodi wrote:
| I would love to ditch to ditch apple for everything given a
| better alternative (its not android or windows).
| tantalor wrote:
| This is pretty standard practice. A company will typically only
| say "Yes, So-and-So did work here".
| codehitchhiker wrote:
| 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.
|
| How would that be standard?
| rmah wrote:
| 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.
| codehitchhiker wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| drewg123 wrote:
| 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.
| rmah wrote:
| Google will not confirm your title. They will only say you
| worked there.
| drewg123 wrote:
| 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.
| tinalumfoil wrote:
| 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.
| granzymes wrote:
| 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.
| smrz wrote:
| I _cannot_ wait to check back in with you when you 're trying
| to get a new job and negotiating salary.
|
| > If I want my employer to know what number Apple assigned me,
| I'll tell them.
|
| Literally this article is about employers being like "hmm you
| told me this number but we don't believe you because Apple says
| its wrong"
| in_cahoots wrote:
| 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.
| fropie wrote:
| I work for a company with hidden internal levels and the only
| title is "Software Engineer". It works fine.
| theli0nheart wrote:
| > _Literally this article is about employers being like "hmm
| you told me this number but we don't believe you because
| Apple says its wrong"_
|
| Might have been a problem in the past, but now you can point
| them to this article.
| cgio wrote:
| 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.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > 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."
| [deleted]
| tinalumfoil wrote:
| 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.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _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.
| ouEight12 wrote:
| > 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.
| ProAm wrote:
| > in some states potential employers aren't allowed to
| ask.
|
| You dont need to when you can just look this up. Plenty
| of services offer this now. You're salary is pretty much
| public info. [1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29834753
| lupire wrote:
| That's not public.
| 10000truths wrote:
| If your potential employer is fickle about such
| idiosyncrasies, then that's _their_ shortcoming, not Apple
| 's.
| paisawalla wrote:
| > 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.
| Raineer wrote:
| 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.
| pempem wrote:
| People do manage to do so. In fact I work with folks to
| help them find the right words for this situation and
| others.
|
| Still a trend I'm seeing is occurring in negotiation.
| Specifically "do you have a counter you want us to match?
| prove it with an offer letter"
|
| orthogonal but still related.
| lupire wrote:
| That's not a new trend.
| treis wrote:
| 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.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I'm really curious why employers care at all about your past
| employment. To me it always seem just a an advertisement if
| that.
|
| How I and my colleagues got hired and makes 100% sense to me:
|
| 1. Skim their github
|
| 2. Ask questions about their stuff on github or some past
| work they shared
|
| 3. Give them a realistic task and a week to solve and push to
| github. Evaluate it - very easy to gather the motivation and
| skill.
|
| 4. Evaluate performance for a month or two. If they say what
| they are it will appear immediately.
|
| Of course some psychopathic companies want you to solve shit
| on the spot, which is kinda fine if it reflects actual work
| culture.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'm really why employers care at all about your past
| employment
|
| Some of it is "can you perform"
|
| Some of it is assessing how little they can get away with
| offering you, if they decide to hire.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| kesselvon wrote:
| 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.
| markkanof wrote:
| 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.
| trulyawful wrote:
| 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.
| Retric wrote:
| Apple lying to the federal or state government etc doing
| background checks is quite different than sharing incorrect
| information to private systems.
| trulyawful wrote:
| 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).
| sangnoir wrote:
| > 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.
| trulyawful wrote:
| That's a better take than mine. Good read.
| codehitchhiker wrote:
| I can assure you many lawyers have told me I do have a
| case.
|
| I went to the NLRB because the law that was being
| violated was the NLRA, and I was filing charges on behalf
| of others, not just me.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| codehitchhiker wrote:
| 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.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| > 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.
| some_random wrote:
| The problem is that some employers DON'T understand that is
| what's going on and come to the conclusion that you're
| lying.
| CPLX wrote:
| That exact allegation, that an offer was rescinded, is the
| subject of a lawsuit mentioned prominently in the article.
| treis wrote:
| >It's clear that "associate" means "they worked here but we
| won't tell you what as, ha ha"
|
| I don't think that's clear. And if that's the message they
| want to send why not just confirm employment but not state
| a level?
| bink wrote:
| 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.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > 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.
| corry wrote:
| 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?
| cma wrote:
| Undermining everyone who leaves is cult leadership behavior.
| gjvc wrote:
| correct, and this practice is sickeningly widespread.
| gkop wrote:
| Sickeningly widespread, brazen, and shameless. Eg
| https://a16z.com/2016/06/23/options-timing/
| paisawalla wrote:
| Counterpoint: accurately ascertaining an engineer's
| capability is their secret sauce, why should they be
| obliged to share that information with anyone?
| lsaferite wrote:
| 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.
| paisawalla wrote:
| 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.
| bink wrote:
| Read the article. This is about Apple submitting this
| data to private companies like Lexis-Nexis and then
| changing it when employees leave.
| paisawalla wrote:
| 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.
| corry wrote:
| Much better said than in my parent comment, cheers!
| rvba wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| Tech_Employee_Antitrust...
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > why should a future employer get to know how much I make?
|
| Wait until you find out that credit agencies already has this
| info separately.
|
| It was recently here on HN. Look for "work number".
| davidcbc wrote:
| 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.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| 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.
| outworlder wrote:
| > 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.
| [deleted]
| dncornholio wrote:
| There's databases out there with everyone's career record where
| you have no control over but the employers do? I rest my case..
| furyg3 wrote:
| Wait, can a future employer request my past salary information
| from InVerify (or another service) without my approval or
| permission?
| runnerup wrote:
| Yes: https://theworknumber.com There's currently no legal
| constraint on the use/sale of this privately-held/privately-
| sold data.
|
| The background-check forms you sign are not for this, they're
| primarily for legal permission to check your credit history.
| spaceywilly wrote:
| 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
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| I don't know about InVerify specifically, but yes, this is a
| thing companies do.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| 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.
| joshstrange wrote:
| 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.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| It's possible to tell companies what you want to make
| without lying about your previous salary.
| lsaferite wrote:
| 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.
| titoCA321 wrote:
| 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.
| barelysapient wrote:
| 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.
| bink wrote:
| No one in the article or in these comments is saying that what
| Apple is doing is illegal or violates a contract. It's just a
| scummy thing to do.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| 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.
| whalesalad wrote:
| 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.
| reaperducer wrote:
| 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.
| Aloha wrote:
| The emphasis in Human Resources is often really on the
| _Resources_ part.
|
| It's not universally true, but I've seen it enough, to believe
| that the name influences the way people think about it.
| dekhn wrote:
| 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?
|
| Hmm.
| sprayk wrote:
| (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.
| openknot wrote:
| >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.
|
| [0] https://gizmodo.com/apple-gestapo-how-apple-hunts-down-
| leaks...
|
| [1]
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/09/12/15/apples_worldwide_...
| samhw wrote:
| 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.
| rvba wrote:
| They dont want others to pouch their employees - so they screw
| those who leave by deleting their title?
| sprayk wrote:
| 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.
| rvba wrote:
| Apple was part of the "no cold calling" cartel. Basically
| companies had a silent agreement not to pouch employees.
|
| Why give them benefit of doubt now?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| Tech_Employee_Antitrust...
| tarmon wrote:
| I'm not sure what pouching employees means, I think you
| mean poach :)
| Spoom wrote:
| 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"?
| meowface wrote:
| >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.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| qqii wrote:
| Exactly, or expulge and refuse to provide job titles? That
| begs the question, why do they provide this information to
| third parties anyway?
| codazoda wrote:
| 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".
| qqii wrote:
| 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.
| sonthonax wrote:
| What employer when trying to hire high value people would use
| Equifax to verify resumes?
| hyposcaler wrote:
| 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.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| 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.
| sly010 wrote:
| 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.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| 3rd party background checks are notoriously noisy. Companies
| that expect them to be the Word of God are, at best, naive.
|
| 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.
| eloisant wrote:
| 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.
| tristor wrote:
| 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.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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.
| NazakiAid wrote:
| Maybe covered by NDA or could be forged?
|
| I don't know how it works if you accept the NDA and get
| promoted within.
| bradly wrote:
| 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.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I mean, you could link them to a Washington Post article
| explaining the situation.
| tristor wrote:
| > 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.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| Can confirm. And Apple used HireRight when they hired me.
| eunoia wrote:
| 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.
| tristor wrote:
| > 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.
| dnissley wrote:
| 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.
| propogandist wrote:
| 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!
|
| [1] https://employees.theworknumber.com/
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > official databases maintained by job verification services run
| by companies such as Equifax and Lexis-Nexis
|
| Sweet jesus how is that even legal?! And... why are companies
| outsourcing what used to be a core competence of an HR
| department?!
| [deleted]
| mindslight wrote:
| 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.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| 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?
| zeruch wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The problem is not that Apple obscures the job title.
|
| The problem is that Apple supplies the job title, but sometimes
| it is the incorrect value.
| joshstrange wrote:
| 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.
| NazakiAid wrote:
| Well that's scummy and doubt it was done naively.
| shapefrog wrote:
| Steve Jobs; former associate at Apple.
| SilasX wrote:
| "Well, he went on medical leave, so we changed his title to
| Mainstream Medicine Denier and then Organ System Pentester."
|
| Reference: https://apecsec.org/steve-jobs-liver-transplant-
| controversy/
| froggertoaster wrote:
| Not funny.
| fropie wrote:
| SilasX wrote:
| Why not? We can't criticize someone's reckless, selfish
| decision, even ten years past their death from it?
| magikaram wrote:
| Pretty funny.
| the-alt-one wrote:
| Very funny.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Neither is denying treatment for a curable disease.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| > Not funny.
|
| I don't think the parent comment intended it to be funny,
| is sounds like a tongue in cheek criticism of an ethically
| suspect problem.
| SilasX wrote:
| 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...".
|
| My earlier comment on this kind of "insight framed as a
| joke" (interestingly enough, also in the context of
| Apple): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24506073
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30286126
| james-redwood wrote:
| It's hilarious
| ctheb wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29834753
| draw_down wrote:
| gwbas1c wrote:
| 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."
| LegitShady wrote:
| 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.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| 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.
| axg11 wrote:
| > 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.
| sennight wrote:
| > Other than that, it's impossible to equate.
|
| 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.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > I've seen a VP of Engineering at a startup start as a
| junior engineer at a FAANG.
|
| This is a fringe case.
|
| In turn, there are widely available spreadsheets where you
| can find the equivalent levels across dozens of companies,
| most popular of which are FAANG.
| hammock wrote:
| "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.
| LegitShady wrote:
| 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.
| hammock wrote:
| 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.
| LegitShady wrote:
| 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.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Right, so are you telling me that an associate and an
| "associate VP" are the same thing?
| tedivm wrote:
| 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.
| tptacek wrote:
| 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.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| This would make sense if people's titles were "associate"
| while employed at Apple, but they are not.
|
| It's the title change that seems weird and vindictive. It's
| not like Apple has to report a title at all to external
| databases.
| tptacek wrote:
| 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.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The generic word for someone who is employed is employee.
| tptacek wrote:
| At Apple, it's "associate". I can think of other places
| that's the case as well.
| random314 wrote:
| Same at Walmart
| snowwrestler wrote:
| 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.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's not an overloaded term. It means "employee".
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| 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.
| SilasX wrote:
| 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
| tptacek wrote:
| 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".
| titoCA321 wrote:
| 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.
| SilasX wrote:
| 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.
| tptacek wrote:
| Starbucks has internal titles as well!
| SilasX wrote:
| Thus supporting my point, as I said.
|
| 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.
| tptacek wrote:
| 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.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| 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.
| uf00lme wrote:
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The the title would have been changed to "former employee", not
| "associate", for which the only conceivable reason seems to be
| to confuse.
| hammock wrote:
| Associate means employee
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| 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.
| shapefrog wrote:
| In the USA at least, Vice President has a strong
| connotation of the 2nd most powerful person in the
| goverment.
|
| Most companies have one or more people titled as such,
| yet not all of them employ the Vice President of the USA.
| titoCA321 wrote:
| There are places in Wall Street that hand out "Vice
| President" titles as candy.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| 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.
| hammock wrote:
| 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.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| 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.)
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.)
| hammock wrote:
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| rdtsc wrote:
| 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.
| penguin_booze wrote:
| 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.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > 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.
| angumagu wrote:
| 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.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| sounds like something out of the CIA
| thenipper wrote:
| Almost. In my experience those periods of employment are just
| blank.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| samhw wrote:
| 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.)
| SSLy wrote:
| Arabic and Russian are "exotic" now?
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| What did you do for them?
| touisteur wrote:
| 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.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| 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.
| johncessna wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://www.levels.fyi
| joshstrange wrote:
| 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).
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| > "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.
| 0des wrote:
| 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.
| Someone wrote:
| FTA: "whose resume conflict with official databases maintained by
| job verification services run by companies such as Equifax and
| Lexis-Nexis"
|
| What's _official_ about those databases? Aren't these just "best
| effort" results from those companies?
|
| (I also think this kind of service should be opt-in for (former)
| employees, if not outright forbidden, but that's another story)
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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?
| titoCA321 wrote:
| 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.
| tedivm wrote:
| 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).
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| 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.
| inlined wrote:
| If apple is lying about job titles and that lie harms an
| individual that is the definition of libel.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| 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)
| digitailor wrote:
| 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.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| 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.
| digitailor wrote:
| 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.
| pbronez wrote:
| > 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!
|
| [0]
| https://workforce.equifax.com/resource/-/resource/employment...
|
| [1] https://workforce.equifax.com/solutions/employment-
| verificat...
|
| [2] https://inverify.net/our-services/verification-
| services.aspx
|
| [3]
| https://www.lexisnexis.com/literature/pdfs/EXP_Previous_Empl...
| Avshalom wrote:
| >> Shouldn't these companies have an incentive to provide
| accurate data?
|
| If their information about me might be wrong they can charge
| me to keep an eye on it.
| htrp wrote:
| > You would expect that products like this would have
| rigorous, automated anomaly detection procedures in place.
|
| In general the number of data vendor products is inversely
| proportional to the quality of the data they can provide.
|
| in other news, they definitely do not have any of the logical
| data quality checks, usually they rely on the client to do
| theor own checks
| hammock wrote:
| >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?
| tedivm wrote:
| Protecting privacy would be not giving names out at all-
| instead they do confirm employment, but lie about what the
| role was.
| SR2Z wrote:
| Or that by demoting people that Apple is lying and could be
| sued for tortious interference.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| There are reasons for privacy, which include discrimination
| based on that information. Discrimination based on incorrect
| information is just as harmful.
|
| That said "associate" is arguably vague.
| dsr_ wrote:
| If they wanted to protect privacy, they would only have two
| responses:
|
| "We confirm that this person worked for Apple, ending on
| [date]. By policy, we don't discuss any further details."
|
| "We do not have records that this person worked for Apple."
| redler wrote:
| 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.
| davidcbc wrote:
| Based on the article it obviously isn't widely enough
| known to prevent people from losing job offers over it.
| torstenvl wrote:
| 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?
| davidcbc wrote:
| They weren't fired, they had an offer revoked.
|
| But either way, two things can be bad at the same time
| qqii wrote:
| 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`.
| hammock wrote:
| That is essentially what wiping title record with
| "associate" does. It's a generic term that is commonly
| synonymous with employee.
| nwallin wrote:
| > 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.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| No it's clearly not.
|
| It's very clearly implying they had a job with the title
| "associate".
| awill wrote:
| Exactly. No information is better than inaccurate
| information.
| adrusi wrote:
| 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.
| ant6n wrote:
| It could mean that, but not clearly, and it really
| doesn't mean that.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Setting aside whether it is a good practice or not, if
| all of these agencies know that Apple does this, then it
| becomes a de facto meangingless term.
|
| If this has been an ongoing practice for a while and an
| agency is not aware of it, then it is a bad agency to
| work with.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > "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".
| ghaff wrote:
| >But yet if you call these services while the person is
| still employed, they absolutely will divulge titles.
|
| Is that actually the case?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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).
| hammock wrote:
| 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.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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.
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| briandear wrote:
| 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.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > 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.
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