What It's Like To Work Inside Apple's 'Black Site' (bloomberg.com) 81
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a Bloomberg report: Apple's new campus in Cupertino, California, is a symbol of how the company views itself as an employer: simultaneously inspiring its workers with its magnificent scale while coddling them with its four-story cafe and 100,000-square-foot fitness center. But one group of Apple contractors finds another building, six miles away on Hammerwood Avenue in Sunnyvale, to be a more apt symbol. This building is as bland as the main Apple campus is striking. From the outside, there appears to be a reception area, but it's unstaffed, which makes sense given that people working in this satellite office -- mostly employees of Apple contractors working on Apple Maps -- use the back door. Workers say managers instructed them to walk several blocks away before calling for a ride home. Several people who worked here say it's widely referred to within Apple as a "black site," as in a covert ops facility.
Inside the building, say former workers, they came to expect the vending machines to be understocked, and to have to wait in line to use the men's bathrooms. Architectural surprise and delight wasn't a priority here; after all, the contract workers at Hammerwood almost all leave after their assignments of 12 to 15 months are up. It's not uncommon for workers not to make it that long. According to 14 current and former contractors employed by Apex Systems, a firm that staffs the building as well as other Apple mapping offices, they operated under the constant threat of termination. "It was made pretty plain to us that we were at-will employees and they would fire us at any time," says one former Hammerwood contractor, who, like most of the workers interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity because he signed a nondisclosure agreement with Apex. "There was a culture of fear among the contractors which I got infected by and probably spread." Apex manages the workers it hires -- not Apple. "Following an inquiry from Bloomberg News, the company says, it conducted a surprise audit of the Hammerwood facility and found a work environment consistent with other Apple locations," reports Bloomberg.
"Like we do with other suppliers, we will work with Apex to review their management systems, including recruiting and termination protocols, to ensure the terms and conditions of employment are transparent and clearly communicated to workers in advance," an Apple spokesperson says in a statement.
Inside the building, say former workers, they came to expect the vending machines to be understocked, and to have to wait in line to use the men's bathrooms. Architectural surprise and delight wasn't a priority here; after all, the contract workers at Hammerwood almost all leave after their assignments of 12 to 15 months are up. It's not uncommon for workers not to make it that long. According to 14 current and former contractors employed by Apex Systems, a firm that staffs the building as well as other Apple mapping offices, they operated under the constant threat of termination. "It was made pretty plain to us that we were at-will employees and they would fire us at any time," says one former Hammerwood contractor, who, like most of the workers interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity because he signed a nondisclosure agreement with Apex. "There was a culture of fear among the contractors which I got infected by and probably spread." Apex manages the workers it hires -- not Apple. "Following an inquiry from Bloomberg News, the company says, it conducted a surprise audit of the Hammerwood facility and found a work environment consistent with other Apple locations," reports Bloomberg.
"Like we do with other suppliers, we will work with Apex to review their management systems, including recruiting and termination protocols, to ensure the terms and conditions of employment are transparent and clearly communicated to workers in advance," an Apple spokesperson says in a statement.
The Powerbook G5 is in there somewhere (Score:3)
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Anyone else reminded of the Black Cube building in Greg Bear's "Blood Music"? I don't want to speculate further in case I inadvertently give the impression I know what They're doing, and They make me disappear.
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That was actually a long awaited product. If Apple was able to get that made, it would had been the first mass produced 64bit laptop. But it seems the Power PC development started to seriously lag behind Intel. So I would expect the other Black Experiment was the the OS X for Intel Platform. Which seemed to be something that Apple was keeping on the back burner just in case they needed to switch CPU's which they did.
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That's not quite accurate. They were behind in the mobile space, but not in the desktop space. The first Intel-based machine that could match the Quad G5's floating-point performance wasn't released until five or six years after the last PowerPC-based Mac was built. The main reason for the Intel tr
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Sounds like the land of Mordor. I can imagine fire and the smell of brimstone everywhere, and the big eye peering into all.
Re: They're all like that (Score:2, Informative)
I worked for apex on a Microsoft contract about a decade ago. They never tell you that the position is temporary. After 6 months, I remember other engineers mention that any tickets to the help desk may take longer, because they've all been replaced, "because apex does that sometimes to save costs". The help desk was also apex, so I thought was it suspicious, but didn't think much of it at the time, or that I might have the same fate. Anyways, at my 12 month mark, my badge didn't work to get into the bu
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Except that if you believe the statements from our government (statements that they can't back up with any evidence), all the Chinese stuff is compromised and feeding all your data back to the Communists.
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Workers sometimes want to be contractors so they can cheat on their taxes, work part time and/or go on extended vacations. Corporations want contractors so they can fire them easily, and they don't show up on payrolls the same way (and do not have the scrutiny employees have, which often involve analyzing their degrees and university backgrounds, and rolling that up as high as the board of directors). I am not sure, in all cases, that contractors are cheaper to employ though. Perhaps apple can drive a harde
What's the story here? (Score:3, Insightful)
- Do Managers tell staff to walk a few blocks because it's in an area where it's difficult for taxis to get to?
- Contractors for Apple don't get treated the same as actual Apple staff?
The article makes it sounds like there's something nefarious or dodgy going on but doesn't provide any real detail.
Re:What's the story here? (Score:4, Insightful)
... An Apple contractor has a building that isn't as spiffy as the main Apple HQ? ..
"not as spiffy" seems to be an attempt to downplay the working conditions. As such, your message has confirmed how bad they are.
Re:What's the story here? (Score:4, Insightful)
...AA contractor. Not Apple.. ...
I didn't miss that point at all. Using contractors is a way Apple keeps costs low while being able to point to all the happy workers in its doughnut. It's like outsourcing to China, but in the US.
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As I heard it from an ex-manager, the donut building is for the high revenue generating divisions; itunes, iphones, etc. The Mac and OSX people will be in other buildings. I'm not sure what they're going to do with the old campus, but given that they already lease a large number of office buildings in the area it would make sense to move those workers back to there.
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I don't know, from my stand point it looks pretty shitty honestly. At my company, contractors are treated more or less identically to full employees. I think the full difference between treatment is that where full employees get to charge to overhead for the company picnic and holiday party, though contractors are invited, they must do it on their own time. Beyond that, they work at the same facility, they're allowed to use all on site amenities, etc. The major difference is term of employment, and even
Your company chooses risk (Score:5, Interesting)
At my company, contractors are treated more or less identically to full employees.
And that's how contractors win lawsuits to get full benefits.
Given the legal climate Apple is smart to take a hands-off approach to contractors and let conditions be totally managed by this other company,
I know most of them have been offered full time positions, but for whatever reason they prefer contract positions.
(A) This may be in violation of contracts they have signed with the contracting firm they are working through.
(B) Being a contractor in a large company is nice because you are more sheltered from political intrigue.
(C) You can often figure out how to give yourself equivalent benefits company workers get for less than they are paying, combine that with a higher contractor salary and converting to an employee can mean quite an earnings hit.
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And that's how contractors win lawsuits to get full benefits.
^^^ That right there.
It tends to go in waves, where companies try to go "everybody is a contractor", followed by a wave of companies (and sometimes specific executives) facing tax fraud for misclassifying workers.
I've known some company executives who went to prison for it about eight years ago, they had a reputation for abusing their workers. The punishment was well deserved. Looking up the news article, that company owner was found personally liable for a half million dollars in restitution, six months
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Not nefarious but still kinda dodgy. Apple like the idea that their employees are working in collaboration in this big building. While a lot of the work that gets done happens in a run down building.
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- An Apple contractor has a building that isn't as spiffy as the main Apple HQ?
- Do Managers tell staff to walk a few blocks because it's in an area where it's difficult for taxis to get to?
- Contractors for Apple don't get treated the same as actual Apple staff?
The article makes it sounds like there's something nefarious or dodgy going on but doesn't provide any real detail.
But ... but ... it's mysterious! Nobody knows where this secret building, "six miles away on Hammerwood Avenue in Sunnyvale," is!!
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I hear they have a lot of problems there with vampires.
And we wonder why Apple Maps has problems. (Score:5, Interesting)
Having worked as a consultant and contractor myself (not for Apple). It always bugs me how I was treated like a second hand employee. Yes, I got paid more then the normal employees, but that is to cover the risk of being dropped at any time, and for me to find new business.
Contractors are often hired to work on "Career ending" projects, where a failure would cost your job and reputation (However working via a consulting firm, the individual gets isolated, as the firm takes the blame, and then just gets their licensed renew after the problem settles down). These jobs are often very complex, where a lot of things can go wrong.
That all said, there is often animosity towards the contractors. Which makes working cross departments difficult in general difficult, and often being blocked from accessing the companies soft employee benefits, such as the cafeteria, or the gym, in essence all these features designed to help improve productivity and moral. Means the contractors now are further hindered because they can access features to help improve their productivity and moral. Because being charged $250 an hour, you don't want to be caught at the Ping-Pong table, getting some exercise while you are thinking about how to solve the next problem.
Hearing that Apple Maps is primarily done by the contractors, I can see why it is a mess, not because of the lack of skill from these contractors, but because of the conditions they are working in. Granted what we hear isn't bad, but it is isolated from the Apple culture, so the Apple (lack of a better term) soul isn't there.
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You seem to be in some sort of idealistic world. Real life is makes this more complex.
Question: Why are we doing "Impossible, Career-ending, high-risk" projects?
Answer: Because they are highly lucrative. Otherwise, there's no point.
Not necessarily highly lucrative, often it is just a whim of some executive at the time. The idea itself may be stupid, and all the department managers have found a way to say we cannot do it. So they bring in a contractor to do the job, because no one else is willing to touch it with a 100ft pool.
Question: How do you take the risk out of a project?
Answer: By planning it out. You do the R&D, Proof of Concept Studies, Project Scope and Decomposition review, and Market analysis on the hard pieces first. Employee's have no issue doing proof of concept work on a side project if you need specialist work done, and if not, you hire a real hacker who can polymorph themselves into whatevery ou need. There is no end of proof of concept work.
I have taken MBA Classes that tell me that is what we should do... However I never worked at a company willing to put up the m
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Not necessarily highly lucrative, often it is just a whim of some executive at the time. The idea itself may be stupid, and all the department managers have found a way to say we cannot do it. So they bring in a contractor to do the job, because no one else is willing to touch it with a 100ft pool.
I've seen where a department is really bad with a certain task or is spending too much money doing it. So the idea is that money can be saved by contracting it out to a different company. Then you take the department that's not doing very well at the task and put them in charge of coordinating with the third party. Then it starts to screw up. Ie, the department wasn't very good at the task because they were still acting like a startup and never got around to having requirements and creating specifications
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Politics affects this too. And naivete. One thing contracting houses do is marketing. They sound great on paper and they can start as soon as you want. Only after the check clears it's sometimes not working out like you hoped.
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It isn't about being owed anything, it is just an impractical use of consultants, to tread them a second hand employees, while they work on important jobs as well.
Re:And we wonder why Apple Maps has problems. (Score:5, Interesting)
In some cases, contractors don't make that much more than the FTEs. I have seen places where management deliberately pits contractors versus the FTEs, where the FTEs are told that their jobs can be replaced at any time by the contractors, and the contractors are told how awesome the cool benefits the FTEs get, like the gym and such... which they will never get to see unless they become FTEs.
In my experience, in general you are never told how long your gig will be. Of course, when your gig ends, you will never be told face to face. Your badge just stops working in the door, and your stuff on your desk is either packed up and at the front desk... or is likely at a local pawn shop. If lucky, you might be asked to drive to the contractor office, just for them to demand your badge and stuff there.
Your best defense as a contractor? Five things:
First, you make sure your "fuck you" fund is kept at at least a year's salary. This is NOT an IRA, and not a savings. This is a fund whose goal is to keep your rent/mortgage paid, food on the table, your vehicle out of repossession, and you relatively sane. This way, when you get laid off, you can take time and get a "real" job, and not wind up taking another contract job out of desperation.
The second thing: As a contractor, always keep your LinkedIn profile up to date, your resume up to date, keep contacts going, go to various business events, keep a GitHub public repository full of goodies that show your stuff, and keep a job hunt going at a low level. That way, when some company has a good FTE position, you can leave the craziness of the contractor world behind for some stability.
The third thing: Get some certificates. Tech co-workers don't care, but showing you have a Sec+ helps you for government work. A RHCE, MCSE, or CCIE will get you past the HR firewall in most companies.
The fourth thing: You generally don't get any vacation time. Make sure you have a vacation fund where you can just take some time off. This will keep you from burning out. Burnout is common as a contractor, and it will kill your career.
The fifth thing: Start looking for a FTE job eventually, or else you get branded as a "contractor only" person. Someone to be hired and fired and who isn't worth paying a full time salary too. Having contract jobs, especially if they are short term, is bad for the resume after a while, as you get viewed as disposable, or the first person on the list to get the axe.
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First, you make sure your "fuck you" fund is kept at at least a year's salary.
This makes all the difference. It's not just a security for when you get laid off; it also enables you to take the initiative to quit yourself, not when you finally reach the point where you really cannot take it anymore, but way before that. Hence the name of that fund. When I quit my job and started contracting, I made myself a promise that I would never again work for asshole bosses, and I built up my "fuck you" fund so I could keep that promise. It allows me to pick the assignments I like, and quit
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Those in the full time business of making shit flow downhill (like it needed any additional help) typically colour within the lines very carefully.
It's not good business to wind up in small claims court playing the visible role of a heartless Ebenezer. Colouring carefully between the legal lines is the best way to remain in the black in the shitflow business
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From a contracting agency, the contractors usually make less or similar money to a full time employee. And not just from overseas agencies but the local US based agencies too. The high fee per worker that agencies charge doesn't all go to the worker. If you want to make good money as a contractor then you should probably be independent, otherwise if you're forking over huge chunks of your fee to an agency then you may as well have been a full time employee instead.
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On the other hand, the contract work I've done in Raleigh, NC has paid less that the full-time positions. When the market is down, it is sometimes all you can get, and they lure you in with the contract-to-hire lie. I let Cisco drag me through that for three years. Had the full-time guys telling me that contractors weren't as good, because they weren't "dedicated". He was a little sheepish when I explicitly gave him the low down on what it was like to be cannon fodder for layoffs when you were trying to
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It can vary a lot depending upon the company. I 've seen contractors hired to work on the spiffy new projects so that employees weren't taken off of the dull routine maintenance of older projects. Often I see contractors hired (often friends of friends of a manager) because they're easier to get on the books than to get a full time employee even though the actual cost might be greater. Sometimes and it frustrated me that there would be underqualified people screwing up projects despite never having gone thr
Minor typo... ? (Score:2)
... According to 14 current and former contractors employed by Apex Systems, a firm that staffs the building as well as other Apple mapping offices ...
Correction: a firm that formerly staffed various offices for Apple; considering how Apex has so severely mishandled things as to make their employees angry enough to "let the cat out of the bag," I'm sure Apple will be exercising one of their small-print termination clauses in the contract with Apex, forthwith.
I mean, come on; pretty much everybody knows that the only way to keep a "black ops" under wraps is to make sure that all of the participants are loyal to a fault and have a strong vested interest in
Bigger company = more mediocrity (Score:5, Insightful)
managers instructed them to walk several blocks aw (Score:2)
managers instructed them to walk several blocks away so any thing that happens is coved under works comp and hourly people need to clock out after that walk as well.
Piece of cake compared to ... (Score:3)
... assembling iPhones somewhere in WangTang where killing yourself seems to be an attractive option.
While not an Apple employee/contractor... (Score:2)
I have been in two of their “black sites” for other projects, and it is funny that Lyft’s maps have the building code addresses. I was really surprised when standing next door that it knew its code already. Just funny how hard people sometimes work to keep obvious secrets hidden.
(Hint— look for the security guards with logo jackets.)
Apple's "Site B" eh? (Score:2)
If Apple really wanted to... (Score:2)
Fixing Apple's statement (Score:2)
FTS: Apex manages the workers it hires -- not Apple. "Following an inquiry from Bloomberg News, the company says, it conducted a surprise audit of the Hammerwood facility and found a work environment consistent with other Apple locations," reports Bloomberg.
"Like we do with other suppliers, we will work with Apex to review their management systems, including recruiting and termination protocols, to ensure the terms and conditions of employment are transparent and clearly communicated to workers in advance,