If Apple considers level 1 and 5 to both be associates and doesn’t share more than that that’s… fine?
WaPo says this can be a 6 figure difference in compensation but frankly why should a future employer get to know how much I make? Maybe I’m a level 3 but deserved to be a level 4. Maybe I’m a level 5 but actually a level 2 that’s just really good at office politics.
If I want my employer to know what number Apple assigned me, I’ll tell them.
EDIT: Telling companies a Level 5 engineer was an associate if associate isn't a superset of Level 5's is shady, and I can't defend Apple on that point. From what I read of the article that wasn't clear to me. They do say the title is generally linked to more junior roles but that's relative and you can still be old, experienced and well-paid but if you're not a manager I might consider that an associate.
Future employers will ask your level and if Apple tells them something different they're going to think you're lying. I can see it being problematic when applying to Government or enterprise roles. They will do their due diligence and might rescind an offer if they find a discrepancy.
I’ve been investigated by federal and state governments nine times (welcome to contracting) since leaving Apple, up to and including a full SSBI, and have never heard a word about a discrepancy. Ever. Public sector, private sector, HireRight, nobody has ever flagged it, and I know what that looks like because others have been. HireRight in particular is sensitive to job level or title differences in what you report as part of their investigation, and again, it’s never remotely been an issue.
I think people put a lot of stock in these databases which are updated voluntarily by employers. When it matters it’s double checked anyway. If a background shop can’t get an answer from Apple in a week it’s a bad background shop, because that’s literally automated (and the last copy I requested from a CRA had my title correctly reported by Apple, including my seniority level).
I hate dismissing the claim and I’m not. Rest assured I believe this tomfoolery to be on brand. There’s just more nuance to this, I think, and it’s even more interesting if it’s intermittently impacting formers. Could this be the result of the “do not rehire” box being checked in Merlin? I know mine isn’t, and I also know that it is often (quietly) checked when people depart, and that might be the difference.
> 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.
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.
In my 4 negotiation experiences, my results when not offering a competing/previous salary have always been better than when a company tries to match a competitor. When a company tries to match, they want to offer the bare minimum over the competition (which often is a minimal increase if the competition is your current company). When I name my own salary companies offer me what I want to be paid.
Maybe, but my experience working mostly at smaller companies is that nobody really cares. If you say you’re a level X they’ll say, “okay prove it. Demonstrate through your accomplishments and knowledge you’re a level X” not “Prove it. Show us your documentation, citizen.”
I also can’t imagine verifying or asking HR to verify someone’s level or salary. They’d start questioning if I understood the point of the interview.
> I 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.
Associate is just another word for employee. I don’t see why Apple should be contributing data to these shady databases of prior salaries and levels.
If a new employer wants to know my level at a previous employer, I’ll tell them. If they want proof then 1) that’s pretty weird but 2) they can give my manager a call.
But if I don’t tell them my level, then I don’t want anyone else to tell them either.
Apple doesn’t consider them to be associates though, that’s the point. Their job titles at Apple AND in the databases are accurate up until they leave the company and only then is their title demoted to Associate.
I can see a weird sort of logic to Apple. Why would they share their judgement about the level of an ex-employee with a potential rival company (rival in case of talent perhaps also product)? Let the employee say "I was Level 5 @ Apple" and have the hiring company verify that the person is at whatever level that implies. Why should Apple allow its rivals piggyback on its own levelling system?
> If I want my employer to know what number Apple assigned me, I’ll tell them.
I think you're being overly flippant. Every single job I've applied to[1] has done an independent background check[2] - which included calling/emailing past employers and verifying the details I told them meshes with their records on title and duration of employment. Discrepancies here can cause delays, or even cost one an offer, as happened the former Apple engineer in the article. I wouldn't be as dismissive as you are, as the consequences can be quite dire; also I cannot think of any positive reason for the practice, except to punish those who leave Apple. I hope the NLRB and courts throw the book at them.
1. At companies with headcounts ranging from low hundreds to tens of thousands
2. Including international calls across timezones. The investigators - often a 3rd party - are diligent, but often clueless/ignorant when the particulars of a case are different to what they are used to. This has caused delays for me in the past, and it was expensive for me because I had quit my old job after accepting the offer, and was unemployed for longer than I had planned.
> if you're not a manager I might consider that an associate.
Maybe that's your personal definition. Generally, 'associate' is the title you will get if you get an entry level retail job. There's nothing 'wrong' with the title if that's what Apple internally called everyone.
If they change it when you leave(specially if it turns out that they do that when you leave in bad terms), that's malicious.
Ultimately, this means that: you say you are a Senior Software Engineer (or whatever title Apple internally uses); the new prospective employer tries to verify and it comes back as an "associate".
i.e. they think your Apple experience was working some entry level job in one of their stores and you are trying to claim you were an engineer.
I don’t know about Apple but at the other FAANGs level is a made up thing that sorta correlates to comp and experience. You can have inexperienced people at a principal or staff level and highly experienced people at a lower level. Depending on your region someone in NYC at a lower level might be bringing more comp than someone in a rural area at a higher level. It all comes down to what you can negotiate, what role you’re applying to, and how experienced the interviewer(s) think you are.
Something that's not mentioned here is this refusal to even confirm what you worked on also affects people's immigration status.
To approve I-140, USCIS requires a signed letter from employers confirming your title, experience and skill sets.
Most companies really don't like to give these details out for some reason, and it's always a struggle, especially outside tech. People manage by contacting their managers to past coworkers to attest this.
This is intended as a general observation and not about AAPL (I can't attest to what happens there).
Naturally, you can see how this puts pressure on visa employees to leave on good terms and be compliant knowing you might not be able to extend your visa otherwise.
In that case it is interesting that the law does not mandate this.
In France you get a paper with the name of the company and the dates of your employment. This is the only information a company can provide, and confirm when requested.
The concept of referrals does not exist in practical terms (I had to give some once for an American company and gave good friends who said I was wonderful) - because they would not work.
There's no law in the US unfortunately so there's no obligation on the employer to provide this information either. There is something called "The Work Number" that certain employers subscribe to for employer verification, but that is not accepted by USCIS.
Reminds me of the practice of Translations.com / Transperfect, one of the largest language services providers. Their HR policy is to not allow employees to name the company in any online space, social media or otherwise. So when you see staff on LinkedIn, for instance, their employer will invariable say "Leading language service provider" or similar. These seem to be completely unreasonable policies, to me, that in effect are demanding that basic facts are ownable by the company.
After some military contractors in some countries got targeted and hurt, most European defence companies started asking their employees they don't advertise who you work for and where, especially in the Internet, and especially on social media.
You're advised not to wear company swag and all company-provided transport (buses) are required not to say or write the name of the company when picking up employees. You're also advised to avoid giving a precise Linked In profile. Even your role makes you a phishing (or worse) target.
You'd get frequent opsec training refreshes explaining all the new tricks and how such and such got roped in from their SM presence.
People who I know who have worked in intelligence have a career history on linkedIn which says they worked in diplomatic service or something similar. If you think about it, it makes sense given they would need to have such a cover job to get visas and so forth. You can't show up at some posting and try to explain "Yes I know my LinkedIn says '2005-2015 Secret Intelligence Service' but now I'm actually a legitimate diplomat".
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.
(Just to throat clear ahead of time... I obviously find what Apple is doing super shitty. I just want to find some reason besides "Apple bad" for why they would do this.)
Could they be doing this title change, at least in theory, as an information security measure? Competitors and journalists could potentially corroborate (or have an easier time corroborating) leaks if they can verify that a former employee is the position/level they claim to be.
I worked briefly at Apple as contractor doing some professional services integration type stuff in the datacenter space, and one thing that struck me was how secrecy seemed to ooze it's way into super unexpected places. This was to the point that I wondered if an infosec team had a hand in designing some of the systems I was working with that were way closer to the power lines than they were to the products they were designing. This was also around the time that I was reading about Apple's "Worldwide Loyalty Team" and how they would plan operations to catch people leaking.
As an aside, does anyone know how accurate the reporting was/is on the "Worldwide Loyalty Team"? Looking back it seems absurd, to the point where it makes more sense to me as a myth than fact.
This was my first thought. Apple is notoriously secretive, even internally. They likely see this as a way to prevent folks from reverse engineering through job titles what former employees were working on. (Agreed that it's super shitty and likely overkill, but I think this is a better explanation than outright trying to screw former employees.)
In this case, though, why not replace the job title with "Employee"?
>In this case, though, why not replace the job title with "Employee"?
One (non-tech) company I worked at had a pretty stringent policy of always referring to "associates" rather than "employees". I don't exactly know why; maybe some kind of branding or psychological thing, like "you're part of the family" instead of "you're working for us". It admittedly does sound a little more pleasant.
I'm not going to make a judgment call on why but it does seem feasible that their system could have a drop-down for title, there is nothing generic in that list, so someone decided to use "Associate".
>As an aside, does anyone know how accurate the reporting was/is on the "Worldwide Loyalty Team"? Looking back it seems absurd, to the point where it makes more sense to me as a myth than fact.
It's not credible from a fact-checking analysis. For reference, the publication that broke the news was Gizmodo [0]. The major issues are:
i) The source of the information is not identified on the record, and is just listed as "Tom" (no last name).
ii) There is only one anonymous interview for the article, and no supporting documentation referenced in the article to justify the claims.
iii) No other publication appears to verify the information independently, such as Apple Insider [1], for such a major story. This includes newspapers that maintain a reputation for fact-checking and responsibility (e.g. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal), where it should should be feasible to verify if this was widely known within Apple.
Exactly this has happened. People have long inferred various things about long-term Apple projects, such as self-driving cars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_electric_car_project), based on the hires they've made (including acquihires). Coupled with Apple's noted paranoia, I can well see this being the reason why they would refuse to disclose someone's team, or even their specialism or seniority.
If it is for secrecy then why not delete the information and inform those who ask they do not hold such information? The issue was the discrepancy when a third party tried to verify, and I'm sure third parties would quickly learn to work around the fact?
Instead making everyone associates is like an error propagating far from it's call site until an exception (this article) is raised.
less about screwing the competition, more about hindering their ability to learn about development through trawling resumes. The more I try and describe it, the weaker it sounds in my head, but the idea is you could get some info on what Apple is doing by looking at resumes referencing Apple, then corroborate what you saw by checking former position with those firms.
I think it's really important to note that Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies, but not only do they choose to do so they also make sure the information is wrong. Apple is, essentially, being unethical on two levels. They're selling or sharing employee information, and they're purposefully making it so that information is wrong.
I want to stress this- I ask during the interview process of every company I work at whether they share employment information with the credit bureaus and most say no. I've worked at startups and a couple of larger companies. What Apple is doing here seems purely vindictive.
I'm also not sure how this is legal- it seems like it would fall under defamation laws. I would personally be willing to sue over this (but I've never worked for Apple).
It's a really good point about Apple willfully using an Experian service as part of this strategy. As to defamation, I don't think that's clear. Apple is intentionally using the term to be as legally vague as possible about how it externally reports its past connection to its ex-payees. This is mostly liability management, essentially saying less that can't be called false, instead of the defamatory tactic of saying more that is not true.
as·so·ci·ate (n)
1. a partner or colleague in business or at work.
2. a person with limited or subordinate membership of an organization.
3. joined or connected with an organization or business.
- Source: Google search results fed by Oxford Languages
This kind of vague hedging in communication for legal purposes is pretty longterm characteristic of the organization. It's the "say absolutely nothing after termination that can be dissected in court later" school. The school has adherents all over the place.
While I agree it’s probably not defamation and is just meant to say as little as possible, there’s no way this would be the end all in court - apple surely keeps the original records internally so a court case could easily find your original title.
> Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies
Also, those third parties don't have to take Apple's word. Equifax and Lexis-Nexis (named in the article) are selling a data product, which is undermined by Apple's bad behavior. Shouldn't these companies have an incentive to provide accurate data?
This is where it gets interesting. I looked up the products in question, and they are VERY careful to talk about streamlining workflows, and connecting you to previous employers without every making claims about the accuracy of the data provided by thos employers.
Equifax's "The Work Number can deliver an automated income and employment verification solution that streamlines the transfer of information between employers and verifier."[0] They do this "thanks to a powerful alliance partnerships with many of the top payroll and HCMs". They are clearly just sloshing data out of payroll systems into a proprietary database. You'd think they'd notice when a large employer overwrites everyone's title on their last paycheck, but they make no claims about quality control on this data.
The article specifically mentions Inverify, which is owned by Equifax. Their verification services page[2] also focuses on efficiency ("Throw it over the Fence"). They claim to "[gather] your electronic data and [upload] relevant information so you do not have to search for employee data from multiple sources." Note that there's nothing in there about quality control. I suspect Inverify exists to provide a services layer over the The Work Number data product.
LexisNexis doesn't make their offerings as obvious. I found this pdf for LexisNexis Screening Solutions[3]. They say "We have developed relationships with many employers and will make those difficult calls for you, thereby simplifying your job." One way they help make those difficult calls is that they "call and verify previous employment with each source." So that's a data quality claim, but they're still focused on just parroting whatever the upstream employer says.
You would expect that products like this would have rigorous, automated anomaly detection procedures in place. As an employer, I don't want to waste time figuring out why this otherwise great senior dev was an "associate" at Apple. I want my verification provider to, at minimum, tell me "heads up, Apple is a fickle and vindictive employer so you can't really trust this." Of course it would be even BETTER if they said "our professional assessment is they were a Level 4. We believe that because that's what the previous 200 paystubs and 4 W2 forms said before they screwed with the data after their departure."
If you're gonna build a terrifying data business, at least be good at it!
I don't necessarily agree that what they are doing is unethical. It seems more a preservation of their business practices. Which is understandable and actually the ethical thing to do since Apple has no obligation to help others, including competitors. There is also an argument that what they are doing is the ethical thing to do by not feeding data into yet another mass surveillance and control system to manage and control people's lives. Imagine you defy or upset the regime … poof … your official employment history says you have no history and are a liar. You are a non-person now.
What is unethical though is the wholesale surveillance and monitoring without any kind of control by those who are being surveilled and monitored, regarding their "employment history" (not all that different than how slave owners would "horse trade" slaves). I realize that many will find that hyperbolic, but in essence it is the same thing going on, the force with the power is negotiating and conversing and managing their resources without those resources being aware, having any input, or being able to even object to it being done. Those resources that are treated like that are not just cattle that may have desirable traits, or slaves that have a stout back, they are humans … Human Resources.
I keep trying to get people to understand that the reality of the matter is that what we call salvery was never actually ended, it was simply pivoted because the ruling class realized there was a far more efficient, effective, lower cost, less hassle and wildly more profitable way of achieving the same exploration … just abstract the means and methods of control with money, regulations, incentives, etc. Why spend all day trying to force people to work against their will where you get marginal returns from a small set of human resources, when you can just construct a system where you can get major increases in returns from a/the majority of society.
It is not a coincidence that this evolution from industrial and agricultural slavery started shortly after the Civil War in the USA. Now we have whole global corporations run by like self-governing slave hives, including a very similar foreman/overseer structure that trickles down to the lowly digital field workers in the code factories, call centers, and cheerful retail stores.
It feels gross to change an employees' official title without at least notifying them and getting them to sign an acknowledgement. I work in big tech, and this is one of many reasons why I wouldn't apply there. (Mostly, their work culture is #1)
>Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies, but not only do they choose to do so they also make sure the information is wrong. Apple is, essentially, being unethical on two levels
By giving out wrong personal information, the argument could be made that they are protecting privacy.
I do not believe saying "associate" is wrong, though. It's a term that is commonly used by HR to refer generically to anyone who works for a company. If you haven't encountered it, it may feel foreign to you, especially since Apple is a retail company and you may be conflating it with "retail associate." That's not what it means though.
"Employee" is a term fraught with legal and other liability in it's use (think Uber drivers - are they employees or contractors?). HR departments will refer to everybody as “associates” to mitigate risk. If Apple wanted to confirm employment, but not divulge titles, they could say associate.
Similarly, Starbucks uses "partners." Do you really think a barista is a part-owner in Starbucks and that's why they're called a partner?
> "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".
There are reasons for privacy, which include discrimination based on that information. Discrimination based on incorrect information is just as harmful.
I remember when I interned at Intel, on the way out I asked about references and I was told, very nicely, that Intel's official policy is to only confirm employment.
I suspect that this is really what Apple is doing; but that some accident of circumstance required them to provide a very generic title. Perhaps they can't confirm employment without some kind of title, and that title's now been twisted out of context?
FYI: The practice mildly makes sense. Many employment issues are highly subjective, so a large company might decide that saying anything about a former employee is a liability, so they'll only say the minimal possible facts: "Yes, X is a former employee from [date range.]" Or, "No, X never worked for us."
You're really bending over backwards here to justify really bad behavior. Apple is actually bringing on liability by lying about what people's titles really were. They aren't saying "nothing", they're actually defaming their previous employees by lying about their level.
They're not "lying about their level". Contra the article, the term "associate" does not in fact mean "junior employee"; I can think of huge companies where everyone's formal title is "associate" regardless of seniority, in the same way that Bell Labs did MTS.
Further, nobody is "bending over backwards" to defend anybody; they're writing their own take on what happened. You're asked by the guidelines to assume good faith in other commenters.
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.
the employee's title while working there doesn't represent any liability that I can think of, and changing it post employment and lying about their title to anyone inquiring seems like a liability instead. Seems like they're trying to sabotage people's careers if they leave apple.
Title is nothing subjective. In fact, titles and levels can be matched between two companies easily.
Anyway, this is not what Apple is doing. They are downgrading everyone by default, which is akin to providing false information about a former employee.
> Title is nothing subjective. In fact, titles and levels can be matched between two companies easily.
There is zero truth to this statement. Perhaps job families can be matched (engineering vs sales, manager vs IC). Other than that, it’s impossible to equate. I’ve seen a VP of Engineering at a startup start as a junior engineer at a FAANG.
"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.
Software Engineer 1, Software Engineer 4... Often the title is bestowed to keep someone in a pay grade. ("Oh, we are really strict about salaries and only pay market rate. Everyone within the same title gets paid the same... But I think I can get you promoted to rank 22.")
Wouldn't there be other ways for you to prove you were a "Level 4" or whatever at Apple and not an associate? An offer letter from Apple? Or just the totality of circumstances in general. If say you're interviewing for a "Sr Engineer" position, you're just not going to have an instance where the candidate shows experience and knowledge but doesn't get hired because some record from Lexis Nexis says that he was an "associate" at Apple prior to coming here. Something like that I feel would get resolved in conversation very quickly.
> Wouldn't there be other ways for you to prove you were a "Level 4" or whatever at Apple and not an associate? An offer letter from Apple?
Having gone through this with several employers, the largest company doing this verification is HireRight. HireRight is BEYOND incompetent at every single level. They refuse documentation such as offer letters on company letterhead to prove a title. The only documentation they accept from applicants is highly sensitive tax documentation from the IRS, which of course does not contain titles but incidentally reveals compensation details they can hoover up into their database but is not relevant to the purpose they were hired by your future employer to do.
If you think credit reporting agencies in the US are Machiavellian and maliciously incompetent, wait until you deal with employment verification firms, they're worse and often the same corporate entities (as noted in the article, another large one is WorkNumber owned by Equifax). These entities put most of the work onto the candidate, display no competence or care for accuracy whatsoever, and generally deliver intentionally misleading or inaccurate results to your future employer. It's so pervasive, that my own complaints to my recruiter were heeded and understood because in their words "oh their reports are always wrong about employment history, we only pay attention to the criminal background check part."
So, in short, no you can't simply provide a valid offer letter showing the title you were hired with to prove that title or to prove a promotion.
I checked my data on The Work Number [1], and see that my prior employer shared details on pay, overtime and even Bonuses received!
It seem my prior employers were providing information down to gross and net pay PER pay cycle, with details about my medical, dental and vision insurance coverage [!!]
This is from Equifax, the company that got hacked and lost PII, and they are getting extremely detailed information!
Just went through hire right for the second time in my life -- interestingly they do now warn you to redact your income information from the w-2s they require.
You can try (especially if you know ahead of time) but background check is done by a third party. Recruiters and interviewers don't care until background check flags it. You can try to be upfront about it, but it just creates a weird situation and they will defer to the 3rd party background check anyway.
Any evidence you may share with the background check company is not present on the final background report (since it might contain salary information which would be illegal i guess). It's a little bit like credit reporting, if your bank misreports in a few places you are f*ed.
I had a background check at an employer, not for a sensitive position, who, when unable to verify employment, found my Facebook and reached out to someone on there (who happened to be my partner) to see if they would "confirm" what they knew to be my job.
That was after their initial email to me:
"Hi, we're about to start your background check. Just want to confirm that this is the correct email address for you?
Are these also the correct details for you? [And proceeded to list Full SSN, address, DOB]."
Like, I'm really rather glad that this actual _was_ the correct email address. But in any case I was furious. On both counts.
In credit to my employer, once I reviewed these two things with them, they fired the background check company.
3rd party background checks are notoriously noisy. Companies that expect them to be the Word of God are, at best, naïve.
Every employer should be ready to resolve "discrepancies" that come back without any negative thoughts about the potential employee. If they can't or won't do that, I don't think you want to work for them.
A few years ago, I was involved in a spinoff and they decided that all the employees would need to go through a background check. Of the ~90 people, something like 10 people (>10%!!!) had weird stuff that turned out to be completely wrong. For example, one person was reported to be currently in prison 5 states over. Some others were "we can't verify this person ever worked for ABC Corp". We were ABC Corp.
Most of these background check companies, they'd say of course there are a lot of Mike Smiths around, but Patty Jones? No no, there has only ever been one Patty Jones in all of human history.
Yes, what I imagine would happen is that the background check company will contact you, you'll send them your last paycheck with your title on it and be done with it.
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.
Readit News
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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"
Might have been a problem in the past, but now you can point them to this article.
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.
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.
Deleted Comment
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.
Wait until you find out that credit agencies already has this info separately.
It was recently here on HN. Look for “work number”.
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.
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.
To approve I-140, USCIS requires a signed letter from employers confirming your title, experience and skill sets.
Most companies really don't like to give these details out for some reason, and it's always a struggle, especially outside tech. People manage by contacting their managers to past coworkers to attest this.
This is intended as a general observation and not about AAPL (I can't attest to what happens there).
Naturally, you can see how this puts pressure on visa employees to leave on good terms and be compliant knowing you might not be able to extend your visa otherwise.
In 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.
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.
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.
This is only for 3rd party databases.
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.
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.
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_...
Instead making everyone associates is like an error propagating far from it's call site until an exception (this article) is raised.
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).
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...
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
If their information about me might be wrong they can charge me to keep an eye on it.
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.
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?
"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."
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".
That said "associate" is arguably vague.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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.
I don't know how it works if you accept the NDA and get promoted within.