If you declare your independence from your job (don’t try to stretch metaphors like this at home, kids—the Macalope’s a professional!), would it really be surprising if you were glad to be no longer working for the company you quit from?
The Macalope’s frequent sparring partner, the affable Rocco Pendola, seems to think so.
“Former Apple Employees: ‘Thrilled to Be Gone’”
Quoting the same ex-Apple employee who questioned the design of the Apple TV homescreen weeks ago, Pendola thinks it’s odd no one other than him has remarked on what it implies. Here’s what Michael Margolis had to say:
Running into tons of ex-Apple employees these days and they’re all thrilled to be gone. I never see that with Google or FB employees…
Ah, the Macalope always loves productions put on by Small Sample Size Theater! But assuming these are people who weren’t laid off, the Macalope finds this result pretty weird. So, Margolis is saying that people who left Apple of their own free will are happy about it but people who left Google and Facebook aren’t?
Well, maybe that just means people who’ve worked at Apple tend to make better life choices.
But to the point Margolis and Pendola are making, the Macalope wouldn’t be at all surprised if Google and Facebook are nicer places to work. Google seems like it might be really nice, particularly if you have the attention span of a sugar-addled toddler. A clever developer could bounce from one discontinued project to another and never have to do a lick of work at Google. Plus, they have foosball tables!
The Macalope has often been asked by friends and relatives “If you love Apple so much, why don’t you marry it?” which he’s always taken as “Why don’t you go work there?” because everyone knows that society is sadly still not ready to celebrate the union of a person and a corporation. If he understands the Republican platform, however, they’re working hard against this prejudice! (WARNING: First person to start a political argument in the comments gets banned until the Suri Cruise administration!)
But the horny one’s always been content to love Apple from afar because, frankly, it seems like it could be a terrible place to work. Maybe some of those stories of Steve Jobs conducting elevator firings are apocryphal, but this alfalfa-chewing ruminant doesn’t need that kind of stress.
Tim Cook certainly seems less likely to drop a bunch of pink slips in an elevator or verbally abuse the MobileMe team or pistol whip a Caffe Macs chef who forgot to use extra virgin olive oil in his baba ghanoush. And the company seems to have offered a number of new employee benefits in the last year, so maybe it’s becoming a little more touchy-feely.
While the Macalope suspects Apple might be a hard place to work, it’s probably like any other company in that it depends on which department you work in. Ultimately, though, it’s not exactly a South African diamond mine and the Macalope’s not switching to Android just because Google’s developers are more self-actualized, empowered and have “free acupuncture Thursdays.”
[Editor’s Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]