[piaw]

I know several Apple and ex-Apple engineers. Let's just say that the environment isn't even comparable. Google wins hands down. One of my friends at Apple had to file for an information request so that she could debug a problem that spanned multiple layers of abstraction. A Google engineer faced with that kind of inanity would just quit.

[othermaciej]

I've also heard complaints from Google and ex-Google people that wouldn't come up at Apple. Examples: - Launching a hard-to-understand product and providing it with scant marketing support, so it promptly goes nowhere (when Apple launches a product we are committed to making it a success). - Central hiring leads to o way of knowing what kind of project you will end up working on, and high risk that it will be infrastructure grunt work which is not respected by the culture.

Does internal secrecy suck more or less than those kinds of things? I dunno. I would not be so bold as to make a claim either way without firsthand experience of both environments.

[endtime]

I'm sure having the trains run on time is nice, but I have to concur with piaw - from the people I've talked to, Apple sounds like a remarkably stifling place to work.