Apple Does Not Create Fake Projects for New Hires, Says Former Manager

Don Melton, a former manager at Apple that helped create the Safari web browser has again chimed in to share his knowledge of what really goes on at Apple. This time, he adds further credibility to the recent report by Ars Technica that concluded ‘fake’ projects for new hires to test loyalty do not happen.

Melton reiterated what he formerly shared about working at Apple, that the company works like a smaller company with a clear focus, rather than a large bloated corporation, akin to an IBM or General Motors as that helped eliminate the problem of duplicate work. With Apple trying so hard to be efficient, rumours of fake projects thrown into the mix do not make sense:

Clearly, duplication of effort is not big in Cupertino. Even with two operating systems — iOS and OS X — the idea is to share technologies that make sense and keep those technologies from diverging too much. Otherwise it becomes really complicated to coordinate releases. It’s not perfect, but anyone who’s attended an Apple developer conference knows the company takes reducing even that kind of duplication seriously.

Which makes the idea of fake projects so ludicrous. That’s not even duplicated effort. That’s completely superfluous work. When you have a focus on efficiency like Apple, why would you waste time and resources doing that?

Apple intensely screens candidates before and after they are hired so to add on additional loyalty tests are “a stupid idea” and would be counterintuitive as it would “demotivate” new employees. As for the obsession of the media over Apple and the stories being written? Melton says most of it is “horseshit meant to draw flies”:

So much of what is written about Apple these days is just horseshit meant to draw flies. And it makes me sad that somebody had to clean up after that particular pile.

There you have it. No fake projects exist at Apple, as much as some people want to believe them.