Apple -- with its obsessive cult of fanboys, pioneering devices, groundbreaking design and, of course, its charismatic co-founder, the late Steve Jobs -- is arguably one of the most watched companies in the world. But most of what goes on in the company headquarters on Infinite Loop in Cupertino, Calif., has been very scrupulously hidden from view.
Even Walter Isaacson’s hefty Jobs biography didn't pull the curtain back on exactly how the Apple business model really works, focusing more on the co-founder than ground-level view of its workings.
Adam Lashinsky's "Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired -- and Secretive -- Company Really Works" has changed that.
The book is an outgrowth of a much-touted article by Fortune's senior editor-at-large in May. In a concise 223 pages, Lashinsky describes “a frighteningly harsh, bullying and demanding culture at Apple … throughout the organization," with few of the perks of most other thriving Silicon Valley tech giants.
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As Lashinksy is told, “Everybody at Apple wants out, and everybody outside Apple wants in.” And he quotes Gina Bianchini, CEO of a neighboring Valley start-up, on the Apple work climate: "Fear is palpable there ... no other company has that level of fear."
The author quotes Jobs as saying employees found working at Apple “the most fulfilling experience in their lives … people love it, which is different than saying they have fun. Fun comes and goes.”
The secrecy Lashinsky cites in his book’s title is “strictly enforced from within,” he says, citing a project where special locks were put on one floor, doors were added to sequester the development team and the employees on the project were made to sign agreements that they wouldn’t speak of it to anyone, including their wife and kids.
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One ex-employee recalled Jobs’ warning in a meeting that: “Anything disclosed from this meting will result in not just termination but in prosecution to the fullest extent our lawyers can."
Former Apple senior hardware executive Jon Rubenstein told an interviewer, "We have cells, like a terrorist organization ... everything is on a need-to-know basis."
Lashinsky details an annual “ultra-secret gathering called the "Top 100," an internal elite who annually meet in a room that is first swept for bugs: “Relatively low-level engineers would attend, because Jobs wanted them there, while certain vice presidents would be excluded.”
Rank doesn’t always confer status at Apple, Lashinsky writes. He describes “an unwritten caste system” in which “the industrial designers are untouchable” and tells how the former “cocks-of-the-roost” Macintosh specialists came to be considered “second-rate“ in the Apple hierarchy as software engineers tied to online functions came to rule.
Apple's organization chart is so tight, the author says, that there are just 70 vice presidents for a company with more than 24,000 non-retail employees.
