My first five months at Apple in 2000 were as a Volt contractor. Contractors are even more disposable than H-1Bs. But at the time there was still a realistic path to full-time employment. The upside of contracting was you were hourly, not salaried. /2

Being eligible for overtime was a pretty sweet deal in a place where crunchtime was a recurring theme. As we got to the end of my first major project, there was more testing to do than hours in the day. I only worked 100 hour weeks 2 weeks in a row, & it was entirely voluntary /3

A couple nights, I went home at 2 a.m. after 14 hour days. It wasn't until the flurry was over and I got paid that I found out Califorinia's double-time statue ends at midnight. I should've gotten out of bed earlier those days instead. /4

I don't know how many hours my supervisor would've expected me to work, but I had every incentive to go above and beyond, both to impress, and to get some extra cash. I knew it wasn't sustainable, but sprints by definition aren't. /5

I was converted to full-time shortly thereafter. The incentive structure was upended. As a salaried, exempt employee, the longer I worked, the less I was paid per hour. Longer hours were still sometimes part of the job, & that was fine. But I doubt I worked more than 70h again /6

As I described the team I managed in the previous thread, our lives revolved around the macOS (née Mac OS X) release cycle. Before we synchronized with the iPhone release cycle due to the same underlying code, this varied from months to years. /7 https://x.com/treblewoe/status...

The switch to the annual release cadence made all the questions of long hours much more predictable and hence manageable. We had two major crunch-times each release: 1) after the first developer seed at WWDC, and 2) the month prior to shipping the OS. /8

As a manager responsible for app quality, I had multiple overlapping & competing goals: 1) Ship macOS with zero significant app regressions 2) Ensure no bad bugs slipped through the cracks 3) Not burn out or abuse my guys, and spread the misery around evenly when necessary. /9

One of the things I told every potential new hire during interviews was that these crunch times would come, and they would be losing some nights a weekends. It was simply part of the job. But I also told them that we worked smarter every year to prevent burnout. /10

Our major downtime effort after the new OS shipped was improving our processes & building new tools & techniques to streamline whatever the worst parts of the grind were. Software updates were always going, so downtime is a euphemism here. Sometimes it just meant one guy. /11

We weren't the golden children like iOS so I wasn't getting any more headcount, no matter how much our workload increased. Despite handling far more bugs than our iOS counterparts, and far with far better results, I had a order of magnitude smaller team & fewer hours worked. /12

The parallel iOS team was initially & significantly staffed up by the "Apple Genius" cream of the crop. They were guys a lot like I had been coming in: non-engineers, willing to do anything to prove themselves. The difference is that became their entire m.o. /13

Throwing more bodies & more hours at the problem worked, & it's what they knew, so it's mostly how they ran things. We had no such luxury of resources, and I had zero tolerance for burning guys out when it wasn't necessary. This was one of the major cultural rifts iOS caused. /14

The bottom line is that we were all making good money in cushy jobs where the hours sometimes stunk. It was a fair tradeoff. But when companies create a culture of using up and spitting out human beings for profit, that is simply a choice; it's not an inevitability. /15

Every year, I made sure my team got better at how we did everything, & made sure we had the tools & resources we needed to do everything as efficiently as possible. By the time I left, my team was a finely oiled machine. Weekend work became a lightweight, alternating task. /16

Despite handling 10-12k bugs a year, burnout was non-existent on my team. We abolished heroics & death marches. No one ever came close to the kind of hours I subjected myself to as a contractor. That crap is unsustainable & inhuman. Anyone telling you otherwise is a monster. /end

Oh, one addendum: that holographic "MAC OS Software" sticker on the back of my badge in the photo was our "free dinner" ticket at Cafe Macs. During designated crunchtimes, dinners were comped to encourage longer hours. $15 worth of free food for two more hours of labor lol

@treblewoe The anti-family animus behind this discourse should not be ignored.

@skenzyme Absolutely. As a single guy who just got there with nothing to come home to, long hours had far fewer downsides.

@treblewoe I’m having a very hard time buying the 100 hour week. You need sleep. If you don’t, you’re not going to be very useful. I don’t think 80 is possible either, even if you lived at Apple. Not saying you didn’t bill them this much, just saying you couldn’t have broken the laws of

@AlexEdgerton I have no interest in convincing you. I badged in and out. I got about 60 hours of sleep two weeks straight. I did nothing else. What do you think you're accomplishing by calling me a liar?

@treblewoe If I ever need a competent manager for anything, I am giving you a call. This is all the resume I need to see.

@treblewoe Story time 2014 I was working at 3am tracking to dubdub, I badge in Within 10 s of me badging, my phone rings It's NPS: "Sir, these aren't your normal working hours. Are you under duress? Cough 3x if you are." "No man I'm cool" "Thank you. <click>" Apple NPS does not play

@treblewoe I started as a Volt contractor myself in Austin for iOS support. Did the same busted my ass working crazy hours to get badged after doing a backfill for tier 2. I wouldn’t have my job today if it wasn’t for my Apple days.

@treblewoe I can’t tell you how much I love hearing about your experience at Apple. I must say you did a great job too. Your time at Apple was when Apple was at its best.

@treblewoe I appreciate this. I do the same for my team. Leader: First in, last out and protect the family. Tech bros should chat with respected military leaders. Time to grind and time to rest.

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