Every employee who leaves Apple becomes an ‘associate’

Future employers will ask your level and if Apple tells them something different they're going to think you're lying. I can see it being problematic when applying to Government or enterprise roles. They will do their due diligence and might rescind an offer if they find a discrepancy.

I cannot wait to check back in with you when you're trying to get a new job and negotiating salary.

> If I want my employer to know what number Apple assigned me, I’ll tell them.

Literally this article is about employers being like "hmm you told me this number but we don't believe you because Apple says its wrong"

Associate is just another word for employee. I don’t see why Apple should be contributing data to these shady databases of prior salaries and levels.

If a new employer wants to know my level at a previous employer, I’ll tell them. If they want proof then 1) that’s pretty weird but 2) they can give my manager a call.

But if I don’t tell them my level, then I don’t want anyone else to tell them either.

Apple doesn’t consider them to be associates though, that’s the point. Their job titles at Apple AND in the databases are accurate up until they leave the company and only then is their title demoted to Associate.

I can see a weird sort of logic to Apple. Why would they share their judgement about the level of an ex-employee with a potential rival company (rival in case of talent perhaps also product)? Let the employee say "I was Level 5 @ Apple" and have the hiring company verify that the person is at whatever level that implies. Why should Apple allow its rivals piggyback on its own levelling system?

> why should a future employer get to know how much I make?

Wait until you find out that credit agencies already has this info separately.

It was recently here on HN. Look for “work number”.

> If I want my employer to know what number Apple assigned me, I’ll tell them.

I think you're being overly flippant. Every single job I've applied to[1] has done an independent background check[2] - which included calling/emailing past employers and verifying the details I told them meshes with their records on title and duration of employment. Discrepancies here can cause delays, or even cost one an offer, as happened the former Apple engineer in the article. I wouldn't be as dismissive as you are, as the consequences can be quite dire; also I cannot think of any positive reason for the practice, except to punish those who leave Apple. I hope the NLRB and courts throw the book at them.

1. At companies with headcounts ranging from low hundreds to tens of thousands

2. Including international calls across timezones. The investigators - often a 3rd party - are diligent, but often clueless/ignorant when the particulars of a case are different to what they are used to. This has caused delays for me in the past, and it was expensive for me because I had quit my old job after accepting the offer, and was unemployed for longer than I had planned.

> if you're not a manager I might consider that an associate.

Maybe that's your personal definition. Generally, 'associate' is the title you will get if you get an entry level retail job. There's nothing 'wrong' with the title if that's what Apple internally called everyone.

If they change it when you leave(specially if it turns out that they do that when you leave in bad terms), that's malicious.

Ultimately, this means that: you say you are a Senior Software Engineer (or whatever title Apple internally uses); the new prospective employer tries to verify and it comes back as an "associate".

i.e. they think your Apple experience was working some entry level job in one of their stores and you are trying to claim you were an engineer.

In that case it is interesting that the law does not mandate this.

In France you get a paper with the name of the company and the dates of your employment. This is the only information a company can provide, and confirm when requested.

The concept of referrals does not exist in practical terms (I had to give some once for an American company and gave good friends who said I was wonderful) - because they would not work.

All this is closely regulated by law.

This article has nothing to do with employer/employee requested job verification.

After some military contractors in some countries got targeted and hurt, most European defence companies started asking their employees they don't advertise who you work for and where, especially in the Internet, and especially on social media.

You're advised not to wear company swag and all company-provided transport (buses) are required not to say or write the name of the company when picking up employees. You're also advised to avoid giving a precise Linked In profile. Even your role makes you a phishing (or worse) target.

You'd get frequent opsec training refreshes explaining all the new tricks and how such and such got roped in from their SM presence.

Lots of finance prop shops do this too

sounds like something out of the CIA

I'm sure a non-zero number of ex-Apple interns will try putting "Senior Software Engineer" on their resume for a $350,000 director gig at a startup.

The easiest way to get 20% more at a new gig is by inflating your salary by 20% at your old gig.

Where does it say that they wipe it?

This is only for 3rd party databases.

How about being asked to screen shoot part of employee agreement

This was my first thought. Apple is notoriously secretive, even internally. They likely see this as a way to prevent folks from reverse engineering through job titles what former employees were working on. (Agreed that it's super shitty and likely overkill, but I think this is a better explanation than outright trying to screw former employees.)

In this case, though, why not replace the job title with "Employee"?

>As an aside, does anyone know how accurate the reporting was/is on the "Worldwide Loyalty Team"? Looking back it seems absurd, to the point where it makes more sense to me as a myth than fact.

It's not credible from a fact-checking analysis. For reference, the publication that broke the news was Gizmodo [0]. The major issues are:

i) The source of the information is not identified on the record, and is just listed as "Tom" (no last name).

ii) There is only one anonymous interview for the article, and no supporting documentation referenced in the article to justify the claims.

iii) No other publication appears to verify the information independently, such as Apple Insider [1], for such a major story. This includes newspapers that maintain a reputation for fact-checking and responsibility (e.g. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal), where it should should be feasible to verify if this was widely known within Apple.

[0] https://gizmodo.com/apple-gestapo-how-apple-hunts-down-leaks...

[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/09/12/15/apples_worldwide_...

Exactly this has happened. People have long inferred various things about long-term Apple projects, such as self-driving cars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_electric_car_project), based on the hires they've made (including acquihires). Coupled with Apple's noted paranoia, I can well see this being the reason why they would refuse to disclose someone's team, or even their specialism or seniority.

If it is for secrecy then why not delete the information and inform those who ask they do not hold such information? The issue was the discrepancy when a third party tried to verify, and I'm sure third parties would quickly learn to work around the fact?

Instead making everyone associates is like an error propagating far from it's call site until an exception (this article) is raised.

They dont want others to pouch their employees - so they screw those who leave by deleting their title?

It's a really good point about Apple willfully using an Experian service as part of this strategy. As to defamation, I don't think that's clear. Apple is intentionally using the term to be as legally vague as possible about how it externally reports its past connection to its ex-payees. This is mostly liability management, essentially saying less that can't be called false, instead of the defamatory tactic of saying more that is not true.

  as·so·ci·ate (n)
  1. a partner or colleague in business or at work.
  2. a person with limited or subordinate membership of an organization.
  3. joined or connected with an organization or business.
                 - Source: Google search results fed by Oxford Languages

> Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies

Also, those third parties don't have to take Apple's word. Equifax and Lexis-Nexis (named in the article) are selling a data product, which is undermined by Apple's bad behavior. Shouldn't these companies have an incentive to provide accurate data?

This is where it gets interesting. I looked up the products in question, and they are VERY careful to talk about streamlining workflows, and connecting you to previous employers without every making claims about the accuracy of the data provided by thos employers.

Equifax's "The Work Number can deliver an automated income and employment verification solution that streamlines the transfer of information between employers and verifier."[0] They do this "thanks to a powerful alliance partnerships with many of the top payroll and HCMs". They are clearly just sloshing data out of payroll systems into a proprietary database. You'd think they'd notice when a large employer overwrites everyone's title on their last paycheck, but they make no claims about quality control on this data.

The article specifically mentions Inverify, which is owned by Equifax. Their verification services page[2] also focuses on efficiency ("Throw it over the Fence"). They claim to "[gather] your electronic data and [upload] relevant information so you do not have to search for employee data from multiple sources." Note that there's nothing in there about quality control. I suspect Inverify exists to provide a services layer over the The Work Number data product.

LexisNexis doesn't make their offerings as obvious. I found this pdf for LexisNexis Screening Solutions[3]. They say "We have developed relationships with many employers and will make those difficult calls for you, thereby simplifying your job." One way they help make those difficult calls is that they "call and verify previous employment with each source." So that's a data quality claim, but they're still focused on just parroting whatever the upstream employer says.

You would expect that products like this would have rigorous, automated anomaly detection procedures in place. As an employer, I don't want to waste time figuring out why this otherwise great senior dev was an "associate" at Apple. I want my verification provider to, at minimum, tell me "heads up, Apple is a fickle and vindictive employer so you can't really trust this." Of course it would be even BETTER if they said "our professional assessment is they were a Level 4. We believe that because that's what the previous 200 paystubs and 4 W2 forms said before they screwed with the data after their departure."

If you're gonna build a terrifying data business, at least be good at it!

[0] https://workforce.equifax.com/resource/-/resource/employment...

[1] https://workforce.equifax.com/solutions/employment-verificat...

[2] https://inverify.net/our-services/verification-services.aspx

[3] https://www.lexisnexis.com/literature/pdfs/EXP_Previous_Empl...

I don't necessarily agree that what they are doing is unethical. It seems more a preservation of their business practices. Which is understandable and actually the ethical thing to do since Apple has no obligation to help others, including competitors. There is also an argument that what they are doing is the ethical thing to do by not feeding data into yet another mass surveillance and control system to manage and control people's lives. Imagine you defy or upset the regime … poof … your official employment history says you have no history and are a liar. You are a non-person now.

What is unethical though is the wholesale surveillance and monitoring without any kind of control by those who are being surveilled and monitored, regarding their "employment history" (not all that different than how slave owners would "horse trade" slaves). I realize that many will find that hyperbolic, but in essence it is the same thing going on, the force with the power is negotiating and conversing and managing their resources without those resources being aware, having any input, or being able to even object to it being done. Those resources that are treated like that are not just cattle that may have desirable traits, or slaves that have a stout back, they are humans … Human Resources.

I keep trying to get people to understand that the reality of the matter is that what we call salvery was never actually ended, it was simply pivoted because the ruling class realized there was a far more efficient, effective, lower cost, less hassle and wildly more profitable way of achieving the same exploration … just abstract the means and methods of control with money, regulations, incentives, etc. Why spend all day trying to force people to work against their will where you get marginal returns from a small set of human resources, when you can just construct a system where you can get major increases in returns from a/the majority of society.

It is not a coincidence that this evolution from industrial and agricultural slavery started shortly after the Civil War in the USA. Now we have whole global corporations run by like self-governing slave hives, including a very similar foreman/overseer structure that trickles down to the lowly digital field workers in the code factories, call centers, and cheerful retail stores.

>Apple does not have to share their database with these third party companies, but not only do they choose to do so they also make sure the information is wrong. Apple is, essentially, being unethical on two levels

By giving out wrong personal information, the argument could be made that they are protecting privacy.

I do not believe saying "associate" is wrong, though. It's a term that is commonly used by HR to refer generically to anyone who works for a company. If you haven't encountered it, it may feel foreign to you, especially since Apple is a retail company and you may be conflating it with "retail associate." That's not what it means though.

"Employee" is a term fraught with legal and other liability in it's use (think Uber drivers - are they employees or contractors?). HR departments will refer to everybody as “associates” to mitigate risk. If Apple wanted to confirm employment, but not divulge titles, they could say associate.

Similarly, Starbucks uses "partners." Do you really think a barista is a part-owner in Starbucks and that's why they're called a partner?

You're really bending over backwards here to justify really bad behavior. Apple is actually bringing on liability by lying about what people's titles really were. They aren't saying "nothing", they're actually defaming their previous employees by lying about their level.

Additional titles can sometimes be used to determine business strategy or product development, Apple can be ultra secretive about both. I suspect that would be part of the official rational for doing it.

The the title would have been changed to “former employee”, not “associate”, for which the only conceivable reason seems to be to confuse.

the employee's title while working there doesn't represent any liability that I can think of, and changing it post employment and lying about their title to anyone inquiring seems like a liability instead. Seems like they're trying to sabotage people's careers if they leave apple.

Title is nothing subjective. In fact, titles and levels can be matched between two companies easily.

Anyway, this is not what Apple is doing. They are downgrading everyone by default, which is akin to providing false information about a former employee.

> Wouldn't there be other ways for you to prove you were a "Level 4" or whatever at Apple and not an associate? An offer letter from Apple?

Having gone through this with several employers, the largest company doing this verification is HireRight. HireRight is BEYOND incompetent at every single level. They refuse documentation such as offer letters on company letterhead to prove a title. The only documentation they accept from applicants is highly sensitive tax documentation from the IRS, which of course does not contain titles but incidentally reveals compensation details they can hoover up into their database but is not relevant to the purpose they were hired by your future employer to do.

If you think credit reporting agencies in the US are Machiavellian and maliciously incompetent, wait until you deal with employment verification firms, they're worse and often the same corporate entities (as noted in the article, another large one is WorkNumber owned by Equifax). These entities put most of the work onto the candidate, display no competence or care for accuracy whatsoever, and generally deliver intentionally misleading or inaccurate results to your future employer. It's so pervasive, that my own complaints to my recruiter were heeded and understood because in their words "oh their reports are always wrong about employment history, we only pay attention to the criminal background check part."

So, in short, no you can't simply provide a valid offer letter showing the title you were hired with to prove that title or to prove a promotion.

You can try (especially if you know ahead of time) but background check is done by a third party. Recruiters and interviewers don't care until background check flags it. You can try to be upfront about it, but it just creates a weird situation and they will defer to the 3rd party background check anyway. Any evidence you may share with the background check company is not present on the final background report (since it might contain salary information which would be illegal i guess). It's a little bit like credit reporting, if your bank misreports in a few places you are f*ed.

Your new employer can believe you? If they are hiring simply based on a couple words from a different company, then there is going to be risk for them.

Maybe covered by NDA or could be forged?

I don't know how it works if you accept the NDA and get promoted within.

With the way outrage flows unchecked these days can you blame them? Someone can be a C-level one day and the focus of bad press the next day, and the entire world holds their brand accountable. Everyone has a non-binding, non-committal relationship to their employer, and the employer is all too happy to cut-and-run to save face by the plausible ability to say "not our guy", or "this is just a support tech".

It's the 2022 form of "Your call is important to us, sit tight and someone will be with you shortly." It is a viable strategy straight out of the 2022 playbook because it works to "placate and wait" while the news cycle moves on to the next scandal-du-jour.

No one in the article or in these comments is saying that what Apple is doing is illegal or violates a contract. It's just a scummy thing to do.

I agree, I find the whole "DB of past employers, title, salary, etc" to be quite disgusting. Furthermore if you are just using your past title to swing a new job then I question your ability. Prove that you can perform at the level you want to be hired at. If companies are too stupid to find a way to test for that (or too stupid to have a probationary period to find people that made it past initial screens) then that's not a company I care to work for. Hire me because I have the skills you need, not because I held some made-up rank at another company.

The problem is not that Apple obscures the job title.

The problem is that Apple supplies the job title, but sometimes it is the incorrect value.

"Well, he went on medical leave, so we changed his title to Mainstream Medicine Denier and then Organ System Pentester."

Reference: https://apecsec.org/steve-jobs-liver-transplant-controversy/