Apple's Secrecy, From the Inside Out

Glassdoor.com's employee reviews can be a fascinating lens for looking at any company story. So
Glassdoor's lead developer recently used it to make a point about the brouhaha over the strict NDAs that Apple made iPhone app developers sign -- a practice that Apple last week ended.

Glassdoor's Russ Lussier wrotethis:

The culture of secrecy at Apple is highly apparent when you read the 250
Apple Reviews contributed by Apple Employees on Glassdoor. Apple employees are 15 times more likely to use the word "secrecy" or
"secret" when describing their company compared to employees at other companies. 15.9% of the Apple Reviews use these words compared to just
1% at other companies.

Here are some examples:

Secrecy hurts the company - employees are given limited information about important company news and events." -- Concierge in New York, NY

The secrecy is beyond fastidious and is in fact insultingly petty and political, and often is an impediment to actually getting one's work done." -- Senior Software Engineer in Cupertino, CA

The developer goes on to say that he wrote Steve Jobs before Apple dumped the NDA, and Jobs wrote back saying the whole thing was blown out of proportion by a few bloggers. For what it's worth, Jobs has one of the highest approval ratings of any CEO on Glassdoor, at 90%. But the "overall rating" of what it's like to work at Apple is a 3.8, which is about equal to the ratings at Microsoft and Cisco, and well behind Google's 4.1 rating. For Portfolio.com: Tech Observer by Kevin ManeyRelated Links

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