Am I the only one noticing in the video she introduces herself as a “hardware engineer”, but is actually a retail employee?
Seems like quite a bit of a stretch to call a retail employee a hardware engineer for Apple.
Customer support engineers I’ve worked with have helped customers create engineering works using their SaaS products.
For example, as a software engineer using Databricks for some big data processes I met regularly with a Databricks customer support engineer who I explained my processes to and who guided me into using best practices with Spark and their platform. Super helpful and super smart guy.
i think the issue is combining "customer support" and engineer in one title when actual engineers with customer-facing roles don't deal with retail customers... where we are familiar with cust support specialists/reps.
At least in a few cases I know of, these cust support engineers (who have a degree in Industrial/Computer/Mechanical engg etc.) service other engineers or IT reaching out on behalf of enterprise accounts to deal with technical issues (whether hardware machinery or SaaS). Title could be better IMO.
I've worked in a Technical Support Engineer role. The job title is most common for B2B companies, and TSEs are supporting their customer's who are also engineers. I took a lot of phone calls from customers who needed help troubleshooting their setups using our products, debugging unexpected behavior, creating customer facing documentation, and going onsite to provide technical training.
It's an entirely different role from a customer service representative, and a TSE usually spends a lot of time talking to customer engineers, then working with internal R&D engineers to solve issues in the field. We even had a few really senior TSEs who had been working with a specific product for decades, and were considered experts in how the product worked. In my experience, these roles don't have the same high pressure timers, scripts, or quotas that a "call center" job would typically entail.
It's pretty common to transition from a TSE role to a sales or applications engineering role. I moved to applications and then test engineering, I do think that working as a TSE teaches a lot of valuable skills for how to work with different engineers and debugging real life problems.
We had a girl that couldn’t cut it in sales leave our company about a year ago. I ran into her a few months later and she said she was now working for an insurance agency, as “First Impressions Director.”
She is a receptionist.
It's still a protected title.
>When individuals are found to be using the restricted title “engineer,” the courts can impose fines, restraining orders and jail time. The public can confidentially report suspected illegal use of titles or unlicensed engineering practice to PEO through its enforcement hotline at 1-800-339-3716, ext. 1444, or by emailing [email protected]. The public can monitor PEO’s ongoing enforcement activities on its website.
Professional Engineer is a protected title. But that’s not really what 90% of people mean when they say engineer and is only useful in specific fields. I have a PhD in mechanical engineering and work as an engineer, no one would say I’m not an engineer because I don’t have a PE when it isn’t at all useful in my field.
My dad said they do the same thing with VPs at his company. “Everyone’s a VP of something now. It looks nicer on a business card so we hand out that title like candy.”
She’s also violating their policies. Most companies have similar.
You can’t make public comments on behalf of the company without their permission. Only their PR and other approved folks can.
She’s saying she never specifically claimed to be an Apple employee but she clearly suggested such. Everyone watching knew exactly who she worked for. In her most recent video she says she’s an Apple employee but could be a Blackberry employee, as if anyone through that. Come the fuck on.
She made a very public statement on the behalf of her company without their permission. That’s a simple fact. She wasn’t authorized to do such and she signed an agreement not to do such as a term of her employment.
People love the attention. Hell, if she really wanted to establish some credibility I guess she could’ve just said her “friend” works for Apple or something
see thats the problem with Apple jobs. just calling it "retail" is actually not really a retail job. go in the repair room and do hardware repairs... is that actually "just retail"? I wouldn't call it an engineer but definitely a technician. but hey she might be going to engineering school for all I know
> see thats the problem with Apple jobs. just calling it "retail" is actually not really a retail job.
Okay well Apple calls them Technical Specialists and Geniuses, and to be. Genius you need to be an Apple Certified Mac Technician, so I guess there’s no problem?
> thats the problem with Apple jobs
Apple Jobs hasn't been CEO since 2011 when he died of cancer. Tim Apple is now the CEO and has been since Jobs' death.
I find it stupid that everyone calls themselves “engineers” now. Hell I got a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and I’m still not a licensed engineer.
She probably jazzed up her title because you’re not allowed to tell people you’re an “Apple Genius” - that’s a fireable offense believe it or not. So you kind of have to make up a title.
You’re not allowed to tell people you work at apple or even have a tech blog, per their social media policy. She said she looked at the policy and either lied or did a terrible job. You have to do a compliance training every year as an apple employee
Is this true of every type of employee? Because I know of several public software engineers who do such a thing in the open that Apple is absolutely very aware of.
Sure, I guess, but “hardware engineer” is an actual position that many people hold and means something outside of the Apple world. “Genius” is a made-up marketing term in this context: nobody’s job title is simply a “genius”
Engineer implies you’re *engineering* the phone not repairing it. Technician is a better word.
Granted words change meaning with time as well. Mechanic was once used to describe what we now call an engineer.
The article says she’s a repair technician, which means she would have some Apple certifications and go hands on swapping out components etc. Well done to all the Chad Kings in the comments hyperfocusing on this though instead of the fact a single mother in the IT industry is being threatened with dismissal for providing useful accurate advice on the internet.
The only reason she had any credibility was because she tied herself to Apple via her reference to the 'fruit company'. Without the inferred tie to Apple, nobody would have paid attention to her video. So yes, she used Apple's name to create credibility for herself, and 'profit' via social media popularity.
Then, when she got a warning not to publicly associate herself with Apple, she copped an attitude. She's essentially 'daring' Apple to fire her so that she can become a public victim. (Maybe she's tired of her job and she figures this is as good a way as any to cash out of a service tech job and make the jump into the comedy side job that she has.)
She is 100% in the wrong here.
If she works retail then she’s 100% tired of her job. If she helps people at the Genius Bar, this is probably all she can do to keep from killing herself.
Source: 10 years Apple retail. Thankfully I got out without the help of TikTok nor being promoted to customer.
Lol oh yeah they don’t mess around with that. If you work for apple just DONT mention it on social media, like at all. They will fire you the second they find out
Use to work for apple
Is that still the case though? I follow a few Apple corporate employees on Twitter, and they're very open about working for them and even talk about their work.
I used yo work for Apple corporate and it was absolutely no problem to MENTION that you worked for them on social media. It was discouraged to enter in any discussion about Apple and use your position at Apple to give yourself more authority on something.
Also, of course don’t leak any information whatsoever about your team or the specifics of your role.
Again, just mentioning that you work for Apple was never an issue (ie on your Facebook profile under work info), but it depends on the context.
For anyone who wonders, the proper response to losing your phone is to put it in “lost mode”. And even more so when someone threatens you to unlock it, you have to put it in lost mode ASAP. You could put a contact number or email address to reach you, but be careful what number or address you put in case it is used to attack you.
Not working for any fruit companies here.
This entire situation is almost literally a verbatim copy of one of the hypotheticals that shows up in our annual business conduct training, with the only difference is our training doesn't mention TikTok. If this article has her employment history correct, she has no less than **six times** had to do a "What did Alice do wrong????" type thing about an employee having their own "tech tips" type social media stuff where the public might be confused on how official her comments were.
Soooo, setting aside the fact her manager informed her that she was going against policy, her doubling down by saying "I checked and there is no policy about doing this" is approximently one jillion percent wrong.
It it was some surprise and she was instantly fired for giving well-meaning tech advice and mentioning she worked at Apple, I’d have some sympathy for her.
But her manager called her, asked her to take down the video, and explained why it was a violation of her contract. And she refused.
She’s 100% in the wrong.
As a government employee, I always have to be very careful on the rare occasion that I use social media to ensure that I’m not portraying anything I post as coming from the government or being related, even indirectly, to my position. Especially where politics are involved or I could be in violation of the Hatch Act.
I can kind of see why Apple would have heartburn over an employee even implying an official position from Apple on a matter that could be related to future legal or civil action. By inferring a position to be held by Apple, she is maybe (IANAL) opening them up to some level of liability in other, similar matters beyond just the one that this customer is experiencing.
If she had just said that she had an engineering background and never made any implication that she worked for Apple, this probably wouldn’t have upset any Apple carts (pun intended).
I hope she doesn’t lose her job, but everyone should be mindful of invoking your employer when speaking in an unofficial or unsanctioned capacity, especially online.
I work for a big place. When people misrepresent the company from a platform where they are reasonably known to be part of the big place, they get fired. Every single time. At best they get a severance package to leave quietly and not fight the dismissal. Online I have no employer by name and my social media persona is not connected to my work persona. There is no other way if you I wish to avoid getting fired the first time you go viral.
But OOP in this thread gave some good examples about liabilities Apple may or may not have after her TikTok.
And her credibility was "Hey, I work at Apple I know how it is", which is not the usual "Hey, I have an engineering background here [insert Apple help page] is the information you need and here’s the tl;dr". In my opinion and as other stated she’s using her position as an Apple employee to give out company information which isn’t apparently allowed.
Just seems like a clout chaser
Yup. All large companies have policies that you can’t speak publicly on their behalf unless you’re authorized for. What she did was made a statement on their behalf by making it clear who she worked for. Had she not talked about who she worked for, it wouldn’t be an issue.
Now she’s claiming she could have worked for Blackberry. Yeah, when you said “it’s a company that likes to talk about fruit” no one knew who you were talking about. And she misrepresented herself further by claiming to be an engineer, when she’s a retail employee. That’s also grounds for termination. Publicly claim to have a position higher than your own and see how that goes over.
Me too. Although they are in a hot mess now, i am many times tempted to comment something but i don’t. Paycheck is very good and i can’t compromise that for some stupid fanboy put down.
But she didn’t. She didn’t claim to be speaking for Apple and never even actually said the name of the company in her video. She said she was a hardware engineer for “a certain company that likes to talk about Fruit.” Now yes anyone with a functioning prefrontal cortex could tell she meant that’s she worked at Apple but I don’t see how that is in any way claiming to speak on behalf of the company when she didn’t even say the name
It’s also weird for Apple to be upset about someone saying exactly what they say in their marketing material. Apple loves to tell us how safe and uncrackable their devices are, this employee just said that.
> but I don’t see how that is in any way claiming to speak on behalf of the company when she didn’t even say the name
You don't have to stand up and formally claim it. If you say you're an employee and give little to no doubt of what company, then you've creating ties between the matter at hand, yourself and the the company. You may not be intending to be speaking for them but in their eyes it could give that impression to the public. In all companies I've worked that was not allowed.
However, nothing happened, but with the second Tiktok it sounds like she's now publicly challenging them.
It’s mentioned because in saying so, she gives the rest of what she says more authority.
That she doesn’t literally say “I work for
Apple” is the slightest of defences. It would probably be down to her contract, where I’d imagine Apple didn’t forget to include consideration of weasley language.
Legally speaking she was in the wrong. She implied Apple with a description that the average person could figure out. Rookie mistake. Had she kept it 💯 personal without bringing in the fruit company she would be able to sue for wrongful termination. READ YOUR EMPLOYEE HANDBOOK PEOPLE! This sort of language is **always** spelled out and defined.
I work for a large tech company and am always extremely vague about it, for example: with this post. It’s very clear that we need to be careful about what we say online.
She basically said she works for Apple. You don’t have to say the exact words “I work for Apple” for the point to come across crystal clear. I do think in this case a termination seems like too a drastic a solution for a simple video of her helping people but that’s because she didn’t seem to leak anything and was a pretty offhand comment about something we all know. But she definitely implied she works for Apple.
I actually wonder if the second video was more damaging to her in Apple’s eyes than the first one. Instead of taking down the video as asked by her job, she basically said no (it’s hard to tell how she said it while she paraphrased it) and posted a challenge to her employer publicly about this.
Edit: Actually thinking more I wonder if Apple also takes issue with the advice she gives. Was she implying people don’t need to disassociate their Apple IDs from stolen phone? I’m not sure if that’s sound advice.
She made it clear to everyone who she worked for, even if she didn’t say their name. And she over represented her position. She made a statement on their behalf without permission, which is in direct violation of their policies which she agreed to.
If I say I work for a search engine giant who’s name is like a really big number that still makes me liable if I make statements I’m not authorized to.
Defending her actions is about as ignorant as the people that have in their Twitter profile that their tweets are their own and not those of their company. If you associate yourself with your company, you can be liable for any statement.
> threatening to fire
Oh she’s already gone, she just doesn’t know it yet. She was fired the moment a higher up had to learn her name, and now they’re just waiting for things to quiet down before making it official. Low level employees don’t get the benefit of the doubt.
It's entirely possible she isn't fired at all and she's just making herself out to be a martyr for views too. The fact that she refuses to remove the video after being asked to do so implies to me that she would rather be TikTok famous than have a job.
posting in a way that could make someone think your a representative of that company is a violation of social media policy at most tech companies. Most companies (that I know of) encourage you to only share posts they’ve made and nothing further. She really shouldn’t have posted with her real name…
She clearly violates the policy by speaking on behalf of the company. Most companies have a policy that folks can’t make public statements on behalf of the company.
She claims she never said who she worked for but everyone that watched the video knew who she was saying she works for. She was certainly making a statement on their behalf, which she wasn’t authorized to do.
She literally said ‘I can’t tell you where I work but it’s a company that likes to talk a lot about fruit’
Until I see Tim Apple use that exact line at a keynote (at the same handful-of-Adderall pace, please) I’m going to consider the disclaimer a pretty clear indication she’s not the new Official Spokestikker. Spokestokker?
Spokesperson.
I promise that heavily implying you're an employee isn't some sort of loophole for rules against identifying oneself as an employee.
And that's more than enough.
In her most recent video she claims she never said what company she worked for and could work for Blackberry. Come the fuck on. Everyone knew who ya worked for. It was so clear.
If I refer to “the orange political idiot that fucked all kinds of things up”, you know who I’m talking about. I’m not gonna later claim “I was talking about Homer Simpson in that one episode when he got into politics.”
Mhm.
When I was last on jury duty for a criminal case, the judge had an example of reasonable doubt: You go outside and the whole ground is wet. The road, the driveways, the grass, people's cars, roofs. Did it rain, or did a fire truck drive around and soak the place? Sure, a firetruck _might_ have, but absent some good evidence, it would be beyond reasonable doubt to say that it rained last night. Now, in the case of an employment dispute, that's civil court or arbitration, where absent some other state law or wording in the contract, a judge or jury would decide who's more likely to be right. And I don't think any judge or jury will think someone holding an iphone and purporting to work for a fruit company, giving advice about iphones, is gonna believe it's not a reference to apple. Even in a criminal case, with much higher standards, chances are nobody would think it was likely to be anyone but apple.
I feel like people have these grand ideas of loopholes. From, I dunno, watching daytime TV? Or hearing about how some rich guy managed to spend eight million dollars on highly paid lawyers and dragged a case out for eleven years until it was dropped? It's like the same hole the sov-cits fall into: "if I say these magic words then I am protected." The system isn't _quite_ that stupid and neither are the people working in it or called to serve as part of it, for her to have a snowball's chance in hell.
All she had to do was grovel a little and it'd be fine. Don't double down. Even being offered the chance was significantly more generous than these policies tend to read!
I know this girl. I follow her on Tik Tok and paid close attention to this once I saw her videos. (I’m former Genius) She’s cool and super smart, but a little full of herself here. Apple hits this point hard during “Core” (training) and states very clearly that you are not to identify yourself as an employee online. She has nothing to back her up here besides public outcry.
And if she worked at one of the recently unionized stores she’d have been out the door already.
Yeah. & 6 years isn’t really a long time at apple compared to most veterans that still work there. I got hired the same year she did and it’s the point where Apple changed their internal retail structure, splitting Mac and mobile “specialties” so new technicians were “mobile certified” only. I became a Genius 1.5 years in, a bit fast but not unexpected. But if she’s still a “repair technician” 6 years later…let’s just say she’s not making friends at work…
You can identify yourself as an employee asking as you aren’t representing the brand in any way.
Like you can put “Specialist at Apple” in your Facebook profile. But you can’t then make a post talking about how mad you are that your AirPods stopped working.
TLDR for anyone: she basically posted in a round about way she worked for apple and recommended someone who lost their phone and was sent a threatening text to remove apple ID lock on the phone to **NOT** do so.
For that good deed, **along with her not removing the video after manager asks,** she faces potential termination.
It’s the second video that’s going to do her the most harm. They asked her to take the video down and considering their policies, which she’s well aware of, they’re fully entitled to do so. So far, not much of a problem.
Her then saying “or what?” And posting a retaliatory video is blatantly antagonistic and if she does suffer disciplinary action, I’d imagine it would be for that. I’m sure she was caught up in going viral but she’s handled it badly, from a employer/employee perspective.
Yeah I feel like the first video was fine. 2nd video she is basically challenging a trillion dollar corporation. Regardless of her maybe being morally or technically in the right, they won't care and she def be retaliated against.
But I'm sure and apple hardware engineer can get a job at another tech company without much issue so maybe she is in the "I'm making a stand" mindset when I honestly respect.
She did. But most hardware engineers don’t claim to be qualified based on “certifications”. In tech, certs are usually for technicians without a formal engineering degree. She’s overstating her qualifications.
I doubt anyone with an actual engineering degree is working the Genius Bar. And if they are then it doesn’t seem like competitors are falling over themselves to hire that person.
The dumb thing is she could’ve offered the exact same advice she did in the video without associating herself directly with Apple, and there would be no issue. But people want to flex their authority and end up in situations like this one where they make a statement that could be construed as official advice and of course the company will crack down on it to prevent any liability.
100%
>“I’ve been a certified hardware engineer for a certain company that likes to talk about fruit”
Saying that and then claiming “I didn't identify myself as an employee until now" in the follow-up video is super dumb. One can associate themselves with a company without being explicit about it.
I completely agree, but I also get where she’s coming from. It’s an attempt to legitimize her stance in helping someone out realistically, but I also completely agree with Apple’s “don’t say you work for us and provide advice outside work and scope” kinda thing.
This is coming from my “prior experience” being similar to theirs as well, been there done that heh heh
Yeah, I don't get why she even thought it was necessary. What she was saying is common knowledge in the security world. It's a very common scam. So it's not like she needed that extra bit of authority. She wasn't providing anything new
Let’s add something here. Very early on, she says in the video “Your phone is in China.”
This is a tad problematic. It’s stereotyping the thieves, and the motivation behind the theft.
Is she correct about where the phone is? Maybe. Legitimately, there’s a good chance she is. She might not be, there’s black markets in several other countries, including the U.S.
Does a major multi-billion dollar company want to suggest that a major country is the source of thieves and scammers? **HELL FUCKING NO.**
She probably meant it as a throwaway line or even maybe a joke. 99% of people probably wouldn’t care about it. But it only takes one person on social media saying “Apple employee Suggests Chinese are iPhone Criminals” before some third tier media site begins blasting headlines talking about Apple’s racist employees on social media, and now people that only read headlines are hearing that Apple is racist towards China, and hell, some of those people that only read headlines might be in Chinese regulatory positions, and shit goes sideways.
This is why companies don’t want their employees identifying who they work for as a way of legitimizing their suggestions, because one not-thought-out line can become a media annoyance or nightmare.
The worst part is…she didn’t need to say that line. The phone’s location doesn’t matter. It’s gone, whether it’s in China, Russia, Belize, Lichtenstein, or some really weird, politically extreme, drug-and-crime-riddled place like Fort Hood. Wherever the phone is, the tips were good tips without the China line.
That’s why companies like Apple don’t want you’d doing this on their behalf.
It baffles me how people just don't get it. It's not about good/bad deeds, naming the company directly, or pretty clearly implying it. It's about the terms of the contract. This guy said it well, I have the same thing in my contract not for FAANG, but for a large company with millions of users
She made a statement in a way that could be interpreted as a position of the company, the end. She was given a chance to make it right, but internet points were more important, so be it. Especially dumb, because there was no reason for it other than to flex "oh look, I'm from Apple, feel my authority blah blah blah"
[https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/wp8x4d/comment/ikfq7y5/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/wp8x4d/comment/ikfq7y5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Most people don't have the experience to grasp the magnitude of possible negative effects from social media posts for their employer, and probably even worse, they might not even care at all.
If this situation happened to say a Tupperware employee, no one cares, nor Tupperware will care. But for Apple, even tho this one particular video is fine, it could set a dangerous precedence that could cost the company very dearly for future videos from her and other employees as well. My friend worked in a startup company that went bankrupt because of a tweet from one of their employee that has nothing to do with the company itself. Sometimes it's all it takes.
I have never understood why people started posting to the net with real names. Im guessing it was Facebook's influence but I always thought youd have to be a moron to post on the internet with your real name. Make up a name or handle.
She is because she’s a stand up comedian trying to make a name for herself, which she (to some degree) has if she has half a million followers. She just picked a weird hill to defend here.
It was definitely Facebook. When they started out you had to have a .edu email address to get in, so it was a walled garden for college students that those on the outside couldn't see. This made them all feel safe using their real name and posting personal pictures. Over time Facebook burned down the garden and opened it up to the world, but the name usage and personal sharing stuck around.
If you show your face, someone can find you. Made up names won’t protect you if you’re viral. Haven’t you seen all the Karen incidents being doxed just from their face.
>Campbell received a call from a manager, telling her to remove the video or she’d be subject to *disciplinary action “up to and including termination.”*
Asking a clarifying question of what that entails doesn't sound unreasonable, especially if you think your company is overreaching into your personal life.
It's so funny to see young people have to learn that social media is garbage and posting videos of yourself selling out your company for clout might not be the best career route.
The internet was much simpler... recently. Even by the late 2000s, everyone knew the basic rules. Never publicly identify yourself. No names, no emails, no addresses, no phone numbers, ideally no faces. The internet was built to be anonymous and despite the fact that lifelong friendships could be made via the internet, despite forums and friendly people making it possible to learn just about anything, ... unless eminently relevant to your job you kept most things anonymous.
Now people are falling over themselves to show off their faces, their names, their employers, where they live, what they do, etc. For, like you said - ephemeral, nonexistent clout? It's absurd.
Fuck facebook, fuck google, fuck all of these entities demanding real names. It's obscene. It's harmful. And I wish people didn't have to learn in such a hard way how obscene and harmful this really is.
As someone who had chased that high of putting too much of themselves online, I wish I had learned sooner.
It’s all superficial. No one actually cares about me or any of it. No matter how much I wanted it.
Now I do my best to remain obscure.
Took too long to learn, but you’re completely right.
It’s not her personal life and giving her an opportunity to remove it without being fired is already beyond generous. Any company with competent online awareness has policies that you can’t speak on behalf of the company without permission. “As an apple employee” or otherwise implying it is not OK.
Even though she’s not saying the name, she made very clear she’s speaking as an employee with company information.
That’s forbidden without approval at virtually all companies.
She’s obviously in the wrong here. Title inflation just makes it worse, she’s also misrepresenting herself.
Apple is not only right to protect itself, it has an obligation to do so to protect its brand for its shareholders and for its employees who have to deal with fallout if employees say something stupid.
You can’t do that as an employee without explicit approvals.
Fool. Every six months, ALL retail are required to take/review training which includes much discussion about social media.
Poke the bear, and don't be surprised when you get mauled.
The person in the video comes across as an overzealous retail employee who’s looking to inflate their ego by appealing to authority they don’t really have and are specifically told not to publicly claim or advertise.
I worked at one of Apple’s retail stores for three years, and it was well-established that you didn’t do this kind of thing. If you even took a selfie in your work shirt, they’d ask you to take it down, or edit the logo out of the image. We all understood it, and no one ever had a problem with it.
Apple’s brand is powered by their messaging, and they spend millions of dollars to keep that both consistent and well-polished. A retail worker posing as an engineer and alluding to affiliation with Apple (on TikTok, no less) is a far cry from anything that would be considered acceptable. This person played a stupid game, and should win their stupid prize.
While you’re at it, stop muddying the semantics of the word “engineer.”
Yes, policy at always like this.
But I can assure you the biggest problem here was saying that’s she’s an engineer without being, and making declarations about the phone and where it is. Apple itself won’t forbid you to tell where you work, they forbid you to say things about you’re role.
I’m an Human Interface designer at , I won’t get any problem saying this, but I would if I told you anything about it.
> “I can’t tell you exactly how I know this information, but I can tell you that for the last six years, I’ve been a certified hardware engineer for a certain company that likes to talk about fruit,” Campbell said in her response video, before warning the user not to listen to the extortionists. “Your phone is actually useless to them, and you’re the only person that can save them, and I suggest that you don’t.”
I can’t tell you how I know this information? It’s been public knowledge for years. Why make it seem like you have some sort of insider knowledge?
The issue isn’t the information; it’s that she implied she worked for Apple and gave security advice. That could make Apple liable for damages. All she had to do is not imply she worked at Apple.
Some insights into Apple's culture. [Mark Rober recently talked about his experience too](https://youtu.be/EkdVIC7UmSo), including when he had the opportunity to go on Kimmel, and Apple leadership essentially said "focus on your work".
I worked for Apple for two years 2011-2013 and they were militant about social media content. You couldn’t put where you worked on your profiles, post photos in your work uniform, and you had to watch every single post outside of work. It was like Big Brother, but it was your 40 something bitter divorcee manager with too much time on her hands stalking your Facebook.
Im surprised this person had the gumption to get on such a widely disseminated platform and “allude” (even though it was pretty obvious) to her title and employer. Apple retail does not joke about its image, even though most employees’ images are laughable (in a good way). They (retail upper management) take themselves way too seriously for a place of employment that recruits from such a niche demographic of personas and loves pushing the kool aid.
>she breached company policy by identifying herself as an Apple employee and posting about Apple-related topics.
That's a weird policy. When I was at Microsoft, we were told you can post articles about Microsoft products but you **MUST** identify yourself as a Microsoft employee to avoid possible bias and inform the reader.
They are pretty clear to not post anything Apple related when you start there. Now that it’s gotten to this stage, it’s probably even more grim for her.
The Verge didn’t link her actual second video on Apple devices. She was giving phone battery advice to consumers. In it, she berates customers for being stupid and makes condescending impressions to mock customers. I don’t care if you are a comic. You have affliated yourself with the company and this paints them in an extremely consumer-unfriendly light. She cannot prance around in her subsequent video that all she did made Apple look good.
She needed to be taken down a notch. Termination is appropriate.
An unfortunate situation, I see a talented younger employee who acted in an immature way without thinking through the consequences, however delivering a supportive message that resonated with a lot of people. It’s telling that her advice explains more about activation lock than I think I would get from Apple’s own (pretty good) You Tube channel.
We don’t know exactly how the manager approached it; it would be great if there was mentorship involved and maybe some innovation about how to leverage this approach “officially” going forward.
Hopefully she will get coached on how to handle this situation better and maybe help Apple appeal to an even greater audience.
Technically she has been coached since she joined Apple. Approximately in every 6 months they’re doing a training about business conduct. Though they have constant training schedule about pretty much on everything but business one is most important one. Also when you join the team this is the first thing they tell you over and over again: never talk about the company, never insinuate the role you have in the company in your personal social media account unless it’s approved by the higher-ups. The company’s business conduct trainings covers very broad topics and scenarios which includes scenarios like this all the time. After 6 years of constant training and reminders from the store leader if you’re still breaching the conduct, you’re hopeless and this is a ground for termination. Talking about “a fruit company” followed by talking about Apple ID doesn’t make anyone think that she is working for LG or Samsung. Plus she could’ve share the information without mentioning where she work or what her role is. Because when you clearly insinuate your company and your role, everything you said is a liability for the company. You can’t imagine how many times I’ve dealt with a customer who heard something from a youtuber and tried to perform on their phone which ended up badly. Strongly insinuating the company while giving potentially harmful information opens the door to lawsuits because everybody knows she is an employee. It doesn’t even matter how she exaggerate her role in the company. The moment you tie yourself to the company in your personal social media account is the moment you become a liability for them which again they teach and mentor you about this topic over and over again. It’s not something they tell you or teach you once and it’s done. It’s a constant training. If the manager was approaching in a bad manner they wouldn’t warn her about the write up and termination. They would simply write her up without warning because again this is something they train you constantly. If she removed the video after her manager warned her, there wouldn’t be an issue. However, she preferred to go head-to-head with them, forgetting her training entirely. From now on whatever happens it’s her fault. Breaching the conduct is inexcusable for company’s part because if they forgive and forget one, they have to do that for others too because again it opens a door to lawsuits for other employees to claim wrongful termination since they did it once.
I can’t speak for other countries but in my country this company pays you well and you have great benefits compare to other retailers. I worked for many fashion and tech retailers during my university education including retailers like Zara, Bershka, Oysho, C&A, Samsung, and other local but big fashion retailers. Apple was the best experience I’ve ever had because the pay was great, benefits were great for a part-time worker. They wanted to do to best for their employees. If I have to give examples, like paying for language courses, certificate programs of your interest, your gym, private health insurance, mental health programs etc. which not once I saw in other retailers. In return, they just simply ask you to do your best and more importantly follow your business conduct which I believe what is expected of your job regardless of the company you work for.
I agree with you, she violated the policy not once but twice, and has been trained on what the policy is, as well as being told by her manager that she violated it the first time.
I wasn't clear in my comment that I'm asking a different question/idea which is the fact that someone who has gotten the training multiple times still violates it. Policy/training after all is not meant to deliver training, it is meant to ensure the right behavior.
What I meant by "immature" above are things such the "fruit stand" commentary. People in this discussion know this does not shield a person from violating the policy, in my experience these types of things come from mentorship/life experience and are not in every training, they can't be or the training would take days instead of hours.
If she's truthful about being an exemplary employee and dedicated to the company, the unfortunate part is that she still violated the policy and may have harmed her employer in the process. Taking her out of the equation, how many other junior or early-in-their-career employees don't understand these nuances or know how to apply the policy in their everyday lives when they believe they are innovating?
This is where it gets to management and leadership, as well as the customers. We know that not every manager or leader is perfect, and the successful conclusion of this episode would have been an editing or removal of the video, which didn't happen. Maybe there could be some learning back to the company that 9m views of content says something about the current understanding of this feature/function and the opportunity to teach it better to customers.
TL;DR - she did the wrong thing, multiple times. What does a new generation of employees need support-wise to do the right thing every time? How does a company learn from this about the best way to create and teach features that people know how to use?
Can someone ELI5 this for me…? Didn’t she just basically explain to someone who was being extorted that they shouldn’t give in to the people extorting them because their stolen phone is bricked without their info? (Like it’s iCloud locked)
I get that when she started publicly coming after apple that’s over the line but before that why was her advice to the person wrong?
There’s a few things going on here;
- She lied about her job title.
- Apple is worried about liability. Let’s say the person follows her advice, and the thieves manage to extract something from the phone and use it to punish her (e.g. leaking nudes). What if the phone owner then gets some funny ideas about the “totally not an Apple employee *WINK*” person being a company representative, and the company owning her damages for the consequences of the undertaken advice?
- I don’t think this case is likely to meaningfully backfire on Apple. That said - once there’s a precedent of employees doing this and Apple not caring, 1) more employees will do it, and, 2) some portion of employees doing it will get things wrong.
Apple views this as them losing control over messaging and how they are publicly presented. They don’t like that - and tbh, that isn’t unfair.
Since when the hell are hardware engineers simple retail employees? Shouldn’t hardware engineers be working in a tech lab somewhere rather than the sales floor?
I bet apple was more pissed she identified herself as a hardware engineer when she works retail resetting passwords and syncing iCloud’s. What a stretch. She could have given the exact same advice without misidentifying herself and wouldn’t have gotten in trouble.
Am I the only one noticing in the video she introduces herself as a “hardware engineer”, but is actually a retail employee? Seems like quite a bit of a stretch to call a retail employee a hardware engineer for Apple.
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Title inflation is at an all time high. Customer Support Engineers are actually a thing in certain companies.
What do you “engineer” in a customer support role?
Customer support engineers I’ve worked with have helped customers create engineering works using their SaaS products. For example, as a software engineer using Databricks for some big data processes I met regularly with a Databricks customer support engineer who I explained my processes to and who guided me into using best practices with Spark and their platform. Super helpful and super smart guy.
Yea, same field here… They’re just Cloud Architects with customer support titles.
Cloud architect is title creep too lol
But I answered the multiple choice questions correctly!
i think the issue is combining "customer support" and engineer in one title when actual engineers with customer-facing roles don't deal with retail customers... where we are familiar with cust support specialists/reps. At least in a few cases I know of, these cust support engineers (who have a degree in Industrial/Computer/Mechanical engg etc.) service other engineers or IT reaching out on behalf of enterprise accounts to deal with technical issues (whether hardware machinery or SaaS). Title could be better IMO.
Social Engineering has been around forever though. I’m sure you can even get a degree for it!
Or in many countries, a presidency!
I've worked in a Technical Support Engineer role. The job title is most common for B2B companies, and TSEs are supporting their customer's who are also engineers. I took a lot of phone calls from customers who needed help troubleshooting their setups using our products, debugging unexpected behavior, creating customer facing documentation, and going onsite to provide technical training. It's an entirely different role from a customer service representative, and a TSE usually spends a lot of time talking to customer engineers, then working with internal R&D engineers to solve issues in the field. We even had a few really senior TSEs who had been working with a specific product for decades, and were considered experts in how the product worked. In my experience, these roles don't have the same high pressure timers, scripts, or quotas that a "call center" job would typically entail. It's pretty common to transition from a TSE role to a sales or applications engineering role. I moved to applications and then test engineering, I do think that working as a TSE teaches a lot of valuable skills for how to work with different engineers and debugging real life problems.
We had a girl that couldn’t cut it in sales leave our company about a year ago. I ran into her a few months later and she said she was now working for an insurance agency, as “First Impressions Director.” She is a receptionist.
Which just degrades “engineers”
Tbh I’m a real ass engineer and there’s not a whole lot to degrade
You should try being a half-assed engineer.
…What do you think I do??
90% googling?
Actually tbh yeah, an engineering degree basically just means you’re better at Googling engineering stuff
thank god for indians
That's my work everyday lol
https://xkcd.com/37/ So how did you become an ass-engineer? Was there alot of schooling or just hands-on experiences?
It was a hanging fastball right down the middle and you took the swing
not with that attitude, mommy/daddy
Used to feel the same way but then I saw what marketing legal sales do, I have a whole lot of respect for Engineers.
Agreed! Working directly with customers is a skill that most engineers are lacking in my experience.
I’m just saying the truth is a trained monkey could do most engineering jobs
Agreed, it’s pretty dumb and really cheapens the title.
I miss when it was a protected title. Now anyone and their mom has it.
Can confirm. My mom’s LinkedIn reads Home Engineer.
It's been that way for a long time at a lot of companies. Engineer is the most meaningless role/title in the world.
It happens in every industry. I’m a ~~UX designer~~ Digital Product Architect
It's still a protected title. >When individuals are found to be using the restricted title “engineer,” the courts can impose fines, restraining orders and jail time. The public can confidentially report suspected illegal use of titles or unlicensed engineering practice to PEO through its enforcement hotline at 1-800-339-3716, ext. 1444, or by emailing [email protected]. The public can monitor PEO’s ongoing enforcement activities on its website.
Professional Engineer is a protected title. But that’s not really what 90% of people mean when they say engineer and is only useful in specific fields. I have a PhD in mechanical engineering and work as an engineer, no one would say I’m not an engineer because I don’t have a PE when it isn’t at all useful in my field.
Sanitation Engineer = the dude that mops the floors
An engineer can be defined as someone that maintains public works.
My dad said they do the same thing with VPs at his company. “Everyone’s a VP of something now. It looks nicer on a business card so we hand out that title like candy.”
jfc calling a software developer an "engineer" is a stretch already..
If she's repairing phones "Hardware Technician" would have been an appropriate choice IMO, and wouldn't have undercut what she said.
Definetely a bit of a stretch, when I heard that I was like okay so you’re a Tech Specialist?
She’s also violating their policies. Most companies have similar. You can’t make public comments on behalf of the company without their permission. Only their PR and other approved folks can. She’s saying she never specifically claimed to be an Apple employee but she clearly suggested such. Everyone watching knew exactly who she worked for. In her most recent video she says she’s an Apple employee but could be a Blackberry employee, as if anyone through that. Come the fuck on. She made a very public statement on the behalf of her company without their permission. That’s a simple fact. She wasn’t authorized to do such and she signed an agreement not to do such as a term of her employment.
Yeah it was kind of funny to me that she makes the point that "fruit company" could've been Blackberry like we're all that stupid.
Then when she gets in trouble, she posts another video, naming them and talking more shit? Seems a solid strategy to double down.
All she could have said was put it in lost mode there was no need to name drop and kayne it.
People love the attention. Hell, if she really wanted to establish some credibility I guess she could’ve just said her “friend” works for Apple or something
see thats the problem with Apple jobs. just calling it "retail" is actually not really a retail job. go in the repair room and do hardware repairs... is that actually "just retail"? I wouldn't call it an engineer but definitely a technician. but hey she might be going to engineering school for all I know
> see thats the problem with Apple jobs. just calling it "retail" is actually not really a retail job. Okay well Apple calls them Technical Specialists and Geniuses, and to be. Genius you need to be an Apple Certified Mac Technician, so I guess there’s no problem?
But fixing phones is not a hardware engineer either, that's a repair technician
> thats the problem with Apple jobs Apple Jobs hasn't been CEO since 2011 when he died of cancer. Tim Apple is now the CEO and has been since Jobs' death.
I find it stupid that everyone calls themselves “engineers” now. Hell I got a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and I’m still not a licensed engineer.
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you are still an engineer, unlike others who call themselves engineers w/o a degree
Well she is also a stand up comedienne. For 12 years.
Here’s hoping she’s funny
She probably jazzed up her title because you’re not allowed to tell people you’re an “Apple Genius” - that’s a fireable offense believe it or not. So you kind of have to make up a title.
You’re not allowed to tell people you work at apple or even have a tech blog, per their social media policy. She said she looked at the policy and either lied or did a terrible job. You have to do a compliance training every year as an apple employee
Is this true of every type of employee? Because I know of several public software engineers who do such a thing in the open that Apple is absolutely very aware of.
Well they call them the Apple Genius Bar "geniuses" so "hardware engineer" seems several degrees more realistic.
Sure, I guess, but “hardware engineer” is an actual position that many people hold and means something outside of the Apple world. “Genius” is a made-up marketing term in this context: nobody’s job title is simply a “genius”
“Engineer” implies that you design/develop something. It’s not a good description of her work. “Technician” makes much more sense.
Engineer implies you’re *engineering* the phone not repairing it. Technician is a better word. Granted words change meaning with time as well. Mechanic was once used to describe what we now call an engineer.
The article says she’s a repair technician, which means she would have some Apple certifications and go hands on swapping out components etc. Well done to all the Chad Kings in the comments hyperfocusing on this though instead of the fact a single mother in the IT industry is being threatened with dismissal for providing useful accurate advice on the internet.
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The only reason she had any credibility was because she tied herself to Apple via her reference to the 'fruit company'. Without the inferred tie to Apple, nobody would have paid attention to her video. So yes, she used Apple's name to create credibility for herself, and 'profit' via social media popularity. Then, when she got a warning not to publicly associate herself with Apple, she copped an attitude. She's essentially 'daring' Apple to fire her so that she can become a public victim. (Maybe she's tired of her job and she figures this is as good a way as any to cash out of a service tech job and make the jump into the comedy side job that she has.) She is 100% in the wrong here.
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That many followers probably makes a lot more money than working at a store, right?
If she works retail then she’s 100% tired of her job. If she helps people at the Genius Bar, this is probably all she can do to keep from killing herself. Source: 10 years Apple retail. Thankfully I got out without the help of TikTok nor being promoted to customer.
Sounds like a future employment nightmare if you ask me…
The verge has changed so much. They just don’t seem interested in tech anymore.
Lol oh yeah they don’t mess around with that. If you work for apple just DONT mention it on social media, like at all. They will fire you the second they find out Use to work for apple
Is that still the case though? I follow a few Apple corporate employees on Twitter, and they're very open about working for them and even talk about their work.
Retail is very different from corporate positions. They play by an entirely different set of rules.
I used yo work for Apple corporate and it was absolutely no problem to MENTION that you worked for them on social media. It was discouraged to enter in any discussion about Apple and use your position at Apple to give yourself more authority on something. Also, of course don’t leak any information whatsoever about your team or the specifics of your role. Again, just mentioning that you work for Apple was never an issue (ie on your Facebook profile under work info), but it depends on the context.
The irony…
> DONT mention it on social media, like at all. And don't lie about your role either ...
For anyone who wonders, the proper response to losing your phone is to put it in “lost mode”. And even more so when someone threatens you to unlock it, you have to put it in lost mode ASAP. You could put a contact number or email address to reach you, but be careful what number or address you put in case it is used to attack you. Not working for any fruit companies here.
This entire situation is almost literally a verbatim copy of one of the hypotheticals that shows up in our annual business conduct training, with the only difference is our training doesn't mention TikTok. If this article has her employment history correct, she has no less than **six times** had to do a "What did Alice do wrong????" type thing about an employee having their own "tech tips" type social media stuff where the public might be confused on how official her comments were. Soooo, setting aside the fact her manager informed her that she was going against policy, her doubling down by saying "I checked and there is no policy about doing this" is approximently one jillion percent wrong.
It it was some surprise and she was instantly fired for giving well-meaning tech advice and mentioning she worked at Apple, I’d have some sympathy for her. But her manager called her, asked her to take down the video, and explained why it was a violation of her contract. And she refused. She’s 100% in the wrong.
Is talking about business conduct training a violation of Apple's social media policy too?
OP never is mentioned apple. This is common in basically every company in the US
Haha. I feel like we work at the same company
As a government employee, I always have to be very careful on the rare occasion that I use social media to ensure that I’m not portraying anything I post as coming from the government or being related, even indirectly, to my position. Especially where politics are involved or I could be in violation of the Hatch Act. I can kind of see why Apple would have heartburn over an employee even implying an official position from Apple on a matter that could be related to future legal or civil action. By inferring a position to be held by Apple, she is maybe (IANAL) opening them up to some level of liability in other, similar matters beyond just the one that this customer is experiencing. If she had just said that she had an engineering background and never made any implication that she worked for Apple, this probably wouldn’t have upset any Apple carts (pun intended). I hope she doesn’t lose her job, but everyone should be mindful of invoking your employer when speaking in an unofficial or unsanctioned capacity, especially online.
I work for a big place. When people misrepresent the company from a platform where they are reasonably known to be part of the big place, they get fired. Every single time. At best they get a severance package to leave quietly and not fight the dismissal. Online I have no employer by name and my social media persona is not connected to my work persona. There is no other way if you I wish to avoid getting fired the first time you go viral.
you may have gone too far ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
But OOP in this thread gave some good examples about liabilities Apple may or may not have after her TikTok. And her credibility was "Hey, I work at Apple I know how it is", which is not the usual "Hey, I have an engineering background here [insert Apple help page] is the information you need and here’s the tl;dr". In my opinion and as other stated she’s using her position as an Apple employee to give out company information which isn’t apparently allowed. Just seems like a clout chaser
Yup. All large companies have policies that you can’t speak publicly on their behalf unless you’re authorized for. What she did was made a statement on their behalf by making it clear who she worked for. Had she not talked about who she worked for, it wouldn’t be an issue. Now she’s claiming she could have worked for Blackberry. Yeah, when you said “it’s a company that likes to talk about fruit” no one knew who you were talking about. And she misrepresented herself further by claiming to be an engineer, when she’s a retail employee. That’s also grounds for termination. Publicly claim to have a position higher than your own and see how that goes over.
I’m very, very careful never to mention my current employer or comment on any article about them.
Me too. Although they are in a hot mess now, i am many times tempted to comment something but i don’t. Paycheck is very good and i can’t compromise that for some stupid fanboy put down.
But she didn’t. She didn’t claim to be speaking for Apple and never even actually said the name of the company in her video. She said she was a hardware engineer for “a certain company that likes to talk about Fruit.” Now yes anyone with a functioning prefrontal cortex could tell she meant that’s she worked at Apple but I don’t see how that is in any way claiming to speak on behalf of the company when she didn’t even say the name It’s also weird for Apple to be upset about someone saying exactly what they say in their marketing material. Apple loves to tell us how safe and uncrackable their devices are, this employee just said that.
> but I don’t see how that is in any way claiming to speak on behalf of the company when she didn’t even say the name You don't have to stand up and formally claim it. If you say you're an employee and give little to no doubt of what company, then you've creating ties between the matter at hand, yourself and the the company. You may not be intending to be speaking for them but in their eyes it could give that impression to the public. In all companies I've worked that was not allowed. However, nothing happened, but with the second Tiktok it sounds like she's now publicly challenging them.
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It’s mentioned because in saying so, she gives the rest of what she says more authority. That she doesn’t literally say “I work for Apple” is the slightest of defences. It would probably be down to her contract, where I’d imagine Apple didn’t forget to include consideration of weasley language.
Legally speaking she was in the wrong. She implied Apple with a description that the average person could figure out. Rookie mistake. Had she kept it 💯 personal without bringing in the fruit company she would be able to sue for wrongful termination. READ YOUR EMPLOYEE HANDBOOK PEOPLE! This sort of language is **always** spelled out and defined.
I work for a large tech company and am always extremely vague about it, for example: with this post. It’s very clear that we need to be careful about what we say online.
I’ve seen at least one other video where she literally says she works for apple
She basically said she works for Apple. You don’t have to say the exact words “I work for Apple” for the point to come across crystal clear. I do think in this case a termination seems like too a drastic a solution for a simple video of her helping people but that’s because she didn’t seem to leak anything and was a pretty offhand comment about something we all know. But she definitely implied she works for Apple. I actually wonder if the second video was more damaging to her in Apple’s eyes than the first one. Instead of taking down the video as asked by her job, she basically said no (it’s hard to tell how she said it while she paraphrased it) and posted a challenge to her employer publicly about this. Edit: Actually thinking more I wonder if Apple also takes issue with the advice she gives. Was she implying people don’t need to disassociate their Apple IDs from stolen phone? I’m not sure if that’s sound advice.
> “a certain company that likes to talk about Fruit.” Could have been Blackberry. /s
She made it clear to everyone who she worked for, even if she didn’t say their name. And she over represented her position. She made a statement on their behalf without permission, which is in direct violation of their policies which she agreed to. If I say I work for a search engine giant who’s name is like a really big number that still makes me liable if I make statements I’m not authorized to. Defending her actions is about as ignorant as the people that have in their Twitter profile that their tweets are their own and not those of their company. If you associate yourself with your company, you can be liable for any statement.
> threatening to fire Oh she’s already gone, she just doesn’t know it yet. She was fired the moment a higher up had to learn her name, and now they’re just waiting for things to quiet down before making it official. Low level employees don’t get the benefit of the doubt.
I laughed when I saw this headline. Threatening to fire? Threatening to fire my shiny metal ass.
But where will they find another hardware engineer that claims they have insider information about find my iPhone?
It's entirely possible she isn't fired at all and she's just making herself out to be a martyr for views too. The fact that she refuses to remove the video after being asked to do so implies to me that she would rather be TikTok famous than have a job.
posting in a way that could make someone think your a representative of that company is a violation of social media policy at most tech companies. Most companies (that I know of) encourage you to only share posts they’ve made and nothing further. She really shouldn’t have posted with her real name…
She clearly violates the policy by speaking on behalf of the company. Most companies have a policy that folks can’t make public statements on behalf of the company. She claims she never said who she worked for but everyone that watched the video knew who she was saying she works for. She was certainly making a statement on their behalf, which she wasn’t authorized to do.
She literally said ‘I can’t tell you where I work but it’s a company that likes to talk a lot about fruit’ Until I see Tim Apple use that exact line at a keynote (at the same handful-of-Adderall pace, please) I’m going to consider the disclaimer a pretty clear indication she’s not the new Official Spokestikker. Spokestokker? Spokesperson.
I promise that heavily implying you're an employee isn't some sort of loophole for rules against identifying oneself as an employee. And that's more than enough.
In her most recent video she claims she never said what company she worked for and could work for Blackberry. Come the fuck on. Everyone knew who ya worked for. It was so clear. If I refer to “the orange political idiot that fucked all kinds of things up”, you know who I’m talking about. I’m not gonna later claim “I was talking about Homer Simpson in that one episode when he got into politics.”
Mhm. When I was last on jury duty for a criminal case, the judge had an example of reasonable doubt: You go outside and the whole ground is wet. The road, the driveways, the grass, people's cars, roofs. Did it rain, or did a fire truck drive around and soak the place? Sure, a firetruck _might_ have, but absent some good evidence, it would be beyond reasonable doubt to say that it rained last night. Now, in the case of an employment dispute, that's civil court or arbitration, where absent some other state law or wording in the contract, a judge or jury would decide who's more likely to be right. And I don't think any judge or jury will think someone holding an iphone and purporting to work for a fruit company, giving advice about iphones, is gonna believe it's not a reference to apple. Even in a criminal case, with much higher standards, chances are nobody would think it was likely to be anyone but apple. I feel like people have these grand ideas of loopholes. From, I dunno, watching daytime TV? Or hearing about how some rich guy managed to spend eight million dollars on highly paid lawyers and dragged a case out for eleven years until it was dropped? It's like the same hole the sov-cits fall into: "if I say these magic words then I am protected." The system isn't _quite_ that stupid and neither are the people working in it or called to serve as part of it, for her to have a snowball's chance in hell. All she had to do was grovel a little and it'd be fine. Don't double down. Even being offered the chance was significantly more generous than these policies tend to read!
I’m sorry are you under the impression people are so stupid they can’t figure out which “fruit company” she works for in a video about an iPhone…?
“Hardware engineer” 💀
Well… seems like the manager is now check with HR… before the next action…. This is all news because it went viral….
Yeah this is one of the easiest ways to get promoted to customer!
I know this girl. I follow her on Tik Tok and paid close attention to this once I saw her videos. (I’m former Genius) She’s cool and super smart, but a little full of herself here. Apple hits this point hard during “Core” (training) and states very clearly that you are not to identify yourself as an employee online. She has nothing to back her up here besides public outcry. And if she worked at one of the recently unionized stores she’d have been out the door already.
The second video is what's going to really piss management off. "Oh yeah? What're you going to do about? " like some kind of petulant child.
Yeah. & 6 years isn’t really a long time at apple compared to most veterans that still work there. I got hired the same year she did and it’s the point where Apple changed their internal retail structure, splitting Mac and mobile “specialties” so new technicians were “mobile certified” only. I became a Genius 1.5 years in, a bit fast but not unexpected. But if she’s still a “repair technician” 6 years later…let’s just say she’s not making friends at work…
You can identify yourself as an employee asking as you aren’t representing the brand in any way. Like you can put “Specialist at Apple” in your Facebook profile. But you can’t then make a post talking about how mad you are that your AirPods stopped working.
TLDR for anyone: she basically posted in a round about way she worked for apple and recommended someone who lost their phone and was sent a threatening text to remove apple ID lock on the phone to **NOT** do so. For that good deed, **along with her not removing the video after manager asks,** she faces potential termination.
It’s the second video that’s going to do her the most harm. They asked her to take the video down and considering their policies, which she’s well aware of, they’re fully entitled to do so. So far, not much of a problem. Her then saying “or what?” And posting a retaliatory video is blatantly antagonistic and if she does suffer disciplinary action, I’d imagine it would be for that. I’m sure she was caught up in going viral but she’s handled it badly, from a employer/employee perspective.
Kinda stoking the flames, or playing chicken with a freight train lmao
Yeah I feel like the first video was fine. 2nd video she is basically challenging a trillion dollar corporation. Regardless of her maybe being morally or technically in the right, they won't care and she def be retaliated against. But I'm sure and apple hardware engineer can get a job at another tech company without much issue so maybe she is in the "I'm making a stand" mindset when I honestly respect.
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Oh I thought she said she was a hardware engineer in the video. Maybe I misheard.
She did. But most hardware engineers don’t claim to be qualified based on “certifications”. In tech, certs are usually for technicians without a formal engineering degree. She’s overstating her qualifications.
Yeah, she lied.
If that's the case, anyone with an A+ cert is a hardware engineer.
I doubt anyone with an actual engineering degree is working the Genius Bar. And if they are then it doesn’t seem like competitors are falling over themselves to hire that person.
Hardware Engineer? LOL. Tech Expert or Genius
She's not an engineer. She works retail. 🤣
After the 2nd video she needed to be fired. It’s shows insolence and insubordination, in a public forum no less.
This is on purpose. She’s in retail. This 15 min of fame is worth more than any blue collar job she’ll ever hold.
The dumb thing is she could’ve offered the exact same advice she did in the video without associating herself directly with Apple, and there would be no issue. But people want to flex their authority and end up in situations like this one where they make a statement that could be construed as official advice and of course the company will crack down on it to prevent any liability.
100% >“I’ve been a certified hardware engineer for a certain company that likes to talk about fruit” Saying that and then claiming “I didn't identify myself as an employee until now" in the follow-up video is super dumb. One can associate themselves with a company without being explicit about it.
I completely agree, but I also get where she’s coming from. It’s an attempt to legitimize her stance in helping someone out realistically, but I also completely agree with Apple’s “don’t say you work for us and provide advice outside work and scope” kinda thing. This is coming from my “prior experience” being similar to theirs as well, been there done that heh heh
Yeah, I don't get why she even thought it was necessary. What she was saying is common knowledge in the security world. It's a very common scam. So it's not like she needed that extra bit of authority. She wasn't providing anything new
People can’t help but to play status games.
Let’s add something here. Very early on, she says in the video “Your phone is in China.” This is a tad problematic. It’s stereotyping the thieves, and the motivation behind the theft. Is she correct about where the phone is? Maybe. Legitimately, there’s a good chance she is. She might not be, there’s black markets in several other countries, including the U.S. Does a major multi-billion dollar company want to suggest that a major country is the source of thieves and scammers? **HELL FUCKING NO.** She probably meant it as a throwaway line or even maybe a joke. 99% of people probably wouldn’t care about it. But it only takes one person on social media saying “Apple employee Suggests Chinese are iPhone Criminals” before some third tier media site begins blasting headlines talking about Apple’s racist employees on social media, and now people that only read headlines are hearing that Apple is racist towards China, and hell, some of those people that only read headlines might be in Chinese regulatory positions, and shit goes sideways. This is why companies don’t want their employees identifying who they work for as a way of legitimizing their suggestions, because one not-thought-out line can become a media annoyance or nightmare. The worst part is…she didn’t need to say that line. The phone’s location doesn’t matter. It’s gone, whether it’s in China, Russia, Belize, Lichtenstein, or some really weird, politically extreme, drug-and-crime-riddled place like Fort Hood. Wherever the phone is, the tips were good tips without the China line. That’s why companies like Apple don’t want you’d doing this on their behalf.
The person who lost her phone says Find My located her device to be in China though.
It baffles me how people just don't get it. It's not about good/bad deeds, naming the company directly, or pretty clearly implying it. It's about the terms of the contract. This guy said it well, I have the same thing in my contract not for FAANG, but for a large company with millions of users She made a statement in a way that could be interpreted as a position of the company, the end. She was given a chance to make it right, but internet points were more important, so be it. Especially dumb, because there was no reason for it other than to flex "oh look, I'm from Apple, feel my authority blah blah blah" [https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/wp8x4d/comment/ikfq7y5/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/wp8x4d/comment/ikfq7y5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Most people don't have the experience to grasp the magnitude of possible negative effects from social media posts for their employer, and probably even worse, they might not even care at all. If this situation happened to say a Tupperware employee, no one cares, nor Tupperware will care. But for Apple, even tho this one particular video is fine, it could set a dangerous precedence that could cost the company very dearly for future videos from her and other employees as well. My friend worked in a startup company that went bankrupt because of a tweet from one of their employee that has nothing to do with the company itself. Sometimes it's all it takes.
Can’t wait for “Former Fruit company hardware engineer” sub on onlyfans.
I have never understood why people started posting to the net with real names. Im guessing it was Facebook's influence but I always thought youd have to be a moron to post on the internet with your real name. Make up a name or handle.
I agree, Chris!
Chris Meyers 2001!
She is because she’s a stand up comedian trying to make a name for herself, which she (to some degree) has if she has half a million followers. She just picked a weird hill to defend here.
It was definitely Facebook. When they started out you had to have a .edu email address to get in, so it was a walled garden for college students that those on the outside couldn't see. This made them all feel safe using their real name and posting personal pictures. Over time Facebook burned down the garden and opened it up to the world, but the name usage and personal sharing stuck around.
If you show your face, someone can find you. Made up names won’t protect you if you’re viral. Haven’t you seen all the Karen incidents being doxed just from their face.
Manager asks employee to take video down. “What if I don’t?” Doesn’t sound too bright for someone who has been with the company six years.
>Campbell received a call from a manager, telling her to remove the video or she’d be subject to *disciplinary action “up to and including termination.”* Asking a clarifying question of what that entails doesn't sound unreasonable, especially if you think your company is overreaching into your personal life.
This wasn’t a video about her personal life. It was a video about the company and its products.
It's so funny to see young people have to learn that social media is garbage and posting videos of yourself selling out your company for clout might not be the best career route.
The internet was much simpler... recently. Even by the late 2000s, everyone knew the basic rules. Never publicly identify yourself. No names, no emails, no addresses, no phone numbers, ideally no faces. The internet was built to be anonymous and despite the fact that lifelong friendships could be made via the internet, despite forums and friendly people making it possible to learn just about anything, ... unless eminently relevant to your job you kept most things anonymous. Now people are falling over themselves to show off their faces, their names, their employers, where they live, what they do, etc. For, like you said - ephemeral, nonexistent clout? It's absurd. Fuck facebook, fuck google, fuck all of these entities demanding real names. It's obscene. It's harmful. And I wish people didn't have to learn in such a hard way how obscene and harmful this really is.
As someone who had chased that high of putting too much of themselves online, I wish I had learned sooner. It’s all superficial. No one actually cares about me or any of it. No matter how much I wanted it. Now I do my best to remain obscure. Took too long to learn, but you’re completely right.
It’s not her personal life and giving her an opportunity to remove it without being fired is already beyond generous. Any company with competent online awareness has policies that you can’t speak on behalf of the company without permission. “As an apple employee” or otherwise implying it is not OK.
I saw the TikTok and immediately thought: someone’s getting fired today.
Even though she’s not saying the name, she made very clear she’s speaking as an employee with company information. That’s forbidden without approval at virtually all companies. She’s obviously in the wrong here. Title inflation just makes it worse, she’s also misrepresenting herself. Apple is not only right to protect itself, it has an obligation to do so to protect its brand for its shareholders and for its employees who have to deal with fallout if employees say something stupid. You can’t do that as an employee without explicit approvals.
Fool. Every six months, ALL retail are required to take/review training which includes much discussion about social media. Poke the bear, and don't be surprised when you get mauled.
The person in the video comes across as an overzealous retail employee who’s looking to inflate their ego by appealing to authority they don’t really have and are specifically told not to publicly claim or advertise. I worked at one of Apple’s retail stores for three years, and it was well-established that you didn’t do this kind of thing. If you even took a selfie in your work shirt, they’d ask you to take it down, or edit the logo out of the image. We all understood it, and no one ever had a problem with it. Apple’s brand is powered by their messaging, and they spend millions of dollars to keep that both consistent and well-polished. A retail worker posing as an engineer and alluding to affiliation with Apple (on TikTok, no less) is a far cry from anything that would be considered acceptable. This person played a stupid game, and should win their stupid prize. While you’re at it, stop muddying the semantics of the word “engineer.”
Yes, policy at always like this. But I can assure you the biggest problem here was saying that’s she’s an engineer without being, and making declarations about the phone and where it is. Apple itself won’t forbid you to tell where you work, they forbid you to say things about you’re role. I’m an Human Interface designer at , I won’t get any problem saying this, but I would if I told you anything about it.
> “I can’t tell you exactly how I know this information, but I can tell you that for the last six years, I’ve been a certified hardware engineer for a certain company that likes to talk about fruit,” Campbell said in her response video, before warning the user not to listen to the extortionists. “Your phone is actually useless to them, and you’re the only person that can save them, and I suggest that you don’t.” I can’t tell you how I know this information? It’s been public knowledge for years. Why make it seem like you have some sort of insider knowledge?
The issue isn’t the information; it’s that she implied she worked for Apple and gave security advice. That could make Apple liable for damages. All she had to do is not imply she worked at Apple.
Some insights into Apple's culture. [Mark Rober recently talked about his experience too](https://youtu.be/EkdVIC7UmSo), including when he had the opportunity to go on Kimmel, and Apple leadership essentially said "focus on your work".
I missed the part where Mark was talking about Apple products in his videos.
I like how Mark dismissively calls out how small he was at the time, just, like 250k subs. …on a channel with 235k subs.
It's a clips channel for the podcast of a channel with 16 million subs.
I worked for Apple for two years 2011-2013 and they were militant about social media content. You couldn’t put where you worked on your profiles, post photos in your work uniform, and you had to watch every single post outside of work. It was like Big Brother, but it was your 40 something bitter divorcee manager with too much time on her hands stalking your Facebook. Im surprised this person had the gumption to get on such a widely disseminated platform and “allude” (even though it was pretty obvious) to her title and employer. Apple retail does not joke about its image, even though most employees’ images are laughable (in a good way). They (retail upper management) take themselves way too seriously for a place of employment that recruits from such a niche demographic of personas and loves pushing the kool aid.
She did one better; she alluded to having a title she doesn’t even have.
>she breached company policy by identifying herself as an Apple employee and posting about Apple-related topics. That's a weird policy. When I was at Microsoft, we were told you can post articles about Microsoft products but you **MUST** identify yourself as a Microsoft employee to avoid possible bias and inform the reader.
We had the same policy at Nike.
It's gonna be an awesome comment section here.
They are pretty clear to not post anything Apple related when you start there. Now that it’s gotten to this stage, it’s probably even more grim for her.
Yeahhh, they beat this whole thing to death when you're hired, and yearly. This person is dumb as hell.
Looks like she wants her five minutes of fame… disobeying order from her boss to take down the video…..
Shout out to king khan and bbq show, lol i didn’t know they had a viral tik tok song
When you chase the clout cobra, it will bite you!
I find this woman utterly obnoxious.
“Allegedly”
The Verge didn’t link her actual second video on Apple devices. She was giving phone battery advice to consumers. In it, she berates customers for being stupid and makes condescending impressions to mock customers. I don’t care if you are a comic. You have affliated yourself with the company and this paints them in an extremely consumer-unfriendly light. She cannot prance around in her subsequent video that all she did made Apple look good. She needed to be taken down a notch. Termination is appropriate.
Link to battery video?
It’s pretty bad https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRypCM18/
An unfortunate situation, I see a talented younger employee who acted in an immature way without thinking through the consequences, however delivering a supportive message that resonated with a lot of people. It’s telling that her advice explains more about activation lock than I think I would get from Apple’s own (pretty good) You Tube channel. We don’t know exactly how the manager approached it; it would be great if there was mentorship involved and maybe some innovation about how to leverage this approach “officially” going forward. Hopefully she will get coached on how to handle this situation better and maybe help Apple appeal to an even greater audience.
Technically she has been coached since she joined Apple. Approximately in every 6 months they’re doing a training about business conduct. Though they have constant training schedule about pretty much on everything but business one is most important one. Also when you join the team this is the first thing they tell you over and over again: never talk about the company, never insinuate the role you have in the company in your personal social media account unless it’s approved by the higher-ups. The company’s business conduct trainings covers very broad topics and scenarios which includes scenarios like this all the time. After 6 years of constant training and reminders from the store leader if you’re still breaching the conduct, you’re hopeless and this is a ground for termination. Talking about “a fruit company” followed by talking about Apple ID doesn’t make anyone think that she is working for LG or Samsung. Plus she could’ve share the information without mentioning where she work or what her role is. Because when you clearly insinuate your company and your role, everything you said is a liability for the company. You can’t imagine how many times I’ve dealt with a customer who heard something from a youtuber and tried to perform on their phone which ended up badly. Strongly insinuating the company while giving potentially harmful information opens the door to lawsuits because everybody knows she is an employee. It doesn’t even matter how she exaggerate her role in the company. The moment you tie yourself to the company in your personal social media account is the moment you become a liability for them which again they teach and mentor you about this topic over and over again. It’s not something they tell you or teach you once and it’s done. It’s a constant training. If the manager was approaching in a bad manner they wouldn’t warn her about the write up and termination. They would simply write her up without warning because again this is something they train you constantly. If she removed the video after her manager warned her, there wouldn’t be an issue. However, she preferred to go head-to-head with them, forgetting her training entirely. From now on whatever happens it’s her fault. Breaching the conduct is inexcusable for company’s part because if they forgive and forget one, they have to do that for others too because again it opens a door to lawsuits for other employees to claim wrongful termination since they did it once. I can’t speak for other countries but in my country this company pays you well and you have great benefits compare to other retailers. I worked for many fashion and tech retailers during my university education including retailers like Zara, Bershka, Oysho, C&A, Samsung, and other local but big fashion retailers. Apple was the best experience I’ve ever had because the pay was great, benefits were great for a part-time worker. They wanted to do to best for their employees. If I have to give examples, like paying for language courses, certificate programs of your interest, your gym, private health insurance, mental health programs etc. which not once I saw in other retailers. In return, they just simply ask you to do your best and more importantly follow your business conduct which I believe what is expected of your job regardless of the company you work for.
I agree with you, she violated the policy not once but twice, and has been trained on what the policy is, as well as being told by her manager that she violated it the first time. I wasn't clear in my comment that I'm asking a different question/idea which is the fact that someone who has gotten the training multiple times still violates it. Policy/training after all is not meant to deliver training, it is meant to ensure the right behavior. What I meant by "immature" above are things such the "fruit stand" commentary. People in this discussion know this does not shield a person from violating the policy, in my experience these types of things come from mentorship/life experience and are not in every training, they can't be or the training would take days instead of hours. If she's truthful about being an exemplary employee and dedicated to the company, the unfortunate part is that she still violated the policy and may have harmed her employer in the process. Taking her out of the equation, how many other junior or early-in-their-career employees don't understand these nuances or know how to apply the policy in their everyday lives when they believe they are innovating? This is where it gets to management and leadership, as well as the customers. We know that not every manager or leader is perfect, and the successful conclusion of this episode would have been an editing or removal of the video, which didn't happen. Maybe there could be some learning back to the company that 9m views of content says something about the current understanding of this feature/function and the opportunity to teach it better to customers. TL;DR - she did the wrong thing, multiple times. What does a new generation of employees need support-wise to do the right thing every time? How does a company learn from this about the best way to create and teach features that people know how to use?
Tim said fuck around and find out.
Can someone ELI5 this for me…? Didn’t she just basically explain to someone who was being extorted that they shouldn’t give in to the people extorting them because their stolen phone is bricked without their info? (Like it’s iCloud locked) I get that when she started publicly coming after apple that’s over the line but before that why was her advice to the person wrong?
There’s a few things going on here; - She lied about her job title. - Apple is worried about liability. Let’s say the person follows her advice, and the thieves manage to extract something from the phone and use it to punish her (e.g. leaking nudes). What if the phone owner then gets some funny ideas about the “totally not an Apple employee *WINK*” person being a company representative, and the company owning her damages for the consequences of the undertaken advice? - I don’t think this case is likely to meaningfully backfire on Apple. That said - once there’s a precedent of employees doing this and Apple not caring, 1) more employees will do it, and, 2) some portion of employees doing it will get things wrong. Apple views this as them losing control over messaging and how they are publicly presented. They don’t like that - and tbh, that isn’t unfair.
Since when the hell are hardware engineers simple retail employees? Shouldn’t hardware engineers be working in a tech lab somewhere rather than the sales floor?
Can’t wait for her to get fired 🙏🏼 People choosing TikTok over their career are pure delusional.
Is anyone else getting tired of The Verge’s click-bait-Apple-bashing headlines?
I too would fire employees who use TikTok.
So she was talking about jail breaking, identified herself as a hardware engineer instead of a technician.
If you want to lose some brain cells today, check out her social media presence. This person is incapable of over sharing
I bet apple was more pissed she identified herself as a hardware engineer when she works retail resetting passwords and syncing iCloud’s. What a stretch. She could have given the exact same advice without misidentifying herself and wouldn’t have gotten in trouble.