Apple culture of secrecy claimed to cause Swift lead's exit, but Chris Lattner denies repo...
According to colleagues, Swift developer Chris Lattner reportedly left Apple because of a culture of secrecy within the company -- a claim that Lattner denies.
"He always felt constrained at Apple in terms of what he could discuss publicly -- resorting to off-the-record chats, surprise presentations, and the like," one of Lattner's self-proclaimed colleagues told Business Insider. "Similarly, I know he was constrained in recruiting and other areas. Eventually I know that can really wear people down."
Given the relatively open-source nature of Swift, Lattner can continue to contribute to the language, to some extent even after his recently announced departure from Apple.
Lattner studied computer science at the University of Portland, Ore. After being one of the co-authors of LLVM, Lattner was hired by Apple in 2005, and was instrumental in the advancement of Xcode, Apple's OpenGL implementation, and every aspect of Apple's Swift rollout and continued development.
Lattner was hired by Tesla, and is the company's Vice President of Autopilot Software. At the time of Lattner's departure, Apple coder Ted Kremenek was selected to lead the Swift development team.
Update:
Since Business Insider's original report, Lattner has taken to Twitter to refute the claims of being stymied by secrecy.
At December's Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference, Apple Director of Artificial Intelligence Research Russ Salakhutdinov announced that Apple employees in artificial intelligence were allowed, and in some cases encouraged to both publish, and "engage with academia."
In August, former Apple Watch heart rate sensor engineer Bob Messerschmidt pointed out the same issues. Messerschmidt claimed that under CEO Steve Jobs, stealth was employed mainly to elicit a big surprise from the public and press when a product was ultimately announced. After Jobs' death, the engineer believed that Apple uses secrecy to "maintain an empire," or make projects feel more important than they really are.
Partly as a result of Apple's secrecy culture, Apple's former global data center network manager Jason Forrester broke free, and founded networking company Snaproute. Forrester's company has the stated goal to "free talented network engineers to do their job to the best of their ability, unconstrained by vendor lock-in."
"Slowly, our desire to share our ideas with the world began to overshadow the thrill and pride of working for Apple," Forrester recalled in June. "My team and I left in 2015. Truth be told, I spent a few days crying on the couch."
"He always felt constrained at Apple in terms of what he could discuss publicly -- resorting to off-the-record chats, surprise presentations, and the like," one of Lattner's self-proclaimed colleagues told Business Insider. "Similarly, I know he was constrained in recruiting and other areas. Eventually I know that can really wear people down."
Given the relatively open-source nature of Swift, Lattner can continue to contribute to the language, to some extent even after his recently announced departure from Apple.
Lattner studied computer science at the University of Portland, Ore. After being one of the co-authors of LLVM, Lattner was hired by Apple in 2005, and was instrumental in the advancement of Xcode, Apple's OpenGL implementation, and every aspect of Apple's Swift rollout and continued development.
Lattner was hired by Tesla, and is the company's Vice President of Autopilot Software. At the time of Lattner's departure, Apple coder Ted Kremenek was selected to lead the Swift development team.
Update:
Since Business Insider's original report, Lattner has taken to Twitter to refute the claims of being stymied by secrecy.
My decision has nothing to do with "openness". The "friend" cited is either fabricated or speculating. Folk just want to make look bad.
-- Chris Lattner (@clattner_llvm)
Not just a problem for coders
Apple had a problem with secrecy in dealing with artificial intelligence academics. Until recently, Apple researchers weren't allowed to publish findings, or cooperate with colleagues to advance the field as a whole.At December's Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference, Apple Director of Artificial Intelligence Research Russ Salakhutdinov announced that Apple employees in artificial intelligence were allowed, and in some cases encouraged to both publish, and "engage with academia."
In August, former Apple Watch heart rate sensor engineer Bob Messerschmidt pointed out the same issues. Messerschmidt claimed that under CEO Steve Jobs, stealth was employed mainly to elicit a big surprise from the public and press when a product was ultimately announced. After Jobs' death, the engineer believed that Apple uses secrecy to "maintain an empire," or make projects feel more important than they really are.
Partly as a result of Apple's secrecy culture, Apple's former global data center network manager Jason Forrester broke free, and founded networking company Snaproute. Forrester's company has the stated goal to "free talented network engineers to do their job to the best of their ability, unconstrained by vendor lock-in."
"Slowly, our desire to share our ideas with the world began to overshadow the thrill and pride of working for Apple," Forrester recalled in June. "My team and I left in 2015. Truth be told, I spent a few days crying on the couch."
Comments
To the larger point -- I am not a making value judgment, but rather, just an observation -- in an increasingly 'social,' big data, network externalities, analytics-driven world driving the consumption of good and services, Apple's go-it-alone and keep-cards-close-to-vest strategy might get tougher and tougher to pull off. Developing more partnerships, sharing, and collaborations are increasingly the order of the day.
Apple is secretive, but then most companies I have worked for don't really appreciate you discussing ongoing projects with people outside the company.... so if that is the reason.... he might have to eventually move to an open source company (and even then there might be some secrecy) or back to academia.
What absolute nonsense, a true low value post. Also, pro tip: Cook doesn't read these forums.
The fact that you've seen something in your career amounts to a hill of beans. Why don't you then explain Cook, Ive, Schiller, Cue, Frederighi, pretty much every board member of Apple, etc. and how much they "...put in w/one gig"?
That would be a pretty understandable motivation, but they might have taken things too far. Perhaps they need to find a better balance.
One good thing about Cook (and Jobs before him) is that he shows a willingness to change course when things aren't working. A great example is when he quickly replaced that terrible guy he hired to lead the retail operation. Now he's got Ahrendts and she seems to be doing a good job.
Like I said, I work in big tech and a guy staying for over a decade is rare. Citing the very top echelon of executive leadership with their millions upon millions of personal stock investment has very little bearing on the conversation of what is normal. You get that, right?
Those who don't fit that culture shouldn't stay. It's just that simple.
Sour grapes nonsense. Apple isn't following with the best smartphone, tablet, notebooks, desktops, payment system, smartwatch, and now wireless headphones. Each of these devices has a mind-blowing amount of hardware engineering innovation, much of it invisible from the outside and thus overlooked by most. And you cite supply chain management but you do realize they're still king of JIT supply chain and Cook brought that.
But oh, not enough legacy USB ports. Uh huh.
If you think the busiest man at the biggest public company on earth is reading your posts on a rumor site, well....that's a pretty nice bubble.
You have six posts and they're all whining about Apple. Forgive me if I weight your input accordingly low.