Work for an Evil Genius? No Thanks

There's a great article out today from Wired Magazine about the inner workings of Apple and how and why they're successful. It's an interesting read. What was of note to me was the description of the working conditions for software developers (any employee, really) at Apple when compared to those at other companies like Intel or Google.

Management styles differ greatly from company to company in regards to software development. Sometimes you have employers who will tell the engineers what they want and the engineers can then make recommendations and the employer is totally open to suggestions. From the article, Steve Jobs at Apple is on the completely other end of the spectrum. He's basically the 'my way or the highway' type of boss who requires and demands that products be done according to his specifications and no other. He makes no distinction between what you've done lately and previous work. Sure, you made a great product last year, but that doesn't give you any preferential treatment in regards to the next product you work on.

Contrast that to the working conditions at Google, where employees are given their choice of software, hardware, and even what projects to work on. Google even encourages employees to spend time on the clock to work on their own personal pet projects. For Google, it's worked out pretty well. After all, employees' personal software projects are how popular applications like Gmail and Google News got started. Google even offers employees free paid lunches.

There are some very varying working conditions out there for software developers to choose from. Personally, I would think that the only way someone would actually choose to work for Apple under the conditions described in the article is if they were already an Apple Android, completely converted to Jobs' ideology and in love with Apple products. Personally, I'm much more a fan of the Google management style.