Jim Edwards, writing for Business Insider, brings together a story from The New York Times on Apple and agism with an anecdote about the engineer who got OS X to run on a PC:
“Bertrand walks in, watches the PC boot up, and says to JK, ‘How long would it take you to get this running on a (Sony) Vaio?’ JK replies, ‘Not long’ and Bertrand says, ‘Two weeks? Three?’
“JK said more like two hours. Three hours, tops.
“Bertrand tells JK to go to Fry’s (the famous West Coast computer chain) and buy the top of the line, most expensive Vaio they have. So off JK, Max and I go to Frys. We return to Apple less than an hour later. By 7:30 that evening, the Vaio is running the Mac OS. [My husband disputes my memory of this and says that Matt Watson bought the Vaio. Maybe Matt will chime in.]
“The next morning, Steve Jobs is on a plane to Japan to meet with the President of Sony.”
The tweet at the end of the story tells it all:
Wonder if Apple will finally give me callback on that genius bar interview.
I hope Apple does give JK a call back. He’s earned it, I think. And if his skills have fallen off, my guess is, he’d be happy to train up, and more than capable.
I don’t think this story is quite accurate. Go to any Apple Store… there are plenty of older employees… maybe more than most places in Retail. They probably didn’t call him back because they were afraid he would demand a large salary or that perhaps it would be insulting to hire him for less than he is worth (that has happened to me even in my twenties).
who knows why he didn’t get a call back, but like rosewood said i see older graybeards working at Apple Stores.
I doubt it’s ageism, like the others here, I routinely see Apple store employees in my age bracket (post 60) and so far each one has been a pleasure to deal with.
There are lots of reasons one might not work out as an employee in an Apple store; it’s just not a great fit for everyone, no matter what their background and knowledge of Apple products.
Overqualified, perhaps?
More likely he didn’t have the salesmanship required? Or he said something that grated on the interviewer? We’ll never know. But heck, the next time that Apple Store needs to port a device to a new OS? They know who to call!
Honestly Apple Store hiring is super hit and miss. Thankfully the store in Winnipeg has finally over the last few years learned how to hire competent people. (Though they’ve missed me the four times I’ve interviewed!) The first few years it was open, it was awful I’d go in and explain to the “Genius” what was wrong, and they’d tell me that I was probably wrong and they’d need to run their tests. Only to come back and agree that I was actually right and let me know how much it would cost to have them repair it.
Most recently I went in with a problem with a Thunderbolt monitor I’d lent my Dad, and thought the logic board had gone. Turned out it was just the Thunderbolt cable. (Still not sure how that resulted in the USB ports not providing power.) And for the first time I actually learned something new from an Apple Store Genius.
But still, I’ve bene passed over several times for jobs at the Apple Store, despite the fact that every sales job I’ve had I’ve been near the top for sales numbers, plus I’m always either top or very close to it for customer satisfaction. I’ve been a Mac user since 1999, and I have three and a half years working the phones for an ISP in tech support. (And being that company’s top Mac tech support person.)
When it comes down to it, the Apple Stores are mostly hiring people who the managers like, and the managers probably are given virtually no bias training. So you’re more likely to see moderately intelligent and exceptionally attractive people working at the Apple Store, than someone who’s absolutely brilliant but wouldn’t look great with their shirt off.
He should try again after getting a few tattoo, ear gauges and embrace the LGBT community. Get Hipster
Most of this job relies upon interpersonal skills (listening, patience, empathy…). All of the technical knowledge in the world can’t give you that.
Now I don’t feel so bad about being rejected by the Apple Store in spite of my decades of experience.
ive never noticed the Apple worker aesthetic leaning more to attractive than any other retail outlet.
ignorant hater nonsense.
what in fuck’s sake does this have to do with gay civil rights? nothing.
Neither have I. Not at all in fact.
Well as a software engineer that had to interact with people at the apple Genius. I can say safely that the reason for his rejection probably has little to do with his age. More importantly an engineer is not an IT:
– he may have the technical know how (albeit some knowledge IT are expected to have are things I long forgot to give room for things more related to my engineering while IT can solve that for me) but he may not be very good to understand what the client problem is based on there client says (it is a skill that you do not learn doing engineering)
– being a good engineer do not require to have good communication skills. Being a consumer facing IT does strongly require it
In short he is over qualified on some aspect (at such level that he may not very good at simple things he would have to do on a day to day basis as an Apple “Genius”) and his CV — at least what I know of it from this article — do not show any consumer facing skill (being able to convince your boss — that is also known to be a hard ass — is not the same was listen to random client explaining that his mouse double tap is not working while keeping a polite smile)
I don’t know either how he could come from a position where he was able to interact directly with one of the most powerful consumer electronic company, down to working on a position which is basically low level technician at the bottom chain — income wise — of the same company.
Call me septic but I think there’s more behind this story than ageism (not saying that ageism is not an issue, but if it is an issue in apple this story makes a very bad illustration for it)
A OS systems engineer would, in general, make a HORRIBLE end-user support staffer. Those are two radically different skill sets. I say this as someone who’s done end-user support (among many other hats) for well-nigh 20 years…
Go back to 4chan.
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