Apple dishes out cheap, tasty Macs 'n slabs to staff
Employees sink teeth into hefty $500 Macbook discounts
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
As if the joy of working for Apple wasn't reward enough, all Apple employees will now get a $500 discount off Macs and $250 off iPads.
CEO Tim Cook played Santa Claus at Apple's "Town Hall" meeting with employees in Cupertino yesterday, 9 to 5 Mac reported, handing out the kit discounts to staff as a celebration of Apple's expectation-busting profits for the last quarter.
Even if all of Apple's 63,000 employees worldwide take Cook up on the $750 offer, the cost of the subsidised computers will be spare change to Apple. According to the New York Times the company earned over $400,000 in profit per employee last year.
The chunky discount will be another incentive to work for the tech giant, though as it has been noted recently, not many people do - comparatively speaking. Despite the Republicans praising Jobs for creating more jobs in the party's retort to Obama's State of The Union Address, Apple has a relatively small workforce for its size and profit margins. In comparison, Dell employs about 103,000 and HP 350,000, as CNN pointed out.
Anyway, those lucky Apple-selected few are about to get luckier. Though there are some conditions on the offer: the discount will only kick in in June and will only be available once every three years to employees who have worked over 90 days at Apple. So if you haven't got a job there – here's the application form, or maybe you should start dating someone who does.
We doubt that the same treatment will be extended to Apple's hundreds of thousands of contracted employees in China and Asia, who work long hours making devices for manufacturers such as Foxconn or Pegatron.
But taking home daily wages of $17, the Chinese and East Asian workers are unlikely to be coughing up for the computers, even at a discount. ®
COMMENTS
'We doubt that the same treatment will be extended to Apple's hundreds of thousands of contracted employees in China and Asia, who work long hours making devices for manufacturers such as Foxconn or Pegatron.'
Er... that would possibly be because they're not contracted to Apple, they're contracted to Foxconn or Pegatron?
Seriously Reg, is this the best you can do?
@Bishop Joey
Well clearly SOME Apple employees have social lives...or how else did those "lost" iPhone protoypes end up in bars?
Unique?
In my long and painful experience in the IT and related industries (computer/software manufacturers, telecoms, banks, engineering, pharmaceutical), this is normal in the engineering, support and design areas. Worse, for real engineers etc., the promotion paths are few and far between and it is not uncommon, (twice here in the last month) for staff on holiday to be recalled for something "urgent". Our basic working week is 42 hours, not including mealtimes. This particular billet is better than some (though not for salary(:).
My easiest times were as an external contractor, paid hourly; because they had to pay, not that this always helped.
The only relaxed place I have worked at became bankrupt.
So if you have found a relaxed place that pays a living salary, enjoy it and keep your fingers crossed.
Just an example: I have still got 55 days of holiday and 100 hours of overtime to take for this year and last year, despite taking a month off at the beginning of last year. I am not unusual.
As for Foxcom and the like, look at them in the context of where they are, not where you are or where Apple HQ is. In China or India, the equivalent of $17 buys a lot more than in California or most parts of Europe. Where I live we pay the equivalent of US$4 or $5 for a cup of tea or coffee, US$20 for lunch. But I have found such a sum will feed me for several days in parts of Asia and even in countries like Slovakia will go much further. So simplistic arguments based on numbers are ignorant and irrelevant.
Similarly, most of the workers are not there because the farm on which they laboured or the road they maintained had vanished. They are there because it pays more in cleaner, warmer conditions and often had to compete hard to get the job. Of course, conditions could be better and eventually will be. But I venture to say that one could visit parts of the Southern USA or Michigan or even fruit orchards in California and find people who would envy Foxcom employees.
If you see it as the responsibility of Apple, HP, Dell, IBM et alia to sort this out, then it is even more so yours and mine as the people who demand the low prices and buy the goods and so are the ultimate paymasters and drivers of the pressure on the workers, whether these are fellow citizens or subcontractors in a land far away.
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