Apple’s secrecy created engineer burnout, led to a Different Together collaborative approach

Apple’s secrecy when it comes to product development is one of the defining characteristics of the company. However, a former Apple HR executive said it was a costly decision that led to engineer frustration and burnout. He argues that it ultimately stifled the company’s innovation.

Chris Deaver, who was a senior HR business partner at Apple from 2015 to 2019, says that the company tried an experiment with the development of AirPods Pro, to see whether it was possible to create a more collaborative working environment while still ensuring secrecy …

Deaver wrote in a Fast Company piece that he understood Apple’s motivation for secrecy.

Secrecy was a core value that it believed in, and which helps customers retain the surprise and delight. The kind that arrives on the day of launch when nobody (not even most employees) anticipate how insanely great new products will be.

But, he stated that he quickly saw the negative side to different silos and teams.

Hoarding critical information. Promoting personal agendas. Infighting. These escalations were common as a newly appointed HR partner. It was always about the “team not sharing .”

” issue.

He said it was so bad that engineers didn’t even know who they could and couldn’t talk to about their work.

I would hear from one person after the other, bright people asking: “How can I work like that?” If I can only share information with certain people, how do I know who and when? I don’t want to end up fired or in jail.”

The friction caused by the separate silos made it extremely stressful for people to come together. It even created enemies between members of different teams.

Teams had been innovating in different silos for many months, only to come together in the last hour of launch. This led to a series of five- and six-hour daily meetings that caused tremendous friction and burnout. People were frustrated. They wanted to leave or to “never work with that one person again.”

Deaver found that the camera teams within Apple had a different approach, creating a ‘braintrust’ which operated across silos.

We discovered “The Camera Braintrust” (as in iPhone camera, or the cameras in any hardware devices), or “CBT,” and applied these key ingredients: a weekly cross-staff transparency session, focusing on a vulnerable or open approach to sharing challenges they were facing. Each leader and team with a voice, each sharing exactly where they were in their development, and what they needed from the other teams. These cycles led to innovation, which made the camera technology the standard for collaboration.

Frustratingly, no explanation is given for why the camera teams were allowed to operate in this more open manner. It did serve as an example that Deaver and other Apple executives could point to. They also tested the AirPods Pro using the same method.

This was considered a success and an open approach to the project was adopted by other Apple product departments in an initiative called Different Together.

What emerged was a culture shift to what we called “Different Together,” the next-level notion for Apple’s future. This combination of power and history, which highlighted the importance of endless variety of voices, was combined with the ability to do it all together “Together,” is what we called “Different Together.”

Understandably, Deaver doesn’t go into details on the compromise between secrecy and collaboration, but it appears that the AirPods Pro set a precedent for at least a somewhat more open development process.