Couldn't he also get his employment terminated at Apple? Because I'm pretty sure any company wouldn't let you work with the media whilst working with them under a standard NDA.
Pure speculation, but it sounds to me like he may have been working on some kind of undercover exposé on Apple. While I don't see any evidence of this, his actions would make more sense in that light. But if so, it is unclear why nobody at the Verge seems to be in the loop.
Maybe he's been infiltrating the Verge secretly working for Apple, and now the mission's done and he's ready to transition to official employment with Apple, he doesn't care what happens to his career at the Verge?
Or, he was instructed to infiltrate Apple by Verge, and was found out. The Verge burned him, he dropped out of Apple, hence why he's supposedly not on the payroll at Apple.
Eh, in that case, I would assume/hope he had those instructions in writing, as The Verge's burn has surely put a huge dent in his employability, and very likely libelous.
I know someone who did this. It was both so he could collect dual salaries for a while and because he wanted to try out his new job before quitting his old one.
It turned out playing out much like what Patel describes with Ziegler. Manager at old job became suspicious when he became largely unresponsive and figured out what was going on, then fired him. I think he thought he could do both at once better than he was able to.
At one job we had the director of security take a lot of vacation, at his level he didn't have to report it. A couple months later someone discovered he was working full time at another company and also taking a lot of vacation there as well. Eventually the CIO fired him once the details were known. Plus he sucked at security so no idea why he even had the job in the first place.
I knew someone who jumped from TiVo to Google and part of the contention in the timing of the switch for him was options vesting.
So Google (well his hiring mgr/HR) told him to keep working at TiVo and get his bonus from them and they'd have something lined up for him to jump immediately afterwards. They couldn't let him work on Google proprietary stuff, though.
Ziegler was, among other things, the automotive editor of The Verge, and is, by any measure, a car enthusiast. What follows is my wild speculation:
Given his experience in both tech media and automotive media, perhaps he was hired at Apple as part of the team whose responsibility it will be to construct the messaging and narrative around the unveiling of Apple's car program. As part of the secrecy around the project, he might well have been hired by one of Apple's automotive shell companies [1], thus his name not appearing in the Apple intranet.
As for his employment overlap, that sounds more like a mishandled quiet departure than anything else – Apple HR would certainly have instructed him to keep his transition low-profile, and maybe he simply screwed it up.
From the sounds of things, it was roughly a month ("[he] was not in contact with us through most of August and into September.").
That's probably not super crazy for a reasonably senior writer working on "longish" form stuff. While a month is probably a long time, I wouldn't be surprised if a week or two usually passed without touching base. It might take a couple of those "week or two" cycles to notice someone hasn't checked in.
The article also says it wasn't unnoticed, and that they tried to reach him several times in that period.
Yes, it sounds to me like they noticed almost immediately, and just didn't figure out what was going on until a couple of months later because he didn't tell them what was going on.
Sometimes when an employee stops showing up and cuts contact, they are dealing with mental health issues and good employers see what accommodations can be made.
In this case, it turned out to be something else, but that's why I wouldn't have rushed to fire if I were in HR at the Verge.
This was downvoted, but I recall it supposedly being an explicit condition of employment that you don't tell anyone that you are going to be an apple store employee?
> well, but freelancers pay their own healthcare, 401k, etc.
And are paid more to compensate for it. Whereas if you're working for two employers you're "paying" for two sets of healthcare etc., which seems wasteful.
US insurance carriers generally ask you to certify that you did not have insurance through another carrier/policy simultaneously (upon submission of a claim), as policies tend to have 100% coverage kick in on things like annual and lifetime maximum numbers.
Double-dipping on insurance policies messes with their actuarial table calculations.
That sort of certification is a practice that should be made illegal. I've just been bit by that when we transitioned my family from one earner's plan to the other. It created a pointless hastle for us and our care team. Insurers don't need to know if I have coverage through another insurer.
Thats pretty simple to solve though, just decline coverage from the provider with the most limited coverage. This is pretty common as married couples usually only take the coverage from one spouse.
It's way harder to fake hours that need to be billed to someone, I assume anyone who's double dipping on jobs isn't actually trying to do 40 hours at both, they are trying to get paid to do 40 hours at both ;)
It's not uncommon for journalists to jump ship and work for the people they've covered. Numerous former newspaper colleagues of mine work as public information officers for the school districts and agencies they used to cover. This happens all the way up to the White House level. Questions of biased coverage in the months leading up to the switch are often justified and asked.
But I've never heard of this kind of double-dipping. Other than the brief extra paycheck, this is all massive downside, particularly in media becomes the grist for another news cycle. The fact that he's also just gone silent on Twitter makes me think there is some other problem here.
A more burning question is if this guy took a job at Apple, did he get so frustrated by Verge, or was so thrilled by the job at Apple, that he simply walked out and never looked back? That's one way to certainly burn a bridge.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 87.2 ms ] thread- You wouldn't risk your new position by not quitting your old one.
- Apple would not want you to keep your old job since they want your focus on your new position.
- Getting double salaries is not worth the paperwork headache of tricking the system.
The only reason I can think of is, he would get some sort of extra pay from his old job if he would fulfil a time written on his old contract.
(conspiracy intensifies)
I don't believe this of course, but hey, tinfoil.
Anyway, this theory is getting too convoluted, hence almost certainly false :)
It turned out playing out much like what Patel describes with Ziegler. Manager at old job became suspicious when he became largely unresponsive and figured out what was going on, then fired him. I think he thought he could do both at once better than he was able to.
Was he trying to time slice multiple processes like an OS?
I knew someone who jumped from TiVo to Google and part of the contention in the timing of the switch for him was options vesting.
So Google (well his hiring mgr/HR) told him to keep working at TiVo and get his bonus from them and they'd have something lined up for him to jump immediately afterwards. They couldn't let him work on Google proprietary stuff, though.
Given his experience in both tech media and automotive media, perhaps he was hired at Apple as part of the team whose responsibility it will be to construct the messaging and narrative around the unveiling of Apple's car program. As part of the secrecy around the project, he might well have been hired by one of Apple's automotive shell companies [1], thus his name not appearing in the Apple intranet.
As for his employment overlap, that sounds more like a mishandled quiet departure than anything else – Apple HR would certainly have instructed him to keep his transition low-profile, and maybe he simply screwed it up.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/alleged-apple-front-company-a...
That's probably not super crazy for a reasonably senior writer working on "longish" form stuff. While a month is probably a long time, I wouldn't be surprised if a week or two usually passed without touching base. It might take a couple of those "week or two" cycles to notice someone hasn't checked in.
The article also says it wasn't unnoticed, and that they tried to reach him several times in that period.
In this case, it turned out to be something else, but that's why I wouldn't have rushed to fire if I were in HR at the Verge.
but it doesn't really fill in all the gaps. Like where he is now, if he still works there, etc.
I imagine a pretty good engineer could maybe work two full time jobs pretty easily remotely working 4-5 hours per day on each gig.
3hours each and you could be totally productive (and not burnout)
if you're running two well-paying full employments with all benefits, you have a sweet gig going.
only possible in the US due to the setup of healthcare and overall taxes, etc.
And are paid more to compensate for it. Whereas if you're working for two employers you're "paying" for two sets of healthcare etc., which seems wasteful.
Double-dipping on insurance policies messes with their actuarial table calculations.
But I've never heard of this kind of double-dipping. Other than the brief extra paycheck, this is all massive downside, particularly in media becomes the grist for another news cycle. The fact that he's also just gone silent on Twitter makes me think there is some other problem here.
However, it looks like nobody was able to reach him, which might mean he had an accident.
Regardless, keeping coworkers in the dark is bad form, even if Apple was pressuring him to do so (which might not have been the case at all).