Employees many
rungs down the ladder from the CEO echo the sentiment. “When you talk to people at Apple, they can
tell you in general what they do,” said a former senior hardware executive. “When you interview
people at other companies it is amazing how few of them can say what they do.” Reported another
departed employee, this one from Apple’s marketing ranks: “There’s no confusion as to who’s going
to do what. It’s very detail-oriented. I tried to bring this to other places, and they were like, ‘What do
you mean?’ They wanted two to three people to have responsibility.”