8 Management Lessons I Learned Working At Apple
BIANCA MALE
APR. 22, 2011, 10:54 AM

Apple is a company that spawns both rabid fans and haters. But there's no denying that it's been enormously successful, and it just keeps on winning. Part of that success, as we've said before, comes from the fact that the company is really just a huge startup -- with a corporate culture that is extremely engineer-focused, emphasizes minimal bureaucracy, and likes taking care of its people.
Sachin Agarwal learned a lot about Apple's management style during his days as an engineer. He worked at the company for 6 years, before leaving to start the simple blogging platform Posterous. "I loved working there... [Choosing to leave] was a really hard decision," he says. But, when he left, he made sure to take a few important management lessons with him, which have helped make Posterous successful as well.

1. A tech company should be run by engineers, not managers
Agarwal tells us that Apple is completely run by its engineers. "They don’t have a lot of product management," he says. "Most of the project teams are really small, and they’re all driven by the engineers." On top of that, Agarwal says that most managers are all engineers as well, "not product people or MBAs." That means that the people overseeing projects understand the technology, what's necessary for a project, and can really relate to their team. 2. Build a culture of respect between managers and employees
Agarwal says that, because most managers have strong engineering backgrounds, "there’s not a division between product manager and 'code monkeys'." There's a great amount of respect between the two tiers. "My manager was an engineer at apple for ten years before he was a manager... which made me want to work [even harder] to impress him," Agarwal says. That respect, along with small, close-knit project