Know this. If you ever get an offer of employment at Apple, answer right away. They take this stuff seriously. You might possibly not get a second chance.
One-time jailbreaker “Comex,” whose real name is Nicholas Allegra and is a 20-year-old Brown University student, found that out first hand. He forgot to reply to an email and found out he was promptly terminated. That's heavy stuff, but it stands to mention that the email he “forgot” to reply to was an important one.
Comex originally wrote jailbreaking tools that allowed users to get into iPhones and iPads and remove iOS restrictions placed on them by the Apple Store. He seemed to be years ahead of other hackers and garnered a lot of attention with his know-how, including attention from Cupertino. Apple offered him an internship, and he took them up on it twice, although promises that he didn't sell out for money. He was simply bored with jailbreaking.
Apple then sent Comex an offer to join them permanently as an employee, but the offer was promptly rescinded. Why? The jailbreaker forgot to reply to an email, and that's something Apple takes very seriously, probably both emails and job offers. When he got around to replying, he found the offer was off the table. He said, “I wasn’t too happy about it, but it didn’t seem like I was able to fix it. So that’s what it is.”
Apple, I'm promising, that if an offer is ever coming my way, I will respond quickly.
Photo Credit: forbes.com
