Does Apple really assign engineers to “fake” projects as a loyalty test?

"Apple Makes New Employees Work on Fake Products Until Apple Can Trust Them", blared a headline—and many others like it—last January. In the Apple-watching world, it has since become common wisdom that the company assigns new engineers to "fake" projects in order to test their loyalty—that is, their propensity to leak—before giving them actual work.

The claim took life with the publication of a book called Inside Apple, which claimed some employees were "hired into so-called dummy positions, roles that aren't explained in detail until after they join the company." Author Adam Lashinsky cited an unnamed Apple engineer who said he wasn't informed of what he would be working on until his first day on the job. This expanded into a wider-reaching "fake products" claim made when Lashinsky spoke about the book at LinkedIn. After his talk, an unnamed audience member said that a friend had worked on "fake products" at Apple for nine months before being put on something real. The point was related to Lashinsky's reporting on Apple's notorious secrecy and was meant to highlight the extremes to which Apple goes to protect its trade secrets. The moment was captured on video, and the idea that Apple puts employees on fake projects took off within the Apple blogosphere and became widely accepted as fact.

But is it true? I was prompted to look into the question after several friends—Apple employees, no less—expressed disbelief at the claim. Their skepticism matched my own experience; in my years of reporting on Apple and speaking to many of its employees, I had never heard of such a practice. When I sought answers by interviewing current and former Apple engineers, I found that "fake" projects are certainly not a regular occurrence at Apple—and they quite probably do not exist at all.

Fake projects? What fake projects?

"Apple always seemed to be a no-bullshit kind of place when it comes to the seriousness of your work and what you get done," one former engineer told me when I asked him about fake projects. "I find it suspect that they'd ever waste their own and the employee's time on something that didn't directly contribute to their bottom line somehow."

I spoke to Apple employees from various areas of the company at differing levels, some who are still at Apple and others who have moved on, but all expressed the same sentiment. No one reported any direct experience of being put on a fake project at Apple, and no one knew a friend or colleague at the company who had. A single former employee acknowledged having heard about fake projects—but only from a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, and the employee was quick to acknowledge that the rumor should be treated with a skeptical eye.

"I don't really see the need for that kind of stuff because everything is NDAed [governed by a nondisclosure agreement] out the ass," one current employee told me. "You can be hired for a position where they don't tell you what you're working on beforehand, sure, but if they're choosing to hire you with your skill set, you might be able to hazard a guess on what it's about. It's a lot easier to have someone sign an NDA and then fire them if they violate it."

Indeed, multiple individuals I spoke to highlighted Apple's "generous" use of the NDA for projects, or parts of projects, or even parts of parts of projects. The point isn't just to hold employees accountable if information gets out, but also to serve as a constant reminder that Apple is watching. The attitude directly affects hiring—employees said that managers try to hire people who are clearly enthused about the job and about Apple, not the type who come off as someone who might leak right away.

"Everything we work on, there's a new NDA for," one engineer said. "If we had any questions about whether someone would be able to maintain confidentiality, we just wouldn't hire them. And if they did leak, they'd just get fired."

Several current and former engineers said that few US Apple employees would dare leak outside the company, echoing our report from last October, "Apple's secret garden: the struggle over leaks and security." Apple has plenty of leverage over its own state-side employees, of course, including the prospect of firings and even lawsuits; more positively, most employees stay silent out of loyalty to their teammates.

But the leaks often come fast and furious from Apple's partners in its Asian supply chain. Contract factory workers and non-Apple executives are seen as having far less skin in the game, making them more willing to publish unreleased product information. "Clearly, the people who need the security training are not [in Cupertino]. They're not getting the same level of scrutiny as we are, and it shows," one current employee told me last October.

"Apple is so containerized and siloed that rumors [among employees] tend to be the same as Internet rumors," said the former engineer who acknowledged hearing about allegedly fake projects through the grapevine. "It's mostly horse shit and links to pictures from Chinese factories."

But when it's not, the company has ways of sending a message.

Security lockdown

If Apple does catch wind of leaks from inside Cupertino, it's willing to go all Men in Black in order to find the source. A former employee familiar with Apple's security procedures said he has personally witnessed "lockdowns" wherein a part of the floor or office is surrounded by security personnel—usually outside contractors with backgrounds in the military, CIA, or FBI.

Employees working within the lockdown area have to remain in their offices while security visits each desk in order to copy data from computers and other devices. The security team claims it can zero in on a leak almost instantly (though some investigations do take longer), and it may choose one individual to take away for further questioning.

Though it sounds scary, the practice is uncommon. When asked how often such a thing might happen, the former employee told me, "At most I feel like it'd be once every couple of years." He went on to say that such an incident is often enough for those considering leaking info to the outside world to reconsider their plans.

Fake "fake" project, bro

So how did the fake projects rumor get started? As it turns out, Lashinsky never meant to imply—and didn't actually say in either his book or in the LinkedIn talk—that he was referring to fake projects. "I can see how 'dummy projects' was a poor choice of words on stage that day," Lashinsky told me in reference to the LinkedIn video. "The concept I was trying to describe might best be worded as 'placeholder' positions or 'unspecified' projects."

Our own sources acknowledged that Apple may not tell an engineer what project he or she is about to work on until the time comes, which is what Lashinsky was talking about in Inside Apple. Lashinsky clarified that the "fake" projects line didn't come from him but secondhand from an audience member, who had himself heard about it from a friend.

Let's assume that Audience Member's friend really did make this claim and wasn't attempting to deceive. Here's what might have happened: an employee was assigned to one of Apple's many experimental projects to see whether it would work out. It didn't, and the project was eventually killed. The employee—particularly if he or she were new and unfamiliar with Apple's practices—might have thought that this was a "fake" product, then complained to a friend about their supposedly wasted time.

My sources all agreed that this seemed like the most likely scenario, though two pointed out that being the most likely idea still doesn't make it likely. "If that happened, it would have been for a small project that a manager wanted or something," one former employee said, pointing out that Apple runs extremely minimal, barebones teams for its secret projects.

"Sometimes projects get canceled and never see the light of day," acknowledged a current employee who has been at Apple for roughly a decade. "But in my experience, it's highly unlikely that a new employee would be put on one of those."

Update: Red Sweater Software's Daniel Jalkut, a former Apple employee, chimed in with his experience on Twitter. "I never, in 7 years there heard of anybody’s time being intentionally wasted on a fake project. Canceled projects, sure," he said.