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- Tony Fadell (iPod creator) on the culture clash between Apple and Google
Tony Fadell (iPod creator) on the culture clash between Apple and Google
“At Apple, you couldn’t hide. If you were hiding, someone would say, ‘What the [expletive]? Why aren’t you doing the thing we need?’ Everyone was critical.”
When Tony sold his company Nest to Google for $3.2B, and the contrast couldn’t have been sharper.
“At Google, it’s 20% time. You were lucky if they even showed up… They’d take the bus in for lunch, get a massage, grab yogurt, and head home. It was [expletive]. Everyone could hide.”
Fadell says that level of comfort breeds mediocrity that’s dangerous for early-stage startups.
That’s why he warns founders against hiring “career Googlers” with 15–20 years of tenure:
“It will mess up your culture.”
He’s seen this pattern before — way back in the ‘90s at General Magic:
We swore we’d never hire people from the East Coast. They needed a driver, a company car, an executive toilet. We said, ‘It’s a culture clash…And now? “Silicon Valley has become that. Entitlement everywhere.”
Great cultures are built on urgency, ownership, and accountability — not perks. Hire people who ship, not people who hide.