'Slow down' and 'deeply observe' the company culture when starting a new job, says ex-Apple director

Business Insider

18 hours ago

When job-hopping, make sure not to accidentally bring your old company's culture along for the ride, said Bob Baxley, a former director of design at Apple.
"I think my own particular mistake, and I've seen this with some other Apple executives as well, is we went directly from Apple — I left Apple on a Friday and I started Pinterest on a Monday," Baxley said on a recent episode of Lenny's Podcast. "And I didn't give myself time to recalibrate to the Pinterest culture."
After leaving Apple in 2014, Baxley went on to work as the head of product design at Pinterest, where he said he "bounced off" the culture, given that he was still acting as he had in his previous role.
"I came in thinking I was supposed to behave the way I behaved at Apple, which is very direct, fighting hard. It's very — everybody cares about each other, it's never insulting, but it's intense," he said. "That's not really where Pinterest was at the time."
It's not just Apple's working environment that has a way of sticking with you, Baxley added — most major tech companies have " really powerful cultures."
"You get kind of indoctrinated into all those standards and it's really deep. It infuses all of your behavior and how you conduct yourself in the company, away from the company," he said. "And so, I think it's pretty hard to immigrate successfully from one of those environments to another."
Baxley said that other former Apple employees have smoother transitions, purely by virtue of taking time off before taking up a new position. Baxley cites Hiroki Asai as a prime example — as Apple's former Vice President of Global Marketing, Asai took years off for "re-wirement" prior to joining AirBnB, according to his LinkedIn.
"It also should be noted that he had — it was a multi-year gap between the time he left Apple and the time he started Airbnb," Baxley said. Asai and Apple did not respond to a request for comment by Business Insider prior to publication.
"At Apple, I think it was Tim or Steve, used to talk about the Apple car wash," he added. "That when you started Apple, they kind of had to take you through the car wash and get off all that stuff that you'd accumulated at other places. It turns out there's a car wash you need to go through when you leave Apple as well."
Though eschewing old habits as you move into a new role is important, that doesn't mean you should forget the lessons your old job taught you, Baxley said.
"The thing I took away from Apple, and I think this is true for anybody changing from one major culture to another, is most likely, the new place hires you because of the values of the organization you left, but not the behaviors," he said.
As you move on, it's worth asking how you can best incorporate the best aspects of your old company's culture in your new workplace, Baxley added.
"And so I think it's important to recalibrate and say, well, I want to hold onto these values," he said. "So at Apple, attention to detail, product excellence, doing everything you can for the customer and the user — so, try to hold onto those values but then think, 'Okay, how are those values best expressed in this culture?'"
Still, Baxley told Business Insider, it won't always be possible to pause between roles — particularly in the tech sphere, where companies usually want new hires to onboard right away. Even if you have to start immediately, it could be helpful to go in while expecting a period of adjustment.
"My biggest point on this topic is that when you go into a new culture you really need to slow down, deeply observe, don't judge or compare, and then when you have a reasonable handle on things, reflect on the best ways to express the values from the old place with behaviors that are appropriate to the new," he told BI.