One of Facebook’s earliest female employees recalls what it was like to work there; what it’s really like to work at an Apple Store.
Apple Stores’ army, long on loyalty, but short on pay [THE NEW YORK TIMES]
About 30,000 of the 43,000 Apple employees in this country work in Apple Stores, as members of the service economy, and many of them earn about $25,000 a year. … Divide revenue by total number of employees and you find that last year, each Apple store employee — that includes non-sales staff like technicians and people stocking shelves — brought in $473,000.
The woman in the Facebook frat house [THE WALL STREET JOURNAL]
At a one-on-one meeting with Sheryl weeks later, I found out that she had an interest in the topic of women at Facebook and in Silicon Valley generally. She scheduled individual meetings with all the women in engineering. By that point, they numbered about 15 out of hundreds of engineers. I told her that there were a few situations i]volving men in the department that I thought she should know about. … Sure enough, the manager who propositioned employees had been subtly demoted and the aggressive engineer moved to another team.
Apple v. Motorola: Judge Posner dismisses entire patent case, no injunctions to be issued [THE VERGE]
For Motorola, Posner’s ruling is huge: it had been hanging on by a thread with just one patent remaining in the fight — a standards-essential patent for GSM that Apple claimed wasn’t actually used in practice — and a full ruling in Apple’s favor could’ve put the newly-minted Google subsidiary in the precarious position of facing a portfolio-wide product ban until it could design around Apple’s claims.
Amazon Studios selects first four original TV projects, rivals Netflix [THE NEXT WEB]
Just a month after we brought you news that Amazon Studios was calling for original comedy and children’s series projects, the company announced today that it has selected its first four projects, choosing three comedies and one children’s show.
‘Find Friends Nearby’: Facebook’s new mobile feature for finding people around you [TECHCRUNCH]
Initially called “Friendshake” and also accessible through a URL that is the abbreviation of “find friends nearby” (http://fb.com/ffn), it’s another step in Facebook furthering its reach into mobile, and creating services to meet new people — rather than building up more connectivity with the ones you already know. And, in keeping with Facebook’s emphasis on being as ubiquitous as possible, for now it’s not being delivered in a native app, but via the mobile web.
Sony to make $623 million investment in Olympus [THE VERGE]
The two firms are said to be negotiating a $623 million investment from Sony Corp., which would make it Olympus’ largest shareholder, accounting for more than a 10 percent stake.