Earlier this week it the local council in Cupertino approved a permit for Apple to build a massive 1,765 sqm cafeteria for Apple employees only. During the meeting a representative from Apple said the facility was being built “… to provide a level of security so that people and employees can feel comfortable talking about their business, their research and whatever project they’re engineering without fear of competition sort of overhearing their conversations.”

In other words - don’t bring your mates that don’t work at Apple - they’re not allowed.

When you work for Apple clearly they value secrecy in everything they do and therefore you must keep everything you do to yourself. Having held a position with similar confidentiality arrangements in the past I can understand that to some extent, but in those cases it didn’t matter where you ate or where you were: YOU JUST DIDN’T TALK ABOUT IT.

It seems just a little odd that Apple would be so strict with secrecy between their own teams about prototype products but then say that employees will be able to talk comfortably about their business in their new cafeteria amongst themselves. Surely many topic are still off the discussion list no differently to before? It’s far more likely that Apple will push its employees to use the new facility by offering discounts or other incentives in order to reduce the number of secrecy “slip-ups” caused by employees by ’lunching’ elsewhere with ‘outsiders’.

If you want to work at Apple tell your friends it might be a while before you can do lunch.