I have to agree to a certain level. Apple has a level of quality control that people tend to forget and think of it more as a proprietary system. Its true Apple does not make sense in their choices most of the time and for some reason it works. A elite cliche type of expression if you own their products.

Whiles others that see room for improvement in their model try the same with looser controls and it never seems to be able to catch that distortion field momentum that Jobs is so good at creating.

Other should be all the above. Each one of these organizations are equally hellish to work with.

Perhaps some sort of job saving move by this Guggenheimer. If anything I think many will really miss XP, regretfully.

Yes its good to hear I am not the only one in a company like yours. While I dont do 16 hours consecutively I feel your pain.

When your in it, its hard to see whats better, the mind numbing slave work for days on end or unemployment.
Grass is greener whichever side of the fence your on in a company run as such.

I work for a large medical company that has a call center in the US headquarters and have also been outsourcing their call center to India and Phillipines. From what I can tell from my observations, by the way I am not directly involved in the call center so my comments are not quantifiable, people anywhere eventually tire of working for shit jobs.

Perhaps people outside the US can last longer than their American counterparts, but over the course of time they eventually develop the same traits that cause them to be terminated as well. Bad attitude, lack of interest, insubordination, lack of job performance. A crap job is just that, if you are hungry then you may accept it, but once your basic needs are met you will realize you no longer wish to be in a crap job. Americans have their basic needs met more easily, than the countries mentioned so they tolerate a bad job in a less amount of time than people that have not eaten or had a decent place to live for many years of their life.

Complacency is human trait not just Americans.