Affiliate Disclosure
If you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Read our ethics policy.

Apple puts some new hires on fake projects until they can be trusted

Apple's penchant for secrecy sometimes sees new engineers tasked with working on decoy products for a lengthy period of time while management vets their trustworthiness.

The revelation was widely disclosed in Adam Lashinsky's new book "Inside Apple" and further corroborated by a former Apple engineer during the author's appearance at LinkedIn last week.

"A friend of mine who's a senior engineer, he works on — or did work on — fake products I'm sure for the first part of his career, and interviewed for 9 months," the employee said. "It's intense."

The exchange between Lashinsky and the former employee was captured, below, by Fortune's Philip Elmer DeWitt.

"Inside Apple," which was first previewed by AppleInsider earlier this month, also tells of a secret room at Apple devoted solely to designing product packaging and what users experience when opening a new product

It also offers details on Steve Jobs's interest in a startup camera company before he died late last year.