It’s interesting when three domains of my interest coincide. Last week (or was it the week before?) it was the tech/leadership/design news that (now former) Apple Human Interface Design chief, Alan Dye, was leaving Apple for Meta. I drafted this post when the news was announced, but I forgot to post it… so here it is.

My first thought was not about Dye’s competence as a designer (those more competent to judge than I suggest it was limited), but rather the strange move from the perspective of Leadership.

One of the things you learn if you want to succeed as a leader is how to adapt your leadership to the organisation in which you’re leading. Or to leave and find an organisation more aligned with your values and principles. If Dye has done the latter, it is remarkable that he spent so long at Apple. While both Apple and Meta are corporate behemoths, they do seem fundamentally different when it comes to the expression of specific values. If Meta is Dye’s ‘value home’, then Apple certainly cannot have been. If Apple is Dye’s ‘value home’, then Meta is going to be hard for him. Time will tell, I suppose.

For more on the story (if you somehow missed it), John Gruber has a nice write-up on how this news was received at Apple: daringfireball.net/2025/12/b…