Apple Reviews in Austin, TX Area

Current Employee – been working at Apple full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – -The stock purchase plan has been rewarding.
-My co-workers tend to be very high quality. The average tenure is much longer here than at other companies so I tend to think most of the employees are satisfied.
-The onsite caffe is great and serves healthy fare.
-Employee perks are numerous and generous. (beer bashes, BBQ cookoffs, etc.)

Cons – -Managers tend to "manage up".
-Lots of trendy business lingo without a lot of substance in some of them.
-The company can be greedy. Compensation plans change to drastically reduce employee income when it suits them.
-Culture is changing since Steve Jobs is gone

Advice to Senior Management – Manage your employees instead of managing your spreadsheet. Build tools that help not only you but your employees do their jobs more effectively. Remember that other companies envy your talent pool.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Apple full-time for more than a year

Pros – -Working from home
-very open contact with manager
-flexible to your situation
-great pay for job skill

Cons – -none that I've had at this point

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Apple part-time for less than a year

Pros – You get to work in pajamas, be awesome, you don't have to drive anywhere, people are usually polite when calling Apple customer service. Your co-workers are generally awesome and you have an open chat room to ask questions.

Cons – The pay is lower than on-site customer service, you are only guaranteed employment for 1 year at a time, and only when you are in college. They may or may not offer you another year or a job after college, depending on your performance.

Advice to Senior Management – Understand that people have different personalities and that someone can provide great customer service without a bubbly personality. Look at their CSAT and if it is good, leave them alone about their tone.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Apple full-time for less than a year

Pros – Move up quickly, recognized for good performance, fun contests, lots of overtime, room for growth, great pay, great benefits...

I've been with the company for 7 months and have already received a promotion due to my performance!

Cons – The only con is when we don't find out about a product launch until less than a week before it comes out and they change our schedules. I'm full time now, so I don't have to worry about that. It was really the only downfall.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Apple full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – great environment full of smart, creative, dedicated people

Cons – sometimes long hours because of product launches, but thats the best part of apple!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Apple as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – Great company that really take care of their employees. Friendly managers, awesome co-workers. Lots of room for advancement.

Cons – They use Volt to hire contract to hire employees and making it through Volt with their stricter than Apple rules is difficult.

Advice to Senior Management – None, I think you're doing great

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Apple full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Great benefits (money, health, free stuff, Apple discounts)
Wonderful people, almost every employee can tell you why they joined and why they stay, we are working towards a greater purpose. As Steve stated "I want to put a ding in the universe." Tim's the same way socially responsible, innovative, and a wonderful captain for this ship!
Great flexibility and drive for excellence, Apple culture is like nothing else you add driven people to wonderful ideas and you get at all levels a drive for excellence. Again as Steve stated we all need to "be the yardstick of quality."
We make products that change the world and the individual's quality of life, who else can really say that?

Cons – Scalability issues, minor just seem to be behind the curve sometimes reactive instead of proactive.
Infrastructure issues, we have a opportunity as we grow to rebuild the internal infrastructure, that we don't always seem to take.
Normal cooperate stuff (minus the soul sucking) there are politics, misconceptions, skewed messages just like every other company, even Apple can't solve for the human design.

Advice to Senior Management – Invest, we have the money. Take the same usability and elegance we apply to Customer facing products and give our internal tools a good shine.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Apple full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – - At least when I first started, the culture was amazing. Creativity was valued and prized. You were taught interesting things, and given projects that tickled your brain if you were interested.
- The people were, and still are, some of the most amazing people you'll ever work with.
- The managers who are good are absolutely brilliant, amazing, and inspiring. You'll want to jump off a cliff for them.
- The onsite benefits are pretty rocking. Cafeteria, very nice gym, lovely campus, onsite Toastmasters group (at least while I was there), various employee organizations and clubs, etc.
- There's a lot of growth, so if you can play the politics game, you have a bright future ahead of you

Cons – As I continued on in my career at Apple, the company grew up and became more corporate. What does that mean? Fewer people got promoted from within (preferring instead to get people form the outside, people with MBAs, etc.)
- As good as the benefits are, there were some serious lacks (example: No paternity leave, no paid leave for adoption, no sabbaticals, etc.)
- Very few managers (and certainly almost no upper managers) care about the customer. They care about the number, but not about the actual customer.
- The pay is okay at best. They brag that they're solidly average. This seems counterintuitive for one of the richest companies in the world. Value your human capital.
- You do have to play politics. Which often translates to keeping your mouth shut. Anger the wrong person and you may as well quit because your career there is over.
- A lot of the skills they teach aren't transferrable. Instead of certifying people in recognized brands (PMP, ASTD, etc.), they prefer to do their own certifications in house, which don't mean anything anywhere else.

Advice to Senior Management – There's a certain amount of brainwashing that you start to believe as an Apple employee. Namely, that because you work at Apple, there is no other company anywhere that is possibly even a tenth as awesome and hip and reliable as Apple - if you ever have the audacity to leave, every job for the rest of your career will be worse. It isn't true, but this attitude prevents Apple from caring as much about their employees as they could (and should). True, the benefits are great, but the culture definitely suffered in the time I was there. A few things I would look at:

- Rethink how you want the culture to be. Do you want people to have the freedom and creativity to make things better for coworkers and the customer, or do you want them to say "Yes Sir" to the Powers that Be, sit down, and be quiet?
- Invest in employees, both in terms of their professional and personal development
- Take a hard look at the managers that you hear are terrible. If a manager has a reputation for being awful, you should probably work on managing them out, not just proving them around to different teams. This isn't the Catholic church.
- If you see a drastic change in peoples' behavior, try asking them what's wrong, rather than assuming that they've suddenly become bad employees.
- Value your top performers. Keep them challenged. The fastest way to make a top performer your worst performer is to let them get bored.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Apple full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Laid back atmosphere
Individualistic
Value your innovation/input

Cons – Advancement sometimes seems unfair based on previous skills- some people have almost no background in management, but they are in charge

Advice to Senior Management – Development plans are good for employees who have bright futures- you find out skill sets you may not have known were there and you can ask a "hungry" employee to do more, simply by using their desire to succeed to your advantage.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Apple full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Great benefits, Employee Discounts, and Lunch

Cons – I can't think of any.

Advice to Senior Management – Doing great

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company