Apple Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Apple

Pros – Apple is innovative and hard-working. It not the easiest job but if your looking for challenge (which I was) and want to work with retail and technology there is no better company to work for. The benefits are great - even when you are part-time. No matter what position you work with the company there is always room for growth and everyone is one big happy family.

Apple spends lots of money, time and har-work into making Apple retail flawless. They have a special corporate team dedicated to making internal software that'll ease workflow for employees and customers.

Cons – The politics inside of Apples culture are a little bizarre. For example, when something is released and it is slightly wrong or people are unhappy with it the everyone in the company needs to be prepared to take one stance on the subject and hold onto that stance until Apple says other wise.

Advice to Senior Management – Communication over RNN is great but, sometimes I feel as if I would like to be able to check my Apple webmail from home, even if I'm part-time. In my store there is a lot of communication through Apple webmail and I don't get that communication until I actually go to the store which is 1-2 times/week since I'm PT.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Apple

Pros – relaxed corporate environment, very flexible, happy people work there from all walks of life

Cons – Flat management means that incompetent people may get promoted to manager status (so many managers!), middle management problem where it may take a long time for someone to get promoted beyond manager and they get disgruntled, and there is a lack of constructive feedback, interns are often set up to fail since there are so few employment opportunities available

Advice to Senior Management – Just because you can't rise above a management position doesnt mean you should sabotage or hold others back, thats my opinion and it was shared by several colleagues.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Apple

Pros – Easy workload when things were light. Teamwork and camaraderie are unparalleled. Easy job when fixing machines. Salary was competitive for similar retail fields.

Cons – Retail. A_hole customers. Insane customers. Combative customers. Constant shift and changes and management and operating procedures. Inconsistent policies and internal promotions.

Advice to Senior Management – Enjoy it while it lasts.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Apple

Pros – - Nice perks
- Super casual dress code
- Really nice people and interpersonal culture
- Can actually take accrued vacation without anyone complaining
- Stock has been doing very well
- Heavy marketing means you can impress everyone when you say where you work.

Cons – - Lots of weird managerial politics
- Endless meetings to get anything done
- Ridiculous amount of secrecy causes animosity between different teams and makes it take forever to get anything done unless it's high priority or "for Steve".
- Waaayyyyy understaffed for software engineering in most departments, prepare to work lots of overtime.
- Some senior engineers have been around for 20 or 30 years, no matter how out of touch they may be, they'll have a significant say in projects tangentially related to them.
- Corollary: Don't be young.
- Software engineering culture is fad driven (and we're talking weird Apple-only fads like GCD) on the desktop, rushed and buggy on embedded.

Advice to Senior Management – Software design mimics the organization that creates it, by separating desktop and embedded development with such an insane amount of security checkpoints, you're ensuring that economies of scale and scope that could come from sharing embedded and desktop code will never happen no matter how much management tries to force it.

And getting caught between these two worlds is infinitely frustrating.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Apple

Pros – This place is great if you want people to think you're cool, trendy and willing to work for nothing. A lot of the Mac Specialists seem brainwashed to think they're getting a good deal with their low hourly rate to sell, sell, sell.

Cons – If you want a relatively dead-end, low paying job to do while you're in school, work here. You're better off getting an internship in non-retail.

Advice to Senior Management – Offer your employees higher pay, your Genii won't have anything to do without sales people. Offer some incentive, not just some old crap you have laying around at Christmas time.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Apple

Pros – Good corporate culture and learning.

Cons – Long hours. Company is driven by brand marketing rather than engineering.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to employees.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Apple

Pros – Company Culture
Company Products
Challenging Projects
Great benefits
Fast Pace lets make a difference style
Think Different place to be
And lets not forget SJ
Great Beer bashes and food

Cons – Really depends on how good your Manager is ( Walker or Talker) and takes care of the whole team
Politics is the name of the game
Depending on group / team expect to work very long hours and weekends for long periods of time
Work / Home life balance is really tough depending on which team your on
Lots of teachers pets drama going on through the groups with management
Often stressful

Advice to Senior Management – Remember your History and remember it's the " Think Different " idea which rebuilt a great company from the ashes.
Customers are number one
Old and new products need to be treated with respect, don't let the newer groups step on the old groups.
Crack down on the in house Drama / Politics games
Keep it in house, out sourcing Dev, QA over seas is just being lazy and cheap and takes away from the people that help built this company to the star it has become. People buy the products because Apple employee's take pride in the products they make and produce, otherwise they would be buying another company products.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Apple

Pros – It gives you the chance work on products that impact users all over the world and millions of people use every day.

Cons – You have to be ready to work long hours and hard but the seeing the end result makes it all worth it.

Advice to Senior Management – I am quite happy with the high level management at Apple, they focus on what is important and it shows in the results of the company these past few years.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Apple

Pros – Great company with nice benefits and comfortable salary. Constant communication with management, approachable and friendly. Great hiring standards. Smart, generous employees.

Cons – You're selling products at the height of their popularity; dealing with a lot of crazy policies and limitations that change every day. Along with a lot of crazy people. A lot of silly "lingo'' for a company that tries to "think differently.''

Advice to Senior Management – I never received feedback at all from management about my own performance. Over the course of three months, I never met with a manager. We interfaced daily, but I never even knew if I was doing well with customers!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Apple

Pros – -ability to work on cool consumer electronics
-international travel
-stock / RSU package is a reasonable income supplement
-pride associated with working for the most admired company in the world

Cons – -management by chaos - resulting in a lot of unnecessary churn and work
-no respect for work life balance
-management expects you to be on call all the time
-everyone is so busy, training and development is an afterthought
-very top down structure where individuals hold little authority and are often micromanaged
-management considers "company pride" as a perk, and skimps on other benefits
-financial compensation is not competitive
-no clear career development opportunities
-very few processes, so the culture is people-driven, and therefore, very political
-management is maniacally focused on the bottom line, so certain detrimental behavior is not discouraged. This is often manifested in needless politicking, bad management styles, heavy-handed vendor relations, and turf wars. In short, jerks are tolerated.
-the company is very siloed, limiting mobility (in my case, my VP would not allow me to consider jobs outside his umbrella)
-different organizations have different incentives, often resulting in poor coordination at critical hand-off points

Advice to Senior Management – Allow engineering / ops to push back more on late design changes. Align incentives so that engineering / ops are better coordinated between across development builds. Do not allow form to trump function (see antenna-gate). Provide more competitive compensation for your top performers.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend