Apple Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Apple

Pros – Great Compensation for retail
Management takes care of employees
Nice benefits for part time
Fun Job
Fast Paced never boring
Good way to develop sales skills and knowledge in the technology field

Cons – Very competitive for advancement in retail division or company
Hard to keep consistent amount of work hours when part time
Managers can play favorites

Advice to Senior Management – I have worked in a large flagship apple store and a smaller mall store and have nothing but good things to say about the management teams that apple puts together for their retail stores.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Apple

Pros – Great Atmosphere. Helpful colleagues. Lot's of enthusiasm. Helpful management with lots of training. Some opportunities for advancement. Fair compensation for work duties. Compensation is not based on commission.

Cons – Pushy about meeting sales goals. Upper management is mostly concerned about meeting goals, rather than employee development. Very busy atmosphere

Advice to Senior Management – Focus more on the employees and what they bring to the table rather than what qualities they lack. Keep a positive attitude at all times.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Apple

Pros – 1. Brand name
2. Benefits
3. Great people
4. Decent work-life balance
5. Interesting work
6. Bay area!
7. Entrepreneurial structure

Cons – 1. Career advancement not great
2. Siloed in role
3. Too much secrecy
4. Base salary and bonus not competitve

Advice to Senior Management – 1. More opportunities for MBAs
2. More career mentorship
3. Better benefits
4. Give perspective on other parts of the business

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Apple

Pros – Really interesting work in most areas (very little dull routine).
Outstanding opportunity to work with really smart people in your field.
General helpfulness of colleagues is almost uniformly present across teams.
Really cool leading-edge products and services you can be proud to help develop.
Very intense focus on understanding and helping customers.
Lots of opportunity to become "expert" on a subject for the company.
Financial health of company is excellent. Very good handle on cost management.
Benefits are very good.
Equal opportunity is apparent everywhere. Very diverse workforce.
A truly international company and workforce.

Cons – General rule: You will not know if you really "fit" the culture until about a year on the job.
Managers mostly work higher level projects and negotiate resources and priorities (as opposed to develop their people). Experience of working at Apple is hugely influenced by your direct manager and his/her style. Some buffer the craziness, others amplify it.
Company is now huge but still trying to act lean like a start up. Teams are getting moved off main campus with little regard to who they need to interact with. "Campus" feeling only applies to core business groups.
Work-life balance can quickly become terrible for those who really understand systems and processes and how to manage them. The better you are, the less balance you can expect.
Management planning process - continual over-committing continues.
Really stove-piped planning structure. Very little cross-functional planning below VP level. Regular surprises from project work in other areas for which you had no visibility..
Secrecy bordering on paranoia can be a pain in the neck especially when it delays notice on necessary (and unplanned) changes in other areas.
High turnover in the areas I worked with. Less during the recession. Burn out is common.
Fear of being the team/individual that delays or messes up a project is ever present.
Absolutely no professional development outside a modest number of internal courses. Don't even think about trying to publish a paper, or speak at a conference!
Growing inequity in business team perks and facilities is an annoyance.

Advice to Senior Management – Relentless product and service focus is fine, but growing company complexity means brute force changes (forcing deadlines, etc.) is becoming more difficult. Less recovery time between waves of project work is stressing people and systems to the extreme. Very few people will tell you how they really feel about the growing workload.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Apple

Pros – Work is challenging. The projects are interesting. Perks, benefits and compensation is very good. The people I get to work with are all very talented and helpful. Unlike my old company, I know that the products I'm working on will make a significant impact. Management is really good too. That being said, I work in a pretty close knit team so I'm not sure if its like this all over Apple.

Cons – Work hours are sometimes long but not unusual for a company that is doing so well. But the ROI is good.

Advice to Senior Management – Remember that people are the reason the products are great (you guys are doing fine in my book).

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Apple

Pros – A place for a lot of growth, great experience with peers, and management. A lot of information is available through peers and training.

Cons – The cons were sometimes I felt that management was very biased on who was to get promoted and it got some people mad.

Advice to Senior Management – Instead being biased on who to promote, look at the numbers, examine the people on the floor of how they treat , and handle customers. Also , to look how well they are doing the other stuff like merchandising etc.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Apple

Pros – The best discount ever in the world

Cons – Working on the weekends, no matter what you have to

Advice to Senior Management – none

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Apple

Pros – Great pay, great people, pretty cool benifits, and pretty shirts.
The amount of people you will meet from this experience will be beyond your imagination.

Cons – Even though there are so many perks to working there, the requirements of the job are repetitive. Customers who are there are often impatient and unwilling to stick around for the full treatment. Leadership will impress upon you time after time that you must present everything with a slight undertone reminding you that it's not about the macs that you sell but about the attachments that you make.

Advice to Senior Management – My sole advice to management would be to be more selective during the hiring process and more cooperative as a management team. During my time there I've only seen the quality of employees decrease as their quantities increase. This is both a disgust premeniation for the quality of the company's future as well as a sign of weakness on the part of the managing team. If they are to continue as a high end retailer they need to continue to remain being just as selective with their employees as they are with their products.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Apple

Pros – One of the best work environments I've ever been in. If you talk to people and are friendly then you will be just fine!

Cons – The store does get full and your managers will forget your brakes unless you remind them. Sometimes all the Apple confidentiality gets a bit annoying when speaking with customers.

Advice to Senior Management – Great job guys! Apple was the best place I've every worked and if I ever have an opportunity I'll be back

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Apple

Pros – There is an employee discount of 25% on Apple products and 10% on third-party accessories. The 25% discount can be used once every three years on laptops and computers, within-reasonable-quantities on accessories, and once a year on everything else (iPods, etc.) This discount does not apply to phones but you do get a 20% discount off AT&T.

The cafeterias are good: They are reasonably priced, have many organic and vegan options, and use compostable containers and utensils. In addition, they host beer bashes every milestone or product launch, and other fun events.

Cons – The corporate culture for the engineers is to stay until at least dinner, with no overtime for salaried workers. The other con is the strange culture surrounding Steve Jobs. When he walks into and out of the cafeteria or around campus, the standard is to keep talking and ignore him, but discuss his health immediately after he is out of earshot. It seems as if the future of the company is uncertain and largely dependent on SJ's health and well-being.

Advice to Senior Management – All of the managers I met while at Apple seemed very competent. In addition, it seems as though they've subscribed to the "beehive mentality" I've heard described and seen in action. I appreciated the fact that management at Apple gained respect through the ability to stay organized and get things done.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend