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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

Pros

not much work, just sitting around till the end of the day

Cons

a bit boring...wish i could do more than just cleaning

Advice to Senior Management

they're great

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.

Pros

The best discount ever in the world

Cons

Working on the weekends, no matter what you have to

Advice to Senior Management

none

Pros

Fabulous products that you can be proud of
Some great colleagues (not all)
If you're an engineer, great products to build
If you're a designer, great products to design

Cons

Least empowering place I've ever worked - all decisions go upwards, great if you're Steve Jobs, but not so great for anyone else.
Mediocre/poor performers are rarely fired.
Incredibly siloed.
Executives are so indoctrinated in the Apple way of doing things that they're not open to new approaches.

Advice to Senior Management

Push decisions down whenever possible. Get rid of people who aren't at least really good, and make sure you only hire outstanding people.