Apple Reviews in San Diego, CA Area

Pros

- discounts
- fellow employees
- challenging work environment
- opportunity for personal and creative growth
- helping people
- learning about products

Cons

- can be stressful at times
- micromanagement is annoying
- cramped work environment; some stores are tiny
- store politics
- management can be suffocating

Advice to Senior Management

Stop micromanaging the employees and allow them to help customers with more space
Take responsibility when it is the company's fault

Pros

no customer interaction
easy day to day work load
fixed schedule
first to see new products
easy going job that relaxed

Cons

there is not always a clear path on advancement
coming from the back of house there is little room to advance

Advice to Senior Management

promote more from within your own store
give detailed analysis of what an employee needs to do to move forward within the company

Pros

Great products, great discounts, great place to work

Cons

working your butt off for the pay

Advice to Senior Management

were working harder than you think

Pros

Great team to work with and the employees were motivated. It is exciting to work for a company that is doing well and takes care of the employees the way they do. Benefits are pretty well rounded also and pay is good.

Cons

Because of the soaring popularity of Apple, the stores can get pretty crazy at times....

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure to keep a personal relationship with the employees also even amongst the crazy times.....

Pros

I feel that I am treated like if not better than a customer. Most other jobs that I have had is all about pleasing the customer. At Apple, the management does everything in their power to please the employee. I have only been working for Apple for a few months and I went to San Diego just for the summer and they transferred out to a store there without any hesitation. No other job I know would ever do that. Employee satisfaction is why I work for Apple.

Cons

No benefits if you work under 30 hours a week.

Advice to Senior Management

None, they are doing a great job!

Pros

The culture of the company is one of the best I've ever experienced. From the basic understanding that if you do something there's probably a good reason for it to the whole team-integration, there's no fear that there is going to be backstabbing or infighting. The fairly clear paths for keeping a career is a nice touch as well. Even the little things, like the Wellness Program, really convey that the company cares about the employees and values them as a major asset and not a liability.

Cons

Apple is a very exclusive company to work for and they know it. The pay isn't as high as one could get elsewhere, and sometimes minor infractions, like talking about a possible upcoming product launch, are enough to get you dismissed. Also, while my training, expertise, and career path lie with either repair of computers or education of users, I'm stuck in a sales job until a manager determines that I've met some benchmark that seems, at this time, to be completely arbitrary.

Advice to Senior Management

Recognize when an employee might feel like their current position isn't really providing the day-to-day challenge that will keep the work fun and interesting for an employee. Also eliminating some of the hoops that need to be jumped to get to a new position that one might wish to be in, especially if the employee is not especially well fit to their current position.

Pros

Apple is a great place to be updated with the latest Apple technology, as well as being provided with superior training on their products. Every day, each employee is given a daily rundown as to how the store is doing, what new products are available, and how customers are rating our stores based on online surveys. As a company we can look at the feedback customers are leaving and be able to improve the customers' experiences, which in turn makes our experience better with less customer service issues. Whenever I have a particular question, whether it be how to fix a broken iPod to transferring data from a PC to a Mac, I know that there is another employee who will be able to answer that question without hesitation. I believe that Apple is the absolute best place for someone to buy a computer based on the training our staff goes through, and the services we offer in the store such as Personal Shopping, Personal Training, Genius Bar, computers for children to play on, and to allow anyone passing by to use our computers to both check us out as a product/company, or just check their inbox on Gmail.

Cons

As employees we are constantly expected to add on to every computer sale, there is AppleCare (three year "protection plan"), ProCare (V.I.P. service for technical support), One 2 One (Personal Training membership), and .mac (online membership to share photos and store data). Not every person will want one, let alone three, of these services that we offer. Yet we are expected to have 60% AppleCare, 25% .mac, and 30% One 2 One and ProCare combined. To top that off, there is no benefit to the employee by getting any of these services, except a photo taken of you if you receive a "Trifecta" (having 3 out of the four services). Having another job that pay commission on every sale, it really bothers me to have no motivation to sell these services, that definitely a majority of people do not need.

Advice to Senior Management

Sometimes I feel like our company is too forward onto giving answers, then asking questions. We try to give customers the best solutions to help solve issues they might not even want answered. It would be nice also to not have to have manager approval for every return, I hate getting all the pissed off customers mad at me, and then after grabbing a manager having them tell them it's perfectly okay to return their product after the deadline. I think many of them are too focused on miniscule details of the store that they are losing touch of the real goal, to teach people that Apple is the best computer brand out there, and it's hard to do that when you are treated like a child with "fearless feedback," or asking "permission" to ask a customer a question.