Excitement surrounding a possible Steve Jobs appearance at the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco comes as no surprise given that he is among the top five highest rated CEOs on Glassdoor with an approval rating at 91%. He is also the second most popular tech-industry CEO with at least 50 reviews or more, after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.
| Glassdoor Report: Top Rated CEOs (w/ 50 reviews +) | |||
| Company | Company Rating | CEO | CEO Rating (%) |
| General Mills | 4.4 | Ken Powell | 97 |
| Northwestern Mutual | 4.1 | Edward J. Zore | 94 |
| Netflix | 4.0 | Reed Hastings | 91 |
| Apple | 3.8 | Steve Jobs | 91 |
| Procter & Gamble | 4.1 | A.G. Lafley | 88 |
| 4.0 | Eric E. Schmidt | 87 | |
| Goldman Sachs | 3.7 | Lloyd C. Blankfein | 87 |
| FactSet | 4.0 | Philip A. Hadley | 84 |
| CareerBuilder | 3.8 | Matt Ferguson | 84 |
| Disney | 3.5 | Bob Iger | 78 |
In addition, Apple enthusiasts are all abuzz with the latest flurry of product announcements stemming from today’s events, highlights included:
- The new iPhone 3GS – S for “speed” -will have faster mobile Web connectivity and video-capture software.
- Large price cut on the solid-state-drive version of the MacBook Air, which was dropping from $2,500 to $1,800
- Snow Leopard gets a ship date of September 2009
But despite working for a well-liked creative and cutting-edge CEO, what’s the cost to the engineers responsible for helping bring these products and others to market? We have included below some recent commentary from a variety of Apple software and hardware engineers that speaks to pressure and other workplace factors they have been up against to remain highly competitive in today’s tech environment. Over and over we find that one of the most common complaints about working at Apple are the long hours and the challenge to maintain work/life balance. 
Here are some noteworthy examples of engineer gripes about working at Apple:
Just this past week a Senior Software Engineer in Cupertino commented that Apple is a huge disappointment. “Working 7 days a week makes people’s total output go DOWN. Set the right weekly milestones and have people go home and recharge on the weekends. They will get MORE done every week.”
“Great company but long hours,” -Senior Hardware engineer
Another Software Engineer suggests to senior management: “Value your employees more, try to keep them from getting burned out. They are not always replaceable.”
“Many departments, and their VP’s, directors, and managers have unrealistic expectations of their employees. Particularly on the hardware engineering side of Infinite Loop (buildings 5 and 6), people get driven very hard and are regularly expected to work weekends.” Software Engineer IV
“Apple is very secretive. It can be difficult to know what’s going on ahead of time, and then all of the sudden, you need to shift and adapt. Schedules are very rough and change a lot. Releases, and crunch-time seems omni-present. It can be overwhelming.” – Senior Software Engineer
Will Steve Job’s re-entry into Apple full time reinvigorate the engineers from possible burn out? Or will life at Apple continue to be full throttle? Stay tuned as we track engineer sentiment, Steve Job’s approval rating and Apple’s company satisfaction score.
