Thinking about buying an iPod or even a MacBook this year as a gift for that someone special? As you walk into an Apple store this year, we wanted to give you a behind the scenes look at what it’s like to work for the company that has captured the hearts (and wallets) of so many.
As our review of the month, this Apple employee is based out of the headquarter offices in Cupertino, Calif. and provides a comprehensive review with an honest perspective of the work culture at the company today.
The good things about working for Apple emphasized in this review include:
- Outstanding opportunity to work with really smart people in your field.
- Really interesting work in most areas (very little dull routine).
- Financial health of company is excellent. Very good handle on cost management. Benefits are very good.
- Really cool leading-edge products and services you can be proud to help develop.
The downside of working at Apple though comes as a reaction to the overall culture – and it appears that Apple’s reputation of being a ‘Fortress of Secrecy’ is still alive and well. The employee points out:
- You will not know if you really “fit” the culture until about a year on the job.
- 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.
- Secrecy bordering on paranoia can be a pain in the neck especially when it delays notice on necessary (and unplanned) changes in other areas.
Wrapping up the review, the employee offers some advice to senior management, pleading for more downtime between work projects. “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.”
Interested in reading more of what this reviewer had to say? Click here to be a fly on the wall at Apple.
