What It's Like to Work at Apple
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What It's Like to Work at Apple
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Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#2Would be great if he had expanded on the 'no career path' section - that will probably be something that most people want to know about - surely there must be different levels of developers to some extent? Moving from development to management?
Any Apple employees on here like to comment?
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#3Reservists called up to active duty are put into a military-leave status and they remain Apple employees while Apple makes up the salary difference between their military pay and their Apple pay until they return.
I wonder if other companies do this. I know by law they are required to keep those positions for active reserves but I don't think they are required to continue to pay their salary. In the past, I've worked temp positions for employees that were deployed.
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#4Reservists called up to active duty are put into a military-leave status and they remain Apple employees while Apple makes up the salary difference between their military pay and their Apple pay until they return. I wonder if other companies do this. I know by law they are required to keep those positions for active reserves but I don't think they are required to continue to pay their salary. In the past, I've worked…
A company I worked for in Atlanta did the same thing (pay the difference). However, I suspect this is still the exception, not the rule.
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#5Secrecy: Apple's secrecy is comparable to the U.S. government's in terms of "need to know" and compartmentalization.
This. My roommate is a hardware engineer on the iPad team, and he won't even confirm that there will be another iPad. He takes extra precautions when working at home - he won't take work calls if I'm in the room, and he set up the furniture in his room in an awkward fashion solely so that his computer monitor didn't face towards the door.
Several times I've brought friends or family down to Cupertino. He lets us inside to walk around the inner campus and eat at Caffe Macs, but that's truly all there is to see. Certainly we can't enter any other buildings on Infinite Loop.
One thing this article doesn't mention is work-life balance. We live in SF, and my roommate has a 90-minute commute (each way) on the Apple shuttle, and he usually works 12 hours on top of that. He's out by 8am and doesn't usually return until 11pm. He tells me this is a common topic of discussion at Caffe Macs - the balance between working on groundbreaking technology and, quite simply, having zero personal time during the week (and often on the weekends).
He can be called to go to China with no more than a few days' notice, and the duration of his stay there is never known ahead of time. He often estimates 7-10 days but it frequently ends up being closer to 2, even 3 weeks. Apple covers all of his expenses, of course, but he doesn't much care for Shenzhen.
He really likes working at Apple, but I think he recognizes that it's not a sustainable job for him for more than 3 or 4 years.
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#6Secrecy: Apple's secrecy is comparable to the U.S. government's in terms of "need to know" and compartmentalization. This. My roommate is a hardware engineer on the iPad team, and he won't even confirm that there will be another iPad. He takes extra precautions when working at home - he won't take work calls if I'm in the room, and he set up the furniture in his room in an awkward fashion solely so that his computer…
Sounds like a genuine shithole/borderline slavery. Why are people putting up with this?
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#7Secrecy: Apple's secrecy is comparable to the U.S. government's in terms of "need to know" and compartmentalization. This. My roommate is a hardware engineer on the iPad team, and he won't even confirm that there will be another iPad. He takes extra precautions when working at home - he won't take work calls if I'm in the room, and he set up the furniture in his room in an awkward fashion solely so that his computer…
Sounds like a genuine shithole/borderline slavery. Why are people putting up with this?
Because he's designing the next iPad.
Several people on his team have left Apple for very lucrative careers as designers and engineers at hardware or design firms. It's a phenomenal boost to your career.
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#8Reservists called up to active duty are put into a military-leave status and they remain Apple employees while Apple makes up the salary difference between their military pay and their Apple pay until they return. I wonder if other companies do this. I know by law they are required to keep those positions for active reserves but I don't think they are required to continue to pay their salary. In the past, I've worked…
That really is above and beyond. Aside from the fact that many companies will find you completely unattractive if you have Guard/Reserve on your resume, paying the difference to keep your existing salary while not even at Apple makes it very military-reserve friendly environment. But you'll probably still have to weigh the other working environment factors.
(It's even hard for me to convince my investors that I'll be around in case my Guard unit is deployed.)
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#9Would be great if he had expanded on the 'no career path' section - that will probably be something that most people want to know about - surely there must be different levels of developers to some extent? Moving from development to management? Any Apple employees on here like to comment?
Any Apple employees on here like to comment?
Probably not ;-)
Re: What It's Like to Work at Apple
#10Secrecy: Apple's secrecy is comparable to the U.S. government's in terms of "need to know" and compartmentalization. This. My roommate is a hardware engineer on the iPad team, and he won't even confirm that there will be another iPad. He takes extra precautions when working at home - he won't take work calls if I'm in the room, and he set up the furniture in his room in an awkward fashion solely so that his computer…
While I only worked at Apple for about 8 months (started as a summer intern), I can completely echo this. It's never that we _have_ to stay later, it's that we _want_ to. You really have a dedication to the product because you want your customers to love you; that was the overall mindset. With a deadline, that means you'll do almost anything to meet it and succeed.
As for the secrecy, you're totally right. I roomed with 3 other interns during the summer and none of us would talk shop, ever. When interviewing for other companies later, nearly all my answers about what I did at Apple were "I wish I could talk to you about that, but the most I can do at this point is talk 'around' it, if you will, since that's an unreleased product." Not at all unlike government secrecy.
All that said, it really was a glorious place to work. I miss a lot about it; the seemingly infectious excitement and passion for the products was really driving. I loved being in that environment. :)