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My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

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Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#281

Post by jeffbush »

allenbrunson wrote: post #174
jeffbush wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would highly recommend that candidates do research on the company. If you do, and you are truly interested what the company is making, specific questions will come up. Be prepared to ask followups and drill in. In my experience, this can have a larger impact than the candidates answers (it's well known that people like to talk more than they like to listen :) This is a way for a candidate demonstrate your intellect…

Somewhat off-topic, but not too much: Are you the Jeff Bush that worked at Be for awhile? If so, you were in on my interview there. (For the sake of other readers, I got the job. But then Be went out of business seven months later and I got laid off, along with almost everybody else.) This conversation is reminding me of why I washed out of the Bay Area high-tech scene. I was able to do it, but at too high a price. I…

Hey, yeah! it's been a long time...

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#282

Post by seanmcdirmid »

foobarqux wrote: post #280
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studying people is much harder than doing math proofs or experimenting with chemicals.

I meant that corporations should be trying to figure this stuff out, not academics.

They have the same problem as academics do, only without the benefit of being able to consistently apply the scientific method and good experimental practices (the only hope of cracking that nut).

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#283

Post by allenbrunson »

jeffbush wrote: post #281
allenbrunson wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat off-topic, but not too much: Are you the Jeff Bush that worked at Be for awhile? If so, you were in on my interview there. (For the sake of other readers, I got the job. But then Be went out of business seven months later and I got laid off, along with almost everybody else.) This conversation is reminding me of why I washed out of the Bay Area high-tech scene. I was able to do it, but at too high a price. I…

Hey, yeah! it's been a long time...

You know, I really botched that opportunity at Be. I was really in awe of you guys. I had been on the outskirts of the tech biz for my whole career at that point. I didn't know that there were that many amazingly smart people in the whole world, let alone in one company.

It didn't help any that Be's heart was already broken by the time I got there. I don't think anybody really believed that the eVilla was going to be a success. But I could have overcome that problem, if I'd been smart.

Ultimately, I'm just not cut out to work in the rarified air that you work in. I can certainly see the appeal, though.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#284

Post by vxNsr »

steven777400 wrote: post #237
smtddr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another anecdotal... I originally got rejected from my current position. It wasn't until a month later that they called me back and we're like, "um yeah, actually come back and let's talk about compensation." Found out that some political hurdles were cleared up for the extra headcount needed to bring me on. Apparently the whole interviewing candidates process was started a bit earlier than it should have.

Similarly, at my current position, I interviewed and was hired. After I arrived I found that I had to do some weird paperwork each pay period, but I didn't know much about the internal organization so just did what I was told. A few months later, my supervisor told me, "When we hired you, the budget for your position wasn't approved. We were hoping we could scrap together enough funding to pay for you until we could…

That's a pretty terrifying thing to not be told, especially because it sounds like it could've gone either way.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#285

Post by EnderMB »

gaius wrote: post #273
EnderMB wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a similar vein, I'd also like to know how many people manage to land jobs at the Google's and Facebook's of the world, and ultimately prove to be less-than-spectacular developers. I dropped out of a masters degree to join a startup as a .NET developer, but kept in touch with a few guys finishing there. One of them now works for Google. He was always great in the algorithm classes, and he knew his theory reasonably…

Let's be honest, 99% of Google employees are not working on hard problems like self-driving cars, they're just finding new things to slap ads on. You might need to be impressive in a very narrow way to get in, but the work isn't going to be that challenging.

While that's most likely true, they all go through a fairly grueling interview process where their theoretical knowledge is really tested. It sounds a bit iffy to make someone with a decorated career or an advanced degree go through that, promise them the world, and have them answering support questions for Google+.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#287

Post by GregQuinn »

jedc wrote: post #172

I used to work for Google and did a ton of interviews for roles where I was the hiring manager, as well as others. One of the more painful things that I came across regularly was that we often had multiple great people go through the full interview process for a role, but could only hire one. Often 2-3 candidates could have done the job brilliantly, but we could only choose one. In that case, it tends to be really su…

...Often 2-3 candidates could have done the job brilliantly,..

Tell me more about the skills shortage.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#288

Post by vanessa98 »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #59
foobarqux wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were the bad things about working at Apple? Why did you leave?

I'm not prepared to get into my experiences at Apple much beyond the surface level that I touched upon, for a few reasons, but I left for the same reason everybody does. I was offered a career-advancing opportunity to prepend senior to my title and help build out a small startup that's going places and really making a name for themselves. Apple, like Google, has already "won" (for lack of a better word) and while a p…

Yikes! Don't fall into the title driven career path. Titles are a false currency and a company accreditation that is of non-transferrable value outside that company, for the most part.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#289

Post by foobarqux »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #282
foobarqux wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant that corporations should be trying to figure this stuff out, not academics.

They have the same problem as academics do, only without the benefit of being able to consistently apply the scientific method and good experimental practices (the only hope of cracking that nut).

The difference is they have lots of funding and a large monetary incentive to do the research.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#290

Post by seanmcdirmid »

foobarqux wrote: post #289
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have the same problem as academics do, only without the benefit of being able to consistently apply the scientific method and good experimental practices (the only hope of cracking that nut).

The difference is they have lots of funding and a large monetary incentive to do the research.

Their development teams have funding to build products, rarely do they have funding/resources/expertise to do "meta" research on processes.
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