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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

#31

Post by natch »

The author has an odd interest in sharing numbers that, while significant, show that the point is being missed.

Sure, 700 billion is an impressive market cap for a company, but that's not what it's all about for the creative people of Apple.

$6,000 of your time, meh, we all invest that much in side projects, year after year, if not more frequently than that.

5,000 miles, yeah, so you took a flight, is this supposed to be a measure of something of significance? Yes we sometimes travel for interviews. Putting mileage numbers to it almost sounds like complaining.

17 hours of WWDC videos, that's a sliver of a slice of what's available. If anything, it's an embarrassing number to admit to, for someone who claims to be an Apple UI expert.

Maybe this weird fixation on off-point numbers was a turnoff for the kind folks at Apple, I don't know.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#32

Post by staticfish »

RandomBK wrote: post #16

This all sounds like a typical 'cultural fit' screening process. I can't speak to SV firms, but many consulting/banking firms use the same technique. It can be very frustrating at times, as you never get to find out what went wrong, especially if the interview itself felt like it went very smoothly. I just finished a long string of interviews for consulting and product management positions, and there is nothing worse…

What a nice, sane thing to write on HN. Reading this I got the exact same impression.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#33

Post by joslin01 »

jacques_chester wrote: post #27
joslin01 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I always cringe a little bit when I see people breakdown their time to an imaginary monetary loss. This way of looking at things comes with a pretty heavy dose of narcissism if you ask me. It says "People would be paying me money for what I'm doing for free right now; look how much I'm sacrificing." While there might be quite a few people out there who could get away with billing their time at any given ho…

> Same here. I always cringe a little bit when I see people breakdown their time to an imaginary monetary loss. If you're freelancing, then it's not that imaginary. You're giving up billable time.

As a person who is a freelancer and also employs freelancers, you're right in a way. But in another way, you have to admit it's probably not OK to just say "Hey guys, off for two weeks to write a blog post, oh and if I decide to do a a few hours of time when I feel like it, you better pay for it."

It's just not realistic. Like the guy above you said, it comes down to time and I can sympathize with that. But to imagine you always have someone on hand right there willing to pay for your hours of work is where I am like "ok, wait, hold on."

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#34

Post by objclxt »

bevacqua wrote: post #19
samdk wrote: post #13

Note: after 25 minutes answering questions for a job you really want it’s kinda hard to shift to a question-asking mode. When I was looking for a job I found that it helped enormously to write down a set of questions ahead of time. Some I liked: What does a typical day look like for you? What projects do you work on? How long have you been at $company? How has your role changed since then? If I were hired for this ro…

My favorite question to ask is "If you could change one thing about $company, what would you change and why?"

I like that, it's a good question. Nobody's actually asked me that, which is odd because one question I like to ask all candidates I interview is the inverse ("If you could change one thing about $our_product, etc"). You'd think somebody would have flipped it around on me!

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#35

Post by jacques_chester »

joslin01 wrote: post #33
jacques_chester wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same here. I always cringe a little bit when I see people breakdown their time to an imaginary monetary loss. If you're freelancing, then it's not that imaginary. You're giving up billable time.

As a person who is a freelancer and also employs freelancers, you're right in a way. But in another way, you have to admit it's probably not OK to just say "Hey guys, off for two weeks to write a blog post, oh and if I decide to do a a few hours of time when I feel like it, you better pay for it." It's just not realistic. Like the guy above you said, it comes down to time and I can sympathize with that. But to imagin…

I wouldn't expect to be paid to interview. But it's still an opportunity cost.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#36

Post by staticfish »

presty wrote: post #20
joslin01 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand, but ok, thanks. That's a great descriptor of Apple (of which there are many), but doesn't point anywhere toward a rationale for titling an interview experience as "700 billion". I'm not trying to say titles need to make logical sense, but they usually should make some sense

it refers to Apple's current Market Cap

I think he understands that, but is wondering why that is relevant for the topic at all.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#37

Post by samdk »

jeffbush wrote: post #18
samdk wrote: post #13

Note: after 25 minutes answering questions for a job you really want it’s kinda hard to shift to a question-asking mode. When I was looking for a job I found that it helped enormously to write down a set of questions ahead of time. Some I liked: What does a typical day look like for you? What projects do you work on? How long have you been at $company? How has your role changed since then? If I were hired for this ro…

I always find it a little funny as a manager when a prospective individual contributor asks me what a typical day is like for me. For me? I sit in meetings all day, thanks for asking. Would you like to know what a typical day would be like for you? :)

Finding out you spend all day in meetings still tells you something, especially with a few follow-up questions. Who do you spend your time meeting with? What about? How many people are typically involved? How long do meetings last?

(That said, most of the people I've been interviewed by were devs, so this was not really ever an issue.)

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#38

Post by blister »

zobzu wrote: post #3

this is pretty close to the process we have here at And indeed, if you had to go through all this it means they very seriously considered you for the position. Now, the expenses they made mean little (even for a far poorer company) compared to the mistake of recruiting someone that did not fit. There's many reasons why someone would not be selected and sometimes it's just that people didn't "click" really. I know tha…

Why is this the case? As a hiring manager, I often lean heavily towards the "hire them and if they don't work out, let them go" camp. I've gotten a lot of great teammates that way and only one that didn't work out. But the one that didn't work out killed the interview and was ridiculously smart. All the ones that did poorly in the interview and had little experience ended up being some of my better engineers.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#39

Post by fenomas »

I notice several comments about culture fit and not clicking with interviewers, but it's worth keeping in mind that there isn't always a "reason" for not getting an offer. Not related to the candidate, that is. Job openings sometimes disappear for random internal reasons, or there may have been another candidate for the same position who was objectively a much better fit.

I feel you have to look at job interviews like a hand of poker or the like. There are things you can do to increase your odds, but even with perfect play not every hand is winnable.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#40

Post by swang »

adamnemecek wrote: post #26
Miserlou57 wrote: post #6

About two years ago I was fast-tracked to interviews at Apple via recommendation. About 9 interviews later over 4 spread-out days, I was told I had done quite well during the interview process. Eventually I was not given the position because I was holding a beer in my LinkedIn picture. They ended up paying my current employer (their vendor at the time) astronomical amounts of money to do the very same service, done b…

"Think different. But not too different."

I'm not sure if your parent was referring to interviewing at Apple.
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