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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

#51

Post by Miserlou57 »

grecy wrote: post #45
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…

While I would love to work at Apple, I honestly don't think I want to work somewhere that isn't happy to see a picture of me holding a beer. If they don't want my whole personality, they can't have my intelligence. I refuse to turn myself into a "corporate robot" for the sake of a paycheck.

That was my thought.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#52

Post by valleyer »

steakejjs wrote: post #23

EVERYONE does a horrible job recruiting. I think a very low number of companies are doing this correctly. The thing about the process is one bad moment spoils the entire process for the candidate. Shallow/No responses, or horrible questions, or something unprofessional being said during the interview. It's not just $AAPL it is everyone, but if you are an interviewer or a recruiter, please fight for the candidates to…

$AAPL ? Why not “Apple”?

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#53

Post by seanmcdirmid »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #47
steakejjs wrote: post #23

EVERYONE does a horrible job recruiting. I think a very low number of companies are doing this correctly. The thing about the process is one bad moment spoils the entire process for the candidate. Shallow/No responses, or horrible questions, or something unprofessional being said during the interview. It's not just $AAPL it is everyone, but if you are an interviewer or a recruiter, please fight for the candidates to…

I agree that most companies get it wrong, but what is right? It seems like interviewing and recruiting is a field dominated by "sounds right, common sense" styles of thinking (like most HR) where there is no post-mortem of how well a candidate did in the next 6-24 months. Even if you look at most MBA programs, the stuff on recruiting and interviewing aren't as research and evidence based as you would expect, and inst…

They get it wrong because no one knows how to do it right. Actually...evaluating human knowledge and behavior into a bunch of 1 hour interview slots doesn't lead to much accurate information.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#54

Post by joslin01 »

thombrn wrote: post #41

We live in an age of inversion. Many things are the opposite of what makes sense. - You have to interview, and prove you're worthy, to become a slave - You have to pay to look at ads (ever been to a movie theater, or sat in a plane with screens in front of you?) - You have to pay to get cancer (ever buy a cigarette?) It's interesting, because the other way makes way more sense. If you're going to be a slave, you shou…

Yes, using such a manner of thinking, you ultimately arrive that you are born to die, and but live to suffer. It truly is a grim irony, isn't it?

Sometimes though, we say to ourselves we were born to live and suffer to live. The manner through which you justify your existence here on this Earth -- and how that relates to your work / play balance -- is nothing special to this age and never will be something special to an age. Its roots go too deep. We'll always be paying in some form to live or die.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#55

Post by pippy »

natch wrote: post #31

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 t…

If we're going to focus on money, which the Author did, Apple's revenue per full-time equivalent is $2.13 million. It's obvious that Apple didn't feel that he was going to be worth that.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#56

Post by soup10 »

natch wrote: post #31

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 t…

I'd be annoyed too if I was subjected to the bureaucratic circle-jerk tech companies call interviews.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#57

Post by Miserlou57 »

geetee wrote: post #10
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…

I believe you, but they actually admitted that was the reason?

not really. I had a close contact part of the process who revealed this to me.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#58

Post by jeffbush »

samdk wrote: post #37
jeffbush wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Yeah, when I say I spend a lot of my day in meetings, I usually get a blank look, but it's an opportunity to riff and expand on what the environment is like at the company. For example, part of my job is to protect engineer's time. One reason I go to meetings to report status and collect relevant information to condense and pass on to the team.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#59

Post by jsmthrowaway »

foobarqux wrote: post #49
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I recently left a position at Apple and I am the complete opposite of the "culture." Two key differences emerged in my reading of the author's process and my own, which I think boil down to differences between DevPub and where I worked, in what they call Internet Services in Cue's org. That's a pretty wide org, so there's vast gulfs even within, just based on the way the org was put together. My…

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 portion of compensation is equity, it's hard to feel like you're putting it out there to change the world. Apple spends a not-insignificant amount of time changing the world, to be sure, but it takes time and stripes to end up in a position where you can be on a team like that.

There's no shortage of folklore about Jobs hand-picking teams, as I'm sure you know, and moving around at Apple is very social by its nature. You have to make a conscious effort to end up in a position where you get an opportunity to build Swift, or iPhone (I mean building it, not keeping it going; vast numbers of people keep it going now), or Apple Watch unless you're hired into an essential role for something like that. Most people at Apple are doing the same things you and I do: upgrading Cassandra, diagnosing some OS bug that only appears on certain phones and carriers, localizing a piece of iTunes. So it becomes a question of how much you're willing to invest to earn your place at Federighi's side on stage, launching your passion that will change the world. For some, that equation breaks the right way. For me, I need more immediate feedback. Make sense? More me than them.

My time in the peninsula taught me that I value small, scrappy teams more, and that I'm not cut out for Facebook, Google, Apple, and friends. For that very same reason, I'm not the best person to ask on whether you should work for Apple or Google: some people thrive very well in large-scale corporate organizations but it isn't for me. In general, I'd wager a new grad should do a peninsula tour before getting into the risk game up 101, but I think that's a very myopic view, if I'm honest.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#60

Post by jeffbush »

Miserlou57 wrote: post #48
jeffbush wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't they have seen that before they brought you on-site? Isn't that how they found you? I'm a little surprised this was the reason; we had beer bashes all the time at Apple.

You'd think so. I think it just didn't pass a final filter.

It would probably be worth a point or two for me, fwiw :) This can be a stressful business, it's important not to take things too seriously.
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