Can't help but wonder how Jobs or Woz would have reacted to that when they were young?
I get the feeling they would call the company "assholes", of course there wasn't quite the celebrity culture of tech and money back then.
My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple
71–80 of 295 posts
Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple
#72Earlier 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…
I have never been able to distinguish whether the subtext is "I hated my job and left as soon as I got the chance" with "I loved my job and only left because I got something even better".
Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple
#73this 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…
"Now, the expenses they made mean little (even for a far poorer company) compared to the mistake of recruiting someone that did not fit."
Please explain. I hear this a lot but it's never substantiated other than by vague references to employees being able to sue for being fired. Yes, some employees do sue, but there generally is no ground to do so, even when the employer has misbehaved. In my experience, it's actually incredibly easy and cheap to fire someone. You might lose a couple months' salary, but generally even that won't be a total loss as you're likely to get at least some decent work even out of a bad hire.
Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple
#74EVERYONE 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”?
It's shorthand on Twitter to refer to a company: https://twitter.com/search?q=%24AAPL&src=typd
Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like that's a big misunderstood thing in our community. There is a talent shortage - in the sense that companies are always ready to hire someone in the top ~10%. That's what talent means in this context. Google and Facebook will always be more than willing to hire the people who build frameworks in their spare time or contribute to the Linux kernel. There is however no shortage of one trick pony PHP developer…
Well, there have been a few instances in the past where I've been desperate to hire and I've brought people in against my better judgement. I can tell you it sucks having to look someone in the eye and let them go because they couldn't keep up with the rest of the team. Once you've had to do it a few times as a manager, you become more conservative with your hiring. Sure, pushing pixels around is easy, but when you'r…
When you're up against such a deadline, your manager has failed you, not the other way around.
Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like that's a big misunderstood thing in our community. There is a talent shortage - in the sense that companies are always ready to hire someone in the top ~10%. That's what talent means in this context. Google and Facebook will always be more than willing to hire the people who build frameworks in their spare time or contribute to the Linux kernel. There is however no shortage of one trick pony PHP developer…
Well, there have been a few instances in the past where I've been desperate to hire and I've brought people in against my better judgement. I can tell you it sucks having to look someone in the eye and let them go because they couldn't keep up with the rest of the team. Once you've had to do it a few times as a manager, you become more conservative with your hiring. Sure, pushing pixels around is easy, but when you'r…
[deleted]
Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple
#77Note: 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 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 intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm.
I've seriously been asked by a candidate in an interview what our product was, and not just once. You took a day off work to come here and you couldn't even look at our website? On the other hand, I've had candidates who proactively identified some of the internal challenges we were currently dealing with "but how do you deal with X?" which is impressive.
More importantly, this decision to work at a company is going to have a bigger impact on the candidate than the hiring manager. People forget that the interview is a two way process. It's important to find out whether this company is going to be a place you will enjoy. Use questions as a way to figure out what the environment is like. Look for subtext in the answers.
Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I have never been able to distinguish whether the subtext is "I hated my job and left as soon as I got the chance" with "I loved my job and only left because I got something even better".
I would be lying to your face if I told you that Apple didn't have its negatives, sometimes severe ones. All jobs do. But hate? No.
Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple
#79Earlier 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…
Great answer. Could Steve Jobs himself succeed at a company like Apple as an employee? I doubt it. But that is the question.
Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But no one seems to spend time on trying to figure out how to do it right or even how well the current methods perform.