Fun story for you on that:
I applied numerous time for their Failure Analysis Engineer, Reliability Engineer, and other similar positions but repeatedly got rejected (or simply ignored by their ATS, I don’t play that keyword game very well).
My professional career in Materials Science and Materials Engineering has had a large focus on reliability testing and failure analysis. In parallel with inventing new technologies or pioneering research projects I have had to rigorously test and verify the robustness of the products. To put it plainly: the position descriptions were me. I had a bit more experience and qualifications but not so much that I was “over qualified”.
When I see some of the things that get through their engineers, I scratch my head and wonder what’s going on internally. Is there a lack of empowerment? Are those positions more or less for show and, while filled with legitimate engineers, not really leveraged as they should be?
At any of the places I’ve worked stuff that Apple has let slip through would have never flown.
The iPhone 5S compass/accelerometer issue (those of you who had it know, it was a bummer) and solving that by replacing the phone with another faulty one? The 2010-MacBook Pro discrete and integrated GPU switching failure? Right now I’m sitting in front of a 2017 MBP that has been used as a stationary desktop and babied with a keyboard cover and much TLC that has strange screen artifacts that seem to indicate that it was pinched or there’s adhesive in those regions while the rest of the screen is trying to pull away? Whatever it is has been there since I got it and I didn’t realize it wasn’t suppose to be that way until recently.
I stopped applying to Apple because nothing was coming of it and the thought of working for a company that claims to be detail oriented but let’s that stuff slip through was enough to put me off.
What’s inspiring though is that it gives their competitors and easy way to jump on the market. I’ve seen plenty new students choose Surface Books or Pro’s over Apple computers or tablets.
There’s a point where companies forget to continue earning their success.
I expect the foldable phone technologies have gone through considerable cyclic testing. That doesn’t mean that some manufactured ones won’t be flawed and that also doesn’t mean that people won’t be doing normal consumer things that cause failure sooner, but it’s likely these won’t be too bad.