The interview process included a recruiter phone screen, a phone interview with an engineer, a huge engineering design challenge, and an all-day onsite interview panel. What a colossal mega waste of my time; I cannot emphasize enough how pointless this was. They required a full design review of an assembly product, for which I had to design several versions, model them in CAD, run tolerance stack-up analysis, FEA, material selection, manufacturing assumptions, force balancing, and more, as if the assembly was going to be manufactured the next day. They liked my design, so they brought me in.

The onsite interview was a firing squad. They ran me through absurd conceptual problems not based in reality and did anything to get me cornered. It did not matter how much work I put into the project (I went above and beyond, including all the above in a 50-page PowerPoint presentation, fully dimensioned 11x17 prints, high-res renders, and 3D printed parts). They glossed over that work and WILL find the weakest aspect to press until I didn't know what more to say.

They don't look for you to be a good fit; they look for any reason at all to not hire you. And after all that effort, they will send a general "BS" email: "Thanks for your interest in Apple, but we are looking for other people."

What a waste of two days of PTO and several nights spent on CAD for two weeks.

If you are in a boat with a boulder and you drop that boulder into the lake, how does the water level before and after you drop the boulder in the lake compare?

You have 3 light bulbs upstairs and 3 light switches downstairs, but you don't know which switch connects to which bulb. How can you switch the bulbs once and then go upstairs and immediately know which switch belongs to which bulb?