The first phone interview was about 15 minutes with HR. It covered basic personal information and checked on interest in Apple and specific jobs. Later, there was one phone interview with the Hiring Manager, followed by an onsite visit to meet eight people. These included the Hiring Manager, team members, and counterparts from the Engineering team.

Apple's travel coordination takes care of hotel and flight arrangements, covering most everything for you, which is nice.

While onsite, everyone except the Hiring Manager indicated that the Operations Engineering roles (including Technical Program Manager, Ops Program Manager, and Manufacturing Design and Quality Engineers) are incredibly demanding. I was told that you basically have to devote yourself to Apple, working six days a week and every night from 9 PM to 11 PM on calls with the Asian team. They absolutely expect you to respond to emails Sunday night, as it would be Monday morning in Asia. You also have to travel to Asia very frequently, spending roughly 30% of your time, about 90 days per year, in Asia, possibly more in some roles or groups. Work-life balance would be a joke here.

This also explains why some groups in operations have a turnover rate of more than 50%. This is likely also part of the reason they keep hiring tons of new positions on the operations side.

Most of the interviewers I spoke to seemed to understand in-depth what they were doing. They were mostly in their 20s to early 30s, genuinely nice, and light-hearted. I enjoyed most of the conversations and had some good technical exchanges and discussions with them.

However, there was one individual with a huge ego. I almost wanted to tell him, "Come on! You didn't invent the iPhone. Just chill up."

Questions were very detail-oriented, ranging from manufacturing processes, tolerance stack-up, and process control, to some soft skills questions. Nothing too difficult if you have the experience you claimed on your resume. They wanted you to give examples, not just walk through a general approach or concept.

Overall, I felt that if you are young, have no family or kids, love traveling, and possess the talent Apple is looking for, Operations Engineering might be a good fit for you. Otherwise, be aware that the huge workload is simply incomparable to any other jobs you may have done in the past.

Describe how you fix or improve a manufacturing process with a supplier.

How do you handle a supplier's pushback?