Pros: Incredible opportunity to work on the world's best products, and most of the people really care about the product. It was a lot of fun to see how the world's most admired company works behind the scenes. If you have a good manager, you can go pretty far, pretty quick. Compensation and PTO are very fair for Silicon Valley. The culture is very design and user experience driven, which may seem obvious, but you should feel the same way before joining. Sometimes sacrifices in the technical implementation are made because it provides a better user design.

Cons: My main complaint is that it gets repetitive after a few years. Specifically, working on the OS side, you just feel like it's the same cycle-driven work year in and year out. Work-life balance can be tough, especially leading up to major OS releases. The hybrid schedule is nice, but the in-office days force you to commute to/from Cupertino to sit in online meetings. I put a low score for DEI because there is not huge representation of underserved minorities in tech. That becomes apparent from day one on campus, despite what the values of the company are.

Pros: It is nice to be around so many really bright people, and I did pretty well financially with my stock options/employee stock purchase plan.

Cons: As a female engineer, it was impossible for me to develop or even stay up to date. There were some really great guys who treated me as an equal from the first moment. However, there were too many others who excluded me, talked down to me, and discounted or ignored what I had to say. I was shut out from the projects and information that I needed to stay up to date or develop as an engineer. I did everything in my power to try to get around this, and was still shut out. They have a diversity program, but are very naive about what is really going on. I also got the distinct impression that the software engineers would never get the same respect and status as the hardware engineers. In addition, certain people would obstruct teamwork and information sharing, presumably to preserve their job security. The last thing that really bothered me was that certain teams were required to work seven days a week for two or three months straight in order to get a product out.

Pros: Work with some of the smartest and best engineers in the field, and one of the most competent senior management in terms of technology.

Cons: Management can be personality-driven and chaotic. There is practically zero support for career development – basically, sink or swim. There's too much of a churn and burn mentality with regards to staff retention.