Apple reached out to me over LinkedIn a few months back, asking me to consider them for an SRE position with their Maps organization. They moved very quickly at first, as I had an offer from Google on the table. A solid two-hour technical phone screen was followed by an invite to the Sunnyvale office. The on-site was typical: six or so interviews plus lunch with the recruiter. There was lots of Python on the whiteboard, many systems architecture and troubleshooting questions, and the same overemphasis on CS "dogwhistle" questions as Twitter and LinkedIn are known to use for Ops/SRE positions.

Altogether, it was a pretty decent round of interviews, and I was very confident in my chances. The hiring manager seemed very stressed about headcount and growing their small team of less than ten engineers to a size capable of efficiently rolling out improvements competitive with Google. This seemed like a serious challenge. This was the middle of December.

Nothing happened for the next week or so before everyone disappeared for Christmas. Two other offers came in, but there was solid radio silence from Apple. In early January, when everyone was back, I gave the recruiter a call. He seemed flustered, and I think he might have even forgotten about me completely. Either way, he reassured me and said that my case was going in front of the hiring committee that week. Of course, I heard nothing back.

While I will say that I wasn't seeing a great fit with Apple's odd culture and likely wouldn't have taken the offer considering the alternatives, I do feel the recruiter's lack of response is unprofessional at best. At worst, it makes the company look like it doesn't even care about getting qualified talent into its internet services org.

Don't waste your time.

• 1/3 Linux internals
• 1/3 Web services troubleshooting and design
• 1/3 Data structures and algorithms