Pros: The contractor I worked for offered discounted Apple products to employees. This is not the case for most Apple contractors; no discounts are given. The only other perks were the food. We were told we had to work in a designated building. So, we got access to free bushels of apples. This is not normally the case. Our designated building was for contractors. It was dusty and there were no bushels of free fruit. Also, we had access to the cafeteria, which has respectable food.

Cons: The list will never end. There is no documentation at Apple at all, at least that's what they tell you. Their systems are well-architected, which implies that there are architecture documents somewhere, but no documentation was ever made available to me. There is an ever-constant swinging door of contractors because Apple is so abusive and most people don't stay. So, you cannot find any single person to answer any of your questions. One time, it took two of us 6 hours to access a DB table. No one would give us the username and password. And then, there was no DB schema or diagram, so we had to guess what the table names meant and then guess what they might use as foreign keys. Oh, and I had nightly meetings with India. Sometimes up until midnight. Sometimes, they'd call me at 2 AM. They'd call my teammates and tell them to call me at 2 AM. I've never seen such behavior before.

Pros: Great pay, great benefits, and you have Apple on your resume.

Cons: Reviews are accurate, all of the bad ones at least. They use a lot of offshore contractors, and a high percentage are not good. The same goes for the managers; they used to be not-so-good contractors and are managers now. It's not usually bad to use contractors due to the flexibility of scaling up and down on people. But when you have 5 employees and 15 contractors, and they just come and go, you don't really have that flexibility. It's the same 15 positions, but filled by people who are taken to extreme burnout and are writing code and creating designs worse than recent grads. Engineer quality is the worst I've ever seen in my life overall, with 18 YOE. Are there good folks there? Yes, absolutely. But when you have 5 employees and 15 contractors, and 50% suck and are offshore in India on a completely different timezone, you are in for a mess and a career hara-kiri. Unless you are making much less than the current TC offered, I would advise against it. It doesn't matter the team, trust me on that. I have experienced and interacted with several teams; it's all the same. If the TC is significantly higher, take it, and leave soon for a similar paying company. I'm looking for my way out. All the contractors are from Tata Consulting and Infosys. Those guys are suffering and being exploited. 100% of the people I've interacted with are Indians. Diversity is 0%. It's incredible; you feel like you are in India yourself. I've never seen this in my life, and I've worked in all the MAGAF.

Pros: Exciting projects and great teamwork.

Cons: It is an onsite option only.