Apple

—famous company. —Pay can be good, depending on which product and org you work in. —Benefits are good. Health, dental, etc., are top-notch. Some people complain it doesn’t have free food 24/7, but Apple does have free dinner. —Travel benefits are excellent for people who travel a lot. I can’t communicate how good their travel is. The Apple Travel group are great people and help you no matter where you are on Earth, 24/7, at a moment's notice. Business class tickets for international, and your pick of hotels. —Funding is unlimited for products the company is committed to shipping. —Some fantastic colleagues. I’ve become friends with really great people because of the challenges you endure together. —The experience is unique: only Apple can do Apple.

—management. Good ones are hard to find, and even more difficult to transfer to. Often, job openings are due to people quitting a manager, so people coming in don’t have a clue to what situation they’re stepping into.

—Highly political culture. Very siloed. GSM and Capex community is particularly difficult to work with. Some PD groups are legendary for being difficult to work with.

—Turnover is high.

—People are highly educated, but sometimes don’t possess good engineering common sense. Endless funding and a faux accountability structure insulates people with amazing pedigrees but poor engineering judgment.

—People are good at shifting blame, covering tracks, and overall bending the optics so that they look good regardless of outcome. More often than not, other cross-functional groups and people are “thrown under the bus.”

—Most positions are support. i.e., you’re most likely working on someone else’s vision or idea, whether you’re in product development or operations.

—Engineering is mostly execution-based. You are most likely going to spend endless hours to prove out ideas based on ID’s whim and managers’ behest. This can be deeply frustrating for creative people.

—Career advancement is poor. You were hired to turn a crank, and that crank you shall turn.

—It is a political place to work. Worth mentioning twice...

—None