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Great products, great engineers, good company growth, with expected growing pains

Senior Software Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at Apple for less than 1 year
June 17, 2008
4.0
RecommendsApproves of CEO
Pros

Apple makes high-quality products, both inside and out. They're considered good by both users and developers.

Some aspects of our internals can be ugly, but there's a strong push companywide to create maintainable interfaces and implementations, even those for internal use.

We're constantly pushing to create new & better ways of doing things, if no longer in a completely revolutionary manner. It seems there is just too much legacy software AND mindset out there now.

Even so, that drive is present.

We don't have all the perks of other high-profile companies, but hours are flexible, and a new shuttle service makes commuting quite pleasant.

Apple is big enough that you can find a work & management environment that fits your temperament.

Cons

Management is extremely secretive, even internally, and it's only becoming more so. That said, I can see why, looking at the marketplace.

Apple is operating in a new world, and we can't just talk about what we're working on anymore.

Internal resource allocation is very stingy; it's hard to have enough equipment to work properly on multiple releases and test system-level things that sometimes require a second machine of similar specs.

Work level tends to go in a roller-coaster, with long crunches before releases, but that's typical for the industry, really.

Overall project management seems to be declining in recent years, which is rather worrisome.

I've been frustrated by some general communication problems in my department and difficulties making time for professional growth at the company, but it's something I could probably get past if I took more initiative in the matter.

We are REALLY overcrowded and getting more so. Many people are doubled up in offices, the on-campus cafe is overloaded every day at lunchtime, and the new campus shows no signs of coming along.

Advice to Management

Give more resources to the engineers. That's the major one.

Better overall project management would be nice.

Get that new campus built.

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