Hi,
I have 6 years of experience in the software engineering field, mostly working as a software consultant and at not well known startups. Having done MSc in the field AI, I got an offer to interview with Apple for an interesting role that seemed to have the best from 2 worlds - Software Engineering & AI/ML. To my surprise, after 6 interviews over the span of 2 months and an emotional rollercoaster, I got the job at ICT3 level and moved to another country. I thought I might be underleveled at first, but I kept thinking I actually don’t have experience in AI/ML so they’re levelling me as ICT3 must be right, I also don’t feel like a senior yet.
The situation I’m in now at work is very frustrating and disappointing to me, because of the following :
Hey, I'm really sorry to hear this. My response here boils down to 2 big points:
Apple is one of the best tech companies in the world, filled with incredible engineers. It also probably has the strongest financial outlook among the FAANG companies. It would be a shame if you had to exit the entire company over this. I would start reaching out to other managers within Apple (ideally through some of your Apple peers in other orgs) and seeing if you can join their teams.
Maybe what I’m experiencing in this particular branch of Apple is unusual for FANG or even other Apple jobs and would be grateful for others’ opinions on this situation.
The average Big Tech team is quite competent (this is why these companies are so successful after all), but every Big Tech company will have thousands of terrible teams. It is simply impossible to sustain every team being good at this scale. It sucks (especially for engineers like yourself who get burned by this), but that's unfortunately just how it is.
Big Tech also has a ton of other problems as we talk about in our session here: [Masterclass] Should You Work At FAANG? - What Big Tech Is Like For Software Engineers
To help you find a good next team, I recommend our team selection masterclass: [Masterclass] How To Choose A Good Company And Team As A Software Engineer
Best of luck! Please ask more questions into Taro as the situation unfolds - I would love to further help.
I'll share one data point after talking to 100s of engineers: of the engineers who end up switching teams or companies after being in a bad situation, the vast majority wish they had done it sooner.
I put my thoughts on switching teams here.