What It's Like to Work at Apple

[novum]

Secrecy: Apple's secrecy is comparable to the U.S. government's in terms of "need to know" and compartmentalization.

This. My roommate is a hardware engineer on the iPad team, and he won't even confirm that there will be another iPad. He takes extra precautions when working at home - he won't take work calls if I'm in the room, and he set up the furniture in his room in an awkward fashion solely so that his computer monitor didn't face towards the door.

Several times I've brought friends or family down to Cupertino. He lets us inside to walk around the inner campus and eat at Caffe Macs, but that's truly all there is to see. Certainly we can't enter any other buildings on Infinite Loop.

One thing this article doesn't mention is work-life balance. We live in SF, and my roommate has a 90-minute commute (each way) on the Apple shuttle, and he usually works 12 hours on top of that. He's out by 8am and doesn't usually return until 11pm. He tells me this is a common topic of discussion at Caffe Macs - the balance between working on groundbreaking technology and, quite simply, having zero personal time during the week (and often on the weekends).

He can be called to go to China with no more than a few days' notice, and the duration of his stay there is never known ahead of time. He often estimates 7-10 days but it frequently ends up being closer to 2, even 3 weeks. Apple covers all of his expenses, of course, but he doesn't much care for Shenzhen.

He really likes working at Apple, but I think he recognizes that it's not a sustainable job for him for more than 3 or 4 years.

[borski]

While I only worked at Apple for about 8 months (started as a summer intern), I can completely echo this. It's never that we _have_ to stay later, it's that we _want_ to. You really have a dedication to the product because you want your customers to love you; that was the overall mindset. With a deadline, that means you'll do almost anything to meet it and succeed.

As for the secrecy, you're totally right. I roomed with 3 other interns during the summer and none of us would talk shop, ever. When interviewing for other companies later, nearly all my answers about what I did at Apple were "I wish I could talk to you about that, but the most I can do at this point is talk 'around' it, if you will, since that's an unreleased product." Not at all unlike government secrecy.

All that said, it really was a glorious place to work. I miss a lot about it; the seemingly infectious excitement and passion for the products was really driving. I loved being in that environment. :)

[hyperbovine]

Glad to hear it's not just me! I've got a couple friends working there too, the 007 shtick gets a bit droll sometimes.

[Keyframe]

Sounds like a genuine shithole/borderline slavery. Why are people putting up with this?

[nhangen]

I don't see how it isn't sustainable if you are loving it? Most people would love a job where they don't need to stay, but want to stay.

[loewenskind]

Does the compensation reflect the working hours? That is, your roomate is working at least 50% more than normal [1], does he make 50% more than people who work normal hours doing similar work?

[1] I can't comment on the industry standard because Apple is kind of a hybrid between a software and hardware company.

[yardie]

Reservists called up to active duty are put into a military-leave status and they remain Apple employees while Apple makes up the salary difference between their military pay and their Apple pay until they return.

I wonder if other companies do this. I know by law they are required to keep those positions for active reserves but I don't think they are required to continue to pay their salary. In the past, I've worked temp positions for employees that were deployed.

[jasonjei]

That really is above and beyond. Aside from the fact that many companies will find you completely unattractive if you have Guard/Reserve on your resume, paying the difference to keep your existing salary while not even at Apple makes it very military-reserve friendly environment. But you'll probably still have to weigh the other working environment factors.

(It's even hard for me to convince my investors that I'll be around in case my Guard unit is deployed.)

[rdl]

I actually saw some (military contractor or related manufacturing) companies which continue to pay full salary (plus the employee gets whatever active duty salary and allowances). These companies also donated stuff like satellite links to their employee's unit so they could have Internet access.

I would probably do this at my company (even outside of defense), purely to be more attractive to NG/Reserves candidates -- a lot of them have great additional experience and training which is paid for by the government, and especially if they value their military career and security clearance, are unlikely to get involved in anything untoward.

[rdj]

A company I worked for in Atlanta did the same thing (pay the difference). However, I suspect this is still the exception, not the rule.

[retroryan]

I am pretty sure Oracle does this as well.

[adamesque]

I worked at Apple for 5 years (ending in summer '08), and one of the most amazing things about the experience was how well most people understood the core vision of the company, even in departments where you wouldn't expect that – like call center management.

I've worked with other big tech companies and frequently heard people talking about doing things "more like Apple". It was funny to think that was exactly the way people inside Apple talked too. Everyone's on board.

[smiler]

Would be great if he had expanded on the 'no career path' section - that will probably be something that most people want to know about - surely there must be different levels of developers to some extent? Moving from development to management?

Any Apple employees on here like to comment?

[gaius]

Any Apple employees on here like to comment?

Probably not ;-)

[apike]

Lack of a career path is part of why I left Apple to start my own company. The hierarchy is quite flat, and the departments are quite compartmentalized. Because of this, if you want to move up, you're probably quitting and applying to a new job that also happens to be at Apple. Of course, it was a wonderful place to work in a lot of other ways.

[nostromo]

The way he mentions that Apple HR confirms that there are 'no career paths' at Apple makes me think he's referring to a more regimented promotion system (a la GE).

[jfb]

Almost certainly he's referring to a formal career plan, of which I saw none at Apple. On the other hand, I know many engineers who have made director -- but only by switching gears to management. If you want to stay an individual contributor, you can, but "moving up" at Apple is largely confined to management. There are a handful of DESTs, but they are the exception, rather than the rule.

[nhangen]

As a former Army Soldier, it was very cool to read the piece about the military. Props to Apple for taking a strong stand.

[davidj]

A friend of mine worked at Apple as a consultant for a ERP system that ran on Windows NT and I used to pick him up all the time. They would let me walk right in no problem. I remember walking across a parking lot where there was a wine bar where he liked to hang out. Of course this was in 2000 though.

[updog]

BJ's is not a wine bar ;)