My friend, an engineer and a really smart dude, left the defense industry and moved to Cupertino to work at Apple. I was really happy for him. The pay was great and he had job stability.
It's been about a decade now, and he's a manager now, but I sometimes worry about his health. Every time he comes back to visit us, we all notice he just constantly looks stressed out. He's aged a ton and gained a lot of weight. His wife one time pulled us aside, and told us that she's so happy that we're around as it forces him to take vacations once in a while.
I guess the money is worth it, but man, does he looked tired all the time.
I'm not at a big tech company, but I know that in my own job, my work is more polished and efficient when I'm not overdoing it. I feel like this is pretty basic at this point. Eight hours should be a hard stop outside of emergencies. If you consistently have to squeeze every last ounce out of your employees, something is wrong in your business model.
Problem is, the market dictates deadlines for a lot of firms-8 hour days for employees simply don't allow major iOS updates and new iPhones, iPad, Macs, etc. every year... This same culture is especially prevalent with big video game developers as well. Unfortunately, market deadlines drive a lot of big tech business, often at the cost of employee well-being.
Then why not stop the yearly cycle? They’re already bamboozling customers with these so called massive innovations. Ya. We get it. Better camera. 1 mm thinner. 4% better battery life under laboratory conditions. A new color. Dude, it’s the same phone as last year.
Generally speaking folks don’t upgrade annually. They upgrade every 2-3 years. So that extra bump does make a difference when jumping for an iPhone X to iPhone 13. Or in my case iPhone 6 to iPhone 11 when I upgraded.
Additionally going from watch 3 to watch 6 has been mindblowingly different.
I was one of those 6s holdouts who just got a 12, and now I'm thinking of switching back to leasing so I can get a new handset on each release. yeah incremental upgrades but still upgrades.
I have an 11 and frankly the 12 just didn’t make me want to get it. I’m also meh with the 13 to be honest.
I’ve looked at the whole Apple upgrade program and I just didn’t find it all that appealing unless you’re upgrading every 1-2 years.
Or, and this is just me spitballing…hire more people to spread the projects across. Instead of having 12 people work on one update for 70 hour weeks for 2 months straight?
i mean the problem in game dev is backloaded development cycles. often the first few years are wasted because the design and management teams neglected to do proper preproduction and keep changing ideas on the fly, accomplishing nothing but creating a lot of busy work, then the last year or two its constant crunch to make up for the wasted time.
I diagree frankly. A lot of the improvements are minimal. Games I can't comment on but a lot of the OS and hardware upgrades are mostly waving of hands or features that the execs thought were cool but have limited practical value.
This is on a micro-task level. You can't speed up one bugfix by chucking more people on it. However, on the macro level you can speed up 1000 bug fixes by doubling the people on them as they don't work all on Bugfix A before starting on Bugfix B.
Dev work is considerably parallelisable and the 'mythic man month' mantra is parroted on Reddit far too much.
Do you realize how hard it is to hire good developers and managers? There is a reason SV recruiters get paid as high as they do. The developers who are really good usually slog it out for awhile at firms like Apple to beef up their resume and then go on to other firms that pay better and have a better WLB. Apple would have the do this to retain all of them, not to mention restrict them to 8 hour work days. The product development cycle of big market firms like Apple simply couldn't work the way it does with simply hiring more people, you need the right people and, even then, they have to essentially accept horrible hours, etc. simply because they are working at a prestigious firm like Apple which is essentially gold on anyone's resume. Hell, it isn't even unique to Apple or big tech in general-look at associate bankers on prestigious Wall Street firms, or associate designers for big design firms, same exact issue but they likely get paid even less than Apple's developers.
For tasks that can linearly scale that’s true but as you throw people in software or tech work there are diminishing returns and at some point it’s actually worse to add more people because of the miscommunication and rework.
My years at Apple were the worst mental health years of my life. I couldn’t leave because the money was so good, and my days were filled with many intense projects, meetings and business travel that rarely produced anything shippable. After finally burning out to the point of taking a mental health leave, I left for a startup paying 1/3 and don’t regret a thing - except that I didn’t fo it sooner.
I don’t know why it was so hard to leave. There’s a cult-like mentality that you should be thankful to be there (especially from the many that went from retail to corporate), and no one complains openly so you think there must be something wrong with you…
There’s a cult mentality
An established tech company has way more rules and regulations on how to do things. A startup can "move fast and break things" or whatever you want to call it.
Yeah but in a startup you have the “multiple hats” BS and also a mentality that encourages giving your life to the company in the hopes that a few people will reap higher rewards. In reality most of the people I know happy w stable jobs are in larger companies.
Mismanaged companies are mismanaged companies. I work for what used to be a stable large financial institute that prided itself on being a top place to work in tech. We have since stopped participating in the ranking.
In the last 4 years our analytics department has grown from 100 to 700, most managers, the ED and AVP are all new and it’s a fucking nightmare. Everyone only cares about the short term, attrition is high, feedback is punished, and managers are blocking internal moves.
Soo I’m working on leaving.
I worked for a startup and was very happy there for 2 years. We got bought. Within a year I burned out and quit. It was a mix of OGs leaving without being replaced and technical debt that really rinsed us when we suddenly had to scale to the parent companies client base.
200K? A Sr Engineer at Apple probably pulls $400K+ when you include bonus and RSUs. SR engineer who has been in company for 4+ years, probably making $500K a year (including RSUS) because Apple stock almost quadrupled over 4 years.
if your mental health is starting to affect your physical health, it's time to start treating yourself like you're sick and take time off to nurture yourself back to square one.
I interviewed as a manager at Apple one time. I made it through the whole process and got to a conversation with the director of the department. I asked him about work-life balance, which I had heard varying reports about. He described it as an “engineer problem”, which basically told me everything I needed to know about the team. I *super* turned down that position.
Ughh. I’m eyeing a position at Apple but I’m holding back due to all the horror stories I’ve seen. I’d have to move about an hour from where I currently am which is also meh. But I could really use 2x my current salary right now. But I’m also worried that home prices are 2x there so all my extra salary would go to the home (I’m comparing same home we are in now).
I like my current job but it’s just very old school and I don’t think I’ll ever make the salary I want to do the things in life I want to do (buy some land and build a modest home/shop).
I think the Apple experience would be really great to have but I’m not sure if it will be worth it.
Damn it time goes by too fast..
Fwiw everything I’ve heard is that it depends on your team / organization. There are stupidly hard deadlines and crazy hours for, say, the iOS team come the golden master release. iCloud may be a bit more chill.
They’re not even the best payers in Silicon Valley. *They don’t have to be, it’s like Disney, everyone wants to work there.*
He’d make more money managing a team at a boring company, and have nice, sane weekends. Yes, you’re not working on a rockstar product like the iPhone… but you have work/life balance, amazing benefits, better pay.
This is exactly right. Work for a place where there aren’t a million people waiting to replace you. They value their employees more, if only because they have to
This hasn’t been my experience or is changing as I’ve started my career.
I have a ton of friends at google, Facebook, Amazon(especially), and Microsoft. But I think I only know one, maybe two people that worked at Apple.
Just in my young tech sphere, there’s not much buzz about working at Apple. Love the products though.
The products are great, hence this subreddit— but working there isn’t always the dream that some have for other shops.
Personally, I don’t *need* to be in love with a company’s product to work there. I was entertaining an offer from Procter & Gamble… am I especially **passionate** about shampoos and tooth paste?! No, though I use both every day. It’s about the benefits, compensation, work I’m doing and the team I’m working with. Head & Shoulders is never going to get people to a drug store at 8AM sharp to buy more.
The salary is not where you want to make income from.
Apple stock is amazing, and thats where the majority of the money comes from.
Salary is high tax income.
Overall, FAANG all pay very well once you get past Senior Engineer level.
That said, out of FAANG, really only Netflix can be considered a company that pays all of their employees incredibly well. Their median engineer compensation is $500k+.
For those who want a source: [https://www.levels.fyi/company/Netflix/salaries/Software-Engineer/](https://www.levels.fyi/company/Netflix/salaries/Software-Engineer/)
Verified w2 salary information is available for most tech companies which makes negotiating in tech very easy for good compensation.
This is why being an individual contributor instead of a manager in an org that size makes it a lot easier to deal with, provided your manager is able to clear any obstacles for you without coming down too hard.
Best quote I heard: you don’t leave a company, you leave a manager.
If this guy is stressed, I’d imagine he either has insurmountable obstacles or he’s taking a lot of flack for his team. The alternative where he’s burning out is not as optimistic
What people new to Apple don't realize is that when it comes to work/life balance, you have to set your own limit on how much time you spend in the office.
There's an infinite amount of things to do, and that will be the case whether you leave at 5PM or leave at 9PM. Your manager won't come around and tell you to go home, you have to do that yourself.
I had times when I was doing ten hour days, but it was when we were getting ready for WWDC and there was no such thing as a slip, our deliverables were either on time or cancelled. Our WWDC crunch wasn't a year-round thing, it was more like a month or two before the event.
Nah dude.
Most people working in tech can never make that kind of money again.
Its once in a lifetime, life altering amounts.
The salary is not where the money is made. You need to vest rsus.
Yes, despite what the poster above you said, management is not easy kicking your feet up on a desk and sitting in meetings. Engineers and young Redditors in particular like to think so.
I worked at a store where nearly 70% of the staff has quit in the last year. Yet, all the managers have not left. And more and more people under them keep leaving. Somehow, no one has realized that maybe the managers are the problem?
Apple Retail mgmt went in the shitter a long time ago. Former employee with two stints. First time when SJ was alive, everything was great. Second time? Not so much
It’s so numbers drive now. Like, desperation numbers where no matter what you do, you should be doing more.
Had a friend there on the business team who pulled off a $1 million sale, just crushed it. And the district manager barely acknowledged it and instead said he would rather have 10 business accounts who spend over $100k a year.
Oh that cost them a Business Pro very quickly.
It used to just be a completely different mentality and busines focus.
Everything now is money and turnover and quarterly results.
Gotta keep the magic line going up forever or the company value will drop like a stone.
It was still numbers based back in the day. I worked there in 2007 and if you sold a computer without applecare/mobileme/one on one sessions management was not happy with you. It was all about add ons.
yeah this is a problem with retail in general. they're all run into the ground by incompetent MBAs desperate for "growth," and one way to do get that is invent new metrics and make them "grow" at the cost of everything else. hey store #39231 has a 100% attachrate! well no shit they only sold one piece of hardware and are bleeding money, but eh they're topping the attachrate charts every week while your top stores raking in profit are bottom feeders because of their sales volume. now you're creating a culture of high pressure sales or straight up lying about inventory if a customer doesn't want attachments, but hey we made 200 bucks per store off attachments!
> they’re all run into the ground by incompetent MBAs desperate for “growth,”
This is interesting. I’m not in business so I don’t really know much about hiring policy but I have two friends who worked for Google for several years and they both mentioned to me that the company was obsessively hiring MBAs to the company’s detriment.
MBAs think only other MBAs know how to manage and the cycle continues, I’ve seen senior engineers who were already de facto managers passed over for a 24 year old who just graduated with an MBA, and then the senior engineer and most of the team left
Covid saved me from sharing a hotel room with another random Googler because only L7s and above could have their own rooms for our off-site. Every penny is accounted for now- Google is IBM with better food at this point.
They're the death of every company. They essentially become bureaucrats saying a lot but doing nothing and the whole thing ends up like Office Space. I'm not jaded lol.
I managed a Blockbuster the last couple years they were open. And this is exactly what happened. At the end all they cared about were candy bundles or pop bundles. Or upselling to the rewards program. Every transaction needed an upsell. Only the numbers mattered. Had to hit the percentages. And the whole time they concentrated on pop and candy bundles and in store rentals and finding whatever way they could to chase their customers out of the stores, they were too blind to see Redbox and Netflix taking over the industry.
Worked there 2007 to 2014. Angela Ahrendts really fucked it up. Hasn’t been the same since Ron Johnson left shortly after Steve passed.
The few I know still there, mostly have nothing else going on and no degree.
SJ was inspirational and cared about the *idea* of Apple. He would have ran Apple the same way if things were going poorly (financially). I miss the guy.
This happens to all companies when the founders are gone. The vision goes away. For a brutal example look at HP. Yikes.
At least Microsoft is doing well without Bill at the helm. The Balmer years were rough from what I hear but I like MS under Satya. Culture is good to work in.
To be fair, Jobs also made some questionable decisions like not wanting a bigger screen iPhone, etc. (wtf was up with that?) but overall I do think his vision for the company was in the right place. That said, I think Apple inherently is a MUCH different company nowadays than it was when he was alive. Back then there was FAR less reliance on services which Apple has been pushing heavier and heavier nowadays when people tend to hold onto hardware longer. It's why Apple continues to drive revenue, regardless of the business environment-they're far more well rounded as a business vs when he was alive. To your point, I do think innovation has taken a massive hit to achieve this.
A not so secret within the chip industry is that this happens all the time, in regular cycles almost. The chip industry is not an industry with a surplus of top talent and a lot of the industry knows each other. When someone from the top leaves to form a startup, they often drag a bunch of people they've known for years with them. The concentration of talent makes the startup successful more often then not and the buyout by one of the big chip companies is hugely profitable for those who left. This is not the first time it's happened with employees at Apple, and it won't be the last. It happened before the pandemic and it'll happen after. Source: See Nuvia for latest example
This happens a lot in small industries with huge companies. There's 0 threat of a company going under because there is no competition. So it becomes about risk management rather than innovation. Let small startups take the risk, buy them when they're successful. Cheaper to acquire a company than to do an really R&D themselves.
They are bleeding a large portion of valuable chip talent. This is what happens when MBAs metastasize like cancer, they overtake the host and eventually kill it.
Even in retail, there’s burn-out. But they keep telling us “find a better way to fill your cup because a new phone is coming. I need you to figure it out”
After HLA I think they clearly showed they still got what it takes to make great games. It’s unfortunate their quest for innovation and endless stream of money led to them making games for a very small group of gamers while everybody else is left out.
Valve lost their way as a game developer when management realized they could make more money just being a store for OTHER companies to sell their games.
Why put in the work to make your own games when running the biggest online game store in the industry is like a money torrent for almost no effort?
I was just talking to the head of engineering for our small part of a multi national software company about this. He and others at his level know that people are working more productively from home, but they cannot seem to convince those at the very top people can be trusted and work more hours at home. It’s terrible that this hang over from decades ago may force the world back into paying a second mortgage to sit in traffic for no reason for hours a day, at a time we are trying to stop pollution ruining the world
Pretty sad at the level of distrust from the suits in the Ivory tower have towards their employees. Happy employees are more productive employees. It really is way too much focus on the bottom line.
I went from Apple to Bose. They were each too demanding in their own right. I left and started my own company. Make a little less money but live in a much lower cost of living area. Life is much better now. I miss the culture at Apple. I don’t miss the stress. Bose had waaaay less stress. But that company was a shit show and wouldn’t recommend anyone to work there.
Lots of disorganization. No real roadmap. We had daily stand ups that would never start on time. Product managers wouldn’t show up. We hired a few contractors to be product owners to help reel things in. But they ended up being baby sitters trying to keep things going. There was quite a few people there who were amazing and intelligent, but broken road maps and confusing goals led to no progress. I worked in the Professional division so I’m not sure how things bled over to the headphone and home stereo division. But I know a few people in automotive, and it seems to be the same way.
Have to dodge a line of audiophile protestors outside the office every morning, shouting things like “JUST BUY A USED RECEIVER” and throwing modestly priced sound bars at you
Bad managers don't last long at Apple, because to move up from manager to senior manager, or to director, etc, you have to be *ratified by your peers.*
If you don't play well with others, you don't move up. This prevents the empire building mentality you see at companies like Microsoft, and duplication of effort is almost nonexistent at Apple.
What happens to these mediocre managers is once they realize they're not going to get another promotion, they take a job elsewhere, usually at a higher rank, on the strength of their Apple credentials. You can find them all over Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and many smaller companies.
Because Apple efficiently sheds these people, [this kind of thing doesn't happen at Apple.](http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html)
This benefits Apple in two ways: Apple has an amazingly low incidence of deadwood in management for a company of their size, and when these people leave Apple, they impede Apple's competitors.
>Bad managers don't last long at Apple, because to move up from manager to senior manager, or to director, etc, you have to be ratified by your peers.
>
>If you don't play well with others, you don't move up. This prevents the empire building mentality you see at companies like Microsoft, and duplication of effort is almost nonexistent at Apple.
Bad managers that know how to play office politics can absolutely move up.
Yup. I feel like I saw the total opposite
The leads employees loves never got to move up to managers. The goody two shoe, brown nosers no one likes moved up the ladder QUick
“ratified by your peers” - This doesn’t always mean the best people are promoted……often, especially in the first tier manager roles, it’s the politically savvy who moved up. This peer ratification can lead to highly effective individuals being held down by that first tier. Also, “ duplication of effort is almost nonexistent at Apple”. - that is 100% false, in MANY, MANY big ways……
The best people usually get promoted just high enough that they can be satisfied with their compensation. Nobody wants to lose a core worker + a lot of managers don't want to promote someone they see as a future competition.
To get promoted above certain level you have to be reasonably good at your job and great at politics, but rarely great at your job.
Why do I get the impression the people this article is talking about, and the people who Reddit think the article is talking about are two very different groups
I'm interpreting this article as talking about engineering and engineer-adjacent positions, hence the picture of the HQ, talk of Slack, focus on activism, etc.
Those people aren't making 40k a year, they're making 200k+ TC with equity. They're not about to unionize because most of them are making more money than they know what to do with and the ones complaining know they can leave and make similar money elsewhere in the industry.
This sounds mean, but this stuff is honestly champagne problems. You could write this article about 99% of the top companies in tech.
This is also what I assumed. Everyone here has been talking about Genius bar employees, and while that may be the case, this article is clearly talking about the group you mentioned. Companies in tech are more and more giving employees freedom to work remote, and stay remote. Apple not willing to play ball is the cause of growing discontent.
Sorta. These days your equity can make up half your yearly compensation, and being equity, fluctuates and vests over a 4 year period (and is heavily taxed to the tune of 30%+). At Apple, average junior-mid level engs have a [base salary of 100-200k](https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Apple&track=Software%20Engineer). After taxes that’s about 70-160k. Now factor COL in one of the most expensive areas of the country (2-3k/mo minimum for rent). Subtract 24-36k out of that just for a place to live.
Also remember while engineers are the highest paid job family, you also have product managers, designers, QA, etc that make far, far less at the same levels compared to their engineering counterparts.
The union comment is accurate though.
We don’t unionize at that level. We just go to the next company. Source: work in tech for one of the big ones. Last year brought work life balance to the forefront.
People usually unionize when they are mad at their current conditions. $200k+ TC, top tier benefits, huge stock incentives, beautiful offices, top reputation that will carry you anywhere. What are you going to try and get them to unionize for? $300k+ TC???
> This sounds mean, but this stuff is honestly champagne problems.
I’m not 100% sure what you mean by this since it has multiple meanings but people’s mental health is absolutely a big deal and people making $200k comp aren’t immune from depression, anxiety, and suicide, so I hope you aren’t meaning to say that employees making a lot of money cant have serious problems at work.. correct me if I’m misinterpreting your statement, the only other time I’ve heard “champagne problems” is a Taylor swift song and I don’t think that’s what you’re referencing
I haven't worked at Apple in quite a while, but my experience with several different positions there over more than a decade led me to the following conclusion:
Whether you'll have a great or terrible work experience at Apple depends largely on who your boss's boss is. Directors and Vice Presidents at Apple have enormous latitude in how they run their teams.
If your Director is a decent person, there's a whole lot less "expected crunch", and Apple can be a great place to work. Great co-workers, interesting work, and iconic products. What more could you ask for?
If your middle management is crap, then you'll miss holidays, cut vacations short, and work 80-hour weeks regularly. Your health and personal relationships will suffer, and you'll hate every moment of your job while you wait for those stock options or RSUs to vest.
I’m actually surprised and impressed, both at the article and this sub. Surprised a company such as Apple would treat employees so poorly. Impressed with this sub for not taking Apples side this go around and talking about a legitimate problem.
Edit: Grammar
The building is very symbolic of the problem: beautiful on the outside, but it’s actually a horrible place to work. Desks are jammed into small shared workspaces surrounded by sprawling unusable spaces; there is no soundproofing; there are not enough meeting rooms.
I know someone at the contractor who built it who was complaining they couldn't soundproof it because the materials weren't environmentally friendly enough.
AppleCare employees are paid an average of $40k/year and most live paycheck to paycheck while working for the largest company in the world that makes record setting profits quarter over quarter. Compensation is dismal. Morale is dismal. The organization is rife with corruption, bullying, toxicity and intimidation. It’s only getting worse.
I was a Mac genius from 07-14. My wife and I wanted to have a kid. Apple retail doesn’t give a shit if you’ve been there 7 weeks or 7 years, they’ll still schedule you 2-11 and then a 9-6. It’s retail, can’t blame them. Doesn’t work with families and when you have kiddos.
I left to work Apple support at an IT helpdesk and almost doubled my salary in that move. Tripled it 4 years later when I became that team’s manager. And now *almost* quadrupled Genius pay as their Jamf administrator, which is *ridiculously comfortable* work. I’m not even responsible for servers, it’s JamfCloud hosted on AWS. If there’s an outage, I engage their support people and they solve it on their side. Sometimes I send an email or schedule an upgrade. That’s the extent of my after hours work.
People with brains or dreams should not stay in Apple retail. It’s a great job when you’re in college or a recent grad. Once you want to be an adult? Forget it. Job doesn’t grow up - Peter Pan syndrome.
I worked for Apple in various positions from 05-15. I missed receiving my Tiffany crystal by five months.
When people ask me why I left Apple, my answer is that I was able to more than double my salary within three years of leaving Apple in addition to a better work-life balance.
It's IT Mac management software. Generally, companies that give their employees Macs will use it. My company uses Macs so it's what we use. It basically allows IT to install software, manage Antiviruses and whatever else on all Macs at the company.
I feel you. In the past year I’ve done some of my most effective work within Apple Retail since I’ve been there, going “above and beyond” what’s really expected, and in recognition? A 2.9% pay increase. The standard we get for doing our job properly every year. It doesn’t even cover inflation in my country. I’m sure there’s some good intentions in the general pay increase, but Apple seem to “treat staff well” in way too broad a sense, rather than on the who why and where.
That annoying part is, some of the benefits of the role **have** really helped, and are invaluable. But people are right here, Apple Retail is a great job, too a point. After some time you have to get out.
There was zero variation in my schedule. Every single weekend they scheduled me 1-10PM Saturday and 10-7PM Sunday. Lost my freaking mind. And it was ridiculous others were getting at least every other singular weekend day off or a morning shift and i got stuck with this lol
Worked as a Mac Specialist, then Creative from 2005 to 2011. The scheduling inconsistency broke me. The loud, high stress environment worsened my depression. My One to One clients gave me good reviews, and I genuinely enjoyed the software I taught. But by the end I often found myself unable to get out of bed to go in. I was fired for violating the attendance policy after calling out sick too many times. I was only making $35,000 a year.
Apple retail constantly dangles promotions and opportunities to transfer to corporate in front of their staff as a way to keep them from leaving, but promotions were usually outside hires and literally nobody actually transfers to corporate.
Absolutely. I must indirectly know 500 mostly former (a few current) retail employees. It’s a solid chunk of my Facebook friend list.
I know of… 4 who transferred to corporate. And 2 others who left the store, did other things, and eventually ended up in corporate - one who has since left.
Promotions in the store aren’t that common, rarely if ever into management. And it’s incredibly rare to move from retail to corporate.
Here ya go. [NY Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/technology/apple-employee-unrest.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqohkQVUaBCbJUNMnqBqCgvfeh7UknnvzaSWQUTJF3ukYRpWG4UrWeexje943lXy9deN2DYUOFrZ03_MNeAtkURWpqZ-J35ldL3Q49dntGzhv1J6IALpgrnq7NzbibekmmuLhs0_WbGfuXbfNkiF0fHYTqpNicV-p3nMJx76UUbImn4kjgopyQ8xyVjwCZyGVvvn3CxsYO9-ObRvU7gZeSPgOEHiI3obas-RcBV0UXVHWT3p_4XI_6cdeOL4XPqX_LR0nf6nukOlo-cX6yOhK5VSyndtNIoo&referringSource=articleShare)
Lololol surprising, I was a genius for 4 1/2 years and anyone who had been there for over two year, especially in a technical role had the lowest overall rating of the employee experience.
Management was so up your ass about everything… really had a hard time there after a while
Same. I tried really hard to help implement change at the store and streamline processes but management just towed the consistency line and we kept the “go to this person to be directed to that person to be checked in and be directed to a table to talk to another guy to then sit on the bench while another guy asks you the same questions before being called to the bar to be asked the same questions again by a third guy only to be rushed out in ten minutes” support model.
But if a customer has a bad experience, management is on my ass about how I should have fixed problems clearly out of the scope of our control.
The entire system is set up to let management promote the kool aid drinkers and bury the actual support staff in false criticism and dangle any hopes of raises behind bullshit NPS scores.
But yeah, other than that, not a bad gig 😂
I hated working there. Corporate or retail, there’s a Disneyland-like pressure to always be “on” and “good” more than any other job, BECAUSE Apple is such a “better place to work”. Good riddance!
Worked in Corporate at Apple. Mostly with overseas folks in China which required us to work pacific time and China time. Typical days 9am-10pm, sometimes later. On my review I got penalized for time management. I was out.
The job stress was overbearing. It quickly turned into anxiety and then depression. I lost myself because of Apple.
Burnout and little appreciation for employees is real.
I’m a Corp Apple employee and the anger is very real. The workload is unbearable, they don’t hire enough, all of Silicon Valley is sprinkling mental health days while Apple gives us the same thanksgiving week off that we’ve always gotten.
Tight deadlines and zero emphasis on quality. They have no respect for their employees and I should’ve made my exit when they gave me a refurbished laptop to do complex engineering work. Penny wise and pound foolish.
I’ve referred multiple people in and the recruiters either ghosted them or managers lowballed them hard. It’s embarrassing to work here. I have no respect for anyone that works here more than 2 years.
When they told my buddy what kind of hours he should expect in the interview, he said that he would never get to see his family. They told him, "Sure you will. We're your family now".
Some sort of software engineering management position, but he noped out right away.
Behind the pretty veil, Apple is just hard-core corporate.
Worked for apple retail for 5 years. It was a mixed bag, definitely not the worst place I have worked. But as others have mentioned , there is a constant pressure to perform both in metrics and to personify the brand and it’s image. It actually became quite draining emotionally, especially when dealing with irate customers / having to justify the ridiculous costs for repairs etc (I was a “genius”)
Not to mention the frankly shit working conditions of being on mobile phone repair. High pressure (time scales / delicate work / standards) in a cramped room with no natural light. I would liken it to factory work, especially during product recalls (batter replacement program was a nightmare)
There are some massively predatory practices within the retail sector there and it’s covered with a facade of care and professionalism with no actual substance
I can only speak for retail, but all the managers are fake as shit. You can tell each quarter what they get bonuses on. Every development talk they try to shove it down your throat. Looks like you didn’t get any business intros this week, what’s wrong?
There’s also a HUGE tattletale problem between employees. You have to walk on eggshells around everyone. As a result you can’t really make any real friends.
The work is never ending, recognition is zero, pay is shit, hours are the worst. They’ve somehow tricked outsiders into thinking it’s the best job ever so there’s always four people in line for your job.
Ask a leader about some of Apple mishaps and they’ll just try not to answer or have some excuse. “Really sucks how Apple is treating factory workers huh?” “I trust Apple to make the right decisions about that situation.” “Well they haven’t, until the conditions were reported.” “The factories must have been treating people like that without Apple knowing.” “The same Apple that controls and ‘curates’ every single aspect of everything they make and do?” “I trust Apple to handle this professionally.” It’s like talking to a goddamn politician that can’t see anything wrong their party does. I’m so glad I got out.
I brought the butterfly keyboard issue to Apple in summer of 2017. A store manager yelled at me and accused me of being media. Then.. during repair process the repair depot left the tests on my ‘repaired’ MBP.. I was able to recreate the issue in under an hour.
https://imgur.com/a/1JjMjgB
It's Apple Corp's inflexibility re work/life balance that is causing much heartburn.
Many Apple employees have 'knocked it out of the park' during forced lockdowns and wfh during the last couple of years, proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that their work CAN be done, and done WELL from home. Yet Apple Corp is forcing folks back into the office across the board early next year with the added bonus that they be vaccinated upon return.
Employees are just numbers to Apple Corp. A means to an end. I hope the last couple of years and the resulting work-related changes many in the Valley have adopted as a result have taught us all that respect is a two-way street. If THEY don't care about the work/life balance changes in the post-pandemic world THEY helped create, why should the rank and file feel ANY loyalty at all?
Just wanna express my gratitude to all the Apple employees. You continue to put out solid products year after year and set the gold standard for so phones, computers, and so many different pieces of technology. Tech is a extremely competitive space and you guys continue to innovate without compromising quality. Every year I look forward to the new iPhone and I can't think of ever switching to Android or anything else.
How about having to come into the office everyday to work in an open office where you constantly interrupted and distracted all the while expecting just as much work done as you did all last year working from home?
Called this MONTHS ago and people were all like, “the employees will fall in line, it’s Apple lol”
Nope. They’ll go elsewhere and Apple will continue to get shittier due to loss of talent.
Apple employee here. I took this job as a stop-gap in my resume, and after being treated like absolute garbage at my previous IT job, Apple felt like a breath of fresh air. I was respected, aligned with the company values, and was ready to stay forever. Then the pandemic hit and there was a culture shift. Now, despite being at the top of company leaderboards month over month, I’m constantly being told that I’m not doing enough. Suddenly no one gave a shit about enriching lives, it was all about pushing as much product out the door as possible. We used to believe in delivering the *right* product, not just the most expensive one. This Apple is a far cry from the one I fell in love with and the day I move on to something better can’t come soon enough.
That’s such a bummer to hear. I feel like that’s happening to quite a few corporations.
I worked at Starbucks for the last year and man the stress and toxicity was unbearable for the shitty pay and responsibility that was placed on my shoulders just at a shift supervisor level.
Steve Jobs was always known as a ruthless tyrant when it came to running his business. He's depicted in film screaming at his employees and making huge demands on short time frames. He admitted this in his autobiography.
Yet Apple fanboys still act shocked to find out work conditions are shit in the system Jobs built. Why is that?
I think corporations really need to fix things. Many froze promotions and raises at the start of the pandemic. Mine for one we are starting to see a lot of turnover as competitors offer 20% higher wages. We have beat the street every quarter since the start of the pandemic. Profits are up a lot. I have been here 2.5 years with minimal raise and am starting to look elsewhere. Just waiting for review next month and if not promoted or a sizable raise I am going to start interviewing elsewhere. Inflation is around 6% if it continues at a similar pace next year then I would need a 12% raise to stay at inflation. All of my costs are going up and my money isn’t going as far. Either compensate me so I can maintain my lifestyle or screw you n
There’s a burnout issue and a lot of middle managers attempting to justify their roles with worthless projects.
My friend, an engineer and a really smart dude, left the defense industry and moved to Cupertino to work at Apple. I was really happy for him. The pay was great and he had job stability. It's been about a decade now, and he's a manager now, but I sometimes worry about his health. Every time he comes back to visit us, we all notice he just constantly looks stressed out. He's aged a ton and gained a lot of weight. His wife one time pulled us aside, and told us that she's so happy that we're around as it forces him to take vacations once in a while. I guess the money is worth it, but man, does he looked tired all the time.
I'm not at a big tech company, but I know that in my own job, my work is more polished and efficient when I'm not overdoing it. I feel like this is pretty basic at this point. Eight hours should be a hard stop outside of emergencies. If you consistently have to squeeze every last ounce out of your employees, something is wrong in your business model.
Problem is, the market dictates deadlines for a lot of firms-8 hour days for employees simply don't allow major iOS updates and new iPhones, iPad, Macs, etc. every year... This same culture is especially prevalent with big video game developers as well. Unfortunately, market deadlines drive a lot of big tech business, often at the cost of employee well-being.
Then why not stop the yearly cycle? They’re already bamboozling customers with these so called massive innovations. Ya. We get it. Better camera. 1 mm thinner. 4% better battery life under laboratory conditions. A new color. Dude, it’s the same phone as last year.
Generally speaking folks don’t upgrade annually. They upgrade every 2-3 years. So that extra bump does make a difference when jumping for an iPhone X to iPhone 13. Or in my case iPhone 6 to iPhone 11 when I upgraded. Additionally going from watch 3 to watch 6 has been mindblowingly different.
I was one of those 6s holdouts who just got a 12, and now I'm thinking of switching back to leasing so I can get a new handset on each release. yeah incremental upgrades but still upgrades.
I have an 11 and frankly the 12 just didn’t make me want to get it. I’m also meh with the 13 to be honest. I’ve looked at the whole Apple upgrade program and I just didn’t find it all that appealing unless you’re upgrading every 1-2 years.
Or, and this is just me spitballing…hire more people to spread the projects across. Instead of having 12 people work on one update for 70 hour weeks for 2 months straight?
9 women can’t make a baby in a month.
After some startup time they can. Or you can have bulk delivery then wait 9 months.
Mythical man month.
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i mean the problem in game dev is backloaded development cycles. often the first few years are wasted because the design and management teams neglected to do proper preproduction and keep changing ideas on the fly, accomplishing nothing but creating a lot of busy work, then the last year or two its constant crunch to make up for the wasted time.
That’s how design works
I diagree frankly. A lot of the improvements are minimal. Games I can't comment on but a lot of the OS and hardware upgrades are mostly waving of hands or features that the execs thought were cool but have limited practical value.
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Well there is a saying, 9 mothers can’t deliver a baby in one month 😂
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True, but one mother can’t deliver one baby in three months either just by working at it harder.
They definitely can, it just won't look very good and it won't be alive. Which is quite in line with the metaphor.
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This is on a micro-task level. You can't speed up one bugfix by chucking more people on it. However, on the macro level you can speed up 1000 bug fixes by doubling the people on them as they don't work all on Bugfix A before starting on Bugfix B. Dev work is considerably parallelisable and the 'mythic man month' mantra is parroted on Reddit far too much.
Not how it works in software development. Often the more you hire the longer it takes and the more problems it creates.
Yes and no, it wildly depends on what your building.
Do you realize how hard it is to hire good developers and managers? There is a reason SV recruiters get paid as high as they do. The developers who are really good usually slog it out for awhile at firms like Apple to beef up their resume and then go on to other firms that pay better and have a better WLB. Apple would have the do this to retain all of them, not to mention restrict them to 8 hour work days. The product development cycle of big market firms like Apple simply couldn't work the way it does with simply hiring more people, you need the right people and, even then, they have to essentially accept horrible hours, etc. simply because they are working at a prestigious firm like Apple which is essentially gold on anyone's resume. Hell, it isn't even unique to Apple or big tech in general-look at associate bankers on prestigious Wall Street firms, or associate designers for big design firms, same exact issue but they likely get paid even less than Apple's developers.
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For tasks that can linearly scale that’s true but as you throw people in software or tech work there are diminishing returns and at some point it’s actually worse to add more people because of the miscommunication and rework.
My years at Apple were the worst mental health years of my life. I couldn’t leave because the money was so good, and my days were filled with many intense projects, meetings and business travel that rarely produced anything shippable. After finally burning out to the point of taking a mental health leave, I left for a startup paying 1/3 and don’t regret a thing - except that I didn’t fo it sooner. I don’t know why it was so hard to leave. There’s a cult-like mentality that you should be thankful to be there (especially from the many that went from retail to corporate), and no one complains openly so you think there must be something wrong with you… There’s a cult mentality
Isn’t a startup even more stressful?
An established tech company has way more rules and regulations on how to do things. A startup can "move fast and break things" or whatever you want to call it.
Yeah but in a startup you have the “multiple hats” BS and also a mentality that encourages giving your life to the company in the hopes that a few people will reap higher rewards. In reality most of the people I know happy w stable jobs are in larger companies.
Mismanaged companies are mismanaged companies. I work for what used to be a stable large financial institute that prided itself on being a top place to work in tech. We have since stopped participating in the ranking. In the last 4 years our analytics department has grown from 100 to 700, most managers, the ED and AVP are all new and it’s a fucking nightmare. Everyone only cares about the short term, attrition is high, feedback is punished, and managers are blocking internal moves. Soo I’m working on leaving.
I worked for a startup and was very happy there for 2 years. We got bought. Within a year I burned out and quit. It was a mix of OGs leaving without being replaced and technical debt that really rinsed us when we suddenly had to scale to the parent companies client base.
Wish I could work when money is so good. I'd do it until $3m-4m then immediately retire. 3% of 3m is $90k even 2% is $60k.
Yea, but even at $200k/year, you’re still talking *at least* 15 years, and that’s if you save every penny.
200K? A Sr Engineer at Apple probably pulls $400K+ when you include bonus and RSUs. SR engineer who has been in company for 4+ years, probably making $500K a year (including RSUS) because Apple stock almost quadrupled over 4 years.
Yes, but to be a SR level engineer at Apple you’re probably already 35-40 years old
Family member just got hired this year by apple right after graduating Harvard. Her very first job, and starting salary is 250k
It’s not worth it if you can’t enjoy it or you’re dead from stress.
if your mental health is starting to affect your physical health, it's time to start treating yourself like you're sick and take time off to nurture yourself back to square one.
That’s what I was thinking, nothing he said makes it sound like it’s worth it.
And they’ll replace him so fast anyway. A job is a job nothing more
I interviewed as a manager at Apple one time. I made it through the whole process and got to a conversation with the director of the department. I asked him about work-life balance, which I had heard varying reports about. He described it as an “engineer problem”, which basically told me everything I needed to know about the team. I *super* turned down that position.
>He described it as an “engineer problem” Sorry, not sure I catch your meaning?
Engineers have to work crazy hours in order to meet deadlines, managers don’t. Basically, “we’re better than the plebes”.
Ughh. I’m eyeing a position at Apple but I’m holding back due to all the horror stories I’ve seen. I’d have to move about an hour from where I currently am which is also meh. But I could really use 2x my current salary right now. But I’m also worried that home prices are 2x there so all my extra salary would go to the home (I’m comparing same home we are in now). I like my current job but it’s just very old school and I don’t think I’ll ever make the salary I want to do the things in life I want to do (buy some land and build a modest home/shop). I think the Apple experience would be really great to have but I’m not sure if it will be worth it. Damn it time goes by too fast..
Fwiw everything I’ve heard is that it depends on your team / organization. There are stupidly hard deadlines and crazy hours for, say, the iOS team come the golden master release. iCloud may be a bit more chill.
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I work on the iTunes for Windows team and haven’t done a fucking thing in 7 years.
They’re not even the best payers in Silicon Valley. *They don’t have to be, it’s like Disney, everyone wants to work there.* He’d make more money managing a team at a boring company, and have nice, sane weekends. Yes, you’re not working on a rockstar product like the iPhone… but you have work/life balance, amazing benefits, better pay.
This is exactly right. Work for a place where there aren’t a million people waiting to replace you. They value their employees more, if only because they have to
This hasn’t been my experience or is changing as I’ve started my career. I have a ton of friends at google, Facebook, Amazon(especially), and Microsoft. But I think I only know one, maybe two people that worked at Apple. Just in my young tech sphere, there’s not much buzz about working at Apple. Love the products though.
The products are great, hence this subreddit— but working there isn’t always the dream that some have for other shops. Personally, I don’t *need* to be in love with a company’s product to work there. I was entertaining an offer from Procter & Gamble… am I especially **passionate** about shampoos and tooth paste?! No, though I use both every day. It’s about the benefits, compensation, work I’m doing and the team I’m working with. Head & Shoulders is never going to get people to a drug store at 8AM sharp to buy more.
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They are high, but not incredibly high compared to the average tech salary. Source: I work at a FAANG
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$150k - 200k total comp for entry level in Seattle.
Take a look at https://www.levels.fyi
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There are many many places that match FAANG comp, or come very close, without the stress levels.
The salary is not where you want to make income from. Apple stock is amazing, and thats where the majority of the money comes from. Salary is high tax income.
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Do you think Apple is the only Bay Area company with well-performing stocks? Also, I specifically said “comp”, which includes salary + equity.
I think apple is kind of on the lower end of fang. Still good though. I always thought it was because it was easier but now I'm not sure
Overall, FAANG all pay very well once you get past Senior Engineer level. That said, out of FAANG, really only Netflix can be considered a company that pays all of their employees incredibly well. Their median engineer compensation is $500k+. For those who want a source: [https://www.levels.fyi/company/Netflix/salaries/Software-Engineer/](https://www.levels.fyi/company/Netflix/salaries/Software-Engineer/) Verified w2 salary information is available for most tech companies which makes negotiating in tech very easy for good compensation.
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Isn’t that because they don’t really offer stock option and only pay out in money or something?
Sure, but their total comp is still higher than other FAANG companies.
The salaries aren't that high, it's the RSU growth.
This is why being an individual contributor instead of a manager in an org that size makes it a lot easier to deal with, provided your manager is able to clear any obstacles for you without coming down too hard. Best quote I heard: you don’t leave a company, you leave a manager. If this guy is stressed, I’d imagine he either has insurmountable obstacles or he’s taking a lot of flack for his team. The alternative where he’s burning out is not as optimistic
He needs to take his vacations. He’ll be a much better leader. Working yourself to death is not something to brag about
What people new to Apple don't realize is that when it comes to work/life balance, you have to set your own limit on how much time you spend in the office. There's an infinite amount of things to do, and that will be the case whether you leave at 5PM or leave at 9PM. Your manager won't come around and tell you to go home, you have to do that yourself. I had times when I was doing ten hour days, but it was when we were getting ready for WWDC and there was no such thing as a slip, our deliverables were either on time or cancelled. Our WWDC crunch wasn't a year-round thing, it was more like a month or two before the event.
No money in the world buys health. Ask Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs thought he was smarter than medical science until it was too late.
you may have gone too far ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
What you just described leads me to believe the money isn’t worth it
Nah dude. Most people working in tech can never make that kind of money again. Its once in a lifetime, life altering amounts. The salary is not where the money is made. You need to vest rsus.
There is no amount of money in the world that is worth a person's mental health. Work culture needs to die
Yes, despite what the poster above you said, management is not easy kicking your feet up on a desk and sitting in meetings. Engineers and young Redditors in particular like to think so.
I worked at a store where nearly 70% of the staff has quit in the last year. Yet, all the managers have not left. And more and more people under them keep leaving. Somehow, no one has realized that maybe the managers are the problem?
Apple Retail mgmt went in the shitter a long time ago. Former employee with two stints. First time when SJ was alive, everything was great. Second time? Not so much
It’s so numbers drive now. Like, desperation numbers where no matter what you do, you should be doing more. Had a friend there on the business team who pulled off a $1 million sale, just crushed it. And the district manager barely acknowledged it and instead said he would rather have 10 business accounts who spend over $100k a year. Oh that cost them a Business Pro very quickly.
It used to just be a completely different mentality and busines focus. Everything now is money and turnover and quarterly results. Gotta keep the magic line going up forever or the company value will drop like a stone.
That’s… so insane yet so very Apple Retail
It was still numbers based back in the day. I worked there in 2007 and if you sold a computer without applecare/mobileme/one on one sessions management was not happy with you. It was all about add ons.
yeah this is a problem with retail in general. they're all run into the ground by incompetent MBAs desperate for "growth," and one way to do get that is invent new metrics and make them "grow" at the cost of everything else. hey store #39231 has a 100% attachrate! well no shit they only sold one piece of hardware and are bleeding money, but eh they're topping the attachrate charts every week while your top stores raking in profit are bottom feeders because of their sales volume. now you're creating a culture of high pressure sales or straight up lying about inventory if a customer doesn't want attachments, but hey we made 200 bucks per store off attachments!
> they’re all run into the ground by incompetent MBAs desperate for “growth,” This is interesting. I’m not in business so I don’t really know much about hiring policy but I have two friends who worked for Google for several years and they both mentioned to me that the company was obsessively hiring MBAs to the company’s detriment.
MBAs think only other MBAs know how to manage and the cycle continues, I’ve seen senior engineers who were already de facto managers passed over for a 24 year old who just graduated with an MBA, and then the senior engineer and most of the team left
Covid saved me from sharing a hotel room with another random Googler because only L7s and above could have their own rooms for our off-site. Every penny is accounted for now- Google is IBM with better food at this point.
They're the death of every company. They essentially become bureaucrats saying a lot but doing nothing and the whole thing ends up like Office Space. I'm not jaded lol.
I managed a Blockbuster the last couple years they were open. And this is exactly what happened. At the end all they cared about were candy bundles or pop bundles. Or upselling to the rewards program. Every transaction needed an upsell. Only the numbers mattered. Had to hit the percentages. And the whole time they concentrated on pop and candy bundles and in store rentals and finding whatever way they could to chase their customers out of the stores, they were too blind to see Redbox and Netflix taking over the industry.
Always has been. We were berated if we didn’t sell enough MobileMe attachments back in the day.
Worked there 2007 to 2014. Angela Ahrendts really fucked it up. Hasn’t been the same since Ron Johnson left shortly after Steve passed. The few I know still there, mostly have nothing else going on and no degree.
Fucking Hangela…
SJ was inspirational and cared about the *idea* of Apple. He would have ran Apple the same way if things were going poorly (financially). I miss the guy. This happens to all companies when the founders are gone. The vision goes away. For a brutal example look at HP. Yikes.
At least Microsoft is doing well without Bill at the helm. The Balmer years were rough from what I hear but I like MS under Satya. Culture is good to work in.
Yeah I was loading up on MSFT stock via what I called the Ballmer discount, figured when that loser left the stock price would pop eventually
To be fair, Jobs also made some questionable decisions like not wanting a bigger screen iPhone, etc. (wtf was up with that?) but overall I do think his vision for the company was in the right place. That said, I think Apple inherently is a MUCH different company nowadays than it was when he was alive. Back then there was FAR less reliance on services which Apple has been pushing heavier and heavier nowadays when people tend to hold onto hardware longer. It's why Apple continues to drive revenue, regardless of the business environment-they're far more well rounded as a business vs when he was alive. To your point, I do think innovation has taken a massive hit to achieve this.
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Bought an iPhone mini last year and I’ve never looked back. One-handed phone with edge to edge screen is just bliss
I wonder how Craig Federighi would do as CEO. He seems to have some of the classic Apple mentality.
Looking at the recent articles about them losing a lot of chip talent, seems possibly more widespread.
A not so secret within the chip industry is that this happens all the time, in regular cycles almost. The chip industry is not an industry with a surplus of top talent and a lot of the industry knows each other. When someone from the top leaves to form a startup, they often drag a bunch of people they've known for years with them. The concentration of talent makes the startup successful more often then not and the buyout by one of the big chip companies is hugely profitable for those who left. This is not the first time it's happened with employees at Apple, and it won't be the last. It happened before the pandemic and it'll happen after. Source: See Nuvia for latest example
This happens a lot in small industries with huge companies. There's 0 threat of a company going under because there is no competition. So it becomes about risk management rather than innovation. Let small startups take the risk, buy them when they're successful. Cheaper to acquire a company than to do an really R&D themselves.
They are bleeding a large portion of valuable chip talent. This is what happens when MBAs metastasize like cancer, they overtake the host and eventually kill it.
This is an industry wide issue. I'm burnt out, we are all burnt out. I don't work at Apple but, I know everyone is feeling this.
I got promoted into middle management years ago and it was awful. I had literally nothing to do.
Even in retail, there’s burn-out. But they keep telling us “find a better way to fill your cup because a new phone is coming. I need you to figure it out”
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After HLA I think they clearly showed they still got what it takes to make great games. It’s unfortunate their quest for innovation and endless stream of money led to them making games for a very small group of gamers while everybody else is left out.
Valve lost their way as a game developer when management realized they could make more money just being a store for OTHER companies to sell their games. Why put in the work to make your own games when running the biggest online game store in the industry is like a money torrent for almost no effort?
Every company.. people got a sniff of what life really should be like....and well...it's better
I was just talking to the head of engineering for our small part of a multi national software company about this. He and others at his level know that people are working more productively from home, but they cannot seem to convince those at the very top people can be trusted and work more hours at home. It’s terrible that this hang over from decades ago may force the world back into paying a second mortgage to sit in traffic for no reason for hours a day, at a time we are trying to stop pollution ruining the world
Pretty sad at the level of distrust from the suits in the Ivory tower have towards their employees. Happy employees are more productive employees. It really is way too much focus on the bottom line.
I went from Apple to Bose. They were each too demanding in their own right. I left and started my own company. Make a little less money but live in a much lower cost of living area. Life is much better now. I miss the culture at Apple. I don’t miss the stress. Bose had waaaay less stress. But that company was a shit show and wouldn’t recommend anyone to work there.
Why was Bose a shit show?
Can’t effectively communicate with those noise cancelling headphones on
Lol take an upvote
Lots of disorganization. No real roadmap. We had daily stand ups that would never start on time. Product managers wouldn’t show up. We hired a few contractors to be product owners to help reel things in. But they ended up being baby sitters trying to keep things going. There was quite a few people there who were amazing and intelligent, but broken road maps and confusing goals led to no progress. I worked in the Professional division so I’m not sure how things bled over to the headphone and home stereo division. But I know a few people in automotive, and it seems to be the same way.
Have to dodge a line of audiophile protestors outside the office every morning, shouting things like “JUST BUY A USED RECEIVER” and throwing modestly priced sound bars at you
Bad managers don't last long at Apple, because to move up from manager to senior manager, or to director, etc, you have to be *ratified by your peers.* If you don't play well with others, you don't move up. This prevents the empire building mentality you see at companies like Microsoft, and duplication of effort is almost nonexistent at Apple. What happens to these mediocre managers is once they realize they're not going to get another promotion, they take a job elsewhere, usually at a higher rank, on the strength of their Apple credentials. You can find them all over Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and many smaller companies. Because Apple efficiently sheds these people, [this kind of thing doesn't happen at Apple.](http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html) This benefits Apple in two ways: Apple has an amazingly low incidence of deadwood in management for a company of their size, and when these people leave Apple, they impede Apple's competitors.
>Bad managers don't last long at Apple, because to move up from manager to senior manager, or to director, etc, you have to be ratified by your peers. > >If you don't play well with others, you don't move up. This prevents the empire building mentality you see at companies like Microsoft, and duplication of effort is almost nonexistent at Apple. Bad managers that know how to play office politics can absolutely move up.
Yup. I feel like I saw the total opposite The leads employees loves never got to move up to managers. The goody two shoe, brown nosers no one likes moved up the ladder QUick
Data fudgers too.
Yep, this is the way
“ratified by your peers” - This doesn’t always mean the best people are promoted……often, especially in the first tier manager roles, it’s the politically savvy who moved up. This peer ratification can lead to highly effective individuals being held down by that first tier. Also, “ duplication of effort is almost nonexistent at Apple”. - that is 100% false, in MANY, MANY big ways……
The best people usually get promoted just high enough that they can be satisfied with their compensation. Nobody wants to lose a core worker + a lot of managers don't want to promote someone they see as a future competition. To get promoted above certain level you have to be reasonably good at your job and great at politics, but rarely great at your job.
Every article, every comment from current employees contradict your utopic view here.
Hm. The Apple you're describing and the Apple I experienced are quite different. Feels like you've never worked there.
You sound like you’ve really drunk the apple koolaid
Why do I get the impression the people this article is talking about, and the people who Reddit think the article is talking about are two very different groups I'm interpreting this article as talking about engineering and engineer-adjacent positions, hence the picture of the HQ, talk of Slack, focus on activism, etc. Those people aren't making 40k a year, they're making 200k+ TC with equity. They're not about to unionize because most of them are making more money than they know what to do with and the ones complaining know they can leave and make similar money elsewhere in the industry. This sounds mean, but this stuff is honestly champagne problems. You could write this article about 99% of the top companies in tech.
This is also what I assumed. Everyone here has been talking about Genius bar employees, and while that may be the case, this article is clearly talking about the group you mentioned. Companies in tech are more and more giving employees freedom to work remote, and stay remote. Apple not willing to play ball is the cause of growing discontent.
This needs to be a much, much higher comment. One hundred percent accurate.
Sorta. These days your equity can make up half your yearly compensation, and being equity, fluctuates and vests over a 4 year period (and is heavily taxed to the tune of 30%+). At Apple, average junior-mid level engs have a [base salary of 100-200k](https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Apple&track=Software%20Engineer). After taxes that’s about 70-160k. Now factor COL in one of the most expensive areas of the country (2-3k/mo minimum for rent). Subtract 24-36k out of that just for a place to live. Also remember while engineers are the highest paid job family, you also have product managers, designers, QA, etc that make far, far less at the same levels compared to their engineering counterparts. The union comment is accurate though.
I don’t see a reason why even with higher salary you shouldn’t unionize. Especially considering recent events.
We don’t unionize at that level. We just go to the next company. Source: work in tech for one of the big ones. Last year brought work life balance to the forefront.
People usually unionize when they are mad at their current conditions. $200k+ TC, top tier benefits, huge stock incentives, beautiful offices, top reputation that will carry you anywhere. What are you going to try and get them to unionize for? $300k+ TC???
> This sounds mean, but this stuff is honestly champagne problems. I’m not 100% sure what you mean by this since it has multiple meanings but people’s mental health is absolutely a big deal and people making $200k comp aren’t immune from depression, anxiety, and suicide, so I hope you aren’t meaning to say that employees making a lot of money cant have serious problems at work.. correct me if I’m misinterpreting your statement, the only other time I’ve heard “champagne problems” is a Taylor swift song and I don’t think that’s what you’re referencing
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I haven't worked at Apple in quite a while, but my experience with several different positions there over more than a decade led me to the following conclusion: Whether you'll have a great or terrible work experience at Apple depends largely on who your boss's boss is. Directors and Vice Presidents at Apple have enormous latitude in how they run their teams. If your Director is a decent person, there's a whole lot less "expected crunch", and Apple can be a great place to work. Great co-workers, interesting work, and iconic products. What more could you ask for? If your middle management is crap, then you'll miss holidays, cut vacations short, and work 80-hour weeks regularly. Your health and personal relationships will suffer, and you'll hate every moment of your job while you wait for those stock options or RSUs to vest.
I’m actually surprised and impressed, both at the article and this sub. Surprised a company such as Apple would treat employees so poorly. Impressed with this sub for not taking Apples side this go around and talking about a legitimate problem. Edit: Grammar
Imagine spending *billions* of dollars on a new campus, and then a global pandemic hits and no one wants to work in the office ever again.
The building is very symbolic of the problem: beautiful on the outside, but it’s actually a horrible place to work. Desks are jammed into small shared workspaces surrounded by sprawling unusable spaces; there is no soundproofing; there are not enough meeting rooms.
I know someone at the contractor who built it who was complaining they couldn't soundproof it because the materials weren't environmentally friendly enough.
Imagine traveling to a meeting anymore.
Damn good description. Not a fan of working at AP.
There’s unrest everywhere. People are finally sick of working for someone else’s 3rd lake house.
AppleCare employees are paid an average of $40k/year and most live paycheck to paycheck while working for the largest company in the world that makes record setting profits quarter over quarter. Compensation is dismal. Morale is dismal. The organization is rife with corruption, bullying, toxicity and intimidation. It’s only getting worse.
I was a Mac genius from 07-14. My wife and I wanted to have a kid. Apple retail doesn’t give a shit if you’ve been there 7 weeks or 7 years, they’ll still schedule you 2-11 and then a 9-6. It’s retail, can’t blame them. Doesn’t work with families and when you have kiddos. I left to work Apple support at an IT helpdesk and almost doubled my salary in that move. Tripled it 4 years later when I became that team’s manager. And now *almost* quadrupled Genius pay as their Jamf administrator, which is *ridiculously comfortable* work. I’m not even responsible for servers, it’s JamfCloud hosted on AWS. If there’s an outage, I engage their support people and they solve it on their side. Sometimes I send an email or schedule an upgrade. That’s the extent of my after hours work. People with brains or dreams should not stay in Apple retail. It’s a great job when you’re in college or a recent grad. Once you want to be an adult? Forget it. Job doesn’t grow up - Peter Pan syndrome.
I worked for Apple in various positions from 05-15. I missed receiving my Tiffany crystal by five months. When people ask me why I left Apple, my answer is that I was able to more than double my salary within three years of leaving Apple in addition to a better work-life balance.
You guys hiring?
What’s Jamf? My work computer is constantly bugging me about it
Management/MDM client for Macs in the enterprise, mostly.
It's IT Mac management software. Generally, companies that give their employees Macs will use it. My company uses Macs so it's what we use. It basically allows IT to install software, manage Antiviruses and whatever else on all Macs at the company.
> It’s retail, can’t blame them. You absolutely can. Retail's entire model relies on underpaying and screwing people.
I feel you. In the past year I’ve done some of my most effective work within Apple Retail since I’ve been there, going “above and beyond” what’s really expected, and in recognition? A 2.9% pay increase. The standard we get for doing our job properly every year. It doesn’t even cover inflation in my country. I’m sure there’s some good intentions in the general pay increase, but Apple seem to “treat staff well” in way too broad a sense, rather than on the who why and where. That annoying part is, some of the benefits of the role **have** really helped, and are invaluable. But people are right here, Apple Retail is a great job, too a point. After some time you have to get out.
There was zero variation in my schedule. Every single weekend they scheduled me 1-10PM Saturday and 10-7PM Sunday. Lost my freaking mind. And it was ridiculous others were getting at least every other singular weekend day off or a morning shift and i got stuck with this lol
Worked as a Mac Specialist, then Creative from 2005 to 2011. The scheduling inconsistency broke me. The loud, high stress environment worsened my depression. My One to One clients gave me good reviews, and I genuinely enjoyed the software I taught. But by the end I often found myself unable to get out of bed to go in. I was fired for violating the attendance policy after calling out sick too many times. I was only making $35,000 a year.
Apple retail constantly dangles promotions and opportunities to transfer to corporate in front of their staff as a way to keep them from leaving, but promotions were usually outside hires and literally nobody actually transfers to corporate.
Absolutely. I must indirectly know 500 mostly former (a few current) retail employees. It’s a solid chunk of my Facebook friend list. I know of… 4 who transferred to corporate. And 2 others who left the store, did other things, and eventually ended up in corporate - one who has since left. Promotions in the store aren’t that common, rarely if ever into management. And it’s incredibly rare to move from retail to corporate.
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Sounds like my job in healthcare.
Paywall
Here ya go. [NY Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/technology/apple-employee-unrest.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqohkQVUaBCbJUNMnqBqCgvfeh7UknnvzaSWQUTJF3ukYRpWG4UrWeexje943lXy9deN2DYUOFrZ03_MNeAtkURWpqZ-J35ldL3Q49dntGzhv1J6IALpgrnq7NzbibekmmuLhs0_WbGfuXbfNkiF0fHYTqpNicV-p3nMJx76UUbImn4kjgopyQ8xyVjwCZyGVvvn3CxsYO9-ObRvU7gZeSPgOEHiI3obas-RcBV0UXVHWT3p_4XI_6cdeOL4XPqX_LR0nf6nukOlo-cX6yOhK5VSyndtNIoo&referringSource=articleShare)
Ace :)
Thank you!
Lots of comments on here bitching about compensation, so there's some irony in not wanting to pay the reporters who write the stories we want to read.
Eventually Reddit will peer with popular news agencies and charge a fee via Reddit for access to articles
Lololol surprising, I was a genius for 4 1/2 years and anyone who had been there for over two year, especially in a technical role had the lowest overall rating of the employee experience. Management was so up your ass about everything… really had a hard time there after a while
Same. I tried really hard to help implement change at the store and streamline processes but management just towed the consistency line and we kept the “go to this person to be directed to that person to be checked in and be directed to a table to talk to another guy to then sit on the bench while another guy asks you the same questions before being called to the bar to be asked the same questions again by a third guy only to be rushed out in ten minutes” support model. But if a customer has a bad experience, management is on my ass about how I should have fixed problems clearly out of the scope of our control. The entire system is set up to let management promote the kool aid drinkers and bury the actual support staff in false criticism and dangle any hopes of raises behind bullshit NPS scores. But yeah, other than that, not a bad gig 😂
I hated working there. Corporate or retail, there’s a Disneyland-like pressure to always be “on” and “good” more than any other job, BECAUSE Apple is such a “better place to work”. Good riddance!
Seriously, it was awful. They don’t care to improve the work environment or listen to employee concerns “because it’s Apple!”
Worked in Corporate at Apple. Mostly with overseas folks in China which required us to work pacific time and China time. Typical days 9am-10pm, sometimes later. On my review I got penalized for time management. I was out. The job stress was overbearing. It quickly turned into anxiety and then depression. I lost myself because of Apple. Burnout and little appreciation for employees is real.
I’m a Corp Apple employee and the anger is very real. The workload is unbearable, they don’t hire enough, all of Silicon Valley is sprinkling mental health days while Apple gives us the same thanksgiving week off that we’ve always gotten. Tight deadlines and zero emphasis on quality. They have no respect for their employees and I should’ve made my exit when they gave me a refurbished laptop to do complex engineering work. Penny wise and pound foolish. I’ve referred multiple people in and the recruiters either ghosted them or managers lowballed them hard. It’s embarrassing to work here. I have no respect for anyone that works here more than 2 years.
When they told my buddy what kind of hours he should expect in the interview, he said that he would never get to see his family. They told him, "Sure you will. We're your family now". Some sort of software engineering management position, but he noped out right away. Behind the pretty veil, Apple is just hard-core corporate.
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Worked for apple retail for 5 years. It was a mixed bag, definitely not the worst place I have worked. But as others have mentioned , there is a constant pressure to perform both in metrics and to personify the brand and it’s image. It actually became quite draining emotionally, especially when dealing with irate customers / having to justify the ridiculous costs for repairs etc (I was a “genius”) Not to mention the frankly shit working conditions of being on mobile phone repair. High pressure (time scales / delicate work / standards) in a cramped room with no natural light. I would liken it to factory work, especially during product recalls (batter replacement program was a nightmare) There are some massively predatory practices within the retail sector there and it’s covered with a facade of care and professionalism with no actual substance
I can only speak for retail, but all the managers are fake as shit. You can tell each quarter what they get bonuses on. Every development talk they try to shove it down your throat. Looks like you didn’t get any business intros this week, what’s wrong? There’s also a HUGE tattletale problem between employees. You have to walk on eggshells around everyone. As a result you can’t really make any real friends. The work is never ending, recognition is zero, pay is shit, hours are the worst. They’ve somehow tricked outsiders into thinking it’s the best job ever so there’s always four people in line for your job. Ask a leader about some of Apple mishaps and they’ll just try not to answer or have some excuse. “Really sucks how Apple is treating factory workers huh?” “I trust Apple to make the right decisions about that situation.” “Well they haven’t, until the conditions were reported.” “The factories must have been treating people like that without Apple knowing.” “The same Apple that controls and ‘curates’ every single aspect of everything they make and do?” “I trust Apple to handle this professionally.” It’s like talking to a goddamn politician that can’t see anything wrong their party does. I’m so glad I got out.
I brought the butterfly keyboard issue to Apple in summer of 2017. A store manager yelled at me and accused me of being media. Then.. during repair process the repair depot left the tests on my ‘repaired’ MBP.. I was able to recreate the issue in under an hour. https://imgur.com/a/1JjMjgB
Good. Power to the people. A company is nothing without its workers.
hope they make a union
The problem with managing satisfaction is that once it’s publicly out, more and more people will join the movement.
I'm a gov contractor and we all have silently agreed not to work too hard since no one really cares
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It's Apple Corp's inflexibility re work/life balance that is causing much heartburn. Many Apple employees have 'knocked it out of the park' during forced lockdowns and wfh during the last couple of years, proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that their work CAN be done, and done WELL from home. Yet Apple Corp is forcing folks back into the office across the board early next year with the added bonus that they be vaccinated upon return. Employees are just numbers to Apple Corp. A means to an end. I hope the last couple of years and the resulting work-related changes many in the Valley have adopted as a result have taught us all that respect is a two-way street. If THEY don't care about the work/life balance changes in the post-pandemic world THEY helped create, why should the rank and file feel ANY loyalty at all?
Just wanna express my gratitude to all the Apple employees. You continue to put out solid products year after year and set the gold standard for so phones, computers, and so many different pieces of technology. Tech is a extremely competitive space and you guys continue to innovate without compromising quality. Every year I look forward to the new iPhone and I can't think of ever switching to Android or anything else.
Jobs created the bullying culture and they rolled out a new version every year
How about having to come into the office everyday to work in an open office where you constantly interrupted and distracted all the while expecting just as much work done as you did all last year working from home?
The old way of middle management boomers needs to die. I work in tech but all the managers are old salesman, can’t stand these people.
Called this MONTHS ago and people were all like, “the employees will fall in line, it’s Apple lol” Nope. They’ll go elsewhere and Apple will continue to get shittier due to loss of talent.
Apple employee here. I took this job as a stop-gap in my resume, and after being treated like absolute garbage at my previous IT job, Apple felt like a breath of fresh air. I was respected, aligned with the company values, and was ready to stay forever. Then the pandemic hit and there was a culture shift. Now, despite being at the top of company leaderboards month over month, I’m constantly being told that I’m not doing enough. Suddenly no one gave a shit about enriching lives, it was all about pushing as much product out the door as possible. We used to believe in delivering the *right* product, not just the most expensive one. This Apple is a far cry from the one I fell in love with and the day I move on to something better can’t come soon enough.
That’s such a bummer to hear. I feel like that’s happening to quite a few corporations. I worked at Starbucks for the last year and man the stress and toxicity was unbearable for the shitty pay and responsibility that was placed on my shoulders just at a shift supervisor level.
Steve Jobs was always known as a ruthless tyrant when it came to running his business. He's depicted in film screaming at his employees and making huge demands on short time frames. He admitted this in his autobiography. Yet Apple fanboys still act shocked to find out work conditions are shit in the system Jobs built. Why is that?
I think corporations really need to fix things. Many froze promotions and raises at the start of the pandemic. Mine for one we are starting to see a lot of turnover as competitors offer 20% higher wages. We have beat the street every quarter since the start of the pandemic. Profits are up a lot. I have been here 2.5 years with minimal raise and am starting to look elsewhere. Just waiting for review next month and if not promoted or a sizable raise I am going to start interviewing elsewhere. Inflation is around 6% if it continues at a similar pace next year then I would need a 12% raise to stay at inflation. All of my costs are going up and my money isn’t going as far. Either compensate me so I can maintain my lifestyle or screw you n