Company: Apple
Date: 2019-11-30
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former

Creative Pro - Greater Boston
Pros: -Excellent benefits like stock plans, tuition reimbursement, discounts inside and outside Apple, health coverage for everyone (including part time). Also free health screenings and flu shot sessions once a year.

-Somewhat flexible with school schedules. 

-You make supportive and smart friends at Apple that last, who may move on to better corporate roles or other tech companies. Also great to hang out with, if work friends are your thing.

-Your career is centered around growth and development, being the best at your role. Even if you’re not staying long-term, you grow and learn a lot.

-Managers who started as non-management genuinely care about you. Market Leaders are generally visible and charismatic. They visit each store in their market at least once a week, sometimes twice.

-Occasional (once every two years or so) town hall with Apple executives, usually on topics of people, retail, diversity and inclusion. If Tim Cook is in town, he makes an effort to visit the nearest store. When he was in Boston for a speech at MIT, he stopped at Apple Boylston Street and took several employees to a Red Sox game where he briefly spoke.
Cons: -Consistently seemingly too many, lofty, high stress targets every quarter that have to be met or even exceeded or else you won’t see any career progression at Apple. 

-Besides occasional flowery lip service from corporate and some retail managers, Today at Apple is not advocated for at all on any level - as a creative or creative pro Today at Apple are the sessions you facilitate. You will spend 85% of your time pitching Today at Apple to customers and/or selling accessories and services.

-Very little of your time is spent facilitating or preparing for sessions. And, because of this lack of advocacy, managers will always be questioning how you’re spending your time is common. They won’t trust you. It’s also common to be flexed from your duties to do *more important* things like sales. 

-You will frequently not have the proper equipment or working technology to facilitate seamless sessions. Due to the lack of advocacy, you will have Genius Bar and sales associates working with customers at your table or in the forum as you’re facilitating sessions. This will significantly negatively impact your ratings from customers.

-Your ratings and ultimately your compensation are directly influenced by the number of attendees you have in session, as well as their ratings of you. Anything but a 5/5 at Apple is considered bad. This rating system applies to all roles in Apple Retail.

-As of late (~5 years), Apple has been progressively hiring more and more big box managers from companies like Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and district managers from other random places like Gap, Starbucks, or Lord + Taylor. While they have volume experience necessary for Apple, they bring the same bad people habits and lack of creativity with them. These types of managers are colloquially referred to as the big box robots or “yes men”. Internally developed/promoted managers have always performed and led better, long-term.

-No long-term leave options for students like many other retail/service companies. Also, there’s absolutely no work/life balance. Tuition reimbursement criteria hard to achieve while working 32-45hrs/week.