Company: Apple
Date: 2016-08-30
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Lots of Pros, and a few big Cons
Pros: Best benefits I've ever had of any job.  And perks out the wazoo.  Work culture is very liberal and laid back.  Pay is very competitive for the industry.
Cons: With so many things right with this company, it's extremely disheartening that there are also so many things wrongs.

1) Little opportunity for upward movement - Apple REALLY likes to encourage its workers with promises of career advancement.  Unfortunately, and not until recently, any and all movement I've encountered in the last year and a half has been lateral.  The reason for this is due to Apple's outsourcing of advisors to 3rd party call centers or "vendors".  For this reason, Apple is no longer opening up additional management positions, which has lowered the ceiling pretty dramatically.  This is a huge disappointment for those of us who have at the "Management" carrot dangled on a stick in front of us for 2+ years.

2) Metrics-based performance measurements - One of the metrics by which advisors are measured is 'Issue Resolution."  After troubleshooting with Applecare, a customer gets a survey asking if their issue was resolved.  If they answer 'yes,' this is good.  If they answer 'no,' then the advisor is penalized.  The problem I have with this, as a measured metric, stems from the fact that there is no expectation that all issues will be resolved by the end of the first call, before the survey is sent out.  

So even on issues where the resolution is not 100% in control by the advisor, advisors are still graded on it.  This means that if a hardware repair is needed, the call isn't resolved on the phone, and yet the advisor still gets a survey where they are held accountable for the resolution.  If the customer has to stop troubleshooting and resume at a later time due to time constraints or a prior obligation, they'll get the survey, and may answer 'no' to the issue resolution question, and the advisor will be punished.  Some tasks take a long time to complete over the phone, and customers are asked to call back after a specific step is completed.  Once again, issue is not yet resolved, and yet the customer receives the survey asking this question.  

I am of the opinion that if there is so much as an INKLING of a possibility that the issue not being fully resolved before the first call, due to factors outside of the advisors' control, then the advisor simply should not be graded on it.  It makes as much sense as penalizing a baseball team for missing a game due to inclement weather.  

Too frequently do circumstances outside of the advisors control govern an issue's resolution, and yet advisors are held accountable to these factors.  This is wrong.  This is unethical.  And honestly, I feel that this runs counter to the culture Apple boasts.  Any grievances aired to upper management about this are met with suggestions of mental gymnastics to try and essentially convince the customer to answer 'yes' to it, even if the issue is not resolved.  No effort has been made to really address this as a valid issue, and I do not anticipate that this will change in the future.  This is a fundamental flaw, and it's the only major, significant gripe I have about Apple policies and procedures, as a big company.  

How this punishment affects the advisor is addressed in my next item:

3) Schedule picks -  Advisors get a new schedule every 90 days.  This is done through a process by which an advisor 'bids' on their preferred schedule, from a list of available schedules.  The list of schedule picks available to the advisor is governed by their aforementioned metrics (including the dreaded Issue Resolution metric).  Those with the poorest metrics (whether in their control or not) are often left to pick the 'scrap' (minus the 's') schedules from the bottom of the barrel;  schedules that have the advisor working the entire weekend, working until nearly midnight every night, working on holidays, etc.  Given the fact that the metrics on which we are measured that determine our 'place in line' for a schedule pick are not entirely within our ability to control, this inevitably screws with the home lives of a lot of advisors.  I've heard of parents being unable to take or pick their children up from daycare because of this, people unable to attend church functions, celebrate holidays with their families, etc.  And on some occasions, even glitches on the back end have stuck advisors with terrible schedules, without so much as a word from upper management on addressing it.  And the ways in which the different senior area managers address these issues is extremely inconsistent, and would benefit from some calibration.  

Apple is a large enough company, at this point, with a large-enough employee base that it could very easily assign workable, manageable schedules to every person in every timezone in such a way that it does not negatively affect their home lives, and still ensure that all customers are taken care of in a timely fashion.  It's 100% plausible.  And doing so would further promote the progressive culture that Apple loves to boast.  But alas, they will do nothing of the sort.

4) The customers - As is the case with any customer service job, the most stressful part, day-to-day, is the customers.  Angry customers who won't think rationally.  Customers who simply want someone to get in trouble.  Customers who blame Apple for their inability to function in a world full of modern technology.  Customers who refuse to acknowledge user-error.  And they take it out on you.  Working this job has shown me the worst of the worst in people, and I know it's affected me in a very negative way (so much that I sought therapy from depression/emotional exhaustion because of it).  This isn't Apple's fault, but people should still know what they're getting into.

5) You will work on major holidays.  At least you will be scheduled, and expected to be in your seat ready to work, before they say "Ok, you can leave," after the first few hours on the clock.  Every single major holiday, advisors are required to work, and are often dismissed early due to low call volume.  Of course I love being dismissed early on holidays.  What I don't love is the inability to make plans with family for holidays due to the requirement of working, despite knowing I'll be dismissed early.  Just let us off.  Apple customers can go a day without someone to yell at when they don't know how to use their device.  They'll live.

6) The resources given to advisors to utilize while troubleshooting are often insufficient, often nonfunctional and broken, and the fat is constantly being trimmed from them to make the advisors' jobs that much more difficult.  Despite this, we are still held to the almighty metrics.

For some, these complaints may be relatively minor, but for me, after working here for 4 years, I'm left disenfranchised, and often uninterested, and certainly no longer passionate, about the work I'm putting in.  I no longer look forward to working each day.  At that same time, I feel trapped, because I know I won't find another job with benefits and compensation nearly as competitive as Apple's.  I guess that's corporate work life for you.  The level of effort I put into my work has lowered drastically, and with the punishments in place and the lack of incentives for hard work, I don't anticipate a shift toward the positive in the foreseeable future.  The benefits and perks are phenomenal, but at a primal level, the things that affect you emotional, day in and day out, are what impact you the most, and Apple has lots of 'areas of opportunity' to improve upon.