Company: Apple
Date: 2014-05-06
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

little room to advance but lots of room to learn
Pros: The best personality match for a career in Apple Retail is the humble techno-monk whose only ambition is to serve people and fellow workers. The ongoing training and integration professional improvement means that you can fill your brain, actually increase your skills and you will truly, madly, deeply learn your job.   Most of the financial benefit comes from the halo effect when you leave.  Before Obamacare, the benefits were amazing.  Everyone is as smart as you, as nice as you, as humble as you and as talented.  That's good for collaboration and can be bad if you are used to being a star, a keener, the key team member.  However, if you have glacial patience and are financial sustainable at the level of your offer (as well as amazingly humble, able and talented), you can ascend.
Cons: You have to be able to afford to work for years at whatever wage or salary they first bequeath and, if you are a manager-type, it will be a non-negotiable fraction of what you used to make and at least one demotion.  If you do get one of the rare promotions, it will be because you have become (frustratingly) completely competent at the new job first and then waited for an eon for no apparent reason for the actual job title and tiny raise.  If you have any sense of being a star or being entitled to advancement as a result of hard work, run Forest run.  You will get discouraged and accept an outside offer before you get a promotion.