Company: Apple
Date: 2020-07-06
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Truly special and unequaled company that taught me an immense amount and changed my life
Pros: • Incredible culture and drive to be and do the best at everything. Steve's simple yet powerful vision "to make the greatest products in the world" really did deliver.
• Special place to be and work alongside some really great and talented people. I was there for 8yrs and to this day have life long friends and trusted colleagues.
• IF you performed and achieved results, you could be compensated handsomely. This was obviously even more dramatic the earlier you joined (I joined around the time of the 1st iPhone). 
* Honestly, I miss so much about Apple despite it being my choice to leave. There was so much greatness there but I had to expand my horizons and in doing so have passed on immeasurable amounts of experience I gained while at Apple.
Cons: • Like any organization, there were some true jerks. They were somewhat few and far between but upper management did not see this clearly and HR was not good about dealing with them EVEN when there were multiple points of feedback. I had a Director that was such a jerk that it caused me physical health issues not to mention the emotional and stress toll. Luckily I was young and could take this, but MANY people quit or tapped out, I watched it happen somewhat frequently. That said, these horrible experiences were balanced out by some incredible leaders who to this day set the bar for me. 
• Tons of travel can really wear on you. If you get good at it, you can manage it, but nothing is like being home consistently. The good news is the travel is somewhat by choice -- once you prove yourself you can move around internally to minimize this -- and it's comfortable (good airline seats, good hotels, good food, good people).
• Career growth is challenging since there are so many motivated, driven, capable people. Even when you believe -- and others tell you -- that you are a stand-out performer and leader, there's always jockeying for roles and it can be exhausting and demotivating.