Company: Apple
Date: 2018-07-10
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

The Dangling Carrot
Pros: - Lot's of amazing talented people you get to work with. 
- Every once and awhile you help a customer with a heart warming story and it makes your day
- Higher than average pay for retail but at a cost (see cons)
Cons: The Dangling Carrot
- The work to pay balance isn't right. You're expected to help multiple customers at once, talk about ALL Apple Services and Store Programs with every customer, help them quicker  and quicker and constantly be in a high stress environment that makes the higher than average pay mean next to nothing when you realize you're doing the work of 2 to 3 employees
- Apple is one of the largest companies in the world and staffs it's stores like it may be going out of business any day now. Customers regularly wait 20-30+ minutes just to get the opportunity to talk to someone to buy something. This can even happen if the person knows exactly what they want, has no questions, and is ready to pay. That stress is directly put on you as leadership hides behind an iPad or in an office but tells you to work faster from afar. 
- Apple's goal is to positively impact humanity but they seem to forget their own employees are part of that humanity. Your career ambitions are ignored, favoritism is rampant, they put more and more pressure on their people while giving them less and less resources to deal with it.
- Their promotion practice is hidden and vague so that they can always make up excuses about why you aren't ready to get promoted. There are no clear metrics or avenues for job growth just management preference and their favorites are forced to the front of the queue while much more capable and deserving team members are passed over. When you're told you're not able to interview for a new position or promotion they make up reasons like "what books are your currently reading about self development?" or other vague open ended questions that have no right answer because whatever you say they will tell you its not good enough.
-It is a regular practice that they will handpick people for promotions, interview them, and give them the job before they even let the team know the job is available. The day the job is posted is the same day they tell the staff someone already got the position. It's ok that they choose who they think is ready for promotion but the hidden nature of the process makes it look like under the table deals and favoritism is the only way to get ahead.
- Apple has the clout to hire managers etc from outside of the company in a job role far below their last job. This means department store general managers and district managers are regularly hired as entry level managers at Apple (2 to 3 steps below their past position at their prior job). This makes an impossible void for anyone internally to get promoted to management. You're essentially shown that you need to be able to run 8-12 stores on your own before you can be moved up to be a basic manager at Apple. They give no opportunity for people to exhibit these skills internally so there will always be a very large divide between what they expect and what they allow internal candidates to show the competency for. This means that you're far more likely to move up at Apple by leaving the company, getting promoted elsewhere, and then coming back several years later to take a step down in role when you return.
- Managers do very little to support the sales floor and technicians throughout the day. They blindly stand around and wait for issues to escalate before they step in.... in the meantime they are online buying sneakers, sitting in a closed door office drinking coffee, or having meetings that have no purpose while the rest of the staff handles the pressure of the day.