Company: Apple
Date: 2014-11-08
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Don't Think Different. Don't Think At All.
Pros: In the two positions I've held at Apple, I've been able to work from home for both. Not commuting is nice, but many times, this may not feel like a "pro." Employee discount is better than I expected. Ample vacation days (12 for entry level first-time job) and pretty lenient with sick leave. It's nice to not really have a script that I'm required to read from, since basically AppleCare, as well as my previous Online Store Chat position, closely resembled stereotypical call-center jobs.
Cons: As a home-based employee, of course my interactions with co-workers and supervisors were expected to be drastically different than they would be in a real office. But there's never an effort to balance this out. I can go weeks without a word of casual conversation being said in the team chatroom. I feel almost embarrassed that I'm holding a bachelor's degree from a top university, but I'm surrounded by dull people who do nothing all day but play video games and sleep. You cycle through managers and teams, shift schedules, even entire job roles wlly-nilly, without any input on your part.

There is really no interest in the satisfaction of the customer. It's all about the metrics. You can have stellar reviews from customers, and documented peer feedback from other departments bragging about you, but if you can't average out a 15 minute phone call time to fix the endless list possible issues that can go wrong with a computer, then you're in the hot seat. Don't "fix" your behaviors in 3, 6, then 7 months and you're probably going to be canned. So it's either be curt, and frankly rude, to a lot of the people that buy products from you, or fall down the totem pole in the staff rank and get stuck working a late night shift the next time shift bids come around, which will make good performance tougher, your personal life lonelier, all while any recommendation for a change in the operating procedures is balked at by management.

One is expected to clock-in and immediately start taking calls. 60 seconds is expected between hanging up one call, finishing the case notes, and taking your next call. Any time over 5 minutes will have you speaking with a supervisor. I once had my pay revoked for taking 20 minutes to check email and get situated before logging into the call queue. And even if you're not completely hoarse and exhausted from a nonstop cycle of calls, you will be pressured, and by that i mean threatened with zero consideration for future upward movement, if you do not partake in at least 6 hours per week of overtime during the busy season, which is about 5 months out of the year.  I stopped caring when I realized I was spending my extra money from OT on prescription painkillers for my back from being chained to a desk every solitary second for 7.5 hours (that's a day minus 1 hour lunch and two 15 minute breaks). Also during this busy season, you will experience cancellation of team meetings, training seminars, or any other offline time that might have given you a moment of rest from the endless work or time to work on a side project that you could use to show your skills to other areas of the company.

Sum of the story: you are paid to do exactly one job and one job only and you're not allowed to do or think anything else besides that one job. It's a dead-end. I hear the salaried positions are pretty cool, but if you have to work like a dog at the entry level, I hate to think of how life-consuming a position with actual responsibility at this company must be.