Company: Apple
Date: 2013-11-19
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Operations
Pros: -	The smartest people with outstanding pedigrees.  Not just Stanford/MIT/etc grads but the top students from those top schools.  Young, energetic, and ambitious - it’s very exciting to be part of.
-	Work on great products that you see everyone using.  Know that you played a huge part in making that happen.
-	Empowered.  Immediately put into roles and positions where you have to make big decisions (multi-million dollar) that impact the company and end users.
-	Lean in places.  Very fast paced and not a lot of formal processes.  Ability to make decisions quick without having to go through tons of redtape.
-	Fantastic cafeteria at very reasonable prices.  Plus, free Apples.
-	Great on a resume and recruiters constantly contact you because you work at Apple.  When you leave you go to Amazon/Square/Nest/Google etc.
-	Good discounts on products for personal and friends/family.  Get stuff for yourself too. 
-	Okay compensation (salary, bonus, and stock).
-	International travel is on business class and stay at 5-star hotels (Grand Hyatt, JW Marriot etc. with good daily food budgets).  Get to keep those airline/hotel points and travel for free on vacations.
-	On-site Concierge, ergonomics experts, laundry service, free dinner.
-	“Beer Bash” every couple weeks.  Free beer/appetizers in the quad while a top band plays live.
-	Wear whatever you want to.  Some people come dressed as Ninjas or wizards.  
-	Good shuttle service to many locations in the SF Bay with free Wifi.
Cons: -	Extremely high burnout rate.  Some products have teams where the overwhelming majority of people (>60%) have been at the company less than 3 years (high turnover).  Hearing that someone has been at Apple for 5 years is rare and garners respect/admiration.
-	Zero work-life balance.  Expect to work until late every night and then be “on-call” to answer emails/calls at any hour.  If in Operations, expect to work both California and Asia working hours in the same day (9am-1am).
-	Travel a lot to be on-site.  Essential but draining.  When you fly overseas, it’s expected that you land in the morning so you can work the second you get there.  When you fly home, it’s expected that you take a flight to land in SFO at 8am so you can be at work that day.  Also, common for last minute travel.  Had a couple instances of getting a call on Saturday and was on a flight to Asia on Sunday.  Stay there until job is done.  
-	90 days a calendar year is the limit to be in a certain Asian country for business purposes.  “Strongly recommended” that employees apply for a work-permit/visa so that you can stay there longer.  
-	Extremely fast paced.  Very common to get an email/text on a Sunday afternoon and it’s expected that you have a presentation done and sent by dinner time (Sunday night Pacific time is Monday morning in Asia).
-	Working with Asia means getting calls at all hours. 
-	Lots of politics between teams/orgs.  Some teams (Industrial Design and Product Design especially) are higher in the totem pole and treat the other teams with annoyance (at best) to belittlement (“Just get it f***ing done, Engineering PMs!  I don’t care about supplier capabilities.”).