Company: Apple
Date: 2013-03-06
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

High quality of work, very fast paced
Pros: - In general, almost everyone I've worked with is much smarter than an average employee at some other company. 
- Great beer bashes with awesome free food
- Caffe macs, although not free, serves amazing gourmet quality good. The only problem is, I've gained a lot of weight! 
- Tons of work around...wide exposure to lots of IT systems. I've learned SO much in the past couple of years here and I continue to learn something new everyday. 
- People love to innovate and find creative solutions to everyday problems, however small. 
- Nothing but high quality of work is expected
- Small teams. So you have a bigger chance to get noticed for your work. The only problem is, everybody is a rock star.
- Good opportunities to take job related training - my manager always encourages me to take as many related courses as I want. The difficult part is taking the time out to do this.
- Fair performance review process + cash bonus + RSUs.
Cons: - People who've done their time at Apple (read: Older employees) seem more laid back compared to the more recent hires/younger blood. This causes bottlenecks in projects which are extremely fast moving and need juggling of multiple priorities at the same time
- NO WORK LIFE BALANCE. I regularly work 50-60 hours per week. The sad thing is, the more you work, the more people expect from you and the more you work. If you treat it just like a job, you might stick around, but you'll be passed on when the good projects come in. You need to decide what type of career you want - you can't do 40 hours AND shine at work at the same time. 
- High burnout rate. I find myself short of patience many times just because there's always too much to do. 
- Base salary is not that good, but more than compensated for in the form of cash bonus, RSUs, 401k