Company: Apple
Date: 2017-02-11
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Genius
Pros: The biggest pro about this job are the people you work with. I have been blessed with great work environments in my life. Apple retail has amazing and diverse people. If it were just up to hanging with my coworkers, doing great work and having fun I'd be running to work to be there every day. 

Apple will provide some great tools that can be used in your personal life and later professional life. If you follow how they teach it their perspectives on "Fearless feedback and assuming positive intent" can be incredibly useful. 

If you are young and can get in it's a great place to start, learn some skills move up a little, if you can, and then use it as a resume stuffer.
Cons: This is Apple Retail - its not really Apple. They would like you to believe that the company is one big family but the retail side is kind of a step child. The vacation structure is different as are benefits. There is NO PROFIT SHARING. and also no commission. So even if you individually do 1million in sales, you still get just your salary. 

They do not value experience or tenure. They appreciate it, like pat on the back 'great job' appreciate. But do not value it. There is no significant compensation other than additional vacation time for high levels of experience. That being the case it is good to get out sooner rather than later. They do not cultivate and give incentives for people to stay. The longer you stay, with no upward movement, the more demoralized you will get.  

Tenure and Experience and Hard work DO NOT equal promotion. Apple managers have a secret recipe on who they favor or do not. If you do not fit into a management team's vision, YOU WILL NOT PROGRESS. PERIOD. It is possible to move up and sometimes dramatically if you do fit what they want. I have seen both very worthy and very unworthy (based on their effectiveness after promotion) people promoted. 

Management is often hired from outside the company which causes a severe cultural mismatch and tremendous frustration. Potential leaders are not developed and people from outside with managers titles who might not click with Apple values are brought in on a regular basis. 

Apple essentially asks you to develop yourself. That goes for managers on down. That is an upside for people who use the Apple language and style and live it, sometimes like an automaton. However if you do not speak their development language and feed it back to them, even if you have vast leadership potential they have no way to cultivate you. I've seen people with incredible potential bypassed, grow demoralized and leave because the company cannot find ways to develop people internally, They generally overburden managers and employees so any possible time you have for development is taken away or you have to essentially not do your job and overburden others to make time to do the development things they ask. 

The company improves their systems which is helpful but essentially is only trying to make everyone (on the technical support side) take more and more people. Work in the technical support side is a thankless job often and more than it was. You are asked to help more and more people while somehow connecting personally and not making it "transactional". And often the customers are great but they can also be awful. Not know which you'll get EVERY 10-15 minutes!! Is emotionally draining day after day. And with managers who've never done the job they don't understand the emotional toll the job takes. 

I appreciated my time at Apple but hit a number of walls of demoralization. As did most of the amazing people around me, managers included. I managed to reinvigorate myself but with every leadership change you are essentially at square one again having to re-build your credibility. I probably should have gotten out sooner but Apple Retail also has a way of sucking you in for longer than you expect... it can get comfortable because of the amazing co-workers.