Apple reviews

4.1

79% would recommend to a friend

(43,087 total reviews)
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Tim Cook

86% approve of CEO

73% positive business outlook

Apple has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 43,087 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Apple employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

43K reviews
1.0
Apr 29, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You enjoy being treated as less than human. You're desperate and can't find anything else.

Cons

Apple has no conception of employees as human beings. This is made evident through its incentive bonus plan. You can earn a max of about $500 per month based on customer feedback. Exact amount depends on customer ratings and number of reviews received. However, management makes it clear through periodic reminders that if you miss any time at work for any reason, you are displaying a poor work ethic and will lose your earned bonus. A sick day costs you the entire bonus for the month, even if it's the last day of the month and you were about to qualify for the maximum bonus. Lateness to work for any reason, even a legitimate one like a car accident costs you a significant portion of the bonus. I have been with mothers as they sobbed in the break room, because they have to leave work in the middle of the day to take care of a sick child, knowing that they will lose their bonus money and will struggle to be able to pay the child's doctor. Apple management actually states in writing that "it is always your choice if you don't come to work and you are showing a poor work ethic if you don't". Legitimate sickness, legitimate child care issues, any legitimate reason for absence is not accepted. Because of the significant drop in earnings, people usually don't stay out when they're sick; colds and flu are rampant in this workplace. Furthermore, the requests for feedback about your work that Apple e-mails to customers do not mention your name, or the topic that was discussed during the telephone call. Quite often the customer reviews someone other than you, e.g. a previous agent they were dissatisfied with, or a Mac Genius at the Apple Store you referred the caller to. So even if you did a great job, you get a bad review on your record. This reduces the percentage of good feedback for the month and drops your bonus. Apple does not remove these mistakes from your record. Management says "you get some good ones and some bad ones." In other words, tough s***. I have lost hundreds and hundreds of dollars because of this unconscionable attitude. Who has the poor ethic in this picture?

2.0
Feb 2, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Having the name on your resume is nice as most other employers will be impressed. The amazing Marketing machine that Apple is brings a lot of status wearing the badge. You can have pride in the products that Apple sells as they are truly the best products in its market.

Cons

The pay at Apple is quite a bit below industry standards. Apple leverages the name in every possible aspect including employee productivity. Management puts the constant "fear" that there are others that would love to have your job and that you are never trying hard enough or doing enough.

2.0
Jun 17, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

They make some really cool toys. The campus is great. There are some really smart people to work and play with at Apple.

Cons

Apple corporate memory is very spotty at best strewn across emails and bug reports and the occassional standalone blog. It is very difficult to come up to speed. Information is also highly restricted by project rather than cross-functional which makes work difficult and design from foresight very difficult. Every part of the entire software stack is modified at once throughout a new OS product / version cycle including dev tools. QA is much, much too sparse and Apple depends on all devs eating the dog food while trying to meet their own very aggressive schedules. In the groups I experienced their is very little real design except in the heads of individual engineers. Their software stack sucks. Objective C is archaic and long of tooth as a dev environment. Every developer regardless of seniority and experience is expected to sling fixed bugs (radars) at a certain rate to be seen as worth keeping around. Everyone has to prove they are a good Apple drone before they can do anything creative. And/or they have to work nights and weekends (if they don't already have to to even keep up) to do something that gets them beyond drone mode and have some measure of control over their time and destiny. The people that make it seem to all work 60 hours or more a week.

Viewing 355 - 357 of 43,087 Reviews

Glassdoor has 52,689 Apple reviews submitted anonymously by Apple employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Apple is right for you.