Apple Sr. Software Engineer reviews

4.3

87% would recommend to a friend

(444 total reviews)
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Tim Cook

97% approve of CEO

90% positive business outlook

Sr. Software Engineer employees have rated Apple with 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on 444 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Sr. Software Engineer professionals have an excellent working experience there. Apple is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Sr. Software Engineer professionals compared to other employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

444 reviews
2.0
Jun 19, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You get to work on really cool product (iPod and iPhone in my case) and it is everywhere in the states. The stock options/RSUs (while it does good). Benefits are good, 401k price match is pretty decent with a progressive scale over 5 years that ramps up from 50% to 100% matching.

Cons

You get treated like crap. "SWEATSHOP!!! YOU HAVE A FAMILY? YOU WON'T NOTICE IT" The schedule during the iPod release was working from 10am to 3am every single day of the week for 3 months (Wife was furious). You may think that they would compensate with a nice fat BONUS for doing SO much work, but think again. We received roughly 5% of our salary as a bonus for the year. If you count your salary per hour, it's not pretty. Expect to do a LOT of overtime with little compensation for it. "YEARLY RAISES = INFLATION" The yearly raises are such that the managers get 4% of the employee's salaries as a raise. They are then free to distribute the money however they feel like. So on average, people tend to get ~4% increase/year (this isn't necessarily bad, but it's also not necessarily good). "IT'S A ONE MAN SHOW" It's ALL about Steve. He dictates everything from the corporate vision down to the position of the pixels. Although it's a great thing to have him there. Don't expect that your ideas will really make any headway into the products. You're more of monkey than a thinker (and that's a good thing for Apple as an investor, but a really bad thing as an employee). "VACATION TIME? WE'LL THINK ABOUT IT" You really have to plan around Apple when you take vacation. Forget about taking anything longer than 2.5 weeks straight. They simply can't have you outside of Apple for that long even if you do have the time off. Every year, Apple has this plan where you can cash in 1 day of vacation if you take one day of vacation. ie: -2 days of vacations, you get paid for one day on your paycheck. A lot of people end up taking a day off (although still working on that day) only because they would otherwise have too many hours (it's just that hard to get vacation there). If the product is about to launch in a couple of months, don't even bother taking time off.

1.0
Jun 18, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It is still a big time, name brand company with a lot of international recognition. Apple is also continues to ride a huge amount of hype and (relatively speaking) recent business success. The stock options also made many of us multi-millionaires over a short period of time. A number of internal processes, the culture, and the people are also quite unique to Apple, and from a diversity of experience point of view, that's great exposure for one's career.

Cons

There are an unusually high number of individuals at Apple (both management and individual contributors, at various levels), who would clearly NOT be successful at any other company or period of time. But that's not the problem. The problem is that many of those individuals genuinely believe in their own talent, capabilities, and accomplishments and make ridiculous decisions based off these fundamental dillusions. Bozo cancer has also reached Stage III levels.

3.0
Jun 18, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

For projects that Apple upper management has its eyes on, quality is given high priority. Teams on those projects are also often very good, with smart and experienced people with whom it's fun to work and from whom one can learn at lot.

Cons

It's a big place, and there are sometimes inefficiencies due to the number of people involved with a project. There is a significant amount of politics involved with promotions and a significant amount of empire-building, with teams growing unnecessarily to bolster the team managements' prestige. Projects that are not visible to upper management suffer from quality problems typical of any organization, but everyone is very confident about the superiority of their work regardless of their actual performance and the actual quality of what they produce. Arrogance is rampant and encouraged by management and the corporate culture.

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