Apple reviews

Where do I start? 'All that glitters is not gold'; 'The grass isn't always greener on the other side'. These are a few sayings that come to mind when people say they want to work for Apple. If you work in Applecare, you are a call center worker. No matter how they dress it up to you. Chat, Email or Phones. It's a call center, so comes with it the cons of working in a call center. Shift Scheduling - Is absolutely abysmal. Depending on your department, you'll have to change your schedule in a little as every 3 months or 6 months. So say goodbye to any obligations you have outside of work, because when a shift is assigned to you. It's yours, and you have to work it. Yes, they try to sugar coat and say you can swap with someone else, but if it's already a crazy shift to begin with, nobody else is going to want it. Work life Balance - Where? At the time of this writing you get no holidays off in Applecare (or weekends depending on your schedule). When I first started, you did. But now, nada. 365 days a year the queues are opened. However management (your manager) gets these days off (and weekends). How nice. Work tools - Will never work properly. I've never worked at a company where there was so many issues with work tools. The kicker is you'll still need to be able to assist the customers and expected to get awesome CSATs with non-working tools. Micromanagement - You'll never do anything right. If it's not one thing, it's another. Your manager will find fault in anything that you do, it's expected. Good calls or chats will still be nit picked and have endless "one on ones" on discussing how it could have been done better. They even have it written in policy on how long you are allowed to take bathroom breaks. Yep, even when you work from home. Policy and Procedures - Can and will change without notice.You are told how to do something, you do it. A few months later it's wrong and should never be done like that. And when you ask why or when it was changed. No one can give you a straight answer. They'll give you the typical 'Apple BS giving you an answer, but not really answering your question' answer (with a smile on their face). Those that work in Applecare will know exactly what I'm referencing too. Final thoughts. Management loves to "cheerlead" you through this muck of a work environment. They know what we have to go through isn't ideal and outright sucks, but they ignore it and speak to you like everything that is happening to you is good and we should be thankful for what Apple is doing for us. It's borderline "cult like". It's like serving you dog poop on a gold plate with gold utensils, and they try to convince you that it's good for you.

When on calls I am constantly stressed about my performance metrics such as call handle time, survey results, and conforming to Apple's call flow guidelines. It is upsetting to receive a bad survey over an issue that you did not cause or have no control over, especially when you did everything possible to correct the problem. The surveys and other other performance metrics are used to decide priority when bidding for schedules. One or two bad surveys can be the difference between working a good schedule or a bad schedule. To me, it is the difference between having time to spend with friends and family or barely seeing them at all. I have worked extremely hard to achieve good metrics and I am typically in the top 10-20% in the internal advisor rankings, yet this is still not enough to get both weekend days off. Advancement is also a problem. I was able to move up to Tier 2 fairly quickly, but beyond this, it is much more challenging. There are a limited number of positions available beyond Tier 2 and there is such a vast amount of talent you are competing with for those spots. So far, in almost 2 years on my team of 18 people, only 1 person has advanced to a higher position. Admittedly, if you work "on-site" you have more opportunities available. Another big frustration for me is that it as advisors, we have a surprising lack of tools to do our job. I would think that as one of the largest software and hardware manufacturers, we would have a range of diagnostics, tests, and utilities at our disposal to correct and handle issues that arise with customer's devices, but this is not the case. We have access to an internal knowledge base (90% of which is already publicly accessible on our support site), the ability to run very basic diagnostics on iOS devices, and access to some account information - that is all. We are also not given much information in regards to any "known issues" or bugs in the software. In short, as advisors we put in a position where we are fairly ignorant and blind, which often makes us look bad and doesn't do any favors for the company. Basically, we just have to make the best of what we have and use experience and logic to solve problems. Perhaps I just had higher expectations that Apple would be a more progressive and resourceful company, but I think it suffers from most of the problems facing large organizations in that change is difficult and slow.