Very smart people, everything turned up to 11, including politics - Senior Software Engineer Apple Employee Review

3.0
Jul 30, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Most of the smartest co-workers I've ever worked with I met at Apple. Everybody is extremely driven and has ambitious goals, and the environment will increase most people's drive and make them more ambitious. Compensation is good. Opportunities to get promoted to leadership positions abound. In my experience, there was very little useless process, though product groups are rumored to be very rigid.

Cons

If you are not a manager, or working on iOS, you will almost certainly work in a cubicle in boring office space. Everybody is perpetually on-call. Your boss will call you at 8-9PM on a Friday night to ask you a question. You will be expected to work some Saturdays/Sundays even if there's no production reason. The pain of this is slightly mitigated by the fact that you know that your boss's boss is doing the same to your boss. Sometimes it feels like you're being tested. Bonuses are a big part of compensation, and it is easy for a manager to hide subjectivity in your performance review which potentially means getting paid a lot less for being liked less. Perks are minimal for the tech industry these days but fit with the "no-nonsense" budget attitude, and I didn't have such a problem with that.

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5.0
Jun 23, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great place to work at!

Cons

Was micromanaged and they track your stats all the time

4.0
Aug 28, 2014
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

We work with geniuses - in every department, We create innovative products that thrill our customers and create new product categories - who else can say that?

Cons

ZERO ZERO ZERO work/life balance. Execs have been saying for YEARS that they understand and will make it better. But in actuality, it gets worse every year! It is obviously top management LIP SERVICE because if they meant it, they could fix it tomorrow. They have hundreds of BILLIONS in the bank. If they REALLY cared about employee work/life balance, they could bring aboard the right number of folks to make that issue dissolve. Sick of hearing the lies. Just don't lie about wanting to fix it, when they clearly DON'T care

1501
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