Excellent place to sharpen skills; awful politics - Software Engineer III Apple Employee Review

2.0
6 Oct 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You may work with the most talented people in your industry and benefit from their experience and work ethic. You will never be bored. There are many exciting opportunities within Apple and if you're clever and hardworking, you can work on those exciting products. The pay is on par with contemporaries of similar size and stature. Any discrepancies can be assuaged by compensation in the form of generous RSU's and cash bonuses (distributed bi-annually).

Cons

Apple is a strict meritocracy. The better your performance; the better your compensation and presented opportunities will be. The company's reputation for secrecy bleeds into its culture and there is a surprising lack of transparency not only in terms of development, but management. Your performance is entirely subjective to your immediate manager who is not always suited to managing people. The emphasis at apple is managing products. Specifically their product. Combined with aggressive scheduling, there can be a astounding amount of infighting and politics. It is possible to be a pawn in these politics and have information withheld concerning product and company vision. Work-life balance skews heavily towards work. Expect 60 hour weeks minimum during post release lulls.

Explore other reviews about Apple

5.0
4 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great work life balance. Great work - serious innovation. One tends to learn a lot through their tenure. A gem of an addition to work experience esp for embedded systems

Cons

Kind of stagnant with respect to promotions

4.0
28 Aug 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

1500
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