This is with a software team. Any idea what to expect on the first phone screen? Is this more like Google's product thinking + guestimates + strategy? Amazon LPs? There's so little information online on Apple product and program manager interviews... Please help!! 6 yoe, TC 240k
I had 3 phone screens for a technical program manager role at Apple: (1) Internal recruiter; (2) hiring manager; and (3) senior engineer. #1 and #2 went well. #3 - not so much. This person flaked on the call; didn’t even bother to tell me he wouldn’t make it or was going to be late. HR rescheduled, but the guy was 10 minutes late, had to leave on time, and didn’t bother to book a conference room on his side. He must’ve been in an open-floorplan type office because there was lots of noise. I couldn’t hear him well. He was also distracted and kept on blaming the recruiter (I’m not sure it was her fault because she was in an office in a different state). Anyway, if this happens to you, stop everything. Reschedule for another time. I was so irritated during that call that there was no way for me to succeed. Needless to say I did not advance to the on-site.and I was ghosted too - no followup email that said ‘thanks but no thanks’. Having said that, he threw out two scenario questions that could probably take a half-hour to answer. I think he just wasn’t prepared to interview me and just needed to fill the time. The questions were (1) what is serverless computing; (2) what’s difference between SAAS, PAAS and IAAS?
Thank you for the super detailed answer. Were these questions from the hiring manager? Do you remember any other areas the other interviewers tried to cover/ types of questions?
The hiring manager asked questions related to my real-world experience. It was obvious he read my resume. The senior engineer was more focused on domain expertise (e.g. serverless computing). I was told that if I got past the senior engineer, I would go on to the on-site. So, the process is 3 phone screens then on-site. I think they move pretty quickly if all the schedules are ‘perfectly ‘ aligned - it would’ve taken me just 2 weeks to get to the senior engineer if he kept the original schedule. Since your domain is ‘distributed systems ‘, then that means cloud. So, definitely Google what Apple has in the cloud and what’s on Prem. If you can’t figure that out from public info, then that’s a really good question to ask the interviewer at the end of your call, e.g. ‘for this particular service, do you have a hybrid model or cloud native?’ Obviously brush up on scenarios related to cloud for the more technical phone screen.
What’s your background? And experience in?
Distributed Systems