Apple - new employee tips?

New
kachalu*

New

kachalu*
Mar 20 39 Comments

Starting a new job at Apple soon. Any one have tips, advice or recommendations on best practices for computer and account setup, work habits, benefits and perks, getting to know the team and technology, WFH culture, RTO culture, etc.

All helpful comments are welcome!

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TOP 39 Comments
  • Apple / Eng
    Mr. Hat 🎩

    Go to company page Apple Eng

    Mr. Hat 🎩
    Some burnt out disgruntled employees above. Don’t worry, your job is what you make of it and usually you hear the few negative experiences much louder.
    Enjoy your weekend and you’ll have time to ramp up once you join.
    Mar 20 8
  • Apple
    Random🍏PM

    Go to company page Apple

    Random🍏PM
    Everything BWhL08 said.

    Bow your head, do as you are told, don’t ask too many questions, don’t questions decisions made by others, especially any decision coming from top. Think about a military structure. Orders come from top, you are there to execute. Not to improve, not to fix broken things. Just to execute someone else’s dream.

    Good luck.
    Mar 20 3
  • Apple
    BWhL08

    Go to company page Apple

    BWhL08
    Run like the wind. Idk how apple hardware is, but apple software is where career comes to die.

    But since you asked specific questions, here you go:
    1. Computer setup - the best practice is to follow the documentation on how to set it up. If there’s no documentation, ask your on-boarding buddy.

    2. Work habits - think toxic culture, apple embodies so many aspects of it. A few habits I have seen: people are afraid to be self-critical, managers often hint at working weekends or late because they planned poor. That’s fine if it’s a critical launch, every team will have crunch time. But here’s the catch: all these deadlines are flexible and often postponed.

    3. Benefits - well you got your offer letter and there’s a benefits page on the internal wiki.

    4. Getting to know people - hard in one word. The standard way to ask questions is slack. There’s no job level on directory, so if you want to reach out to a Staff engineer for some context, you don’t know who to reach out to. So you hop from person to person till you reach somebody who can answer your question. The second issue is people are often busy with random deadlines, so your slack question may go unanswered or you may get time several days down the line. And then there’s the secrecy, people (even within the same team) may have different disclosures, so often you have no idea about what the guy next to you is working on.

    5. WFH - 😂. Starting a pilot for 3 days in office. My guess is despite enough evidence of employees preferring flexibility, it will morph to 5 days in office.

    6. See WFH
    Mar 20 2
  • Apple / Eng
    phase

    Go to company page Apple Eng

    phase
    Computers/devices: if your work requires you be on the next OS, make sure you keep a backup computer and phone on a version that's shipped to customers. I've bricked or otherwise had some issue fixable only from another device too many times. Mattered especially during remote days; in-office there's somewhere you can go to get stuff sorted.

    Culture: as much as you can, try to write some docs about what you work on for the next person. You probably won't have many docs and will need to ask around to find people who know things to learn what's going on, but at least in my org there's an opportunity to shift this culture (secrecy?) to having more docs. The lack of docs and this ask-around culture have been the most challenging aspects of working here for me.

    Getting to know your team: do at least an intro meeting with people under your same manager, and probably people adjacent to your team under your manager's manager. I've tended to work with several nearby managers and/or their reports rather than just my team. Your manager should be your go-to resource for all of your questions, btw.

    Work approach: focus on delivering something each week - especially if you have deadlines - but also make sure you keep some room to think about the larger picture. Sometimes things that would take a ton of work need to be rebalanced or redesigned/negotiated with larger teams before being executed.
    Mar 21 1
  • Apple
    kenTiger 🇺🇦

    Go to company page Apple

    kenTiger 🇺🇦
    Take it easy 😀! Enjoy your Sunday first. You will get enough time to do all that after joining.
    Mar 20 0