Got an email from someone Out There about coming to work at Apple. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it made a nice blog entry, so I’ve removed any identifying info, and I hope the original questioner doesn’t mind….

Got an email from someone Out There about coming to work at Apple. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it made a nice blog entry, so I’ve removed any identifying info, and I hope the original questioner doesn’t mind….

I’m sorry to contact you out of the blue like this. I’ve been reading
your weblog and see that you work at Apple. I’ve been a lifelong Apple
fan and I’ve wanted to work there since before I started high school. I
was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about working there.

- How did you get your job at Apple? Do you recommend applying through
the jobs.apple.com website?

I was working at Sun doing technical support. I’ve been working with Macs on my own and involved with various mac activities, and it was at a time when Sun was squeezing budgets so I was getting unhappy with the workload. I’d been kind of exploring options when my boss at Sun moved to Apple to start the group that was going to support A/UX. At the time (1989) Apple didn’t “do” tech support, so this was going to be the first direct customer support organization. Coming across to help start that up with my boss was a no-brainer, so I became one of the first five members of what became the Direct Response Center.

I definitely recommend applying through the web site. Referrals through people inside Apple can definitely help, but in my case, I only refer people I know because I feel I’m putting my reputation into a refferal, so I tend to be fairly conservative — and it depends on the hiring manager knowing the person over whether they take the referral seriously — so it can definitely help, but it isn’t a guarantee. But if you don’t apply, you can’t get hired — so use both routes. Since I’m in IS&T, not engineering, I don’t have a lot of visibility (or influence) on engineering jobs, so I’m not really a good person to refer over there, although I do at times. Use every avenue available to you… But yes, when we hire, the jobs go on the web site, and we do review and interview based on that site. I believe our last hire came out of the resumes off the site, in fact. But you need to make sure you write a good, powerful resume, since you need to stand out from the crowd.

- What is the interview process like? From reading weblogs I get the
impression it is fairly extensive.

Depends on the group. For technical positions, it can be intense. In our group, it’s not unusual for some of our interviewers to sit you down and have you code something on the fly (as much to see how you react to pressure situations your ability to code). Since others tend to focus on technical issues, I tend to interview more towards personality and compatibility things, which we also take seriously.

Our group’s interviews are generally done in pieces; there’s an initial contact and probably a phone interview, then a decision is made to bring a person in. That interview is with 4-7 people, and 1/2 to 2/3 of a day. Sometimes, depending on realities of a schedule, broken over a couple of days. then there’s a final round of interviews with the management structure, where a candidate gets to meet people going up the food chain — and a non-trivial number of candidates don’t pass that test for one reason or another (my management is very interested in compatibility and personality, in how a person fits into the organization now, how they’ll fit into it in two or three years, and career development issues, so a candidate that might qualify for the job might not qualify for a position because we don’t see a growth path for them, for instance. It’s very “not IS-like”, but we’re also an organization is miniscule turnover rates — people just don’t leave very often….)

So there are a lot of factors. In our part of the world, “plays well with others” is very important at all levels, which means it’s one hell of a lot of fun to work with these folks, and we all generally get along very well. There are regular social groups and after-work get togethers that some folks do.

- What do you like most about your job? What do you like least?

I can make a difference — make things better for people. And I do (IMHO). Being able to change the world, whether in little ways or big ways, is a huge plus for me, and I do it personally in the work I do FOR Apple, and the work Apple allows me to do outside of work (like my time I’ve contributed to the Mailman open source system), and also by being part of making Apple succeed and as a small part of the company changing the world in big ways (and don’t let the media pundits tell you otherwise — they’re so busy looking at things that don’t matter, like market share, that they don’t see what does.

Like least? there’s so much more I wish I could do. Part of me would love Apple to just shut up and fund a bunch of things — but that part of me would hate having to lay people off when those projects were done and I didn’t have new projects for them. So some stuff gets done now, and some stuff gets done later, but we build an operation that’s sustainable and doesn’t do the binge and purge thing. Sometimes we bring in contractors, too — and Apple has funded some projects for me when I’ve written justifiable plans, so I can’t really complain. But there’s so much going on in the internet and the community/communication space right now, I feel like ought to be doing lots of things right now… But we’ll get there.

- What is the corporate culture like at Apple?

Being in IS, I’m not on the Apple campus regularly. I’m probably not a good speaker for engineering land, but from my discussions with people I know over there, it seems pretty good. You work your butt off, but you do things that matter. My area has good morale, and is very “not IS-like”, which I love. I enjoy being in an IS organization that “gets it”.

At the same time, realize it’s been a rotten time in the industry. Lots of companies doing lots of layoffs. Apple took the stance of freezing salaries to limit layoffs, and while Apple hasn’t avoided layoffs 100%, they avoided almost all of them. The freeze is coming off soon, fortunately. But I can accept the tradeoff of everyone giving a little to avoid having some folks give a whole damn bunch — and Apple was able to keep the finances going and the company moving forward and people employed (just in the last couple of weeks, Sun, Gateway and Toshiba announced layoffs. Dell laid off in 2001, and the trail of tears goes on and on…)

In a bad industry, under a salary freeze, there’s going to be some stress and tension. I think overall Apple handled it well, and I think overall, most employees are satisfied and looking to stay, and looking forward past Panther to the future, not over their shoulders. I’m not sure how many companies have employees feeling that way right now. Not sun, that’s for sure.

- Is Apple interested in new graduates without a lot of experience or
are they more likely to hire experienced workers? I do have 16 months of
internship software/firmware development experience but many of the
posted jobs are looking for 3-5 years. Do you have any advice for new
professionals trying to enter the field?

Depends on the group, but in general, the answer is yes. One of the folks working with me is only a couple of years out of college, another was my summer intern a few years back, who we hired in when his startup imploded.

One thing to keep an eye out on is QA/testing — that’s a good way to get into any company and prove your worth so that after some time, you can look at moving into other positions. And you may find you LIKE QA. But for the junior/new person, it cna be tough, because here in silicon valley, I know lots of pretty experienced and unemployed engineers looking for any job, and it’s hard to compete with them when they’re willing to take a job under their expertise to get a salary again. So you have to look for alternatives, and realize competition for jobs is tight right now.

And because of that, I think it’s not enough to just be good. To get what you want, you have to stand out. It’s not enough to be a Java programmer — what do you do that the other Java programmers don’t? or can’t?

Make sure your resume show that. A little bragging doesn’t hurt (a lot does). Another thing I suggest to folks is to do things that people can notice — if you’re technical, get involved in open source projects and make a contribution. It doesn’t have to be huge, and it doesn’t have to be coding — being visible on the support lists, or writing documentation (especially writing documentation!) gets noticed. I know of a number of Apple employees who’ve been hired off of our tech lists on lists.apple.com, because they became known on the lists as people helped out and contributed and proved they knew what they were talking about. I also know of folks who’ve been blacklisted out of Apple because all they’ve proven is they’re noisy whiners, too.

Having useful secondary skills is another way to stand out. Good writer? Comfortable presenting in front of crowds? can you DBA a system? People are looking for people who bring more to the plate than ‘just’ the skills the jobs need. Maybe they’re hiring a Java programmer, but they have a project they want they can’t get funding for. If they see an ability to squeeze that project in as well because you have a missing skill, that’s suddenly a big plus. (I’m tempted to fall into Dungeons and Dragons nomenclature for a minute, and make people think about character types, sub-types and skill sets: you aren’t just a fighter or a thief, but a 5th level fighter with a specialty in two-handed swords, a 3rd level thief with a specialty in daggers and lock-picking. Does your resume say this? Or does it say “thief!”?)

Find ways to stand out in positive ways. It gets noticed, and it helps opportunities to come to you. When you sit at a desk with 100 resumes to review, you’re looking for two things — easy reasons to reject resumes, and resumes that make want to take a second look.

- Do you have any general advice for someone who wants to work at Apple?

Patience, determination. A realization that Apple’s not doing lots of hiring, and generally hires slowly and carefully. Remember you aren’t alone in thinking Apple isn’t Just Another Company, so you have competition. Be aware that if there are certain things working against you (relocation, for instance), the rest might not matter. But think about ways to get involved with Apple, if not working for it — companies that use Apple systems, companies that write software for Apple. There are always alternatives (if you aren’t the only java programmer, Apple’s not the only company….)

Hope this helps!

chuq