Problematic Retail Wage Structure - Anonymous employee Apple Employee Review

3.0
Oct 2, 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great co-workers, highly underestimated talent pool for you to connect with on a personal level at work, good benefits (yet you are discouraged from unionizing which I think may be borderline illegal?) progressive work environment in terms of race, sexuality, and lifestyle. Rewarding experiences and lots of skills to be utilized in the real world (Apple Retail is not the real world, as much as they say it is)...Tim Cook is also trying really hard to correct the company but Retail and Corporate hate one another.

Cons

First and foremost, transparency and accountability. The hiring process is a bag of nonsense. Even internally, when you apply for a lateral transfer or a position inside your own store, the management lies to you about your chances with impunity, the Store Leader has no clout with the recruiting process yet promises upward mobility. There is favoritism, avarice, and a highly political nature to all hiring decisions. The customers are either incredible or absolutely horrible. This job requires the highest extreme of negotiation skills, customer service, and tolerance as people will test you beyond your limits with what they expect and require. Apple Retail needs to clean sweep its management tier, the majority of whom were hired from Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target and Pacsun...companies that share no values with Apple and love to focus on numbers. Having worked under Steve Jobs and Ron Johnson, the philosophy used to be "work on customer experience, because the products sell themselves" but now it is all about results even though we don't make any commission (which is insane if you do the math) and the management brags about results and company wealth while the average employee is required to know skills required for 80k tech support and IT jobs while paying them half or less than that and asking them to perform harder on top of those unfeasible numbers. Apple needs to reshape retail and get rid of the people who have taken over the top tier and are running it like a boutique Circuit City.

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5.0
Jul 10, 2026
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Pros

Work with game developers to bring their games to Apple Platforms. I get to work with all the technology that goes into games and make games feel native.

Cons

Sometimes work projects build up.

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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