Before I start: I've learned why people can't post comments directly in this blog..... you actually can, but it's not intuitive. If you want to post a comment, simply click on the title of the blog entry, and only that entry will appear, with a "Comments" box at the end of the entry. I've contacted Squarespace (which facilitates the website) and have asked them to "fix" this blog template to make it more intuitive..... I'm not optimistic, but we'll see if they make a change. And in the interim - please post any comments you may have that way!
And so it goes......
Last week I posted about my experience working at Apple.... at least, the portion of it related to the actual work. But there's more to it than just the work itself. So in a much, much shorter post, here are my thoughts about some of the peripheral things that come with being an Apple employee - again, just my perspective. Though I would encourage others (from Apple) to add their comments as well.
The Good:
- Apple Special Events - Google has earned a reputation as being an employer that does just about everything it can to make its employees' lives easier, with free food, dry cleaning, transportation, etc..... and while Apple doesn't rival that, it does have a bunch of recurring and non-recurring events that are a lot of fun. It has fairly regular beer bashes (campus-wide) and individual group events. Plus, with Apple's heavy involvement in the music business, there periodically are announced or surprise concerts that happen on the main courtyard, including pretty big-name artists. Plus, you never know who you're going to bump into in the company store on-campus. During random visits, I bumped into Keith Urban (4-5 years ago), and the cast of Glee once. Pretty cool.
- Discounts and other benefits - Employees do get discounts on virtually all of the Apple products, so it's easy to get "geared up" pretty inexpensively. Plus, if you work in the new product area, you periodically get to try unreleased products privately, and/or have the opportunity to use test units (after the products have been released). Needless to say, employees can become peoples' best friends around holidays or birthdays, when people want to get Apple gear.
- "Being a Rock Star" - This isn't really true in the Bay Area, where anytime you turn around you bump into an employee from Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc..... But the further you get from the Bay Area, the more notoriety (and some semblance of reverence) comes with saying you work for Apple. Going to parties in the Sacramento area, it was kind of cool to be able to say I worked in the new products team at Apple - people would get really excited, interested, talkative. And where it really hit me - over Christmas 2012, Shelley and I took a cruise that started in Australia and ended in New Zealand, and approximately 60% of the people on the cruise were Australian. Walking around the ship, you saw a few Kindles, but aside from that, the only other devices you saw, and the only company people really talked about, were Apple devices. And when I told people that I worked for Apple in Cupertino, it was really neat to see the response - something like 7000 miles from home.
The Not-so-Good:
- Not talking about your work - There is a reality in working on new products that you can't tell anyone, even your spouse, what you're working on..... and that's kind of tough! I spent almost 2.5 years working on portables (laptops), so Shelley realized generally what I was working on, but never specifics. Most of the rest of the time, she didn't really have much of an idea what I was working on at any point in time. When I was tired or frustrated, I really couldn't tell her why..... and though she knew I was traveling regularly, I could never tell her a schedule for anything. Frequently I'd be able to say "see this new announcement - that's what I've been working on." But it is kind of hard to just have a major part of your life that's pretty off-limit for conversation, even with the people you love and spend time with.
- The "I'm thinking about buying a phone....." questions - Some people have to deal with this more than others..... but one of the most difficult, and personally frustrating, situations I dealt with was when friends or family indirectly (or even directly) asked me to divulge information about what products were coming out when. The most common: "I'm thinking of buying a phone in the next couple of months..... should I wait, do you have something coming out soon?" Usually it was about phones, but sometimes it was about iPads or computers. In most cases, I didn't know specific information about what was coming out or when..... but that wasn't the point. Simply asking me the question put me in an incredibly awkward position - while I didn't want people I cared about to make bad purchasing decisions, I could literally be fired if I revealed anything about the products coming out. So people were asking me a question I literally couldn't answer. I would try to de-fuse this (or really avoid the question entirely) by making sure people realized I couldn't talk about my work - and that if they valued the relationship, they wouldn't put me in the position where I could get fired if I said anything. But when the questions did inevitably come, I did my best to simply say "I don't work on that, and don't know anything more than I read in the media..... but based on when we released our last version of the product, and the normal product cycle, you can probably make as good a guess as I can as to when the next one is coming out." And usually that sufficed. But it was definitely uncomfortable.
- Target practice - For all the Apple advocates that exist, there are obviously anti-Apple folks as well, and other more "neutral" parties who simply like to create controversy or chide the Apple crowd. I make no bones about it - I'm an Apple homer. I have pretty strong opinions about most of the companies that are major competitors of Apple, and in a future post, I'll share specific thoughts on some of them. But for all my "Apple homer-ism", I also recognize that on an individual product basis, there are devices, or features, that other companies offer that are at least as good or better than what Apple's products have. But I don't need to hear snide comments or chiding about how bad, or expensive, Apple products are, merely to be controversial or start a fight. Apple's not for everyone, that's cool, but don't just get in my face or be a jerk because I worked there and love their products and ecosystem.
Hope people enjoy this..... for any of the Apple crowd that reads this - what do you think are the great, or not-so-great "extra-curricular" things that come from working at Apple? Do tell!