Why do I see so few seniors people trying to get a position at Apple

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yes-im-hiring-2025@reddit

Their MO is being tight lipped and just doing their job. You won't find much about them online/ yt ...

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Most seniors went through college and entered the market *before* the paradigm shift of FAANG obsession. So what you're asking is the same as "why are few Seniors applying to X/Y/Z company near me?" People who are trying to max their TC at all costs are going to apply to other FAANG, and people who aren't aren't going to be any more likely to apply to Apple over various other companies in their area.

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Leading_Yoghurt_5323@reddit

apple looks stable from the outside, but a lot of people care more about day-to-day autonomy than just “safe” environments.

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HayatoKongo@reddit

I know multiple people who work at Apple. They're all what I would describe as aloof, mysterious, and tight-lipped in general, not just about work. Genuinely, I know nothing about the culture of working there, I find it to be pretty fascinating tbh. I've also actually noticed that if I find a bug or issue as a user and mention it to one of them, it ends up getting fixed. People I know have worked there a long time and don't seem to have any intention of leaving. That alone makes me think it is probably a nice place to work.

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Kind-Armadillo-2340@reddit

I wonder if they discourage talking about it. I went to the Apple campus once to help my friend with a startup competition he was participating in. They put us in a big room with a bunch of computers and other startup founders. One of the rules was no one was allowed to talk to other teams about what they were working on. It made causal chit chat kind of awkward.

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tinycockatoo@reddit

I had a classmate in college who was working there and said he had signed a NDA

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robertbieber@reddit

Every tech company I've worked for in my entire career has made me sign an NDA

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tinycockatoo@reddit

Interesting - I never had to, worked in e-commerce, finance and gov

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bruticuslee@reddit

They do have a history of getting their best products ripped off and then out competed. From Mac/Windows to iPhone/Android to AirPods.

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ColdPorridge@reddit

Lmao come on dude reread what you just wrote

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Away_Technician_2089@reddit

Outcompeted? Lol They are literally the market leaders in every category you mentioned

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HaMMeReD@reddit

Android worldwide has 4 installs to every 1 iOS install Windows worldwide also has 4 installs to ever 1 OSX install. So I guess it really depends on what you mean by market leader, if having 20% of the market or less makes you the leader, then I guess yeah sure, Apple is the market leader.

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Lyraele@reddit

You can find quite a bit online explaining how Apple doesn't really optimize for size of installed base, but profitability. Not sure how much it's moved, but a few years ago Apple had something like 90% of the profits in the entire mobile space despite only having something like 25% of the installed base. And desktop is a fraction of the money vs mobile, they don't care (macOS has been free for more than a decade). Not buying into the classic Silicon Valley "1. get all the users 2. ??? 3. underpants gnomes 4. profit" was one way Apple tended to be different.

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JimDabell@reddit

> a few years ago Apple had something like 90% of the profits in the entire mobile space despite only having something like 25% of the installed base. It was even more extreme than that in 2016 – [Apple had 12% market share in the smartphone industry and more than 100% of the profits](https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/11/04/apple-grabs-more-than-100-of-smartphone-profits/) because everybody else was collectively losing money while Apple were profiting. I would *love* to be “outcompeted” like Apple!

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Lyraele@reddit

Yeah, it's pretty wild. The VC "underpants gnomes" playbook has really done a number on a lot of people and businesses. "It's all about market share" has definitely had a negative impact on... pretty much everything.

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msamprz@reddit

The way you've described it sounds a bit like Severance S1 haha

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Lyraele@reddit

I think most of FAANG, and certainly Apple would try and use the technology of Severance if it existed.

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jocona@reddit

But then people couldn’t work nights/weekends from home

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raverbashing@reddit

That's ok they will pay for your Uber no problemo

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Groundbreaking_Egg58@reddit

which is made by Apple TV

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msamprz@reddit

Mind blown

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vinny_twoshoes@reddit

one of my peers from code school was hired at apple over ten years ago and hasn't left. lucky duck.

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Fit_Butterscotch_829@reddit

Definitely a lot more user focused than other FAANG.

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peligroso@reddit

They've been around long enough to know Apple employees are *expected* to be insufferable.

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asdfjklOHFUCKYOU@reddit

I'm not sure but I feel like the only people I know who got jobs at Apple had referrals - they seem very insular.

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ElPilingas007@reddit

I was overqualified for a position by a lot, a lot. Applied, not a single peep, someone referred me, got called the next day, got the job but rejected it (now i regret it but that's another story)

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RepulsiveFish@reddit

Yeah, any time I've applied in the past, I never got any response. Very different from other FAANG who were always in my inbox begging me to apply.

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Impossible-Bake3866@reddit

Long hours reputation

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AggressiveReport5747@reddit

I looked but all of their positions are in person and they didn't have a ton of dev positions.

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Lyraele@reddit

Apple is incredibly tight-lipped, by design and intent. TC is low-ish compared to the rest of FAANG, but stability is higher (15+ year employee's are not rare). Perks are definitely not as generous as the rest (though most of them are tightening up to some extent). Historically, Apple was insulated or straight up rejected a lot of the madness the others embraced, but more madness has crept in over time. Tech overall is declining thanks to greed and executive egotism, and Apple isn't immune to that.

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Inner_Ad_4725@reddit (OP)

In what ways is a company like Apple experiencing that decline? Again, my minimal perspective is from the outside where I see they seldom have large scale layoffs, and still pay well relative to the rest of the economy. I’m assuming they’re not immune to MBAs running the shop & politicking for promos.

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Ok_Adhesiveness3638@reddit

What’s the biggest thing to come from apple in the past 15 years? The vr goggles or the notch? They’re not innovative anymore

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dagamer34@reddit

AirPods, Apple Watch.

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Ok_Adhesiveness3638@reddit

Apple Watch is just a copy of the galaxy gear. I know some people like the air pods but I think wireless earbuds that fall out of your ears aren’t a great product.

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dagamer34@reddit

The market seems to disagree with you. Just gonna leave it at that.

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Ok_Adhesiveness3638@reddit

Sounds like a pretty ignorant logical fallacy to fall back on. Do you think the Ford F-150 is the most innovative vehicle in America too?

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SmartCustard9944@reddit

The company is currently being led by finance people. Maximize profit first, think about innovation later. Other than Apple Silicon, where has Apple innovated recently? Why is Apple not in the AI game as much?

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Inner_Ad_4725@reddit (OP)

Because everyone in the AI race training new LLMs is burning billions in cash. There’s no need for Apple to join that race, it’s a smart business move that they stay in their lane.

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xypherrz@reddit

it’s gotten to a point where the interviewer asked me to come up with a blocking approach for a SPSC queue … just to suggest a spinlock …

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Tamschi_@reddit

That's not entirely wrong, depending on the use. *Afaik* most bleeding-edge generic synchronisation primitives today do spin a little bit at first, and it's especially helpful in many cases where an SPSC makes sense.

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reversethrust@reddit

Many many years ago I was debugging a performance problem on some software my company acquired. The software ran ok on laptops, but we wanted to scale it up onto a really big system. Users typically ran these simulations on their laptops on a small sample and it would run for 30-60 minutes at a time. The thought was that we would load it up on to a big system (at the time up to 192 cores, but we only used maybe 64 of that), and run it as a service for a work group. They could submit the work, run it quickly and get their results back super fast. It didn’t work that way. The system utilization was sub 1% CPU and hardly any memory or I/O pressure. It took much longer to run the jobs on our big server than a laptop (!!!). Long story short, there was a single producer and a couple of consumers. Once we scaled up, it was still a single producer but now we had like 500+ consumers (a couple per thread..). All the consumers were doing were sleeping and waking up. Massive convoy effect. Switching to spinlocks just drove up cpu utilization but didn’t help much with performance. The whole pipeline had to be rewritten.

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Western_Objective209@reddit

The synchronization mechanism you use in that situation isn't going to make a difference if you don't split up the input stream. The Windows NT kernel went from a global spinlock for the page allocator to a per page spinlock to accomodate multi-core machines, and performance issues are basically gone.

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Damacustas@reddit

Do you have more reading on this? I tried searching but couldn’t find any. :)

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Western_Objective209@reddit

I actually discovered it working on my own NT clone side project, this is a pretty buried fact. https://github.com/aniko33/Windows-Internals-7th-edition-book/blob/main/Windows_internals_part1.pdf page 440 talks about using the lower bits as a lock, while if you look at the windows research kernel (pre-Vista) https://github.com/ayyucedemirbas/Windows-Research-Kernel-WRK-/blob/26b524b2d0f18de703018e16ec5377889afcf4ab/WRK-v1.2/base/ntos/mm/mi.h#L871 can see the PFN works on a single lock

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pinehillsalvation@reddit

Huh, interesting, I did not know this. This sort of ancient lore always fascinates me.

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Leather_Secretary_13@reddit

Interesting though what is the alternative? convoy effect sounds like thundering herd problem but ultimately... there is no other way to design it more producers causes sync issues so it's a business logic problem

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Skoparov@reddit

The problem here is contention, so you need to reduce it to avoid useless context switches wasting CPU time. Basically there are only two ways to do this, by reducing the overall number of consumers or by turning it into several queues partitioned by some property. Not exactly the same, but that's how it's done in Kafka, you can't have more than one consumer per partition.

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minimuscleR@reddit

> blocking approach for a SPSC queue … just to suggest a spinlock … Please ELI5 what you are saying. I'm a react dev :(

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Empty_Expressionless@reddit

Single producer single consumer. Multithreading case where one thread writes and another reads. Eliminates many of the omnidirectional mutex requirements that makes multithreading hard and slower

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rurorjuror@reddit

Hello, could you please kindly recommend some reading/learning materials to get familiar with such topics? Also a front end dev here but very eager to learn.

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FeistiestMeat@reddit

If I’m being honest, just go ask Claude to give you interview questions for a senior role in whatever field you want to really learn about, then ask for explanations of concepts in terms that a [insert current specialty] developer would understand. Fact-check stuff, but it’s remarkably useful.

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pinehillsalvation@reddit

The book Java Concurrency In Practise by Brian Goetz is fantastic, even if you never need to work with Java. It’s really old (2006 I think) but the concurrency issues it talks about are timeless. You can probably get a pdf somewhere.

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briyoonu@reddit

These are some of my favorite in no particular order https://github.com/rigtorp/awesome-lockfree https://github.com/kassane/awesome-concurrency

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ChuyStyle@reddit

CS 102

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raulmonteblanco@reddit

You cut me to the quick.

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TribeWars@reddit

A Good book that touches on almost everything important can be found here: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.00854](https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.00854) It is however written from a very linux-centric viewpoint and most of the code examples are in C. In chapter 1.3 there is a big list of further resources depending on what you're looking for (e.g. books using Java, Rust or C++)

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max123246@reddit

Lots of resources. MIT's 6.004 class is free online and dives into CPU architecture and the cache hierarchy. That'll provide a good foundation to understand the principles that guide software and hardware codesign. 6.172 is a class for performance optimization which includes some lectures on multithreading. Another good class to explore Hanging around systems programming subreddits such as for Cpp and Rust will let you find tech blogs that dive deeply into topics that let you explore more deeply. One recent blog I found that you might like about how reader locks are slower than normal locks when the critical section is small: https://eventual-consistency.vercel.app/posts/write-locks-faster If you are interested in GPUs, check out the GPU mode discord and their YouTube channel where they present talks on new modern tools and languages and libraries . That is its own can of worms but it's still informed by many of the same concepts as the CPU world, just with 100-1000x more threads running concurrently And of course, implement these concepts you learn so that you don't just think you understand it, you know you understand it. Design a CPU simulator for a simple RISC V CPU, create a new memory allocator, create a programming language compiler, write a fast multithreaded implementation to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem Systems programming is so much fun. I recommend it a lot

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sethkills@reddit

Did they mean blocking in the colloquial sense that the queue doesn’t return control until an item has been added or removed, as opposed to say, polling? I guess on a granular scale a spin lock is constantly and very aggressively polling.

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Western_Objective209@reddit

what were the requirements? sometimes spinning is better than parking

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Life-Principle-3771@reddit

Yes i don't think spinning is always bad but its technically not blocking so it's kind of an answer that violates the question

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Western_Objective209@reddit

oh yeah I should have read more carefully, good point

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drewfer@reddit

I think OP is implying that a CAS lock-free approach was in-bounds and the interviewer, who was supposed to be making technical judgements about his ability, wasn't aware of them.

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newbie_long@reddit

And that's the example you chose for arguing that Apple has declined?

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xypherrz@reddit

I cleared that round so no complaints. All 4 rounds in fact were good except the one with manager.

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mxldevs@reddit

I have no idea what any of that means. I guess that's the difference between me and a real software engineer.

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Clyde_Frag@reddit

Apple also rewards you for staying for a while. Your TC will likely be higher year 3/4 than when you joined.

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jjirsa@reddit

All companies that do refreshers are higher in year 3/4 than in year 1, some are also lower in year 6 than year 4. (Apple treated me well, I was there for nearly a decade, and I have a lot of friends still there, but my comp went up largely because AAPL outperformed the market and I got a bunch of promos, a lot of other people hit a cliff). There is definitely a few places in the company that value loyalty over innovation, though. For some people that's a bonus. For some people, it's a profound negative. Those tend to be the teams that get stuck in the old way, because challenging the status quo dies. Hopefully those domains dont hold the whole company back over time.

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Clyde_Frag@reddit

If this were true there would be no such thing as thing as a 4 year cliff. Some companies refreshers suck.

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it200219@reddit

Heard someone from Apple worked 12 years purchased their first home in Bay Area full cash 2.5M+

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knowwho@reddit

> but stability is higher (15+ year employee's are not rare). FYI this used to apply to Google as well. Source: Laid off by Google.

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ElkBudget5504@reddit

have you seen any recent data on apple's layoff history

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Maleficent-Wish-6734@reddit

reminds me of the walled garden approach

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ilyas-inthe-cloud@reddit

Apple's tight-lipped thing is cultural. They move deliberately and don't like external noise influencing internal decisions. That extends to hiring—no poaching wars, no public feuds with other tech companies, just heads-down work. You're right about no layoffs. That's intentional. But the trade-off is slower growth, internal mobility is real (harder to move between orgs), and the work can feel... plodding. If you like rapid iteration and shipping fast, it's rough. That said, if you're 15+ years in and want stability + serious pay, the vibe is solid. Culture is more cooperative than FAANG. Just know you'll ship slower than you might at a startup or Amazon.

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ichabooka@reddit

Because we are tired and the thought of learning how to leet code seems like a lot of work

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Holden_Makock@reddit

For me, their interview loop is 8-9 rounds for barely 400k pay as high ICT4. They wont even offer ICT5 externally.

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SuspiciousBrain6027@reddit

I worked at Apple Park for a bit. 3 days in office, low stress. Great pay. Great food. Great people.

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xXxdethl0rdxXx@reddit

I interviewed last year, had a referral, bowed out. The manager in the final round seemed like a psychopath. When I gently and non-emotionally recounted some of the weird things they did on the call to the recruiter, the manager lied about everything—like, in a crazy, “the dog ate my homework” kind of obvious lie. Maybe there are good teams, but I wasn’t matched with one. Seems like an insane company to work at.

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beefyweefles@reddit

My interview went similarly, super aggressive. Admittedly I was early in my career.

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Isofruit@reddit

You never do that, period. If you want to see how well people can actually perform, you give them the most comfortable environment possible with the least chance of getting flustered possible.

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PureRepresentative9@reddit

Apple has intentionally drastically different culture then "normal". People forget that Apple drastically is aesthetics and perception focused. Remember Steve Jobs and "you're holding it wrong". They intentionally do not follow "common behaviors"

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Coroebus@reddit

That's on them, not on you. An interview should be conducted with kindness and curiosity on both ends. Treating an early career person like that is uncalled for, period.

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it200219@reddit

few years ago, I had coding interview. it was string reverse and I was writing for loop (thinking optimization), and the guy stopped me asking to do in 1 line. I knew I got rejected in first 10mins

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anonyuser415@reddit

How did you hear about the manager's response?

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xXxdethl0rdxXx@reddit

The recruiter forwarded it to me after I explained what happened.

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anonyuser415@reddit

Apple was very tightlipped on my interview (final round). nice you got some feedback at least. when I had negative feedback for HubSpot's interview process the recruiter got defensive and shut me down, so I just stopped giving it

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xXxdethl0rdxXx@reddit

I think it helped that I didn’t wait to hear back. I immediately said that I don’t think the team and I are the right fit. Sometimes they ask what happened, sometimes they couldn’t care less. Often, the recruiter is already frustrated with a poor hiring manager and welcomes the documentation.

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gplgang@reddit

I had a friend that works there and he also said there were definite psychopathic behaviors from management, like getting moved to one team and once he wanted to switch to another the manager basically threatened to fire him

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bobsbitchtitz@reddit

I had a similar experience. However for me the guy was arguing saying my solution is wrong and I was proving him wrong then he got mad. I already had a solid offer in hand so I was cool with it

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Fit_Butterscotch_829@reddit

They’ve done layoffs. People either really like working at Apple, or really don’t like it.

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Individual_Zombie457@reddit

When did Apple do Layoffs? I had the same impression as OP, and couldn't remember them doing it in the past 5y or so

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potatolicious@reddit

There have been [relatively small ones](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/apple-cuts-jobs-across-its-sales-organization-in-rare-layoff/ar-AA1R4bMt?cvid=692525d07e284c3393eeccb5429526ef#:~:text=The%20cuts%20included%20longtime%20managers%20and%2C%20in,the%20US%20Defense%20Department%20and%20Justice%20Department.) but nothing like the mass layoffs other FAANGs have experienced in the last few years.

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Fit_Butterscotch_829@reddit

And I thought they did layoffs in whatever division was working on car related stuff?

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it200219@reddit

what I know, Apple hardly PIP unless extreme case of low perf. Managers work hard to get things done, no matter what. They wont shame to call you late night or even on weekends. Its simple get things done.

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kosmos1209@reddit

I don’t work at Apple but as a 20+ year resident of SF Bay Area working in tech, it’s a combination of: - Very political, hard to get anything done - some teams are ultra intense - many live in SF, and company bus takes up to 2 hours, and it’s mandatory to come in, and they check badge data - pay isn’t the best in FAANG - they are a bit old school, and they don’t have free food, and people have to pay, although discounted - I heard this from many women especially, but Apple is very male. Very very male, especially at leadership positions.

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Fit_Butterscotch_829@reddit

Huh, I didn’t realize that Apple is doesn’t have a more balanced distribution of men vs women.

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kosmos1209@reddit

Anything related the product development like design, engineering, and product managers, are very male. It’s like that most of SF Bay Area, but Apple skews even worse

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minimuscleR@reddit

> Anything related the product development like design which is kinda crazy. Like I get engineering because the field is very male, but design you would think have much more women in them, especially considering 50% (or even more in case of Apple) of their customers would be women too.

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codescapes@reddit

Sure but I'd also note that good designers are able to disconnect / detach their own feelings from the product when making decisions. If your process rides on you being a member of a demographic and thereby "knowing what they want" and able to dictate design choices you risk making the [Homer car](https://media.wired.com/photos/593252a1edfced5820d0fa07/3:2/w_2240,c_limit/the-homer-inline4.jpg) where you embed your own gut feels instead of following data, user feedback etc. It's actually a sign of a very immature design culture. Good design practices intentionally, knowingly transcend demographic boundaries. You need diverse user input but the actual process of design shouldn't be tightly coupled to the designer's demographic profile. Clearly they are doing something right given Apple products like the iPhone do better with women than men!

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Isofruit@reddit

I think this is by and large true, but also can still fall flat when designers *think* they're adhering to that, but then... forget to check if their motion sensing or facial recognition works worse for any darker skin tone/voice recognition that becomes worse with higher pitched voices or heavy accents.

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ParadiceSC2@reddit

Isn't it that you still need an engineering background to do Industrial design ? Otherwise you don't have the knowledge of what things are possible in reality

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captcanuk@reddit

Very similar to what I’ve heard. I’d add a few that I’ve heard: very large egos, power struggles and toxicity at senior leadership. All some offer is being a whip because they have no leadership skills.

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fadedblackleggings@reddit

Yup, had just one interview with the fruit ppls, and the guy started like ranting and raving, literally screaming at the camera. Had zero interest, if that kind of lunatic is working there.

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Lyraele@reddit

That's all of FAANG now, alas.

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MCPtz@reddit

> many live in SF, and company bus takes up to 2 hours, and it’s mandatory to come in, and they check badge data This has been my blocker. Absolutely anti WFH. Even though they have a bus from Santa Cruz, that's only convenient if you can walk to downtown SC easily. I've known some young and old people who lived around downtown Santa Cruz and took the Apple bus to work. They enjoyed it!

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duderduderes@reddit

Worked there, obviously any company of this size is team dependent but I found: - politics was in pockets - some teams were ultra intense - being in office is strict - pay was quite good especially with the strength of the stock - food was way better than google/meta/etc. The minimum you’re paying actually increases the quality of the food - best gender balance in any workplace I’ve been in

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FlamingTelepath@reddit

Yea the food there was absolutely better than other places, and Apple never had the crazy lines like Google for the good food.

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xSaviorself@reddit

Some comments about gender balance indicating leadership is male-dominated, would you say that's accurate?

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Per_Aspera_Ad_Astra@reddit

A very close friend of mine works at Apple and I can confirm the male dominated culture. she was the only woman on her team for quite some time, then after being promoted to manager she has seen a number of female counterparts resign for a variety of reasons, my opinion is mostly from burn out. the culture to always respond to slack all times of the day and working late into evenings at home is common. She is not a comp sci major, but is in supply chain - ridiculous expectations for work in evenings for quarter end and launches are non stop, sometimes over weekends. when she takes time off she has to compress all that work from those days into other work days, so effectively you aren't taking time off, you are just shifting that work to other work days.

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CompetitiveSubset@reddit

All the things you listed are good except the political part - but that is true for all big corpos. What’s wrong with ”intense”? Who in their right mind wants to work in those places where people come in, eat junk, have meeting and bullshit on slack the entire day?

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kosmos1209@reddit

There’s a happy medium between coasting like you said and working till midnight many nights, which is what I mean by intense. Yes, people ride 4 hours a day on company shuttle, work at office and in the shuttle, then keep working from home after getting home from 7pm till midnight. Same with politics.There is also happy medium in big companies between requiring buy ins from 2 teams vs 20 teams.

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xypherrz@reddit

why many live in SF than in South Bay?

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kosmos1209@reddit

Life outside of work is generally better in SF, especially for people in their 20s and 30s, and some think that crazy commute is worth it.

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MrDilbert@reddit

> some think that crazy commute is worth it. Especially if you don't have to drive yourself. Instead of focusing on the road and the traffic, you can do something else.

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Tenelia@reddit

Lol... Wait till you see Google or other big tech. They're all political and/or intense. And so many folks coast along barely fixing bugs properly.

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Safe-Habit811@reddit

Especially amazon.

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max123246@reddit

Oh wow, I'm surprised that pretty much none of these are true for Nvidia besides the food not being free. I'd have assumed Apple would run more like a software company than a hardware company but I guess not

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1finite@reddit

Ex-Apple, spent almost a decade there and this is 100% correct

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Nervous-Till4096@reddit

I could go work for my friend at Apple anytime but I don’t want to have to go into the office at Cupertino!

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SequentialHustle@reddit

My friend has been there for almost 4 years and the team he is on didn't even LC interview him. Seems a lot of people on his team have been there 10-15+ years and are workaholics.

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Tall-Introduction414@reddit

> The tools and frameworks they use are extremely outdated In other words... high-performance native code, not javascript framework garbage?

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SequentialHustle@reddit

No, the team he is on is using an ancient version of Angular with terrible build tooling.

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Business-Row-478@reddit

So javascript framework garbage?

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SequentialHustle@reddit

2016 JS framework garbage.

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Refmak@reddit

2016 “ancient”… bro what have we become 😭

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improbablywronghere@reddit

That’s a decade old dude

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Refmak@reddit

A decade is FAR from ancient…

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Isofruit@reddit

Relative to JS Framework time it is. For Angular in specific, you're basically at an entirely different framework at that point, because between v2 and v21 the entire way of writing reactivity, tracking dependencies and to a degree also writing components has changed. I've been on versions *close enough* to v2 that I dread to think what more features you'd be missing or if you could even write down declarative dataflow in those in the first place. I assume you're mentally drawing up comparisons to C90 based code, COBOL systems or the like, which fits the descriptor far better. Which is *fair*, but ultimately you're not going to have a pleasant time finding people for any position requiring either. Though I guess in the case of COBOL and similar systems, you'll have almost no chance of finding anyone, while with Angular you have some chance you can train someone at least vaguely familiar with rxjs to learn ancient angular versions. Though given that JS Framework codebases do not tend to be the most valuable thing anyhow, chances are if you let it rot to become that old, you're not willing to expend the money to keep working on it, so the cost of having to train somebody to work with it might as well be infinite because it won't be worth it.

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WJMazepas@reddit

For a framework version? Yes it's ancient. They could update to a newer version just fine

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Tamschi_@reddit

Old Angular versions really aren't very good 😬 (Current is v21.) What's concerning is that they do provide automatic migrations and backwards-compatibility is generally pretty good in Angular, so I can't imagine what their code looks like that they aren't updating. They'd be able to remove a ton of boilerplate and get much better performance with just a semi-manual transliteration. I'm pretty sure the official tooling has quick actions for much of that, too.

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Refmak@reddit

Plenty of companies still run AngularJS or old versions of more obscure frameworks like Riot. Hell plenty of strange PHP apps still float around. Calling a 10 year old technology “ancient” is a bit of a stretch. It’s likely their own code is unmaintainable crap that makes it impossible to update to later versions, but I wouldn’t blame angular for that…

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Tamschi_@reddit

The web platform does evolve much faster than most others though, I would compare the changes there to a 20+ year gap elsewhere. If you run an old framework, that's prone to include slower JS implementations of what's now available natively. Development has also gotten easier to match, at least between Angular 8 and 21, which are the versions I know. It feels like a nearly half reduction in boilerplate and apps seem to compile in a fraction of the time now on a slower machine. You can maintain older apps without upgrading, sure, but I really wouldn't want to develop new features that way. (The situation with PHP is very different in my opinion.)

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Refmak@reddit

IBM mainframes that run COBOL still lives on in the banking world.

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Tamschi_@reddit

Again **VERY** different matter. Outdated JS frameworks leave a lot of performance on the table and are usually relatively easy to update (especially with Angular, unless the app is *really* bad), porting old COBOL systems is far more involved and they're usually plenty efficient as-is. This is something you should know if you have any experience in this sector.

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Refmak@reddit

I swear people like you can’t take a joke… If YuO wErE aN eXpErIeNcEd DeV, yOu WoUlD uNdErStAnD tHe IrOnY.

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Tamschi_@reddit

… I think you're reading things into my posts that aren't there.

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Refmak@reddit

Whatever man I’m not here to argue. My original comment in this thread wasn’t a serious one anyways. Those with experience in irony would understand that.

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Life-Principle-3771@reddit

I know of several major internal sites at Amazon that still use JSP lol.

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PeanutJayGee@reddit

Local man discovers the inexorable march of time.

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sneed_o_matic@reddit

I've used AppStore Connect I can believe it

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ryanheartswingovers@reddit

The most aspirationally named website on the internet. I read “Connect” as a 56k modem noise followed by 5 second spinners any time I try a new page.

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sethkills@reddit

Doing FE webdev at Apple is an interesting case and I could see them being outdated there.

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ZubacToReality@reddit

> leaving after he fully vests High performers always get yearly refreshers so you’re never fully vested. Leaving the most stable tech company in this economy is certainly a choice, good luck to him!

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Reasonable_Salad5220@reddit

I went through this at a big tech shop too. The “never fully vested” thing kept me around way longer than I should’ve stayed. What worked for me was running real numbers on refreshers vs market comp and work-life, then planning an exit date anyway. We modeled this in Carta and Pulley, and Cake Equity later caught dilution and vesting timing details I’d totally skimmed over.

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SequentialHustle@reddit

He’d rather live in a LCOL area, work somewhere less stressful, and has saved enough to do that very comfortably.

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CharlesV_@reddit

I’m guessing they also don’t hire a ton of remote workers?

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SequentialHustle@reddit

It's all in office now.

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upsidedownshaggy@reddit

Ah yes, the popular goose farmer pivot.

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ZubacToReality@reddit

These “I want to live on a farm” mfs are a dime a dozen lol I’ve encountered many and they’re all still “waiting to vest”

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upsidedownshaggy@reddit

Well yeah, running a farm is expensive. That's why so many family farms are being sold to large corporate farms who make up the expenses through sheer volume being grown and sold. There's a reason the US federal government has been subsidizing the shit out of the farming industry since 1933

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CorrectPeanut5@reddit

I'm not surprised out some of the outdated nature. I know folks who have to work with the designers there. You get nonsensical drafts and specs that have to be completely redone by teams who know what they are doing.

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allllusernamestaken@reddit

like every other big company, it's highly team-dependent. Apple has more of a "if it ain't broke" philosophy towards their software than others so they're fine keeping old JS frameworks and not willing to rewrite every few years just because. But they are also using the latest tech in spots and still producing novel, often cutting edge, work in parts of the company so there are opportunities to do cool things.

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PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit

How is he burnt out if dealing with low competence team, just work less?

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SequentialHustle@reddit

When did I say the team was low competence. I said he’s encountered people who are which surprised him upon joining.

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PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit

Oh you didn’t exactly make it sound like competence was a key skill on the majority of the people there

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kaflarlalar@reddit

I've got a few friends who work at Apple, and while they seem to like it, I wouldn't want to work there. Apple is a hardware company. It is not always fun being a software engineer at a hardware company. You aren't going to have the same level of internal respect that you'd get at a software-first company like any of the other FAANGs. Besides that. Apple is very serious about industrial espionage and takes information security seriously. My friends have all seen people get fired on the spot for infractions that would be a slap on the wrist at other companies. I don't need that kind of stress in my life.

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dorkyitguy@reddit

For the same reason I don’t work for the military or law enforcement: I don’t want to be part of the problem. Instead, I work for a hospital. Things might not be perfect, but I know that the end goal is to help people. I don’t see that big tech is really doing anything to make the world better.

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th3l33tbmc@reddit

Absolutely. Core tech ceased to serve humanity in any meaningful sense a long time ago. Now it’s just as abusive and toxic as private equity or real estate, just more complicated, faster, and bigger. The US can’t really produce things of any real value to people without enshittifying them nearly immediately.

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mgodave@reddit

I got in to Apple the right out as soon as I could. I spent my time in services.

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Idiopathic_Sapien@reddit

I learned that I don’t want to be in that kind of pressure cooker. Unless the money is life changing and they could promise the autonomy I’m used to.

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softcore_ironman@reddit

I work at Apple. My dev team is very laid back. Badging in 3 days a week is a requirement, but we only stay in the office a couple hours a week. No badging out anywhere. Obvious amount of politics in my team. Would actually consider leaving the company if it wasn't one of the more stable ones, especially in this economy.

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SolidDeveloper@reddit

What is “badging in/out”?

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nigirizushi@reddit

I'm genuinely curious, in 17 years, you've never had to do it? Even to badge into parking building?

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SolidDeveloper@reddit

Yes. I was just unaware of the “badging in/out” term. We’d just say “swipe your keycard” or “tap your fob”. And even then, it wasn’t used as an expression for going to the office, just for getting in/out.

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DanLynch@reddit

Using your key card to enter/exit the office building.

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kevstev@reddit

An important distinction here is that they don't require you to swipe to leave the building- meaning they can't track you on that metric. So you could theoretically come in, go to a meeting and get lunch, and then immediately leave and get your "credit." When my company tried to RTO me in the still kinda scary part of the pandemic (policy was to mask up to use the bathroom for example), and we had free lunch, I would come in the morning, get lunch as it was served, and leave. This was made easier by the fact that it was not the main office- we were allowed to go to satellite offices since mass transit was considered a big no no and was also not really running. There are other means of tracking though, my wife's company actually tracks their wifi connections.

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TheMaddMan1@reddit

I recall last time I visited Apple there was at least one exit door that was badged, and nobody tailgated without badging themselves

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beatlemaniac007@reddit

> I see so few seniors trying to get a position Where are you looking to see this? Just curious. I imagine they might be less visible on the software side of things compared to other big tech?

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balalaikaboss@reddit

At least from an Ops standpoint, Apple is known in industry to be a tire-fire that burns staff out and replaces them quickly. I can't speak to the dev side.

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sethkills@reddit

I was there for 5 years and had a very positive experience. If the company’s values and approach to technology in general appeal to you then that can be a huge factor. Like others have said it’s extremely insular and experiences across groups can vary a lot.

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Valuable_Ad9554@reddit

Personally never seen the appeal of being an insignificant cog in such a massive machine, feel like that would be the case for any big place like Apple. Fortunately have always managed to be in small to medium size places with more of a startup vibe.

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Intelligent-Turnup@reddit

I was all ready to get on my "I eat apples for breakfast" horse and how you couldn't pay me to work at Apple... ...but I also feel much the same way about Google, Microsoft, and Adobe. At one point I loved these companies (but not Apple) or rather I loved the products they produced. It's been over a decade since I've had any love for them now. Would I take a job offered by any of them? Probably not. I've gotten into a great job with a boss that I'd nearly sell my soul for. To consider going anywhere else it no longer becomes about the pay or status of saying I worked at XYZ. It becomes about culture - and how good I get along with the boss. I'll take the flexibility, space to do what I do best, and good relationships (along with a livable wage) every time.

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Coroebus@reddit

Better things to kill ourselves over than a walled garden of software by and for shallow egotists worshiping narcissistic abusers. Your contribution is reasonable and not off topic. Fuck the haters.

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Covet-@reddit

OP asked about Apple, but you just talked about yourself

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max123246@reddit

They might be an LLM? Hard to tell with the private account. Lol your comment hit home with me because I'm always deeply self conscious about whether I talk too much about myself when I do genuinely just want to share my experiences in the hope the other people can follow up with their own takes

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Intelligent-Turnup@reddit

No, I just value privacy. And yes, that's what I was trying to share. I thought my experience would shed some light and illustrate that it's not all about FAANG.

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Intelligent-Turnup@reddit

Was that not answering the question? OP asked why - I shared my perspective... I'll remove it if that really wasn't wanted.

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Coroebus@reddit

A smart and healthy senior won't go and work at a toxic cult like Apple.

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Zalkium@reddit

Given the commentary about Apple’s competence here, I’m surprised they have such a lead in silicon and OS performance, ecosystem, etc. Does that just mean that Intel is even worse, to the point of comical incompetence? Most of the commentary is for software but still would be surprised if the culture doesn’t permeate between divisions

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funny_lyfe@reddit

Yes all big tech is frankly comical level of idiocy. I haven't worked faang but I did work in another big tech and things were always political. As for Apple silicon. The business model is different. Apple buys RAM, Storage, and makes its own motherboard etc Basically fully integrated. They make money on selling the MacBook. Intel on the other hand has dozens of internal projects. The die sizes will affect their margins. So they choose smaller die for cores with high frequency. Apple has relatively bigger cores and they don't have to worry about x86 legacy which makes the cores less efficient. If you check it the new Panther Lake performance is getting close and battery seems to be better than Apple. So if Intel wanted a big fat core and was selling laptops directly and not processors, they could have also upped IPC.

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BTTLC@reddit

Interview process kinda ass. Kinda wish that they had a more generalized pipeline with teammatch after. Went through 6 hrs of interviews only to be told they filled out their headcount and i’d be placed on a shortlist for when more hc opens for the org. 3 months later, nothing, and I ended up accepting an offer elsewhere. What a waste of time.

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diablo1128@reddit

15 YOE working on embedded devices and I would love to work at apple. I've interviewed multiple times and never get an offer despite getting to "final interviews" after the onsite. I'm just always 2nd or 3rd choice I guess.

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barrel_of_noodles@reddit

Were all just tired boss. I'm happy at my mid level job at a family run agency that understands I have a family and pays well enough and allows me to work almost fully remote. Why the hell would i want to be in a rat race? That's a young man's game.

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ListenLady58@reddit

I used to have an interest in working for big FAANG companies, but it’s honestly seems like a shit show of a life from what I hear in the news and on Reddit.

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twohertbrain@reddit

I don’t think it’s as comfortable as it looks from the outside. That closed off, boxed-in feeling works well for some people, but for others it would probably feel suffocating. Seems like a personality thing more than anything.

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Ch3t@reddit

Maybe because of stuff like [this.](https://www.theverge.com/news/737757/apple-president-donald-trump-ceo-tim-cook-glass-corning)

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zeke780@reddit

Friend just took a job there. Had to move, in office 4 days I think. Took a pay cut. They are out there but I think there just isnt the crazy pay packages or remote work so people dont even look. I am interviewing now and wont be applying there, mainly because I dont want to relocate.

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joe0418@reddit

My understanding is that they don't offer remote roles. That immediately checked them off my list.

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Fantastic-Age1099@reddit

the tight-lipped culture cuts both ways. low drama, no layoffs, stable - but hard to know what you're walking into until you're in. most seniors i know who passed on Apple did it because they couldn't get a clear read on the team before accepting.

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RandomPantsAppear@reddit

Even internally the Apple software teams are regarded as subpar. Majority of respect and investment is industrial design, mechanical engineering, and operations.

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keyboard_operator@reddit

Does anyone happen to be familiar with the hiring process for the CoreOS team in London? I'm currently preparing for an interview and would appreciate any insights. [https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200637131-2114/kernel-engineer-coreos?team=SFTWR](https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200637131-2114/kernel-engineer-coreos?team=SFTWR)

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vinnymcapplesauce@reddit

Apple is \*extremely\* political. Or, at least, it used to be. Every time I interviewed at Apple, I ended up noping out of it because you could just see it was not a good place to work if you cared about your mental health. If I was younger, maybe I would have done it. But, the older I get, the more important work/life balance is to me. And I don't want to always be scheming how to get ahead, or looking behind my back every hour at work.

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Vivid_Image_5851@reddit

maybe it's the tight lipped culture that keeps them there longer. less leaks, more stability

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One-Tale5211@reddit

maybe they prefer stability over prestige

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Short-Situation-4137@reddit

Because Apple (and the rest of FANG) isn't anymore what it was 15 years ago.

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Deranged40@reddit

>Why do I see so few seniors people trying to get a position at Apple Because your view of "people trying to get positions" is not normally distributed, probably.

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Over_Mousse6683@reddit

reminds me of when i considered applying there

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Minimum-Reward3264@reddit

Apple is big on contractors. It’s hard to get in full time. That’s the reason why don’t hear about the layoffs, they just terminate not renew the contract and you are gone.

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thekwoka@reddit

If they have low turnover, then there aren't a ton of positions to take.

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honestduane@reddit

It’s because the TC is lower and they have a realistic expectations about expecting you to relocate or commute for hours a day. The market has changed to the point where you can actually make more money working fully remotely from home than working for them onsite .

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pwndawg27@reddit

If Apple has a similar 4 round leetcode gauntlet as the other FAANGs then the pay isnt there. Not to say apple isnt great, they are stable and maybe thats the tradeoff, but if I have to grind LC for a quarter Im naturally going to be more interested in higher offers for that same amount of lrep.

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West-Design-9809@reddit

Apple is bewilderingly siloed which seems on the surface at least like it makes staff+ work very difficult. It’s one of the main reasons I haven’t tried to work there at least.

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Paul721@reddit

At this point in its lifecycle it’s a great career company. They don’t pay that great but interesting work and much higher levels of stability than the rest of the tech industry. A lot of folks chase the big payouts elsewhere and just deal with the whiplash. So you just don’t hear them so much.

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zoe_bletchdel@reddit

Honestly, I've never applied simply because I don't think I could get in. I'm just not an expert in their tech stack, nor do I want to become one.

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Routine_Internal_771@reddit

Apple's like a quant fund: they don't talk about it online

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dagamer34@reddit

Because every team is different, it’s not worth generalizing all that much. Because every team interviews differently, it’s not worth worrying about specifically. Because the company is pretty oriented around hardware release schedule even as a SWE, it’s going to be unlike every other company in the Valley. Because the level of integration for software they ship on a yearly basis (honestly, no other company ships 5 operating systems with new versions at once), getting all your ducks in a row is itself a job. In other words, no other company is like Apple. A good and bad thing based your previous experiences. Everything else requires discussion of a particular team to be fruitful (pun intended).

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Dangerous-Sale3243@reddit

Compensation is not great and a lot of politics means you cant just show up and get promoted, you need to spend years building relationships.

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