Working at Apple is a dream job for a lot of techies but it’s also clearly not for everyone. Business Insider has done a great job of combing the Internet for every gripe and complaint it could find from current and former Apple employees on websites such as Quora and Glassdoor that describe the very worst aspects of working at the world’s most valuable tech company.
What a lot of the complaints boil down to is this: Apple has incredibly high standards, it’s ridiculously inflexible with the hours it expects you to work and the company’s obsession with secrecy borders on paranoia.
“Generally speaking it is a pressure cooker and all communication is one directional (guess which way that is),” one anonymous Apple employee wrote on Quora. “Paranoid management, disrespect, constant tension, and long hours sum up most of the real culture in operations… Most of the people in SDM (supply demand management) see it as something they need to suck up for a few painful years after b-school so they can move on to a better gig with the Apple brand on their resume.”
Of course, this sort of pressure-cooker environment is by many accounts the same type of environment that Apple had back when Steve Jobs was running the show. And apparently it’s actually now marginally less intense than it used to be when Jobs served as CEO — according to author Yukari Kane, Tim Cook actually respects employees’ need to take vacations whereas Jobs would regularly call employees back from vacations or would make employees work on Christmas on a whim.
Business Insider’s full roundup of Apple employee complaints is worth reading in its entirety and can be found by clicking on the source link below.
