Difficult Interview – Overall Positive Experience – Yes, and I accepted – Fri, 1 Aug 2014
Interviewed May 2014 in Cupertino, CA(took 6 weeks)
Got nowhere submitting my resume through their website. Used a referral from a friend and I got an interview very quickly. They are hiring a lot of people now so I actually interviewed for 3 different positions. I had no phone interview, and skipped directly to on-site interviews, although maybe this is because I was local (Silicon Valley area). I was at the Cupertino campus for 3 whole days from 8am to 6pm, meeting with a new person every 30-60 minutes. Each person, mostly engineers, would ask me a bit about my experience for about 10 minutes and then spend the rest of the time working out some kind of whiteboard problem. Most asked me to design some circuits or systems, while some others were derivations. Everyone was fairly young and very energetic. I came out of each day of interviews exhilarated but exhausted. By the end of the last day, I was so tired that I could not answer a very basic question. I should have been able to give the right answer just by looking at the circuit diagram, but I needed to derive the transfer function by hand. When I finished the derivation, I was like ... duh... It was kind of like doing a big long mathematical proof that 2+2 does indeed equal 4.
In the end all 3 groups wanted to hire me, but I was instructed to pick one before they made an offer. I knew which position I wanted, but I took a week to talk with the hiring managers each individually and also some employees to verify. After I made my decision, it took longer than I thought necessary to get me the offer, but they are a big company so these things can take some time when there's bureaucracy involved. Communication with the recruiter was excellent throughout the process.
Apple is such a secretive company that I did not even know exactly what I would be doing until I started. The people interviewing me could not tell me any details, and I did not see a single lab or piece of hardware during my interviews. Also, Apple has a need-to-know culture, as in if you need to know something to do your job they'll get you access, but otherwise you don't get access. So when interviewing competitively for several groups, a guy from group A has only a vague idea what guys from group B are working on.
In many ways the interview is a preview of what it's like to work there. It's very fast-paced, secretive, and you really need to know your stuff. But I would stress that fundamental analytical skills trump specific knowledge. Apple was different from many other places I interviewed in that they didn't really care so much about my exact knowledge as in how well I could apply it. And that's necessary in the day-to-day work since every engineer is given a very high degree of individual responsibility.
Interview Questions
If you have a 10W light bulb and a 100W light bulb, and you connect them together, which one will be brighter?
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Other Details
The interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview and a Background Check