Apple tumbled 48 spots on Glassdoor's 'best places to work' list
Facebook (FB) may have reclaimed the No. 1 spot on Glassdoor’s “100 Best Places to Work in the U.S.” this year, but Apple (AAPL) didn’t fare quite as well. The Cupertino, California, tech giant saw its rank tumble 48 spots from No. 36 to No. 84 on the same list.
To be fair, Apple remains a highly rated employer, with a 4.3 out of 5 rating at the time Glassdoor compiled the list — a rating that inched up slightly by 0.1 versus last year. However, several other tech companies surpassed Apple in the process, including Google (GOOG, GOOGL) at No. 5, HubSpot at No. 7, World Wide Technology at No. 8, Ultimate Software (ULTI) at No. 10., Yahoo at No. 65 and VMWare (VMW) at No. 33.
Many Apple employees, who anonymously reviewed the company on Glassdoor, listed “pros” such as great benefits, great colleagues to work with and the ability to work from home. But so-called “cons” for working at Apple hinted at a company that is “strapped for resources,” offers a poor work-life balance for some, internal politics that make it difficult for some employees to move up the ladder, and high pressure to “deliver at a high standard with quick turnaround.”
Also cited: lack of free lunch for corporate employees — a commonplace Silicon Valley perk offered by companies like Facebook and Google — and Apple’s widely known “culture of secrecy.”
Apple’s tumble down Glassdoor’s list occurs during an otherwise excellent year for the company, which performed well financially. The tech giant beat earnings expectations during its most recent quarter. On the product side, 2017 also marked the 10th anniversary of its bestselling iPhone product line, as well as the launch of the long-awaited iPhone X, unveiled at Apple’s new $5 billion Apple Park campus. My colleague David Pogue hailed the new smartphone as a “far more exciting leap than the incremental upgrades we’ve seen in recent iPhone models.”
As Facebook’s tumultuous year in the public eye hasn’t affected employees’ affinity for working at the social network, conversely, gripes by some Apple employees clearly haven’t affected the company’s bottom line. There may, however, be a connection between some of that employee feedback — some teams allegedly being “strapped for resources,” for instance — and some of the more recent iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra software problems users have complained about recently.
Apple did not respond with a comment in time for the publication of this story.
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JP Mangalindan is the Chief Tech Correspondent for Yahoo Finance covering the intersection of tech and business. Email story tips and musings to [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook.
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