There are tons of other ex-QC people here as well. Hopefully some of them will chime in, but in my opinion, its hands down a far better work environment than QC. Things that are better: company vibe, cafeteria (excellent isn't strong enough word), beer bashes, free snacks (well, depends on you department), discounts on Apple products, better computers (I have 2 side by side 27" monitors and a 15" MBP vs a total piece of shit HP with a 21" monitor that they wouldn't upgrade or something like that back at Q), much better software engineering practices than QC and most of the people are way more skilled in SW, amazing technology (wait until you see what's going on inside here), the upcoming spaceship office building, overall company prestige, up to 2x the 401k matching of QC, to name a few. There are crunch times here, but management is really smart and technically top notch. Some down sides though: start out with 12 days of vacation, many groups are in open office seating arrangements, very little technical training (its assumed that you do that for yourself), no library like QC. But overall, a far superior a place to work. It can be challenging, but overall much more rewarding than QC and if you can get a job at Apple, I would drop QC like a hot potato and move on with your
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My 2 cents are the smart phone market is tapped out, and Apple (or atleast iphone) is going to follow the rest of the industry in a year or two.. IMHO, best to get out of the wireless industry if you have a chance now..
which hotel is it at? Marriot on LJ Village Drive? no invite for me, sounds fun to hang out in the lobby bar and see who from my division is trying to GTFO
You can lead a horse to water...
Apple work environment is just as bad, don't kid yourself. Q doesn't pay as well but then we don't have to worry about owning a $2mil 200sqft house.
Apple is another sweatshop.
Guys, Got Linked in mail from Apple about apple hiring event on 10th Aug...did anyone else got it? .
This is OP. This was originally posted to another thread, but someone must have started this new thread with my reply, not sure why. '913 - Maybe I am lucky and maybe still honeymoon period, although its been several years for me now at A. But why be so perennially pessimistic? Go ahead, look for some perfect employer or just sit around and be dissatisfied @ Q, I don't care. You are probably a lost cause, but others might want to know that there are better options out there. There was a time when Q was the place, but as most of you realize by now, things have reversed and who knows if they will reverse again and get better. In order to have confidence that things will improve (and I'm not talking business wise, I'm talking about what it feels like to work there, so work culture), I would be looking for candid statements from management along the lines of, "we know we have problems X, Y, and Z and this is specifically what we intend to do about them", and then see them follow through. If I were them, I would acknowledge that they read this web site and understand the issues that people are saying and come up with ideas to address them. I never saw or heard of that happening when I was there. Its amazing, because if you f*ed up, they would expect you to have a specific plan put forth for how you would resolve it and they would hold you to it. But when they screw up everything, well, somehow they aren't being held to the same standard. So go ahead and slave away there so you can make them more millions on their stock options/bonuses while you aren't really doing good engineering work anymore, suffer further skills degradation, face layoffs, and reduced benefits. '979, while I would agree with you, I would say that the density of jacka$$ and dumba$$ @ A is lower, but its never == 0. Look, if A isnt your thing, thats fine. I'll admit that it does take a certain amount of fan-boyishness to work there. But in my book, thats a good thing. It means that people have passion, and that was something that I really felt was missing from Q. Somehow, the corporate environment of Q just sucked that you of you, esp if you are in QCT. Whats amazing is that the people @ Q are actually smart and capable, but the problems were systemic corporate rot that got out of hand, unchecked by management (which is their job, btw, to, you know, actually, like, manage).
I've worked at both companies, and NO!!! Qualcomm IS NOT Apple. They're worlds apart in management, intelligence, work atmosphere and how they treat employees. Apple knows how to retain employees, whereas Qualcomm likes to pound their chest and say how nice employees have it. Maybe that was up to 2000, but now QC covers their asses and only looks out for Executives and the shareholders.
Plus some of us don't want to work on iOS.
OP could still be in his Honeymoon phase and hasnt endured the jacka$$ manager or other dumba$$ coworkers. They exist in all companies.
Not everyone wants to work for Apple. Grass isn't always greener on the other side. I've heard many horrible stories coming out of Apple. Besides, do the opportunities that Apple offers really fit with what you want to do? Are they meaningful? Don't just join for the brand name. There are other companies. Don't just say Apple, google, or facebook all day. Do they fit with what you want to do?
Care to elaborate how is it bad? I don't believe any well established long standing large and prosperous company, specially in SV, can be as horrible as QC management. In general "perks" are not what keeps people going. But some form of self satisfaction of having done/contributed something meaningful at the end of the day. At Q, even if you do achieve something, the management will somehow overshadow your contributions and steal credit and shut you up with "QualStars". You have to go around advertising your existance and self promoting your contributions for recognition. Which real engineer really has time for this..
Not what I've heard from 3-4 people, I've heard it's worse, maybe you're lucky