The Genius Design of Apple Park

Used to work there pre-pandemic. Beautiful campus, but gets old after a week or two. The walk from the main parking structure was a good 12-15 minutes. The building lacked any sort of color besides the occasional tree and that rainbow stage they added later. Also there was a huge wildfire in NorCal one year and because of the "unique" HVAC system AP has, it could not filter out the smoke and actually invited more of it in which caused a lot of breathing/smelling issues. We were told to WFH during that week because of how bad it smelled in AP and how terrible the HVAC was to prevent it. Also, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary to suffer seasonal depression at Apple Park because it's just so much white/grey that it felt like sensory depravation. Shared working environment was more of a nuisance than anything, it was loud, sometimes unruly with people shuffling in and out, you couldn't have 1:1s with your boss privately so you usually had to take a walk to have the 1:1 and pray no one was eavesdropping. Food was decent, but wasn't free. The only free things you got was coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and water (room temp, chilled, hot, or carbonated). They say it's subsidized, but it started becoming more expensive throughout the years whereas it was just as much as going out for lunch. People who worked at AP sometimes would rather work out of the nearby satellite offices just to be able to park and go into the office much more easily. The circular building is massive and you'll be doing lots of walking. Apple has a pretty toxic work culture, it's supposedly a bridge between technology and liberal arts, but that recipe brews toxicity and a dog-eat-dog culture. Lots of kool-aid is drank at Apple as well, if you want to float a new idea you'll be met with "it's Apple's way or the highway". Also a decent amount of people who worship Steve Jobs still, which is pretty cringey once you've learned how terrible Steve really was as a human being. If you want to work in tech in the SF Bay Area avoid Apple or Amazon. Google and Meta (despite how much crap Meta gets in the news as of late, still treats their employees incredibly well) is where you want to aim. So many perks like free food, snacks, beers on tap, rock climbing, outdoor activities, arcade rooms, karaoke, etc. There are smaller tech companies that model their business like Google and Meta as well that you should take a look at. Don't go to Apple or Amazon unless you're willing to sacrifice work life balance and become a shell of your former self. If you want a glimpse of what it's like to work at Apple (albeit a bit exaggerated) watch Severance the TV show, which is (hilarious and ironically) on Apple TV's platform.