Adam Noffsinger

Apple was all I hoped it would be.

I never thought of it as an option earlier in my career, either because I felt it was unattainable, or because it felt like a mythical design team with little outside visibility. I think that's starting to change now in some ways. I still remember the specific moment I realized I might be able to work there and how focused I became on it after that.

Should you temper your expectations? Definitely. That's true for Apple or any other company. There's no such thing as a perfect place to work. 

Here are some takeaways from my time there I've shared with others before.

1. The work is unparalleled

At Apple, you'll work on large and meaningful problems. The types of problems that can only be solved by a company with Apple's resources, appetite, and hardware footprint. You'll also likely be taking on those problems with a smaller team and wider influence than you might think. 

You'll get to design within Apple's expansive and cohesive hardware and software ecosystem—often using technologies and patterns a year or more from release. It's the only large tech company that has an ecosystem that you want to work across and support. While the ecosystem is great, it's also accompanied by a deep legacy of design decisions that pervades the design team and provides a common language.

That common language also doesn't stop with the design team. Across disciplines and levels of seniority, there's a shared understanding of a quality bar that must be met. Apple's tenured employees, of which there are many, help engrain this understanding across the design team and company. Of course, that doesn't mean that everyone is always marching in the same direction—there are plenty of disagreements.

2. The people are incredibly talented

Across all disciplines, you'll work with people who care deeply about their craft, because Apple values those types of people. That value is apparent across ICs, managers, and executives.

Before joining Apple, I knew that many of the best designers I'd worked with were already there, but I wasn't prepared for the deep wells of talent that have existed there for years (in some cases, decades) and certainly don't care about Design Twitter. Meeting those folks and seeing the incredible work they produced gave me an appreciation for different ways of working and introduced me to new toolsets. There are many ways to make great things and it doesn't matter what tool you use to get there.

These folks were also accessible and happy to help out. Some highlights for me were chatting with early iOS designers, designers behind some of Apple's most iconic UI motion, and one of the creators of SwiftUI.

3. Designers have more responsibility

Being a designer at Apple means you'll wear many hats and have more ownership. You'll also be surrounded by a design team that skews senior.

Teams are leaner than you might expect and you'll be responsible for most facets of a project from inception to launch. This means focusing on product strategy in the upfront, using your intuition in the relative absence of research, writing copy (although sometimes you'll have a writer), and most critically, selling your work by presenting it across your organization and up the executive ladder many times. 

This might not sound wildly different from what you do now, but for me, it felt like I had fewer cross-functional partners to rely on. Executive presentations were high stakes and yielded intense debate and detailed design feedback. However, the feedback was almost always "right" and I was consistently impressed by leadership.

4. Long release cycles mean more iteration

Apple has one release date per year per operating system, with a few incremental "dot" releases targeted at bug fixes. This means long cycles for design iteration. These long cycles are part of the secret sauce that helps Apple make great stuff. In practice, it means that you'll make every possible version of a design—likely at the highest possible fidelity. I'd often have to start new files in Sketch (that's right, Sketch) due to huge files causing crashes.

There's also no aversion to changing a project's direction at any point in the process. Apple always makes the best possible experience for the customer. If the work hasn't reached the quality bar I mentioned earlier, it just won't ship. Apple has this luxury because it makes its money on hardware. Apple's software, with the exception of some services, helps sell hardware. There's less pressure to ship a subpar feature because it's just one small slice of a far greater whole that no one wants to degrade.

This all helped me become less attached to specific executions and taught me to push back against the rush to ship subpar product that pervades many tech companies. I recognize that Apple is in a unique (and luxurious) position, but it's a good guiding light for anyone's work.

5. The culture is secretive and unstructured

I won't go into great depth about secrecy at Apple, because a ton has been written about it. What's important to know, is that projects are shared on a need-to-know basis. Across teams and within teams, there are different levels of disclosure about what's being built. This has cultural ramifications that are difficult to describe, but significant.

At the same time, teams have autonomy in deciding how to operate. My team felt like its own startup within the larger company. Compared to other places I've worked, there were less established processes—whether for onboarding, collaborating with cross-functional partners, or interviewing candidates. This wasn't bad or good, but it subverted my expectations for a company the size of Apple. There was a certain simplicity to the lack of structure that led to "just figuring it out." In some ways, this experience drew parallels to the practice of designing based on intuition that I mentioned earlier.

6. Your team matters

Given the insularity of teams, each one that I worked with seemed like it had it's own micro-culture within the larger company. Since you'll be working mostly with those people, if you're thinking about a job at Apple, dig deeply into what the team is like, how they like to work, and how they report through the executive ladder and what those relationships are like.

It's also worth noting that there are many different design studios and embedded pods throughout Apple. There are certainly many I don't even know about. The two largest studios are the Platform studio, which was historically run by Jony Ive and now Alan Dye, and the Services studio, which works on many of the standalone apps that Apple monetizes like Music, Maps, iCloud, Apple Pay and Wallet, and more. I was in the latter studio. The studios have different cultures and that will color your experience.

In summary, I'd say Apple design culture is intense. 

If you're motivated by work quality and access to incredibly talented people, there's no better place to be. If you're driven by shipping fast and work-life balance (we didn't even talk about the commute), you might struggle. Regardless of what motivates you, there's no doubt that working at Apple will make you a better designer and challenge how you approach design.

Of course, everything I've shared here is only reflective of my experience. As I mentioned, there are many pockets of design at Apple into which I have no insight and which operate in their own ways. I only worked at Apple for two years, most of which were remote. 

If you're thinking of working at Apple, there are a number of designers there with far more experience than myself whom you should seek out for advice. I did and it was very helpful.

I never thought of it as an option earlier in my career, either because I felt it was unattainable, or because it felt like a mythical design team with little outside visibility. I think that's starting to change now in some ways. I still remember the specific moment I realized I might be able to work there and how focused I became on it after that.

Should you temper your expectations? Definitely. That's true for Apple or any other company. There's no such thing as a perfect place to work. 

Here are some takeaways from my time there I've shared with others before.

At Apple, you'll work on large and meaningful problems. The types of problems that can only be solved by a company with Apple's resources, appetite, and hardware footprint. You'll also likely be taking on those problems with a smaller team and wider influence than you might think. 

You'll get to design within Apple's expansive and cohesive hardware and software ecosystem—often using technologies and patterns a year or more from release. It's the only large tech company that has an ecosystem that you 

 to work across and support. While the ecosystem is great, it's also accompanied by a deep legacy of design decisions that pervades the design team and provides a common language.

That common language also doesn't stop with the design team. Across disciplines and levels of seniority, there's a shared understanding of a quality bar that must be met. Apple's tenured employees, of which there are many, help engrain this understanding across the design team and company. Of course, that doesn't mean that everyone is always marching in the same direction—there are plenty of disagreements.

Across all disciplines, you'll work with people who care deeply about their craft, because Apple values those types of people. That value is apparent across ICs, managers, and executives.

Before joining Apple, I knew that many of the best designers I'd worked with were already there, but I wasn't prepared for the deep wells of talent that have existed there for years (in some cases, decades) and certainly don't care about Design Twitter. Meeting those folks and seeing the incredible work they produced gave me an appreciation for different ways of working and introduced me to new toolsets. There are many ways to make great things and it doesn't matter what tool you use to get there.

These folks were also accessible and happy to help out. Some highlights for me were chatting with early iOS designers, designers behind some of Apple's most iconic UI motion, and one of the creators of SwiftUI.

Being a designer at Apple means you'll wear many hats and have more ownership. You'll also be surrounded by a design team that skews senior.

Teams are leaner than you might expect and you'll be responsible for most facets of a project from inception to launch. This means focusing on product strategy in the upfront, using your intuition in the relative absence of research, writing copy (although sometimes you'll have a writer), and most critically, selling your work by presenting it across your organization and up the executive ladder many times. 

This might not sound wildly different from what you do now, but for me, it felt like I had fewer cross-functional partners to rely on. Executive presentations were high stakes and yielded intense debate and detailed design feedback. However, the feedback was almost always "right" and I was consistently impressed by leadership.

4. Long release cycles mean more iteration

Apple has one release date per year per operating system, with a few incremental "dot" releases targeted at bug fixes. This means long cycles for design iteration. These long cycles are part of the secret sauce that helps Apple make great stuff. In practice, it means that you'll make every possible version of a design—likely at the highest possible fidelity. I'd often have to start new files in Sketch (that's right, Sketch) due to huge files causing crashes.

There's also no aversion to changing a project's direction at any point in the process. Apple always makes the best possible experience for the customer. If the work hasn't reached the quality bar I mentioned earlier, it just won't ship. Apple has this luxury because it makes its money on hardware. Apple's software, with the exception of some services, helps sell hardware. There's less pressure to ship a subpar feature because it's just one small slice of a far greater whole that no one wants to degrade.

This all helped me become less attached to specific executions and taught me to push back against the rush to ship subpar product that pervades many tech companies. I recognize that Apple is in a unique (and luxurious) position, but it's a good guiding light for anyone's work.

5. The culture is secretive and unstructured

I won't go into great depth about secrecy at Apple, because a ton has been written about it. What's important to know, is that projects are shared on a need-to-know basis. Across teams and within teams, there are different levels of disclosure about what's being built. This has cultural ramifications that are difficult to describe, but significant.

At the same time, teams have autonomy in deciding how to operate. My team felt like its own startup within the larger company. Compared to other places I've worked, there were less established processes—whether for onboarding, collaborating with cross-functional partners, or interviewing candidates. This wasn't bad or good, but it subverted my expectations for a company the size of Apple. There was a certain simplicity to the lack of structure that led to "just figuring it out." In some ways, this experience drew parallels to the practice of designing based on intuition that I mentioned earlier.

Given the insularity of teams, each one that I worked with seemed like it had it's own micro-culture within the larger company. Since you'll be working mostly with those people, if you're thinking about a job at Apple, dig deeply into what the team is like, how they like to work, and how they report through the executive ladder and what those relationships are like.

It's also worth noting that there are many different design studios and embedded pods throughout Apple. There are certainly many I don't even know about. The two largest studios are the Platform studio, which was historically run by Jony Ive and now Alan Dye, and the Services studio, which works on many of the standalone apps that Apple monetizes like Music, Maps, iCloud, Apple Pay and Wallet, and more. I was in the latter studio. The studios have different cultures and that will color your experience.

In summary, I'd say Apple design culture is intense. 

If you're motivated by work quality and access to incredibly talented people, there's no better place to be. If you're driven by shipping fast and work-life balance (we didn't even talk about the commute), you might struggle. Regardless of what motivates you, there's no doubt that working at Apple will make you a better designer and challenge how you approach design.

Of course, everything I've shared here is only reflective of my experience. As I mentioned, there are many pockets of design at Apple into which I have no insight and which operate in their own ways. I only worked at Apple for two years, most of which were remote. 

If you're thinking of working at Apple, there are a number of designers there with far more experience than myself whom you should seek out for advice. I did and it was very helpful.

I'm an apple fanboy and design engineer and I can not think of a place I'd rather have the experience of working than at Apple. I kind of see that as the peak of my career sometime in the future, but haven't gotten there yet. How was it? Should I temper my expectations?

Adam Noffsinger

Was working at Apple all you hoped it would be?

Subscribe to Adam Noffsinger

Adam Noffsinger