Last November, I interviewed at Apple and it was a very negative experience. Their recruiters and schedulers made critical oversights at every step of the way. After several weeks of phone screens, I was invited for an onsite. Despite repeated emails to the recruiter requesting prep information, nobody responded until literally the night before, and even then did not include basics such as where to go, park, who to ask for, etc. This was especially stressful given the fact I was flown in from out of state. Thankfully I knew what the interview itself would consist of based off of the fact I'm an interviewer in a similar capacity at a different company. Compare this process to somewhere like Amazon, where they are extremely structured and clear regarding how to communicate expectations to the interviewee. The team I met was very pleasant to interact with. My portfolio presentation had over 30 people in it which was unusual; every other loop I've done only has your 1:1 interviewers present in the folio review. There was also not really any structure to my 1 on 1s. I just talked to a handful of people where it seemed like they were trying to get a sense of my personality but they did not ask pointed questions related to a topic. Ultimately, despite feeling like I had to overcome sabotage from the recruiting team, I felt pretty good about the experience and thought I had a really great shot. Then fast forward a week and find out that apparently the recruiters missed a crucial step of having me complete a design exercise prior to the onsite. First of all, I despise design homework. If you can't learn enough about a designer's process and approach in an onsite & their portfolio then you don't know how to interview. Second of all, it's now Thanksgiving. I was told to complete this exercise in 2 days on Thanksgiving weekend, missing time with my family. Also, the team did not know what kind of design homework to even give me, given that this was for a specialized role on their team- they had to scramble to contrive an exercise after consulting with outside teams. If you don't even know what to look for in an exercise, why bother having me do it? Despite this, I still managed to create a 70 page design deck that explored 10 different scenarios they provided. That's right, 10 scenarios in 2 days on Thanksgiving. This is a taste of some of that infamous Apple WLB I've read so much about. After the rush to complete this exercise, I submit on Monday morning just to find out that the team is now on Christmas break and I will not be able to present the work to them for another month. Thanks, recruiters! Fast forward to mid-January, I'm invited to present my design homework to the team remotely from a satellite office near where I live, and then follow up with a 1 on 1 with a PM who had joined the team in the 2 months since I last interviewed. What a trainwreck. On the call were designers from an outside team whom I've never met, and they took the opportunity to really jump down my throat to see how I'd react. It's not the first time I've had someone behave in such a way in a design crit, but it was definitely telling as to what their culture is like. There was just generally such an air of dismissiveness and disdain which isn't OK, even in crits. It certainly didn't help that I had to defend work I did 2 months ago. After that, my 1 on 1 was a stark contrast from the onsite I had in November. The PM I met with was extremely rude and standoffish - she had just come from Amazon a month prior and you could tell she still carried that culture with her. The entire visit just left me feeling blindsided; the vibe and attitude from everyone was so starkly different from my initial visit. Ultimately, things did not work out. Speaking to friends within the company, I had the job up until the final design exercise. I strongly believe the recruiters did not put me in a position to succeed, but I was also so thirsty to work for Apple that I overlooked numerous red flags. I don't know if anybody who was on my interview was even aware of all the obstacles I had to face, not that it matters, but some understanding would have been nice. After investing 4 months of my life during holiday season just to see how disorganized and at times unprofessional Apple behaved throughout this process was a pretty big blow to my confidence and perception of self-worth as a designer. After a month, I got back on the horse and received offers from literally every other FAANG company. I'm very excited to be working for a direct competitor on a much stronger team. If there's one lesson you can take away from my review, it's this: Don't let the allure of a brand get in the way of your judgement. Culture and WLB matter, and a company's treatment of you throughout the interview process speaks volumes as to how they will treat you as an employee.