I worked at two Apple retail stores over the course of ~3 years. I did sales, worked at the Genius Bar, repaired machines and performed data transfers in the back, and delivered a shit-ton of One-to-One sessions. Though I generally enjoyed myself and remain good friends with many of my former co-workers, I never want to work there again, so here's some supplementary material they evidently don't want me to provide you with.
First, the top comment in this thread is…how to put this delicately…presumptuous, moronic, and generally unbecoming of the quality of discussion I expect on HN.
No. The ~$3M dollars that apple spends on advertising daily are what put Jordan Golson in the position of seeing $750,000 worth of purchases be made in front of his cash register within 3 months of his working there.
Um, cash register? Have you been in an Apple store recently? Where exactly was the cash register again? I must have missed it. And where did the customer procure the computer to place in front of Jordan at the nonexistent register? Oh wait, they're all in the back, a sales exercise would already have to be in progress for a boxed computer to make it out to the front of house in the first place.
Yes, Apple spends a lot on marketing, and they're damn good at it. The same might be said about BMW; Could their salespeople be replaced with mannequins without negatively impacting sales? How about Louis Vuitton? That shit sells itself, right?
The vast majority of customers who buy a computer in an Apple Store are buying their first Mac. In fact, the majority of them have never so much as entered an Apple Store prior to that visit. Perhaps they've had friends recommend a Mac in the past, perhaps they've even made up their mind before they walk in the door, but the average Apple Retail customer is far from a frothing-at-the-mouth fanboy. If I had to select a single word to describe first-time Apple customers (to reiterate, the majority of Apple Retail customers are first-timers—I'll return to this) it would be skeptical. A knowledgeable, approachable sales team is an absolute necessity in that context. (I can think of a dozen instances when a jilted potential buyer wrote an email to a manager complaining that they walked in, had no idea what to do, weren't approached, and bailed—at which point a meeting was called and everyone had to double down on the Warm Welcome.)
The best salespeople at Apple would be the best salespeople wherever they worked. And if they worked somewhere else, they wouldn't have to contend with a sales floor full of people who are not, and are never going to be customers. Think about that for a second. I can't think of another retail chain where every machine on the floor is an internet-connected, totally functional computer. At an Apple Store, they are. Many of them are even loaded up with pro apps, and you're welcome to play as long as you like. Before I worked at Apple, I had no idea how many homeless people had email accounts. I had no idea how interested teenagers were in taking 500 iSight photos of themselves in public. Shit, we had one dude (easily the coolest transient I've ever met) who just came in and danced to YouTube videos. One time he tried to convince me that Michael Jackson composed all the music in Sonic the Hedgehog (which actually turned out to be half-true, in reverse).
Somewhere in all that mess, Apple's sales team identifies the sometimes timid, frequently baffled first-time customer, answers questions, addresses their concerns, and ultimately sells them what is by all accounts an expensive ass computer.
Let's take a step back. Although Apple aren't the volume kings of retail computer sales, they do move a lot of units. Any idea what percentage of revenues are generated inside an Apple Retail Store? Last I heard (it's been over a year since I was on Apple's payroll) that number was less than 15%. There have been rumors for years that Apple operates the Retail stores at a loss as—you guessed it—a marketing expense. How does that figure into your theory?
Now that I have that off my chest, some other points:
-The only people I knew at Apple who made real money had been there from the beginning. Which is to say, they were in high ranking positions that didn't have a direct path to management (basically Genius and Creative) and got in early enough to receive stock options in lieu of bonuses when Apple wasn't doing so hot pre-iPod/Macbook/iPhone/iPad. The sole exception: "Store Leaders," Apple's term for the head manager of a retail store, a gig that frequently entails a six figure salary. Assistant managers are paid significantly less.
-The article is spot-on as far as poaching managers from other firms, though I encountered just as many former Starbucks managers as I did former Gap managers. The only managers I knew who had been promoted up the ranks at Apple were lifers (i.e. in some cases had been employed by Apple from the day the first retail stores opened), and most of them were stuck in Asst. Manager roles while Store Leaders were generally recruited externally. One of my managers had previously managed a MAC Cosmetics store. (Hah! Punny.)
-As you might expect, technical knowledge was rare among managers, in my experience. If you ever have an interaction with a Genius, and they mention that they need to confer with a manager and put on a sour face, they're not faking it. Almost every Genius I've ever met held their managers in absolute contempt.
-Apple doesn't hire for technical knowledge, except in the few roles where it's absolutely required (Again, Genius and Creative, and even some of the Creatives are kind of dopey.) They hire a personality type/range, with the expectation that they'll be able to train employees on technical details as required. If you've ever been to an Apple Store, and are a big enough nerd to be reading HN, you should probably have assumed this point already. If you were bitching in this thread about how Apple Employees aren't knowledgeable enough because you expected them to know even a fraction of what you know, perhaps you're not as perceptive as you think you are.
it wasn’t a surprise to upper management because it was clear that many geniuses wanted to leave. There was a ceiling. It wasn’t a glass ceiling because everyone could see it.
A-fucking-men.
Okay, so here's my tale of woe. I was hired as a part-time Specialist (salesperson). I'm terrible at sales, but I'm a nice guy and I know technology. Also, I'm tall, and people like that for some reason. So I kind of fit the description of the archetypal Apple Retail hire, except when a customer asked me a question I actually knew what I was talking about.
It wasn't long before managers and other employees were sending the most bizarre, detailed, or otherwise highly technical questions in my direction, as any Geniuses on the clock already had their hands full. I would proceed to spend as long as possible chopping it up with a fellow geek, all the while not selling anything. This soon got the attention of my store's lead creative, who sent me off to a two day training session, after which I had three dedicated days a week wherein I did nothing but One-to-One training sessions.
It was more interesting than sales, but I was never promoted to Creative, nor did I receive any sort of pay raise. In fact, I couldn't even get management to officially promote me to full-time, despite the fact that I was consistently being scheduled 36-40 hours a week (occasionally they'd drop in a 29 hour week to absolve themselves of any legal obligation to promote me). Multiple calls to HR were met with insistence that "those decisions are made at a store level." (Eventually I adjusted my availability such that they couldn't schedule me more than 36 hours and I had Thu-Fri-Sat off every week.)
All the while, the internal training program for Geniuses and Creatives was effectively frozen. I would discover why when they eventually introduced a new role between Specialist and Genius/Creative, called "Family Room Specialist." An FRS splits their time between 1to1 training, Genius Bar shifts focusing on small device (iPod/iPhone/iPad) triage and repair, and basic repairs/RAM upgrades/data transfers in the back.
There were employees at every Apple store who had been doing all these jobs for years. Most of them had been doing them as Specialists, in my case for about a year and a half, in other cases I was familiar with as long as five years. When the FRS role was conceived, management held a hard line that a "promotion" to FRS was in fact a lateral move—no raise, no negotiation. I was in the second group of FRS hires at my store, all of us had been doing the same shit with a different title for some time already. All of us were passed over on the next round of Genius/Creative promotions. Conversations with management went nowhere, as they had little understanding of what our jobs even required, and as the article indicates, there was always a line of warm bodies around the block ready to enlist.
Even if I'd been promoted to Genius, I stood to make as little as half what the highest paid Genius at the time, another Apple lifer, was making. And that's really where the trail ends for many Apple employees, and I don't just mean internally. Most skills that make you a great Apple employee are totally non-transferable, due to the company's priorities (although noble) being so inconsistent with much of the retail world. I hear all this about how Apple's a great thing to have on your resume, but it hasn't done me a whole hell of a lot of good.
I was happy to hear earlier this week that some of my friends might be getting much-deserved raises. I'm also happy that I got the hell out of there when I did, and couldn't imagine working there again. I was a PC geek before switching to a Mac when I went to college, and I was deep into Mac nerdery well before I started working for Apple; I had my own reasons for being there. However, some other folks there hit the kool aid pretty damn hard, which can be an annoyance, particularly when they're technical dunces. As previously stated, unless your career aspirations amount to working at the Genius Bar or teaching old people how to use the Google for $15 an hour, there isn't much of a point to working at Apple for any extended period of time.
Most critically, many of the customers are absolutely fucking reprehensible. Let me repeat that, in slightly different terms: If you walk into an Apple Store, act as if the technician you're speaking to caused the problem you're having with your iPhone (Hint: Generally speaking, you're the problem.), and give the impression that you believe no one else in the building has a problem that matters—especially if you behave aggressively and/or condescendingly, issue ultimatums, throw adult tantrums, threaten legal action, or demand free replacements/upgrades you don't deserve—allow me to recommend, on behalf of all Apple Retail employees, past and present, who are restricted from speaking for themselves, that you EAT YOUR OWN ASSHOLES, YOU DESPICABLE CUNTS.
First, the top comment in this thread is…how to put this delicately…presumptuous, moronic, and generally unbecoming of the quality of discussion I expect on HN.
No. The ~$3M dollars that apple spends on advertising daily are what put Jordan Golson in the position of seeing $750,000 worth of purchases be made in front of his cash register within 3 months of his working there.
Um, cash register? Have you been in an Apple store recently? Where exactly was the cash register again? I must have missed it. And where did the customer procure the computer to place in front of Jordan at the nonexistent register? Oh wait, they're all in the back, a sales exercise would already have to be in progress for a boxed computer to make it out to the front of house in the first place.
Yes, Apple spends a lot on marketing, and they're damn good at it. The same might be said about BMW; Could their salespeople be replaced with mannequins without negatively impacting sales? How about Louis Vuitton? That shit sells itself, right?
The vast majority of customers who buy a computer in an Apple Store are buying their first Mac. In fact, the majority of them have never so much as entered an Apple Store prior to that visit. Perhaps they've had friends recommend a Mac in the past, perhaps they've even made up their mind before they walk in the door, but the average Apple Retail customer is far from a frothing-at-the-mouth fanboy. If I had to select a single word to describe first-time Apple customers (to reiterate, the majority of Apple Retail customers are first-timers—I'll return to this) it would be skeptical. A knowledgeable, approachable sales team is an absolute necessity in that context. (I can think of a dozen instances when a jilted potential buyer wrote an email to a manager complaining that they walked in, had no idea what to do, weren't approached, and bailed—at which point a meeting was called and everyone had to double down on the Warm Welcome.)
The best salespeople at Apple would be the best salespeople wherever they worked. And if they worked somewhere else, they wouldn't have to contend with a sales floor full of people who are not, and are never going to be customers. Think about that for a second. I can't think of another retail chain where every machine on the floor is an internet-connected, totally functional computer. At an Apple Store, they are. Many of them are even loaded up with pro apps, and you're welcome to play as long as you like. Before I worked at Apple, I had no idea how many homeless people had email accounts. I had no idea how interested teenagers were in taking 500 iSight photos of themselves in public. Shit, we had one dude (easily the coolest transient I've ever met) who just came in and danced to YouTube videos. One time he tried to convince me that Michael Jackson composed all the music in Sonic the Hedgehog (which actually turned out to be half-true, in reverse).
Somewhere in all that mess, Apple's sales team identifies the sometimes timid, frequently baffled first-time customer, answers questions, addresses their concerns, and ultimately sells them what is by all accounts an expensive ass computer.
Let's take a step back. Although Apple aren't the volume kings of retail computer sales, they do move a lot of units. Any idea what percentage of revenues are generated inside an Apple Retail Store? Last I heard (it's been over a year since I was on Apple's payroll) that number was less than 15%. There have been rumors for years that Apple operates the Retail stores at a loss as—you guessed it—a marketing expense. How does that figure into your theory?
Now that I have that off my chest, some other points:
-The only people I knew at Apple who made real money had been there from the beginning. Which is to say, they were in high ranking positions that didn't have a direct path to management (basically Genius and Creative) and got in early enough to receive stock options in lieu of bonuses when Apple wasn't doing so hot pre-iPod/Macbook/iPhone/iPad. The sole exception: "Store Leaders," Apple's term for the head manager of a retail store, a gig that frequently entails a six figure salary. Assistant managers are paid significantly less.
-The article is spot-on as far as poaching managers from other firms, though I encountered just as many former Starbucks managers as I did former Gap managers. The only managers I knew who had been promoted up the ranks at Apple were lifers (i.e. in some cases had been employed by Apple from the day the first retail stores opened), and most of them were stuck in Asst. Manager roles while Store Leaders were generally recruited externally. One of my managers had previously managed a MAC Cosmetics store. (Hah! Punny.)
-As you might expect, technical knowledge was rare among managers, in my experience. If you ever have an interaction with a Genius, and they mention that they need to confer with a manager and put on a sour face, they're not faking it. Almost every Genius I've ever met held their managers in absolute contempt.
-Apple doesn't hire for technical knowledge, except in the few roles where it's absolutely required (Again, Genius and Creative, and even some of the Creatives are kind of dopey.) They hire a personality type/range, with the expectation that they'll be able to train employees on technical details as required. If you've ever been to an Apple Store, and are a big enough nerd to be reading HN, you should probably have assumed this point already. If you were bitching in this thread about how Apple Employees aren't knowledgeable enough because you expected them to know even a fraction of what you know, perhaps you're not as perceptive as you think you are.
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