Sci-Fi Hi-Fi

Speaking of life at Apple, I’ve been meaning to post some reflections on my first month in Cupertino. Fortunately, I’m still here—although I did have a brief moment of terror on the morning of my one month anniversary (Thursday, 9/18) when, upon entering 1 Infinite Loop, I discovered that my badge no longer worked. All I could do was stand there fiddling nervously with the thing while the ubiquitous, eternally suspicious, white-shirted security guys looked on grimly. After what seemed like an eternity, I was told to go to the badge office, where the nice lady, thankfully, furnished me with a working version.

Aside from that, everything has gone swimmingly. My coworkers are a cool bunch of cats who have been very good about making me feel like a part of the team very quickly. I do have to say, though, that I’ve come to feel like a bit of an elder statesman among them. One of these youngsters actually expressed muted shock the other day after discovering I’d reached the advanced age of 25 (actually, 26 next Saturday—hint, hint!).

Which brings me to an interesting observation: if I had to sum up my experience at Apple thus far (at least in a way that wouldn’t run afoul of the dreaded NDA), I would have to say that it feels for all the world like I’m back in college. It’s all there: a “campus,” a cafeteria everyone patronizes constantly until they get desperately sick of it (and, really, even after that), a sort of “quad” where volleyball is played, people who burn the midnight oil and sleep late (one day some guy even crashed on a couch outside my office!), and, of course, parties.

Not that it’s been all fun and games, mind you. Apple employees are nothing if not hard workers, and I’ve been very impressed at the level of commitment shown by everyone from top to bottom to making sure that OS X is the best it can be. The culture is highly oriented toward quality, and, though it’s trite to say so, I think it really shows in Apple’s products.

I would say that my favorite benefit of the job so far has been the opportunity to learn, which is inestimable. The chance to be a part of the development of a whole operating system is rare indeed, and the opportunity to assimilate knowledge from the sheer number of brilliant people Apple employs is even rarer. My group is a great place to learn a lot about a lot of things, and I often feel like an intellectual tourist, just trying to take it all in.

In short, I’m absolutely thrilled to be at Apple, and I’m very much looking forward to what’s ahead. Many thanks to my team and my boss for giving me a chance!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 22nd, 2003 at 5:47 am and is filed under Life at Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.