About to join Apple as a DE. Any tips or suggestions?

CraneK5939·October 2, 2026

Expecting an offer from Apple for the Data Engineer (Analytics) position.

People seem to be obsessed with PSC and “impact”. What is meant by impact, any strategies for making an impact, what to expect and not to expect from a manager? Is the fight for impact a real thing? Across all levels?

Which teams would you recommend for a reasonable WLB? Coming from startups, used to gig hard but have a family and definitely want to minimize working weekends and evenings.

Anything else I should understand? Anything you wish you knew when you were joining?

Any DE/Analytics who likes the culture?

Also, from some conversations during the interview process I got the impression that PM, DS, and DE work quite closely together and the boundaries between these roles a sort of blurred (obviously DE does much more SQL and PM does much more CF communication). Is that right? If so, do you like it?

TC (pre-FB) $240k (Bay Area)

5 comments

CraneK5939op·

Can you tell me more regarding that mysterious impact? How is it defined? And why do they keep hiring if it’s so hard to find an impactful gig?
Also, which crew are you on?

CraneK5939op·

Sounds like a normal thing that any sane shop should expect from their employees.
But Ddriven is full of posts mentioning impact in a extremely negative context, like complaining about constant fight for impact etc etc.

CraneK5939op·

On a related note, what is the job of product managers at Apple about? I would expect that a PM’s gig is from a big part about helping engineers to identify the most impactful problems to work on. But from many posts here I feel like it’s everyone responsibility to find some impactful gig for themselves.

Leah_438768·

Start preparing for interviews outside. DE at FB sucks. WLB sucks. There is constant battle to locate impact.

civil_dove_9576·

Gotta replaced the non impactful engineers