Career Advice About Apple

The promotion process at Apple isn't ultra formal - It occurs alongside the Annual Review process. There's no nomination required: In fact, you can even get promoted without coordinating with your manager if the calibration committee thinks you're doing very well.

Since your manager is going to be making the case for your promotion, it's important to make sure that they're very in-sync with what you're doing and what your accomplishments are. To give your manager the best tools possible to go to bat for you with the promotion committee, make sure your self-review is incredibly thorough by following the techniques in this video: Making The BEST Case For Yourself In Performance Review: The Self Review

Here are some average promotion speeds for Apple:

• ICT2 (Junior) -> ICT3 (Mid-Level): 2 years
• ICT3 (Mid-Level) -> ICT4 (Senior): 4 years

The ICT5 (Staff) promotion is extremely difficult. Many engineers get perfect reviews (Exceeds Expectations on all 3 axes for a score of 9) repeatedly at ICT4 and don't get promoted. It is normal to be at ICT4 for 10+ years.

For resources on getting to staff, check out these FAANG engineer discussions:

• "What does a path to staff look like in a coding-heavy environment?"
• "I would like to get more clarity on what a Staff-level project and execution look like."