I'm not prepared to get into my experiences at Apple much beyond the surface level that I touched upon, for a few reasons, but I left for the same reason everybody does. I was offered a career-advancing opportunity to prepend senior to my title and help build out a small startup that's going places and really making a name for themselves. Apple, like Google, has already "won" (for lack of a better word) and while a portion of compensation is equity, it's hard to feel like you're putting it out there to change the world. Apple spends a not-insignificant amount of time changing the world, to be sure, but it takes time and stripes to end up in a position where you can be on a team like that.

There's no shortage of folklore about Jobs hand-picking teams, as I'm sure you know, and moving around at Apple is very social by its nature. You have to make a conscious effort to end up in a position where you get an opportunity to build Swift, or iPhone (I mean building it, not keeping it going; vast numbers of people keep it going now), or Apple Watch unless you're hired into an essential role for something like that. Most people at Apple are doing the same things you and I do: upgrading Cassandra, diagnosing some OS bug that only appears on certain phones and carriers, localizing a piece of iTunes. So it becomes a question of how much you're willing to invest to earn your place at Federighi's side on stage, launching your passion that will change the world. For some, that equation breaks the right way. For me, I need more immediate feedback. Make sense? More me than them.

My time in the peninsula taught me that I value small, scrappy teams more, and that I'm not cut out for Facebook, Google, Apple, and friends. For that very same reason, I'm not the best person to ask on whether you should work for Apple or Google: some people thrive very well in large-scale corporate organizations but it isn't for me. In general, I'd wager a new grad should do a peninsula tour before getting into the risk game up 101, but I think that's a very myopic view, if I'm honest.