[flatiron]

i just left a 3+ year stint as a contractor at Apple. Some of the stuff from the article rings a bit true to my experience (we get "sad grey apple badges" and apple employees get colored apple badges, we don't get to go to any corporate events (even though we get the e-mails to attend with the asterik at the bottom loljk) but on the whole i always didnt really feel like a second class citizen too much. that being said, every 3 years wondering if my contract was going to get resigned was a bit nerve wracking. im much happer in the past 3 weeks being fulltime somewhere else :).

[mr_o47]

I can totally understand what it feels to miss out while seeing others enjoy at the same time.

[flatiron]

true. 99% of the time i wasn't on campus so "come to the friday afternoon austin beer bash" e-mails didn't bother me as I wasn't in austin :). its more the silent power dynamic that i felt. if a full time apple employee is just spouting nonsense on a call, i was not going to make too much of a peep. but if they had a disagreement with me or one of my coworkers we usually just had to grin and bear it and "ohh yes of course we can do it that way". but thats life i guess.

[simfree]

The pay for most Apple contractors in Austin is abysmal. Multiple people I knew from UW earned barely over $30k a year working there.

[saagarjha]

That depends very much on what you're doing.