Half Way Through

Six weeks have passed since my beginning. I have been concentrating on gathering information for one of my projects and standardizing a process for another project. Since my boss and most of the team members were on a business trip, I got exposure into a new situation at Apple.

(1) Communication and Teamwork
While doing my projects, communicating with others at Apple was really important. It is quite common in all companies, but especially communicating well at Apple operations was really important. First reason is because Apple is so concerned about security. Since it is hard to get information, you have to be good in explaining well what you do and why you need the information. Second reason is operations specific. Since most of the people are traveling, e-mail communication skills are required. But before that, you have to meet as much people as possible during their stay at Cupertino campus. While my first MBA days, communication and teamwork was almost all that I learned, but using the skills and theory that I learned in a real environment gave me more takeaways.

(2) Function Based Structure
I had more executive speaker series with people at HR, operations, software. One thing interesting was one I heard from HR person. He told us the unique aspects of Apple organization. The one he emphasized was the functional based organization structure. He told us that functional based structure keeps Apple's employees professional in their areas and keep all people in a flat structure. I also had other chances to know about Apple operation by talking to senior leadership people of operations at a breakfast event. Apple gives as many chances as possible to let interns get to know Apple. I think I should utilize them more in my second half of intern.

(3) SF Giants Game
This week interns went to the SF Giants game. When I got to the stadium, I could see lots of SF famous players‘ biography with their signatures. Talking about baseball with colleagues seemed to be another way of enhancing communication and sharing each one’s interests. Good that I am a huge baseball fan.