Overall, this was hands down the worst recruiter screen I have ever experienced, and a terrible first impression with Apple. Usually, the recruiter call is the fun part. You get to talk to cheery, sociable people and it's a great break from sitting in front of a computer. I've never really had a negative recruiter experience that I can recall. Unfortunately, it changed here. Here were the red flags: Red Flag #1: I applied to Apple sometime in 2017, at least 6 months prior to the phone call. I had completely forgotten about it and figured since I was in a remote location, there was limited headcount. Not a problem since there were more fish in the sea. Red Flag #2: I received a random email from a recruiter. It immediately seemed off because it was simply an apple logo as the subject and a two-liner body asking for my availability and a calendly link. All recruiter emails are sent out en-masse, that's fine, but this one didn't put any thought or personal touch into the body and thought the Apple brand would be enough, literally. Red Flag #3: I open the Calendly link and notice the availability is anytime between 7AM-7PM. Most recruiters have the standard 8 hour availability on their Calendly, not this one. How many hours are they making her work?? Red Flag #4: It's call time; it's 7:30AM, we're in the same time zone because the recruiter is in California and I'm in Seattle. Figured I'd be her first call. Nope! She ends up calling 20 minutes late. The reason is because she agreed to do some setting up for some other project, with no warning. I'm a laid-back guy, the red flags are accumulating, I should bow out at this point, but I figure I'll let it pass and take her word that she's just a workaholic with no life (her words, verbatim) and let it go. Red Flag #5: We start talking and she starts describing the team she's hiring for. Turns out it's in SF. I specifically applied to Seattle, my resume said I'm located in Seattle, my LinkedIn says I'm not interested in anywhere but Seattle/ New York, but she goes and shoe horns an SF team onto my radar. Red Flag #6: She keeps describing the team using buzz words: "fast paced, disruptive, challenging!". My experience in the biggest tech hub besides SF has been that these buzz words usually entail bad work life balance and coworkers who make tech their life, i.e. very myopic, unbalanced people. I'm already a bit hesitant applying to a tech company having worked at a different one with similar employees/culture, but now my spidey sense is really starting to go off! ("I don't feel so good Ms. Recruiter") Red Flag #7: I mention how I'm in-between jobs but have some pending offers. This is not a lie, I left my job on my own volition: the market was hot and I was confident of my abilities, and I ended up with a few competitive offers within a 2 weeks and was quickly approaching offer deadlines. Unfortunately, that went in one ear and out the other because all she heard was how I was in between jobs and how that was going to be a huge red flag on their side and was asking why I left. Doesn't matter that I need to sign an offer within a couple of weeks and need to interview ASAP, she's just grilling me why I left. Keep in mind that this was no issue with other recruiters, but this recruiter was grilling me like your worst recruiting horror story. Red Flag #8: I tell her that I left because I wanted a change after a few years at ex-company, I wanted a vacation between jobs, and because the previous job was not a good culture fit since we were working 60 hour weeks and it had a lot of the myopic engineers I mentioned earlier (can you guess why I'm weary of tech companies at this point?). Once again, it went in one ear and out the other. I have always been this candid with recruiters and it leads simple understanding from the recruiters and often times job offers. Again, this recruiter had to go out of her way to grill me on how that won't fly at Apple, and how I sound like I don't want to work! Apparently not working 60 hours means not working, though I should have inferred that reasoning from her schedule. At this point she says she'll submit me to the SF teams but I've made peace that Apple is not a company I want to work at based on this interaction. I sign another offer and send an email that I will not be going forward with them. I understand it's a big company and I shouldn't make blanket statements like this, but this was an interaction so far left field from any other recruiter interaction and was so surreal, that it sounded more like a "Silicon Valley" skit, than a real phone call. It was so surreal that I'd be very weary of future interactions with the company if this is how the people that are supposed to be the friendly ones behave. Moreover, Apple is always excluded from conversations amongst software engineers when it comes to GOOG/MS/AMZN/FB, and from this interaction it makes sense why.