Inside Apple’s Secretive University-Style Training School

Inside Apple’s Secretive University-Style Training School

Deep within the bowels of Apple, there’s a secretive school where employees learn about the company and how to work for it. Some call it education, others indoctrination — but either way, a new report explains what it’s like.

We’ve already heard what Apple’s Genius Finishing School is like, but this new report from the New York Times describes the experiences of “three employees who have taken classes” at the company’s “internal training program, the so-called Apple University”.

It sounds, typically, grandiose and polished. It certainly takes itself seriously: courses are taught by faculty members from Yale, Harvard, the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford and MIT. Indeed, much of the teaching was developed by Joel Podolny, ex-dean of Yale School of Management, back in 2008.

Classes at the University for employees are “tailored to their positions and backgrounds.” The Times explains there are courses for “founders of recently acquired companies how to smoothly blend resources and talents into Apple;” case studies of important business decisions that Apple made (like making the iPod work with Windows); and even one class which likens Picasso’s ‘The Bull’, a series of 11 lithographs that simplify the form on the animal, to the way Apple designs its products.

All of this is taught on the Apple campus in a section of buildings called City Center, and it’s not just the classes which are high-quality. “Even the toilet paper in the bathrooms is really nice,” one source told the NYT. You can read the whole run-down on the course in the Times feature. It’s well worth a read. [New York Times]

Picture: Gorka Linaza /Flickr


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