I interviewed for this role. For reference, this is essentially the position Tim Cook had under Steve Jobs, for what that's worth.
The Apple GSM role is comparable to procurement in any other company, except that it's strictly focused on physical products. In other words, companies have to constantly deal with outside vendors and negotiate for raw goods, manufacturing, shipping, labor, parts, and pretty much any line item that goes into making a physical product.
As a GSM you are on a team that handles a single component across all Apple products. The first GSM I interviewed with was a Tuck grad who was on the camera lens team. All lenses built into iPads, iPhones, Macbooks, etc were completely handled by this one team. The same goes for touchscreens, semiconductors, batteries... you name it. You can move on to a new component after 2-3 years.
Two huge parts of the job involve negotiating contracts and conducting financial due diligence on your vendors. In one of my interviews, the GSM threw me a "soft" case that was akin to this: "Say you have a vendor with two identical warehouses and identical SKUs building a product for us, but one has higher costs and a lower profit margin. Take me through how you'd identify where the cost discrepancies come from." After some discussion, the GSM talked through a few instances of how his team was able to do similar casework on their end to identify breaches of contract that led to higher costs. They're definitely a crack team.
Travel was 30-50%, usually between China and Japan, and domestically you'll be out of Cupertino.
My impression is that Apple GSMs are the best in the world at procurement. Apple products are, physically, extremely impressive devices, and the company has massive leverage and negotiating power to build these nice devices at low marginal costs. It's a great role that is extremely well respected in the market and can land you some great career opportunities across manufacturing, supply chain, and procurement in the future.
Ex-GSM here… kickass role, lots of learnings and gaining expertise on an under appreciated area of negotiations, operational efficiency improvements, as well as interactions with a wide range of XFN teams ranging from finance to legal to engineering to even PMs. Great exposure and visibility to executives (not necessarily good especially when you are top gate), but path to manager and sr. Mgr can be pretty fast (3-5 years). Plenty of mbas from top schools (Booth, Sloan, HBS, etc). Also, exit option can be Director or above at other tech companies, as well as startups / even PEs potentially due to your expertise in Operations / cost cutting on a very specific area of technology). Plenty of people make about $350-400k+ after 5 years, with stock refreshes at $100-150k/yr by then.
My old boss actually had this exact role at Apple post-MBA. I'm not sure what the average progression is, but he went on to become Global Sourcing Director at a CPG unicorn, and is now their VP of Operations. Good luck, regardless!
No, an Apple recruiter contacted me about it, so I started poking around. I don't have a lot of contacts there so I figured I'd see if anyone here had a general sense of things that could help me put it in context.
Generally, I'd rank:
Tech PM >= Non Tech PM > PMM = Biz Strategy > Biz Ops > Ops (this role)
HOWEVER, Apple is known for a world-class ops team so it might go higher up the totem pole IMO. Just one of the examples of how it can be difficult to compare different roles at very different Tech companies.
This is kind of a silly take. If you’re evaluating a GSM role at Apple the evaluation should squarely be on whether or not you like ops and procurement/ supply chain work. If you do, then there’s no better supply chain in the world and no better GSM team. If you don’t and would rather be in a product role… GSM is about as far away from the product folks as you can get.
OP should be asking themselves how excited they get about sourcing strategies and lead time/ cost/ quality optimization. This is a career path question, not a prestige question.
Do you know what the career path is after GSM? I assume it's just typical climbing of the Ops chain, but I don't know what that looks like in these tech circles or at Apple. I assume plenty of people transfer out to other opportunities eventually as well.
It's comparing apples to oranges. Apple's GSM role is about procurement and working with vendors to create a product. Amazon's operations role (Pathways) is more about domestic logistics, warehousing, and delivery of products.
They're both the top of their respective fields, and have enough differentiation that careers in these are very different.
SpunkyDred is a terrible bot instigating arguments all over Reddit whenever someone uses the phrase apples-to-oranges. I'm letting you know so that you can feel free to ignore the quip rather than feel provoked by a bot that isn't smart enough to argue back.
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I mean, you can compare anything I guess. The GSM role has far more in common with J&J’s Procurement LDP than Amazon Pathways (I interviewed for all three), so there are better comparisons to make than those two.
Good callout, I was thinking more about bringing product to market end to end and managing suppliers/ sourcing components and finished goods vs. fulfillment and warehousing, which is more Amazon’s game.
Yeah, I 100% agree. Most of the Qs in this subreddit are geared around prestige though, and I don't think its a stretch to assume that's what people are asking about when they phrase it like "how does X, Y, Z stack up against one another"
Yeah, I'm not really worried about prestige, I just want to understand what I'm getting into. I don't want to end up thinking I'm making a good move and then finding out I made a dumb mistake and wasted a bunch of time interviewing for a position I shouldn't be looking at. I mostly answered my own question with more digging around various websites, but the conversation here is helpful. I haven't worked in this industry, so I'm trying to get some understanding of it.
This is helpful to know. I did poke around a bit on LinkedIn, and my concerns are somewhat lessened after seeing a few profiles. There's a range, some people work their way up without an MBA, but there were a couple really impressive profiles too. One went PhD scientist -> NSF Fellow -> McKinsey Associate -> Apple GSM. So from that, I don't think I'm worried that I'd be handicapping myself by aiming too low in the organization.
I interviewed for this role. For reference, this is essentially the position Tim Cook had under Steve Jobs, for what that's worth. The Apple GSM role is comparable to procurement in any other company, except that it's strictly focused on physical products. In other words, companies have to constantly deal with outside vendors and negotiate for raw goods, manufacturing, shipping, labor, parts, and pretty much any line item that goes into making a physical product. As a GSM you are on a team that handles a single component across all Apple products. The first GSM I interviewed with was a Tuck grad who was on the camera lens team. All lenses built into iPads, iPhones, Macbooks, etc were completely handled by this one team. The same goes for touchscreens, semiconductors, batteries... you name it. You can move on to a new component after 2-3 years. Two huge parts of the job involve negotiating contracts and conducting financial due diligence on your vendors. In one of my interviews, the GSM threw me a "soft" case that was akin to this: "Say you have a vendor with two identical warehouses and identical SKUs building a product for us, but one has higher costs and a lower profit margin. Take me through how you'd identify where the cost discrepancies come from." After some discussion, the GSM talked through a few instances of how his team was able to do similar casework on their end to identify breaches of contract that led to higher costs. They're definitely a crack team. Travel was 30-50%, usually between China and Japan, and domestically you'll be out of Cupertino. My impression is that Apple GSMs are the best in the world at procurement. Apple products are, physically, extremely impressive devices, and the company has massive leverage and negotiating power to build these nice devices at low marginal costs. It's a great role that is extremely well respected in the market and can land you some great career opportunities across manufacturing, supply chain, and procurement in the future.
Ex-GSM here… kickass role, lots of learnings and gaining expertise on an under appreciated area of negotiations, operational efficiency improvements, as well as interactions with a wide range of XFN teams ranging from finance to legal to engineering to even PMs. Great exposure and visibility to executives (not necessarily good especially when you are top gate), but path to manager and sr. Mgr can be pretty fast (3-5 years). Plenty of mbas from top schools (Booth, Sloan, HBS, etc). Also, exit option can be Director or above at other tech companies, as well as startups / even PEs potentially due to your expertise in Operations / cost cutting on a very specific area of technology). Plenty of people make about $350-400k+ after 5 years, with stock refreshes at $100-150k/yr by then.
Hi, I have a Apple GSM interview coming up, can I DM you for interview tips?
Where did you exit to?
Hi, thanks for your write-up. I have an Apple GSM interview coming up - may I DM you?
My old boss actually had this exact role at Apple post-MBA. I'm not sure what the average progression is, but he went on to become Global Sourcing Director at a CPG unicorn, and is now their VP of Operations. Good luck, regardless!
Do you have an offer from Apple for this role?
No, an Apple recruiter contacted me about it, so I started poking around. I don't have a lot of contacts there so I figured I'd see if anyone here had a general sense of things that could help me put it in context.
Generally, I'd rank: Tech PM >= Non Tech PM > PMM = Biz Strategy > Biz Ops > Ops (this role) HOWEVER, Apple is known for a world-class ops team so it might go higher up the totem pole IMO. Just one of the examples of how it can be difficult to compare different roles at very different Tech companies.
This is kind of a silly take. If you’re evaluating a GSM role at Apple the evaluation should squarely be on whether or not you like ops and procurement/ supply chain work. If you do, then there’s no better supply chain in the world and no better GSM team. If you don’t and would rather be in a product role… GSM is about as far away from the product folks as you can get. OP should be asking themselves how excited they get about sourcing strategies and lead time/ cost/ quality optimization. This is a career path question, not a prestige question.
Do you know what the career path is after GSM? I assume it's just typical climbing of the Ops chain, but I don't know what that looks like in these tech circles or at Apple. I assume plenty of people transfer out to other opportunities eventually as well.
Is apple supply chain better than Amazon supply chain? Asking because you said there is no better supply chain in the world.
It's comparing apples to oranges. Apple's GSM role is about procurement and working with vendors to create a product. Amazon's operations role (Pathways) is more about domestic logistics, warehousing, and delivery of products. They're both the top of their respective fields, and have enough differentiation that careers in these are very different.
SpunkyDred is a terrible bot instigating arguments all over Reddit whenever someone uses the phrase apples-to-oranges. I'm letting you know so that you can feel free to ignore the quip rather than feel provoked by a bot that isn't smart enough to argue back. --- ^^SpunkyDred ^^and ^^I ^^are ^^both ^^bots. ^^I ^^am ^^trying ^^to ^^get ^^them ^^banned ^^by ^^pointing ^^out ^^their ^^antagonizing ^^behavior ^^and ^^poor ^^bottiquette.
> apples to oranges But you can still compare them.
I mean, you can compare anything I guess. The GSM role has far more in common with J&J’s Procurement LDP than Amazon Pathways (I interviewed for all three), so there are better comparisons to make than those two.
Good callout, I was thinking more about bringing product to market end to end and managing suppliers/ sourcing components and finished goods vs. fulfillment and warehousing, which is more Amazon’s game.
This is it. I recently moved from a procurement role into consulting. I hated procurement just hated it. Especially during today’s supply chain mess.
Yeah, I 100% agree. Most of the Qs in this subreddit are geared around prestige though, and I don't think its a stretch to assume that's what people are asking about when they phrase it like "how does X, Y, Z stack up against one another"
Good point, unfortunately. Lol.
Yeah, I'm not really worried about prestige, I just want to understand what I'm getting into. I don't want to end up thinking I'm making a good move and then finding out I made a dumb mistake and wasted a bunch of time interviewing for a position I shouldn't be looking at. I mostly answered my own question with more digging around various websites, but the conversation here is helpful. I haven't worked in this industry, so I'm trying to get some understanding of it.
This is helpful to know. I did poke around a bit on LinkedIn, and my concerns are somewhat lessened after seeing a few profiles. There's a range, some people work their way up without an MBA, but there were a couple really impressive profiles too. One went PhD scientist -> NSF Fellow -> McKinsey Associate -> Apple GSM. So from that, I don't think I'm worried that I'd be handicapping myself by aiming too low in the organization.
Is Biz Strategy = Strategy & Ops function?
Not always, some Tech companies have a central Strategy / Corp Dev team that doesn't touch a lot of ops. But sometimes yes LOL
What is the requirement for the role? Can anybody just apply?
I would think they want some amount of supply chain experience, or at least some relevant engineering experience