My experience was that it was genuinely small teams...and it was fun! It's one of the ways that Apple maintains a startup-like atmosphere despite being such a large company. Oh, and Apple remains a very flat company. I was 5 degrees removed from Steve Jobs, and I don't know anyone that was more than 8...including retail staff!

> Oh, and Apple remains a very flat company. I was 5 degrees removed from Steve Jobs, and I don't know anyone that was more than 8...including retail staff!

This sounds funny from my POV because I work mostly with startups now so I'm usually 0-1 levels away from the CEO. In the last 2 weeks alone I've ended up in F2F conversations with folks who I originally thought were some bizdev guy, perhaps a senior technical architecht, but no, turns out, that was the CEO. (... ", bitch." <--- per The Social Network) I was in a conversation the other day with a guy who was the CEO of a potential competitor, but at the time I didn't know he was the CEO, or that they were a potential competitor, and likewise in reverse. Funny stuff.

So yeah, this whole "flat company" with a mere 5-8 levels of hierarchy, makes me giggle. Back to my Terminal session, which this CEO considers his office. :)

(not criticising, just pointing out the humor of relative POV's)