Uh, its retail job. No one there creates the products they sell. Better yet, its not a hard sale. I would bet the majority of people entering an Apple store are there to buy something, provided they can afford it.
While some could and can make a living off of these jobs I see them as a stepping stone. As in, I would be forever fascinated by how these product I sell and obviously like are made, the design, the programming. So I would probably gravitate to learning the skills necessary to move into that line of work. Some may see this as a guide towards starting their own business, how do you market your product, present it, interact with people.
Still its not a job that requires any real education. It simply requires you to remember some product information, some tricks and tips, and not be a douchebag to other people, namely your co workers and customers.
They sell high priced products that are sold in large numbers, of course the numbers will be distorted. I really dislike articles like this because not all jobs within a company have the same value. When you have a product that nearly sells itself it kind of tells me who deserves more money - hint they are not at the store.
> I really dislike articles like this because not all jobs within a company have the same value.
Did you read the whole article? That part about which jobs have value was mainly just in the beginning. The main parts of the article are about how motivated people are to work at Apple, how they foster that, and a lot of interesting details about Apple's retail outlets and what it is like to work at them.
Have you ever worked in retail? I suspect not given your condescending attitude towards the skills retails works need. Exceptional customer service (which is what Apple Stores used to have, I think it's dropped off in recent years) requirers exceptional interpersonal skills, and is not something that anyone can just turn on, it's a skill - sure not one you learn through the traditional education world, but a highly valuable one.
Sorry, but no. I have worked retail, as have many of my friends and family. It's a low skill job, which is why it pays what it does and is done by armies of teenagers.
As in all things free-market driven, value is a function of supply and demand. The reality is the supply of people capable working in a retail, direct sales, or service position is sufficiently large in comparison to the companies requiring such employees, that the negotiating position is in the hands of the companies.
There is never any absolute value to any position, nor any value judgements about the people in those positions - there is simply a (dynamic) supply curve, a demand curve, and the intersection thereof.
Tragically - skills play less a role than what one might think. I am constantly embarrassed to discover the salary differential between what I make as a Network Engineer/Technical account manager and what my friends who are particle physics PHD graduates at SLAC make. (If it's not clear, the skill/education required to be a particle physicist exceed that of a network engineering manager. But the network engineering manager makes somewhat more money in the valley.)
Edit: Also - it's important to differentiate skills that are acquired/developed, (I.E. such as understanding the behavior of Muons, or quickly grokking an OSPF schematic) versus those that are simply attributes of being a nice person. I'd suggest that a lot of retail positions can be taught in less than a couple weeks (indeed, the Apple training takes place over two weeks) - whereas other skills take many years to learn.
Uh, its retail job. No one there creates the products they sell. Better yet, its not a hard sale. I would bet the majority of people entering an Apple store are there to buy something, provided they can afford it.
While some could and can make a living off of these jobs I see them as a stepping stone. As in, I would be forever fascinated by how these product I sell and obviously like are made, the design, the programming. So I would probably gravitate to learning the skills necessary to move into that line of work. Some may see this as a guide towards starting their own business, how do you market your product, present it, interact with people.
Still its not a job that requires any real education. It simply requires you to remember some product information, some tricks and tips, and not be a douchebag to other people, namely your co workers and customers.
They sell high priced products that are sold in large numbers, of course the numbers will be distorted. I really dislike articles like this because not all jobs within a company have the same value. When you have a product that nearly sells itself it kind of tells me who deserves more money - hint they are not at the store.