Apple CEO Tim Cook's employee approval rating dips, but still high in spite of issues

When you start at 100 percent, there’s nowhere to go but down. Even so, Apple CEO Tim Cook’s approval rating among Apple employees is still very, very high.

Apple’s been through some tough spots historically. And while anyone who remembers the “beleaguered” days of the late 90s and early 2000s can’t think that the company is in too much trouble right now, with the stock losing hundreds of billions of dollars and Google’s Android taking massive mobile market share, there’s definitely a sense that Apple’s best days might be in the rear-view mirror.

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But Cook has maintained 90-plus-percent approval ratings internally, according to Glassdoor:

That’s just a shade below Steve Jobs’ lifetime rating of 97 percent.

In addition, Apple employees are still pretty happy to be working at the iconic Cupertino company. Employee satisfaction, which reached a peak 80 percent in the middle of 2012 when Apple’s stock soared to over $700, has only dropped slightly to 78 percent.

Which doesn’t mean that working at Apple is easy. Or that working for Tim Cook is easy.

Cook looks for early hours, according to one Apple manager in Cupertino, who said he was “a CEO who demands work before 6 AM every day, and ‘accountability without control.’” And another Apple employee, an engineer, complained about work/life balance at Apple … or rather, the lack thereof.

“No work life balance is to be expected while working at Apple. Weekly management reviews and expectations from management is that you are reachable after work hours.”

The upcoming Worldwide Developer Conference will be an interesting test for Cook, and Apple. After basically telling the world not to expect any new products before fall, an iOS7 reveal will likely be the big news at the developer-focused show — and well as, possibly, announcements about developments in Apple core services like music and media.

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Those announcements have to be good enough to reassure the Apple faithful within and without the company that Apple is still the leader in mobile operating systems and ecosystems and can still amaze and delight its customers.

And its team members.

Image credit: Dean Takahashi