Retired Apple Engineer Claims Apple Genius Bar Wouldn’t Hire Him Due To His Age

Apple has a reputation of being a hip and trendy company, one that builds and markets popular mobile gadgets to the masses, young and old. But while Apple wants every person of every age to tout an iPhone in their pocket or purse and a Mac device at home, it's been accused on more than one occasion of age discrimination in the work place. The most recent claim comes from an op-ed piece in The New York Times that used an example of a former Apple engineer being turned down for a Genius Bar job.

The former Apple engineer's name is JK Scheinberg. He spent 21 years of his life working for the Cupertino outfit and helped convince Steve Jobs to move the Mac from PowerPC to Intel in 2005, according to a two-year-old article by Business Insider titled "Apple Employees Confess All The Worst Things About Working At Apple."

Scheinberg, now 54, is described by NYT as being "a little restless" since retiring in 2008. It was that restlessness that led him to apply for a job as a Genius Bar employee. He notes that he was twice as old as anyone else that participated in his group interview, though on the way out, claims that three interviewers singled him out to tell him they'd be in touch.

"I never heard back," Scheinberg says.

His story is a rather brief example in a much longer op-ed piece on age discrimination. As such, it's short on details, such as whether or not he might have burned any bridges on the way out. One has to think that his name being included in a past article about employees talking about the worst parts of working at Apple doesn't help his cause, especially in this day and age of social media.

That's not an excuse to automatically pass Scheinberg over, we just wonder if there's more to the story here. In any event, it appears Scheinberg is hopeful that the media attention will get him a second interview at Apple. We wish him the best of luck.