That could be the case, I just find it difficult to believe that an ICT3 role at Apple of all companies would be about programming language trivia, given that the specific team I spoke with mentioned how they were very cross-collaborative with other LOBs.
>I just find it difficult to believe that an ICT3 role at Apple of all companies would be about programming language trivia
Fully agreed, but I don't think it is like that across Apple at all. It was like that just for that specific team OP was interviewing with, and it makes sense in the context of that whole team being Wipro converts. This is definitely unusual to have a team like that in the first place, so OP just simply got unlucky.
Given a company of Apple size, no matter how pleasant and competent an average team is, there will always be a few outlier teams that are just whack and awful to work with.
I can confidently say the same about my workplace. I like my team and org a ton (in terms of competency, how the responsibilities are assigned, etc.), and I believe that an average team in the company is very competent and high quality. However, I would be lying if I said that I haven't encountered at least a couple of teams in other orgs at the company that I would never want to work on due to similar issues.
Note that senior isn't actually rare in a large tech company. It goes something like intern, junior, senior, staff, principal, distinguished, fellow. It's hard to get above "staff".
