Apple still has time to cut some jobs no? Maybe they're just the last in the row ...
Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide
71–80 of 405 posts
Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not like him halving his compensation makes any material difference in the ability of the company to avoid layoffs.
It's a PR stunt. Get shareholders and the public talking about 'oh poor CEO he lost a few of the many many millions he earns a year'
An expensive one and probably least successful as many haven't heard the news.
Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide
#73I don’t think Apple went on a hiring spree like the rest of the tech giants during the pandemic, but there is still time for even Apple to start cutting jobs.
Well, Tim Cook started by halving his compensation. I didn't hear anything like that from his fellow CEOs who all "took full responsibility" for the choice of going for mass firing instead.
It's always insane to hear about CEOs saying that they take full responsibility, but never resign, donate their money to keep employees around, or anything of the like.
Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on the company but yes. Stripe, as an example, drastically slowed down hiring when the pandemic hit expecting an economic slowdown. It then turned out that so much commerce moved to online—rather than stopped—so they ramped up hiring to meet demand. The bet that companies like Shopify and Stripe [1] made was that COVID created a “new normal”; much of the economic activity that went online would stay there. Th…
Is it called a "bet" when you stand to win big, but if you lose it's the people you hired who've lost, and you don't lose basically anything?
Who lost? Everyone who got laid off wouldn't have had at a job at all if they weren't hired, and they probably got severance packages for more than the average American makes in a year.
Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide
#75This is such a weird topic. The comparison is between companies that didn't exist 20 years ago like Meta and the 50 year old industry veteran Apple. Of course Apple didn't hire as fast, they were established. That's like saying a 20 year old college student grew more over the past decade than a 40 year old engineer. Yea, that's how life works.
Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google has the focus of a crack addled flea and has products that aren’t profitable and people working on them - including probably 4 new messaging apps simultaneously. Facebook predicted that it would lose billions in potential revenue because of Apple making tracking optional. Microsoft is basically just cutting employees that are on products that it doesn’t care about anymore. You can say what you will about Apple…
Google was doing Fuchsia. SUPER cool... but what is the business case there? They are also ham strung by just not listening to customers it feels like - so I think that impacts traction. You get an 80% solution with simple glaring edges. Thousands ask - please fix this edge, but whoever is driving the product is onto something else it feels like sometime. Apple's main product lines all seem to make money, have positi…
My understanding with Fuchsia was to do better than Linux/Android in terms of security, scalability, and adaptability across devices. Why wouldn't they want to own a great OS full-stack? It's part of their bread & butter.
Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google, Facebook, Microsoft, … are also sitting absolutely giant piles of money as well.
Google has the focus of a crack addled flea and has products that aren’t profitable and people working on them - including probably 4 new messaging apps simultaneously. Facebook predicted that it would lose billions in potential revenue because of Apple making tracking optional. Microsoft is basically just cutting employees that are on products that it doesn’t care about anymore. You can say what you will about Apple…
Oh yeah, the reason these other companies are laying off thousands is because they've spent years hiring indiscriminately, and having many boondoggle (sp?) projects, numerous loss leader products ("we'll be profitable selling this at a loss, because we can spy on people more" - people complained about the cost of HomePod vs Alexa, etc and have said "speaker quality!" as the reason, but also all of those assistants are sold at or below cost).
The problem is that many are now doing a "we need to fire x% of the company so I can get my stock reward... I mean be profitable", and are doing it in arbitrary and short sighted ways (stack ranking is an incredibly stupid way to cut people), so while cutting N-1 of N chat teams at google might be reasonable, cutting teams working on potentially high value future tech _just_ because it's not currently profitable. Take Fuchsia: I worked on it during my brief google stint, and even if they did decide it didn't have a future (and I think that was not the rationale here), there were incredible engineers they've apparently discarded that would still have been good to keep working on other things at google.
Others have said FB and G were also mass hiring to stop people being hired by each other - I'm not sure how true that is, I was never involved in interviewing people at G but even if I were the interview system there seemed very strange to me so even if I were interviewing people I don't know if I'd have been aware of hiring-to-stop-FB nonsense.
Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide
#78Another issue is culture. Not everyone wants to work for an oppressive, intrusive employer like Apple. That sort of limits who would apply to them.
Amazon is a retailer, a logistics company, and a VPS. AWS was spared most layoffs.
Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it called a "bet" when you stand to win big, but if you lose it's the people you hired who've lost, and you don't lose basically anything?
Who lost? Everyone who got laid off wouldn't have had at a job at all if they weren't hired, and they probably got severance packages for more than the average American makes in a year.
> Everyone who got laid off wouldn't have had at a job at all if they weren't hired
Maybe I've been lucky, but every time I've been looking for a job I've had AT LEAST two options.
People move cities, sell houses, buy houses, give up apartments, plan their finances, and plan their career around their job all the time. Investing a year learning the ropes at a company, finding ways to fit into the structures, etc. only to have the rug pulled out from under you just as you're starting to get the hang of things...
> and they probably got severance packages for more than the average American makes in a year.
Maybe I've been unlucky, but I've never had a job where my expectation of a severance package was anything more than 2-4 weeks wages.
Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't think of a company more blatantly engaged in anti-competitive practices than Apple, but I'm glad to see all that unfairly amassed wealth benefitting even the lowest rungs of its corporate hierarchy through the unusual benefit of not being terminated at the drop of a hat. Bravo!
> I can't think of a company more blatantly engaged in anti-competitive practices than Apple In a world where Amazon, Meta, Google, Wal-Mart, Time-Warner, Comcast, etc exist, you think Apple is the most anti-competitive?
In a world where when Apple puts a dialogue on your phone, that when they try track you with ads, they ask "allow us to enhance your experience?" whereas when other companies try to track you, they ask "allow to track you across apps and websites?"
In a world when you can't even hint at the existence of a payment mechanism outside the App Store to get subscriptions?
It's not the most anticompetitive but it's definitely competing for the title in big tech.