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Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

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Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#121

Post by midoridensha »

kennywinker wrote: post #46
tyre wrote: post #43

Earlier 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?

Depends: did you really get that much value out of those new people in the time you had them employed? It usually takes a while for a new tech employee to become productive, and just hiring a person costs a lot of money. If you, for instance, hired 10,000 new engineers and then laid them off after only 1 month, you would definitely lost a LOT of money, and not have gained anything for it.

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#123

Post by [deleted] »

testfrequency wrote: post #88

Working at Apple is the equivalent of working for Target in the US. Good brand image, everything appears great on surface, employees all appear homogeneous - however..the internal feuds, dislike for leadership, and cost cutting measures make it completely miserable to work at. I’m still of the belief Apple probably should do layoffs, but won’t. Pandemic has not been kind to their profits either, but Tim will take the…

[deleted]

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#124

Post by NeverFade »

threeseed wrote: post #56
NeverFade wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make them sound like saints. They are not, and they have a history of being less scrupulous than some of these other companies. Here's just a small example of what they're capable of when their obsession for secrecy and control makes them flex their corporate muscle: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/09/07/iphone.5.probe/ind... And we didn't even talk about their sweatshops in China which has always had persist…

> And we didn't even talk about their sweatshops in China where employees kill themselves an awful lot, the Chinese government boosting iPhone production with child slave labor, and all the many other scandals they've been involved with. This tired argument again. Apple has always led the industry in their auditing of their supply chain and taking proactive steps to address illegal and unethical behaviour. There will…

> Apple has always led the industry in their auditing of their supply chain and taking proactive steps to address illegal and unethical behaviour.

Based on what data? The workers staged massive protests just a couple of months ago: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/23/huge-foxconn-iphone-plant-in...

Foxconn has repeatedly had issues with labor abuse: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn...

5 years ago it was the massive child-slave-labor scandal, which I suppose is what you refer to as "mistakes happen". Apple chose to continue to use Foxconn for production, even though they had similar scandals before and after the child-slave-labor one, until our present day.

That's not a "mistake". Apple is deliberately choosing to use a producer which has had persistent issues with labor abuse, some of which were as serious as pressing schoolchildren into 11 hour shifts of slave labor.

Let's face reality here: Apple is using Foxconn because they produce their products quickly and cheaply. They don't care about the abuse as long as it makes more cheap gadgets with fat profit margins. They aren't saints, nor better than other companies in their position.

> If you're going to call Foxconn a sweatshop then arguably Amazon, Tesla etc should be called them as well.

I never said Apple is worse than the rest of the industry. I refuted the notion that they are far better, and the overall halo of sainthood hung over them in this thread.

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#125

Post by NeverFade »

desro wrote: post #53
NeverFade wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make them sound like saints. They are not, and they have a history of being less scrupulous than some of these other companies. Here's just a small example of what they're capable of when their obsession for secrecy and control makes them flex their corporate muscle: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/09/07/iphone.5.probe/ind... And we didn't even talk about their sweatshops in China which has always had persist…

Curious about where you source any Fair Trade silicon you might be using?

I'm not pretending Apple is worse than the rest of the industry. I'm refuting GP's blanket statement that they are much better.

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#126

Post by avereveard »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #26
trynewideas wrote: post #15

https://techpp.com/2023/01/25/tech-layoffs-apple-2023/ > Amazon, for instance, hired about 780,000 people during the pandemic. Meta, too, had more than doubled its staff in this period, going from about 40,000 to 87,000. Even Microsoft had hired about 77,000 people just before the pandemic. > Apple, in comparison, is believed to have hired under 20,000 people during the period of the pandemic. Can't layoff people you…

Did the pandemic really increase business so much that they had to hire that many people?

In Italy whole industry verticals that were traditionally resistant to change where digitalized, kicking and screaming, from general practice to luxury wholesales

Check zoom user growth graph, something like 300% growth was common for the software supporting this transition. Not everything was positioned as good that, but the pull was there.

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#127

Post by [deleted] »

asdff wrote: post #89
microtherion wrote: post #58

I don't recall whether this was ever stated explicitly, but I always had the impression that this is one of the elements of Apple's strategy that is still driven by the tribal memory of the late 1990s turmoil. Both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook were there at the time, and especially the former (who also had witnessed a 1980s bust) was determined to never be in this position again. So as a consequence: * Apple is hoarding c…

Why does apple hoard cash instead of buy back their stock? 5 years ago they had 90 billion cash in hand. If they put that into their stock then, It would be up at least 260% by now even with the losses last year, then if they need cash they could just take a loan against the stock.

[deleted]

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#128

Post by midoridensha »

gsatic wrote: post #120
webwielder2 wrote: post #10

Apple is a generally more well run, mature, patient, and scrupulous company than most others.

Yup its just that they have become the largest seller of status signalling veblan goods in history, in times where inequality is at its highest. It would be nice instead, if they used their cash hoard to stop wasting time upgrading the iphone with more superficial shit. Bring prices of the phones down to 50 bucks. Put it in the hands of everyone. And kill the toxic advertising supported attention economy that has cau…

>Bring prices of the phones down to 50 bucks. Put it in the hands of everyone.

60% of Americans already have them, and are perfectly happy to spend $1300 on them every few years, even if it means not paying rent or having to starve themselves. Why would they want to bring the price down?

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#129

Post by NeverFade »

petesergeant wrote: post #93
NeverFade wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make them sound like saints. They are not, and they have a history of being less scrupulous than some of these other companies. Here's just a small example of what they're capable of when their obsession for secrecy and control makes them flex their corporate muscle: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/09/07/iphone.5.probe/ind... And we didn't even talk about their sweatshops in China which has always had persist…

> where employees kill themselves an awful lot Is that true? Last I read[0] "the suicide rate was comparable to its host country’s". 0: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-l...

I clarified the comment, since suicide rates aren't the only factor by which to judge or point out the issues at Foxconn. Foxconn had a long list of labor abuse[0], and apparently they still do given large-scale worker protests last November[1].

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn...

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/23/huge-foxconn-iphone-plant-in...

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#130

Post by midoridensha »

culi wrote: post #109
arthurcolle wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I am not OP but obviously they are more anti-competitive if ONLY for their killing off support for progressive web apps over the last 3 or 17 releases of iOS/Safari

I'm a big fan of PWAs, but this really seems like small fries compared to something like Walmart which has an internal planned economy many times larger than the Soviet Union ever achieved. If you sell your product in Walmart they basically own everything about it. They deem how you make your product, the supply chain, the prices you charge, everything And they use this incredibly granular level of control to run out…

I guess that's why Amazon, Best Buy, local grocery stores, etc. all went out of business.

Oh wait...

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