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

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

131–140 of 405 posts

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

#131
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of Google’s lack of focus is their internal management culture and nothing will change (and google/alphabet will not be worth being a customer of or being investing in) until the culture problem is fixed. Google only promotes engineers when they are part of a program launch. No credit is ever given for feature launch or program maintenance. If you are not a part of a program launch within a few years at googl…

> Google’s recent actions made me unsure GCE would still be a product in five years. Out of curiosity, which actions are you referring to?

These ones? https://killedbygoogle.com/

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

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's the corporate equivalent of "thoughts and prayers".

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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

This statement is a verifiable lie.

1. There's no such thing as PWA. There are a dozen or more standards, and everyone selects a different set of them to pretend they are oh so crucial.

2. Safari has supported the vast majority of standards that even Google deems as crucial for PWAs

3. Many of the "standards" some people on HN want are Chrome-only non-standards that are also opposed by Firefox

4. Actual people couldn't care less about PWAs because: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34517503

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

#134
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read their comment as implying that Apple should distribute that cash pile to investors through buybacks or dividends. I don't know what about their comment implies they want layoffs.

I'm implying that Apple's cash pile belongs to investors and shareholders. Part of that money is used to pay employees. However, that cash pile is not a charity for employing workers that is no longer needed at the company.

[dead]

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

#135
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read their comment as implying that Apple should distribute that cash pile to investors through buybacks or dividends. I don't know what about their comment implies they want layoffs.

I'm implying that Apple's cash pile belongs to investors and shareholders. Part of that money is used to pay employees. However, that cash pile is not a charity for employing workers that is no longer needed at the company.

And what specific employees are unnecessary, which you feel qualified to fire?

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

#136

Earlier 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…

Fuchsia is (was?) a long term investment, so would be expected to not be directly profitable for a long time.

The core problem I guess is that it suffers from an inability to partially migrate to it. This is a common problem that many people fail to understand actually matters. For example, we know rust is a safer language than C and C++, and so people say "all should be rewritten in rust", but rust is designed with no intent or plan to support partial migration. What that means is that even Mozilla - who created rust specifically for gecko - has been unable to replace the bulk of their code with rust: they can only replace entire large subsections at a time, which is harder, riskier, and as a result slower. Fuchsia's (I guess Zircon's) adoption is hindered because the objectively superior security model also meant that none of the infrastructure around the linux kernel say could work with it, so feature parity required at best significant porting, but frequently complete rewrites of large swathes of the surround infra. e.g. porting android to zircon (the fuchsia kernel) would require significant rewriting of the existing code bases, and the time spent doing that is not time spent adding shiny new features and animations (or chat programs?). Apple is generally much more pragmatic which is why Swift had such good objc and C interop from day 1, and why real C++ interop is something it's working on: if fixing C++ projects can only be done by all-at-once complete rewrites you basically ensure the C++ will live forever - rewriting a file at a time however is much more achievable, which is personally what I want (as for Swift vs rust I'm on the fence I like different parts of both, and also c++ :D).

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

#137
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 definite…

They single handedly killed PWA in iOS, they should get split up just for that

They didn't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34543451

PWAs were never alive to begin with.

If they were there would be amazing world-shattering and paradigm-changing PWAs on Android which holds 71% of worldwide market share.

Oh wait. There are still none. For reasons obvious to anyone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34517503

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

#138
post #89

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.

Apple's buyback program probably has no equal, it's a sight to behold which demonstrates the power of sustained share repurchases. Sure, there are the Teledyne stories, but to do it at this scale is something else.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/shares-...

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

#139

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

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 which has always had persistent labor-abuse issues[0]

Ah yes. Foxconn. The company that only produces products for Apple.

And Amazon

And Google

And Sony

And Google

And Microsoft

And Intel

And Fiat Chrysler

And ...

And yet, only Apple is held accountable, and only Apple publishes regular audit reports on worker conditions etc.

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

#140

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

Apple is the only one that doesn’t seem to start up hundreds of obviously useless projects. Google will hire thousands to work on an obviously doomed streaming service, to build a new OS, and so many other obviously bad ideas and then just fire them all later. Vanishingly few Apple products seem to be discontinued. Usually after a long life like the iPod.

A/UX, Taligent, Dylan, Pippin, Java Bridge, Quickdraw 3D, Copland,...

We don't know more due to the secrecy.

EDIT: A few more I just remembered, MacRuby, OpenCL, WebObjects, Quicktime

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