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

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

161–170 of 405 posts

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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If you feel like this, you shouldn’t take a job that can’t guarantee in writing that they will keep you for X number of years. If you took a calculated risk and took the job anyway, well that’s on you.

> If you feel like this, you shouldn’t take a job that can’t guarantee in writing that they will keep you for X number of years.

Those jobs don’t exist. If there are they are such a minuscule number of openings it is not worth thinking about them.

> If you took a calculated risk and took the job anyway, well that’s on you.

Let me break it to you: almost everyone works because otherwise they would go hungry, loose their home and die in sad circumstances. People who don’t are statistical anomalies.

Are you saying that by having the misfortune of not being born independently rich and working basically any job the poster “took a risk” which is “on them”?

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

#162

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…

Cook has made several decisions in the past handful of years that seem to show an ability to resist the group think that exists among the large tech companies leadership.

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

#163

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…

> Pandemic has not been kind to their profits either https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/net-inc... 2022 $99,803 2021 $94,680 2020 $57,411 2019 $55,256 2018 $59,531

I wonder how much of this "growth" is because inflation and ads. Also, Apple benefits on others' companies doing well.

But yeah, I think Apple brand loyalty is at all time high.

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

#164
post #97
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still put out stinkers, they just kill them fast. Ping?

OTOH the butterfly keyboard was one of their biggest stinkers that was not killed nearly fast enough, and the new keyboards still don't feel as good as the 2012s.

Slightly off topic, but when I encounter the phrase butterfly keyboard I think of that really cool sliding keyboard that IBM came up with for the Thinkpad 701c... and not a failing keyboard switch.

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

#166
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.

There’s another possibility, which is that the group of executives who built the largest money printing machine in human history have a better understanding of how to maximize long term value than whoever wrote the Forbes article complaining about Apple’s cash reserves.

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

#167
post #74

Earlier 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,

Incorrect. Many of those people already had a job when the moved to Amazon/Microsoft/wherever.

Since no one makes a horizontal movement, all the roles they vacated when moving where lower roles. And this argument goes recursively when the old company fills those roles.

This means that most people who did not have a job prior to the hiring explosion and had a job after the hiring explosion, had low-paying jobs, in very low roles.

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

#168
Don't they simply need the people to actually get stuff out the door? Almost every other year teams are being shoved into another department to the detriment of a product, so they can get something else out because otherwise it won't happen. Sounds like they actually need more people, not less. To me, Apple always sounds like it's spread way too thin or running on the absolute minimum.

Meanwhile I'm still looking at bugs in my OS that have survived a decade.

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

#169
post #91

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?

Amazon, Meta, Google are most certainly cut from the same cloth, only slightly smaller. For Wal-Mart I can't think of anything strictly anit-competitive, but its practice of paying sub-subsistance wages and counting on government relief programs to make up the difference is so disgusting I don't know how to describe. Time-Warner, Comcast I'm not too familiar with, but as I understand they are under regulations that p…

> but as I understand they are under regulations that prohibit them from dropping your connection when e.g. they find you visiting ycombinatior.com

Was that a problem before?

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

#170
post #91

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?

Amazon, Meta, Google are most certainly cut from the same cloth, only slightly smaller. For Wal-Mart I can't think of anything strictly anit-competitive, but its practice of paying sub-subsistance wages and counting on government relief programs to make up the difference is so disgusting I don't know how to describe. Time-Warner, Comcast I'm not too familiar with, but as I understand they are under regulations that p…

> For Wal-Mart I can't think of anything strictly anit-competitive...

Wal-Mart might be the world's foremost practitioner of predatory pricing, not to mention the control they exert over their suppliers.

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