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

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

201–210 of 405 posts

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

#201

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…

Where did all these people come from?

Exactly.

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

#202

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…

Where did all these people come from?

[dead]

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

#203
post #20

So these tech giants just happened to all do layoffs around the same time. What a coincidence. Almost like they are organized against their workers.

Not everything is a conspiracy. It's very obvious that Musk cutting jobs at Twitter had them/him take the brunt of the news cycles about the job cut because it happened first. Each subsequent company has faced less and less blowback. I'm sure they've all been wanting to do this for a while but didn't want the headlines.

The remarkable thing is how little using Twitter actually changed. The biggest change from cutting a bunch of staff seems to be... increased velocity?

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

#204

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.

I still remember Ping.

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

#205
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?

Textbook capitalism is a society in which (among other things) companies belong to investors. In other words, when a company bets, it is typically with other people's money. In that case, it's other people's jobs, which extends a bit this textbook case, but not by much.

edit Rewritten to take into account sokoloff's remarks, thanks!

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

#206
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.

Please don't forget all the people who lost their job outside of the US.

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

#208
Tim Apple was the one who brought the company from being a financial war zone to an extremely profitable company - by overhauling their logistics. He is ultimately a logistics and supply chain man, and he hates waste.

By the way, this is a good example of how vision and ideas (Jobs) will not build a successful company alone without execution. Apple always struggled with that until Jobs brought in Cook.

Of course, Steve Jobs would never allow the Weather App in the new MacOS to be so bad compared to Dark Sky ;)

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

#209

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.

While I respect Apple as a whole, "they didn't start up hundreds of obv useless projects" is an empty claim. Not only they sank so much money into subpar offerings like iCloud/iWork, not pay attention to some of their competitive advantages like Automator, they ran some of their once-great stuff into ground as well (Finalcut pro).

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

#210
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I believe that. It honestly sounds like an excuse to fire people. Or leadership has no clue. The biggest thing I got from the pandemic is flexible work arrangements. But I and everyone I knew all wanted to get back out there. Just not back out on public transport to work. We were doing things online because there was no other option. But once the borders opened and restrictions eased, everyone did what t…

Tech also depended a lot on the zero interest backed money from investors. Now that interest is up, money costs money, so the situation as changed as well.

I hear this a lot lately, and intuitively it is true of startups and businesses that are pre revenue, but I have trouble seeing how it applies to companies with billions in profit.
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