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

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

381–390 of 405 posts

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

#381

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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.

Here is one such example. Albiet not from the latest round of layoffs, and occuring a few years ago https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/linkedins-ceo-gives-14-m...

I’m waiting for Zuckerberg and Pichai to say bye bye themselves or keep staff and pay them with their salary + bonuses because they took “full responsibility.”

It’ll probably be a very, very long wait.

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

#382
post #324

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> Apple is a public company, and public companies are accountable to shareholders, not customers. Tim Cook himself, a decade ago, might have had something to say about that¹. > It is possible to do what's best for both, and Apple still does that plenty My objection is the trend more than the current state. A decade ago it would have been unthinkable to me that Apple would ever have ads in any OS. Today, I’m dreading…

Sure I think there are senses in which Tim Cook is accountable to customers, or maybe his own moral compass (as might be the case here), but in a specific and direct sense the board that controls whether he keeps his job or not is legally bound to act for the shareholders. However I don't think Tim Cook in that moment was necessarily saying that accessibility was non-negotiable, shareholders be damned, it's also poss…

> the board that controls whether he keeps his job or not

A job he doesn’t need¹ and which he’s aware he’ll leave in the not-too-distant future.² The only thing stopping Cook from making different decisions is himself.

¹ He’s filthy rich.

² https://wccftech.com/tim-cook-not-running-apple-in-10-years-...

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

#383

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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.

> Why wouldn't they want to own a great OS full-stack? It's part of their bread & butter. It's not their bread and butter. Their bread and butter is web advertisement. 80-90% of all money they make comes from web advertisement. Someone in the company said "we need vertical integration like Apple has and we don't like Android", and for a while they managed to run with it. Now they lost the internal power struggle. Oh…

Android is a hugely important piece to Google. It’s pretty clearly the case for a wide variety of reasons, some of which is because they want to control the browser/app experience on mobile as much as Desktop in order to fuel those ads.

Android itself of course makes billions alone, which is enough to justify Fuschia. They need a better setup to compete with Apple specifically on decoupling the OS from the drivers for updates on 3rd party manufacturers, in addition to security. I think there’s even some thought it could run in the data center - that drives everything Google. They already employ entire teams that just work on the Linux kernel, compilers, etc. All of that is bread and butter.

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

#384
post #322
post #278

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I've found that eating out varies a lot city by city (estimate: 50%+?). Some cities have excellent base-level food; others are terrible. As someone who lived in Atlanta during the restaurant revolution, it went from "I could do better than this at home" to most places being able to put together an interesting plate I couldn't/wouldn't do at home. And oddly, pre-pandemic prices didn't change that much when it happened…

I may be spoiled, but its extremely rare we eat someplace where I find the ingredients, flavor, and options to match what we have at home. We don't travel a crazy amount (compared to people with traveling jobs or a real wanderlust), but we get around a fair amount and I see the variability you describe--but only up to a point. There's obviously places where the restaurants are truly awful, and there's places where th…

I'm probably in the minority but pasta and frozen pizzas are about the extent of my cooking skill and there are about dozen excellent restaurants within a 10 minute walk... it isn't good for my wallet.

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

#385

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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 prefer Google's method of open sourcing their work. it benefits humanity in the long term, where Apples software generally benefits Apple and is only allowed to run on their "blessed" hardware. Thanks to Google we have patent-free codecs, an open source mobile OS, and they contribute significantly to the Linux kernel, among other projects that are "available to the public".

Like AMP..

Google does what's best for Google.

Not saying that's necessarily always a bad thing for the end user, but they do play the long game. Chrome was great at the start, did a lot to drive the web forward, and is now suffocating those advancements with Manifest V3 etc (including delaying removal of third party cookies).

It almost feels like embrace, extend, extinguish..

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

#386

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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.

No scandals, no twitter addiction, no sexual assault cases. No bullshit. All this guy does is wake up at 4, work till 10, and sleep. Cuts his own pay voluntarily. Didn’t double his headcount while revenues fell like so many. Tim Cook is such a beast. Jobs left one last blessing for Apple shareholders in his decision to elevate Cook.

[dead]

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

#387

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I think if you asked me to write a car OS the ethical thing to do would be to quit.

The entertainment systems are really quite dull, go checkout toyotas default interface in 2021.

Oh, I mean I'd probably end up killing someone. It sounds hard and I don't know how you become an expert in it.

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

#388
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No scandals, no twitter addiction, no sexual assault cases. No bullshit. All this guy does is wake up at 4, work till 10, and sleep. Cuts his own pay voluntarily. Didn’t double his headcount while revenues fell like so many. Tim Cook is such a beast. Jobs left one last blessing for Apple shareholders in his decision to elevate Cook.

> No scandals, no twitter addiction, no sexual assault cases. No bullshit. It’s unfortunate (and it says a lot about our current situation) that that behaviour is worthy of note. > Jobs left one last blessing for Apple shareholders in his decision to elevate Cook. I don’t understand the obsession with shareholders. It’s all about money money money, good products and respect for the customer be dammed. Cook was a fant…

Because the shareholders are the owners. And I don't think it's all about money (in the short term). I believe a significant part of Apple shareholders understand the importance of brand reputation and are willing to sacrifice short term gains for sustainable long term gains.

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

#389

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…

Let's be real - Apple outsources the dirty work of hiring/firing loads of workers to Foxconn. If the demand for iPhones slips, there will still be people out of a job, it will simply be factory workers in China/India who likely have far less savings to fall back on.

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

#390
post #44

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> 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/

Ah! Yes, ok. I wondered if there was anything out of the ordinary that I may have missed.

Thanks!

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