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Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

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Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#71

Post by trilobyte »

wand3r wrote: post #33

> Apple, meanwhile, was more cautious. Its headcount increased just 20% from 2020 to 2022 At Apples size this is still pretty huge. At least, I thought it was until I saw that Amazon, Meta and Salesforce basically DOUBLED in 2 years. If this data is correct isnt that insane? How can you effectively double orgs of this size over a 2 year period? Its not like a startup with 50 people or something. I guess I was out of…

When Google announced 12,000 layoffs, for anyone reading past the headline this came on the back of hiring 41,000 people over the last two years. 41,000 is about 1/2 the total employees of Salesforce as of October 2022.

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#72

Post by bbor »

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #55
lapcat wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most layoffs are happening in growth businesses that aren’t even profitable on paper. Google? Facebook? Microsoft? All very profitable, all doing layoffs.

I'm guessing Google and Facebooks profit centers are much more narrow? Eg. Google Ads. Facebook has the Metaverse Black Hole whereas has Googles countless endeavours (eg. Chat)

Yeah but they’re still some of the most profitable companies in the world, and Google at least has many billions in the bank. I feel you’re moving goalposts?

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#73

Post by jonfw »

jsnell wrote: post #69
mabbo wrote: post #32

Apple's underlying economics haven't changed, so they have not had any reason to over-hire in the first place. Amazon, Google, Meta, Shopify and others are all e-commerce based. There was a clear trend that e-commerce had shifted up due to the pandemic, and looked to be permanent. That bet was wrong, so they all had layoffs. Other companies were willing to hire lots of developers because the ROI on devs was good comp…

> Other companies were willing to hire lots of developers because the ROI on devs was good compared to low inflation and low interest rates Was the ROI good though? Did any of these companies seem to deliver new products or features faster? Do their financials suggest that these devs somehow improved operational efficiency (e.g. improved gross margins)? Or was it just that they hired because they could afford to?

Most orgs claim that they need X% more money to serve X% more users, and they use that money to hire X% more devs. Since the users and money are both there, they get it in the short term, and nobody looks at the big picture until money tightens up

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#74

Post by icehawk »

bryan_w wrote: post #7

And they failed to hire enough people to bring their AR headset to market which is the other side of the coin.

How did they fail at doing that?

Did they announce an AR headset, not bring it to market and someone else's got wildly popular or...?

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#75

Post by LarryMullins »

mbesto wrote: post #63
psychlops wrote: post #13

A few days ago we were criticizing Nintendo because it was making too much money per employee and didn't hire enough. Also, we criticize Google for laying people off and Amazon for everything else (overhiring?). One wonders why Apple gets high praise for "hiring cautiously".

> One wonders why Apple gets high praise for "hiring cautiously". Have you not read this forum for the past week? It's been riddled with techies ragging on tech CEO's for "blaming the economy" and not blaming themselves for over-hiring.

The part I don't quite get (except insofar as it's an understandable emotional reaction) is why people are mad at companies hiring more people than they should have and then eventually laying them off a few years later. Would it have been better for those people if they were never hired in the first place, never had a few years of getting paid for extraneous work? Is the trauma of getting laid off really so great that they wish they had never been hired in the first place?

Okay, so the job wasn't the last of your career, you didn't get to commit the rest of your life to the company. But come on, it's not the 1950s anymore. People change jobs all the time, it's normal. If a company overhires for a few years then eventually corrects itself, that's the company screwing itself over but I think workers offended by this are getting emotionally over-invested. You got paid for your time and you got more out of the relationship than the company which never actually needed your labor in the first place. That's a win for you and a loss for the company, but not all good things can last forever.

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#76

Post by lapcat »

cguess wrote: post #67
lapcat wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, Apple has a mostly-stable massive chunk of the consumer device market and has always had a profit margin that is startlingly high. Not much has changed as far as they're concerned. Apple had a big bump in pandemic-related revenue too, inspired by mass WFH hardware purchases. And now Apple revenue has gone down as well: https://sixcolors.com/post/2023/02/apple-results-and-charts-...

But they were selling the same thing, just because more people buy laptops doesn't mean you have to hire more hardware engineers. The design is the same, you scale your outsourced manufacturing instead. With e-commerce you absolutely need more engineers to maintain the software and you need to buy more servers and hire more sysadmins etc.

> you absolutely need more engineers to maintain the software and you need to buy more servers and hire more sysadmins etc.

Apple makes software, you know. ;-)

They also have many internet services, such as iCloud, App Store, Apple Music, TV+, etc.

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#77

Post by mbesto »

etempleton wrote: post #53
wand3r wrote: post #33

> Apple, meanwhile, was more cautious. Its headcount increased just 20% from 2020 to 2022 At Apples size this is still pretty huge. At least, I thought it was until I saw that Amazon, Meta and Salesforce basically DOUBLED in 2 years. If this data is correct isnt that insane? How can you effectively double orgs of this size over a 2 year period? Its not like a startup with 50 people or something. I guess I was out of…

Growing too fast is damaging to both culture and productivity. You have a bunch of people starting that are still learning. Depending on the job and the person it can take a full year to be fully competent in a job. Apple was smart to move slower. They are probably one of the best run companies in the world.

> Growing too fast is damaging to both culture and productivity.

This seems to be general sentiment here lately. Do you have any evidence to support this or is purely conjecture?

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#78

Post by trilobyte »

jsnell wrote: post #69
mabbo wrote: post #32

Apple's underlying economics haven't changed, so they have not had any reason to over-hire in the first place. Amazon, Google, Meta, Shopify and others are all e-commerce based. There was a clear trend that e-commerce had shifted up due to the pandemic, and looked to be permanent. That bet was wrong, so they all had layoffs. Other companies were willing to hire lots of developers because the ROI on devs was good comp…

> Other companies were willing to hire lots of developers because the ROI on devs was good compared to low inflation and low interest rates Was the ROI good though? Did any of these companies seem to deliver new products or features faster? Do their financials suggest that these devs somehow improved operational efficiency (e.g. improved gross margins)? Or was it just that they hired because they could afford to?

I think it was more of a tragedy of the commons where some companies started aggressively hiring, and other companies followed suit to avoid losing access to talent. The pandemic was a huge societal event, but nothing indicated it was going to be the new normal and CEOs who grew headcount expecting it to go on indefinitely made a huge, and arguably an easily avoidable, misstep.

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#79

Post by sumtechguy »

lapcat wrote: post #46
mclouts91 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most layoffs are happening in growth businesses that aren’t even profitable on paper. Apple, make things, things people want and quite often need. they are a solid business that are unlikely to suffer much in a short term tightening of people’s finances interest rate rises.

> Most layoffs are happening in growth businesses that aren’t even profitable on paper. Google? Facebook? Microsoft? All very profitable, all doing layoffs.

My guess most of these companies were also borrowing money. You can look on their balance sheets for the stock. When that rate is low it makes a lot of sense to grow and borrow. When that rate goes up the math changes. No matter how profitable you are. There could be quite a bit of 'someone had to go first' fad going on too. Adding headcount just because you make tons of money does not necessarily make sense. It just means you are probably overcharging for your existing products and really should be passing those cost savings onto your customers. If you do not do that you risk a competitor doing exactly that. Interest rates plus decent inflation plays into how much debt/risk you can take on what your headcount will be plus what you charge your customers.

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#80

Post by rvz »

wand3r wrote: post #33

> Apple, meanwhile, was more cautious. Its headcount increased just 20% from 2020 to 2022 At Apples size this is still pretty huge. At least, I thought it was until I saw that Amazon, Meta and Salesforce basically DOUBLED in 2 years. If this data is correct isnt that insane? How can you effectively double orgs of this size over a 2 year period? Its not like a startup with 50 people or something. I guess I was out of…

Yes. Apple's size is still large but isn't ten times as large as Amazon, nor has it grown as much in a short space of time.

But surely someone must have questioned the industry mass over hiring with the Covid bubble and VC cheap money fuelling it for decades to result in these mass layoffs?

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