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

Try $0. Look at the App Store charts. The 200 top grossing apps are ironically all "Free": https://appfigures.com/top-apps/ios-app-store/united-states/...

This is the real problem, the crApp Store race to the bottom. Apple's cut was never really the problem. The cut is obscene, but only because the prices are already obscenely low. I'd be happy to give Apple 50% if I could sell my software for higher prices.

> And you sell 100,000.

Good luck with that.

> You also have to set up a server to serve the downloads and pay hosting, storage, and bandwidth.

Cheap.

> As well as shipping updates to all of your customers. As well as ensuring updates are compatible for any iOS version your customers might be using. There's going to be some level of customer support required.

You have to do these things anyway.

> Finally, how are people going to discover your app? You aren't on any app stores, so you have to advertise. You'll need to market. And -- convince people that you aren't going to infect their device with malware.

You have to do all of this stuff regardless of whether you're in the App Store. As an App Store developer myself, I can tell you that Apple absolutely does not do these things for you.

Notice how many Mac developers, given the choice, choose to distribute themselves rather than via the Mac App Store. They don't see the App Store as a win like you do.

Then at home, kids and multiple family health issues. I guess my age plays a role too.

Amazon saw a massive spike in their ecommerce business due to lockdowns so they had to hire to ensure they had the labour to deal with all the extra orders and deliveries. And even with this extra hiring I remember my deliveries being delayed often in 2020.

Saleforce is a weird software company because my understanding is a lot of their staff are there to help clients with integrations, manage accounts and to upsell. Again, assuming Salesforce saw a spike in demand during the pandemic they probably needed more employees because of the nature of their business.

My guess is that Apple also had to ramp up manufacturing significantly during the pandemic to meet demand, but obviously they don't employee people directly to do their manufacturing which probably gave them more flexibility when it came to meeting pandemic demand without increasing head count.

For the most part I don't understand why people act like tech companies were hiring recklessly during the pandemic. Are people forgetting how much demand was pulled forward by stimulus and lockdowns? These companies were forced to hire or lose market share. That's really the only two options they had.

Personally I'd be blaming politicians and the Fed for creating an impossible economic environment to operate in. If you were a company in 2020 your demand was either skyrocketing from lockdowns or at zero because you were forced to close your business. There was no in-between. Tech employees as initial beneficiaries of lockdowns are only now seeing the impact of job losses, but these were happening on mass elsewhere in the economy while lockdowns were in place.

Demand looked like it was growing massively with no end in sight, valuations were insane, and money was easy to get.

A lot of companies didn't stop to think that maybe it was all just a bubble. So they hired to avoid missing out.

Basic things like running a sustainable business with a sane balance sheet were not scrutinized by investors. Now they are, and in the layoff emails to employees we see CEOs talking about how that is important, as if they suddenly realized it for the first time.

To be fair, some of those companies probably did make a lot more money than they would have if they hadn't taken advantage of the situation -- and they probably would have been punished by their shareholders if they didn't.