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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

#321

Post by mensetmanusman »

lapcat wrote: post #96
mensetmanusman wrote: post #86

Apple’s job losses are hidden because they don’t build anything physical, they let their suppliers fire and hire.

Is there any evidence of Apple supplier mass layoffs? If anything, Apple has had supply chain problems of not being able to produce hardware fast enough to meet demand, due to pandemic-related closures in China.

Suppliers like Foxconn have laid off about 100k in the last half year or so, that’s just one in 1000+. Suppliers in the technology area I am working in have also seen 1000+ layoffs related to fewer orders.

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

#322

Post by Gigachad »

kefirlife wrote: post #296
etempleton wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple does a lot right. However, I find their insistence on keeping their teams in an office to be strange. My experience with Apple internally was an overly positive and optimistic culture, to the point where they had a hard time identifying, or discussing, what did not work well.

I predict that Apples in office culture is going to be key to their success.

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

#323

Post by covercash »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #294
brnt wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soon in supermarkets near you: the Apple Apple. Beautiful, healthy, tasty; no buttons!

Cutting it into quarters requires a special knife that costs $500

But it’s the nicest knife I own… and I’m saving the box.

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

#324

Post by chasd00 »

r00fus wrote: post #58
chaostheory wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To help bring the next paradigm in computing interfaces. I don’t understand why people have forgotten all of the sci-fi movies that have been showing what’s possible

Let me know when someone has solved the "glasshole" creep factor. Clearly Apple is the most capable in shifting consumer sentiment but that's a challenging hurdle.

don't put a led on the front for one. i think people would largely not care if they largely didn't notice. This is why surveillance cameras are placed somewhere out of the way.

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

#325

Post by brookst »

scarface74 wrote: post #317
com2kid wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Apple is doomed any day now”. That’s been the narrative for over 40 years. And they almost went out of business at least twice, once they survived because MS bailed them out. Apple pre-iPod was a source of amusing commercials. Pre iPhone they were the catalyst for change in the music industry, but they were still a consumer goods company with one product that had pretty wide, but still overall limited appeal. Appl…

Just Mac revenue by itself would be the envy of most companies. But you can easily look at Apple’s revenue breakdown between Mac, iPads, services, wearables, etc and see that it is well diversified. And Microsoft never “bailed them out”. Before the MS deal was signed, Apple had already gotten a line of credit for a couple of billion. The $250 million that Microsoft invested in Apple was nothing. Apple turned around a…

Microsoft’s financial contribution was nothing, but Office on Mac was huge. Had there been some third OS that was thriving so Microsoft didn’t feel the need to prop Apple up for antitrust reasons, the world would be different.

But so what? I can’t believe someone is seriously arguing that the failures of the Scully era are somehow damning to Apple under Cook. Sure, every company can fail. Apple is the most profitable company in the world right now, so it’s an odd time to sing doom songs.

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

#326

Post by sanderjd »

Patrol8394 wrote: post #268
sanderjd wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this analysis is exactly backwards. The reason they axe flailing projects quickly is that they know they need to find a small number of promising new revenue streams to focus on. What HN wants them to do - commit to small projects indefinitely - would be exactly the lack of focus and urgency being criticized! I think what people are saying is something like "Google needs to focus on a small number of new succe…

What about AI/ML, Cloud, Workspace ? (+ of course ads and search). Why didn't they launch something like ChatGPT? Even if it was half baked, they should have made more noise and marketing PR on what's cooking ... instead they let OpenAI and Microsoft take the stage. Cloud? They basically invented the cloud! They were running in the cloud when the rest of the world was still copying files to production .. and yet they…

> What about AI/ML, Cloud, Workspace ? (+ of course ads and search).

"AI/ML" isn't a product, it's a tool, and one that is used effectively in a number of successful Google products (including the big moneymakers).

Cloud and Workspace are the non-ads bright spots, which is why they keep receiving plenty of investment, but they are both still very far from dominant in their markets, behind both Amazon and Microsoft. They are good businesses but not at all a full solution if the ads business declines substantially.

> Why didn't they launch something like ChatGPT?

Because billions of people would have used it immediately, and it's way too expensive for that. I suspect nobody yet has a way to serve these chats without the marginal revenue being negative. Google can't launch search features with rate limits, they can only launch things that are capable of serving billions of requests per day.

I'm not sure what argument you think I'm making that the Cloud thing is a counterargument to... My point is very much not "Google has always done everything right and made no mistakes". They absolutely missed the Cloud opportunity, and that's probably the only thing they've tried that could have been big enough if they'd entered the market early enough. (Maybe also if they had started making their own iphone-competitive hardware much earlier.)

But they thought going the social route, competing with Facebook, was going to be the answer, and the failure of that strategy was a major setback.

It could still be the case that this new era of AI is their saving grace. They still have a very real chance to be the first ones to figure out how to turn it into an economically sustainable product in some form. For all the hype, I sincerely doubt anyone has accomplished that yet. Definitely not OpenAI, and I'm guessing this Bing integration is a loss leader.

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

#327

Post by birdymcbird »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #136

I wouldn't lump Amazon in with the others, unless the additional hiring/cuts were to AWS. That's because Amazon __had__ to increase its distribution/warehouse staff during the pandemic just to handle to the __huge__ increase in online purchases, regardless of how long that pattern lasted. So it's going to have a more cyclical hiring/firing pattern than pure tech companies who don't need to double their engineering st…

was at amazon at peak covid.

distribution/warehouse problem and over hiring problem are two separate problems.

i will explain overhiring problem.

from 2018 to 2021 many amazon executives and director leave company. this continued in 2022.

these “tech” leadership very hands on..strong technical acumen. they have vision..manage people..understand business..understand the tech and how to scale.

these people not perfect. under them it very hard burnout factory of place to work. good chance if you work here you need therapy.

these people all start leaving.

they replace by “professional” managers. professional manager has one goal: grow headcount and build empire so they get promoted.

entire teams exist with no valuable output. team of 8 people supporting a service built 10 years ago maybe doing patching like replace outdated java log4j library and redeploy. no feature work. entire team can be fired and service ownership could be given easily to some team doing feature work in another space.

this problem happening all over amazon. innovation at amazon is on how to increase revenue. what they do is hire mba grad, put pressure on them to deliver. Mba grad does obvious shitty thing… let show more ads. if you see amazon.com and search it is now flea market but before you buy any cheap trash first you see walls and walls of “sponsored” recommendation or what is actually fucking ad.

it a massive grift.

amazon need Bezos to return like bob iger do at Disney. jassy only focus on aws

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

#328

Post by yunwal »

flangola7 wrote: post #217
bell-cot wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...more on short-term gains instead of long-term quality... Considering that Tim has been CEO for 11 1/2 years now, and things are still going incredibly well for Apple...it seems pretty hard to argue that he is too focused on the short term. (FWIW, I mostly agree about their software quality.)

And what's the last revolutionary consumer technology that has come out of Apple? The original successful Macs, the iPod, the iPhone, iTunes, those were all under Jobs.

You might dismiss it, but for me AirPods are the biggest QOL improvement from tech since smartphones. Bluetooth headphones were atrociously hard to use before them.

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

#329

Post by rbanffy »

I wish Apple overhired a bit to fix a couple issues I have with their Terminal app... The color support thing doesn't bother me as much as the lack of an overline attribute (so I get my favorite 3278-like status bar). And, quite frankly, I'd love to see smooth scrolling for those rare moments where things are not scrolling past the window at relativistic speeds. In terms of VT-100 compatibility, Terminal.App is already on the very top tier.

And yes, of course, I know there are other terminal apps for macOS. I just want the built-in one to get fixed.

And don't get me started about Tektronix and ReGIS graphics...

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

#330

Post by scarface74 »

brookst wrote: post #325
scarface74 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just Mac revenue by itself would be the envy of most companies. But you can easily look at Apple’s revenue breakdown between Mac, iPads, services, wearables, etc and see that it is well diversified. And Microsoft never “bailed them out”. Before the MS deal was signed, Apple had already gotten a line of credit for a couple of billion. The $250 million that Microsoft invested in Apple was nothing. Apple turned around a…

Microsoft’s financial contribution was nothing, but Office on Mac was huge. Had there been some third OS that was thriving so Microsoft didn’t feel the need to prop Apple up for antitrust reasons, the world would be different. But so what? I can’t believe someone is seriously arguing that the failures of the Scully era are somehow damning to Apple under Cook. Sure, every company can fail. Apple is the most profitable…

Office had been on the Mac since the 80s. Microsoft didn’t just wake up one day in 1997 and decide to port Office to the Mac.

They promised to keep doing what they were already doing.

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