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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

#331

Post by com2kid »

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…

What % of those wearables and services are tied to devices?

If iPhones vanished tomorrow, how much trouble would Apple be in? Wearables are 100% attach rate to iPhone, and I'd presume so are the vast majority of service subscribers.

> 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.

As others said, the software support, browser + office were huge.

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

#332

Post by rbanffy »

giantg2 wrote: post #271
JohnFen wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I turn down promotions. A promotion (especially to a management position) means another step toward the sort of work I don't enjoy and don't want to do.

You have to be careful how you do it. I was punished for turning it down. I was told that all I needed to do was work one extra hour per day (in addition to normal support, elevation, etc). Why would I take a position with higher expectations for a 7% raise and a 13% increase in hours - a rate cut? Plus, if I'm a high performer in my current role I should be getting bigger bonuses. I have a skip level where the depar…

> You have to be careful how you do it. I was punished for turning it down.

Not only that - you may be perceived as a threat to anyone who takes the post that was offered to you and, since you turned it down, you have no actual power to control what happens.

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

#333

Post by etempleton »

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.

Apple built one of the most expensive office complexes in the world. They are going to want people in the office.

Additionally they deal a lot with hardware design. Being in the office is going to be easier for certain things, particularly when you are as secretive as Apple.

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

#334

Post by gsinclair »

hailwren wrote: post #233
simonh wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, people have been lamenting the poor quality of Apple software and how much better it was in the old days since I got my first Mac in 2007, at least that's when I became aware of the complaints. If it was really on a substantial continual down trend from then, by now nothing would work at all. Apple continues to invest massively in software, that means a ton of new code, which means a ton of new bugs. Yo…

Ehh, Apple has some big misses. Their software objectively sucks. OS X has gotten buggier and slower over the years. I traded “it just works” for the speed and customization of linux years ago and would _really_ like the benefits of Apple hardware but can’t bite the bullet on Apple software (Asahi isn’t in a good enough spot yet to be my primary computer imo). The iPad pro line is a travesty. IPadOS is horrible, Appl…

For my use case (education) iPad Pro is a godsend. I don’t see anything wrong with it.

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

#335

Post by ben7799 »

jarjoura wrote: post #315

I can only speak to my experience in the engineering org at Meta and past experience at Apple. One key difference between Apple and Meta is that each individual (on the ground) team at Apple is responsible for its own hiring. Whereas at Meta, they have a general company-wide engineering pool that is mainly driven by recruiters to fill. A manager at Apple will get a batch of resumes and start hiring with a recruiter a…

I had the impression Google and Amazon use the same model as Meta. But in working in the field since the 1990s I have never encountered or worked at any company that used their model. I think their model is likely superior in terms of hiring the most people in the shortest time. With the shortcoming that it might make it easy to overhire, and it might not fill the job with the best person as often.

Lots of small to massive very successful companies don't need to use their model of hiring a pool of people and then only later figuring out which role they will fill. If you're only hiring someone when you have identified a specific role and identified the correct person for that role it might take longer to hire someone, but you won't overhire as easily and you're probably more likely to have a higher hit rate in terms of getting the right person.

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

#336

Post by hummus_bae »

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…

> 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. This is certainly what I remember from the pandemic, but it seems like it would be hard to quantify. Anecdotally, for my fairly typical family, we were probably ordering < 10% of our items online; does anyone have data on orders vs. average household?

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

#337

Post by hailwren »

gsinclair wrote: post #334
hailwren wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, Apple has some big misses. Their software objectively sucks. OS X has gotten buggier and slower over the years. I traded “it just works” for the speed and customization of linux years ago and would _really_ like the benefits of Apple hardware but can’t bite the bullet on Apple software (Asahi isn’t in a good enough spot yet to be my primary computer imo). The iPad pro line is a travesty. IPadOS is horrible, Appl…

For my use case (education) iPad Pro is a godsend. I don’t see anything wrong with it.

What feature of the pro makes it worth $150 ($650 if you have the larger screen) more than the comparable iPad?

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

#338

Post by JohnFen »

hbn wrote: post #316
JohnFen wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I turn down promotions. A promotion (especially to a management position) means another step toward the sort of work I don't enjoy and don't want to do.

I haven't necessarily turned down promotions, but I've been at my job for over 2.5 years and have no desire to make the jump from "developer" to "senior developer" like most do, because while I'm sure you get a nice pay bump, I know firsthand it just means you're in way more meetings (of which I already think I'm in too many of) and writing less code. I don't even know what the extra pay would be, but it's probably n…

It depends on what "senior developer" means, though. With my last 4 jobs, I was hired with the title "senior developer" -- but what it indicated was my pay grade, not my responsibilities. I was just a regular developer in them all.

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

#339

Post by ben7799 »

paulmd wrote: post #283
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.

there is a cultural mindset especially among startups that it's better to be alive and having to make layoffs than to move conservatively, have a faster mover overtake you and push you out of the market, and be dead. "The graveyards are full of businesses that moved appropriately for the market conditions", to warp a saying. apple is an enormously stable company in ways that (to be very honest) even most other tech b…

This is kind of a west coast SV/social/adtech type of startup mentality.

Working east coast in more traditional tech companies this has never really been a thing. It's always been conservative, staying profitable, etc.. It is the older way.

Apple, MS, etc.. were built this way too of course.

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

#340

Post by JohnFen »

giantg2 wrote: post #289
JohnFen wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, you don't want to burn bridges. But taking the description of your situation at face value, I would have quit that company. Its values are so different from mine that I'd feel I have no business being there.

I didn't feel like I was burning bridges. I obviously worded it more gently and stuff. It's consistently ranked as a best place to work. The written policies are great, but they don't matter because there are unwritten backroom policies. They are also one of the largest employers in the area and I can't move due to family issues. I was screwed, but sure, if one has other options, one should take them.

Yeah, that's a tough spot.
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