Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by intrasight » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 6:37 PM UTC

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.

Your assertion makes no sense. If anything, physical goods should take more people than does cloud software.

These dotcoms hired more people because that's what dotcoms do when they can.

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

#242

Post by yodsanklai » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 6:38 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #203

danudey wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally it takes a full year for them to realize that you're not competent, at which point you hit your 1 year cliff and can snag 25% of your options or RSUs before you get PIP'ed out.

I've been at my company for 10 years. It went: competent -> high performer -> competent (promotion) -> high performer -> competent -> low performer

Did you go from high performer to low performer at the same role? what has changed?

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

#243

Post by no_wizard » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 6:39 PM UTC

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…

I know that everyone is looking at this as "by the numbers" and there is truth to be had there, I offer a different take though.

Apple's culture is not all that amendable to high growth of headcount[0]. Its not in their DNA. Steve Jobs in his return back to Apple setup a cultural legacy around hiring smart, hiring smart, and being intentional. That its better to invest in hiring the best you can and people who fit. When I was there, it was another huge boom time for most of the industry, and Apple still wasn't hiring fast like Meta (then Facebook) or Google was. Some departments in Apple do scale quickly, but typically there is a targeted plan behind that scaling.

In essence, they don't like to take shots on scaling the people aspect of the business, because they value culture fit extremely high and intentionally put it ahead of many other metrics internally.

That was and I believe still is the case

[0]: one can argue no company can take rapid headcount rises, but setting that aside, clearly a lot of companies thought it could work

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

#244

Post by jsnell » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 6:41 PM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #204

sofixa wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile Apple rolled out a completely custom CPU and transitioned all its hardware to it. Amazon literally did the same with Graviton (to be fair they acquired a company doing this and used their work as the basis, but still). Google literally developed TPUs in the same timeframe, while also trying a few other things (Stadia, rip, comes to mind).

Neither of those were risky in the sense of "if it fails, it takes the company with them".

Apple making their own CPUs would also not have taken down the company. They took small incremental steps; at any point, a failure of their own CPU program would at worst have meant using a commercially available SOC (with probably great terms), or alternatively skipping the SOC refresh for a year.

In fact, by your criteria, I doubt that Apple has made a single risky bet this millennium. Even the iPhone failing would not have taken down the company at that stage.

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

#245

Post by encryptluks2 » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 6:43 PM UTC

shmatt wrote: post #40

All of these "company X has avoided layoffs" articles are pretty foolish, are all the big layoffs done? Are we even sure there won't be second rounds by summer? Apple could layoff 4% in a week and these same analysts will try to explain why there was no other way

These aren't even real analyst. They are propagandist.

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

#246

Post by gruez » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 6:44 PM UTC

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.

>It's been riddled with techies ragging on tech CEO's for "blaming the economy" and not blaming themselves for over-hiring.

I think the "I take full responsibility ..." that seems to be a regular fixture of layoff announcement suggests otherwise.

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

#247

Post by htrp » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

shmatt wrote: post #37

lapcat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an official statement directly from Tim Cook a week ago: https://9to5mac.com/2023/02/02/apple-layoffs-tim-cook/

He literally says "you can never say never" Every CEO says its a last resort, they tried everything, etc. Cooks statement isn't any different

If he says never and ends up doing it.... it officially becomes securities fraud.

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

#248

Post by orangecat » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 6:49 PM UTC

jjirsa wrote: post #151

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…

> Apple's underlying economics haven't changed, so they have not had any reason to over-hire in the first place. The bloomberg article has a visual showing revenue-per-employee going up from 1.17M/employee (2017-2019) to 2.51M/employee (2020-2022), so ... some of the underlying economics changed somehow?

revenue-per-employee going up from 1.17M/employee (2017-2019) to 2.51M/employee (2020-2022)

The pandemic probably contributed to that, but also during that period they went from their worst line of Macs in recent years to their best.

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

#249

Post by dmitriid » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 6:49 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #244

dmitriid wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those were risky in the sense of "if it fails, it takes the company with them".

Apple making their own CPUs would also not have taken down the company. They took small incremental steps; at any point, a failure of their own CPU program would at worst have meant using a commercially available SOC (with probably great terms), or alternatively skipping the SOC refresh for a year. In fact, by your criteria, I doubt that Apple has made a single risky bet this millennium. Even the iPhone failing would…

Riiiight. iPhone is not risky, but small scale Graviton production by Amazon is.

Gotcha.

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

#250

Post by UncleOxidant » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 6:50 PM UTC

I've seen recent job listings at Apple that seem to strongly indicate that they're still trying to make an EV ("automotive and electric drive train experience preferred"). So they still seem inclined to throw money away in that direction.