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Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

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Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#261

Post by lotsofpulp »

midoridensha wrote: post #128
gsatic wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup its just that they have become the largest seller of status signalling veblan goods in history, in times where inequality is at its highest. It would be nice instead, if they used their cash hoard to stop wasting time upgrading the iphone with more superficial shit. Bring prices of the phones down to 50 bucks. Put it in the hands of everyone. And kill the toxic advertising supported attention economy that has cau…

>Bring prices of the phones down to 50 bucks. Put it in the hands of everyone. 60% of Americans already have them, and are perfectly happy to spend $1300 on them every few years, even if it means not paying rent or having to starve themselves. Why would they want to bring the price down?

>60% of Americans already have them, and are perfectly happy to spend $1300 on them every few years, even if it means not paying rent or having to starve themselves. Why would they want to bring the price down?

Source? This comment sounds hyperbolic when many very capable iPhones versions are available for $700+ and 90% of people would not know the difference between a $700 and $1,300 iPhone.

In my family, we have an iPhone 6, X, XS, XR and 2020 SE still working.

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#262

Post by berniedurfee »

devsatish wrote: post #229
sangnoir wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is rather pedestrian: Apple is mostly a hardware company. Apple isn't primarily in e-commerce, streaming or online ads and did not get as big a boost from millions of people suddenly trapped in their homes as other tech companies. Apple was never tempted to overhire, I suspect Apple had the opposite pressure during lockdowns due to its many retail workers seeing fewer customers, while Amazon's warehouses w…

This is the right take ! The pandemic hiring overall was all mostly ‘E-commerce’ driven.

Agreed as well. This seems like an odd metric to use to compare a bunch of tech companies with very different market dynamics.

The Venn diagram between these companies would show some overlap, but not much.

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#263

Post by GeekyBear »

pjmlp wrote: post #140
Gigachad wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is the only one that doesn’t seem to start up hundreds of obviously useless projects. Google will hire thousands to work on an obviously doomed streaming service, to build a new OS, and so many other obviously bad ideas and then just fire them all later. Vanishingly few Apple products seem to be discontinued. Usually after a long life like the iPod.

A/UX, Taligent, Dylan, Pippin, Java Bridge, Quickdraw 3D, Copland,... We don't know more due to the secrecy. EDIT: A few more I just remembered, MacRuby, OpenCL, WebObjects, Quicktime

Compare to something like Microsoft's Kin Phone.

Microsoft paid half a billion dollars to buy Andy Rubin's company, Danger. They decided to rewrite the platform from Java to Dot Net, which took so long the product was no longer competitive when they finished. Then they spent a fortune to advertise a product that was canceled after two weeks.

Then Microsoft decided to take another huge pile of cash and set that on fire by purchasing Nokia's mobile phone business.

> Microsoft wasted at least $8 billion on its failed Nokia experiment

https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/25/11766540/microsoft-nokia-...

Researching a potential product and deciding not to go ahead with it is nowhere near the same order of magnitude on the monetary waste scale.

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#264

Post by toyg »

msm_ wrote: post #248
toyg wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't completely understand your comment. Do you imply there's something wrong with being autistic? Or that overworking is an exclusively autistic trait? Both interpretations seems off, so I believe I missed your point. Though I suspect it's a joke that went well over my head.

[flagged]

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#265

Post by GeekyBear »

rsynnott wrote: post #258
pjmlp wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A/UX, Taligent, Dylan, Pippin, Java Bridge, Quickdraw 3D, Copland,... We don't know more due to the secrecy. EDIT: A few more I just remembered, MacRuby, OpenCL, WebObjects, Quicktime

> Java Bridge, MacRuby These were arguably pretty reasonable hedging; it was _far from certain_ that developers would accept Objective C, and then later there was a general sense that dynamic interpreted languages might eat the world. I can't imagine either were particularly expensive; MacRuby in particular was basically someone's side project? > WebObjects This was inherited, and was pretty successful in its day (th…

> Quicktime

Quicktime was never cancelled. It was adopted industry wide as the MP4 file format.

> MPEG-4 Part 14 is an instance of the more general ISO/IEC 14496-12:2004 (MPEG-4 Part 12: ISO base media file format) which is directly based upon the QuickTime File Format which was published in 2001.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP4_file_format

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#266

Post by berniedurfee »

changoplatanero wrote: post #49
camillomiller wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Tim Cook started by halving his compensation. I didn't hear anything like that from his fellow CEOs who all "took full responsibility" for the choice of going for mass firing instead.

It's not like him halving his compensation makes any material difference in the ability of the company to avoid layoffs.

Nor any material impact to his day to day life. Having half a zillion dollars in the bank ain’t much different from a full zillion.

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#267

Post by remote_phone »

fullsend wrote: post #211
simplyluke wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cook has made several decisions in the past handful of years that seem to show an ability to resist the group think that exists among the large tech companies leadership.

No scandals, no twitter addiction, no sexual assault cases. No bullshit. All this guy does is wake up at 4, work till 10, and sleep. Cuts his own pay voluntarily. Didn’t double his headcount while revenues fell like so many. Tim Cook is such a beast. Jobs left one last blessing for Apple shareholders in his decision to elevate Cook.

He did not cut his pay voluntarily. He pay was cut by the board.

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#268

Post by brown9-2 »

lanza wrote: post #75

This is such a weird topic. The comparison is between companies that didn't exist 20 years ago like Meta and the 50 year old industry veteran Apple. Of course Apple didn't hire as fast, they were established. That's like saying a 20 year old college student grew more over the past decade than a 40 year old engineer. Yea, that's how life works.

Are you saying that Google or Meta are not “established”?

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#269

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

largepeepee wrote: post #147
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I believe that. It honestly sounds like an excuse to fire people. Or leadership has no clue. The biggest thing I got from the pandemic is flexible work arrangements. But I and everyone I knew all wanted to get back out there. Just not back out on public transport to work. We were doing things online because there was no other option. But once the borders opened and restrictions eased, everyone did what t…

The problem with hindsight is people often forget just how chaotic previous events like the entire pandemic was. Even the "experts" were flip flopping globe affecting decisions, we had no idea what the right solution was and how long it would be... 3 months? 6? Permanent? Long term decisions had to be with numerous unknowns, it is clear now they were wrong but I am not certain I would have made the right choice eithe…

You can however react to changes in circumstances when you get new inform. I got my first dose in Sept 2021. Surely people getting vaccines was the signal that things might start reverting a bit. How many employees did these companies add over 2022? Why didn’t they slow down? Because no one else was slowing down?

Re: Apple: The only big tech giant going against the job cuts tide

#270

Post by ghaff »

simonh wrote: post #174
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I believe that. It honestly sounds like an excuse to fire people. Or leadership has no clue. The biggest thing I got from the pandemic is flexible work arrangements. But I and everyone I knew all wanted to get back out there. Just not back out on public transport to work. We were doing things online because there was no other option. But once the borders opened and restrictions eased, everyone did what t…

You’re being very absolutist, people don't have be doing “everything” online for the shift in habits to have a significant effect. Yes on the whole most people do go out and travel again, but on average much less frequently than they used to because they retained the desire but not the same habits. They find they can scratch the itch with fewer outings. All it takes is for people to go out 20% less than they used to,…

You're absolutely correct that relatively small differences at the margin can have fairly large knock-on effects.

That said, I'm pretty sure the overall picture is that things didn't change as much post-pandemic as many predicted. Travel is pretty much back to normal. Dining out is somewhat back to normal--though you need to factor in inflation effects as well. If I drive into the nearest major city, traffic sure seems back to normal--especially mid-week. The shift to remote seen in tech is something of an outlier.

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