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

#261

Post by sanderjd » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 7:03 PM UTC

cinericius wrote: post #201

sanderjd wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, Google is all over the places, they are very distracted and confident that they will always be the indisputable kind in ads and search so they didn’t invest much in generating other long term major revenue streams. I think this is a very muddled analysis. You seem to be saying that the lack of focus is caused by the perception of a permanent easy revenue stream. But I think the causation is actua…

> You seem to be saying that the lack of focus is caused by the perception of a permanent easy revenue stream. But I think the causation is actually the reverse of that. The lack of focus is more like a breadth first search for additional sustainable revenue streams undertaken because they know the golden goose can't lay eggs forever. I think the difference is urgency. They probably do know that the golden eggs will…

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 successful large revenue sources". Which, yes, of course! But they don't know what those are, and none of the backseat drivers do either.

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

#262

Post by vineyardmike » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 7:05 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…

So, like everything, that’s not the whole truth. Apple was much more restrained, but that’s because it’s always been restrained. I commented this before here, but not all tech companies substantially changed behavior wrt hiring…

We forget that many of these companies have been doubling every few years already. Google and meta were startups in the 2000s, apple and Microsoft are 20+y older.

Basically, most of these tech companies have been hiring at a constant rate for years, and also experiencing constant attrition. Once the economy soured, and then hiring freezes started, attrition rates had crashed, and the employee count wasn't as affected by freeze as desired. The layoffs have been roughly a reset towards the headcount before the freeze for many companies.

While the whole article is paywalled, I'll quote an excerpt from ben Thompson:

> The popular narrative right now about these layoffs is that tech companies dramatically over-hired during the pandemic, but while that seems to have happened with Amazon — and for arguably very good reasons given the way that e-commerce shot up during lockdowns in particular — the reality is that the rest of the tech companies largely increased at the same rate they always had. Sure, the number of employees they added was large, but that was a function of keeping the same hiring rate off of an ever increasing base.

> In short, no one was giving up a job at one of the big five tech companies this year as fear spread about a broad-based slowdown in hiring... These companies, though, adjusted more slowly to the slower rate of attrition, which means they accidentally increased their headcount... the relatively limited size of the layoffs to date actually reflects that: these companies are not returning to their pre-pandemic levels of employees, but rather to where they would be had they kept up roughly the same rates of hiring this year that they have over the last ten

[0] https://stratechery.com/2023/tech-layoffs-big-techs-hiring-r...

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

#263

Post by twblalock » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 7:07 PM UTC

kypro wrote: post #257

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 can't speak to Meta, but Saleforce and Amazon probably needed to hire during the pandemic to keep on with demand. 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…

I definitely blame the Fed.

It's pretty hard to be in charge of a public company and say no to the shareholders who want you to take advantage of the sudden bubble in demand.

Companies would have been punished for not growing, and now they are being punished if they don't shrink.

Who created that perverse system of incentives? The Fed, by making a number of mistakes in the past decade that kept the economy overboosted, by boosting it even more during 2020, and then by taking drastic action to kill the monster they created.

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

#264

Post by JohnFen » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 7:12 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #137

giantg2 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Depending on the job and the person it can take a full year to be fully competent in a job." Some of us never become competent.

And if you do become competent, you're soon promoted to another job you're not competent for.

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.

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

#265

Post by zinekeller » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 7:13 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #127

zinekeller wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> on paper This is the important word. Although Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft overall are profitable there are parts of it that a) was (and still not profitable) and b) was in demand in the last three years but are now softened enough that it turns "okay, unprofitable but manageble" into "this has become a money pit". Since that they are cutting off anyway, why not throw laggards and undesirables into the mix? I estim…

> Meta no longer grows in its traditional business in social media "Almost 20 years in, Facebook is still growing. The social network now has 2 billion daily active users, Meta reported alongside its fourth-quarter earnings. The report marks the first time Facebook, which added 16 million users last quarter, has reached 2 billion daily users." https://www.engadget.com/facebook-2-billion-meta-q4-2022-ear...

> 16 million users

Which in shareholders' terms would be practically nothing.

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

#266

Post by naravara » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 7:15 PM UTC

bell-cot wrote: post #103

inetknght wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Apple is] probably one of the best run companies in the world. I would argue that perhaps Apple's business side of things is arguably well-run. I personally disagree; I think that since Tim Cook has taken over, Apple's business focus is more on short-term gains instead of long-term quality. But I would also strongly argue that their software side of things has been trending downward ( especially in terms of qualit…

>...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.)

I people tend to have a bit of rose tinted glasses on about Apple's software quality of yore. There have always been big stability issues with new features and apps. And they've simply never been good at the UX for anything that involves a network connection or has to sync across multiple systems (besides Safari). The big difference is that more and more computing requires syncing and networking, which is their traditional weak point.

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

#267

Post by JohnFen » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 7:15 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #131

giantg2 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Depending on the job and the person it can take a full year to be fully competent in a job." Some of us never become competent.

Those are probably the ones being let go. That has always been a concern to me about being laid off in one of these massive layoffs efforts. If it is pretty much understood that in these moves the companies are removing dead weight, does that stigma get attached to you as you search for a new job.

This is not as true as you think, but it does depend on the specific company. When I've been part of the hiring process at various companies, I've never seen anyone penalized for having been laid off.

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

#268

Post by Patrol8394 » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #261

cinericius wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You seem to be saying that the lack of focus is caused by the perception of a permanent easy revenue stream. But I think the causation is actually the reverse of that. The lack of focus is more like a breadth first search for additional sustainable revenue streams undertaken because they know the golden goose can't lay eggs forever. I think the difference is urgency. They probably do know that the golden eggs will…

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 left that to AWS and Azure ...

Don't get me wrong, I loved Google, I had much respect for them, and that's why I am so disappointed!

They doubled down on monetizing on user data, search and ads, and completely neglected other areas they could have dominated hands down.

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

#269

Post by jsnell » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 7:18 PM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #249

jsnell wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know where you got that from. You defined the criteria. By that criteria, neither Apple or Amazon ran a risky CPU project.

Now, the reason is that your criteria for what is risky are pretty stupid, as evidenced by not even the iPhone meeting that bar. But don't blame me for it: again, you are the one who set the bar at the failure of the entire company.

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

#270

Post by mancerayder » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 7:23 PM UTC

glomgril wrote: post #179

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.

If you're at Amazon you'll walk away with 5% after one year, and only 20% after two years.

And you hope the stock doesn't go down by 30 percent after 6 months.