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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".
Apple got burned bad the last time they were caught organizing a wage fixing cartel: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jo... It's different this time around though, because economy. The tech layoffs started at the least profitable companies with the weakest balance sheets first (Google, Microsoft), and besides the whole economy is doing massive layoffs because of the recession and high interes…
> the whole economy is doing massive layoffs because of the recession "U.S. reports blowout job growth; unemployment lowest since 1969" https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-job-growth-accelerates-j...
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 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-...
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…
Both strategies make sense—make big, risky investments, or grind out more profits in existing, highly lucrative markets.
Or maybe the current tech layoffs are a fad not driven by necessity, and Apple tends to set trends, not mindlessly follow them?
Most layoffs are happening in growth businesses that aren’t even profitable on paper. Apple, make things, things people want and quite often need. they are a solid business that are unlikely to suffer much in a short term tightening of people’s finances interest rate rises.
Google? Facebook? Microsoft? All very profitable, all doing layoffs.
> 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…
You mean to tell me that Apple could have created thousands of high paying jobs, if only for several years, but didn’t. And this is good? I can never remember who to be mad at. More seriously, I realize this is just clickbait, but I wonder how you could determine objectively which approach (hiring slow and needing to catch up, hiring medium, hiring fast and needing to fire) is “better for business”. Seems very hard t…
Yes, I consider it good management and judgement. Apple is a company, not some charity. Amazon, etc didn't hire out of the goodness of their hearts they felt they could capitalize on something that didn't materialize.
For example, if Apple grew headcount by 20%, but laid off zero percent — percentage wise, they’re still significantly behind contributions made to labor market of a comparable company that double in size and then laid off 20% of its workforce; meaning not only did the comparable company increase the percentage of people being paid during the period, but also at the end of the period had increased the overall percentage of new employees.
Apple got burned bad the last time they were caught organizing a wage fixing cartel: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jo... It's different this time around though, because economy. The tech layoffs started at the least profitable companies with the weakest balance sheets first (Google, Microsoft), and besides the whole economy is doing massive layoffs because of the recession and high interes…