9 ms·

follow up question, why hasn't apple needed to do this? how are they keeping 'tabs' on 'worker power'?

by noorkersz 4y ago

itsoktocry 4y ago
>why hasn't apple needed to do this? Yet? There's still a lot of market uncertainty.
rmorey 4y ago
Union-busting, NDA’s, restricting new slack channels, non-competes - all the usual ways!
- noorkersz 4y ago
  This response just turns my question into: why haven't the usual ways been sufficient for the rest of the tech companies? why are the usual ways still sufficient for apple but not for the others???
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    Apple still might do a big layoff.
  - toyg 4y ago
    From what I read, Apple has never been ashamed of running on a model that clearly states "this is not a democracy, Dear Leader has all the power". Because they can attract talent on an ideological level, they just don't need to care on a day to day level. See also all the military-level secrecy, cult-like behavior, etc etc. Other companies try to mealy-mouth their way around the facts of life, most of the time, because they have an "evil" image so wouldn't be able to recruit otherwise.
  - soiler 4y ago
    I think it's not as simple as "action x => result y". it's a messy art more than a science. Apple is trying x, y, and z. Google tried a, b, and c. Both companies have different circumstances, different employees, different shareholder mandates, etc. And of course every CEO would like to be the one who solves Industry-Wide Problem in the best way (less public backlash, more savings, whatever your metric is)
- baud147258 4y ago
  > restricting new slack channels how is restricting the creation of chatrooms in a communication tool that's likely provided by the company in any way comparable to any of your other examples? If Slack is provided by your company, they would likely have mean to get everything you might have written there, that's already an incentive to move any discussion the company might frown on (like talk of unionizing efforts) on another platform that's not controlled by them.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Separating workers from each other is a primary focus of fighting unionization, even to the point of starting and dismissing shifts in staggered groups. Work is where workers see each other. A lot of organizing is done at bus stops near places of work, or just outside of parking lots talking through car windows. Workers at work should have the ability to discuss their jobs with each other. edit: I don't know if I made this clear enough, but you cant just tell people at your job to go to a website if you only see two or three of them at a time, and since your employer has invented a new policy against "handing out political literature" you can't even print business cards with the website on them and hand them to people without risking termination for cause.
    - baud147258 4y ago
      it just feels like a petty move compared to actual union busting effort. And instead of a link to a website, put a QR code with an invite to a discord server on that business card, where the channel #resources links to the appropriate manifesto and leaflets... > Workers at work should have the ability to discuss their jobs with each other. yes. But that's not necessarily the obligation of the company to provide them a tool to do so, hence my comment about using another platform
  - 0x457 4y ago
    Slack doesn't share DMs and private rooms without court order.
eyphka 4y ago
So why did Tim Cook take a 40% pay cut?
- LewisVerstappen 4y ago
  Which is completely absurd if you bother doing 20 seconds of math? The reason Apple didn't do a mass layoff is because they didn't overhire during 2021/2022. Like most articles from the LA Times, this seems like complete BS as usual.
  - buildbot 4y ago
    35 million in cut pay is at 300K per worker, ~116 people. That's 0.07%, which while not 5%, certainly is not nothing.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  This should give you some insight: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-28/goldman-morgan-stanley-ceos-take-pay-cuts-as-others-get-raise-despite-layoffs https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-28/goldman-m...
  - eyphka 4y ago
    Apple hasn't done mass layoffs I don't think?
GoToRO 4y ago
My feeling is that they were already doing it so for them there was nothing to be changed.
nfRfqX5n 4y ago
they hired way less than others over the past 2 years
cloutchaser 4y ago
Second hand information: Apple on average takes 2 years to fill an empty position. They almost never lay anyone off, just find another role for someone. It's where the evil corporation narrative falls down, apple makes sure they hire the right people and then keep them. It's the way it should be. But even for other tech companies, people on HN need to look outside of tech and see what life is like, there are people on here who literally had the best possible jobs in the entire history of humanity, with prepaid 3 meals a day, free daycare, free gym, free everything, yet somehow think that these companies were evil exploitative capitalists. I'm sorry - no. These were the best employers in the world. Now there's a serious downturn in the economy, they are firing like 5-10% of staff. That's nothing. Try being a factory worker at a Tyson food factory in the midwest, or a foxconn factory in china, then you'll understood how good these tech companies treat their employees.
- toyg 4y ago
  The fact that they coddle some of their workers (typically a very small minority), doesn't mean they are not exploitative capitalist enterprises. The two are different concepts.
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  I’m sorry, but this is just class war crap. Instead of pitting workers against each other like the plutocrats want, always ALWAYS remember that even with all that non-monetary compensation, the executives are still taking more 100x of the value created by the worker. This is like complaining about some athlete getting paid millions to risk their health for entertainment, while not once giving a thought about the billionaire that pays them. No one is buying a ticket to watch Jerry Jones sit up in a skybox. Similarly, no one buys a piece of software or a chicken breast because of some exec cruising away on inertia.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    Bingo. Billionaires win when they convince thousandaires that millionaires are the real problem.
  - cloutchaser 4y ago
lambic2 4y ago
Apple did not way over-hire during the pandemic like all the other big Tech co's.
infamouscow 4y ago
Apple wasn't stupid enough to think a black swan event was going to last forever. These layoffs shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
alonsonic 4y ago
Maybe the answer is that no one is trying to "keep tabs on worker power" and the decision is primarily driven by financial reasons? Cheap money had to be spent in an inflationary economy, money is more expensive now with higher rates and thus companies that ramped up spending too fast need to cut costs. Apple did not hire as many people during the pandemic so they don't have as much pressure.
- roncesvalles 4y ago
  I never really understood the cheap money argument. Big tech doesn't need to take on debt to expand, so why would it matter what the interest rate is? I also don't understand the notion of "overhiring". Tech doesn't just hire people without having anything lined up for them to do. At least not en masse.
alistairSH 4y ago
Apple didn't hire excessively last year. During the pandemic, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon all had double-digit % employee growth. Apple did not - their growth was typical of previous years at Apple. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/apple-had-slower-headcount-growth-than-tech-peers-no-layoffs-yet.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/apple-had-slower-headcount-g...
mytailorisrich 4y ago
Apple may have had more sensible hiring policies all along. It seems to me that many of the layoffs come from companies that hired like mad over the past few years without necessarily having a need backed by the bottom-line to do so.

follow up question, why hasn't apple needed to do this? how are they keeping 'tabs' on 'worker power'?

itsoktocry 4y ago

>why hasn't apple needed to do this? Yet? There's still a lot of market uncertainty.

rmorey 4y ago

Union-busting, NDA’s, restricting new slack channels, non-competes - all the usual ways!

noorkersz 4y ago
This response just turns my question into: why haven't the usual ways been sufficient for the rest of the tech companies? why are the usual ways still sufficient for apple but not for the others???
- whatshisface 4y ago
  Apple still might do a big layoff.
- toyg 4y ago
  From what I read, Apple has never been ashamed of running on a model that clearly states "this is not a democracy, Dear Leader has all the power". Because they can attract talent on an ideological level, they just don't need to care on a day to day level. See also all the military-level secrecy, cult-like behavior, etc etc. Other companies try to mealy-mouth their way around the facts of life, most of the time, because they have an "evil" image so wouldn't be able to recruit otherwise.
- soiler 4y ago
  I think it's not as simple as "action x => result y". it's a messy art more than a science. Apple is trying x, y, and z. Google tried a, b, and c. Both companies have different circumstances, different employees, different shareholder mandates, etc. And of course every CEO would like to be the one who solves Industry-Wide Problem in the best way (less public backlash, more savings, whatever your metric is)
baud147258 4y ago
> restricting new slack channels how is restricting the creation of chatrooms in a communication tool that's likely provided by the company in any way comparable to any of your other examples? If Slack is provided by your company, they would likely have mean to get everything you might have written there, that's already an incentive to move any discussion the company might frown on (like talk of unionizing efforts) on another platform that's not controlled by them.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Separating workers from each other is a primary focus of fighting unionization, even to the point of starting and dismissing shifts in staggered groups. Work is where workers see each other. A lot of organizing is done at bus stops near places of work, or just outside of parking lots talking through car windows. Workers at work should have the ability to discuss their jobs with each other. edit: I don't know if I made this clear enough, but you cant just tell people at your job to go to a website if you only see two or three of them at a time, and since your employer has invented a new policy against "handing out political literature" you can't even print business cards with the website on them and hand them to people without risking termination for cause.
  - baud147258 4y ago
    it just feels like a petty move compared to actual union busting effort. And instead of a link to a website, put a QR code with an invite to a discord server on that business card, where the channel #resources links to the appropriate manifesto and leaflets... > Workers at work should have the ability to discuss their jobs with each other. yes. But that's not necessarily the obligation of the company to provide them a tool to do so, hence my comment about using another platform
- 0x457 4y ago
  Slack doesn't share DMs and private rooms without court order.

eyphka 4y ago

So why did Tim Cook take a 40% pay cut?

LewisVerstappen 4y ago
Which is completely absurd if you bother doing 20 seconds of math? The reason Apple didn't do a mass layoff is because they didn't overhire during 2021/2022. Like most articles from the LA Times, this seems like complete BS as usual.
- buildbot 4y ago
  35 million in cut pay is at 300K per worker, ~116 people. That's 0.07%, which while not 5%, certainly is not nothing.
andsoitis 4y ago
This should give you some insight: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-28/goldman-morgan-stanley-ceos-take-pay-cuts-as-others-get-raise-despite-layoffs https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-28/goldman-m...
- eyphka 4y ago
  Apple hasn't done mass layoffs I don't think?

GoToRO 4y ago

My feeling is that they were already doing it so for them there was nothing to be changed.

nfRfqX5n 4y ago

they hired way less than others over the past 2 years

cloutchaser 4y ago

Second hand information: Apple on average takes 2 years to fill an empty position. They almost never lay anyone off, just find another role for someone. It's where the evil corporation narrative falls down, apple makes sure they hire the right people and then keep them. It's the way it should be. But even for other tech companies, people on HN need to look outside of tech and see what life is like, there are people on here who literally had the best possible jobs in the entire history of humanity, with prepaid 3 meals a day, free daycare, free gym, free everything, yet somehow think that these companies were evil exploitative capitalists. I'm sorry - no. These were the best employers in the world. Now there's a serious downturn in the economy, they are firing like 5-10% of staff. That's nothing. Try being a factory worker at a Tyson food factory in the midwest, or a foxconn factory in china, then you'll understood how good these tech companies treat their employees.

toyg 4y ago
The fact that they coddle some of their workers (typically a very small minority), doesn't mean they are not exploitative capitalist enterprises. The two are different concepts.
jonathankoren 4y ago
I’m sorry, but this is just class war crap. Instead of pitting workers against each other like the plutocrats want, always ALWAYS remember that even with all that non-monetary compensation, the executives are still taking more 100x of the value created by the worker. This is like complaining about some athlete getting paid millions to risk their health for entertainment, while not once giving a thought about the billionaire that pays them. No one is buying a ticket to watch Jerry Jones sit up in a skybox. Similarly, no one buys a piece of software or a chicken breast because of some exec cruising away on inertia.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  Bingo. Billionaires win when they convince thousandaires that millionaires are the real problem.
- cloutchaser 4y ago

lambic2 4y ago

Apple did not way over-hire during the pandemic like all the other big Tech co's.

infamouscow 4y ago

Apple wasn't stupid enough to think a black swan event was going to last forever. These layoffs shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

alonsonic 4y ago

Maybe the answer is that no one is trying to "keep tabs on worker power" and the decision is primarily driven by financial reasons? Cheap money had to be spent in an inflationary economy, money is more expensive now with higher rates and thus companies that ramped up spending too fast need to cut costs. Apple did not hire as many people during the pandemic so they don't have as much pressure.

roncesvalles 4y ago
I never really understood the cheap money argument. Big tech doesn't need to take on debt to expand, so why would it matter what the interest rate is? I also don't understand the notion of "overhiring". Tech doesn't just hire people without having anything lined up for them to do. At least not en masse.

alistairSH 4y ago

Apple didn't hire excessively last year. During the pandemic, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon all had double-digit % employee growth. Apple did not - their growth was typical of previous years at Apple. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/apple-had-slower-headcount-growth-than-tech-peers-no-layoffs-yet.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/apple-had-slower-headcount-g...

mytailorisrich 4y ago

Apple may have had more sensible hiring policies all along. It seems to me that many of the layoffs come from companies that hired like mad over the past few years without necessarily having a need backed by the bottom-line to do so.