22 ms·

Growing too fast is damaging to both culture and productivity. You have a bunch of people starting that are still learning. Depending on the job and the person

Growing too fast is damaging to both culture and productivity. You have a bunch of people starting that are still learning. Depending on the job and the person it can take a full year to be fully competent in a job. Apple was smart to move slower. They are probably one of the best run companies in the world.

deelowe 4y ago
My experience is in cloud and I can give some insight on what we were thinking at this time. In cloud, infrastructure is key and our theory was that we needed to beat the other companies in terms of scale and capability. So we were aggressively trying to scale to get ahead of the competition. The environment was highly competitive all the way down to even the PCBA manufacturers. As an example, at one company, to get their "A teams" you need to be their top customer in terms of volume. So while it looks odd by comparison, cloud providers were in a bit of a different environment than Apple.
mbesto 4y ago
> Growing too fast is damaging to both culture and productivity. This seems to be general sentiment here lately. Do you have any evidence to support this or is purely conjecture?
- spacephysics 4y ago
  Not that I have a rigorous source, but I feel we can generally agree the following: New hires take anywhere from 3 months to 8 months or more depending on the position to ramp up During ramp up period, there’s a productivity toll taken on the team via teaching the new hire Thus during this time, productivity is hampered —— For culture, I think it’s a bit more subjective. But if you have a team of 5 who then gets 1 new hire to teach over 6 months, generally it allows them to “mesh” better in the culture. Both in terms of team mates learning about the new hire, and the new hire having room to fit in within the culture, and bring their own value to the team (assuming an already existing good culture. Now say you have 3 new hires on a team of 5. If we further presume productivity is also hampered more as more people are onboarded at once, that creates additional stress on the team to teach them. Further, it could be harder to have the new hires feel part of the team if less time is spent getting to know each one. But assume this isn’t the case: Business will most likely expect at least the same productivity from the team. Now they’re stressed from teaching, higher expectations on their output (onboarding a team member is tiring work), and the business is going to soon expect productivity to increase further after headcount is upped by over 50% in this example. Now take that, and add on new teams created to interact with, additional communication layers, and it’s pretty straightforward to assume growing too fast can be negative
  - mbesto 4y ago
    Okay cool. But, none of this addresses the opportunity cost. What happens if you don't hire fast and you miss revenue opportunities. As the saying goes "revenue solves everything".
    - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
      Cash flow solves everything, or profit solves everything are perhaps better phrases, since apparently people forgot that the purpose of a company is to make profit, not just revenue.
      - mbesto 4y ago
        You can have run a company for zero profit and it can still be a benefit to society, so no the "purpose of a company is to make profit" is not necessarily true. "If we want to know what a business is, we have to start with its purpose. And the purpose must lie outside the business itself. In fact, it must lie in society, since a business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. The customer is a foundation of a business and keeps it in existence. The customer alone gives employment. And it is to supply the customer that society entrusts wealth-producing resources to the business enterprise. Because it is the purpose to create a customer, any business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. These are the entrepreneurial functions. Marketing is the distinguishing, the unique function of the business." - Peter Drucker
        Kamq 4y ago
        > You can have run a company for zero profit and it can still be a benefit to society, so no the "purpose of a company is to make profit" is not necessarily true. On one hand, fair. Technically correct. On the other hand basically all laymen use the word "company" to mean for-profit corporation, and pretty much everyone who wants to talk about corporations that are designed not to make a profit use the term "non-profit". I think you've ignored the context in which the comment was made.
inetknght 4y ago
> [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 quality) since Tim Cook took over.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  >...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.)
  - dumpsterdiver 4y ago
    Speaking of software quality, anyone notice in Apple Music how the categories all start with Apple? Apple Dance music, Apple Country, Apple Pop... like are they trying to make it intentionally difficult for me to use my eyes to find music? I know that I'm using Apple Music... why does every category need to remind me of that while simultaneously impeding my ability to locate things alphabetically? Of course, when I use Siri I can just say "play Dance music" and it works. Hmm.
    - eitally 4y ago
      It could be worse. If you were on Android, about half of Google's 1P apps start with "Google", and about half don't, even ones that probably should (like Google Home).
    - brnt 4y ago
      Soon in supermarkets near you: the Apple Apple. Beautiful, healthy, tasty; no buttons!
      - 4y ago
sam0x17 4y ago
> They are probably one of the best run companies in the world. I would disagree with this. Although their risk is spread much better than it was in the early 00s, a huge amount of their recurring revenue right now teeters on the brink of destruction in the form of their 30% app store cut and the walled-garden nature of their app store. All it would take is a morally principled, non-lobbied regulator to step in and regulate that down to something reasonable like 5% or 3% and require allowing third party app stores (both actions would be equivalent economically because their current fee only works because of their monopoly), and I don't see someting like this not happening in the next decade. It will be a huge and deserved adjustment when this does happen, and stock speculation will only amplify the blow in the form of lost stock value. There are many, many long-time holders of apple stock who might see the threat of such an event as a time to finally sell. Then we'll see how much value is really there. Additionally, they have sunk billions of dollars in a brand new campus at a time when WFH is here to stay. That investment will also likely turn out to be worthless in the coming decades as the value of CRE races to $0.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Playing the game according to the current rules seems preferable than playing the game according to rules that may or may not come into existence. Also, they will still be one of the, if not most, profitable businesses in the world even if they lose all the App Store revenue, so it does not seem reasonable to expect more.
  - sam0x17 4y ago
    Companies of this size need to play the long game, but quarterly OKRs and a beuracratic structure ensure they only ever play the short game. The 30% is great this quarter and next quarter, and every quarter until the quarter where it goes away completely. Keeping it this high is extremely risky behavior, literally taunting for regulation.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      If you look at Apple’s results and products and think they are playing for next quarter, I do not know what to tell you. The App Store model has served them well for years. If it stops serving them well next quarter, so what?
nashashmi 4y ago
> one of the best run companies They off-source all of their factory efforts to other companies. The other companies are doing the hiring and firing. Probably the best run company is Qualcomm. I have never heard them do layoffs. And they are based in San Diego. edit: Just googled it and found https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1l5vLinG https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1l5vLinG edit2: also, https://www.thelayoff.com/apple https://www.thelayoff.com/apple
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- simonh 4y ago
  >The other companies are doing the hiring and firing. And this is evidence they're not so well run? On the contrary...
rcarr 4y ago
"I think Apple is one of the strong companies and will stay a strong company, I think it's ungodly well-managed." - Charlie Munger
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  > I think it's ungodly well-managed. So satan is involved? That might explain how Jobs came back after getting boot #1.
giantg2 4y ago
"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.
- danudey 4y ago
  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.
  - glomgril 4y ago
    If you're at Amazon you'll walk away with 5% after one year, and only 20% after two years.
    - Gh0stRAT 4y ago
      True, but misleading. Amazon gives big cash bonuses to new hires in years 1 and 2 in order to compensate for the back-weighted vesting schedule.
      - stephencanon 4y ago
        As big as 20% of their RSU grant + the bonus they would get at another company would be? If not, not misleading at all.
        andonisus 4y ago
        Comp is meant to stay stable at the agreed upon target for the first two years. There is a cash bonus for years 1 and 2 used to offset the vesting schedule. The final 2 years are really dependent on stock performance. For example, I basically will need AMZN stock to get increase by 25% from todays value by Jan 2025 to be making what I did for the first two years.
        Gh0stRAT 4y ago
a4isms 4y ago
I use "Eternal September" for the cultural effect on businesses that suddenly gorge themselves on new hires that have no exposure to the existing culture or context. The negative effects are loosely parallel to what happens when a social medium breaks out of being a subculture and goes mainstream.
paulmd 4y ago
there is a cultural mindset especially among startups that it's better to be alive and having to make layoffs than to move conservatively, have a faster mover overtake you and push you out of the market, and be dead. "The graveyards are full of businesses that moved appropriately for the market conditions", to warp a saying. apple is an enormously stable company in ways that (to be very honest) even most other tech blue-chips are not. even microsoft or google have the sword of damocles hanging over them - given a sufficiently long and severe position of mismanagement it is possible that even google or MS could be unseated or even go under. arguably that is the trajectory MS was on in the 00s, and google could be similarly unseated by AI. intel would be a great real-world example of that. Even 10 years ago the thought of big blue losing control was unthinkable, un-thinkable. And here we are, they're circling the drain right now and need to make very deep cuts and refocus on the essentials or they're going to be in bankruptcy in 5-10 years, during a down market in general and a specific market that they glutted during the pandemic (a lot of customers have enough PCs/laptops/servers for quite a while). And in contrast Apple is still making money hand-over-fist despite the market conditions - now that's stability. I'm not going to say that google or MS doubling their size on a short-term timescale sounds like a good idea but it's a ride-or-die industry, you're pretty much either getting bigger or getting smaller, and mere homeostasis is a rare luxury.
- ben7799 4y ago
  This is kind of a west coast SV/social/adtech type of startup mentality. Working east coast in more traditional tech companies this has never really been a thing. It's always been conservative, staying profitable, etc.. It is the older way. Apple, MS, etc.. were built this way too of course.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Well, of course, how many of the east coast minicomputer companies are still around? That said, I agree in general, there's probably a general difference in approach between east coast and west coast. (And the mix of companies--and government--is generally different and reflects that.)
kefirlife 4y ago
Apple does a lot right. However, I find their insistence on keeping their teams in an office to be strange. My experience with Apple internally was an overly positive and optimistic culture, to the point where they had a hard time identifying, or discussing, what did not work well.
- cjohnson318 4y ago
  Aside from all the talk about the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, etc. I found Apple to be very conservative and buttoned up, which I found very reassuring. I've never worked anywhere else in the FAANG-sphere, but it seemed like the polar opposite of "Googley".
- Gigachad 4y ago
  I predict that Apples in office culture is going to be key to their success.
- etempleton 4y ago
  Apple built one of the most expensive office complexes in the world. They are going to want people in the office. Additionally they deal a lot with hardware design. Being in the office is going to be easier for certain things, particularly when you are as secretive as Apple.
ss48 4y ago
However, if you hire twice as many people, potentially twice as many people will be competent the following year.
chris222 4y ago
This comes directly from Steve Jobs legacy. He talked a lot about the value of small teams and how they self regulate but can breakup if they grow too quickly. https://youtu.be/wTgQ2PBiz-g https://youtu.be/wTgQ2PBiz-g

deelowe 4y ago

My experience is in cloud and I can give some insight on what we were thinking at this time. In cloud, infrastructure is key and our theory was that we needed to beat the other companies in terms of scale and capability. So we were aggressively trying to scale to get ahead of the competition. The environment was highly competitive all the way down to even the PCBA manufacturers. As an example, at one company, to get their "A teams" you need to be their top customer in terms of volume. So while it looks odd by comparison, cloud providers were in a bit of a different environment than Apple.

mbesto 4y ago

> Growing too fast is damaging to both culture and productivity. This seems to be general sentiment here lately. Do you have any evidence to support this or is purely conjecture?

spacephysics 4y ago
Not that I have a rigorous source, but I feel we can generally agree the following: New hires take anywhere from 3 months to 8 months or more depending on the position to ramp up During ramp up period, there’s a productivity toll taken on the team via teaching the new hire Thus during this time, productivity is hampered —— For culture, I think it’s a bit more subjective. But if you have a team of 5 who then gets 1 new hire to teach over 6 months, generally it allows them to “mesh” better in the culture. Both in terms of team mates learning about the new hire, and the new hire having room to fit in within the culture, and bring their own value to the team (assuming an already existing good culture. Now say you have 3 new hires on a team of 5. If we further presume productivity is also hampered more as more people are onboarded at once, that creates additional stress on the team to teach them. Further, it could be harder to have the new hires feel part of the team if less time is spent getting to know each one. But assume this isn’t the case: Business will most likely expect at least the same productivity from the team. Now they’re stressed from teaching, higher expectations on their output (onboarding a team member is tiring work), and the business is going to soon expect productivity to increase further after headcount is upped by over 50% in this example. Now take that, and add on new teams created to interact with, additional communication layers, and it’s pretty straightforward to assume growing too fast can be negative
- mbesto 4y ago
  Okay cool. But, none of this addresses the opportunity cost. What happens if you don't hire fast and you miss revenue opportunities. As the saying goes "revenue solves everything".
  - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
    Cash flow solves everything, or profit solves everything are perhaps better phrases, since apparently people forgot that the purpose of a company is to make profit, not just revenue.
    - mbesto 4y ago
      You can have run a company for zero profit and it can still be a benefit to society, so no the "purpose of a company is to make profit" is not necessarily true. "If we want to know what a business is, we have to start with its purpose. And the purpose must lie outside the business itself. In fact, it must lie in society, since a business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. The customer is a foundation of a business and keeps it in existence. The customer alone gives employment. And it is to supply the customer that society entrusts wealth-producing resources to the business enterprise. Because it is the purpose to create a customer, any business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. These are the entrepreneurial functions. Marketing is the distinguishing, the unique function of the business." - Peter Drucker
      - Kamq 4y ago
        > You can have run a company for zero profit and it can still be a benefit to society, so no the "purpose of a company is to make profit" is not necessarily true. On one hand, fair. Technically correct. On the other hand basically all laymen use the word "company" to mean for-profit corporation, and pretty much everyone who wants to talk about corporations that are designed not to make a profit use the term "non-profit". I think you've ignored the context in which the comment was made.

inetknght 4y ago

> [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 quality) since Tim Cook took over.

bell-cot 4y ago
>...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.)
- dumpsterdiver 4y ago
  Speaking of software quality, anyone notice in Apple Music how the categories all start with Apple? Apple Dance music, Apple Country, Apple Pop... like are they trying to make it intentionally difficult for me to use my eyes to find music? I know that I'm using Apple Music... why does every category need to remind me of that while simultaneously impeding my ability to locate things alphabetically? Of course, when I use Siri I can just say "play Dance music" and it works. Hmm.
  - eitally 4y ago
    It could be worse. If you were on Android, about half of Google's 1P apps start with "Google", and about half don't, even ones that probably should (like Google Home).
  - brnt 4y ago
    Soon in supermarkets near you: the Apple Apple. Beautiful, healthy, tasty; no buttons!
    - 4y ago

sam0x17 4y ago

> They are probably one of the best run companies in the world. I would disagree with this. Although their risk is spread much better than it was in the early 00s, a huge amount of their recurring revenue right now teeters on the brink of destruction in the form of their 30% app store cut and the walled-garden nature of their app store. All it would take is a morally principled, non-lobbied regulator to step in and regulate that down to something reasonable like 5% or 3% and require allowing third party app stores (both actions would be equivalent economically because their current fee only works because of their monopoly), and I don't see someting like this not happening in the next decade. It will be a huge and deserved adjustment when this does happen, and stock speculation will only amplify the blow in the form of lost stock value. There are many, many long-time holders of apple stock who might see the threat of such an event as a time to finally sell. Then we'll see how much value is really there. Additionally, they have sunk billions of dollars in a brand new campus at a time when WFH is here to stay. That investment will also likely turn out to be worthless in the coming decades as the value of CRE races to $0.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
Playing the game according to the current rules seems preferable than playing the game according to rules that may or may not come into existence. Also, they will still be one of the, if not most, profitable businesses in the world even if they lose all the App Store revenue, so it does not seem reasonable to expect more.
- sam0x17 4y ago
  Companies of this size need to play the long game, but quarterly OKRs and a beuracratic structure ensure they only ever play the short game. The 30% is great this quarter and next quarter, and every quarter until the quarter where it goes away completely. Keeping it this high is extremely risky behavior, literally taunting for regulation.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    If you look at Apple’s results and products and think they are playing for next quarter, I do not know what to tell you. The App Store model has served them well for years. If it stops serving them well next quarter, so what?

nashashmi 4y ago

> one of the best run companies They off-source all of their factory efforts to other companies. The other companies are doing the hiring and firing. Probably the best run company is Qualcomm. I have never heard them do layoffs. And they are based in San Diego. edit: Just googled it and found https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1l5vLinG https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1l5vLinG edit2: also, https://www.thelayoff.com/apple https://www.thelayoff.com/apple

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
simonh 4y ago
>The other companies are doing the hiring and firing. And this is evidence they're not so well run? On the contrary...

rcarr 4y ago

"I think Apple is one of the strong companies and will stay a strong company, I think it's ungodly well-managed." - Charlie Munger

red-iron-pine 4y ago
> I think it's ungodly well-managed. So satan is involved? That might explain how Jobs came back after getting boot #1.

giantg2 4y ago

"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.

danudey 4y ago
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.
- glomgril 4y ago
  If you're at Amazon you'll walk away with 5% after one year, and only 20% after two years.
  - Gh0stRAT 4y ago
    True, but misleading. Amazon gives big cash bonuses to new hires in years 1 and 2 in order to compensate for the back-weighted vesting schedule.
    - stephencanon 4y ago
      As big as 20% of their RSU grant + the bonus they would get at another company would be? If not, not misleading at all.
      - andonisus 4y ago
        Comp is meant to stay stable at the agreed upon target for the first two years. There is a cash bonus for years 1 and 2 used to offset the vesting schedule. The final 2 years are really dependent on stock performance. For example, I basically will need AMZN stock to get increase by 25% from todays value by Jan 2025 to be making what I did for the first two years.
      - Gh0stRAT 4y ago

a4isms 4y ago

I use "Eternal September" for the cultural effect on businesses that suddenly gorge themselves on new hires that have no exposure to the existing culture or context. The negative effects are loosely parallel to what happens when a social medium breaks out of being a subculture and goes mainstream.

paulmd 4y ago

there is a cultural mindset especially among startups that it's better to be alive and having to make layoffs than to move conservatively, have a faster mover overtake you and push you out of the market, and be dead. "The graveyards are full of businesses that moved appropriately for the market conditions", to warp a saying. apple is an enormously stable company in ways that (to be very honest) even most other tech blue-chips are not. even microsoft or google have the sword of damocles hanging over them - given a sufficiently long and severe position of mismanagement it is possible that even google or MS could be unseated or even go under. arguably that is the trajectory MS was on in the 00s, and google could be similarly unseated by AI. intel would be a great real-world example of that. Even 10 years ago the thought of big blue losing control was unthinkable, un-thinkable. And here we are, they're circling the drain right now and need to make very deep cuts and refocus on the essentials or they're going to be in bankruptcy in 5-10 years, during a down market in general and a specific market that they glutted during the pandemic (a lot of customers have enough PCs/laptops/servers for quite a while). And in contrast Apple is still making money hand-over-fist despite the market conditions - now that's stability. I'm not going to say that google or MS doubling their size on a short-term timescale sounds like a good idea but it's a ride-or-die industry, you're pretty much either getting bigger or getting smaller, and mere homeostasis is a rare luxury.

ben7799 4y ago
This is kind of a west coast SV/social/adtech type of startup mentality. Working east coast in more traditional tech companies this has never really been a thing. It's always been conservative, staying profitable, etc.. It is the older way. Apple, MS, etc.. were built this way too of course.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Well, of course, how many of the east coast minicomputer companies are still around? That said, I agree in general, there's probably a general difference in approach between east coast and west coast. (And the mix of companies--and government--is generally different and reflects that.)

kefirlife 4y ago

Apple does a lot right. However, I find their insistence on keeping their teams in an office to be strange. My experience with Apple internally was an overly positive and optimistic culture, to the point where they had a hard time identifying, or discussing, what did not work well.

cjohnson318 4y ago
Aside from all the talk about the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, etc. I found Apple to be very conservative and buttoned up, which I found very reassuring. I've never worked anywhere else in the FAANG-sphere, but it seemed like the polar opposite of "Googley".
Gigachad 4y ago
I predict that Apples in office culture is going to be key to their success.
etempleton 4y ago
Apple built one of the most expensive office complexes in the world. They are going to want people in the office. Additionally they deal a lot with hardware design. Being in the office is going to be easier for certain things, particularly when you are as secretive as Apple.

ss48 4y ago

However, if you hire twice as many people, potentially twice as many people will be competent the following year.

chris222 4y ago

This comes directly from Steve Jobs legacy. He talked a lot about the value of small teams and how they self regulate but can breakup if they grow too quickly. https://youtu.be/wTgQ2PBiz-g https://youtu.be/wTgQ2PBiz-g