11 ms·

Apple cuts 600 jobs after dropping self-driving car plans

84 points by voisin 3y ago

andsoitis 3y ago
> "While this might seem significant given that it relates to Apple as one of the last big tech giants to make job cuts, it is not driven by the need for efficiencies," says Mr Pescatore. > "It feels more like a shift of strategic focus into other new emerging areas like AI," he adds. Be mindful when taking your next job in the AI goldrush.
- paganel 3y ago
  It's interesting because "selfdriving" cars themselves were seen as a form of "AI" at the height of that related goldrush, I'd say 2017-2018 or so.
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    As someone else pointed out in the threads, the Apple Car division was around 2000 people, most of whom (AI folks?) have been redeployed, resulting in a remaining 600 being fired - so it is presumably a set of skills that Apple does not think makes sense to redeploy elsewhere such as other manufacturing plants or retail stores or PR department or finance department, etc.
    - dTal 3y ago
      It's still interesting that self driving cars are framed as being something other than "AI".
      - darkwater 3y ago
        But I guess they laid off not the "AI people" working on self-driving cars. They most probably laid off experts in the automotive domain (I don't know, mechanical engineers working on creating parts for the prototypes, for example).
      - pfdietz 3y ago
        It's a promising sign. Technologies stop being called AI when they actually work.
      - brookst 3y ago
        AI is a capability, self driving cars are a product for a vertical; AI is useful for many things beyond self driving cars, and self driving cars need a lot of ingredients beyond AI. If we have to declare that self driving cars “are” a single thing, I’d say it’s manufacturing, not AI.
    - jrmg 3y ago
      Or they’re people that refused to be redeployed because they didn’t like the other projects.
  - dTal 3y ago
    It's absolutely AI. Perhaps this is one of those weird redefinitions that happens when a gold rush takes over a word, like how "crypto" now means digital currency instead of merely "encryption". But what does "AI" mean now then? Generative AI?
    - yareal 3y ago
      Or when "crypto" meant encryption rather than simply "hidden". (For example crypto zoology)
  - epistasis 3y ago
    Self driving cars were supposed to be around the corner because AI was advancing so fast. Instead of autonomous cars, we get generative AI out of this last rush of AI advances. Today, when people talk about "AI" as a startup they are talking about using this already existing technology. Self-driving was always a speculation that the science would advance into engineering within a sm timeframe, which is always a risky bet. I was hugely skeptical, told everyone that would listen that I didn't believe for a second that Musk would ever deliver on self driving. But I'm far more bullish on AI, we actually do have something new here, it just takes a lot of skill, talent, and discovery to deploy it in useful ways.
    - extheat 3y ago
      The industry (OpenAI, DeepMind, et al) are not seriously working on generate AI. Thats a phase. They are working on AGI. AGI definitionally includes all human cognitive capabilities and that includes vehicular operation and real world interaction (in form of embodied robots). It is likely possible that even self driving cars can be done safely without needing AGI with sufficient scale, and I don’t think it’s that far off from happening.
      - epistasis 3y ago
        There are those who are working on AGI, who say they do not know when or if it will show up. Those who do think AGI will appear (if you can get them to define it) think it will come from a gradual increase in capability , just exactly the same way current advances have happened. Then there are those who are using existing generative AI to book revenue today. This includes OpenAI, and other generative AI providers, but it also includes companies like Accenture, which booked $600M in AI consulting last quarter and expects it to continue growing. There's GitHub co-pilot, which is booking revenue.
    - _ea1k 3y ago
      > Self driving cars were supposed to be around the corner because AI was advancing so fast. To be fair, that was almost true. Waymo is doing well, Mobileye is looking good in demos, and even Tesla has a solid L2 system now. It seems inevitable that this will hit a really dramatic exponential growth phase within the next 2-3 years.
kemiller2002 3y ago
My heart goes out to those people. I am sure they are dedicated and talented individuals, but I don't understand why this is news. It's a company, and a project got canceled. It's what happens.
- kypro 3y ago
  Not necessarily disagreeing, but I believe when it was originally announced they said that the team on this project would be mostly migrated to their AI division.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    They were mostly redeployed. The car division was ~2000 people and ~600 are being laid off.
- reaperducer 3y ago
  Because they're human beings, not KPI points. Moreover, 600 is a lot of human beings, and it follows a recent trend of tech companies' mass layoffs from which Apple has mostly avoided.
  - jjice 3y ago
    Huh, I didn't realize that Apple had mostly avoided it, but you're definitely right. In their defense, the other large tech companies just started trimming fat from everywhere it seems, where as this seems like a direct business decision to abandon an entire project. Still rough for those involved, but it feels less bad than the other mass layoffs to me.
    - gedy 3y ago
      > started trimming fat I really wish you and others would not equate layoffs with "trimming fat". It's kind of disgusting, and especially when these huge corps are still full of others doing plenty of non-meaningful work. Plenty of layoffs are illogical and due to internal politics.
throwaway4good 3y ago
Am I the only one who doesn't buy the "Apple canceled the car project because it couldn't do full self driving" story? Obviously they would have had to create a simpler project before the fsd car. Just like they did the iPod before they did the iPhone.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Yes. But you can also get into a project and realize a commercially viable output is going to take too long and cost too much. (And pretty much every auto manufacturer already has assistive driving systems at some level.)
  - throwaway4good 3y ago
    My personal guess is that it is related to Apple's ability to use the Chinese supply chain which is no longer politically tenable.
    - pc86 3y ago
      That certainly is a guess.
  - nerdjon 3y ago
    Wasn't that even stated in one of the reports recently that the problem was not that they couldn't do it but the commercial viability of it and wether to could ever actually make money? A problem with how much it would cost. I highly doubt the problem was, can Apple build a car? They have enough money that they could probably hire the people to do just about anything they wanted to try. Not really sure how you simplify making a car enough to make it worth getting into the market at all in the first place.
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      They could outright buy some reasonable profile existing manufacturer. But actually entering the market and getting Apple like margins and volumes... Very doubtful. Cars are significantly more expensive than even the VR headset or top of the line computers.
causi 3y ago
It was very obvious the Apple car project was never going to happen. So obvious that it never even felt real when I read the headlines. Apple is not a car company and Apple is not willing to transform itself into a car company.
- mrbgty 3y ago
  I'm not sure how obvious it was or that it still won't happen in the future. Cars have been becoming more and more like a computing device.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    They're using more and more computing, but they are not changing into devices that are primarily for computing.
    - mrbgty 3y ago
      Can you think of any applications for having servers primarily used for processing data on location that are distributed around the world in locations that normally can't have buildings sitting there or that might benefit from moving with traffic?
  - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
    Except for the wheels and seats and oil and grease. Just like.
    - mrbgty 3y ago
      Not a very friendly comment and I didn't think electric vehicles needed oil. Vehicles are doing more and more processing - the work of servers. Distributing moving servers around the world to process data at that specific location is useful and becoming more and more so.
      - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
HumblyTossed 3y ago
I'm of the opinion they never really wanted to do a commercially available car. I think they only did enough R&D to get the new CarPlay software where it needed to be so they could start offering it to the auto OEMs.
- jaimex2 3y ago
  No, they genuinely tried with every Tesla reject they could hire.
  - HumblyTossed 3y ago
    Fair, but I just still can't believe it. It's not a core competency.
    - MikusR 3y ago
      Their core competency was the Jobs' reality distortion field
    - andyjohnson0 3y ago
      Apple believes that designing technology-mediated experiences is a core competency. That, and a large degree of overconfidence, are what got them into it. As to what kept them there: sunk costs and that same overconfidence?
    - mynameisvlad 3y ago
      iPhones, iPads and hell even the iPod line weren’t core competencies until they were released and did well. Apple for a long time was Apple Computers after all.
      - threetonesun 3y ago
        An iPhone/iPad is a variation of a laptop at the end of the day. The iPod was the start of their other core competency, services + licensing, and the iTunes store. The car project has always seemed like a "we have too much money" project. Or a good idea from someone who never leaves their perfect spaceship campus.
melenaboija 3y ago
I guess more details would be needed to opine about it but it is hard to believe that a multiple trillion dollar company with 150000 employees can't do anything to keep 600 people no matter what they were doing :(
- Smaug123 3y ago
  Apple isn't a jobs scheme or a charity, and its primary purpose is not to keep engineers employed - I'm sure the organisation could have kept those 600 people if it wanted to!
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    > I'm sure the organisation would have kept those 600 people if it made financial sense to!
  - melenaboija 3y ago
    Apple is not a charity but is one of the most impactful organizations in the planet and probably should think a little bit ahead of this. Im sure they have enough smart people to find some way of working this around other than making the stakeholders happy.
  - trogdor 3y ago
    > Apple isn't a jobs scheme Kinda is, if you’re going for the pun
    - Smaug123 3y ago
      (I did specifically choose to leave that wording in :P )
- anonuser123456 3y ago
  Employment is a game of matching; the employer wants to match a skill set to a particular job. It’s entirely likely people on these products don’t easily match internally. The job market for people capable of working on Apple high end R&D is also likely much better at matching then Apples internal HR, simply because the market has so many more openings.
helsinkiandrew 3y ago
I thought this was after both the car and the internal smartwatch display projects were canned: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-04/apple-cut-at-least-600-workers-when-car-screen-projects-stopped https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-04/apple-cut... (archive: https://archive.ph/MeaiY https://archive.ph/MeaiY)
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39937426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39937426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39937620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39937620
lupusreal 3y ago
Thank goodness, I was dreading the public release of this onto the streets.
freddealmeida 3y ago
600 jobs is impressive. I guess they won't be building robots either. Figure and Tesla will benefit.

84 points by voisin 3y ago

> "While this might seem significant given that it relates to Apple as one of the last big tech giants to make job cuts, it is not driven by the need for efficiencies," says Mr Pescatore. > "It feels more like a shift of strategic focus into other new emerging areas like AI," he adds. Be mindful when taking your next job in the AI goldrush.

paganel 3y ago
It's interesting because "selfdriving" cars themselves were seen as a form of "AI" at the height of that related goldrush, I'd say 2017-2018 or so.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  As someone else pointed out in the threads, the Apple Car division was around 2000 people, most of whom (AI folks?) have been redeployed, resulting in a remaining 600 being fired - so it is presumably a set of skills that Apple does not think makes sense to redeploy elsewhere such as other manufacturing plants or retail stores or PR department or finance department, etc.
  - dTal 3y ago
    It's still interesting that self driving cars are framed as being something other than "AI".
    - darkwater 3y ago
      But I guess they laid off not the "AI people" working on self-driving cars. They most probably laid off experts in the automotive domain (I don't know, mechanical engineers working on creating parts for the prototypes, for example).
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      It's a promising sign. Technologies stop being called AI when they actually work.
    - brookst 3y ago
      AI is a capability, self driving cars are a product for a vertical; AI is useful for many things beyond self driving cars, and self driving cars need a lot of ingredients beyond AI. If we have to declare that self driving cars “are” a single thing, I’d say it’s manufacturing, not AI.
  - jrmg 3y ago
    Or they’re people that refused to be redeployed because they didn’t like the other projects.
- dTal 3y ago
  It's absolutely AI. Perhaps this is one of those weird redefinitions that happens when a gold rush takes over a word, like how "crypto" now means digital currency instead of merely "encryption". But what does "AI" mean now then? Generative AI?
  - yareal 3y ago
    Or when "crypto" meant encryption rather than simply "hidden". (For example crypto zoology)
- epistasis 3y ago
  Self driving cars were supposed to be around the corner because AI was advancing so fast. Instead of autonomous cars, we get generative AI out of this last rush of AI advances. Today, when people talk about "AI" as a startup they are talking about using this already existing technology. Self-driving was always a speculation that the science would advance into engineering within a sm timeframe, which is always a risky bet. I was hugely skeptical, told everyone that would listen that I didn't believe for a second that Musk would ever deliver on self driving. But I'm far more bullish on AI, we actually do have something new here, it just takes a lot of skill, talent, and discovery to deploy it in useful ways.
  - extheat 3y ago
    The industry (OpenAI, DeepMind, et al) are not seriously working on generate AI. Thats a phase. They are working on AGI. AGI definitionally includes all human cognitive capabilities and that includes vehicular operation and real world interaction (in form of embodied robots). It is likely possible that even self driving cars can be done safely without needing AGI with sufficient scale, and I don’t think it’s that far off from happening.
    - epistasis 3y ago
      There are those who are working on AGI, who say they do not know when or if it will show up. Those who do think AGI will appear (if you can get them to define it) think it will come from a gradual increase in capability , just exactly the same way current advances have happened. Then there are those who are using existing generative AI to book revenue today. This includes OpenAI, and other generative AI providers, but it also includes companies like Accenture, which booked $600M in AI consulting last quarter and expects it to continue growing. There's GitHub co-pilot, which is booking revenue.
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    > Self driving cars were supposed to be around the corner because AI was advancing so fast. To be fair, that was almost true. Waymo is doing well, Mobileye is looking good in demos, and even Tesla has a solid L2 system now. It seems inevitable that this will hit a really dramatic exponential growth phase within the next 2-3 years.

kemiller2002 3y ago

My heart goes out to those people. I am sure they are dedicated and talented individuals, but I don't understand why this is news. It's a company, and a project got canceled. It's what happens.

kypro 3y ago
Not necessarily disagreeing, but I believe when it was originally announced they said that the team on this project would be mostly migrated to their AI division.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- danpalmer 3y ago
  They were mostly redeployed. The car division was ~2000 people and ~600 are being laid off.
reaperducer 3y ago
Because they're human beings, not KPI points. Moreover, 600 is a lot of human beings, and it follows a recent trend of tech companies' mass layoffs from which Apple has mostly avoided.
- jjice 3y ago
  Huh, I didn't realize that Apple had mostly avoided it, but you're definitely right. In their defense, the other large tech companies just started trimming fat from everywhere it seems, where as this seems like a direct business decision to abandon an entire project. Still rough for those involved, but it feels less bad than the other mass layoffs to me.
  - gedy 3y ago
    > started trimming fat I really wish you and others would not equate layoffs with "trimming fat". It's kind of disgusting, and especially when these huge corps are still full of others doing plenty of non-meaningful work. Plenty of layoffs are illogical and due to internal politics.

throwaway4good 3y ago

Am I the only one who doesn't buy the "Apple canceled the car project because it couldn't do full self driving" story? Obviously they would have had to create a simpler project before the fsd car. Just like they did the iPod before they did the iPhone.

ghaff 3y ago
Yes. But you can also get into a project and realize a commercially viable output is going to take too long and cost too much. (And pretty much every auto manufacturer already has assistive driving systems at some level.)
- throwaway4good 3y ago
  My personal guess is that it is related to Apple's ability to use the Chinese supply chain which is no longer politically tenable.
  - pc86 3y ago
    That certainly is a guess.
- nerdjon 3y ago
  Wasn't that even stated in one of the reports recently that the problem was not that they couldn't do it but the commercial viability of it and wether to could ever actually make money? A problem with how much it would cost. I highly doubt the problem was, can Apple build a car? They have enough money that they could probably hire the people to do just about anything they wanted to try. Not really sure how you simplify making a car enough to make it worth getting into the market at all in the first place.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    They could outright buy some reasonable profile existing manufacturer. But actually entering the market and getting Apple like margins and volumes... Very doubtful. Cars are significantly more expensive than even the VR headset or top of the line computers.

causi 3y ago

It was very obvious the Apple car project was never going to happen. So obvious that it never even felt real when I read the headlines. Apple is not a car company and Apple is not willing to transform itself into a car company.

mrbgty 3y ago
I'm not sure how obvious it was or that it still won't happen in the future. Cars have been becoming more and more like a computing device.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  They're using more and more computing, but they are not changing into devices that are primarily for computing.
  - mrbgty 3y ago
    Can you think of any applications for having servers primarily used for processing data on location that are distributed around the world in locations that normally can't have buildings sitting there or that might benefit from moving with traffic?
- JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  Except for the wheels and seats and oil and grease. Just like.
  - mrbgty 3y ago
    Not a very friendly comment and I didn't think electric vehicles needed oil. Vehicles are doing more and more processing - the work of servers. Distributing moving servers around the world to process data at that specific location is useful and becoming more and more so.
    - JoeAltmaier 3y ago

HumblyTossed 3y ago

I'm of the opinion they never really wanted to do a commercially available car. I think they only did enough R&D to get the new CarPlay software where it needed to be so they could start offering it to the auto OEMs.

jaimex2 3y ago
No, they genuinely tried with every Tesla reject they could hire.
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  Fair, but I just still can't believe it. It's not a core competency.
  - MikusR 3y ago
    Their core competency was the Jobs' reality distortion field
  - andyjohnson0 3y ago
    Apple believes that designing technology-mediated experiences is a core competency. That, and a large degree of overconfidence, are what got them into it. As to what kept them there: sunk costs and that same overconfidence?
  - mynameisvlad 3y ago
    iPhones, iPads and hell even the iPod line weren’t core competencies until they were released and did well. Apple for a long time was Apple Computers after all.
    - threetonesun 3y ago
      An iPhone/iPad is a variation of a laptop at the end of the day. The iPod was the start of their other core competency, services + licensing, and the iTunes store. The car project has always seemed like a "we have too much money" project. Or a good idea from someone who never leaves their perfect spaceship campus.

melenaboija 3y ago

I guess more details would be needed to opine about it but it is hard to believe that a multiple trillion dollar company with 150000 employees can't do anything to keep 600 people no matter what they were doing :(

Smaug123 3y ago
Apple isn't a jobs scheme or a charity, and its primary purpose is not to keep engineers employed - I'm sure the organisation could have kept those 600 people if it wanted to!
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  > I'm sure the organisation would have kept those 600 people if it made financial sense to!
- melenaboija 3y ago
  Apple is not a charity but is one of the most impactful organizations in the planet and probably should think a little bit ahead of this. Im sure they have enough smart people to find some way of working this around other than making the stakeholders happy.
- trogdor 3y ago
  > Apple isn't a jobs scheme Kinda is, if you’re going for the pun
  - Smaug123 3y ago
    (I did specifically choose to leave that wording in :P )
anonuser123456 3y ago
Employment is a game of matching; the employer wants to match a skill set to a particular job. It’s entirely likely people on these products don’t easily match internally. The job market for people capable of working on Apple high end R&D is also likely much better at matching then Apples internal HR, simply because the market has so many more openings.

helsinkiandrew 3y ago

I thought this was after both the car and the internal smartwatch display projects were canned: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-04/apple-cut-at-least-600-workers-when-car-screen-projects-stopped https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-04/apple-cut... (archive: https://archive.ph/MeaiY https://archive.ph/MeaiY)

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe] Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39937426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39937426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39937620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39937620

lupusreal 3y ago

Thank goodness, I was dreading the public release of this onto the streets.

freddealmeida 3y ago

600 jobs is impressive. I guess they won't be building robots either. Figure and Tesla will benefit.