These are not good months for big tech. A bubble seems to have burst and led to wave after wave of layoffs, with the latest example being the 10,000 Meta employees who took to the streets yesterday. With this, there are already 21,000 layoffs in half a year, no less; and totals in Silicon Valley are estimated to be close to 300,000 layoffs.
This has also reached Apple, but in Cupertino they have been able to afford to act differently (at least that we know publicly). While the whole world is laying off people, in Apple Park they have limited themselves to taking measures to slow down its growth to ensure it. They had already done it, but now they repeat.
Grow slower to weather the storm
According to Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, at Apple they have decided to delay the extra payments (or bonuses as it is usually called there) for some employees and make your payment less frequently. Until now these extra payments were collected in April and October, and it seems that from now on they will only be charged in October. It does not mean that they will charge less, they will charge the same only in a single payment instead of divided into two payments. It is a way to conserve more money now that the finances of technology companies are being watched with a magnifying glass in the markets.
Also the rate of hiring will be reduced again, and those non-essential jobs left by those employees who decide to leave will not be replaced. Apple hasn’t communicated the change to its employees yet, but Gurman’s inside source says it will happen.
This, along with other measures such as the cut in Tim Cook’s salary, signal that Apple is not immune to the markets. But the same CEO of Apple said it in a press conference: the layoffs in Cupertino are “the last resort”, and that is not something that other companies can afford to do.
At the moment, Apple gives the image of a company that has tightened its belt not to lay off and make severe cuts, but to just grow slower. That in itself, with these times, is already a good sign.
Image | Carles Rabada
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