Apple Lays Off More Than 700 Workers, Including Apple Car and MicroLED Teams (9to5mac.com) 43
Apple is laying off more than 700 employees across the company, including its Micro-LED displays division and the recently shut down Apple Car project. 9to5Mac reports: As seen by 9to5Mac in the latest WARN report provided by the California Employment Development Department, the layoffs affect projects that have been in the news recently. For instance, Apple is laying off 58 employees from one of its offices in Santa Clara. This particular office belonged to LuxVue Technology, a company specializing in Micro-LED displays that Apple acquired in 2014. In recent months, we've heard rumors about Apple canceling its plans to design and produce its own Micro-LED displays for the Apple Watch. Bloomberg recently reported that Apple gave up on the project because the screens "were difficult to produce in sufficient quantities."
There are also more than 120 layoff notices filed by Apple in San Diego, which aligns with a January report about the company having recently closed a Siri data operations office located there. The office was responsible for evaluating Siri's responses to users and for helping the company improve the platform's accuracy. At the time, Apple offered to relocate all affected employees to offices in Austin, Texas, if they agreed. Unsurprisingly, the shutdown of the Apple Car project (internally known as Titan) also resulted in layoffs. Some of the offices listed by the records were used by Apple to develop and test its electric car. The company had been actively working on building a vehicle since 2014, but the challenges surrounding it made Apple give up on the project earlier this year. The report notes that some of the engineers working on the Apple Car have been offered positions elsewhere at Apple. "However, not everyone has the chance to be reassigned since there were more than 2,000 people working on this specific project."
The latest rumor is that Apple is exploring the development of personal home robots.
There are also more than 120 layoff notices filed by Apple in San Diego, which aligns with a January report about the company having recently closed a Siri data operations office located there. The office was responsible for evaluating Siri's responses to users and for helping the company improve the platform's accuracy. At the time, Apple offered to relocate all affected employees to offices in Austin, Texas, if they agreed. Unsurprisingly, the shutdown of the Apple Car project (internally known as Titan) also resulted in layoffs. Some of the offices listed by the records were used by Apple to develop and test its electric car. The company had been actively working on building a vehicle since 2014, but the challenges surrounding it made Apple give up on the project earlier this year. The report notes that some of the engineers working on the Apple Car have been offered positions elsewhere at Apple. "However, not everyone has the chance to be reassigned since there were more than 2,000 people working on this specific project."
The latest rumor is that Apple is exploring the development of personal home robots.
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Re:Bidenomics (Score:4)
Like when Reagan called up Apple and had them lay off the Lisa team.
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Reagan qualifies as a RINO now by MAGAgop. He was for free-trade, didn't trust Russia, not rude enough, and against a theocracy.
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There is no more Republican party. There is only MAGA. You are either with us, or against us.
-Donald Trump
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Imagine today if a republican called for amnesty for people in the country illegally or got rid of the ability to open carry firearms. Reagan did both.
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It's ridiculous to compare Biden presidency to Carter's. Carter was a bright, lucid man, one look at his acceptance speech shows it. Biden is physically and mentally disintegrated.
We're Out of Time (Score:3)
Got to get those people out of here! I know. I know. We insisted on Masters Degrees and put them through six interviews and a 17 week vetting process, but they're just not qualified for anything else. Apple only makes ten million a day. Cut them off NOW!
This. So much this. (Score:2)
Companies don't train anymore. Overseas they do the training for them. If it requires a bit of advanced mathematics the public universities do it. Paid for by your taxpayer dollars of course while you're struggling to try and figure out how to fuck you're going
Re:We're Out of Time (Score:4)
Apple only makes ten million a day.
You must have moved the decimal in the wrong direction because in 2021 Apple made $1 billion per day [imore.com]. Considering this past quarter they had revenue of $119.6 billion [apple.com], that's more than one billion dollars each day.
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in 2021 Apple made $1 billion per day
Makes my point even stronger.
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Revenue != profit
Collects != makes
HTH, HAND
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At least they didn't blame the layoffs on AI, like many other co's did. Tech is simply in a slump, just like 83, 92, and 2002.
Re:We're Out of Time (Score:4, Insightful)
At least they didn't blame the layoffs on AI, like many other co's did. Tech is simply in a slump, just like 83, 92, and 2002.
I mean, it's not like anybody didn't see this coming. They've been working on this project for an entire decade, and despite several leadership changes, they still didn't have a shippable project. Sometimes, you try something and it just does't work, and at some point, you have to cut your losses. I don't think anyone should fault Tim Cook for that.
Killing failing projects is very different from cutting a bunch of random people scattered throughout the company just to lower headcount numbers without any real concern for what they're working on because of some silly "we're spending too much money" nonsense. Whether they blamed it on economic downturns or AI or the cook serving their eggs wrong at breakfast doesn't matter all that much; those leaders still suck. You don't pivot by cutting things that are working; you pivot by adding new things or cutting things that aren't working.
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The car really was a terrible idea. If you wanted an EV from a company with a lot of similarities to Apple, you get a Tesla. They'd have ended up competing for nearly identical market segments, and as it is, it seems like growth in that market has peaked.
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> despite several leadership changes, they still didn't have a shippable project.
None of the bot-car competitors do either, at least not scaled production. It may be more that they got too far behind competitors that they decided to pull the plug.
Cars are probably not Apple's forte anyhow. As I mention elsewhere, maybe a dashboard/entertainment system to license to car co's is a better fit.
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Are you in the habit of also keeping your plumber around after he's done fixing your leaking pipe, just because you can afford his 125$/hour rate anyway if he just lounges around your living room and mooches off your pantry for chips and soda ?
No ?
Then stop expecting companies to just keep around staff they don't need.
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Are you in the habit of also keeping your plumber around after he's done fixing your leaking pipe, just because you can afford his 125$/hour rate anyway if he just lounges around your living room and mooches off your pantry for chips and soda ?
If here were delivering all the plumbing for a new house every 48 hours, hell yes.
Then stop expecting companies to just keep around staff they don't need.
Perhaps companies shouldn't appoint shitty management. Then they wouldn't have staff they didn't need.
Ran Out of Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple can't just keep a few hundred employees on staff and figure out where they fit well - it's strapped for cash!
Better to do some layoffs and stock buybacks instead.
Radical loyalty is only demanded in one direction.
Before Ronald Reagan (Score:2, Flamebait)
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That is likely the case, actually.
Apple does most of its work inside the US - most of its employees are working inside the US. Most of its high valued employees - the software developers and such, are paid in US dollars inside the US.
Most of Apple's sales are outside the US - it makes most of its money selling to Asia. So most of the cash Apple has is outside the US.
Thus there is a problem - mo
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You apparently missed the post about a billion dollars a day. Even if each of those employees were making seven figures annually, Apple makes enough in one day to cover it.
Oh sure, it might not be perfectly efficient moment to moment. After all they do have an entire floor of accountants who are paid to hump spreadsheets until they spontaneously combust.
But the truth is the costs of replacing those qualified highly educated highly technical expensively trained people far exceeds (probably by at least an or
Re: Ran Out of Money (Score:1)
Revenue is not profit. If they make a billion dollars a day, that means they spent about 980M that day as well. The profit goes to investments in things that are going to continue that revenue in the future, not to a dead product nobody wants. If the job market were healthy, layoffs would not be a big deal, however Biden still is short millions of jobs pre-pandemic and raising the minimum wage is driving 25% inflation and 25% true unemployment.
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If Apple is that worried about spending, then ratcheting up the ongoing cost of replacing highly qualified employees isn't a very good idea.
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How is Apple ratcheting up the cost? The government is ratcheting up the cost through tax and spend. For every industry labor cost is the highest cost there is, cutting it reduces costs and boosts your potential to survive another year.
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Apple can't just keep a few hundred employees on staff and figure out where they fit well - it's strapped for cash!
You're assuming that they fit well. For generalist programmers, yes, it should be possible to find roles for many of them. But that big an organization is going to have other folks who won't fit in the short term, and maybe not ever.
The management staff likely won't be needed until a management position opens up, which could be a long time. And because most teams would likely prefer to promote someone from within the team to run them, rather than bringing in an outside manager, a position might *never* o
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These are well weeded out engineers, they can make difference anywhere they go. Maybe they do not know ObjectiveC or whatever tool they would need to learn, by they would take no time to learn it. Good engineers are expert problem solves first and foremost and fast learners second, not hammer handlers.
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These are well weeded out engineers, they can make difference anywhere they go. Maybe they do not know ObjectiveC or whatever tool they would need to learn, by they would take no time to learn it. Good engineers are expert problem solves first and foremost and fast learners second, not hammer handlers.
Yes and no. Apple is a mostly software shop, and according to Bloomberg, the folks that haven't moved off the project yet are mostly hardware engineers and car designers (industrial designers with specialization in cars). Giving hardware engineers and industrial designers a two-week Swift boot camp is unlikely to yield adequate results, and Apple doesn't need hundreds of hardware engineers or industrial designers.
The car thing never made sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Cars are too far outside of Apple's experience. However, they could do well making a decent dashboard and entertainment UI to license to physical car manufacturers. My GMC's UI is even worse than MS-Teams. A drunk blind Jony Ive could top it. (I know, Ive's not there anymore, just an example.)
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However, they could do well making a decent dashboard and entertainment UI
There are some renders of the next gen CarPlay. I'm personally not a fan, but that's mostly because I'm with Tom Paris from ST:VOY on this one. Give me analog gauges and physical controls.
The car thing will make sense in 5-10 years (Score:2)
Cars are too far outside of Apple's experience.
Yes, but their competitors are doing it. Believe it or not, limited self-driving cars is coming. E.g. full automatic parking, with you dropping off at the door and the car driving itself to a preset parking space, summoning it from parking to the door, etc. There is a video of a demo showing a prototype driving itself from the entryway of a multilevel carpark to a designated parking spot a few levels up, and on the way automatically avoiding people and other cars, even backing up to let opposing car to p
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> but their competitors are doing it. Believe it or not, limited self-driving cars is coming.
I'm not saying it's not possible, only that it's not Apple's forte: they are not likely to be competitive in it.
And there's the P/R of it: companies who want to risk "moving fast and breaking things" may progress faster, but by risking more. Bad press would damage Apple's general reputation even outside of cars, and thus may be seen as too risky to customer perceptions of the brand. Smaller startups will often ac
All these people were not usable to Apple? (Score:2)
So a company like Apple, spent tons of effort of weeding out substandard employs just to throw them out now?
proving ... (Score:3)
Ppl like Apple's Cook, Google's Pichai, Boeing's Calhoun, etc are worthless as leaders.