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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

> But the iPhone maker has been better positioned than many rivals to date in part because it added employees at a much slower clip than those companies during the pandemic.

I wonder to what extent that was what Apple meant to do, vs. to what extent it was forced on Apple because of supply-chain constraints? Apple was constrained by Chinese manufacturing in a way that software tech companies weren't.

Maybe lean hiring plays a part and maybe it doesn't, but I'm pretty sure "no free lunches" has nothing to do with it.

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Apple is also in a less speculative business (hardware), so their hiring practices are more conservative. While they started investing more into software and services recently, these departments are much smaller than something like Meta or Google.

Does that include however big their teams are who have been working on an EV and AR glasses for a long time?

>I wonder to what extent that was what Apple meant to do,

May be I am missing some context, what has slowed down of iPhone manufacturing or hardware capacity constrain got to do with "over hiring"? Especially in the Software department side of things?

At its essence, a slowdown in manufacturing means a slowdown in revenue, which means less money to pay employees. The software side is being funded in large part by the hardware side if you look at Apple's finances as a whole. When revenue isn't what you'd forecasted, that's not the time to increase hiring.

Obviously it can be more complex/flexible than that with regards to a cash pile, being able to borrow money, etc., but it still generally holds. It would be unusual for any long-established business to be ramping up hiring at the same time that supply constraints are diminishing revenue.

The software side is funded by how big the market is for Apple products, which is accumulated over the year, not how well the hardware sales is for a given period. Just because hardware sales for 2021 was slow, for example, doesn’t mean software and services sales are slow accordingly.

> It would be unusual for any long-established business to be ramping up hiring at the same time that supply constraints are diminishing revenue.

This is not unusual at all. When hardware sales is down company often want to compensate by increasing software sales, that likely means uptick in hiring. In fact that’s one of the strength of Apple. They can weather worsen market conditions thanks to their diversified product and services portfolio.

That's likely true for most companies, but Apple is sitting on an extremely unusual pile of cash.

(I'm also surprised because I think Apple's software quality has gone down, and it seems like an area worth investing in.)

This is well-illustrated by that Delta(?) promo that got shared around the internet a few years ago that (without authorisation I believe) touted the number of Apple employees they were shuttling to and from China on a *daily^ basis.

For a layperson like me, this sort of day-in day-out contact with the supply chain puts this justification will within the realm of reason.

I also can’t imagine that “hardware” and “software” teams aren’t in complete isolation. At the very least, being a more hardware-focused company potentially affects Apple’s overall company culture in a way that would have this impact on their hiring practices.

For the record, United Airlines leaked that. (Though Apple could have similar provisions with other airlines — we just don't know.)

https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/11/apple-spends-150m...

Apple has acted like the grown ups in the room for the better part of 15 years. I also think Steve, for all his flaws, was pretty anti layoffs as you inevitably lose good people.

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