While tech companies are announcing layoffs, Tim Cook and Apple go a different way

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I used reader view to see the article at the link.

Not every large technology firm has turned to layoffs, yet: neither Apple AAPL +1.92% (AAPL) nor Nvidia NVDA +6.41% (NVDA) have announced mass cuts in recent months. Apple CEO Tim Cook requested a pay cut that the board accepted last week. His target compensation this year will be $49 million, down from a target of $84 million in 2022.

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This could age like milk. I don’t have any special insight on Apple, but until this week I would have said Microsoft and Google were “going a different way.” In reality, it was just a case of “not yet”.

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Could very well be. On the other hand, Apple is largely in a consumer facing business. Phones, cloud, headphones, App Store, it’s all “people.” Microsoft revenues are bigly business, no? Productivity, OS, and cloud. Google is almost entirely advertising, which has been traditionally recession vulnerable. (I’d argue that Google’s isn’t because “it’s different”, but that’s just me.)

Businesses are girding (even if it turns out to be unnecessary.) So far, as you point out, Apple isn’t. I’d note that consumers have a far sunnier view of the economy’s next six months than do a lot of business gurus.

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Do you have some specific data on this?

Consumer sentiment from U Michigan survey is way down.

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Didn’t they say that those companies that over-hired through covid are now laying off many of their excess people? And perhaps Apple didn’t over-hire like some of the others did?

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From a piece in today’s WSJ:

From its fis­cal year-end in Sep­tember 2019 to Sep­tember 2022, Apple’s work­force grew by about 20% to ap­prox­i­mately 164,000 full-time em­ployees. Mean­while, over roughly the same pe­riod, the em­ployee count at Ama­zon dou­bled, Microsoft’s rose 53%, Google par­ent Al­pha­bet Inc.’s in­creased 57% and Facebook owner Meta’s ballooned 94%.

No, I’m sorry I can’t find it now. Google is swamped with dour headlines about recession and consumers, so perhaps I am remembering wrong. What I do recall is several pieces late last year talking about how businesses were running scared, but consumers were still spending and didn’t consider recession to be an imminent threat. But can’t find them, sorry.

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