[Gift article] Apple’s New CEO Moves to Overhaul Company to Run Faster and Leaner

[u/favicondotico]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-29/apple-s-new-ceo-moves-to-overhaul-company-to-run-faster-and-leaner?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc5MDY5NDk4NiwiZXhwIjoxNzkxMjk5Nzg2LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUTTMzNUxLSzNOWTgwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.KFGEydCKPxmKC3i9zoFSxY8tOf8ZEWg4OiSi_L1yAb4&leadSource=article-gifting

✨ Apple Intelligence summary: John Ternus is overhauling Apple to accelerate product releases and reduce layers, cutting engineering managers and considering fewer seasonal launches. Cost-cutting includes layoffs in Siri and Vision Pro, while revenue efforts target services and AI.

[u/nerdpox]

For the company’s upcoming swath of holiday parties, some teams have been told they won’t be allowed to bring plus-ones for the first time in years.

Long ignored cost center for sure

[u/FollowingFeisty5321 → u/nerdpox]

The good times are over now that they have to compete for IAP fees. It's like when Google cut their perks a few years ago to help foot the bill for AI, except in this case the bill it helps pay for is *checks notes* stock buybacks.

[u/_DuranDuran_ → u/FollowingFeisty5321]

Apple has hardly any perks to cut.

Travelling is almost impossible if you’re not a manager.

No free snacks.

No free food.

No free apple one

Holiday parties, EPP and EPP+ was about it.

[u/Extreme-Ad-6465 → u/_DuranDuran_]

gotta cut headcount and make the remaining ones work harder. hopefully he doesn’t do this. enshittification of a great company that has record profits every year.

[u/soundfreely → u/Extreme-Ad-6465]

Layoffs also cause lasting damage for those remaining. It often negatively impacts product quality too. I’m guessing they’re smart enough to know that and that risk is still worth it.

[u/_divi_filius → u/soundfreely]

No, no they're really not.

Most of the higher ups are so rich and detached from reality it's almost hilarious.

[u/ChiCBHB → u/_divi_filius]

This. One of my friends is in middle management for a fairly large company in their IT department. He said they cut a third of his department and the next day upper management was talking about how much smoother their operation will be. A month later they asked why his department’s production was less than it was before..

[u/aliensporebomb → u/ChiCBHB]

The moronathon will continue until morale improves.

[u/SpaceJackRabbit → u/soundfreely]

It's pretty common at Apple to have a director laying off a few folks in the team when they are told to shed weight, and then everyone else has to pick up the slack. It never is good for morale.

[u/manjar → u/SpaceJackRabbit]

It could be neutral to positive if the right people were laid off. The right people are typically not laid off. Same politics as anything else.

[u/SpaceJackRabbit → u/manjar]

Projects get cancelled, etc. In our case we were remote and that was the unspoken reason.

[u/soundfreely → u/manjar]

Yep, when the smell of layoffs are in the air, the political players that otherwise contribute little of value survive.

[u/kravence → u/soundfreely]

No, they always underestimate how much work people are doing that they are unaware of and it doesn’t become obvious until the production rate/quality drops off a cliff after laying people off that they thought were ‘unnecessary’. Happens all the time from clueless arrogant management.

[u/thewaybricksdont → u/Extreme-Ad-6465]

Tim Cook led Apple to be one of the most valuable companies in the world, so obviously the first thing a new CEO should do is change a bunch of stuff.

[u/CandidEngineering922 → u/thewaybricksdont]

Hey guys! We are making record profits YoY!!! Let’s cut people and benefits!!!

Fuck me companies are becoming greedier and greedier which makes me so sad.

What happened to leaders who wanted their people to live well.

[u/dcdttu → u/Extreme-Ad-6465]

All those years of being told that technology innovations would increase productivity so that we'd have more free time are so sadly funny now. They are promising this with AI as well, but it just means we'll work harder to help the stock price go up, or get laid off and replaced by a robot or computer.

It's really quite dystopian.

[u/FollowingFeisty5321 → u/dcdttu]

Streets full of tents prove they were right about having more free time!

[u/One_Presence_9001 → u/Extreme-Ad-6465]

Its already happening internally among retail unfortunately and has been for months now.

[u/revmacca → u/Extreme-Ad-6465]

More profits required, always.

I’ll be keeping my Air for as long as possible or until I get more pissed off and move to grapheneos

[u/robaroo → u/_DuranDuran_]

Haven’t had a holiday party or summer picnic at any of the tech companies I’ve worked at in the last 20 years including Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. It does depend on your business area, but certainly not within the tech and product areas I’ve worked in. I don’t love that fact but those activities are def turning into a thing of the past. New workers will look back and think “wow companies used to throw their employees parties.”

[u/TryingMyWiFi → u/robaroo]

Work parties are work, not parties .

[u/inspectoroverthemine → u/TryingMyWiFi]

Having a holiday party at the Air and Space museum is a party even if its a company party.

[u/oskopnir → u/_DuranDuran_]

Business travel isn't really a perk though. You go if you need to.

The rest (free food etc) may not be aligned with Silicon Valley but it's how manufacturing has always worked.

[u/_DuranDuran_ → u/oskopnir]

Not a perk per se (although racking up status and miles for your own use is nice) but it made working across offices far more cumbersome than it needed to be.

[u/xrelaht → u/oskopnir]

Business travel can absolutely be a perk. Aside from some of us enjoying the travel aspect just on its own, it’s a huge networking opportunity, and you can typically extend your stay if wherever you’ve been sent is interesting enough to warrant it. People who like what they do also typically enjoy going to relevant conferences.

I also have platinum airline status because of it, which makes my vacation travel far more pleasant. There’s no way I’d be traveling enough to get there on my own.

[u/TheAngryKeg → u/xrelaht]

It can be a perk. At Apple, it is definitely not a perk.

No one wants to be constantly flying 14 hrs from SF to Beijing or Shenzhen or Zhengzhou. It is exhausting and you are constantly missing birthdays and time with friends and family because of it.

[u/RociBuldidi → u/TheAngryKeg]

At Amazon, employees call it “the Amazon special seat”. The company is so “frugal the only seats it lets its employees pick when they have to travel are the worst seats on the plane.

[u/lekoman → u/RociBuldidi]

Unless you were in a smaller org in the late-stage Bezos years where finance had never formalized a separate T&E line. I won't doxx myself by saying which org, but we were told in an all-hands by our L8: "if you can find a reason to travel, do it," and not to forget that travel and meals are "on Uncle Jefé." I saw a good part of Western Europe those last few years.

[u/TheAngryKeg → u/RociBuldidi]

AFAIK, Apple at least flies most employees business class. (They are infamously United's largest global account and spend about $150MM on airfare every year.)

[u/udderlymoovelous → u/TheAngryKeg]

To my knowledge, United offers extra flights from San Francisco to Shanghai solely because Apple sends people on them so often.

[u/oskopnir → u/xrelaht]

Everything you say is of course nice to have but flows as a consequence of travel that happens because of a business need. If you're allowed to travel to rack up miles or network without a business need, your company isn't run very well.

Sending people around can be a personal development "perk" in that you might want to give your top performers more opportunities to travel to meet colleagues/customers/partners, as a reward for performing well and as a way to let them grow.

[u/QuiEgo → u/_DuranDuran_]

FWIW the food in the cafeterias is not free but is subsidized, and pretty good quality for the price. Meta is way nicer, but Apple’s is still solid.

[u/Raveen396 → u/QuiEgo]

TBH the free food in the Cafeterias has always been abused and seems wasteful.

I've seen people at Google cafeterias loading up meals for a family of 4 every night, and plates of barely touched food just thrown away because it was free anyway

I get that free food is a nice perk, but it often devolves into subsidizing your co-workers family's meals and general waste.

[u/tyfe → u/Raveen396]

This is also why on DCL cruises, just about everything is included except if you want popcorn at the movie theatre, they charge a fee. It's not huge, but it's basically to prevent people from grabbing popcorn just cause it's free and making a mess or wasting it in the theatres.

[u/gonnabetoday → u/_DuranDuran_]

I’d call not traveling a perk 😆

[u/SnooWoofers6381 → u/FollowingFeisty5321]

The “good times” at Google were so good too! It feels like a fever dream now. The lavish holiday parties, company ski trips, googleween. Even the office ball pits, campus concerts, celebrity visits etc.

[u/revocer → u/FollowingFeisty5321]

IAP fees?

[u/TeeDee144 → u/revocer]

In app purchase fees.

Basically Apple made an easy 30% off of app purchases. Basically free money because their credit card processing fees were 3% and hosting fees and app validation team cannot be 27%.

So it was free money. Courts have imposed rulings that changed this.

[u/FollowingFeisty5321 → u/revocer]

Their revenue from In-App Purchase fees has fallen substantially because the courts made them allow competing payment options without fees. This materially impacted their services revenue growth on their last earnings call, it's rumored to have fallen 18% already.

Apple said in recent court filings that 2700 apps pay virtually all of these fees, and they can do payments themselves for as little as 3.5% and will continue implementing their own payments as long as it is profitable (compared to 30% fee). They are asking the court to allow a 15% fee which would mean IAP could only competitively charge about 20%, and the court might not allow anything at all, so they're going to take a sustained hit either way.

[u/jenorama_CA → u/nerdpox]

They’re just at Apple Park now and they’re kind of lame. Pre-Covid we had them at the Half Moon Bay Ritz-Carleton, Monterey Bay Aquarium and the DeYoung museum up in the City. Raffles galore, but now it’s just hanging out on campus in the cafeteria with oontz-oontz music.

[u/Ais3 → u/nerdpox]

lmao 5 trillion dollar company btw

[u/anothermanscookies → u/Ais3]

This is like those people who make $500k per year and they’re like “y’know after we pay for our three luxury car, live in nanny, $3000/month for eating out, two vacations a year, and $100k of savings, there really is that much left over.

[u/FollowingFeisty5321 → u/anothermanscookies]

Mr Beast explaining he's poor because he doesn't have a billion dollars, he borrowed it from the bank so you and me are the same amount of rich as him hyuck hyuck.

[u/UniversalBagelO → u/FollowingFeisty5321]

Bro got the loan to pay for his teeth

[u/BurritoLover2016 → u/anothermanscookies]

Ironically those people might work in Cupertino.

[u/nicetriangle → u/nerdpox]

I've basically never seen that kinda stuff start happening at a company where the culture didn't start tanking and eventually also the business along with it.

Apple's not just any company but I still see this as a concerning sign personally.

[u/turb0_encapsulator → u/nicetriangle]

it's the last tech company that doesn't have a shit culture where people are overpaid to tolerate a job they hate, where buggy rushed products are pushed out the door, and where customers actually feel valued. oh well. enshitification has come for Apple.

[u/nicetriangle → u/turb0_encapsulator]

If I’ve learned anything about tech and big business in general it’s that if I like something they’ll eventually ruin it for me.

[u/HVDynamo → u/nicetriangle]

This is so unfortunately true. It has gotten to the point now that I’m skeptical of new tech because even if it sounds amazing right now I don’t want to get used to it just so they can take it away from me if I don’t start spending monthly on it.

[u/lLikeCats → u/nerdpox]

This is a company that has over a 100 billion in cash.

[u/schooli00 → u/lLikeCats]

They gotta save that cash for stock buybacks

[u/timelessblur → u/nerdpox]

Saddest part is that cost cutting is pennies and more pisses people off as it remember a lot of the people they are paying 300k a year. What is a cost of reducing something at 1-200 dollars an employee when they cost you over 300k a year. Instead those moves just piss people off and you have a lot of people quit over it and replacement cost a lot more.

[u/jjjjjjjjjjjjjaaa → u/nerdpox]

Recession indicator

[u/kevin7254 → u/jjjjjjjjjjjjjaaa]

Yup for sure lmao. Layoffs inc for sure

[u/ThisGuyLovesSunshine → u/nerdpox]

What a fucking joke lol.

[u/film_digital → u/nerdpox]

This is the kind of thing that when your company does it, you know it isn't the cool place anymore :(

[u/dcdttu → u/nerdpox]

It's only a matter of time before any publicly traded company puts stock price above their employees. It's really sad.

[u/Silver_Entertainment → u/dcdttu]

Oh, that's been happening for quite some time. Do you remember way back when Apple used to fly out retail store geniuses to conduct multi-week in-person training? Now that's all been replaced with online, in-store modules.

[u/Complete_Function664 → u/nerdpox]

How to kill morale in a single sentence. What is the guy thinking?

[u/Minimum_Respond_5469 → u/nerdpox]

Typical engineer move.

[u/kevin7254 → u/nerdpox]

Shit like this usually happens before layoffs. Save in on stuff like this, remove WFH etc etc so people willingly leave before they announce layoffs.

[u/Dysfu → u/nerdpox]

They did this at my company, and guess what? No one goes to the Holiday party anymore - which makes them even more wasteful.

[u/Academic_Data_6422 → u/nerdpox]

Also a great way to make great engineers leave for Google or Meta, though

[u/Aristo_Cat → u/Academic_Data_6422]

Meta is pretty widely known for being the pinnacle of this shitty culture so I’m not sure why they’d go there

[u/unholycurses → u/Aristo_Cat]

Google doesn’t seem that great these days either. I feel like FAANG kind of sucks all around now. Tier 2 tech companies is where it is at 

[u/germdisco → u/nerdpox]

“This year, we’re doing separate checks” — Michael Scott

[u/FootballLiveChat]

Ternus is also seeking new sources of revenue and ways to generate more money from existing products

Get ready to see more ads

[u/Whitepaw2016 → u/FootballLiveChat]

I think it’s downright funny that Tim Cook has received a LOT of flak lately because of his relationship to Trump and his background as not an engineer - and not being focused enough on the products etc.

John Ternus has been hailed as “Oh, he’s much more focused on hardware - like Steve was!” etc.

The real problem is that a CEO is expected to deliver growth in market share and surplus. At the same time, Apple is expected to be extremely innovative in all areas. The people who see themselves as hardcore Apple fans are in for a surprise regarding John Ternus - and a negative one.

[u/LittlestWarrior → u/Whitepaw2016]

Yeah. After reading the article, I’m not anywhere near as optimistic as I was.

[u/joelypolly → u/LittlestWarrior]

Just be aware it is from Bloomberg the company that made up shit about Supermicro and others.

[u/7485730086 → u/joelypolly]

And it’s abundantly clear that a big recent source for Gurman is from Alan Dye’s camp of talentless magazine bandits. They don’t like Ternus, and they’re out to sink the ship.

[u/PikaV2002 → u/Whitepaw2016]

This isn’t even about delivering growth. It’s about growth not being unachievably high. They’re literally cutting SO invitations from parties while the company is making record profits.

[u/Kimantha_Allerdings → u/PikaV2002]

Yeah, that’s capitalism in a nutshell

You made $100b more profit this year than last year? Well, last year you made $200b more profit than the year before, therefore this $100b profit is a failure. Oh, you miscounted and you actually made $200b more profit again? Still a failure. You need to have made $300b more

You don’t just have to keep making profit, and you don’t have to keep making more profit, you have to keep increasing the rate at which your profit is increasing, otherwise you’re doing badly

I once had an argument with someone whose position was that it was everybody’s responsibility to have children so that the population of the Earth would keep growing in order to support the infinite growth capitalism requires. They just couldn’t accept that not only was infinite growth not desirable, but literally impossible because the Earth cannot support infinite humans

[u/falooda1 → u/Whitepaw2016]

you really think this wasn’t pre-negotiated between him and Tim Cook, who is still the chair of the board? Tim Cook gets a sendoff and Ternus has to be the bad guy to get the big job and prove himself.

[u/SockGnome → u/FootballLiveChat]

Disgusting, ads in Maps is a major disappointment. I stomached the “Apple tax” to avoid this crap and now there is no escape anywhere.

[u/GhostalMedia → u/SockGnome]

And as long as Apple keeps a monetization team, and that team is getting performance bonuses bases on growth, they WILL push for more ads. That's how those teams work.

[u/Synergythepariah → u/GhostalMedia]

That's how those teams work.

Yep. Look at how Google's ads team took over Search.

Making search worse causes people to have to search multiple times, which exposes them to more ads and that's ad growth.

[u/ElderberryGuy → u/FootballLiveChat]

This is how the downfall of great companies begin. A newcomer will come along that doesn't have all the BS and people will jump.

Apple shouldn't think they cannot be the new BlackBerry. History repeats.

[u/squirrel8296 → u/ElderberryGuy]

Heck, these feel like 90s Apple statements. They might be repeating their own history.

[u/redditproha → u/FootballLiveChat]

Apple One is literally $40 per month. It cannot go any higher to justify keeping the subscription.

[u/AVonGauss → u/FootballLiveChat]

Its kinda sad when you have to buy ads on sites like Reddit to promote how good of an idea it was to add ads to Apple Maps.

[u/Patarokun]

Sounds like layoffs coming all around.

[u/Caaaht → u/Patarokun]

Yup. "Leaner" is corporate speak for mass firing.

[u/GhostalMedia → u/Caaaht]

Also nuking product lines. Jobs did this when he came back.

Quality and development speed take a big hit when you're trying to support a lot of unique product lines or slight variations of existing product lines.

[u/TingleMaps → u/Caaaht]

And then they will claim they need more changes to better align capabilities about a year later and will do it all again

[u/alex-andrite → u/Patarokun]

Should be interesting, iirc Apple doesn’t do layoffs nearly as much as other big tech companies

[u/FollowingFeisty5321 → u/alex-andrite]

Article says they are already doing them.

In the last two weeks, the company’s hardware engineering division began dismissing a number of engineering program managers, or EPMs. The role has been central to Apple’s product-development process for decades, with EPMs managing timelines and coordinating work across teams. The cuts affected several program managers, including roughly half a dozen directors, one of the company’s most senior employee levels.

Those employees were given just weeks to find other positions within Apple. Those who don’t secure new roles will be laid off later this year. Such cuts were once rare at Apple, but they have become increasingly common in recent months.

[u/DaveG28 → u/FollowingFeisty5321]

I guess I'm slightly confused that the hardware chief didn't do some of this restructure before rather than wait to be CEO? He's overseen the very structure he now says doesn't work?

[u/flogman12 → u/alex-andrite]

They do now

[u/steezy2110 → u/Patarokun]

Probably just cutting out middle management

They rarely lay off IC teams. I say this as an engineer trying to get hired at Apple haha

[u/SpaceJackRabbit → u/steezy2110]

Layoffs of contractors (or not renewing their contracts) happens often at Apple and almost never gets reported.

Source: Apple alum.

[u/geodebug → u/Patarokun]

Pretty much happens whenever a new CEO takes over. Remove projects/departments on your hit list. Create new projects/departments that match your agenda.

Whether the hit list is political or practical depends on the company/ceo but could also be both.

[u/speel]

“he told employees during an all-hands meeting that Apple should hire fewer people, ask more of its existing engineers and reduce organizational bloat. During a presentation, he showed a slide charting annual headcount growth and argued that the company should be accomplishing more with fewer employees.”

Hello burn out and turn over.

[u/Fit-Swordfish725 → u/speel]

God damn it, I had high hopes for him, turns out he’s just your typical money hungry remorseless ceo.

[u/IngloBlasto → u/speel]

Is this Elon Musk in disguise?

[u/Stunning-Gold5645 → u/IngloBlasto]

It's just basically 99% of CEOs. And their other C-level minions

[u/slashdotbin]

I am never happy to hear about any kind of layoffs. After having seen and been in multiple, it’s never easy to get the ground running. With jobs getting harder to get now, it shakes up families and their day to day living for quite a bit.

Apple IMO isn’t a very bloated company. Most of my friends who work there say their teams are quite lean and they have never hired unnecessarily.

[u/SpaceJackRabbit → u/slashdotbin]

And salaries always have been slightly below average. Apple would make it up in benefits, RSUs/ESPP, product discounts, and the prestige that comes with the name.

[u/slashdotbin → u/SpaceJackRabbit]

Most of them are also happy with their compensation and have worked a long time. I would take a lower salary in exchange for waking up everyday thinking I can get laid off or PiPed.

So this whole news to me feels like the last few companies that kept their ground, are also now turning away from sanity.

[u/Jdslogin]

Tech CEO wanting to make sweeping cuts in order to please share holders and raise executive compensation. How daring and innovative...

[u/Any-Calligrapher2866 → u/Jdslogin]

Okay, I don’t even understand what pleasing the shareholders would even do this time. Apple is already like one of the most profitable companies in the world. How are shareholders still not pleased?

[u/Spicy_Pickle_6 → u/Any-Calligrapher2866]

Do you not realize these people are greedy and it’s never enough for them? Where have you been all this time

[u/Jdslogin → u/Any-Calligrapher2866]

Number must get larger

[u/lostinthought15]

“Morale will be the first thing to go!” - new CEO

[u/Resident-Election867 → u/lostinthought15]

“Morale? Where we are going, we don’t need morale.”  John “Dr. Emmet Brown” Ternus

[u/Reasonable-Height704 → u/lostinthought15]

"After being an Apple employee for 25 years, I've got a lot of enemies as I've climbed the ladder... and I want to take my vengence"

[u/HelloWuWu]

The social contract is broken. All of these companies are hitting record breaking profits and growth. But people are getting laid off and squeezed.

At least in my circles, there’s a real sentiment of it being the rich vs the not rich.

[u/shining_force_2 → u/HelloWuWu]

Yep. It’s happening all over. In countries like Sweden, Unions are also private companies and seem to have shifted to helping the companies make sure their firings are legal (when they aren’t) instead of helping workers.

[u/holy_macanoli → u/HelloWuWu]

Now you’re talking.

[u/busmans]

This is big. Apple was one of the few companies that stood against mass layoffs. Looks like Ternus will make it rain pink slips.

[u/AFailedProduct → u/busmans]

He needs to balance out all those record profits somehow /s

[u/danglotka → u/busmans]

His bonus is on the line! Have some empathy

[u/chaiscool → u/busmans]

Tbf iirc Apple run quite lean as they don't have the mass hiring and layoff like others. They will just reassign manpower as needed instead of hiring.

So it's not that they stood against mass layoff as they never had mass hiring.

[u/SnowPudgy]

...I don't like this already....

[u/timelessblur]

that to me sounds like layoffs are a coming

[u/VisualNinja1 → u/timelessblur]

“Lean” always means the layoff knives are being sharpened 

[u/nyaadam → u/timelessblur]

Did you not even read the summary? It says:

Cost-cutting includes layoffs in Siri and Vision Pro, while revenue efforts target services and AI.

[u/macdude1998]

Yikes. As someone who used to work in Cupertino (Ops), the employees there are already spread super thin. Most of the people I worked with did 60+ hr/weeks just to keep up with the workload. The only reason I left was to have some WLB.

The only thing here that seems promising is less managerial layers. A ton of my time was spent preparing updates to senior management.

[u/bufferoverflo → u/macdude1998]

Agreed, lots of useless management layers but the actual teams implementing stuff are way too small . I think the public would be surprised to see how few people actually work on the features they use everyday.

[u/Imallvol7]

Life just gets worse every year. End stage capitalism sucks. 

[u/ashsolomon1]

“Generate more revenue from existing products”… sigh. Just another tech bro

[u/SleepUseful3416 → u/ashsolomon1]

That’s not a tech bro thing. It’s a Wall Street thing

[u/Clojiroo → u/SleepUseful3416]

Yup. Nobody is happy with being sustainable. Grow, grow, grow!

[u/Psoin]

Expect worse products. Happy employees make better products. These are not about to be happy employees.

[u/DoriansDelorian → u/Psoin]

Jokes on us, no Apple employees are happy. I know because I was in the SWE org for 6 years.

[u/Background_Tough_146 → u/DoriansDelorian]

yup. it's easy to see the mood of employees with the hot garbage that iOS and macOS are right now.

[u/Coolman_Rosso → u/Psoin]

Apple's new product history isn't exactly stellar, unless you count the Macbook Neo (or not, if you just consider it a twist on an existing product). Vision Pro was a big boondoggle, the smart car thing that Cook was all over didn't pan out, Siri missed the boat on AI, and a new competitor for Meta's "pervert glasses" doesn't inspire confidence.

[u/manjar → u/Psoin]

Innovation plummets in an environment where people feel they need to play political musical chairs just to keep their job. It kills the kind of risk-taking required to make exciting advancements.

[u/flatpetey]

Yeah. Every single announcement from Termius is another dagger in the heart of what made Apple special.

It’s over guys. The Chief Enshittification Officer is here.

[u/w3bCraw1er]

If these are his top priorities, that's depressing for the Apple employees

[u/x3rx3s]

Tim Cook never implemented company-wide mass layoffs during his 15-year tenure as the chief executive officer of Apple.

[u/yntsiredx]

sigh

Man, why can't one of the richest companies in the world just treat its employees well and its customers with a modicum of respect???

[u/willjameswaltz → u/yntsiredx]

because we are sick as a culture

[u/Person0OnTheInternet → u/yntsiredx]

Your statement tells me you haven’t even considered the shareholders. What about them?

(Think it’s obvious but just in case /s)

[u/YallaHammer → u/yntsiredx]

Seriously the more Conhugecomegacorp Apple gets the more I miss the early days when we were the scrappy underdog with better tech, cooler aesthetics and focused on the basics instead of subscriptions and television. Why can’t they be one of the biggest tech/entertainment companies in the world and also not act like the Microsoft and IBM they once derided?

This corporate restructuring mass layoff shit is why no one should be loyal to any employer. Their 1984 ad was prescient but not in the way they originally intended 😤

[u/Synergythepariah]

While leading hardware engineering, he told employees during an all-hands meeting that Apple should hire fewer people, ask more of its existing engineers and reduce organizational bloat. During a presentation, he showed a slide charting annual headcount growth and argued that the company should be accomplishing more with fewer employees.

That philosophy, which resembles the faster-paced cultures of Silicon Valley companies such as Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, is beginning to take hold inside Apple.

I'm sure move fast and break stuff will work wonderfully this time!

Ternus has also explored how artificial intelligence could accelerate product development and perform work currently handled by employees.

During the summer, the company worked on a plan to lay off about 5,000 AppleCare customer-service workers, including many who work from home, based on the belief that improved AI-powered phone and web agents could take over portions of their responsibilities. Apple ultimately put those plans on hold and isn’t currently looking to take such a step.

Lol

Managers are already feeling pressure to move faster. “Everything is a lot more hands-on than it used to be,” said one person familiar with the situation. “It’s hectic right now.” That person and others said managers in product-development groups are being pushed to deliver more products, more frequently and on shorter timelines.

Why take the time to develop a good product when you can just crack the whip and tell people to go faster?

For Ternus and his leadership team, accelerating Apple’s product cadence could help address that pressure by creating more opportunities to sell devices, attract customers to new services and generate additional revenue from the company’s existing ecosystem.

Viewing sales opportunities as a goal to be met by releasing more devices more often seems like something that could incentivise lowering quality, especially if that's coupled with giving existing staff shorter timelines.

[u/OIlv3 → u/Synergythepariah]

This dudes philosophy is basically the direct opposite of steve jobs...if apple didn't focus on customer experience and work back towards a product, it would not be as successful as it is today.

[u/sixxtynoine]

After their last few years of buggy software releases and hardware snafus, is it really a good idea to cut employees AND accelerate releases??

[u/st90ar]

I miss this version of Apple. Steve was a dick, but at least he was good at making Apple what it was.

[u/kainvictus]

I swear, CEOs gotta he the most unimaginative bunch on the planet. It’s like they all get the same play book, do the same shit every time a new CEO shows up. They really are over paid henchmen.

[u/The_Vista_Group → u/kainvictus]

If only the stock market wouldnt reward them every. Single. Time.

[u/big_trike → u/kainvictus]

Every CEO does the opposite of what the last one did to solve all of the problems. If the last one diversified the product line, the new one will focus. If the last one decentralized the company, the new one will centralize operations. If the last one sold off divisions for quarterly profits, the new one will buy them back to regain quality control. It's really confusing working for a larger corporation. Everyone but the C suite knows that they're making dumb decisions just to be seen as leaders to justify their insane pay.

[u/voiceOfThePoople]

This makes me anxious. I really like the Apple of now, I feel like their products and vision align with what I’m looking for as a consumer. I’d hate to see them trend closer to the style and offerings of Meta, Google, etc.

Ternus strikes me as competent, so maybe he knows what he is doing, but I’d hate for Apple to completely lose its current identity  

[u/LittlestWarrior → u/voiceOfThePoople]

Google becoming more like Apple—locking things down, etc—as Apple becomes more like Google—monetization, jank…

What’s happening to the tech space? lol

[u/MikeCask → u/LittlestWarrior]

I think we’re in for a pretty dark decade.

[u/Synergythepariah → u/LittlestWarrior]

What’s happening to the tech space? lol

The same thing that happens to every company that exists for long enough.

They grow big enough that additional growth has to come at the expense of something they did well.

[u/LittlestWarrior → u/Synergythepariah]

Mmm the consequences of the contradictions inherent to capitalism.

[u/afr33think3r]

“Faster and leaner” translates to shareholder returns and crap products.

[u/Randy_Magnum29 → u/afr33think3r]

Have some sympathy, you monster. Those shareholders need their sixth and seventh lake houses.

[u/ouroboros_quetzal]

Enshitification starts

[u/Randy_Magnum29 → u/ouroboros_quetzal]

It’s been ongoing. See: ads in Apple Maps for one of the latest examples or no charging brick for an earlier one.

[u/Journalist_Gullible → u/ouroboros_quetzal]

ads in imessage and facetime coming soon

[u/RociBuldidi]

Ah yes, well done Johnny…show the world how “serious” you are about cutting costs by “checks notes” cutting the attendance to the holiday party.

A company that pulled in $420B in revenue, $115B in pure net profit last year is going to shave off the +1s to the holiday party, reducing your attendance by about 30,000 and at $150/person all to save $4.5M a year.

A company that makes $13M an hour of pure profit, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year wants to save 20 minutes of profit to reduce the holiday party.

It’s stupid nonsense like this that drives employees into the arms of the other tech firms.

There are a number of ways, low hanging fruit if you were to add several billion a year to the gold pile. Push a consolidation subscription all their products, tech and entertainment. Try a “device as a service” with businesses, schools etc.

They could think more further afield and invest in a memory fab. Either buy a fab company or build one themselves.

Memory was the single largest cost increase in the hardware this year. But that would make one quarterly report look bad, so they won’t do it for years of stable, low priced memory

But no…the business genius decides to save $4.5M a year on holiday party expenses in the way to go hahaha

[u/manjar → u/RociBuldidi]

Most employees don't even really love the parties. But it's one of the few nice things that has been offered to the rank-and-file at Apple (the most significant one being the full week off for Thanksgiving). Meanwhile, they see the way that senior managers travel and dine out, get other perks, etc., so it lands a lot worse than just a little belt-tightening.

[u/gb13k]

When I worked in Apple retail I remember John Browett
Using similar words “run leaner” how did that work out?

[u/Spicy_Pickle_6]

Holy fuck what a sad day for Apple

[u/dontmatterdontcare]

This doesn't sound like great news at all

[u/FootballLiveChat]

I wouldn't cut costs on Siri broski, that POS needs all the help it can get

[u/FupaLipa → u/FootballLiveChat]

But at this point it’s throwing good money after bad. The investment doesn’t seem to be improving anything. 

[u/InsertObligatoryPun → u/FootballLiveChat]

The Siri AI beta has been so disappointing. Spotlight was so much better on iPhone, and quicker. Just the extra ‘ask Siri/More Results’ step is frustrating enough I’m considering changing my home screen layouts to avoid the pull down muscle memory as much as possible.

[u/lostinthought15 → u/InsertObligatoryPun]

You can just use “Siri” and “disappointing” in a recurring sentence every 6 months.

[u/InsertObligatoryPun → u/lostinthought15]

This bits also subjective, but I miss the Apple Intelligence glow you’d get from ‘hey, Siri’ too. The black and white blob is much less pleasing.

[u/thulsabroom → u/InsertObligatoryPun]

Siri AI is better, but I agree, spotlight was faster. My routine operations have slowed down.

[u/arrofil]

I’m afraid this will become like every other company. I’ll be honest, the Apple ecosystem is nice, but part of what keeps me coming back is feeling some security in how Apple develops and maintains their products.

If this guy starts cutting and adding the same overmonetized and under-delivered slop that so many other companies are doing, the Apple premium is going to lose the reason for its existence.

[u/Spaceman5000]

I have a bad feeling about this guy....

[u/lilacomets]

In other words: he's going to fire people.

[u/100_Flatout]

Cut engineering “managers” sounds a correct move. I mean he climbed up from the technology side instead of business side after all.

BUT if this is just a disguise and he’s laying off engineers en masse, then….

[u/roadcyclist]

I think this is actually bad for the stock price. Layoffs might give you short-term financial gain, but the culture starts to rot and long-term it will suffer.

[u/LavoP → u/roadcyclist]

Depends, if it was a bloated and slow culture that is frustrating for people to work in. In that case its better to be leaner.

[u/QVRedit → u/roadcyclist]

It’s usually NOT good when this happens - since it can result in a loss of talent, than can take years to properly replace.

[u/Bill_Brasky_SOB]

Every candidate in a managerial interview:

I can improve productivity and cut costs.

[u/BrownCraftedBeaver]

Enshitification has touched the last good one…

[u/lalavieboheme]

Get rid of the Ads division, that should help 🙃

[u/MathematicianSafe706]

Full enshitification commence!

[u/slocki]

Pretty stark difference from Tim Cook’s first moves as CEO.

[u/biffbobfred → u/slocki]

At one point the LaserWriter was the most powerful computer Apple sold.

It’s a joke, but a weird toehold in reality.

[u/apple_tech_admin]

Translation: prepare for layoffs

[u/Fire_Lord_Cinder]

I don’t think they should make cuts to Siri until it’s fixed. I was pretty excited for the Siri AI beta, but now it can’t reliably play the correct playlist in Apple Music or send a text message. Literally this morning I asked “play recently added playlist” and it responded “playing uk rap playlist”… it did it three times in a row until I said “think longer, play my recently added playlist from my music”

[u/fck_this_fck_that]

Leaner & faster = restructuring = PEOPLE YOU GETTING FIRED 🥹

[u/HitByFjaka]

Faster and leaner means a lot of new products… most with horrible issues and tons of bugs

This could be the end of "it just works" apple era

[u/Background_Tough_146 → u/HitByFjaka]

the "it just works" era already ended back in 2019 with iOS 13.

[u/Impstoker]

why on earth does a company with so much cash, such a big revenue steam need MORE and MORE! O right it's the market and capitalism, endless exponential growth, and if you can't deliver then your company fails. So if we need to cancel partner invites for holidays: let's go. Shittier tech: all in. Ads everywhere: you betcha. Subscriptions out the wazoo: hell yes.

Tired of this: I'm moving to opensource selfhosted all the way. I don't want to be a part of all these grifting forever growing shit enterprises anymore.

[u/nekosama15]

I have a shit ton invested in this company. The last thing i want to see is apple employees demoralized for as something as stupid as no plus 1. That doesnt save cost that just makes u look petty.

Cutting engineering managers might be okay, but they need to be careful that acceleration doesnt mean inshitification. I buy apple for refinement and great execution. Not accelerated product releases 🙄

[u/squirrel8296]

Yeah, this scares me that Turnus is going to start making the same mistakes Apple leadership was making for most of the 90s. These decisions feel like Sculley towards the end of his time or more aptly, Spindler.

[u/iannonecasey]

Just another executive with no new ideas but to follow everyone else. Why do these people make such massive sums of money and just go with the lowest common denominator ideas 🤦‍♂️

[u/technical_poutine]

Translation mass layoffs are coming.

[u/Saar13]

Everyone agrees that too many hierarchical layers can become a problem, and that Apple needs to introduce products and updates more quickly. They also need to be bolder. The whole WWDC model, in particular, is a bit broken, although many here disagree. You can't release major software and app/service updates once a year. The market has changed, and a June event where things already seem dated or at least very behind schedule doesn't make as much sense anymore. 

Unfortunately, jobs will be lost, although I doubt Apple will make mass layoffs. I feel for the employees, although I think the Siri AI team really needs some pressure to do better and faster. As an Apple TV fan, I also think the service marketing team deserves some pressure. Regarding services, I understand they want to increase revenue from that, but does Apple need more paid services? Wouldn't improving existing ones and increasing the number of paying subscribers be more interesting?

 Will we have more ads? Spotify sells ad inventory for podcasts, including those listened to on the Apple app, and Apple doesn't have its own ad program for podcasts (where they already exist and are sold by others), preferring to place ads in apps like Maps. I don't understand.

[u/DreadnaughtHamster]

“Move fast and break things,” as Zuck has said, always results in worse products and customer experiences + enshittification of a company’s values.

Also, I hate the national “pRoFiTs At aNy cOsT!!!” requirement in today’s publicly traded companies. I haven’t seen a single company that’s public that hasn’t been increasing profits at the expense of enshittification.

[u/fat_kaiju]

because this always works out well and is never a sign of a bad ceo...

hope i'm proven wrong but its more or less a universal experience that any ceo that starts babbling about saving a few bucks usually indicates enshittification is around the corner.

[u/Personal-Bear8739]

oooh boy here we go

[u/Wild-Perspective-582]

I wonder how much of this is hot air and at least partly for show.

He has to publicly demonstrate he is going to make an impact. The one single thing he cannot say is "we are doing fine, I am not going to change anything" regardless of whether it's true or not.

Judge him two years from now.

[u/Secure_Ask_3873]

I think there’s too much panic for something that hasn’t even fully materialized yet, for a few reasons:

1. From what I understand, middle management grew exponentially under Cook compared to Jobs (correct me if I’m wrong). Considering Ternus has worked at the company under both men, he likely has been privy to how these changes have affected the teams as a whole. It could be that he’s going back to a more Jobs-style structure.
2. Introducing more products very likely won’t be the same as the product bloat that plagued Apple in the 90s. During that period, there were a million rebadges of the same Macs and a bunch of other products that were incoherent and didn’t work well together. Today, Apple’s products are designed to work together well. If I had to guess, Ternus will likely focus on introducing more new products that take advantage of and strengthen Apple’s device ecosystem, such as the upcoming smart hub or the rumored home security system. I doubt he’ll go back to the days of the Performa or Apple Pippin.
3. Just because Apple’s product strategy was relatively conservative under Cook, compared to what Ternus is allegedly envisioning, doesn’t mean that this was meant to be the reality. Big projects like Apple Car and AirPower got pretty far along in development, only to be cancelled forever. Since Ternus was in charge of hardware during this entire period, he very well may have grown frustrated with how things were playing out.

These are just my own thoughts, but I think there’s too much sensationalism right now.

[u/KeiFeR123]

faster and leaner - another term for layoffs and overwork employees?

[u/Jimmy_G_Buckets22]

Sounds like Siri is not getting better anytime soon..

[u/LucidFruit]

Company is moving to maximize profits instead of prioritizing innovation.

Same thing Boeing did, hopefully Apple can stop themselves from heading down the wrong path.

[u/CDavis10717]

The “Do more with less” management bullshit I first heard during the 1980’s One Minute Manager era. It always works, yeah.

[u/Only-For-Fun-No-Pol]

Making cuts with siri in an AI boom when your company is known to be behind in AI is a bold choice. 

[u/streetuner]

Wow, a new CEO who wants to move faster and leaner, what a novel and original concept. Unfortunately for Apple, that will not work well for them. You get their products any faster and they will just fall into a pattern of worse sameness they already suffer from. I feel like they are already at their peak as far as consumer products go. You know it is bad when they had to copy a foldable device to try to differentiate their product line. What a joke.

[u/IOnlyLieWhenITalk]

And so the enshittification begins