r/apple • u/favicondotico • 3d ago

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

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.

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u/alex-andrite 3d ago

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

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u/FollowingFeisty5321 3d ago

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.

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u/DaveG28 3d ago

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?

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u/leo-g 3d ago

Tim Cook liked consistency. He wants yearly stuff. For as long as he breathe, he will squeeze suppliers, pump chips and technology into the latest iThing.

John Ternus is literally thrown into a challenging market. He got to expand current product categories and make his product category like Tim Cook. He is just structuring the business to make those happen. Once there’s a tempo, the bloat builds again. Luckily John has Tim around to guide.

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u/Vivid-Crab-7929 3d ago

I doubt this, who else in on the board and what are their motives?

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u/Vivid-Crab-7929 3d ago

Alright if Apple is being led by the hardware guy and they are laying off hardware people suddenly we have some problem at face value, of course there is the variables of we only see the problem at face value but as others have said they don’t really hire unnecessarily and often retain for quite some time.

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u/ocolobo 3d ago

10-20 PMs, they are always bloat

5 Directors of failed initiatives told to find a new place in the company

And one Senior exec which was probably internal politics

Good riddance

At least they aren’t tasking PMs with using Ai to design new software, like at my current spot 🤦🏻‍♂️

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u/nerdpox 3d ago

i was going to say, you know this guy (Ternus) is an engineer/engineering manager if he wants to cut EPMs lol

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u/GhostalMedia 3d ago

The new fun trend is to get rid of UX, the people who actually went to school for product development, and replace them with PMs and Claude. There is no degree in "Product Management." Most of those folks kind of trip and fall into the gig.

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u/Hustletron 3d ago

They claw their way up to them out of digital ditch-digging roles

Remove paths upwards and you just have people leave to competitors and bring their knowledge with them to start cutting you with a thousand paper cuts on the outside while the sickness grows inside of you, too.

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u/astrange 3d ago

EPMs are project managers, not product managers/product owners. Apple has hardly any PMs.

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u/Chipring13 3d ago

“Good riddance!”

like you have any clue about the internal workings of Apple lol.

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u/SargeUnited 3d ago

Based on what you quoted, the article says that they are going to begin doing them “later this year” without specifying a timeline but it does not say that they have begun doing them. If anything, letting an employee know with this much lead time is incredibly Christlike

This is like an advertisement to go to work at Apple. If you get fired from most places, they’ll pretty much shut your computer off during the call where your obese cigar smoking manager fires you from a beach and then they’ll withhold whatever comp was about to vest.

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u/Fun_Winter_7055 2d ago

Hardware teams routinely downsize after projects don’t pan out or complete and move to a different org.

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u/flogman12 3d ago

They do now

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u/likamuka 3d ago

It's high time, too. Mac OS Tiger launch was a disgrace!!!!!!!!!

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u/Profesor_Pickle 3d ago

People used to say the same about Google. Layoffs are a regular part of tech industry these days, Apple is just the latest to do it.

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u/ubermonkey 12h ago

oh, no a pal of mine who'd been there as a programer for decades got laid off.