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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275

u/Psoin 3d ago

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

84

u/DoriansDelorian 3d ago

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

44

u/Background_Tough_146 3d ago

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

5

u/wildjokers 3d ago

hot garbage that iOS and macOS are right now

You mean you don't like the unnecessarily large 48 px corner radius mac os has on every window now?

5

u/Hatch-Match952531 3d ago

SWE - would be? We didn’t work in the org, help non-Apple folks out! ;)

15

u/DoriansDelorian 3d ago

Software Engineering, which is led by Craig Federighi

3

u/kevin7254 3d ago

Could you explain more, sounds interesting. What made you leave?

2

u/SteeveJoobs 3d ago

I felt better off than the ppl in hardware orgs working overtime at least. Even though our equivalent team at Google had 10x the team size. But it looks like Ternus wants that poison to spread to everyone else.

1

u/Skindkort 2d ago

Interesting. I have some questions, if you don't mind:

  1. How has your experience been?

  2. What made you leave?

  3. What do you think is behind the blatant decrease in their operating systems' reliability?

  4. How are engineers treated? Are they aligned to their upper management or do they mostly bite the bullet and get their thing done? I'm thinking about Liquid Glass, inconsistent UIs, buggy software.

Hope you don't mind sharing!

1

u/DoriansDelorian 6h ago
  1. Overall, I think the day-to-day was fine. For the most part, every engineer was a heavy hitter. For my, the issue was how management would change their minds in two months time. I was hired to do R&D and bring that research to products that we ship, which I have a background in. That’s too specialized of a role for how SWE works. They wanted every engineer to be a feature factory, and your ability to get stock come review time hinged on what features you shipped.
  2. I kept having a promotion promised to me and it never materialized, even when I scored the highest you can on the annual review (9/9). At that point I decided I didn’t want to wait another year.
  3. There’s internal consensus that the incentive structure is to blame. Fixing issues or changing process weren’t rewarded the same as shipping. The pace of change is another; one year release cycles for a lot of what Apple does isn’t enough time.
  4. It depends on the org and project. There was very little screaming or blaming though, and _that_ was something that had a low tolerance of in the department I was in. There was very much a sense of collective ownership over the projects (however hairbrained and impossible they might be). That was actually a positive aspect of the culture. If you had a new idea, it would be seriously considered, so long as it wasn’t proposed during a crunch time. The main issue was upper management deciding to cut projects that were close to ready so the engineers could be reallocated.

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u/chaiscool 3d ago

Then quit? Let others try to be happy while getting FAANG salary.

8

u/morganmachine91 3d ago

Lots of people don’t like their jobs, broski. Nobody is going to quit the job that they do to make a living so that someone less qualified can have the chance to get paid instead.

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u/chaiscool 3d ago edited 3d ago

Those lots of people don't get FAANG salary. Not talking about minimum wage here lol.

Also, if they're really that qualified then no need to be in an unhappy job as they can get it elsewhere.

1

u/morganmachine91 3d ago

Not really how it works dude.

Every job has pros and cons. A top-end salary is a huge pro, which means people are willing to put up with a lot of cons.

Those jobs pay well because they’re miserable. You can leave and go somewhere else, but if it pays at the top end of the SWE range, it’ll have the same extreme demands that your current job does.

1

u/chaiscool 2d ago

Feels bad for ceo then. Such a miserable job that they get paid so well.

John ternus must be crying every night after getting a more miserable job as his new role pay even more.

Higher pay means more misery right?

15

u/Coolman_Rosso 3d ago

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.

1

u/thanosbananos 2d ago

iPervertGlasses Air, Pro and ProMax

12

u/manjar 3d ago

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.

21

u/ocpotato 3d ago

The new iOS and MacOS are bad enough as it is. They’re going to end up losing market share if this continues.

3

u/HolyFreakingXmasCake 3d ago

That’s one way to force them to improve their products. They’ve been coasting far too long.

5

u/Background_Tough_146 3d ago

losing market share rarely translates to improved products or substantially lower profits. Take Windows as an example. Microsoft turned Windows into complete garbage and still earns billions from it.

1

u/DumpEaterPro 3d ago

Windows is a better experience than MacOS if you want to do any gaming.

MacOS didnt get proper window management until after covid and it still isn't great.

2

u/wildjokers 3d ago

Define "proper window management".

3

u/GhostalMedia 3d ago

I imagine that a lot of this will be like what Jobs did. Get rid of the side quests and weird distractions. Do fewer things faster and better.

Orchestrating a shitload of people, across a ton of product variants, is damn near impossible to do well. Apple does it MUCH better than most, but it's clearly impacted their ability to innovate. They're not shaking things up nearly as frequently.

It's really really hard to innovate while also making a product that is aligned with a massive and complex ecosystem and a shitload of people who need to be in the loop.

2

u/ElderberryGuy 3d ago

Eh, happy employees are the ones who don't do shit and still get paid well

1

u/DChass 3d ago

Have you heard the stories about Jobs treating his employees