Layoffs in Tech: What Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has to say about tech companies laying off talent

Google laid off 12,000 employees in January alone and about a month ago, Amazon announced that it will remove 18,000 employees, and has already laid of over 10,000 people. Microsoft, similarly, has laid off about 10,000 employees. All in all, over 1,50,000 people working in tech are likely to be laid by March 2023. 

And then there’s Apple While the global tech industry is seeing an unprecedented level of mass firings, Apple, has somehow managed to survive all this commotion.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that he views layoffs as a “last resort kind of thing.”

Cook stated that Apple has had to alter its spending and recruiting plans in response to broader economic conditions. For example, the corporation is “monitoring expenses extremely closely and is reducing recruiting in certain sectors while continuing to hire in others.” However, Cook explained that layoffs are a “last resort” and that the corporation would prefer to control expenses in other ways.

During 2021, 2020, and 2019, when the tech industry was going through a boom of sorts, Apple, like other organisations in the tech space hired a lot of people. However, they were a little conservative during their hiring spree. While its competitors increased their headcount by anywhere in the 57 per cent to 100 per cent  range between September 2019 to September 2022, Apple’s headcount grew by around 20 per cent.

There’s also the fact that Apple has a  “lean” approach for employee perks (at least in comparison to other tech companies), as well as its very methodical approach to investing in projects with less certain futures. For instance, Apple is investing heavily in things like AR and VR, but it’s doing so at a slower pace than companies like Meta and Facebook invest in new areas.

Despite all of this, Tim Cook revealed that layoffs at Apple can’t be ruled out completely, but they won’t go about the way other tech companies have done it, unless it is absolutely necessary. 

For the time being, however, they don’t appear to be something in the immediate future. There are also other ways Apple can reduce its headcount, such as attrition: simply not replacing people who leave the company.

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