Saving Is Not The Way To Prosperity. 'We Think You Invest Your Way To It'

Tim Cook
CEO of Apple

Nothing is unaffected by global uncertainty. Even Apple, the tech company regarded as the most valuable brand in the world with its $3 trillion market capitalization, is also not immune.

Based in the U.S. and with operations around the world, Apple generates money like many others cannot. But still, it needs to have a plan before looking ahead.

And since the foreseeable future is quite dull, caused by the Russia-Ukraine war, the slow recovery of the economy caused by COVID-19, the decreasing demand level due to high interest rates and more, CEO Tim Cook aims to slim down the company a bit by slowing down hiring, among others.

Cook said that is "still hiring" but doing so on a "deliberate basis."

In an interview with CBS News, Cook explained that Apple continues to hire, but "not everywhere in the company."

"What we’re doing as a consequence of being in this period is we’re being very deliberate on our hiring. That means we’re continuing to hire, but not everywhere in the company are we hiring."
Tim Cook

Cook added that:

"We believe strongly in investing for the long-term. And we don’t believe you can save your way to prosperity. We think you invest your way to it."

Here, Cook is showing that Apple's hiring strategy is quite different from other tech companies.

Facebook parent company Meta, for example, laid off more than ten thousand employees amid declining advertising rates and overall concerns about the state of the economy. Twitter has also faced mass layoffs following Elon Musk’s acquisition.

Other tech companies such as Snap, Lyft, Salesforce, Shopify, Coinbase, Amazon, and Stripe have also made the decision to lay off employees.

Some others paused hiring altogether amid the grappling with high inflation and rising interest rates.

But Apple takes a different approach, because Cook believes that employee is an investment, and they're worth fighting for.

This kind of approach has been successful in the past, like when the original iPhone was released in 2007.

In 2008, just when Apple was venturing the unknown, the company continued to make hires through the year's U.S. recession.

As for Apple’s return to in-person work, Cook explained that he believes in-person collaboration is key to innovation and teamwork.

"We make product, and you have to hold product. You collaborate with one another because we believe that one plus one equals three. So that takes the serendipity of running into people, and bouncing ideas off, and caring enough to advance your idea through somebody else because you know that’ll make it a bigger idea."

"That doesn’t mean we’re going to be here in five days [a week]. We’re not. If you were here on a Friday, it would be a ghost town."

Here, Cook simply described Apple’s philosophy on employees returning to the office, commenting that the nature of the company means that people "have to hold [the] product" and "collaborate with one another."