There is more overlap between the two than you'd think, specifically in producing and evaluating datasets for training and fine-tuning models. Most software engineers and ML engineers who worked on self-driving cars would do fine at working on GenAI; in fact, they're more qualified than the vast majority of engineers to work in a brand-new industry. Same goes for engineers working on compute hardware. Even engineers working on automotive controls and sensors could easily have a role working on increasingly multimodal models and applications, though I have no idea what projects Apple is actually prioritizing within that space.
The question is: does Apple actually need so many people working on GenAI? Would a team with 300 people be twice as good as a team with 150 people for what Apple is going to release as products? I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is going to lay off most of them.
The old Apple would've pitted two (much smaller) teams against each other. Not sure if the company culture really aligns with that type of structure now, but it's a big assumption that 300 people would all be a single team/org.
When you say "old apple" you're referring to the early 80s Apple where Steve Jobs pitted his Macintosh team against Wozniak's Apple II team to near disastrous results.
Jobs referred to the Mac team as "artists" and the Apple II guys as "bozos"
The company almost collapsed under the insane price of the gen 1 mac ($2,495, or nearly $8000 today) which lacked a desperately needed cooling fan and also didn't have color graphics.
I'm not sure if Jobs kept doing that after he came back in the late 90s, but that practice was generally not very effective from a mangerial perspective.
I imagine they are actually referring to the internal competition Jobs orchestrated leading up to the introduction of the iPhone, which I've never heard described as "disastrous" though plenty of people's feelings were presumably hurt.
And although we cannot really know how much that internal competition contributed to iPhone's success, I think we can imagine that if Apple had shipped an iPod control interface (wheel and click button) with a phone inside it, it would have been nowhere near as successful as it was.
"net income" may be a bit simplistic for the moment, but agreed that it doesn't need to be twice as good. it simply needs to be the best. just because the marginal value of adding people goes down, doesn't mean you shouldn't keep adding them.
just tell investors to look at adjusted net ebitda. you'll be fine, they won't even notice (sarcasm because you need this stuff spelled out for you)
It called the fully adjusted number “community adjusted Ebitda,” by which it subtracted not only interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, but also basic expenses like marketing, general and administrative, and development and design costs. Those earnings were $233 million, WeWork said.
Wow, skimping on 150 people for the biggest change to the tech industry in since the invention of the computer.
You understand Apple spent like billions for this electric car industry that never produced anything? Why would they want to starve the AI project now?
You understand how many people in Microsoft and Google are working on AI adjacent projects? Even if they aren't AI researchers, there's tons of work just to put the models in useful applications.
I’d argue the internet is much bigger to date. In the future, who knows — anything getting closer to AGI would be bigger possibly but still built on the backbone of computers and the internet.
>You understand Apple spent like billions for this electric car industry that never produced anything? Why would they want to starve the AI project now?
Interest rates? I'm sure self driving cars will also shift society one day. But money isn't free anymore And in the case of R&D they can't amortize the costs of devs either. it shows how many companies really care about "changing the world".
“Man-Month” can be mythical, then again sometimes you’re making a very big omelette and could use the extra hands - if only to handle tooling, prep work, or other distractions.
