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John Ternus has big plans to make Apple ‘leaner’ and release more products
New CEO John Ternus has plans to “overhaul” Apple in an attempt to make it “run faster and leaner,” according to a new report from Bloomberg. This includes introducing more products, eliminating “middle-management positions,” and much more.
First, the new Apple CEO wants to release more products faster than before, including becoming “more experimental.” One idea is to shake up Apple’s release calendar and rely less on the typical spring-and-fall cadence, instead releasing more new products throughout the year.
Ternus also wants to “create a leaner organization with a greater focus on engineering.” This includes several cost-cutting measures and restructuring. For instance, one change is “eliminating some middle-management positions to reduce the layers separating engineers from senior executives.”
The report says Apple has dismissed “a number of engineering program managers, or EPMs,” in its hardware engineering division over the last two weeks. Bloomberg describes these roles as having been “central to Apple’s product-development process for decades,” responsible for “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,” the report says. “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.”
Bloomberg says the cost-cutting measures could go much broader than that, though. Ternus has reportedly advocated for Apple to be “leaner” for years:
Ternus, 51, has advocated for a leaner organization for years. While leading hardware engineering, he told employees during an all-hands meeting that Apple should hire fewer people, ask more of its existing engineers and reduce organizational bloat. During a presentation, he showed a slide charting annual headcount growth and argued that the company should be accomplishing more with fewer employees.
Furthermore, Apple reportedly scrapped a plan over the summer to lay off 5,000 AppleCare employees, believing that AI-powered agents could handle those responsibilities.
At the same time, Ternus wants Apple to increase revenue from Apple’s services division alongside Eddy Cue and CFO Kevan Parekh. “They have discussed launching new services and extracting more revenue from existing products and offerings,” the report says.
Ultimately, one source told Bloomberg that things are “hectic” inside Apple right now: