[pwinnski]

Your friend has bought into the hype, as a lot of people have. There are very few people making "big tech money" who are not also putting in very long hours. They exist, but are often/usually in the (long) process of being "managed out."

There's no doubt in my mind that a lot of this is a power-play by profitable companies to push back against developers who've collectively gained more power at the negotiating table. Paying dividends and doing stock buybacks while saying "tough economic headwinds require us to lay off 6-8% of you" can only be a power move, as far as I'm concerned.

[DwnVoteHoneyPot]

Dividends/buy-backs and layoffs are derived from the same concept. The company has excess resources they do not plan to use in the future. If you have excess cash, return it to the shareholder. If you have excess employees, reduce head count. It means the company doesn't want to build anything at the moment (for various reasons include prep for a downturn).

[MuffinFlavored]

> The idea of comparing the expected return from a project to a risk-free rate, such as the return on a Treasury bond, is a common method used in finance to assess the riskiness of an investment. This is known as the cost of capital, which represents the minimum rate of return that an investment must generate to be considered economically viable.

How would you breakdown the distribution of projects inside of Apple from a return perspective?

Some will be 0% or negative due to R&D.

Some will be massively profitable (net 20-40% margins).

How do you decide what the right amount of loss-leading R&D projects to have is?

[chad_stevens]

You should read this article,

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-noth...

[majikaja]

When companies trying to make cost cuts see an employee making $500k I don't think they go 'oh that's okay because they're working long hours'.