And more changes are likely coming. Johny Srouji — senior vice president of hardware technologies and one of Apple’s most respected executives — recently told Cook that he is seriously considering leaving in the near future, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Srouji, the architect of Apple’s prized in-house chips effort, has informed colleagues that he intends to join another company if he ultimately departs.
This would be a big blow, Apple’s chip design has been one of their biggest successes I’d say.
While it’s strange from the outside seeing visible figures leave a company like Apple, Apple employs many, many thousands of people. We don’t see what happens out of the public glare.
So while the person responsible for a team (e.g. Johny Srouji) may leave, the rest of the team is still there.
Johny may have been instrumental in enthusing the team to do great things, a new person may equally be able to do the same (maybe someone who’s been developed to take over), New ideas may come out of a change in leadership, Johny may have been suppressing some ideas which then are allowed to be explored
Change is hard and can induce anxiety, but it should always be seen as an opportunity, to embrace new ideas. Change is good.
The Senior Leadership team at Apple has been pretty static for many years. Yes, they’ve been massively successful, but they’ve also take some massive missteps too. Gold watches, Apple Cars, completely missing Gen AI. New people in a. team bring new ideas.
The Successes have outweighed the missteps financially, but in 10 years we may look back on missed opportunities in a different light than we do today.
Steve Balmer was a Stock Market darling for many years at Microsoft, but he failed to move the company on and it started to drop away. Satya Nardella moved the company away from Windows Desktop, Office, and Windows Server into Services and Hosting to make it a far better and future proofed company.
What if, as others have speculated, Apple has been unsuccessful at developing “Apple Intelligence” because of their corporate culture? Apple likes taking their time, sticking to schedules, then announcing hardware and software at regular times through out the year. Does that sound like OpenAI or Google?
How did they drop the ball so badly two years ago? Was top management that clueless? Didn’t anyone ask to see a demonstration of “Apple Intelligence” from time to time? Was everything John Giannandrea’s fault? Or were the cards stacked against him from the beginning?
Maybe this exodus of people will bring some needed change?
And what his team is enthusiastic about may have lost some of its shine for him personally. I’ve seen more than one successful senior executive walk away from a leadership role because the problem set they’d been tasked with no longer excited them. Will Srouji move on to another company to do the exact same work he’s doing at Apple? Maybe. But he may view the move as an opportunity to direct his energies towards a problem that intrigues him personally, but isn’t something Apple would, could, or should be interested in. In that case, both he and Apple will be better off.
As a colleague of mine once observed about senior staff departures: “You leave, the waters close behind you, and soon enough it’s like you were never there.”
Or as Charles De Gaulle (allegedly) observed: “The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”
After switching to I.T. full time, I changed companies once and then retired. Both times, I got the occasional phone call from my replacement for a couple of months, then the calls stopped.
Except for the ones inviting me to lunch, or the company Christmas party.
(As an official Microsoft VAR and WHP (web hosting provider) during the Balmer years, I can definitely confirm that although Wall Street may have loved him, many of my contacts inside Microsoft had a very different opinion.)
As a man grows old I reckon he begins to gravitate toward storied dramas…World Wars…manifesto-packaged philosophies…Apple.
It seems here I’ve been caught in the third.
I caught a glimpse of some Liquid Glass promo reels and from the looks as how I felt some of the staff were dressed (like teenagers) they may fit right in at Meta…whose CEO I caught a similar vibe from last I saw him; before the time I saw him apologizing to Mr Trump over some slip about massive dollar amounts and AI.
You know I wonder if I’d actually love for Apple to fall behind in the AI race; let Ternus run the whole show and send him into the trenches somewhere…brush shoulders with and hear some of the appeals of the people who are into Framework, MNT and System76…maybe steal a few ideas and employees from those companies and continue making nice computers that people enjoy using and that developers enjoy developing software for people to use on their computers.
And if the chips keep coming out alright then people can just use open models using the most popular software and then you hire the developers of the models and hire the people behind the software to help make your own and at the same time because that’s a lot of work the people who you don’t hire can keep doing what they’re doing and this is all according to my imagination anyhow so it’s bond to turn out great for business for as long as I can spin this together!
One of the more subtle changes is the demotion of the Environmental Policy group with the departure of Lisa Jackson (it is being folded in and not reporting directly to Cook).
Could that be a quiet concession to the current political “climate” around environmental policy at the national level?
Good discussion! Of course there was only one irreplaceable exec at Apple, but he died in 2011. Luckily he was smart enough to structure a company that could flourish without him. Let’s hope that continues to happen.
Apple Inc. chip chief Johny Srouji, whose potential departure risked worsening a bout of executive turnover, told staff on Monday that he’ll stay at the iPhone maker for now.
“I know you’ve been reading all kind of rumors and speculations about my future at Apple, and I feel that you need to hear from me directly,” he said in a memo to his division. “I love my team, and I love my job at Apple, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.”
Glad Srouji’s staying. From interviews with Ternus and Millet, it sounds like he brings intensity to each generation’s allocation of real estate on the chips. It would be easy to drift with what’s working too many years without a tough negotiator leading.
