Comments on: Shedding light on Apple exec drama: Why SVP Bob Mansfield unretired

By: Michael W. Perry

Michael W. Perry — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:20:46 +0000

Apple’s in a Catch 22. The more they pay these execs to stay on, the easier I’ll be for them to leave. And the more labor it expects from them, to recoup those cost, the more attractive and early retirement will be.

By: Rich

Rich — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:21:04 +0000

So being a holy terror is better than providing financial incentives? Having had nasty bosses, I would *much* rather be offered money than have a nasty boss – any day of the week – and I’m thinking lots of people agree with that.

By: Guest

Guest — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:10:47 +0000

Interesting article Erica, but that is a terrible photo on the homepage. Perhaps use the headshot that 9-to5 Mac used? http://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/screen-shot-8-31-12-at-12-56-35-am.png

By: Todd Smith

Todd Smith — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:39:18 +0000

Keeping top talent means paying top dollar and working on bleeding edge technologies. Given the current market of competition for experienced engineers, there aren’t many persuasive powers besides money. So I disagree with Dan wholeheartedly.

Tim Cook has been at the company long enough to know what it was like to grow the business, he was there long before the current rise to fame (1998), just a year after Apple almost went bankrupt, so the lack of owner’s perspective is a boondog of an argument.

I don’t see the connection between doing hard work and making difficult decisions. Obviously the entire chain of engineers felt that Bob’s replacement wasn’t ready, so they asked Bob to come back until such a time where they felt they had a replacement how could do the job. Not doing so would have meant either product launch pushback or mistakes within the hardware chain being made. Apple unfortunately doesn’t have the luxury of either of those things, however it does have the luxury of monetary success.

Thus it appears that the decisions made were good ones.

By: Madlyb

Madlyb — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:08:24 +0000

Well said Dan. Buying loyalty is a short term solution and a mutiny among senior engineers shows that either these guys think too highly of themselves or the replacement selection process was flawed. Either way, Cook has to work on redefining these relationships without using money as the facilitator for his management team to succeed.

By: Dan Tanna

Dan Tanna — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:32:00 +0000

Seems to me Tim Cook’s lack of an owner’s perspective (he did not start or grow Apple to its current size from ‘nothing’) will eventually cost Apple a ton of money. We’re seeing that he is taking the easy way out on many issues by simply throwing money at the problem. An owner knows that hard work must always be done, difficult decisions must always be made and throwing money at problems is NOT the answer… even when you have all the money in the world. It encourages entitlement mentality to creep into an organization. There was a very good reason Steve Jobs was a holy terror. He motivated and manipulated using psychology, not money.