Tim Cook's strategy after Steve Jobs' death: Older employees who hardly work anymore

Bloomberg's Apple insider Mark Gurman often shares fascinating facts about the company's office culture. From hiring a potential cash cow to maintain its premium image to Apple spending billions on something that probably won't improve its devices. The latest interesting piece of information, however, is a little different: Apple CEO Tim Cook is keeping senior employees on the payroll to maintain people's faith in the company. How exactly does this work, you might ask? To do that, we have to go back to the death of Steve Jobs, just six weeks after Cook took over as CEO. Because apparently this practice of retaining Apple veterans is nothing new.

Shortly after Jobs' death, Bob Mansfield wanted to leave the company. Mansfield was a key figure in Apple's hardware development department, and Cook was concerned that his departure would upset shareholders. So Cook instead convinced Mansfield to stay for a while, possibly for a very large sum. And although Mansfield stayed at Apple, he hardly worked after that until he took over the Apple Car project, according to Gurman.

Cook had to use the same tactic on Apple's highly acclaimed designer Jony Ive in about 2015. Ive wanted to leave, but was instead kept on the payroll and only allowed to work one or two days a week. He eventually left the company in 2019 to start his own company, but not before Apple had spent years telling the public that Ive was heavily involved in the company. According to Gurman, this tactic was also used on Phil Schiller. That's when Apple invented the title “Apple Fellow,” which Schiller still holds today while running the App Store.

What's more interesting is that the company still uses this method today, almost 13 years after Jobs' death. The most recent example is the retirement of Apple's CFO Luca Maestri in 2025. Although Maestri will no longer hold the title of CFO, the company will still keep it as he provides consulting for Tim Cook among other duties.

Apple isn't exactly strapped for cash. But it's also one of the biggest and most popular companies in the world. Is it really that helpful to keep senior executives on the payroll who barely do any work?

Because I doubt that this major corporation will lose public interest if someone they probably didn't even know leaves.

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