For the first time since at least Q1 2016, “Hardware” is not the most in-demand hiring category at Apple, being eclipsed by “Software and Services”
Apple ($NASDAQ:AAPL) started as a hardware company. Its first product was a kit: a box of hardware that customers had to assemble on their own.
Context & Ripple Effects
Thinknum's job-postings data shows Software and Services displacing Hardware as Apple's most in-demand hiring category for the first time since at least Q1 2016 — a symbolic marker for a company whose first product was a hardware kit customers assembled themselves. The shift was already visible internally years earlier: by late 2016 sources described the Mac as getting far less attention amid departures of key people (the Mac was already being de-prioritized inside Apple).
What makes this hiring signal more than trivia is where it pointed: by 2024, Apple Services revenue had grown to top Mac, iPad, and wearables combined and was approaching hardware-level profits, while revenue per new hire climbed to $2.51M in 2020-2022 from $1.17M in 2017-2019 — fewer hires, weighted toward software and services, generating more revenue each.
First-order effects
- Apple's recruiting pipeline tilts toward software and services engineers, meaning hardware teams now compete internally for a smaller share of new headcount.
- Job seekers and recruiters tracking Apple see the demand signal flip: the highest-volume openings are no longer hardware roles.
Second-order effects
- Rivals hiring for the same software and services talent pool — cloud, apps, subscription platforms — face a deeper-pocketed Apple bidding for those candidates as its services business scales.
- Hardware-focused suppliers and contract manufacturers whose volumes depend on Apple's product cadence face a customer whose incremental investment is flowing to services instead of next-generation device engineering.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Apple's organizational identity completes the inversion the data implies: a services-and-software company that ships hardware, rather than a hardware company that sells services — with capital allocation, executive incentives, and talent brand following the hiring mix.
- A sustained services tilt raises the stakes on App Store economics and platform regulation, since the profit center shifts from devices sold to the marketplace rules governing hundreds of millions of weekly users.
The trend: Apple is transitioning from a hardware-defined company to a services-led one, with its own hiring mix serving as the earliest leading indicator of that rebalancing.