Angela Ahrendts Departing Apple in April, Deirdre O'Brien to Oversee Retail and People

[Baymowe335]

Let’s face it. The stores need improvement and she might hav been the scapegoat for the lowered guidance.

The stores need to SEPARATE service and sales, just like a car dealership. WAY too many people waiting around for service and getting in the way.

 

[Carnegie]

5 years.... $68 Million

"... Ahrendts will receive shares spread over several different vesting periods between June 1, 2014 and June 14, 2018, ..."
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/05/05/angela-ahrendts-signing-bonus/


$13.6M per year. ....... didn't even make it a year after the last vesting date.

I won't be surprised if in 2020-2021 Apple is out making it rain on yet another retail chief they just gotta have.




​

Ms. Ahrendts has received considerably more than $68 million in (pre-tax) compensation while she's been with Apple. And she'll receive another $18 million or so (at the current share price) worth of Apple stock on April 1st.

 

[dogslobber]

Wow, lots of love for Angela in here I see. She will be missed as she brought stability to the Apple store experience.

 

[bernuli]

Did she do anything while at Apple?

Closed a bunch of stores for 6-8 months and reopened them with a slimmer design and less accessories. I am serious. With the length of time it takes to “remodel” an Apple store, when it finally reopens I am expecting to be really impressed. Instead I am left wondering.

 

[rtomyj]

GOOD. One of the few weak links at Apple. A tech company should hire tech-y people. Far easier to teach a tech-y person people skills than a people person tech.

 

[deckard666]

Well judging by posts here on MacRumours this news is going to make many people happy…

Does anyone here at MR like any of the current Apple team ever ? Answers on a postcard...

 

[deconstruct60]

... While I was killing time waiting for my repair, I heard retail employees repeatedly telling customers incorrect information about products — sometimes, with complete confidence in what they were saying. I was dumbfounded.

That isn't particularly new. I've been in Apple stores ~10 years ago and heard comments that were real head scratchers too. Sometimes Apple gets folks looking to join a cult more so than looking to be helpful. Turnover . It is actually hard to have this many stores and that many folks and not to get a few folks that aren't the same folks who regular goofed/charmed/"hustled"/etc their way through school .

 

[minik]

I don't see why so much dislike for Angela here. Let's hope Deirdre will continue where's Angela left off and hire more great people at the store.

 

[gsurf123]

I am yet to see anything she has done unless I am looking in the wrong place. I never saw her fitting in anywhere within Apple.

 

[netdudeuk]

GOOD. One of the few weak links at Apple. A tech company should hire tech-y people. Far easier to teach a tech-y person people skills than a people person tech.

I’m not so sure about that.

 

[Simmias]

Good. Apple Stores are the most broken part of the Apple experience. Every visit involves long waits, being passed between multiple people, confusion about where to go and who to talk to - and I’m just talking about making a simple purchase or return if you already know what you want. I truly dread walking into an Apple Store, and Arendts has done nothing to simplify and reduce friction. The Jony Ive redesign of the physical space is fine, but the flow of traffic and slowness of service is still an absolute nightmare. Her signature program, the Today at Apple sessions, are boring and I would guess not gaining much traction. I hope her successor can take this back to basics and make browsing and purchasing a MUCH simpler and easier experience. Quick, efficient, polite - ditch the “town square” mumbo jumbo.

 

[cljmac]

She came in to really bring a new feel with the watch coming out. Look at her past jobs.

 

[cmaier]

Let’s face it. The stores need improvement and she might hav been the scapegoat for the lowered guidance.

The stores need to SEPARATE service and sales, just like a car dealership. WAY too many people waiting around for service and getting in the way.

Nobody at Apple or anywhere else blames apple retail for the bad quarter.

 

[SFO 1K]

Did not see this coming at all. Sounds like they are letting her stay until she hits 5 years to vest, but usually the new person effectively starts immediately.

New people typically start immediately.
Old people stick around (on paper) until something they were promised or they promised the company, is done.

 

[NauticalDaniel]

As a guy, I’m pretty disgusted with the misogyny directed at Angela whenever there’s a story about her. Talking about her tenure is fair game, but talking about her clothes and gestures is pretty gross.

 

[McScooby]

Let’s face it. The stores need improvement and she might hav been the scapegoat for the lowered guidance.

The stores need to SEPARATE service and sales, just like a car dealership. WAY too many people waiting around for service and getting in the way.

That & doing geniusy stuff on the shop floor lets prospective buyers hear the horrendous stories which they may encounter, business suicide?

 

[Bokito]

Seriously, in 5 years what did she do???

Kill the Apple online store

 

[lunarworks]

The problem with the Apple Store isn't something she did wrong, but more something she didn't do. The stores are great, but the growth in demand for Apple's products over the last five years has far outpaced their expansion in retail, so many locations suffer from a crush in customers, making them difficult to navigate and increased the wait for service. If there were more or larger locations, many of the complaints would be gone. (There's nothing you can do about the complaints about her wearing fashionable clothes or having "big hands", I don't need to discuss where those complaints come from.)

 

[icanhazmac]

Good riddance, my last trip to the Apple store for a 2017 mbp keyboard replacement resulted in a 1.5 hour wait.

 

[deconstruct60]

Ms. Ahrendts has received considerably more than $68 million in (pre-tax) compensation while she's been with Apple. And she'll receive another $18 million or so (at the current share price) worth of Apple stock on April 1st.

Yeah... I forgot to add that was just signing bonus ( buy out from old company and "retention". ). That was just to get her to show up. The issue is more along the lines that "retention" part really doesn't seem to have worked all that well for the huge amount of money spent.

To some extent that is an HR issue. Although the board of dir and senior C-level exes were driving it huge amounts, there is such a thing as throwing "too much" money at folks. It often doesn't work as well as some folks think it does.


That she got an income on top of that is somewhat different than "still here and breathing".

 

[AlumaMac]

As a guy, I’m pretty disgusted with the misogyny directed at Angela whenever there’s a story about her. Talking about her tenure is fair game, but talking about her clothes and gestures is pretty gross.

Do you get upset when people bag on Eddie Cue's gestures and wardrobe??

 

[cmaier]

Do you get upset when people bag on Eddie Cue's gestures and wardrobe??

Does one need to be concerned about all injustices in order to be permitted to be concerned by any injustice?

 

[NauticalDaniel]

Do you get upset when people bag on Eddie Cue's gestures and wardrobe??

No one hardly does, people usually talk about his tenure whenever they talk about him, which with both him and Angela, is fair game.

 

[danielbraun]

As a former Apple Retail employee, let me tell you how great this news is:

Angela was widely viewed as an out-of-touch leader for the Retail side of Apple. I remember that we noticed how, upon the Watch launch, she was sporting a spanking new Apple Watch in gold, and we all found it somewhat distasteful that she was addressing hourly employees with a piece of technology sold by their employers that they would never be able to afford. She had (might still have) weekly videos that employees were forced to watch, and the overarching feeling was always something along the lines of "she has no idea what Apple Retail employees actually go through"

Good riddance!

 

[jpn]

here's the thing:

before Fashion Angela, apple stores had an extensive range of tutorials and presentations that customers could attend to learn more about how to use software and hardware.
people already had developed habits of hanging out there.

Along Comes Fashion Angela.
she spends 3 years doing nothing except developing the concept of apple stores becoming more like "Community Centers".
for the past 2 years she has tried to (and in a rather remarkably failed way) roll out this concept, especially at "New Mausoleum Stores" ™️ (stores that are in significantly expensive real-estate locations and/or stores with historical / cultural value).

fail.
her concept was merely to take the existing apple programs and try to co-opt the idea to some grand Marie Antoinette level.
fail.
cities with real cultural landmarks hated apple's attempt to commercialize historical sites.
fail.
we dont need Angela to Meet Up at Apple.