Apple released its financial results this week for the quarter ending in December 2022, and the news was mostly bad. Revenue was down 5 percent from the previous quarter, the biggest quarterly drop since 2016. Profits were down 13 percent. iPhone sales were down 8 percent compared to the same quarter last year.

Experts say Apple is being hit with a double whammy. First, there are the same inflation and recession concerns that are affecting the entire tech industry. And then, there's China. A Covid shutdown there forced Apple to close its biggest factory in November, limiting its ability to produce its products. That same shutdown also decreased sales in China, which fell 7 percent during the quarter. Analysts predict that overall sales will fall another 4 percent during the current quarter.

Nevertheless, one word was conspicuously absent from Apple's quarterly report and Tim Cook's comments about it--layoffs. Bucking an industry-wide trend--there have reportedly been a total of 200,000 tech layoffs since the beginning of last year--Apple so far remains the only tech giant not to announce layoffs. In fact, layoffs just aren't Apple's style. The company hasn't had big headline-making layoffs since 1997, when Steve Jobs returned as Apple CEO and famously increased focus and decreased costs by slashing the company's product line.

Of course, none of this means that Apple will be able to avoid layoffs forever. If the company continues to struggle with supply chain issues and revenues continue to fall, it could find it has no choice. But the fact that Cook has not mentioned the L-word so far, and that it's been a quarter century since Apple's last big layoffs speaks volumes about both Cook's leadership and Jobs' before him. Here's what every leader can learn from Apple's example.

1. Lead for the long term

In November, when the company warned of decreased revenues, Cook confirmed in an interview that Apple had slowed its hiring, and that in some areas it was not hiring at all. But, he added, "We believe strongly in investing for the long term. And we don't believe you can save your way to prosperity. We think you invest your way to it."

This long-term view works both ways. During the past few years, when other tech giants were engaged in the rapid hiring that they now say necessitated the layoffs, Apple hired too, but much more slowly. From the fall of 2019 to the fall of 2022, Amazon's head count grew by 100 percent, Meta (Facebook) grew by 94 percent, and Microsoft and Google each added more than 50 percent to their head count. Those companies are now laying off tens of thousands of employees. Meanwhile, during the same three-year period, Apple's headcount only grew by 20 percent. Apple also refrained from providing its employees with the free food and other lavish perks that other tech companies have used to lure tech professionals to their payrolls.

2. Your brand is you most valuable asset. Treat it accordingly

I don't mean to suggest that Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft don't care about their brands. Of course they do. But I can't think of another company, large or small, that cares about its brand as obsessively as Apple does, or protects it with as much vigor. That approach has paid off handsomely for the company, whose customers are so devoted to the Apple brand that they post videos of themselves "unboxing" its products on social media and willingly pay a premium for its sometimes very high priced products.

There's no denying that layoffs harm brands. And research suggests that they don't reduce costs much or at all, either. So why do them? For one thing, Wall Street loves layoffs. For example, Meta's share price rose 23 percent after the company announced cost-cutting and suggesting that more layoffs are on the way.

So the question of layoffs may come down to whether you care more about your brand or your share price. Apple clearly cares more about its brand, and again, that's likely the right decision for the long term. Apple's share price fell about 4 percent after it released its earnings report with no talk of layoffs. But its shares have already partly bounced back.

2. Don't follow the crowd

"If you look for reasons for why companies do layoffs, the reason is that everybody else is doing it," Stanford business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer declared in a recent interview. "Layoffs are the result of imitative behavior and are not particularly evidence-based."

He may be right. There's been an undeniable monkey-see-monkey-do quality to the recent round of layoffs. They were kicked off by Twitter, whose workforce was vastly reduced by its new owner Elon Musk for reasons that were unique to Twitterand didn't have much to do with the economy at large. Nonetheless, once the Twitter layoffs were announced, in less than three months, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and many other tech companies announced layoffs of their own. And, as my Inc.com colleague Bill Murphy, Jr. observed, most of them either are laying off exactly 13 percent of their workforce, or maybe 12 or 14 percent. If that doesn't sound like a game of follow-the-leader, I don't know what does. 

And then there's Apple, which long boasted the motto "Think different." When it comes to the growing trend of taking long-term, loyal employees and showing them the door, thinking different seems like a very good idea to me.

There's a growing audience of Inc.com readers who receive a daily text from me with a self-care or motivational micro-challenge or tip. (Want to learn more? Here's some information about the texts and a special invitation to an extended free trial.) Often, they text me back and we wind up in a conversation. Many have been affected by layoffs, either because they had to lay off employees, or because they've been laid off themselves. Layoffs are always traumatic, for managers and employees alike. Like Tim Cook, the wisest leaders do whatever they can to avoid them.

Inc