Cook’s early career

Tim Cook embarked on a career in the field of computer technology right after he graduated from school. First, he got a job at IBM. Later on, he became the corporation’s North American fulfillment director. After that, he managed distribution functions and manufacturing for IBM’s Personal Computer Company in both Latin America and the North. Finally, he worked at IBM for 12 years.

In 994, Tim Cook was appointed as the chief operating officer (CEO) of the Reseller Division at Intelligent Electronics. After three years, he joined the Compaq Computer Corporation as vice president of corporate materials, procuring and managing product inventory. However, his time there was short-lived: After a six-month stint at Compaq, Cook left for a position at Apple.

Tim Cook joins Apple.Inc

Cook joined Apple in 1998. At that time, Apple was experiencing a decline in profits. According to Cook, before accepting his job at Apple, he was dissuaded from doing so because the company’s future looked very bleak.

Cook came on board as a vice president, and things quickly changed after. Less than a year after Cook’s Apple debut, the corporation was reporting profits. This was an extraordinary shift from a recent report that showed a net loss of $1 billion from the prior fiscal year.

Later on, Time As Cook rose to executive vice president and then chief operating officer. He took responsibility for managing worldwide sales and operations. Furthermore, he also led the Macintosh division and continued the development of reseller/supplier relationships.

Due to his performance, Time Cook was pronounced as Apple’s new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in August 2011. In October 2011, Steve Jobs passed away due to cancer after years-long of battle with it. In addition to that, Cook was the chief executive officer (CEO), Tim Cook also sat on the corporation’s board of directors. In November 2011, Cook was named one of Forbes magazine’s “World’s Most Powerful People.”

Furthermore, according to an April 2012 article in The New York Times, Cook was the highest-paid CEO among large publicly traded companies in 2012. While his salary amounted to around $900,000, Cook in 2011 reportedly made $378 million in total compensation from stock awards and bonuses.

Equally important,  in May 2014, Apple.Inc had announced its biggest acquisition to date when it bought Beats Music and Beat Electronics for $3 billion. Beats co-founders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine would join Apple in executive roles as part of the deal.

Consequently, in a letter to Apple employees, Cook said, “This afternoon we announced that Apple is acquiring Beats Music and Beats Electronics, two fast-growing businesses which complement our product line and will help extend the Apple ecosystem in the future. Bringing our companies together paves the way for amazing developments which our customers will love.”

Following this, at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2014, Cook announced the latest version of the Apple operating system for desktop and mobile, OSX Yosemite. In September of the same year, Cook unveiled the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, both of which had larger screen sizes and came with new features such as Apple Pay and “Burst Selfies.” He also announced the first new product under his reign, a wearable device to track fitness and health, the “Apple Watch,” available for purchase in 2015.

In 2015, he announced that after paying for his nephew’s college education, he would donate the rest of his fortune to philanthropic projects.

“My most significant discovery so far in my life was the result of one single decision: My decision to join Apple,” Cook stated some 12 years after joining the corporation while speaking at Auburn University’s commencement ceremony in 2010.

” While Apple did make Macs, the company had been losing sales for years and was commonly considered to be on the verge of extinction,” he told the Auburn graduates.

“Only a few months before I’d accepted the job at Apple, Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Computer, was publicly asked what he would do to fix Apple, and he responded, ‘I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.'” 

Tim Cook’s brilliant innovations

In addition to that, Tim Cook continued to oversee the development of new products like Clips. The clip is an app that enabled the creation of short videos for social media.

A few months after its spring 2017 debut, Apple unveiled the iPhone X, which generated buzz in the tech world for its facial recognition system.

Furthermore, along the way, the company introduced the Apple News app to give users access to articles from a wide range of sources. In June 2018, Apple unveiled a 2018 midterm elections section, which promised to draw curated content from legitimate sites as well as exclusives like The Washington Post’s Election Now dashboard through November.

Addressing the issue of why he felt the need to funnel news to users in that manner, Cook said, “For Apple News, we felt top stories should be selected by humans, not to be political at all but … to make sure you’re not picking content that strictly has the goal of enraging people.”

Cook’s controversies

During Tim Cook’s time as the CEO of Apple Inc., Tim Cook faced mounting questions about the company’s strategy of storing income overseas. However, in a 2013 hearing before the Senate, Cook rejected the notion that he was attempting to bypass U.S. tax laws, noting that Apple was paying one of any major corporation’s highest effective tax rates.

The leak of the “Paradise Papers” in November 2017 offered new revelations of the tax practices of Apple: In 2014, after the European Union launched an investigation into Apple’s arrangement with the Irish government, with the company paying a tax rate as low as 0.005% on its extensive holdings in the country, Apple transferred its assets to the Channel Islands off Normandy. The European Union later ordered Apple to hand over approximately $14.5 billion in unpaid taxes.

After the Paradise Papers surfaced, Apple released a statement that read:

“Apple believes every company has a responsibility to pay its taxes, and as the largest taxpayer in the world, Apple pays every dollar it owes in every country around the world.”

In late December 2017, Apple was hit with multiple lawsuits after admitting to intentionally slowing the performance of aging iPhones. Ostensibly done to adapt to diminishing batteries, the company faced charges that deceived customers into paying more for new models.

Around that time, it was revealed that Tim Cook had been informed he could use only private jets for business and personal transport “in the interests of security and efficiency.” As a result, the CEO’s travel expenses for 2017 added up to $93,109, while his security expenses totaled $224,216.

Moreover, in early 2018, Apple pledged to invest $350 billion in the U.S. economy and add 20,000 new jobs over the next five years. As part of the plan, the company committed to investing $55 billion in 2018 alone and build a new U.S. facility powered by renewable energy. Additionally, Apple said it would bolster its advanced manufacturing fund and expand its coding initiatives to help students and teachers learn valuable computing skills.

In August 2018, shortly after Apple became the first American public company to reach a value of $1 trillion, it was reported that Cook was set to collect approximately $120 million in stock. He had received a restricted stock award after taking over the CEO job in 2011, meeting the threshold that required the company’s stock to outperform those of two-thirds of S&P 500 companies over three years.

As of 2021, Tim Cook’s net worth stands at USD 1.4 Billion.

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