#There was no mass layoff

[deathfavor]

Okay say what you will, but tumblr's CEO had been nothing but kind and reassuring people tonight and dismissing all the false rumors going around as well as being insightful and i genuinely do appreciate the fact hes even taken time to when he didnt have to.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Mass tech worker layoffs and the soft landing

As tech giants reach terminal enshittification, hollowed out to the point where they are barely able to keep their end-users or business customers locked in, the capital classes are ready for the final rug-pull, where all the value is transfered from people who make things for a living to people who own things for a living.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/21/tech-workers/#sharpen-your-blades-boys

“Activist investors” have triggered massive waves of tech layoffs, firing so many tech workers so quickly that it’s hard to even come up with an accurate count. The total is somewhere around 280,000 workers:

https://layoffs.fyi/

These layoffs have nothing to do with “trimming the fat” or correcting the hiring excesses of the lockdown. They’re a project to transfer value from workers, customers and users to shareholders. Google’s layoff of 12,000 workers followed fast on the heels of gargantuan stock buyback where the company pissed away enough money to pay those 12,000 salaries…for the next 27 years.

The equation is simple: the more companies invest in maintenance, research, development, moderation, anti-fraud, customer service and all the other essential functions of the business, the less money there is to remit to people who do nothing and own everything.

The tech sector has grown and grown since the first days of the PC — which were also the first days of neoliberalism (literally: the Apple ][+ went on sale the same year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail). But despite a long-run tight labor market for tech workers, there have been two other periods of mass layoffs — the 2001 dotcom collapse and the Great Financial Crisis of 2008.

Both of those were mass extinction events for startups and the workers who depended on them. The mass dislocations of those times were traumatic, and each one had its own aftermath. The dotcom collapse freed up tons of workers, servers, offices and furniture, and a massive surge in useful, user-centric technologies. The Great Financial Crisis created the gig economy and a series of exploitative, scammy “bro” startups, from cryptocurrency grifts to services like Airbnb, bent on converting the world’s housing stock into unlicensed hotel rooms filled with hidden cameras.

Likewise, the post-lockdown layoffs have their own character: as Eira May writes on StackOverflow, many in the vast cohort of laid-off tech workers is finding it relatively easy to find new tech jobs, outside of the tech sector:

https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/03/19/whats-different-about-these-layoffs/

May cites a Ziprecruiter analysis that claims that 80% of laid-off tech workers found tech jobs within 3 months, and that there are 375,000 open tech roles in American firms today (and that figure is growing):

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/blog/laid-off-tech-workers/

There are plenty of tech jobs — just not in tech companies. They’re in “energy and climate technology, healthcare, retail, finance, agriculture, and more” — firms with intensely technical needs and no technical staff. Historically, many of these firms would have outsourced their technological back-ends to the Big Tech firms that just destroyed so many jobs to further enrich the richest people on Earth. Now, those companies are hiring ex-Big Tech employees to run their own services.

The Big Tech firms are locked in a race to see who can eat their seed corn the fastest. Spreading tech expertise out of the tech firms is a good thing, on balance. Big Tech’s vast profits come from smaller businesses in the real economy who couldn’t outbid the tech giants for tech talent — until now.

These mass layoff speak volumes about the ethos of Silicon Valley. The same investors who rent their garments demanding a bailout for Silicon Valley Bank to “help the everyday workers” are also the loudest voices for mass layoffs and transfers to shareholders. The self-styled “angel investor” who spent the weekend of SVB’s collapse all-caps tweeting dire warnings about the impact on “the middle class” and “Main Street” also gleefully DM’ed Elon Musk in the runup to his takeover of Twitter:

Day zero

Sharpen your blades boys 🔪

2 day a week Office requirement = 20% voluntary departures.

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/the-venture-capitalists-dilemma

For many technologists, the allure of digital tools is the possibility of emancipation, a world where we can collaborate to make things without bosses or masters. But for the bosses and masters, automation’s allure is the possibility of getting rid of workers, shattering their power, and replacing them with meeker, cheaper, more easily replaced labor.

That means that workers who go from tech firms to firms in the real economy might be getting lucky — escaping the grasp of bosses who dream of a world where technology lets them pit workers against each other in a race to the bottom on wages, benefits and working conditions, to employers who are glad to have them as partners in their drive to escape Big Tech’s grasp.

Tomorrow (Mar 22), I’m doing a remote talk for the Institute for the Future’s “Changing the Register” series.

Image: University of North Texas Libraries (modified) https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth586821/

[Image ID: A group of firefighters holding a safety net under a building from which a man is falling; he is supine and has his hands behind his head. The sky has a faint, greyscale version of the 'Matrix Waterfall' effect. The building bears a Google logo.]

[tinyclowndancer]

And when I thought I couldn't like him more, a new skin is unlocked and here's Unionist Matt telling you, yes YOU, to organize and fight for your rights. ✊

I'm not gonna lie that these photos give me a bittersweet feeling, though. As if it wasn't enough for actors to still be vulnerable to the use of AI by studios even after the strike ended, in January SAG-AFTRA signed a deal with an AI studio to use voice replicas in games, instead of opposing completely to it.

It makes me happy to know he was involved in the strike but at the same time... being stabbed in the back by those who were supposed to protect you is disheartening. Kudos to Remedy for being ethical and respecting the artists they work with, at least.

(Source)

[full---ofstarlight]

i simply think mass layoffs should be illegal

[blinkpen]

pour one out for cartoon network i guess, and be prepared to lend an ear and offer support to A LOT of people who are about to lose their jobs, many of whom may very well get it even worse than usual by having their passion projects ripped from them, set on fire and legally forbidden from being resurrected anywhere else bc “eh well we own the rights now and we’re cutting that”

ugh

[villainanders]

You guys are like. aware the US and Canada are mostly likely about to hit a recession right

[mysticarcanum]

currently in the absolute hellish purgatory of waiting to see if that mystery meeting half my team got pulled into was them being fired

[theviolenttomboy]

Something all the layoffs made me think, another legitimately sad and fucked up thing about the video game industry is at this point, Nintendo's probably the only company left that still has almost all of their OG devs from the 80s and 90s, their version of Disney's Nine Old Men. Almost all the veteran staff from other older, still existing companies, even the Japanese ones like Capcom and Sega, are long gone, either retired or went indie to wildly differing degrees of success. And all the newer companies keep shutting down or get absorbed before they even get a chance.

[superchat]

bungie reminding us that the real horrors arent the boogymen hiding under your bed, but the apathetic, careless capitalist machine that can ruin your life at the drop of a hat

[antifatabi]

The first software engineers were women. The first algorithm was also written by a woman. The pioneer of broadening internet access is also a woman. These are just a few examples.

[filmgamer]

Podcast 30: Kingdom of the Planet of Microsoft

  In this episode we talk about why people aren’t going bananas to see this planet of the apes version as much as they did in in the 2001. We’re talking Microsoft Xbox layoffs, and the most anticipated Film and Video Game releases of the summer. Buckle up it’s going to be a fun ride.– Podcast #30: S3 E23

[herawell]

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[wp-blaze]

Surviving Parent Hood

Nobody talks about the pain you feel inside when the love your child has for you dies When they look at your hard work & aren’t satisfied When nothing you do for them is right No matter how hard you try You can see the distaste  for you in their eyes When you thought y’all were […]

[37q]

does anyone have a masterlist of this years january layoffs and more than just tech

[yourcalamity]

i get to take my lunches whenever(ish) at my new job so ive been taking them super late and i only have to work 2 and 1/2 more hours and then the last hour all the overnight people come in including someone i used to work with :3 actually a lot of people from my last job work here now everyone kind of scatters into different parts of the industry once they get out of The Dungeon but a lot of people i havent seen or spoken to in months i was so worried about some of the friends i made there just disappearing but theyre all still out here 🥹

[arcane-hunger]

first post on my Facebook feed: Sony lays off 900 PlayStation staff

Next post underneath: Intro to Generative AI course 😊😊😊

I’m so so tired.

[cerealmonster15]

not another gamedev layoff I swear 2 god‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

[ecoamerica]

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

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