#mass of layoffs of the tech sector

[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

[ayeforscotland]

I'm not a super dedicated gamer these days, but I loved Kerbal Space Program (a game that was more a labour of love than a commercial project) and was super hyped for the much delayed KSP2. When I saw it was releasing as early access (years late) I worried for its hopes of ever seeing completion and held off buying, now after all the other shananigans the entire team have been let go in yet another mass lay-off in the gaming industry. I feel like, a few notable exceptions aside, the big-budget gaming sector has been failing to deliver real quality games for a long time now, with lower-budget indie games more often coming up with gold from much simpler foundations. It seems almost as though developers are being pushed to shoot for unachievably epic games and releasing buggy messes, or vast but hollow worlds when the publishers get impatient or the money runs out. Is there any grain of truth in my feeling that bankrollers' expectations for games is leading to more games failing to live up to the hype as projects spiral out of control and over budget? Would big studios benefit from learning from indie devs and aiming to really nail down a simpler scope but on a scale beyond what the indies can achieve?

Industry-wise there’s a couple of things at play. And apologies for the length of this.

During the pandemic, there was a shitload of investment into the gaming industry as everyone was at home and many started playing games for the first time, so venture capital firms piled money in.

They were looking for a return on their investment, not really aiming to cultivate long-term studio success.

This puts pressure on the studio to get the game out the door quickly. That month or two of QA before launch just becomes overhead while you have a product that could be selling right now.

Chance to earn even more money for shareholders and execs? Welcome to microtransaction hell.

So that’s one side of it, investors/shareholders/execs forcing decisions that make games worse.

Next bit is partly influenced by the shareholder side of things but also a huge cultural side too. Lots of studios complete a project and then layoff staff because the next game isn’t ready to start being developed yet OR layoff staff because they don’t want to pay them OR staff leave to go and do something else (often due to lack of pay, lack of promotion etc)

And what this leads to is a *massive* corporate knowledge gap. People take their skills and knowledge and create voids. Voids that need to be filled by senior staff, which is why big AAA studios are always hiring seniors, and rarely hiring juniors. So all the seniors job-hop from studio to studio and there’s no new skill set being cultivated by new industry talent.

In my experience, these huge studios are also incredibly siloed. It’s something that impacts most industries, siloed teams lead to sluggish development and decision-making.

I think the games industry walks an incredibly fine line between being a creative endeavour and being a tech business. Process management methodologies honestly seem quite alien to the games industry, most of the time to its detriment.

It honestly wouldn’t be that hard to implement but Production as a discipline within games seems to be relegated to ‘staring at JIRA’ particularly in larger studios.

Could write forever about this to be honest.

Worth saying that indie studios also have their own issues. Almost everything is a scramble, and the search for publisher funding is a nightmare.

[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.]

[iww-gnv]

For years, the tech industry seemed like the best place to grow a cushy, stable career. But as benefits disappear and companies lay off thousands, some are questioning whether they made the right choice. In the first two months of the year alone, PayPal, Cisco, and Amazon, among others, have announced layoffs affecting thousands of workers, a continuation of the mass layoffs from last year. All in all, nearly 300,000 workers in the tech industry have lost their jobs in the past year, according to Layoffs.fyi. While the wider macroeconomic environment is still good and job numbers have surpassed expectations, the good vibes have not rippled across all sectors. In tech, even those employees who were not laid off have seen employers scale back benefits while also demanding more of workers.

[shadycomputerpolice]

Is Tertiary Education Education a Scam?

While I am very pro knowledge and skill acquisition and would not declare that higher education is a waste of time, I understand where the "tertiary education is a scam" crowd is coming from.

For many people, myself included, we went to university believing the "go to uni, get good grades and a good well paying job is practically guaranteed" promise. We bought into the idea but upon graduation we realised that the promise was exaggerated or some might say outright false. That promise was true when the world's population was lower

Some of us, myself included, fell for the "it is because you have just a bachelors degree, get a masters then the well paying job is guaranteed". We did that and heart break. We got jobs but not as well paying as we expected.

The truth is many people attended university with the intention of getting lucrative jobs so when we don't get those jobs, we feel duped. The people who had to go into debt to acquire their degrees with the hopes of getting a well paying job are understandably very bitter.

The truth no one told us is that there aren't enough lucrative jobs to go around. There are more qualified candidates looking for high paying jobs than there are high paying jobs; supply exceeds demand. This is the case in all industries and sectors as when people notice an industry or sector is lucrative, they switch to that career or put their children in that career and eventually you have a lot of people in that field that causes unemployment and lower wages in that area. A perfect example of this is the tech industry: Many people believed the IT Industry was the path to financial security but alas the mass layoffs. I know unemployed and underpayed Software Engineers/ Programmers.

Is this a "do not go to university" post? No, absolutely not. This is a if you want a well paying job, you might need to consider a career in healthcare although

[meret118]

Last year was, by all accounts, a bloodbath for the tech industry, with more than 260,000 jobs vanishing — the worst 12 months for Silicon Valley since the dot-com crash of the early 2000s.

Executives justified the mass layoffs by citing a pandemic hiring binge, high inflation and weak consumer demand.

Now in 2024, tech company workforces have largely returned to pre-pandemic levels, inflation is half of what it was this time last year and consumer confidence is rebounding.

Yet, in the first four weeks of this year, nearly 100 tech companies, including Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, TikTok and Salesforce have collectively let go of about 25,000 employees, according to layoffs.fyi, which tracks the technology sector.

. . .

"The layoffs seem to be helping their stock prices, so these companies see no reason to stop."

"Google and the rest of Big Tech are betting big on AI while cutting back on non-strategic areas. Layoffs will continue to happen for Big Tech in some areas while the hiring frenzy in AI will be unprecedented as this arms race continues across the tech world," Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC.

. . .

Other companies too are looking to cut jobs to focus on their AI-driven businesses.Vroom would axe about 800 jobs, according to the U.S.-based online used-car marketplace's regulatory filing last week, as it plans to focus on automotive financing and AI services and close its e-commerce and used-vehicle dealership businesses.Earlier this month, media reports said Duolingo would cut 10% of its contractors as the language-learning app moves toward using AI to create content.

[mariacallous]

It’s so nice that everything’s back to normal at the office now, isn’t it? If “normal” means mass layoffs, empty office buildings, confusing return-to-office policies, AI panic, and the whiplash-y feeling that just when employees were starting to redraw some boundaries between work and home, an economic downturn has forced society to fret even more about work. Managers are channeling this too by emphasizing “efficiency”—at least if they’re not among the many managers Mark Zuckerberg has laid off in his quest for, well, efficiency.

In this sense, Simone Stolzoff’s new book couldn’t be better-timed. The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work posits that we—and Americans, especially—have fetishized work to the point that we’ve lost our identities to it. “For white-collar professionals, jobs have become akin to a religious identity: In addition to a paycheck, they provide meaning, community, and a sense of purpose,” says Stolzoff, a designer who has worked at IDEO and written for The Atlantic, Quartz, and WIRED.

The book kicks off with a parable about an MBA type urging a fisherman to scale his business into a global operation. The fisherman replies that he already has what the MBA is promising he could achieve in the long term: enough success to feed himself and his family, as well as plenty of time for leisure. The MBA is, of course, befuddled. It’s a tiny but meaningful story that goes down as easy as an oyster; the book makes a tasty meal of snackable tales and anecdotes. 

The Good Enough Job, which I’ve been reading this week, also includes reporting on the decline of organized religion, the rise of always-online work culture, and our willingness to use work as a means of self-actualization. It all adds up to a stark portrait of a society truly obsessed with work. That’s risky, Stolzoff says, especially in light of the recent layoffs in the tech sector. I talked with him about our relationship to work and whether it’s possible to achieve any kind of work-life equilibrium in the modern era. The book comes out in the US on May 23. 

WIRED: Why is office work so weird right now? Assuming you agree that it is, in fact, weird. 

Simone Stolzoff: Yeah. I’m reminded of when I worked as a summer camp counselor growing up and during our training the camp’s director always said, “Kids’ biggest fear is that no one is in control.” And I think that is happening for office workers right now, without a clear mandate or a clear vision of what the future of the workplace looks like. It feels like everything is in flux. Managers are dealing with their own uncertainty around the reevaluation of the role of work in their lives while they’re also trying to be leaders and speak with confidence about a future that no one can really predict.

Just yesterday someone told me, “I am a manager and my employees are coming to me and being forthright about the fact that they’re updating their LinkedIn profiles and their resumes.” She has been telling them that she’s doing the same. Increased uncertainty has led to much more open communication about the fact that even jobs that felt stable, are not necessarily such. But this also speaks to the fact that no one really knows what the future of work holds and people are making it up as they go along.

It sounds like a continuation of the pandemic, in the sense that this has all led to some people being their most vulnerable and transparent at the workplace. 

It’s a combination of both the pandemic and the economic climate. An employee at YouTube was telling me about how Alphabet is making workers come into the office three days a week. And she said that on the one hand she thinks it’s bullshit and that the company is just trying to justify the capital expenditures that they’ve made on offices. But she also admitted it makes sense because morale is low and employee workplace culture is nonexistent and coming back to the office is really one of the better ways managers have found to facilitate a more collectivist identity.

You write about “workism,” a phrase coined by Derek Thompson from The Atlantic. How does it play into the current workplace dynamic? 

The basic idea that Derek laid out is that workism is treating work akin to a religious identity. It’s looking to work not just for a paycheck but also for a community, a sense of identity and purpose and meaning in your life. 

There are a few risks to that. One is that it’s just not a burden our jobs are designed to bear. When we look to work for transcendence, it creates these massive expectations, and jobs can’t always deliver on those expectations. A second risk is that over-investing in just one aspect of who we are is risky because those other aspects of our life might be underinvested in. We’re not just workers, we’re also friends, siblings, parents, neighbors, and citizens. As so many people found out during the pandemic, if your job is your sole source of identity and you lose it—what’s left?

You argue that workism is generationally distinctive and write about your own Italian family and how your grandparents worked to live—and the emphasis was really on live. They had structure to their days, but there was that long break in the middle of the day where they went home and ate orecchiette with the family. Work-as-a-religion seems relatively new, or at least industrial age new.

There are many possible explanations of how we got here—economic explanations, historical explanations, political and cultural explanations. The one I focus on in the book is this huge objective value that Americans give to the workplace. You know, we’re an incredibly individualistic country, where we treat CEOs as celebrities and we plaster “Always do what you love” on the walls of our coworking spaces. There’s this push toward wanting work to be our means of self-actualization.

You can pair that with some historical trends, for example the decline of organized religion over the course of the past 40 years, which has left a spiritual void in many American lives. You look at policy decisions in this country, the way that we tie health care to full-time employment for so many people. You look at the historical factors, how our country was founded and the way capitalism and the Protestant work ethic were the two strands entwined to form our country’s DNA. 

And what we’ve found is that, unlike our peer nations, like France and Germany, where at-work time has steadily decreased since the beginning of the 20th century, certain subsets of Americans are working more than ever. And this is a historical anomaly. In the past, the richer a person or a country was, the less they worked, because they could afford not to.

Of course, the majority of people not just in the US but in the world do not work to self-actualize, they work to survive. Wages have been stagnant for the past 40 years, so they’ve had to work harder to buy the same loaf of bread. But the argument of my book is that regardless of what type of job you’re in, we now all live in this culture of productivity and thinking our self-worth is somehow tied to our output at work.

The danger of that, you write, is that we end up taking work events quite personally if they don’t go right. 

Totally, yeah. There is research around the value of what researchers call self-complexity, or just kind of cultivating different aspects of who we are. This also makes sense intuitively, right? If you’re rising and falling with the professional successes in your life, then one piece of negative feedback, one comment from a coworker can throw your life into a funk. But if you’ve cultivated other aspects of who you are, then maybe you’re having a bad day at the office but you feel like you have a very supportive partner or you’re having a good day with that recreational softball team you play on, then there are other aspects of your life that make you feel whole and aren’t predicated on market forces or what your manager or boss says.

The tricky question is where to draw the line. We need money to survive in this world. But as you write, work can be incredibly paternalistic and often exploits people who are most dutiful and hard-working. Is there a formula for finding the right amount to invest in work?

If there was one main question driving the book, it’s how to balance the pursuit of meaningful work without letting work take over your life. I’m not anti-work. We work more hours than we spend doing just about anything else in our lives, so how we spend that time matters. But I also think that the more we can be clear-headed about work’s role in our lives and understand that fundamentally it’s an economic relationship, the better.

We’ve been told that jobs are meant to be callings and vocations, and thinking of it as an exchange of your time and your labor for money is not the most sexy thing in the world. But I actually think that a more transactional approach to work can liberate both employers and employees. It frees employers to focus on setting clear expectations about what good work looks like, and it frees employees to, for example, advocate for fair compensation. More broadly, it frees employees to treat work as a living and not the entirety of their lives.

This is something that so many tech workers in particular have discovered recently, especially at companies like Meta and Twitter and Microsoft and other places that have had layoffs. I’ve spoken to so many employees that say, basically, “I used to think this was my life’s work, my dream job, and the past year has shown me that this is just a job.”

I’m trying to introduce the framework of the “good enough” job. For one person that could mean working in a particular industry or having a certain job title, and for another it’s getting off work at a certain hour so you can pick your kids up from elementary school. Rather than thinking about work as this endless pursuit of perfection, it’s more about having an approach that allows you to understand that what you do for work is not the entirety of who you are as a person.

[emptyanddark]

weekly reading list

(some of these are not very recent, but i have a lot of other things to read. this is a short list of interesting or things i found relevant to understand current events)

America Doesn’t Wage War. Government Institutions Do - very USA-centric but provides insights re: the prolific paramilitary organizations aided by US government, and the de-democratization that's been happening in the US.

Trapped by Empire - Guam is one of the colonies still under US-empire rule. the island is put in difficult position with no easy solution on all fronts - security, environmentally, economically etc.

“A Closed, Burnt Huwara”: How Israeli Settlers Launched A Pogrom - the harrowing happenings in last month's pogrom by Israelis against a Palestinian village.

The PA’s Revenue Structure and Israel’s Containment Strategy - how Israel restricts the PA's economic independence, worsening conditions to Palestinians who are entirely at the (non)mercy of their occupiers.

You Are Not a Parrot - the prolific linguist Emily M. Bender dispels the mystical brainrot around "AI" and Large Language Models (ChatGPT etc). Interesting and insightful. she is also one of the writers of the important article, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots"

World Development under Monopoly Capitalism - reviews the question 'did globalization actually make things better'?, today's global capitalism and monopoly capitalism

The Rot Economy & Mass tech worker layoffs and the soft landing - both discuss the similar topics, about the bizarre realities of the tech sector, as put in the latter by Doctorow: "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."

Silicon Valley elites are afraid. History says they should be - people around the world were exposed by the media to the recent stupidity of US tech executives & investors, resulting in collapsing their bank. here's a rational take about it, with history about the more militant opposition against Silicon Valley.

The New Irrationalism - explores contemporary irrationalist trends, the history of irrationalism and its philosophy. i found it thought-provoking.

[newstfionline]

Sunday, April 9, 2023

Joyous Holy Week celebrations around the world (AP) From dressing as Roman soldiers in Antigua, Guatemala, to carrying palm fronds on the streets of Lagos, Nigeria, Christians around the world are celebrating Holy Week. For millions of Christians, the week between Palm Sunday and Easter, known as Holy Week, is the most sacred time of the year. It’s the week Christians commemorate the passion of Jesus Christ. The week began with Palm Sunday, where mass at the Vatican was celebrated by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square the day after he was discharged from the Agostino Gemelli University Hospital in Rome, where the Vatican said he was treated for bronchitis. In Bolivia’s highland region, artists gathered for an annual event where they built sand sculptures based on Bible stories. Members of the faithful in Brazil wore tunics and hoods to take part in the Procession of Souls in Goiás state. And in Managua, Nicaragua, a child dressed as an angel during an event observing Good Friday. In recent years, Holy Week has been scaled back due to COVID-19 restrictions that require precautions such as social distancing and mask use. However, this year many of the faithful gathered in celebrations reminiscent of the era before the virus changed the nature of religious observance.

Stabbing of Cash App Creator Raises Alarm, and Claims of ‘Lawless’ San Francisco (NYT) The fury erupted within hours, as word spread that the 43-year-old man who had been stabbed to death this week in an enclave of high-rise condominiums near the Bay Bridge was Bob Lee, a well-known tech executive. The leaders of “lawless” San Francisco had Mr. Lee’s “literal blood on their hands,” Matt Ocko, a tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist in Palo Alto, Calif., tweeted. “I hate what San Francisco has become,” added Michael Arrington, the founder of the industry blog TechCrunch. “Violent crime in SF is horrific,” Elon Musk, the chief executive of Twitter and Tesla, chimed in. The drumbeat has built since then in the liberal city that only last year recalled its progressive district attorney amid calls for law and order and deepening frustration over the city’s homelessness crisis. While city officials agree that the murder is a terrifying tragedy and a signal that San Francisco has work to do on public safety, they’re also clashing with powerful figures in the tech sector over the nature and severity of the city’s problems with crime. The tension comes at a precarious time, as the tech industry implodes with layoffs and San Francisco itself struggles to bring visitors, conventions and legions of remote workers back to the too-quiet area in and around its downtown.

Resurgent remittances in Mexico (Foreign Policy) Flows of money sent to Mexico from abroad are at historic highs. This February, total remittances to the country accounted for 11 percent more than they did in February 2022, according to Mexico’s central bank. In 2021, Mexico surpassed China to become the country that receives the second-largest amount of remittances in the world. (India is no. 1.) The high tallies may reflect the post-pandemic economic recovery in the United States, where the bulk of the Mexican diaspora lives, the Economist reported.

Deadly Attack Exposes Growing Threat in Mexico: the Military (NYT) Gustavo Ángel Suárez Castillo, an American citizen from San Antonio, piled six friends, including two brothers, into his white pickup truck with Texas plates just before dawn, having spent the night celebrating the news that he was going to be a father. Suddenly, four vehicles filled with armed men began chasing and firing at them. The pickup truck crashed and as the passengers tumbled out, the armed men threw some to the ground, shooting one in the back, survivors told The New York Times. One recounted how he watched his brother slowly stop breathing while the assailants blocked medics from arriving. When it ended, five of the men, including Mr. Suárez, were dead and the other two severely injured. The attackers? Uniformed Mexican soldiers. The shooting in the city of Nuevo Laredo in the early hours of Feb. 26 has been called a coldblooded execution by the survivors and a top government official. So far, four of the 21 soldiers involved in the encounter have been arrested and the case is under investigation by civilian prosecutors and the military. The episode has deepened concerns about the growing footprint of Mexico’s armed forces, which has not only been put in charge of domestic security, but has also been given a rapidly expanding portfolio of businesses, like a new international airport and a major rail line.

Sweden Says State Actor Blew up Nord Stream Pipeline (AP) According to a new statement by Swedish investigators, it’s most likely that a state actor was behind the explosions that took out the Nord Stream gas pipelines late last year. “Our hope is to be able to confirm who has committed this crime,” said the public prosecutor leading the investigation, though he warned that “it should be noted that it likely will be difficult given the circumstances.” While Ukraine and some in the U.S. have blamed Russia for the attacks, investigations have returned a mixed bag of suspects: the New York Times has suggested that a pro-Ukrainian group was behind the attacks, while German media pinned them on a yacht operated by a pro-Ukraine Polish company. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh also released a report blaming the U.S. for the explosions, though Washington and the U.S. media have dismissed him.

Kremlin says its strategic aim in Ukraine is to create a ‘new world order’ (Guardian) Moscow wants any Ukraine peace talks to focus on creating a “new world order”, the French press agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) quotes Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov as saying. “Any negotiation needs to be based on taking into account Russian interests, Russian concerns. It should be about the principles on which the new world order will be based.” According to the agency, he added that Russia rejects a “unipolar world order led by ‘one hegemon’.” Russia has long said it was leading a struggle against US dominance over the international stage, and argues the Ukraine offensive is part of that fight. The Kremlin said this week it had no choice but to continue its offensive, seeing no diplomatic solution.

Facing critical ammunition shortage, Ukrainian troops ration shells (Washington Post) The artillery shells were stored in a shallow mud dugout, covered with a black plastic tarp to keep them safe. Just 14 rounds remained—evidence of a critical ammunition shortage that has the Ukrainians scrambling for ways to conserve supply until their Western allies can produce or procure more. The artillery platoon, with the 59th Motorized Brigade in eastern Ukraine, used to fire more than 20 or 30 shells per day with their Soviet-era howitzer. Now, they typically shoot one or two, or none at all. The ammunition that has pounded parts of Ukraine daily for more than a year has become a precious resource in the artillery war with Russia—and which side conserves shells and rearms faster could turn the tide on the battlefield. Even amid a shortage, Ukraine is firing some 7,700 shells per day, or roughly one every six seconds. Russia, which may also be running low, is firing more—by some estimates triple that amount.

China flies fighter jets near Taiwan after leader’s US trip (AP) China sent warships and dozens of fighter jets toward Taiwan on Saturday, the Taiwanese government said, in retaliation for a meeting between the U.S. House of Representatives speaker and the president of the self-ruled island democracy claimed by Beijing as part of its territory. The Chinese military announced the start of three-day “combat readiness patrols” as a warning to Taiwanese who want to make the island’s de facto independence permanent. The People’s Liberation Army gave no indication whether they might include a repeat of previous exercises with missiles fired into the sea, which disrupted shipping and airline flights. On Saturday, eight warships and 42 planes were detected near Taiwan, 29 of which crossed the middle line of the strait that separates the island from the mainland, the island’s Ministry of Defense said.

A Historic Handshake (1440) Saudi Arabia and Iran formally reestablished diplomatic relations On Thursday, a significant milestone in the relationship between two of the largest powers in the Middle East. The pair cut off ties seven years ago after Saudi embassies in Iran were attacked following the Saudi execution of a popular Shia cleric. Saudi Arabia and Iran have been engaged in a regional power struggle for decades, exacerbated by the differing sectarian religious views—Saudi is roughly 90% Sunni Muslim, while Iran is about 90% Shia Muslim. The regional conflict has also become a proxy for greater world powers, with Saudi Arabia generally working with the West and Iran forging close ties with Russia and China. Notably, the deal was brokered by China, marking one of the country’s biggest diplomatic moves in modern geopolitics.

Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars (Reuters) Tesla assures its millions of electric car owners that their privacy “is and will always be enormously important to us.” The cameras it builds into vehicles to assist driving, it notes on its website, are “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy.” But a Reuters Special Report shows that between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras, according to interviews with nine former employees. One ex-employee described a video of a man approaching a vehicle completely naked. Also shared: crashes and road-rage incidents. One crash video in 2021 showed a Tesla driving at high speed in a residential area hitting a child riding a bike, according to another ex-employee. Two ex-employees said they weren’t bothered by the sharing of images, saying that customers had given their consent or that people long ago had given up any reasonable expectation of keeping personal data private. Three others, however, said they were troubled by it. “I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don’t think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected … We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids.”

‘I’ve Lost a Lot of Flesh and Bone,’ Jeremy Renner Says, Recalling Snow Plow Accident (NYT) The actor Jeremy Renner, who was severely injured on Jan. 1 when a heavy snow plow ran over him, said in a TV interview on Thursday night that the truck had hit him as he was trying to save his nephew, an accident that broke more than 30 of his bones and upended his life. Mr. Renner, an Oscar-nominated actor who is perhaps best known for his role as Hawkeye in the Marvel Avengers movie and TV franchise, spoke publicly at length about his frightening experience and arduous recovery for the first time in an interview with ABC News. “I’ve lost a lot of flesh and bone in this experience,” Mr. Renner told the journalist Diane Sawyer. “But I’ve been refueled and refilled with love and titanium.” Doctors interviewed by ABC News said that Mr. Renner’s good physical shape and health had probably helped him survive. About 10 weeks after the accident, Mr. Renner is beginning to regain enough strength to walk with a cane. When asked in the interview if he sees the same face when looking in the mirror, Mr. Renner replied, “I see a lucky man.”

[trending-tech-buddy]

Top Tech Career For the Future

The technologies were growing rapidly over the years, even before the Covid-19 pandemic which will provide the most in-demand tech jobs in 2023. The jobs picture in the United States (US) and Europe is still largely illustrative, with recessions, global economic pressures, and recent layoffs at many tech firms. But in the short span of just seven months amid the current global health crisis, it has become a necessity to know the top tech careers for today's society. With these technological adaptations, the demand has grown exponentially for both jobs and individuals with skills that meet the needs of digitally transformed sectors. 

In fact, the technology landscape is currently experiencing a level of growth with global IT spending expected to reach $4.5 trillion by early 2023. According to an online job portal, it was also reported that the demand for AI talents has more than doubled since 2021, with the number of job postings increasing in 2024. This is also a good time for job changers looking for the highest-paying tech jobs without a degree. If you are already working in the artificial intelligence sector, or cyber security sector, or a professional who wants to break into a developer, then this article will help you to stay ahead of the masses in next year's best tech jobs 2023. 

AI / ML Engineer

Data Scientist

UI/ UX Designer

Cloud Engineer and Robotics Engineer

Cyber Security

AI / ML Engineer

Machine Learning is a specialized branch of AI- Artificial Intelligence that is ideal for those who have a passion for computer science and who want to make a career in the exciting and fast-growing industry. Where ML engineers use extensive data to create a complex algorithm that eventually programs a machine to perform human-like tasks such as a self-driving car or a digital voice assistant. It is also necessary to have a master's degree with knowledge of artificial intelligence or computer science for better opportunities in the AI ​​/ ML Engineer field.  Read more about Artificial intelligence in detail here.

2. Data Scientist

Data science jobs are not new as they are known as the most desirable jobs of the 21st century and are emerging like other technology jobs such as cloud computing engineers or machine learning engineers. Presently as various organizations collect and use more data every day, the demand for skilled data science experts has increased.  A sound understanding of data science and analytics is the key to standing out in the field of data science.

3. UI/ UX Designer

UI/UX designers are involved in designing a website that is suitable for the software, website, or app to meet the patterns, motivations, behaviors, and needs of users. As the demand for UI and UX designers continues to grow exponentially, companies are struggling to keep up with them. When businesses are turning to digital platforms to advertise their products or services, it has never been so important to ensure that the user experience and interface are the best. An Appropriate bachelor's degree such as computer science is required, while a master's degree is also desirable and professional experience stands for a better opportunity in the UI/UX designer field.

4. Cloud Engineer and Robotics Engineer

As technology continues to evolve, robotics and cloud engineers are increasingly in demand to prototype, analyze, configure, test, and maintain machines used in mining. Cloud computing has become indispensable for those working remotely and organizations are hiring people with skills and knowledge who can move processes and perform cloud-based tasks. The Master in Robotics or Computer Science will set you up with the necessary skills, knowledge, and experience to enter the field of robotics and cloud engineering. Read more about the Future of Robotics here.

5. Cyber Security

In the present day where most of our financial lives move from personal to virtual, the need for cyber security is greater than ever. With the continuous rise in cryptocurrencies, there is a growing demand for IT experts with knowledge of cyber security, from online banking to shopping. For learners who want to enter cyber security, it is important to increase knowledge with skills in areas such as data encryption, risk elimination, and firewalls, while becoming familiar with software security will keep you ahead of the rest.

Read Full article in detail here.

[dkaufmandevelopment]

🚨 Federal Reserve’s Next Move: A Game Changer? 🚨

The Federal Reserve has been laser-focused on taming inflation over the past few years. As we navigate the post-pandemic landscape, the central bank is now turning its attention to the labor market. Recent reports, including the August job numbers, indicate that the US labor market is cooling down. This has sparked speculation about a potential larger-than-expected interest rate cut in the upcoming Fed meeting.

The latest jobs report has strengthened expectations for a rate cut, but the big question remains: how much? Fed Governor Christopher Waller recently stated, “the balance of risks has shifted toward the employment side of our dual mandate,” suggesting that policy adjustments are on the horizon. Some Wall Street traders are even betting on a 50-basis-point cut, a scenario that seemed unlikely just a month ago.

Despite mass layoffs in sectors like tech and finance, the broader employment market remains relatively stable. However, Fed Chair Jerome Powell is likely aware that many companies are delaying expansion plans due to high borrowing costs and the looming uncertainty of the upcoming presidential election.

While inflation is on a downward trend, lingering concerns about price gouging have many Americans scrutinizing the economic proposals of the presidential candidates.

🔍 What are your thoughts on the Fed’s potential rate cut? How do you think it will impact the economy and your business? Share your insights in the comments below! 👇

#FederalReserve #InterestRates #Economy #LaborMarket #Inflation #RealEstate #Investment #MarketTrends #EconomicIndicators

[werbooz]

How to Create a Recruitment Web App: Features, Costs, and Time required

Why is it important to build a strong recruitment web application?

A report by TOI states that in April 2024, a wave of mass layoffs impacted some of the world’s biggest companies, including Tesla, Google, and Apple, cutting more than 20,000 workers. Until April 2024, over 70,000 people were laid off in the tech sector.

This forms the reason why you must invest your time and money to develop a job recruitment application. Youth have a large market, and you are in a perfect position to enter into this market to curate the right workforce and provide it to the employers and companies.

Nearly 70% of 2021 Job Applications Were Made from Mobile Devices, This itself is an indication for building a Job recruitment web application. As we dive deeper it was found out that jobs applied by mobile increased across the board but they were especially significant in these sectors: 86% of applications for gig-type jobs—such as delivery drivers and ride-sharing apps.Read More

[khalnayaksstuff]

IIT Bombay Placement Challenges: A Reflection of the Current Job Market

IIT Bombay, a renowned educational institution in India, is currently facing challenges in job placements for its graduates. As the 2024 placement season unfolds, 36 graduates remain without job offers, raising concerns about employment prospects. This situation highlights the growing unemployment crisis that has affected various sectors, including the tech industry.

Major IT companies have implemented mass layoffs and hiring freezes, leading to a challenging job market. Despite this, top institutes like IITs and IIMs in India maintain a record of 100% placement for graduating students. However, IIT Bombay, ranked among the top five institutions, is facing placement challenges. Out of approximately 2000 registered students, around 36% (712 students) lack job offers. The Computer Science and Engineering branch may not achieve 100% placement for the first time.

High salary packages often make headlines, with some students receiving job offers worth crores of rupees. However, IIT Bombay faced difficulties attracting companies for campus placements due to high salary demands. Companies were hesitant to offer such high salaries, leading to fewer job opportunities. The placement season continues until May 2024, so the number may change.

In response to these challenges, some students are considering alternative options like startups or off-campus placements due to low-paying job offers. This trend reflects the changing job market dynamics, where companies are willing to invest in employees when they see growth and profitability but hesitant when they are not profitable. The emergence of artificial intelligence and other new technologies further complicates the job market.

The unemployment rate is particularly high among youth aged 15 to 29, with 83% of unemployed individuals in India falling into this age group. Graduates face difficulties securing jobs with decent salaries, while individuals with limited education can find employment more easily. This has led to a decline in the labor force participation rate, from 54% in 2000 to 42% in 2022.

IIT Bombay is not the only institution facing placement challenges. BITS Pilani and IM Lucknow have also sought assistance from alumni in securing jobs for graduating students due to the economic downturn and layoffs in the technology sector.

Stakeholders, including the government, need to come together and create policies to address these challenges. By working together, we can create a more stable and supportive job market for graduates and help address the growing unemployment crisis.

[msclaritea]

Dark Clouds Gather Over Israel's Tech Industry - Business - Haaretz.com

The Israeli high-tech industry has seen a year and a half of challenges: a global industry crisis, a judicial overhaul that nearly sent the country into chaos, and a war leading to the extensive call-up of reservists. The signs are now mounting that the sector is being left behind by the rest of the world, as evidenced by the amount of capital raised by startups, as well as employment forecasts.

Employment forecasts are calculated based on the number of employers who expect to recruit more workers compared to those who expect to decrease personnel. According to a survey by the ManpowerGroup company, employment forecasts in Israel's tech sector for the first quarter of 2024 amount to only 5 percent.

The global average in tech employment forecasts for the first quarter of 2024 is dramatically higher, standing at 36 percent. This marks a shift from recent quarters, in which Israeli employment forecasts lined up with global ones.

The worrying picture is augmented by figures published earlier this month on investment in Israeli tech last year. According to a report by the Start-Up Nation Policy Institute, the country's tech sector had a worse decline than the global average. Investment in tech companies declined 58 percent – double the decline seen in the United States and higher than Europe's 44-percent drop.

The ManpowerGroup survey was conducted last month, concluding near its end, and surveyed 40 employers in 41 countries. In Israel, it studied a representative sample of 792 employers from all industries.

At first glance, the tech sector appears to be better off than others: the average employment forecast among all industries is minus 3 percent. However, compared with the previous quarter or the same quarter last year, there is a noticeable 36- and 28-percent drop in tech employment forecasts, respectively.

The gloomy forecast for tech employment for the first quarter of the year, in contrast with the global industry, underscores the local tech industry's challenges. It also demonstrates industry leaders' pessimistic mood as a result of the war, as they are in no hurry to recruit new workers and are avoiding major personnel changes at an uncertain time.

SolarEdge laid off 550 employees (16 percent of its workforce), while Playtika laid off hundreds of employees. Startups Sisense, Plarium, and Orca Securities have fired employees, along with HP and Google, which laid off workers in Israel. The trend is also increasing abroad. EBay has announced that it will lay off 9 percent of its employees, although the local development center is expected to be spared this time after seeing cuts in previous rounds of dismissals. SAP has announced plans to cut 700 jobs. Microsoft will lay off 1,900 employees in its gaming divisions, and Salesforce will cut 700 employees.

Alongside low expectations for growth in the workforce, a wave of layoffs has swept through Israeli tech companies – the first in a long time. Local employers had opted to defer dismissals during the early part of the war, especially while many workers had been drafted into the reserves.

The same pattern held in other countries, where layoffs had been delayed because of the American holiday season. The beginning of January brought the renewal of mass layoffs both abroad and in Israel – in multinational companies, startups, and publicly traded companies.

SolarEdge laid off 550 employees (16 percent of its workforce), while Playtika laid off hundreds of employees. Startups Sisense, Plarium, and Orca Securities have fired employees, along with HP and Google, which laid off workers in Israel. The trend is also increasing abroad. EBay has announced that it will lay off 9 percent of its employees, although the local development center is expected to be spared this time after seeing cuts in previous rounds of dismissals. SAP has announced plans to cut 700 jobs. Microsoft will lay off 1,900 employees in its gaming divisions, and Salesforce will cut 700 employees.

Uncertain future

The pessimism in Israel boils down to more than passing layoff cycles. The prevailing uncertainty is causing a significant slowdown in recruitment.

Figures from the Israeli tech consulting firm Zviran, based on reports from 180 Israeli tech companies employing 110,000 people, show that 96 percent of them recruited employees in the second half of last year, compared to 90 percent in the first half. While this appears to be an improvement, it must be considered that the percentage of workers recruited into the industry out of the total workforce fell from 7.5 percent in the first half of the year to 5.8 percent in the second. The reason could be that more companies were recruiting employees – but these were targeted recruitments for specific occupations, not overall growth as in previous half-years.

Zviran's data also shows that a sharp decline in companies reporting recruitment problems continued in the second half of 2023. The reports indicate that the situation is much different from the industry's boom in 2021, when there was fierce competition for workers and companies had to increase workers' salaries.The data also shows that a significant upward trend in the rate of companies reporting small-scale recruitment continued in 2023, alongside a sharp decline in companies reporting extensive recruitment. Meanwhile, a sharp decline continues in companies reporting recruitment intended to increase staffing (rather than to replace departing employees), a crucial part of a company's growth. In the first half of 2022, before the industry crisis began, 51 percent of recruited employees were hired to increase personnel; by the end of 2023, that figure had fallen to 38 percent.

Before the war began in early October, a measure of optimism was spreading in the high-tech industry, fueled by stabilizing investment numbers, a slowdown in layoffs, and a recovery on Wall Street. But the deck was reshuffled when the war started, hitting an industry damaged by the global crisis and domestic political upheaval.

A SolarEdge plant. The company has fired 16 percent of its workforce.Credit: Rami Shllush

As a rule, war tends to cause uncertainty and fear of the future in companies. Many companies were affected particularly deeply by the massive reservist call-up, which caused a significant impact on corporate productivity in the first few months of the war.

Even after the release of many reservists, investors and CEOs are concerned about a near future in which a major proportion of key employees disappear for dozens of days a year of reserves duty, which would force extensive changes in personnel composition and structure and complicate future staffing plans.

When companies are "under fire," they usually freeze things as they are – and so do workers. Industry sources say people are more reluctant to move to a new job, are sending fewer resumes, and are going on fewer interviews.

Risk of a rising premium

The high-tech industry isn't monolithic, and different areas aren't all affected by the current circumstances to the same degree. Large domestic IT companies whose clients are local corporations or government ministries are concerned about an economic and business slowdown across various sectors of the economy as the war continues, leading to budget cuts and reduction in purchases. Managers in this field may face a downturn in business activity, the cancellation and rejection of projects, and, accordingly, the postponement of employee recruitment.

Some public tech companies have shown positive results recently but come after cutbacks. These firms have become accustomed to working with a reduced, proven workforce that they may not plan to expand.

Things are a little different for startups. These companies depend on venture capital funds, potentially leading entrepreneurs to fear that the war will delay recovery and that investments will continue to plummet this year. Signs of this appeared in the fourth quarter of last year, the war quarter. The IVC Research Center's 2023 report said that after two quarters of recovery, the fourth quarter saw investment levels return to the downward trend of late 2022. That quarter saw $1.45 billion invested in Israeli startups, a 15-percent fall from the previous quarter.

The data also shows that a significant upward trend in the rate of companies reporting small-scale recruitment continued in 2023, alongside a sharp decline in companies reporting extensive recruitment. Meanwhile, a sharp decline continues in companies reporting recruitment intended to increase staffing (rather than to replace departing employees), a crucial part of a company's growth. In the first half of 2022, before the industry crisis began, 51 percent of recruited employees were hired to increase personnel; by the end of 2023, that figure had fallen to 38 percent.

Before the war began in early October, a measure of optimism was spreading in the high-tech industry, fueled by stabilizing investment numbers, a slowdown in layoffs, and a recovery on Wall Street. But the deck was reshuffled when the war started, hitting an industry damaged by the global crisis and domestic political upheaval.

As a rule, war tends to cause uncertainty and fear of the future in companies. Many companies were affected particularly deeply by the massive reservist call-up, which caused a significant impact on corporate productivity in the first few months of the war.

Even after the release of many reservists, investors and CEOs are concerned about a near future in which a major proportion of key employees disappear for dozens of days a year of reserves duty, which would force extensive changes in personnel composition and structure and complicate future staffing plans.

When companies are "under fire," they usually freeze things as they are – and so do workers. Industry sources say people are more reluctant to move to a new job, are sending fewer resumes, and are going on fewer interviews.

Risk of a rising premium

The high-tech industry isn't monolithic, and different areas aren't all affected by the current circumstances to the same degree. Large domestic IT companies whose clients are local corporations or government ministries are concerned about an economic and business slowdown across various sectors of the economy as the war continues, leading to budget cuts and reduction in purchases. Managers in this field may face a downturn in business activity, the cancellation and rejection of projects, and, accordingly, the postponement of employee recruitment.

Some public tech companies have shown positive results recently but come after cutbacks. These firms have become accustomed to working with a reduced, proven workforce that they may not plan to expand.

The Start-Up Nation Policy Institute report shows that the decline in investment is not unique to Israel, but that the domestic industry has performed poorly in comparison with other countries. It is still hard to tell whether this resulted from the political situation and the war or simply a sharper correction than internationally because of a larger bubble in 2021. The think tank warns that if the war and political situation lead to a loss in investor confidence in Israel, "it will likely result in a slow and sustained decline in the number of transactions that will only be evident over a timeframe of years.

While several companies and venture capitalists have announced solid recruitment in recent weeks – an optimistic opening to 2024 –executives and investors have expressed concern that Israel's risk premium will be raised, deterring some funds from making investments. Some in the industry predict that new players unfamiliar with the market may be deterred by the uncertainty and choose not to invest in Israel, even after the war.

A source of economic optimism and high demand for personnel comes from defense industries, which are profiting from the worldwide increase in demand for weapons amid global geopolitical instability, especially after the war in Ukraine began.

[worldcoin-1]

Silicon Valley’s Bank (SVB) Collapse 2023

The hard-hit tech sector first made information in past due 2022 and early 2023 with mass layoffs.  Over a period of just two days in March 2023, the bank went from solvent to broke as depositors rushed to SVB to withdraw their funds, resulting in federal regulators closing the bank on March 10, 2023.

SVB’s collapse marked the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history after Washington Mutual’s in 2008. While bank failures aren’t uncommon, it’s rare to see banks of SVB’s size become insolvent. When these rare occurrences happen, questions arise about how they can be prevented.

[castingcreme]

Silicon Valley’s Bank (SVB) Collapse 2023

The hard-hit tech sector first made information in past due 2022 and early 2023 with mass layoffs.  Over a period of just two days in March 2023, the bank went from solvent to broke as depositors rushed to SVB to withdraw their funds, resulting in federal regulators closing the bank on March 10, 2023.