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Tag: Business Insider

  • VC Keith Rabois: Tech Layoffs Result of ‘Vanity Hiring’

    VC Keith Rabois: Tech Layoffs Result of ‘Vanity Hiring’

    Venture capitalist Keith Rabois has harsh words for Silicon Valley, saying the recent layoffs resulted from a “vanity metric” of hiring.

    Rabois is one of the “PayPal Mafia,” the group of tech execs that spent their early years at PayPal before going on to found successful companies of their own. Rabois was at the payment company at the same time as Elon Musk, another member of the group.

    Rabois told Business Insider that many of Silicon Valley’s top companies, such as Google and Meta, were hiring for looks rather than out of a true need.

    “All these people were extraneous, this has been true for a long time, the vanity metric of hiring employees was this false god in some ways,” he said.

    “There’s nothing for these people to do — they’re really — it’s all fake work,” he added. “Now that’s being exposed, what do these people actually do, they go to meetings.”

    While it doesn’t seem like a good idea to hire unneeded personnel, Rabois said at least part of the motivation was to prevent talent from being picked up by other companies. This was especially true of Google, which led to a slew of engineers that were happy to “be entitled, sit at their desks, and do nothing.”

    In contrast, Rabois had high praise for Elon Musk and how he has run Twitter since buying it.

    “People are watching Elon and Twitter and he’s clearly setting an example — maybe it’s an extreme example,” Rabois told Insider.

    Rabois is one of the few with praise for Musk. Since taking over Twitter, Musk has laid off thousands and stoked one controversy after another. The company has also experienced a major uptick in outages, likely the result of its reduced technical staff.

    Despite the controversy Musk is generating, Rabois isn’t the only one who thinks his methods may catch on. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently said in an interview with Insider that “every CEO in Silicon Valley has looked at what Elon Musk has done and has asked themselves, ‘Do they need to unleash their own Elon within them?’”

  • Marc Benioff Thinks More Tech CEOs Will Copy Elon Musk

    Marc Benioff Thinks More Tech CEOs Will Copy Elon Musk

    Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has some good — or bad — news, depending on whether or not you’re a fan of Elon Musk.

    Elon Musk may be the world’s richest man, but he certainly didn’t get there by winning any popularity contests. What popularity he did have has taken a major hit since his Twitter acquisition. The mercurial CEO has slashed the workforce, axed his most loyal executives, made demands of staff that many consider unreasonable, introduced drastic changes seemingly on a whim, and raised prices or begun charging for various services.

    While Musk’s management style has put many off, Benioff believes it may become far more common, with many tech CEOs already asking if they need to follow his example.

    “Every CEO in Silicon Valley has looked at what Elon Musk has done and has asked themselves, ‘Do they need to unleash their own Elon within them?’” Benioff told Business Insider in an interview.

    “That is an existential question that if you are any kind of executive in the company,” Benioff added. “You have to look at him and say, ‘Wow, it’s a very unorthodox management style,’ but, as I’ve said, you can’t underestimate what he’s done.”

    While Benioff has not taken such drastic measures as Musk, he did say that he had to step back into more of a hands-on role following the departure of co-CEO Bret Taylor. The company’s recent layoffs and cost-cutting measures reflect that involvement.

    “I had no choice but to step in and to guide the company’s performance,” Benioff told Insider. “And that’s the results that you’re seeing here today with these numbers.”

    While there’s no denying Musk’s approach may meet with a measure of success, it’s hard to imagine it as a sustainable business model. After all, at some point, every CEO still need employees that are willing to work for them.

  • Move Over Subscription Economy, Usage-Based Billing Is Here

    Move Over Subscription Economy, Usage-Based Billing Is Here

    Subscription pricing models may be an unforeseen casualty of the economic downturn, paving the way for usage-based billing.

    Subscription pricing models have permeated everything from cloud services to mobile apps and are a far cry from the early days of computing and the internet. For those old enough to remember, software was sold — often in a box — for a one-time fee for that major version of the software. When a major new version was released, users could usually pay a cheaper upgrade fee to move to the latest and greatest.

    With the rise of the internet, however, subscription models quickly dominated the market and all but supplanted the one-time fee model. Thanks to the economic downturn, however, Business Insider makes the case that subscription pricing may be on the verge of going the way of its predecessor.

    In place of subscriptions, usage-based billing is the new hot thing in the software market. Rather than a flat monthly rate, usage-based billing only charges customers for what they actually use. As Insider points out, this is not uncommon among cloud providers but is poised to spread out to other areas of the industry.

    The model could be a viable and appealing option for much wider use, especially as businesses are looking to rein in expenses wherever possible.

    “If you think about the evolution of business models, it’s always trended more and more towards being more friendly to the customer,” Rishi Jaluria, an RBC software analyst, told Insider. “It is very likely, in my opinion, that there will be more companies that are either on a consumption model or offer a consumption element to the model.”

    Jaluria’s views are shared even by those entrenched in the subscription model approach.

    “The best companies are saying, ‘We want to have a mix of models that really accommodates all our different customers,’” said Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora, a subscription-billing-management company. “Different customers might want different things as well.”

  • Stanford Professor: Tech Layoffs Are ‘Copycat Behavior’

    Stanford Professor: Tech Layoffs Are ‘Copycat Behavior’

    A Stanford professor has confirmed what many suspect, saying Big Tech’s layoffs are more about “copycat behavior than necessary cost-cutting.”

    Tech companies have already laid off hundreds of thousands of workers, blaming an economic downturn and overly-aggressive hiring during the pandemic for the current cuts. It appears many of those cuts are not necessary, instead reflecting a fundamental truth about human nature, Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer told Business Insider’s Sarah Jackson:

    The idea that human behavior is influenced by what others do is really old. If you’re a pedestrian and you see a stop signal, but no cars are coming and somebody steps into the street, you’ll probably do it too. It’s almost automatic behavior.

    We should expect this to also be true in business. A lot of companies were hiring during the pandemic, so everybody decided to hire. Now, companies are laying off, and everybody decided to follow each other and lay people off. A lot of this is just imitation.

    Read more: LinkedIn Hit With Layoffs

    Professor Pfeffer goes on to question the dubious “advantages” many companies tout when laying off employees:

    In many instances, layoffs don’t increase stock prices or cut costs. Between things like the cost of severance and the loss of productivity, layoffs have pretty nasty and negative consequences for the company. It’s not clear they actually increase profits.

    The irony is that these same companies were talking a year ago about people as their most important asset, and now they’re treating their employees pretty badly, laying them off via email or by abruptly cutting off their access to the company. These layoffs are a decision that reflects the company’s values, and these companies have basically given their employees the middle finger.

    Virtually every one of the world’s biggest tech firms has already laid off thousands, including Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta. In fact, only Apple stands apart among Big Tech companies as the one that has yet to engage in mass layoffs.

    Perhaps, given Professor Pfeffer linking layoffs to “copycat behavior,” it’s not all that surprising Apple is the one Big Tech company to avoid layoffs. Apple has a long history of bucking popular conventions and the company and has rarely, if ever, been accused of being a copycat.

  • Intuit Lobbying Congress to Protect Its Tax Filing Business

    Intuit Lobbying Congress to Protect Its Tax Filing Business

    Intuit is going all-in in its lobbying efforts to protect its lucrative tax filing business at a time when Congress is threatening it.

    US law guarantees taxpayers earning less than $69,000 a year can file their taxes for free. Unfortunately, Intuit and other companies often make it difficult for users to find free filing options. Lawmakers wrote a letter to Intuit CEO Sasan K. Goodarzi in April 2022, demanding answers about what they called the company’s “Free File scams.”

    Intuit’s problems got worse in September 2022 when the Inflation Reduction Act set aside $15 million to help the IRS develop an easier platform for taxpayers to file for free.

    According to OpenSecrets, Intuit has responded by spending a whopping $3.5 million in 2022 lobbying Congress. That sum is more than the company spent any previous year. Intuit claims that a government-run tax preparation service represents a conflict of interest.

    “Unquestionably, a government-run tax preparation system that makes the tax collector the investigator, auditor, enforcer, and now also the preparer, is a conflict of interest,” Goodarzi told Business Insider.

    What Goodarzi conveniently omits, however, is that government-run tax filing services work very well in almost every other developed country in the world. In fact, taxpayers in many other countries look with amazement at the state of the US tax industry.

    It’s probably a safe bet that Goodarzi’s comments are more self-serving than a demonstration of genuine concern for the American taxpayer.

  • Snap Is Cutting Google and AWS Cloud Spending

    Snap Is Cutting Google and AWS Cloud Spending

    Snap is cutting back its cloud spending, reducing how much it pays both Google Cloud and AWS.

    Snap relies on both cloud providers to power its operations. Like many tech companies, however, Snap is looking to cut costs and operate more efficiently. According to Business Insider, CFO Derek Andersen said the company had identified its cloud contracts as an area to cut back, with cloud expenditures second only to employee pay in cost.

    As a result, the company has “restructured and renewed to achieve lower pricing and better ongoing leverage in those relationships,” Andersen said.

    There was likely quite a bit of room for negotiation, with the company signing a five-year, $2 billion deal with Google in 2017. Similarly, the company had signed a $1 billion deal with AWS that lasted through December 2021.

    “We’ve focused intently on efficient unit-cost management by engineering our products efficiently, and by migrating among cloud services and products to drive down our unit costs,” Andersen said.

    The efforts appear to be paying off. While Andersen did not say exactly how much the company had reduced its cloud costs, he did say that infrastructure cost per daily user had dropped from $2.78 two years ago to $2.31 today.

    Snap’s actions illustrate the dilemma many companies now face. The pandemic helped fuel a record-breaking rush to adopt cloud services in an effort to better support remote and hybrid work. The pandemic also helped drive record sales for many tech companies. As the pandemic has waned, however, many companies are now paying for massive cloud contracts at a time when business is nowhere near as profitable as it was a year ago.

    While the cloud segment has been relatively insulated from the economic downturn, that could quickly change as more companies follow Snap’s lead.

  • Google CEO Wants Employees to Spend 2-4 Hours Improving Bard AI

    Google CEO Wants Employees to Spend 2-4 Hours Improving Bard AI

    Google CEO Sundar Pichai is pulling out all the stops to improve the company’s Bard AI, asking employees to spend 2-4 hours helping.

    Bard is Google’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The company is playing catch-up to OpenAI and Microsoft, with the latter planning to add ChatGPT’s successor to its Bing search engine. Despite Google’s long history with AI development, Bard’s launch did not go well, with the AI getting an answer wrong in the company’s ad, knocking $100 billion off of Alphabet’s value.

    Pichai is eager to see Bard improve and is recruiting Googlers throughout the company to achieve the goal, according to a memo seen by Business Insider.

    “I know this moment is uncomfortably exciting, and that’s to be expected: the underlying technology is evolving rapidly with so much potential,” Pichai wrote. “The most important thing we can do right now is to focus on building a great product and developing it responsibly.”

    In this memo, Pichai is clearly trying to generate and channel excitement, asking employees to “contribute” their time toward the effort.

    Full memo, courtesy of Insider:

    Hi Googlers,

    Excited to see us opening up Bard for an internal dogfood to help us get it ready for launch. This is an important step as we work to develop the technology responsibly – a big thank you to the Bard team and to everyone who is spending time testing it. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can find instructions on how to participate at go/bard-dogfood.

    I know this moment is uncomfortably exciting, and that’s to be expected: the underlying technology is evolving rapidly with so much potential. This will be a long journey – for everyone, across the field. The most important thing we can do right now is to focus on building a great product and developing it responsibly. That’s why we have thousands of external and internal testers testing Bard’s responses for quality, safety, and groundedness in real-world information. Let’s embrace the challenge and keep iterating, including with users and developers.

    And remember, some of our most successful products were not first to market. They gained momentum because they solved important user needs and were built on deep technical insights. Over time, we earned user trust and more people began to rely on them.

    Here is where we can use your help: Channel the energy and excitement of the moment into our products. Pressure test Bard and make the product better. I would appreciate it if each of you contributed in a deeper way with 2-4 hours of your time. See below for more detail.

    AI has gone through many winters and springs. And now it is blooming again. As an AI-first company, we’ve been working towards this for many years and are ready for it. Let’s stay focused on delivering amazing experiences for our users and launch things we can all be proud of.

    -Sundar

  • Getting Laid Off May Be the Doorway to a Better Job

    Getting Laid Off May Be the Doorway to a Better Job

    The tech sector has been hit with a wave of layoffs, but it’s not all bad news, especially for the workers being laid off.

    Mass layoffs have become an almost daily occurrence. Over the course of 2022, the tech sector saw a whopping 241,176 layoffs. As big as that figure may be, 2023 has already seen an additional 131,132 layoffs at the time of writing (via TrueUp). Almost no portion of the tech sector is immune, with companies large and small letting workers go.

    While being laid off can be a traumatic experience, the picture is not entirely doom and gloom. In fact, being laid off may be the best thing to happen to some people.

    Revelio Labs looked at the state of the industry, as reported by Business Insider, and found that 75% of laid-off tech workers can expect to find a new job within three months. In fact, while tech workers are almost always in demand, Revelio Labs found that is especially true in the current climate. In contrast, 71% could expect to find a job within three months in January 2022 and only 67% in July 2021.

    Perhaps most telling, Revelio Labs found that 52% of laid-off tech workers were finding jobs that paid more than the job they lost. There is such a demand for tech workers that Insider reports many employers are forced to offer a 7% premium over what their existing employees are being paid in order to attract new talent.

    “The key takeaway is ‘do not despair,’” says Reyhan Ayas, a senior economist at Revelio Labs. “The job market is still hot. Although some parts of the tech industry are struggling, other companies are actively hiring.”

  • Microsoft Doesn’t Want Employees Sharing Sensitive Data With ChatGPT

    Microsoft Doesn’t Want Employees Sharing Sensitive Data With ChatGPT

    Microsoft may be going all-in on OpenAI tech and ChatGPT, but that doesn’t mean the company wants sensitive information shared with it.

    Microsoft is rolling out ChatGPT across multiple products and has no objection to its own employees using the tech. However, the company wants to make sure no sensitive information is shared with the AI.

    “Please don’t send sensitive data to an OpenAI endpoint, as they may use it for training future models,” a senior engineer wrote in an internal post that was reviewed by Business Insider.

    The memo demonstrates one of the biggest challenges moving forward with large language model AIs, namely controlling what information it has access to, and how that information will be used if it is shared.

    ChatGPT is a conversational AI that learns from its interactions and what people type into it. As such, it’s not surprising that Microsoft wants to make sure no sensitive information is shared with it, since the AI could then end up using that information in its responses to users.

    “Human beings sign NDAs and consequently have incentives to be careful in how they share information. But large language models such as ChatGPT do not have the ability to reason about such issues, at least by default,” Vincent Conitzer, Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor and director of its AI lab, told Insider.

    Microsoft’s caution is one other companies would do well to imitate.

  • Shopify Unveils ‘Chaos Monkey 2023,’ Limiting Meetings and Slack

    Shopify Unveils ‘Chaos Monkey 2023,’ Limiting Meetings and Slack

    Shopify is aiming to disrupt the workplace with a new initiative called “Chaos Monkey 2023,” one that limits meetings and Slack usage.

    Like many companies, Shopify is working to adjust to a post-pandemic economy, one that may be on the verge of a recession. The company is hoping “chaos engineering” will help it be more nimble and better able to move forward.

    “Chaos engineering is the practice of experimenting with a system to build confidence in that system’s ability to withstand turbulent conditions in production,” the company said in internal documents viewed by Business Insider. “It’s also known as chaos monkey, and at Shopify, we apply this practice not just in building great products for our merchants – but in everything we do.”

    As part of its new strategy, the company has ended meetings involving more than two people, and all meetings on Wednesday. Large meetings, of 50 or more staff, will be restricted to a specific time-frame on Thursdays.

    In addition, the company de-populated all of its public Slack channels, removing all employees from them, deleting chat history, and lowering their limits to 150 people per channel. The company is evidently moving the bulk of its communication to Workspace by Meta, with Slack only serving as a direct message platform.

    “We’ve forced our async work into Slack – it’s bloated, noisy, and distracting,” said COO and Vice President of Product Kaz Nejatian. “We have endless channel updates mixed with broad announcements and pineapple on pizza debates.” 

    The company acknowledges the plan is disruptive, which is exactly what executives are hoping for.

    “All of this feels chaotic, which is kind of the point,” Nejatian said.

    After laying off 1,000 employees in July, only time will tell if Chaos Monkey 2023 helps the company achieve its goals.

  • Google Reorganizing Labor to Answer ChatGPT

    Google Reorganizing Labor to Answer ChatGPT

    Google has issued a “code red” and is reorganizing labor in response to the traction ChatGPT has gained.

    ChatGPT is an AI-driven chatbot released by OpenAI. The chatbot has gained considerable traction and praise, while still receiving criticism for failing in many of the same ways as previous chatbots.

    Google is one company that is trying to find an answer. When ChatGPT gained traction, the company held an all-hands meeting to address employee concerns that Google was being upstaged and could lose its competitive edge. Executives emphasized their desire to proceed slowly, lest the company’s reputation be hurt by less than stellar results.

    According to Business Insider, Google appears to be taking significant steps to catch up. CEO Sundar Pichai has been involved in meetings that have resulted in a reorganization of labor. Personnel in Google’s research, Trust and Safety division are being tasked with assisting in AI development. Other divisions have been similarly involved.

    The company will have to strike a fine balance between protecting the integrity of its search business while simultaneously keeping up with the broader AI industry.

    “This really strikes a need that people seem to have but it’s also important to realize these models have certain type of issues,” Google AI head Jeff Dean said in the initial all-hands meeting.

  • Goldman Sachs to Lay Off Up to 8% of Its Employees

    Goldman Sachs to Lay Off Up to 8% of Its Employees

    Goldman Sachs is the latest company turning to layoffs to weather the economic downturn, reportedly looking to cut up to 8% of its staff.

    According to Business Insider, no decision has been made on the exact number of employees to be laid off, but it is believed to comprise as many as 8%. Semafor, however, previously pegged the number at 4,000 out of a total of 49,100 employees.

    The layoffs could hit as early as January and come on the heels of a warning from CEO David Solomon that rough roads were ahead.

    “We continue to see headwinds on our expense lines, particularly in the near term,” Solomon said at last week. “We’ve set in motion certain expense mitigation plans, but it will take some time to realize the benefits. Ultimately, we will remain nimble and we will size the firm to reflect the opportunity set.”

  • Marc Benioff Wants to Re-Recruit Departed Executives

    Marc Benioff Wants to Re-Recruit Departed Executives

    Marc Benioff has made clear he wants to re-recruit top executives that have departed Salesforce in recent weeks.

    Salesforce has had a rough few weeks, with co-CEO Bret Taylor and Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield leaving, among others. The departures have sparked speculation about what is happening behind the scenes.

    According to Business Insider, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff attempted to put the issue to rest during a company all-hands call, making it clear he has no hard feelings about the execs’ departure and would like them back.

    “Some people come in, some people leave, it’s sad when they go, and it’s great when they come in — it’s a bigger story of life itself,” Benioff said. “I will support them when they are leaving and I will recruit them back.”

    Insider reports Benioff was surprised and disappointed with Taylor’s exit, in particular. Taylor was long-seen as Benioff’s heir-apparent.

    “Everyone deserves to be able to manifest and achieve their own self-actualization to live the life they want and do what makes you happiest, to do what makes you healthiest, to do what is necessary for you to have loving relationships with your family, your friends, to be successful with your work and have impact on the world,” Benioff added to employees. “If you can do that at Salesforce, we’re going to do everything we can to make that for you, and if you have to leave, we will support you, but we will recruit you back.”

  • Users Decry Adobe/Figma Deal; Fear Adobe Will Destroy Figma

    Users Decry Adobe/Figma Deal; Fear Adobe Will Destroy Figma

    Users are up in arms over Adobe’s plans to purchase design startup Figma, fearing the larger company will ruin the startup’s services.

    Figma has taken the design world by storm, providing web-based design tools that rival more traditional options, such as Adobe’s. The company’s offerings have even become popular within Microsoft, a long-time Adobe ally.

    In the wake of Adobe’s announcement that it is purchasing Figma for $20 billion, users are already worried the deal spells the end of what made Figma special.

    “Figma was a tool that gave designers superpowers. And part of the reason they did that is because they listened to what the community was asking them for,” Adam Glynn-Finnegan, a product-design lead at Netflix, told Business Insider. “I don’t think Adobe necessarily has that muscle.”

    Adobe has a long history of raising prices and charging near-exorbitant prices for its design software. This has helped contribute to the rise of open source options, as well as startups like Figma that offer comparable services at prices people can afford. Many are now concerned Adobe will take the startup’s services and raise the prices to be more inline with the rest of the larger company’s offerings.

    Adobe and Figma have tried to reassure users, saying the latter will remain an independent unit within Adobe. What’s more, Figma’s CEO, Dylan Field, will continue to run the unit and has said they “currently have no plan to change Figma’s pricing.”

    The reassurances are not resonating with users, especially freelancers and startups that can’t afford Adobe’s software.

    “Saying that people are freaking out too much comes from a place of privilege,” Mia Eltiste, a design researcher at the IBM spinoff Kyndryl, told Insider. “They can afford the subscription-based model, unlike freelancers or smaller companies, where income comes sporadically.”

    Only time will tell if designers’ fears are warranted, although Adobe’s history would suggest they are. There’s also the possibility that regulators will block the deal, especially given Adobe’s dominant position within the industry.

  • AWS CEO Pitches Cloud Cost Savings but Customers Not Convinced

    AWS CEO Pitches Cloud Cost Savings but Customers Not Convinced

    AWS CEO Adam Selipsky is trying to convince customers that cloud computing can save them money, but many are unconvinced.

    Amid an uncertain economy, companies are looking to cut costs everywhere. Selipsky is touting cloud computing as a way for companies to save money, according to Business Insider.

    “When it comes to the cloud, many of our customers know they should be leaning in precisely because of economic uncertainty, not despite it. The cloud is more cost-effective,” Selipsky said, adding: “If you are looking to tighten your belt, the cloud is the place to do it.”

    Despite the CEO’s confidence, many customers are not convinced that cloud costs can be kept under control. Pay-as-you-go cloud computing sounds good, but costs can quickly escalate as companies begin to scale up.

    “Especially in the past month and a half, the volume of inbound calls we’re getting from startups saying, ‘We need to cut our costs dramatically’” has increased, Ken Cheney, the chief revenue officer at Ternary, told Insider. “It’s the macro conditions, right? Suddenly spending money like a drunken sailor doesn’t make sense.”

    This isn’t the first time cost has come up as a concern with cloud computing. In August, Anodot’s State of Cloud Cost Report found that 50% of IT executives said it was proving difficult to control cloud costs.

    Unless costs are managed carefully, it’s quite easy to lose track of what’s being used—especially for organizations with large development teams that move quickly and tend to try new things. Misconfigurations, over-provisioning, and forgotten resources that have been provisioned but abandoned are the bane of cost management for DevOps teams. Unfortunately, for many organizations, the surprise costs only show up when the monthly invoice arrives.

    If companies continue to struggle with cloud computing costs, AWS and others may have their work cut out convincing customers to continue spending money.

  • Stewart Butterfield, Slack Founder and CEO, Leaving Salesforce

    Stewart Butterfield, Slack Founder and CEO, Leaving Salesforce

    Slack founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield has announced his departure from Salesforce, effective January 2023.

    Stewart Butterfield founded Slack, with its initial release in 2013. The company quickly went on to become a dominant force in corporate messaging, ultimately being acquired by Salesforce for $27.7 billion in mid-2021.

    Barely over a year later, Butterfield has announced he is leaving Salesforce, according to an internal Slack message seen by Business Insider. The executive made clear his departure has nothing to do with Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor leaving the company.

    “FWIW: This has nothing to do with Bret’s departure. Planning has been in the works for several months! Just weird timing,” Butterfield wrote. 

    Lidiane Jones has been tapped as Slack’s next CEO, a decision Butterfield had a hand in.

    “Stewart is an incredible leader who created an amazing, beloved company in Slack. He has helped lead the successful integration of Slack into Salesforce and today Slack is woven into the Salesforce Customer 360 platform,” a Salesforce spokesperson told Insider, saying Butterfield was “instrumental” in Jones’ selection.

  • Amazon’s Advertising Unit the Latest to Suffer a Headcount Freeze

    Amazon’s Advertising Unit the Latest to Suffer a Headcount Freeze

    Amazon’s advertising unit is freezing its headcount as the company deals with economic headwinds impacting the industry.

    Amazon delivered weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter guidance, an indication the company is struggling with the economic uncertainties and challenges facing the tech industry at large.

    According to Bloomberg, by way of Business Insider, Amazon will continue to fill existing roles but will not create any new jobs within the advertising unit. Amazon did not confirm the news, only telling Bloomberg there were a “significant number of open roles” available.

    “We have many different businesses at various stages of evolution, and we expect to keep adjusting our hiring strategies in each of these businesses at various junctures,” the spokesperson added.

    The move to freeze advertising headcount is especially significant since the unit is one of the company’s fastest-growing divisions and is in third place behind Google and Meta. The measure is evidence of the steps Amazon’s execs are willing to take in order to cut costs and increase profitability.

  • JPMorgan Decides Against Investment in Fintech Company Yapily

    JPMorgan Decides Against Investment in Fintech Company Yapily

    JPMorgan has reportedly decided against investing in fintech company Yapily, dealing a blow to the startups fundraising.

    Yapily is a company that develops APIs to help merchants accept payments without going through traditional credit card companies. The startup is already backed by Sapphire Ventures, the same company that has invested in Square and Wise.

    JPMorgan was reportedly looking to invest as much as $25 million in the company, but Business Insider is reporting that the investment bank has decided not to proceed, despite Yapily believing the deal was moving forward.

    One source told Insider the bank’s investment may have been contingent on more funding from other parties, meaning the deal may still happen if Yapily is able to raise additional funds from other sources.

  • Analyst Says Google Should Conduct Layoffs

    An analyst is calling on Google to lay off employees, saying attrition alone will not be sufficient to cut costs.

    The tech industry has been beset with mass layoffs amid an economic downturn that is impacting a range of industries. Virtually ever major tech player has already engaged in layoffs, but Google has so far managed to avoid them. According to Business Insider, Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik says the company should rethink its stance.

    “Google is likely going to find it difficult to reduce headcount growth below revenue growth without more drastic actions,” Shmulik wrote.

    As Insider points out, Google has avoided layoffs as a matter of pride. The company has built a reputation as an employee-friendly workplace and has never conducted a mass layoff. Instead, the company has always relied on attrition to reduce its numbers, letting employees take jobs at other companies without putting forth any effort to stop them.

    The current economic situation is no longer conducive to that approach. While there was a shortage just months ago, there is now a glut of qualified candidates as tens of thousands of tech workers have been laid off and are looking for work.

    “The VC market has cooled dramatically, meaning there is no more funding to grow headcount, and the crypto market has imploded, which cuts out an entire subsector of the potential tech employment pool,” Shmulik wrote. 

    In the meantime, Google employees are already being subjected to tighter performance reviews, a measure that could be a precursor to layoffs.

    “If you have a job at Google, you’re keeping your head down and hoping that cutting toro from the sushi bar is the only cut that affects you,” Shmulik added.

  • Meta Employees: ‘Zuckerberg Will Single-Handedly Kill’ the Company

    Meta Employees: ‘Zuckerberg Will Single-Handedly Kill’ the Company

    Meta employees are speaking up about CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse obsession, saying he will kill the company.

    It’s no secret that Zuckerberg is obsessed with the metaverse. According to a new report by Business Insider, Meta employees are pushing back against Zuckerberg’s obsession, saying the CEO will lead the company into irrelevance and ultimately kill it.

    “The Metaverse will be our slow death,” one user, identifying as a senior software developer, posted on the anonymous forum Blind. “Mark Zuckerberg will single-handedly kill a company with the meta-verse.” 

    Another poster took issue with Zuckerberg’s control, saying his “gut feeling” overrides everything else.

    Read more: Major Meta Investor Urges Company to Scale Back Metaverse Investments

    “Poor leadership is on track to sink this ship,” wrote the individual, who identified as a senior technical program manager. Their listed “cons” included: “No accountability at and above Director level. VPs and Directors are here to just milk the company without adding any value.”

    “I thought it was a data-driven company but actually it is one man’s gut feeling and emotions-driven,” they added. “Nobody can overwrite his decision.”

    Another employee, who identified as an engineer, was overall complimentary of the company but still said, “Zuck is leading this company in the wrong direction.”

    The internal angst is understandable, given Meta’s current situation. The company recently laid off 11,000 employees, the biggest lay-off in its history and the biggest in 2022. Some employees blamed the lay-offs on the company’s investment in the metaverse at a time when its core business is taking a major hit.

    Zuckerberg has committed to investing a whopping $10 to $15 billion per year for ten years in an effort to make the metaverse a reality. So far, the results have been less than impressive, with a major investor calling for the company to scale back and Meta even looking to Microsoft to help it make the metaverse more interesting and useful.

  • Meta’s Image Tarnished With Employees Angry Over Layoffs

    Meta’s Image Tarnished With Employees Angry Over Layoffs

    Meta’s image as a coveted place to work has taken a major hit, with employees disillusioned and angry over this week’s layoffs.

    Meta has always been a top spot to work in Silicon Valley, but the company announced it would lay off some 11,000 employees this week. The layoffs impacted virtually every department, but the one thing it didn’t impact is Meta’s investment in Zuckerberg’s pet project: the metaverse.

    According to Business Insider, employees are disillusioned, confused, and angry with the layoffs.

    “People really didn’t expect layoffs at that scale, even after the news,” said one employee who was not laid off. “Going above 10,000 was definitely more than I had in mind, and more than people had in mind.”

    “Class act as always,” one laid-off employee said sarcastically of Zuckerberg’s announcement. “Least it was on brand.”

    Read more: Major Meta Investor Urges Company to Scale Back Metaverse Investments

    Some employees wasted no time blaming Zuckerberg’s obsession with the metaverse for creating the circumstances that led to so many being laid off.

    “I certainly feel negatively towards him, and I’m sure many more people feel the same,” one impacted worker said. “There’s too much focus on metaverse and Reality Labs.”

    What’s more, the company’s focus on the metaverse seems to be at the exclusion of other company divisions, including ones that are currently growth drivers. For example, despite Zuckerberg repeatedly touting the importance of Facebook’s TikTok-like Reels and calling it a growth driver, one employee estimates as much as 70% of product marketing managers were laid off.

    “Honestly I’m more shocked than anything,” the person added. “It was pretty much a PMM and ‘Business Team’ bloodbath.”

    In a competitive tech scene, the ability to attract top talent is often the major differentiating factor between successful ventures and failures. Meta may have just shot itself in the foot and crippled its ability to attract that top talent in the future.