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The Silver Lining(s) in the Tech Layoff Cloud

The Silver Lining(s) in the Tech Layoff Cloud

Photo by Jonny Clow on Unsplash

Tech has been experiencing ‘massive layoffs’ lately, but always good to look at the why, before you jump to the ‘Oh NOOOO!’

“When people hear layoffs, that is a highly charged word… But you have to understand this in the broader context, which is there was explosive growth during the pandemic, and all that growth was unexpected,” said Russell Hancock, chief executive of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, to MarketWatch.

The ‘broader context’ is that tech is going through a period of adjustment and ‘right sizing.’ Said MarketWatch, “The largest number announced by a Big Tech company so far is the 18,000 projected layoffs at Amazon.com Inc— but Amazon hired hundreds of thousands of workers during the pandemic to grow into the second-largest employer in the U.S. (From) fewer than 800,000 employees at the end of 2019… to more than 1.6 million at times last year…Microsoft grew its workforce more than 50% … hiring roughly 77,000 workers; it recently announced 10,000 layoffs. Meta Platforms Inc. nearly doubled its head count from roughly 45,000… to more than 87,000…then decided to cut about 11,000 workers.” Read More...

Did Google’s Sunday Outage Just Prove the Anti-Trust Argument?

Did Google’s Sunday Outage Just Prove the Anti-Trust Argument?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

We’ve said many times that no one stays on top forever. The Justice Department is preparing a new antitrust investigation against Google parent Alphabet Inc. – again. To refresh your memory and as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, “This comes six years after a similar probe from the Federal Trade Commission, which resulted in no significant damage to the company that powers more than 90% of the world’s internet search activity.”

Closer scrutiny is long overdue. What was not reported was the history of the past anti-trust investigation: it was 2013 – the days when Google executives were frequent guests at the White House during the past administration. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, Google visited the White House 230 times – more than all other tech companies combined. Both Google co-founder Larry Page and Google lobbyist Johanna Shelton met with FTC officials and top White House advisors. The investigation was then shut down when Google promised to voluntarily police itself. Interestingly, this is when Net Neutrality discussions also began and here’s an interesting statistic:

Alphabet/Google Market Caps prior to Net Neutrality: $399.05B for January, 2015. Market Caps as a result of Net Neutrality: $664.55B for Sept. 29, 2017 Read More...