Layoffs

In a remarkable turn for a company that has long touted its job creation, Amazon will have eliminated 27,000 positions in recent months, or 9% of its roughly 300,000-strong corporate workforce. The latest cuts focus on Amazon's highly-profitable cloud and advertising divisions, once seen as untouchable until economic concerns led business customers to scrutinize their spending. The layoffs will affect Amazon's streaming unit Twitch as well. Dan Clancy, who was named as CEO of Twitch last week, said the platform will lay off more than 400 employees. Amazon aims to finalize whom it will terminate in the new round of job cuts by April. The company's stock fell 1.8%. The decision follows a near-endless drumbeat of layoff news in the technology sector that has seen some of the world's most valuable corporations, among them Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc, sever ties with staggering numbers of employees they once courted in droves. "I don't think this means much for … [Read more...] about Amazon deepens tech-sector gloom with another 9,000 layoffs

Walt Disney Co on Monday began 7,000 layoffs announced earlier this year, as it seeks to control costs and create a more "streamlined" business, according to a letter Chief Executive Bob Iger sent to employees and seen by Reuters. Several major divisions of the company - Disney Entertainment, Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, and corporate - will be impacted, according to a person familiar with the matter. ESPN is not touched by this week's round of cuts, but is anticipated to be included in later rounds. The entertainment industry has undergone a retrenchment since its early euphoric embrace of video streaming, when established media companies lost billions as they launched competitors to Netflix Inc. Media companies started to rein in spending when Netflix posted its first loss of subscribers in a decade in early 2022, and Wall Street began prioritizing profitability over subscriber growth. Iger said Disney would begin notifying the first group of employees who are … [Read more...] about Walt Disney Co begins 7,000 layoffs

Our company is currently facing a challenging period and has decided to reduce its workforce by 10%. In my department of 20 employees, we had to let go of two people. Recently, our boss announced that one of our colleagues would be laid off. This person is quiet, gentle, and leads a private life. Although he is proficient in his work and skilled in technology, he was selected not based on his ability, but because our boss perceived him as not knowing how to "behave." In our department, there are two types of flattery: drinking and constant praise. Some colleagues often invite our boss to drink after work and regularly invite the boss to try some new bottle of wine at home, or they bring him to some "excellent" restaurant they just found. These colleagues are very popular with our boss and strive to please him. They even say bad things about other workers -- who do not join the drinking circle -- to the boss. Unfortunately, the colleague who was just fired was the victim of this … [Read more...] about My colleague got fired for refusing to flatter

The code used for recommending the posts suggested to users will become "open source" at the end of March, Musk said in a tweet of his own. "People will discover many silly things, but we'll patch issues as soon as they're found!" Musk tweeted. "Providing code transparency will be incredibly embarrassing at first, but it should lead to rapid improvement in recommendation quality." Musk contended that the recommendation algorithm used at Twitter is overly complicated and not fully understood inside the company. "We're developing a simplified approach to serve more compelling tweets, but it's still a work in progress," Musk said. Making the code open source would mean developers, including aspiring rivals, would be able to put their own spins on the algorithm, according to a foundation for the software ecosystem. Since billionaire Musk's takeover of Twitter in October, the platform has suffered outages, layoffs and seen advertisers flee over the lack of content moderation. … [Read more...] about Musk says code for recommending tweets will be public