862

2024 has seen two mass layoffs at Microsoft, with 1900 staff laid off in January, before a further 650 Xbox employees were shown the door in September.

Regardless, Microsoft's shares are up and the company's market value is now higher than $3tn, as it works to capitalise on the rise of AI.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

This is why every profession, blue or white collar, needs to unionize.

[-] Quexotic@infosec.pub 18 points 8 hours ago

I think the author got confused, it's not despite off it's because of.

[-] 01011@monero.town 27 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Trickle down economics - when the 1% tinkle on the remainder.

[-] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 15 points 9 hours ago

Trickle down was a rebrand.

It used to be called "Horse and Sparrow economics."

Idea being: The horses eat buckets of whole grains. And the sparrows pick their meal from the horseshit.

[-] Breezy@lemmy.world 6 points 7 hours ago

Never heard that. Regardless, i love it.

[-] OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 8 points 11 hours ago

He's doing what the Board wants, stock price is up. If there was a worker advocate on the board, maybe things would be different.

[-] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 1 points 8 hours ago

stock is regularly at a new all time high with $400++/share.

[-] interurbain1er@sh.itjust.works 49 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

In case you missed it, in our broken model of civilization a CEO's only responsibility is to increase value for shareholders. Not to clients, not to employees, not to the biosphere.

Market cap increased, job's done successfully.

[-] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 13 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

A) 1971, Economist Milton Friedman explicitly told the world the "only social responsibility" for businesses is to increase shareholder value. The Business Roundtable heartily endorsed this view, setting the stage for the next half century of villains to gleefully enrich themselves without compunction.

B) 2019, Business Roundtable reversed their 50 year position to include that businesses should be beholden to all Stakeholders, not just shareholders.

But of course the damage has been done, and continues onward. To compound this, the FED's open-purse monetary policy for 14 YEARS ushered in the worst inflation in 40 years, while wages have stagnated for 4 decades, kicking off around the time Baby Boomers were birthing the first Millennial children.

These are just some of the reasons Millennials lay the bulk of culpability at the feet of Baby Boomers, who of course respond with something like: "Well, I don't remember that."

[-] Antaeus@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

Go Copilot!

[-] Default_Defect@midwest.social 44 points 17 hours ago

Because of layoffs, not despite them.

[-] kamen@lemmy.world 7 points 12 hours ago

CEOs gonna CEO.

[-] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 90 points 20 hours ago

When I entered the work force in 2005, it was with a company that had never had a layoff in its thirty-year history.

Then, in 2009, they had their first layoff, and I learned later our CEO had taken an 80% pay raise that year.

Taxes aren't theft. Literally firing people and taking their salaries is theft.

[-] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 29 points 20 hours ago

Also that CEO has an eminently punchable face.

[-] feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world 5 points 12 hours ago

tautological

load more comments (12 replies)
[-] independantiste@sh.itjust.works 14 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

The entire point of AI as it stands right now is to allow more of those layoffs. Anyone telling otherwise is a liar.

Also I hate how currently, AI is used to remove the fun parts of creating things at a computer. Take coding for example, I think I can speak for many people when I say that the fun part of their job, is not the planning or the meetings, it's the actual coding and stumbling upon a hard problem to solve. Now with AI you the human will only keep the boring parts of the job!

[-] Nalivai@lemmy.world 11 points 11 hours ago

Don't overestimate LLMs, it can't code and never will be. It can create templates convincingly enough and do boilerplate parts that are nonsense only sometimes, but those aren't the fun parts of the coding process anyway. In my experience, LLM isn't helping at all and I spend more time fixing it's nonsense than I would do if I don't use it at all, so I don't

[-] Saryn@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago

As someone without a computer science background and who started learning Python for data science shortly before LLMs became mainstream, I gotta say it's been pretty useful for the learning process. I don't mean I just use it to write scripts for me but rather it can be a useful sorta of guide the way a scripted advisor mihht be in a game. Seems to me that one of the good sides of LLMs is that they can make technically dofficult fields more accessible as long as you understand its limits and know what it can and cant do._ i would never use it for any sort of subjective issue but I find it great for logical tasks. And this is not to say that's its perfect for that either but it has increased my efficiency for certain work tasks tremendously.

[-] Nalivai@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

As someone with degrees and decades of experience, I urge you not use it for that. It's a cleverly disguised randomness machine, it will give you incorrect information that will be indistinguishable from truth because "truth" is never the criteria that it can use, but be convincing is. It will seed those untruths into you and unlearning bad practices that you picked up at the beginning might take years and cost you a career. And since you're just starting, you have no idea how to pick up bullshit from truth as long as the final result seem to work, and that's the works way to hide the bullshit from you.
The field is already very accessible for everyone who wants to learn it, the amount of guides, examples, teaching courses, very useful youtube videos with thick Indian accent is already enormous, and most of them are at least trying to self-correct, while LLM actively doesn't, in fact it's trying to do the opposite.
Best case scenario you're learning inefficiently, worst case scenario you aren't learning at all

[-] Saryn@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

Thank you, I will take this into consideration. It sure is tempting to use LLMs but I will always trust experts in the field over LLMs.

[-] Nalivai@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Yeah, the scary thing about LLMs is that by their very nature they sound convincing and it's very easy to fall into a trap, we as humans are hardwired to misconstrue the ability to talk smoothly for intelligence, and when computer started to speak with complete sentences and hold the immediate context of a conversation, we immediately started to think that we have a thinking machine and started believing it.
The worst thing is, there are legit uses for all the machine learning stuff and LLMs in particular, so we can't just throw it all out of the window, we will have to collectively adapt to this very convincing randomness machine that is just here all the time

[-] filister@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

Exactly how I am feeling. AI took the fun part away of cracking a problem and the satisfaction of solving it is now gone.

[-] card797@champserver.net 20 points 19 hours ago

They should be paying 90% tax over 1 million.

[-] Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 30 points 21 hours ago

Typical and most people in the US view CEO's as heroes. US income distribution is on the same level as fucking Russia.

[-] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 21 points 19 hours ago

As someone from fucking Russia, people with biggest income in your country are usually first businessmen, second - something else, while in Russia those would be cockroaches from MFA, PA and other thieves, plus a few oligarchs who at some point were among those cockroaches.

So it may not be as bad yet, but frankly yes, you are giving out vibes of going in the same direction.

[-] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 3 points 8 hours ago

US is the OG oligarchy, but we cosplay "Democracy" to cope

[-] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

I agree, but yours are real oligarchs, while those I'm talking about are a relatively new thing for you.

Russian-style ones are just blokes from one and the same corporation who chose they want to be celebrities. A façade. They used oligarchy as a scapegoat in the 90s, to avoid lustration while it still could be done.

[-] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 4 points 8 hours ago

I see your point. In US our oligarchs run the show. In russia, they submit to the "President" to obtain the position.

[-] ysjet@lemmy.world 65 points 1 day ago

He made $12000 off each fired employee.

[-] P1nkman@lemmy.world 43 points 1 day ago

Per year. And lets not talk about his stock options and other benefits... Fucking disgusting.

[-] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 175 points 1 day ago
[-] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 11 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Thank god, all these employees lost their jobs so Satya Nadella can pad out their already insanely high salary.

We don't want Satya to starve like the rest us of plebs!

[-] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

This is the shit we need to be thinking about when we read about a black person getting shot by a cop for stealing a loaf of bread, if you ask me.

[-] RagingHungryPanda@lemm.ee 76 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Headline confused "despite" and "due to"

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 96 points 1 day ago

That’s roughly 30k for every employee laid off

[-] lol_idk@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 hours ago
[-] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

79,000,000 / 2,550 = 30,980

[-] lol_idk@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 hours ago

The increase is only 30 mill

[-] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

Gotcha, sounds like we’re measuring two different things then

[-] lol_idk@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 hours ago

Yeah. He was already making 49, I was looking at how much of the redistribution went to him, not much, but I imagine it'll go to stock buybacks or AI electricity

[-] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

Yeah maybe to their three mile island project. What a weird sentence. Just a few years off from our Weyland Yutani future

[-] theneverfox@pawb.social 7 points 17 hours ago

So the CEO gets less than half their salary for the year?

Sounds like a great deal for the company. Until, you know, the whole thing collapses because they laid off the workers who kept the whole thing running

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
862 points (98.9% liked)

Technology

58893 readers
3553 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS