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Tag: Layoffs

  • Twitter slashes its staff as Musk era takes hold on platform

    Twitter slashes its staff as Musk era takes hold on platform

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    Twitter began widespread layoffs Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the company, raising grave concerns about chaos enveloping the social media platform and its ability to fight disinformation just days ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

    The speed and size of the cuts also opened Musk and Twitter to lawsuits. At least one was filed alleging Twitter violated federal law by not providing fired employees the required notice.

    The San Francisco-based company told workers by email Thursday that they would learn Friday if they had been laid off. About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety & integrity, confirmed in a tweet.

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut the jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at the company and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as a severance.

    No other social media platform comes close to Twitter as a place where public agencies and other vital service providers — election boards, police departments, utilities, schools and news outlets — keep people reliably informed. Many fear Musk’s layoffs will gut it and render it lawless.

    Roth said the company’s front-line moderation staff was the group the least impacted by the job cuts.

    He added that Twitter’s “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”

    Musk, meanwhile, tweeted that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.”

    But a Twitter employee who spoke with The Associated Press Friday said it will be a lot harder to get that work done starting next week after losing so many colleagues.

    “This will impact our ability to provide support for elections, definitely,” said the employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for job security.

    The employee said there’s no “concrete sense of direction” except for what Musk says publicly on Twitter.

    “I follow his tweets and they affect how we prioritize our work,” said the employee. “It’s a very healthy indicator of what to prioritize.”

    Several employees who tweeted about losing their jobs said Twitter eliminated their entire teams, including one focused on human rights and global conflicts, another checking Twitter’s algorithms for bias in how tweets get amplified, and an engineering team devoted to making the social platform more accessible for people with disabilities.

    Eddie Perez, a Twitter civic integrity team manager who quit in September, said he fears the layoffs so close to the midterms could allow disinformation to “spread like wildfire” during the post-election vote-counting period in particular.

    “I have a hard time believing that it doesn’t have a material impact on their ability to manage the amount of disinformation out there,” he said, adding that there simply may not be enough employees to beat it back.

    President Joe Biden, at a campaign event in Illinois Friday night, said: “Now what are we all worried about? Elon Musk, who goes out and buys an outfit that sends and spews lies all across the world. … How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?”

    Twitter’s employees have been expecting layoffs since Musk took the helm. He fired top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, and removed the company’s board of directors on his first day as owner.

    As the emailed notices went out, many Twitter employees took to the platform to express support for each other — often simply tweeting blue heart emojis to signify its blue bird logo — and salute emojis in replies to each other.

    A Twitter manager said many employees found out they had been laid off when they could no longer log into the company’s systems. The manager said the way the layoffs were conducted showed a “lack of care and thoughtfulness.” The manager, who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for job security, said managers were not given any notice about who would be getting laid off.

    “For me as a manager, it’s been excruciating because I had to find out about what my team was going to look like through tweets and through texting and calling people,” the employee said. “That’s a really hard way to care for your people. And managers at Twitter care a lot about their people.”

    A coalition of civil rights groups escalated their calls Friday for brands to pause advertising buys on the platform. The layoffs are particularly dangerous ahead of the elections, the groups warned, and for transgender users and other groups facing violence inspired by hate speech that proliferates online.

    In a tweet Friday, Musk blamed activists for what he described as a “massive drop in revenue” since he took over Twitter late last week.

    Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said there is “little Musk can say to appease advertisers when he’s keeping the company in a constant state of uncertainty and turmoil, and appears indifferent to Twitter employees and the law.”

    “Musk needs advertisers more than they need him,” she said. “Pulling ads from Twitter is a quick and painless decision for most brands.”

    A lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of one employee who was laid off and three others who were locked out of their work accounts. It alleges Twitter violated the law by not providing the required notice.

    The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification statute requires employers with at least 100 workers to disclose layoffs involving 500 or more employees, regardless of whether a company is publicly traded or privately held, as Twitter is now.

    The layoffs affected Twitter’s offices around the world. In the United Kingdom, it would be required by law to give employees notice, said Emma Bartlett, a partner specializing in employment and partnership law at CM Murray LLP.

    The speed of the layoffs could also open Musk and Twitter up to discrimination claims if it turns out, for instance, that they disproportionally affected women, people of color or older workers.

    ———

    AP Business Writers Mae Anderson, Alexandra Olson and Ken Sweet in New York, James Pollard in Columbia, S.C., Frank Bajak in Boston and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this story.

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  • Widespread Twitter layoffs begin a week after Musk takeover

    Widespread Twitter layoffs begin a week after Musk takeover

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    NEW YORK — Twitter began widespread layoffs Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the company, raising grave concerns about chaos enveloping the platform and its ability to fight disinformation just days ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

    The speed and size of the cuts also opened Musk and Twitter to lawsuits. At least one was filed Thursday in San Francisco alleging Twitter has violated federal law by not providing fired employees the required notice.

    The company had told workers by email that they would find out Friday if they had been laid off. It did not say how many of the roughly 7,500 employees would lose their jobs.

    Musk didn’t confirm or correct investor Ron Baron at a Friday conference in New York when he asked the billionaire Tesla CEO how much money he would save after he “fired half of Twitter.”

    Musk responded by talking about Twitter’s cost and revenue challenges and blamed activists who urged big companies to halt advertising on the platform. Musk hasn’t commented on the layoffs themselves.

    “The activist groups have been successful in causing a massive drop in Twitter advertising revenue, and we’ve done our absolute best to appease them and nothing is working,” he said.

    Some employees of the San Francisco-based company got clues about their pending dismissal when they lost access to their work accounts hours earlier. They and others tweeted messages of support using the hashtag #OneTeam. The email to staff said job reductions were “necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”

    No other social media platform comes close to Twitter as a place where public agencies and other vital service providers — election boards, police departments, utilities, schools and news outlets — keep people reliably informed. Many fear Musk’s layoffs will gut it and render it lawless.

    Several employees who tweeted about losing their jobs said Twitter also eliminated their entire teams, including one focused on human rights and global conflicts, another checking Twitter’s algorithms for bias in how tweets get amplified, and an engineering team devoted to making the social platform more accessible for people with disabilities.

    Eddie Perez, a Twitter civic integrity team manager who quit in September, said he fears the layoffs so close to the midterms could allow disinformation to “spread like wildfire” during the post-election vote-counting period in particular.

    “I have a hard time believing that it doesn’t have a material impact on their ability to manage the amount of disinformation out there,” he said, adding that there simply may not be enough employees to beat it back.

    Perez, a board member at the nonpartisan election integrity nonprofit OSET Institute, said the post-election period is particularly perilous because “some candidates may not concede and some may allege election irregularities and that is likely to generate a new cycle of falsehoods.”

    Twitter’s employees have been expecting layoffs since Musk took the helm. He fired top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, and removed the company’s board of directors on his first day as owner.

    As the emailed notices went out, many Twitter employees took to the platform to express support for each other — often simply tweeting blue heart emojis to signify its blue bird logo — and salute emojis in replies to each other.

    The sweeping layoffs will jeopardize content moderation standards, according to a coalition of civil rights groups, that escalated their calls Friday for brands to pause advertising buys on the platform. The layoffs are particularly dangerous ahead of the elections, the groups warned, and for transgender users and other groups facing violence inspired by hate speech that proliferates online.

    Leaders with the organizations Free Press and Color of Change said they spoke with Musk on Tuesday, and he promised to retain and enforce election integrity measures already in place. But the mass layoffs suggest otherwise, according to Jessica González, co-CEO of Free Press.

    González pushed back on Musk’s assertion that content moderation rules — an operation she said was already “dangerously under-resourced” — had not changed since his takeover.

    “When you lay off reportedly 50% of your staff — including teams who are in charge of actually tracking, monitoring and enforcing content moderation and rules — that necessarily means that content moderation has changed,” González said.

    As of Friday, Musk and Twitter had given no public notice of the coming layoffs, according to a spokesperson for California’s Employment Development Department. That’s even though the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification statute requires employers with at least 100 workers to disclose layoffs involving 500 or more employees, regardless of whether a company is publicly traded or privately held.

    A lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of one employee who was laid off and three others who were locked out of their work accounts. It alleges Twitter violated the law by not providing the required notice.

    The layoffs affected Twitter’s offices around the world. In the United Kingdom, Twitter would be required by law to give employees notice, said Emma Bartlett, a partner specializing in employment and partnership law at CM Murray LLP.

    In the case of mass firings, failure to notify the government could “have criminal penalties associated with it,’’ Bartlett said, adding that whether criminal sanctions are ever applied is another question.

    The speed of the layoffs could also open Musk and Twitter up to discrimination claims if it turns out, for instance, that they disproportionally affected women, people of color or older workers.

    Employment lawyer Peter Rahbar said most employers “take great care in doing layoffs of this magnitude” to make they are justified and don’t unfairly discriminate or bring unwanted attention to the company.

    “For some reason, he seemingly wants to lay off half the company without doing any due diligence on what these people do or who they are and without any regards to the law,” Rahbar said.

    The layoffs come at a tough time for social media companies, as advertisers are scaling back and newcomers — mainly TikTok — are threatening older platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

    In a tweet Friday, Musk blamed activists for what he described as a “massive drop in revenue” since he took over Twitter late last week. He did not say how much revenue had dropped.

    Big companies including General Motors, REI, General Mills and Audi have all paused ads on Twitter due to questions about how it will operate under Musk. Volkswagen Group said it is recommending its brands, which include Audi, Lamborghini and Porsche, pause paid activities until Twitter issues revised brand safety guidelines.

    Musk last week sought to convince advertisers that Twitter wouldn’t become a “free-for-all hellscape” but many remain concerned about whether content moderation will remain as stringent and whether staying on Twitter might tarnish their brands.

    In his tweet, Musk said “nothing has changed with content moderation.”

    But Twitter advertisers have steadily declined since Musk agreed to buy Twitter in April, according to MediaRadar, which tracks ad buys. Between January and April, the average number of advertisers on Twitter was 3,350. From May through September, the number dropped to 3,100. Prior to July, more than 1,000 new advertisers were spending on Twitter every month. In July and August, that number dropped to roughly 200.

    Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said there is “little Musk can say to appease advertisers when he’s keeping the company in a constant state of uncertainty and turmoil, and appears indifferent to Twitter employees and the law.”

    “Musk needs advertisers more than they need him,” she said. “Pulling ads from Twitter is a quick and painless decision for most brands.”

    ———

    AP Business Writers Mae Anderson, Alexandra Olson and Ken Sweet in New York, James Pollard in Columbia, S.C., Frank Bajak in Boston and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this story.

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  • Despite Flailing With His New Toy, Elon Musk Is Going Ahead With Big Twitter Layoffs

    Despite Flailing With His New Toy, Elon Musk Is Going Ahead With Big Twitter Layoffs

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    After a major blunder Sunday on Twitter by the company’s new owner, Elon Musk, he is nevertheless going forward with his plans for major layoffs that could create even more content problems.

    Musk has already asked managers for lists of workers to fire in a cost-cutting move at Twitter, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal reported. Sources have claimed that he plans to cut the 7,500-person workforce by as much as 75% — though Musk denied that to staffers.

    The cuts might be closer to 50%, The Washington Post reported Saturday. One of the first to be slashed would likely be the legal, trust and safety division, which oversees content moderation, according to the Post.

    The cuts appear likely to boost controversial content, including porn, disinformation and hate speech, as vast numbers of posts would slip by largely unmonitored.

    Musk personally became part of the content problem Sunday when he amplified in a post — that he later deleted — a completely baseless conspiracy theory about the vicious home invasion attack Friday on Paul Pelosi, husband of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

    “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” Musk posted. He linked to an article falsely claiming that Pelosi’s attacker was a lover he had met at a bar in the middle of the night. Police have said categorically that Paul Pelosi and assault suspect David DePape had never met before the attack.

    Musk is already struggling with taking control at Twitter.

    Several users that had been banned for breaking various company rules, including those against racist hate speech and lies, have reportedly been sneaking back onto Twitter since Musk took over Thursday.

    Problem content has also skyrocketed. The Network Contagion Research Institute, which analyzes messages across social media platforms, discovered that the use of the racist N-word on Twitter spiked nearly 500% over the 12 hours after Musk bought the company, The Washington Post reported last week.

    Musk on Friday tweeted that he wouldn’t make any “major content decisions or account reinstatements” until a new “content moderation council” is convened.

    Musk has railed in the past at Twitter’s content restrictions, characterizing them as biased and unjustified censorship. But unfettered content could be bad for his new business and in some cases leave Twitter vulnerable to lawsuits.

    Musk tried to reassure advertisers in a message last week that Twitter will not become a “free-for-all hellscape.” But he appears to be already struggling with that promise.

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  • Elon Musk Moves Quickly On Twitter Restructuring : Huge Layoffs On Saturday?

    Elon Musk Moves Quickly On Twitter Restructuring : Huge Layoffs On Saturday?

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    Although many predicted that Elon Musk’s $44 billion deal to buy Twitter
    TWTR
     could still fall through, the billionaire did indeed close the transaction on Friday and his restructuring plan was already well thought out and quickly implemented. At least the beginning of it—who knows what turmoil lies ahead?

    Musk let go key executives CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO
    CFO
     Ned Segal and the head of legal policy Vijaya Gadde, according to the Washington Post. However, don’t shed any tears for the trio, who take with them golden parachute packages and accelerated vesting of stock options worth almost $200 million.

    However, that’s just the beginning of the bloodbath according to The New York Times
    NYT
     (which talked to four different sources at Twitter) the layoffs will begin on Saturday, ahead of a November 1 scheduled distribution of stock grants (and a key vesting date on some already issued stock grants).

    Although the company is no longer public, Musk had previously announced that he would pay out the equivalent of the value of the stock grants, estimated to be about $100 million, in cash.

    Interviews with various sources and document obtained by the Washington Post reportedly show that he plans to fire about 75% of twitter employees, likely well before a town-hall meeting with all employees on Friday. The New York Times reports many of the layoffs will occur tomorrow, October 30.

    Musk reportedly told Twitter staff on Wednesday that the 75% figure is inaccurate, however, he did not state to what extent the layoffs would go.

    Musk has courted key advertisers and said the platform will be an “advertising destination.” One advertiser, General Motors
    GM
    , has already put its Twitter ad buys on hold, although this could be due to Musk’s ownership stake in Tesla.

    His ownership also rubbed some high-profile users the wrong way. Media giant Shonda Rhimes, This Is Us executive producer Ken Olin, Billions showrunner Brian Koppelmen and Bill & Ted star Alex Winter all left or said they are leaving Twitter.

    NBA star LeBron James expressed concern over hate speech, citing a report by the Network Contagion Research Institute, which studies the spread of ideological content online, who said that the use of a racial slur on Twitter had increased by nearly 500% in the 12 hours after Musk’s deal was finalized.

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    Derek Baine, Contributor

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  • EXPLAINER: How will we know if the U.S. is in recession?

    EXPLAINER: How will we know if the U.S. is in recession?

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    WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy grew faster than expected in the July-September quarter, the government reported Thursday, underscoring that the United States is not in a recession despite distressingly high inflation and interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.

    But the economy is hardly in the clear, and the solid growth reported for the third quarter did little to alter the growing conviction among economists that a recession is very likely next year.

    Higher borrowing rates and chronic inflation will almost certainly continue to weaken consumer and business spending. And likely recessions in the United Kingdom and Europe and slower growth in China will erode the revenue and profits of American corporations. Such trends are expected to cause a U.S. recession sometime in 2023.

    Still, there are reasons to hope that a recession, if it comes, will prove a relatively mild one. Many employers, having struggled to find workers to hire after huge layoffs during the pandemic, may decide to maintain most of their existing workforces even in a shrinking economy.

    In the July-September quarter, the economy accelerated to a 2.6% annual pace, after two quarters of contraction. Consumers spent more and exports jumped, offsetting a sharp slowdown in home sales and construction.

    Six months of economic decline is a long-held informal definition of a recession. Yet nothing is simple in a post-pandemic economy in which growth was negative in the first half of the year but the job market remained robust, with ultra-low unemployment and healthy levels of hiring. The economy’s direction has confounded the Fed’s policymakers and many private economists ever since growth screeched to a halt in March 2020, when COVID-19 struck and 22 million Americans were suddenly thrown out of work.

    By far the biggest threat to the economy remains inflation, which is still near its highest level in four decades. Even for workers who received sizable raises, their pay has dropped once it’s adjusted for inflation. The pain is being felt disproportionately by lower-income and Black and Hispanic households, many of whom are struggling to pay for essentials like food, clothes, and rent.

    High inflation has also become a central issue in Republican attacks on President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats, who have been thrown on the defensive as they seek to maintain control of Congress in the midterm elections.

    So what is the likelihood of a recession? Here are some questions and answers:

    ————

    WHY DO MANY ECONOMISTS FORESEE A RECESSION?

    They expect the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes and persistently high inflation to overwhelm consumers and businesses, forcing them to slow their spending and investment. Businesses will likely also have to cut jobs, causing spending to fall further.

    The Fed is poised to keep raising its benchmark interest rate after having already hiked it five times this year, from near zero to a range of 3% to 3.25%. Fed officials have projected that their short-term rate, which affects borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, will reach about 4.6% next year, which would be the highest level since late 2007.

    Consumers have been remarkably resilient so far this year. Still, there are signs that high inflation and borrowing costs have begun taking a toll. Last quarter, consumer spending grew at just a 1.4% annual rate, according to Thursday’s government report, down from 2% in the second quarter and less than half its pace of a year ago.

    Thursday’s figures also showed that businesses are cutting back on investment in buildings and factories, and the housing market has been hammered by rising mortgage costs. Those trends are expected to intensify, leading to a likely recession.

    ———

    WHAT ARE SOME SIGNS THAT A RECESSION MAY HAVE BEGUN?

    The clearest signal, economists say, would be a steady rise in job losses and a surge in unemployment. Claudia Sahm, an economist and former Fed staff member, has noted that since World War II, an increase in the unemployment rate of a half-percentage point over several months has always resulted in a recession.

    Many economists monitor the number of people who seek unemployment benefits each week, which indicates whether layoffs are worsening. Weekly applications for jobless aid have increased in recent months, but not by very much. Instead, employers have added a robust average of 370,000 jobs in the past three months.

    ———

    ANY OTHER SIGNALS TO WATCH FOR?

    Many economists monitor changes in the interest payments, or yields, on different bonds for a recession signal known as an “inverted yield curve.” This occurs when the yield on the 10-year Treasury falls below the yield on a short-term Treasury, such as the 3-month T-bill. That is unusual. Normally, longer-term bonds pay investors a richer yield in exchange for tying up their money for a longer period.

    Inverted yield curves generally mean that investors foresee a recession that will compel the Fed to slash rates. Inverted curves often predate recessions. Still, it can take 18 to 24 months for a downturn to arrive after the yield curve inverts.

    Ever since July, the yield on the two-year Treasury note has exceeded the 10-year yield, suggesting that markets expect a recession soon. And just this week, the three-month yield also temporarily rose above the 10-year, an inversion that has an even better track record at predicting recessions.

    ———

    WHO DECIDES WHEN A RECESSION HAS STARTED?

    Recessions are officially declared by the obscure-sounding National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of economists whose Business Cycle Dating Committee defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months.”

    The committee considers trends in hiring as a key measure in determining recessions. It also assesses many other data points, including gauges of income, employment, inflation-adjusted spending, retail sales and factory output. It puts heavy weight on jobs and a measure of inflation-adjusted income that excludes government support payments like Social Security.

    Yet the NBER typically doesn’t declare a recession until well after one has begun, sometimes for up to a year.

    ———

    DON’T A LOT OF PEOPLE THINK WE”RE ALREADY IN A RECESSION?

    Yes, because many people now feel much more financially burdened. With wage gains trailing inflation for most people, higher prices have eroded Americans’ spending power.

    And the Fed’s rate hikes have helped send the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate surging above 7% this week, the highest level in two decades. It has more than doubled from about 3% a year ago, thereby making homebuying increasingly unaffordable.

    ———

    DOES HIGH INFLATION TYPICALLY LEAD TO A RECESSION?

    Not always. Inflation reached 4.7% in 2006, at that point the highest in 15 years, without causing a downturn. (The 2008-2009 recession that followed was caused by the bursting of the housing bubble).

    But when it gets as high as it has this year — it reached a 40-year peak of 9.1% in June — a downturn becomes increasingly likely.

    That’s for two reasons: First, the Fed will inevitably sharply raise borrowing costs when inflation gets that high. Higher rates then drag down the economy as consumers are less able to afford homes, cars, and other major purchases.

    High inflation also distorts the economy on its own. Consumer spending, adjusted for inflation, weakens. And businesses grow uncertain about the future economic outlook. Many of them pull back on their expansion plans and stop hiring, which can lead to higher unemployment as some people choose to leave jobs and aren’t replaced.

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  • Report: Elon Musk plans to cut 75% of Twitter workforce

    Report: Elon Musk plans to cut 75% of Twitter workforce

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    SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk plans to lay off most of Twitter’s workforce if and when he becomes owner of the social media company, according to a report Thursday by The Washington Post.

    Musk has told prospective investors in his Twitter purchase that he plans to cut nearly 75% of Twitter’s employee base of 7,500 workers, leaving the company with a skeleton crew, according to the report. The newspaper cited documents and unnamed sources familiar with the deliberations.

    San Francisco-based Twitter and a representative for Musk attorney Alex Spiro did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

    While job cuts have been expected regardless of the sale, the magnitude of Musk’s planned cuts are far more extreme than anything Twitter had planned. Musk himself has alluded to the need to cull some of the company’s staff in the past, but he hadn’t given a specific number — at least not publicly.

    “A 75% headcount cut would indicate, at least out of the gates, stronger free cash flow and profitability, which would be attractive to investors looking to get in on the deal,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. “That said, you can’t cut your way to growth.”

    Ives added that such a drastic reduction in Twitter’s workforce would likely set the company back years.

    Already, experts, nonprofits and even Twitter’s own staff have warned that pulling back investments on content moderation and data security could hurt Twitter and its users. With as drastic a reduction as Musk may be planning, the platform could quickly become overrun with harmful content and spam — the latter of which the Tesla CEO himself has said he’ll address if he becomes owner of the company.

    After his initial $44 billion bid in April to buy Twitter, Musk backed out of the deal, contending Twitter misrepresented the number of fake “spam bot” accounts on its platform. Twitter sued, and a Delaware judge has given both sides until Oct. 28 to work out details. Otherwise, there will be a trial in November.

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  • Report: Elon Musk plans to cut 75% of Twitter workforce

    Report: Elon Musk plans to cut 75% of Twitter workforce

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    SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk plans to lay off most of Twitter’s workforce if and when he becomes owner of the social media company, according to a report Thursday by The Washington Post.

    Musk has told prospective investors in his Twitter purchase that he plans to cut nearly 75% of Twitter’s employee base of 7,500 workers, leaving the company with a skeleton crew, according to the report. The newspaper cited documents and unnamed sources familiar with the deliberations.

    San Francisco-based Twitter and a representative for Musk attorney Alex Spiro did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

    While job cuts have been expected regardless of the sale, the magnitude of Musk’s planned cuts are far more extreme than anything Twitter had planned. Musk himself has alluded to the need to cull some of the company’s staff in the past, but he hadn’t given a specific number — at least not publicly.

    “A 75% headcount cut would indicate, at least out of the gates, stronger free cash flow and profitability, which would be attractive to investors looking to get in on the deal,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. “That said, you can’t cut your way to growth.”

    Ives added that such a drastic reduction in Twitter’s workforce would likely set the company back years.

    Already, experts, nonprofits and even Twitter’s own staff have warned that pulling back investments on content moderation and data security could hurt Twitter and its users. With as drastic a reduction as Musk may be planning, the platform could quickly become overrun with harmful content and spam — the latter of which the Tesla CEO himself has said he’ll address if he becomes owner of the company.

    After his initial $44 billion bid in April to buy Twitter, Musk backed out of the deal, contending Twitter misrepresented the number of fake “spam bot” accounts on its platform. Twitter sued, and a Delaware judge has given both sides until Oct. 28 to work out details. Otherwise, there will be a trial in November.

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  • Fewer people seek US unemployment aid amid solid hiring

    Fewer people seek US unemployment aid amid solid hiring

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    WASHINGTON — The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits dropped last week, a sign that few companies are cutting jobs despite high inflation and a weak economy.

    Applications for unemployment benefits for the week ending Sept. 24 fell by 16,000 to 193,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That is the lowest level of unemployment claims since April. Last week’s number was revised down by 4,000 to 209,000.

    Jobless aid applications generally reflect layoffs. The current figures are very low historically and suggest Americans are benefiting from an unusually high level of job security. A year ago this week, 376,000 people applied for benefits.

    The economy shrank in the first half of the year, the government said in a separate report Thursday on gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy’s output.

    Yet employers, who have struggled to rehire after laying off 22 million workers at the height of the pandemic, are still looking to fill millions of open jobs. There are currently roughly two open positions for every unemployed worker, near a record high.

    With companies desperate for workers, they are much more likely to hold onto their current staff.

    Employers are also offering higher pay and benefits to attract and keep employees. Those higher salaries are contributing to inflation pressures.

    The Federal Reserve is aiming to bring down inflation by rapidly raising its key interest rate, which is currently in a range of 3% to 3.25%. A little more than six months ago, that rate was near zero. The sharp rate hikes have pushed up mortgage rates and other borrowing costs. The Fed hopes that higher interest rates will slow borrowing and spending and drive inflation down towards its 2% target.

    Fed officials are increasingly warning that the unemployment rate will likely have to rise as part of their fight against rising prices. If the number of unemployment claims drops, as it did last week, it suggests the Fed may have to raise rates even higher than it plans to slow the economy.

    ———

    This has been corrected to show that the level of unemployment benefits applications is the lowest since April, rather than May.

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  • Vodafone plans 11,000 job cuts | CNN Business

    Vodafone plans 11,000 job cuts | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Vodafone said Tuesday it would cut 11,000 jobs over three years, as the telecom company unveiled a turnaround plan to revive its fortunes following years of poor performance.

    The job cuts would affect the firm’s UK headquarters and operations in other countries, Vodafone

    (VOD)     added in a statement. Shares slid more than 4% in London.

    “Our performance has not been good enough,” CEO Margherita Della Valle said. “We will simplify our organization, cutting out complexity to regain our competitiveness.”

    Two decades ago, Vodafone was the world’s biggest mobile telecom group, having bought Germany’s Mannesmann in 2000 in the largest takeover in history. The deal was valued above $190 billion.

    But the company, which has businesses in 21 countries and partnership agreements with local operators in another 46 locations, has struggled to retain market share.

    Vodafone employs 104,000 people worldwide, according to its latest annual report. Apart from the United Kingdom, it is a major provider of mobile networks in Germany, Spain, Italy and parts of Africa.

    Della Valle, who was appointed to the role three weeks ago after almost 30 years with the company, said her priorities were “customers, simplicity and growth.”

    European telecoms companies have fared particularly poorly over the past decade, delivering lower returns to shareholders than in the United States, according to McKinsey.

    Within a challenging sector, Vodafone’s performance relative to peers had “worsened over time,” Della Valle said in a video posted to the company’s website.

    “Our performance relative to our major competitors in our largest markets has not been good enough, and we know that this is strongly connected to the experience of our customers not being good enough,” she added. Shares in Vodafone have fallen 28% over the past year.

    Under its turnaround plan, Vodafone would invest more in its customer experience and also direct more resources towards Vodafone Business, serving corporate clients, which was growing in nearly all the company’s European markets.

    The strategic overhaul comes as Vodafone’s results showed revenue for the year to March grew by just 0.3% to €45.7 billion ($49.8 billion). Adjusted earnings declined to €14.7 billion ($16 billion), below the company’s own guidance, because of high energy prices and a weak performance in Germany, its biggest market.

    Vodafone said it would generate free cash flow of around €3.3 billion ($3.6 billion) for this financial year, compared to €4.8 billion ($5.2 billion) for the year to end March.

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  • Meta’s latest round of layoffs is underway | CNN Business

    Meta’s latest round of layoffs is underway | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Facebook parent Meta on Wednesday began its latest round of layoffs focusing on technical workers, who are often thought of as more immune to job cuts in Silicon Valley.

    Meta spokesperson Nkechi Nneji confirmed to CNN that some previously announced layoffs were taking place Wednesday, and pointed to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s March announcement that the company would cut another 10,000 employees in the coming months.

    Zuckerberg’s notice said that restructurings and layoffs in Meta’s tech groups would take place in April. Among those affected by Wednesday’s layoffs were members of the company’s sustainability, well-being, user experience, news feed and messaging teams, according to public LinkedIn posts.

    Meta reportedly told North American employees to work from home on Wednesday in anticipation of the layoffs. (CNN has not independently confirmed that.)

    Members of Meta’s recruiting team were notified of additional layoffs last month, and cuts to the company’s business groups are expected to take place in late May.

    The 10,000 job reductions mark the second recent round of significant job cuts at Meta. The company said in November that it was eliminating approximately 13% of its workforce, or 11,000 jobs, in the single largest round of cuts in its history.

    In September, Meta reported a headcount of 87,314, per a securities filing. With 11,000 job cuts announced in November and the 10,000 announced last month, Meta’s headcount will fall to around 66,000 — a total reduction of about 25%.

    Meta has said the layoffs are part of its “year of efficiency,” as the company attempts to engineer a turnaround following repeated revenue declines, heightened competition, concerns about user growth and big losses in its Reality Labs division amid its pivot to building the so-called metaverse. Zuckerberg has also taken responsibility for over-hiring earlier in the pandemic, when there was strong demand for the company’s products and online advertising, which dropped off somewhat once the world reopened.

    Zuckerberg said last month that, in some cases, it may take through the end of this year to complete its staff restructuring processes.

    “As I’ve talked about efficiency this year, I’ve said that part of our work will involve removing jobs — and that will be in service of both building a leaner, more technical company and improving our business performance to enable our long term vision,” Zuckerberg said in his March statement.

    Meta is set to report earnings for the first three months of 2023 next week, during which Wall Street analysts expect it to post its fourth straight quarterly decline in revenue and a more than 30% decline in profits. Still, Meta’s shareholders appear to have been reassured by Zuckerberg’s plans for efficiency — the company’s shares were up more than 70% year-to-date as of midday Wednesday.

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  • Meta’s business groups cut in latest round of layoffs | CNN Business

    Meta’s business groups cut in latest round of layoffs | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Facebook-parent Meta on Wednesday began cutting employees in its business groups as part of a previously announced round of layoffs, according to social media posts from impacted workers.

    Meta employees in operations, project management, marketing, policy, communications and risk analytics announced on LinkedIn Wednesday morning that they had been laid off.

    The company declined to confirm the reductions were underway, but a Meta spokesperson pointed CNN to the March blog post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing that the company would cut 10,000 employees this year, and that affected members of the business groups would be notified this month.

    Zuckerberg previously said the business groups would be the third and final major round of those layoffs. Laid off members of Meta’s technology and recruiting teams were notified in the past two months. Some smaller reductions may continue through the end of 2023, Zuckerberg said in March.

    The 10,000 job reductions mark the second significant wave of layoffs at Meta in recent months. The company said in November that it was eliminating approximately 13% of its workforce, or 11,000 jobs, in the single largest round of cuts in its history.

    In September, Meta reported a headcount of 87,314, per a securities filing. With the 11,000 job cuts announced in November and the 10,000 announced in March, Meta’s headcount will fall to around 66,000 — a total reduction of about 25% — assuming no additional hiring.

    Meta has said the layoffs are part of its “year of efficiency,” as the company attempts to recover from repeated revenue declines, heightened competition, concerns about user growth and big losses in its Reality Labs division amid its pivot to building the so-called metaverse. Zuckerberg has also taken responsibility for over-hiring earlier in the pandemic, when there was strong demand for the company’s products and online advertising, which dropped off somewhat once the world reopened.

    The turnaround strategy is showing early signs of success. Meta’s stock jumped last month after the company posted a 3% year-over-year revenue increase for the first three months of 2023, reversing a trend of three consecutive quarters of revenue declines. Still, profits declined by nearly a quarter compared to the same period in the prior year, and price per advertisement — an indicator of the health of the company’s core digital ad business — also decreased by 17% from the year prior.

    Zuckerberg said on an earnings call with analysts last month that when Meta started its “efficiency work” late last year, “our business wasn’t performing as well as I wanted, but now we’re increasingly doing this work from a position of strength.”

    But left in its wake are the thousands of employees affected by layoffs.

    “Finding work you care about and believe in and the right people to be in the trenches with is an incredible dream; it also makes moments like this incredibly difficult,” one employee affected by Wednesday’s layoffs said in a LinkedIn post. The employee called the cuts a “shock to the system.”

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  • Job site ZipRecruiter cutting 20% of its staff | CNN Business

    Job site ZipRecruiter cutting 20% of its staff | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Fewer employers looking for workers means 270 employees at job search site ZipRecruiter will soon be out of a job.

    The company is cutting 20% of its staff by the end of this month, the company disclosed in a filing late Wednesday.

    “This action was taken in response to current market conditions and after reducing other discretionary expenses, with a view toward driving long-term efficiency,” according to the filing.

    The company had previously said it is experiencing a “typical softness in jobs posting” in January, but sounded other alarms about a slowing in the labor market. Its first quarter revenue fell 19% from a year earlier and it forecast that its revenue in the current quarter would be down nearly 30% from the second quarter of 2022.

    The job search site still projects adjusted earnings that are roughly the same for this year as last year, although it said to do so it would “respond to our environment quickly” by “increasing our focus on profitability during times of decreased demand from employers.”

    About half of the 270 employees losing their job are in the sales and customer support teams. The company will take a charge of between $7 million to $9 million to cover severance costs. It expects to still make the same level of profits, excluding special items such as severance, as in its earlier guidance.

    It also announced that CEO Ian Siegel agreed to a 30% cut in base salary, as of June 1. He has a base salary of $550,000, according to an earlier filing, but had total compensation last year of about twice that amount.

    Layoffs across the tech sector have become widespread in recent months. Amazon, one of the nation’s largest private-sector employers, has announced two rounds of job cuts this year totaling 27,000 positions, and Facebook holding company Meta has announced 21,000 job cuts since last fall. Alphabet, Microsoft and Salesforce — and especially Twitter — have all announced large job cuts.

    Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said Thursday there have been 137,000 layoffs in the sector in the first five months of the year, the most job cuts in the sector since there were 168,000 in all of 2001, the year after the dot.com bubble burst.

    Despite all the job cuts in technology and also in media, US employers overall are still hiring more people than they’re cutting.

    Private sector employment increased by 278,000 jobs in May, according to ADP’s monthly National Employment Report released Thursday, much stronger than the 170,000 forecast by economists. Economists are also forecasting a gain of 190,000 jobs for May when the Labor Department issues its monthly jobs report Friday. The April jobs report also came in much stronger than expected, as employers added 253,000 jobs.

    Still, hiring is at a slower pace than a year ago, when employers added 445,000 jobs a month, on average, in the first half of 2022. The Labor Department’s count of job openings, while up 3% in April compared to March, is down 14% from a year earlier — though that still means there are 1.8 jobs available for every job seeker.

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  • Google workers in London stage walkout over job cuts | CNN Business

    Google workers in London stage walkout over job cuts | CNN Business

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    Reuters
     — 

    Hundreds of Google employees staged a walkout at the company’s London offices on Tuesday, following a dispute over layoffs.

    In January, Google’s parent company Alphabet announced it was laying off 12,000 employees worldwide, equivalent to 6% of its global workforce.

    The move came amid a wave of job cuts across corporate America, particularly in the tech sector, which has so far seen companies shed more than 290,000 workers since the start of the year, according to tracking site Layoffs.fyi.

    Trade union Unite, which counts hundreds of Google’s UK employees among its members, said the company had ignored concerns put forward by employees.

    “Our members are clear: Google needs to listen to its own advice of not being evil,” said Unite regional officer Matt Whaley.

    “They and Unite will not back down until Google allows workers full union representation, engages properly with the consultation process and treats its staff with the respect and dignity they deserve.”

    A Google employee attending the protest, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, told Reuters that talks between employees and management had been “extremely frustrating.”

    “It has been difficult for those involved. We have a redundancy process for a reason, so that employees can make their voice heard,” they said. “But it feels as if our concerns have fallen on deaf ears.”

    Google’s senior management has been engaged in redundancy talks in many parts of Europe, in line with local employment laws.

    Last month, workers at the company’s Zurich office in Switzerland staged a similar walkout, with employee representatives claiming Google had rejected their proposals to reduce job cuts.

    “As we said on January 20, we’ve made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles globally. We know this is a very challenging time for our employees,” a Google spokesperson said.

    “In the UK, we have been constructively engaging and listening to our employees through numerous meetings, and are working hard to bring them clarity and share updates as soon as we can in adherence with all UK processes and legal requirements.”

    Google employs more than 5,000 people in the United Kingdom.

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  • ‘It’s an especially bad time’: Tech layoffs are hitting ethics and safety teams | CNN Business

    ‘It’s an especially bad time’: Tech layoffs are hitting ethics and safety teams | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, as online platforms began facing greater scrutiny for their impacts on users, elections and society, many tech firms started investing in safeguards.

    Big Tech companies brought on employees focused on election safety, misinformation and online extremism. Some also formed ethical AI teams and invested in oversight groups. These teams helped guide new safety features and policies. But over the past few months, large tech companies have slashed tens of thousands of jobs, and some of those same teams are seeing staff reductions.

    Twitter eliminated teams focused on security, public policy and human rights issues when Elon Musk took over last year. More recently, Twitch, a livestreaming platform owned by Amazon, laid off some employees focused on responsible AI and other trust and safety work, according to former employees and public social media posts. Microsoft cut a key team focused on ethical AI product development. And Facebook-parent Meta suggested that it might cut staff working in non-technical roles as part of its latest round of layoffs.

    Meta, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, hired “many leading experts in areas outside engineering.” Now, he said, the company will aim to return “to a more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles,” as part of cuts set to take place in the coming months.

    The wave of cuts has raised questions among some inside and outside the industry about Silicon Valley’s commitment to providing extensive guardrails and user protections at a time when content moderation and misinformation remain challenging problems to solve. Some point to Musk’s draconian cuts at Twitter as a pivot point for the industry.

    “Twitter making the first move provided cover for them,” said Katie Paul, director of the online safety research group the Tech Transparency Project. (Twitter, which also cut much of its public relations team, did not respond to a request for comment.)

    To complicate matters, these cuts come as tech giants are rapidly rolling out transformative new technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality — both of which have sparked concerns about their potential impacts on users.

    “They’re in a super, super tight race to the top for AI and I think they probably don’t want teams slowing them down,” said Jevin West, associate professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. But “it’s an especially bad time to be getting rid of these teams when we’re on the cusp of some pretty transformative, kind of scary technologies.”

    “If you had the ability to go back and place these teams at the advent of social media, we’d probably be a little bit better off,” West said. “We’re at a similar moment right now with generative AI and these chatbots.”

    When Musk laid off thousands of Twitter employees following his takeover last fall, it included staffers focused on everything from security and site reliability to public policy and human rights issues. Since then, former employees, including ex-head of site integrity Yoel Roth — not to mention users and outside experts — have expressed concerns that Twitter’s cuts could undermine its ability to handle content moderation.

    Months after Musk’s initial moves, some former employees at Twitch, another popular social platform, are now worried about the impacts recent layoffs there could have on its ability to combat hate speech and harassment and to address emerging concerns from AI.

    One former Twitch employee affected by the layoffs and who previously worked on safety issues said the company had recently boosted its outsourcing capacity for addressing reports of violative content.

    “With that outsourcing, I feel like they had this comfort level that they could cut some of the trust and safety team, but Twitch is very unique,” the former employee said. “It is truly live streaming, there is no post-production on uploads, so there is a ton of community engagement that needs to happen in real time.”

    Such outsourced teams, as well as automated technology that helps platforms enforce their rules, also aren’t as useful for proactive thinking about what a company’s safety policies should be.

    “You’re never going to stop having to be reactive to things, but we had started to really plan, move away from the reactive and really be much more proactive, and changing our policies out, making sure that they read better to our community,” the employee told CNN, citing efforts like the launch of Twitch’s online safety center and its Safety Advisory Council.

    Another former Twitch employee, who like the first spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of putting their severance at risk, told CNN that cutting back on responsible AI work, despite the fact that it wasn’t a direct revenue driver, could be bad for business in the long run.

    “Problems are going to come up, especially now that AI is becoming part of the mainstream conversation,” they said. “Safety, security and ethical issues are going to become more prevalent, so this is actually high time that companies should invest.”

    Twitch declined to comment for this story beyond its blog post announcing layoffs. In that post, Twitch noted that users rely on the company to “give you the tools you need to build your communities, stream your passions safely, and make money doing what you love” and that “we take this responsibility incredibly seriously.”

    Microsoft also raised some alarms earlier this month when it reportedly cut a key team focused on ethical AI product development as part of its mass layoffs. Former employees of the Microsoft team told The Verge that the Ethics and Society AI team was responsible for helping to translate the company’s responsible AI principles for employees developing products.

    In a statement to CNN, Microsoft said the team “played a key role” in developing its responsible AI policies and practices, adding that its efforts have been ongoing since 2017. The company stressed that even with the cuts, “we have hundreds of people working on these issues across the company, including net new, dedicated responsible AI teams that have since been established and grown significantly during this time.”

    Meta, maybe more than any other company, embodied the post-2016 shift toward greater safety measures and more thoughtful policies. It invested heavily in content moderation, public policy and an oversight board to weigh in on tricky content issues to address rising concerns about its platform.

    But Zuckerberg’s recent announcement that Meta will undergo a second round of layoffs is raising questions about the fate of some of that work. Zuckerberg hinted that non-technical roles would take a hit and said non-engineering experts help “build better products, but with many new teams it takes intentional focus to make sure our company remains primarily technologists.”

    Many of the cuts have yet to take place, meaning their impact, if any, may not be felt for months. And Zuckerberg said in his blog post announcing the layoffs that Meta “will make sure we continue to meet all our critical and legal obligations as we find ways to operate more efficiently.”

    Still, “if it’s claiming that they’re going to focus on technology, it would be great if they would be more transparent about what teams they are letting go of,” Paul said. “I suspect that there’s a lack of transparency, because it’s teams that deal with safety and security.”

    Meta declined to comment for this story or answer questions about the details of its cuts beyond pointing CNN to Zuckerberg’s blog post.

    Paul said Meta’s emphasis on technology won’t necessarily solve its ongoing issues. Research from the Tech Transparency Project last year found that Facebook’s technology created dozens of pages for terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda. According to the organization’s report, when a user listed a terrorist group on their profile or “checked in” to a terrorist group, a page for the group was automatically generated, although Facebook says it bans content from designated terrorist groups.

    “The technology that’s supposed to be removing this content is actually creating it,” Paul said.

    At the time the Tech Transparency Project report was published in September, Meta said in a comment that, “When these kinds of shell pages are auto-generated there is no owner or admin, and limited activity. As we said at the end of last year, we addressed an issue that auto-generated shell pages and we’re continuing to review.”

    In some cases, tech firms may feel emboldened to rethink investments in these teams by a lack of new laws. In the United States, lawmakers have imposed few new regulations, despite what West described as “a lot of political theater” in repeatedly calling out companies’ safety failures.

    Tech leaders may also be grappling with the fact that even as they built up their trust and safety teams in recent years, their reputation problems haven’t really abated.

    “All they keep getting is criticized,” said Katie Harbath, former director of public policy at Facebook who now runs tech consulting firm Anchor Change. “I’m not saying they should get a pat on the back … but there comes a point in time where I think Mark [Zuckerberg] and other CEOs are like, is this worth the investment?”

    While tech companies must balance their growth with the current economic conditions, Harbath said, “sometimes technologists think that they know the right things to do, they want to disrupt things, and aren’t always as open to hearing from outside voices who aren’t technologists.”

    “You need that right balance to make sure you’re not stifling innovation, but making sure that you’re aware of the implications of what it is that you’re building,” she said. “We won’t know until we see how things continue to operate moving forward, but my hope is that they at least continue to think about that.”

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  • LinkedIn to cut 716 jobs and shut its China app amid ‘challenging’ economic climate | CNN Business

    LinkedIn to cut 716 jobs and shut its China app amid ‘challenging’ economic climate | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    LinkedIn, the world’s largest social media platform for professionals, is cutting 716 positions and shutting down its jobs app in mainland China, the California-based company announced.

    The decision was made amid shifts in customer behavior and slower revenue growth, CEO Ryan Roslansky said Monday in a letter to employees.

    “As we guide LinkedIn through this rapidly changing landscape, we are making changes to our Global Business Organization and our China strategy that will result in a reduction of roles for 716 employees,” he said.

    LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft

    (MSFT)    , has joined a slew of US tech companies that have made significant job cuts this year. Meta announced in March an additional 10,000 layoffs on top of mass layoffs announced in 2022. Amazon also said during the same month it would eliminate 9,000 positions, on the heels of the 18,000 roles the company announced it was cutting in January.

    “As we plan for [the fiscal year of 2024], we’re expecting the macro environment to remain challenging,” Roslansky said. “We will continue to manage our expenses as we invest in strategic growth areas.”

    As part of the move, LinkedIn will phase out InCareer, its app for mainland China, by August 9.

    Roslansky cited “fierce competition” and “a challenging macroeconomic climate” as the reason for the shutdown.

    LinkedIn will retain some presence in China, including providing services for companies operating there to hire and train employees outside the country, according to a company spokesperson.

    LinkedIn is the last major Western social media app still operating in mainland China. Twitter, Facebook and Youtube have been banned in the country for more than a decade. Google left in early 2010.

    LinkedIn first entered China in 2014 by launching a localized version of its main app. But its moves to censor posts in the country, in accordance with Chinese laws, came under criticism.

    In March 2021, LinkedIn had to suspend signups in China to ensure it was “in compliance with local law.” A few months later, it replaced that app with InCareer, which was focused solely on job postings, with no social networking features such as sharing or commenting.

    The US social media site has faced tough competition in China. By 2021, it had more than 50 million members in the country, making it the company’s third biggest market after the United States and India. But it lagged behind local competitors such as Maimai.

    Maimai was launched in 2013 and dubbed the Chinese version of LinkedIn. In a few years it surpassed LinkedIn to become the most popular professional networking platform in the country, with 110 million verified members. A major feature that powered its success was that it allowed users to post anonymously in a chat forum.

    The operating environment in China has also become more challenging. Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he has tightened control over what can be said online and launched a series of crackdowns on the internet.

    “While we’ve found success in helping Chinese members find jobs and economic opportunity, we have not found that same level of success in the more social aspects of sharing and staying informed,” LinkedIn wrote in an October 2021 blog post. “We’re also facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China.”

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  • First on CNN: Senators press Google, Meta and Twitter on whether their layoffs could imperil 2024 election | CNN Business

    First on CNN: Senators press Google, Meta and Twitter on whether their layoffs could imperil 2024 election | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Three US senators are pressing Facebook-parent Meta, Google-parent Alphabet and Twitter about whether their layoffs may have hindered the companies’ ability to fight the spread of misinformation ahead of the 2024 elections.

    In a letter to the companies dated Tuesday, the lawmakers warned that reported staff cuts to content moderation and other teams could make it harder for the companies to fulfill their commitments to election integrity.

    “This is particularly troubling given the emerging use of artificial intelligence to mislead voters,” wrote Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Vermont Democratic Sen. Peter Welch and Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by CNN.

    Since purchasing Twitter in October, Elon Musk has slashed headcount by more than 80%, in some cases eliminating entire teams.

    Alphabet announced plans to cut roughly 12,000 workers across product areas and regions earlier this year. And Meta has previously said it would eliminate about 21,000 jobs over two rounds of layoffs, hitting across teams devoted to policy, user experience and well-being, among others.

    “We remain focused on advancing our industry-leading integrity efforts and continue to invest in teams and technologies to protect our community – including our efforts to prepare for elections around the world,” Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta, said in a statement to CNN about the letter.

    Alphabet and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The pullback at those companies has coincided with a broader industry retrenchment in the face of economic headwinds. Peers such as Microsoft and Amazon have also trimmed their workforces, while others have announced hiring freezes.

    But the social media companies are coming under greater scrutiny now in part due to their role facilitating the US electoral process.

    Tuesday’s letter asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino how each company is preparing for the 2024 elections and for mis- and disinformation surrounding the campaigns.

    To illustrate their concerns, the lawmakers pointed to recent changes at Alphabet-owned YouTube to allow the sharing of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, along with what they described as content moderation “challenges” at Twitter since the layoffs.

    The letter, which seeks responses by July 10, also asked whether the companies may hire more content moderation employees or contractors ahead of the election, and how the platforms may be specifically preparing for the rise of AI-generated deepfakes in politics.

    Already, candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appear to have used fake, AI-generated images to attack their opponents, raising questions about the risks that artificial intelligence could pose for democracy.

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  • AI is already linked to layoffs in the industry that created it | CNN Business

    AI is already linked to layoffs in the industry that created it | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Many have raised alarms about the potential for artificial intelligence to displace jobs in the years ahead, but it’s already causing upheaval in one industry where workers once seemed invincible: tech.

    A small but growing number of tech firms have cited AI as a reason for laying off workers and rethinking new hires in recent months, as Silicon Valley races to adapt to rapid advances in the technology being developed in its own backyard.

    Chegg, an education technology company, disclosed in a regulatory filing last month that it was cutting 4% of its workforce, or about 80 employees, “to better position the Company to execute against its AI strategy and to create long-term, sustainable value for its students and investors.”

    IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in an interview with Bloomberg in May that the company expects to pause hiring for roles it thinks could be replaced with AI in the coming years. (In a subsequent interview with Barrons, however, Krishna said that he felt his earlier comments were taken out of context and stressed that “AI is going to create more jobs than it takes away.”)

    And in late April, file-storage service Dropbox said that it was cutting about 16% of its workforce, or about 500 people, also citing AI.

    In its most-recent layoffs report, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said 3,900 people were laid off in May due to AI, marking its first time breaking out job cuts based on that factor. All of those cuts occurred in the tech sector, according to the firm.

    With these moves, Silicon Valley may not only be leading the charge in developing AI but also offering an early glimpse into how businesses may adapt to those tools. Rather than render entire skill sets obsolete overnight, as some might fear, the more immediate impact of a new crop of AI tools appears to be forcing companies to shift resources to better take advantage of the technology — and placing a premium on workers with AI expertise.

    “Over the last few months, AI has captured the world’s collective imagination, expanding the potential market for our next generation of AI-powered products more rapidly than any of us could have anticipated,” Dropbox CEO Drew Houston wrote in a note to staff announcing the job cuts. “Our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development.”

    In response to a request for comment on how its realignment around AI is playing out, Dropbox directed CNN to its careers page, where it is currently hiring for multiple roles focused on “New AI Initiatives.”

    Dan Wang, a professor at Columbia Business School, told CNN that AI “will cause organizations to restructure,” but also doesn’t see it playing out as machines replacing humans just yet.

    “AI, as far as I see it, doesn’t necessarily replace humans, but rather enhances the work of humans,” Wang said. “I think that the kind of competition that we all should be thinking more about is that human specialists will be replaced by human specialists who can take advantage of AI tools.”

    The AI-driven tech layoffs come amid broader cuts in the industry. Many tech companies have been readjusting to an uncertain economic environment and waning levels of demand for digital services more than three years into the pandemic.

    Some 212,294 workers in the tech industry have been laid off in 2023 alone, according to data tracked by Layoffs.fyi, already surpassing the 164,709 recorded in 2022.

    But in the shadow of those mass layoffs, the tech industry has also been gripped by an AI fervor and invested heavily in AI talent and tech.

    In January, just days after Microsoft announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees as part of broader cost-cutting measures, the company also confirmed it was making a “multibillion dollar” investment into OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. And in March, in the same letter to staff Mark Zuckerberg used to announce plans to lay off another 10,000 workers (after cutting 11,000 positions last November), the Meta CEO also outlined plans for investing heavily in AI.

    Even software engineers in Silicon Valley who once seemed uniquely in demand now appear to be at risk of losing their jobs, or losing out on salary gains to those with more AI expertise.

    Roger Lee, a startup founder who has been tracking tech industry layoffs via his website Layoffs.fyi, also runs Comprehensive.io, which examines job listings and compensation data across some 3,000 tech companies.

    Lee told CNN that a recent analysis of data from Comprehensive.io shows the average salary for a senior software engineer specializing in artificial intelligence or machine learning is 12% higher than for those who don’t specialize in that area, a data point he dubs “the AI premium.” The average salary for a senior software engineer specializing in AI or machine learning has also increased by some 4% since the beginning of the year, whereas the average salary for senior software engineers as a whole has stayed flat, he said.

    Lee noted Dropbox as an example of a company offering notably high pay for AI roles, citing a base salary listing of $276,300 to $373,800 for a Principal Machine Learning Engineer role. (By comparison, Comprehensive.io’s data puts the current average salary for a senior software engineer at $171,895.)

    Those looking to thrive in the tech industry and beyond may need to brush up on their AI skills.

    Wang, the professor at Columbia Business School, told CNN that starting this past spring semester, he began requiring his students to familiarize themselves with the new crop of generative AI tools on the market. “That type of exposure I think is absolutely critical for setting themselves up for success and once they graduate,” Wang said.

    It’s not that everyone needs to become AI specialists, Wang added, but rather that workers should know how to use AI tools to become more efficient at whatever they’re doing.

    “That’s where the kind of a battleground for talent is really shifting,” Wang said, “as differentiation in terms of talent comes from creative and effective ways to integrate AI into daily tasks.”

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  • Laid Off or Moving On? Let’s Dispel Myths of the Hidden Job Market and Find Work You Love

    Laid Off or Moving On? Let’s Dispel Myths of the Hidden Job Market and Find Work You Love

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    BOOK RELEASE: Losing Your Job & Finding Yourself: Memoir, Myths, and Methods for Inventive Career Transitions (WordsPerfected, LLC)

    Press Release
    –


    updated: Dec 8, 2016


    West Chester, PA, December 8, 2016 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Mass layoffs continue, and millions of people feel lost at sea when they lose their jobs or want to change careers. Along with holiday cheer, many employees are laid off or decide to move on at this time of year.

    Whether losing a job by layoff or by choice, Ms. Brout’s memoir and guide offers solace, insights, and actions for navigating an experience than can be traumatic, turbulent, and triumphant.

    Losing Your Job & Finding Yourself is a rare gift for professionals who want to figure out what’s next in their careers. When job loss and turbulence comes with feeling like there’s nowhere to go, Nancy’s honest and insightful memoir is a beacon for possibility, and a roadmap for how to get to that job that means so much.

    Dr. Paulette Gabriel, President, Key Leadership

    Contrary to popular belief, today’s winning formula to find work we love is to network less; job hunt online more.

    Having landed all of her positions by applying for advertised jobs, Nancy Brout crushes pervasive myths about the “hidden job market” and networking. After 20 years in one company, Ms. Brout conducted four search strategies, discovered work she was meant to do, helped clients gain confidence and find new jobs, and landed in an amazing job of her own.

    Conventional wisdom that 80% of jobs are never advertised is long overdue for extinction. At least 40% of new hires are found through online channels, and this is growing exponentially. Professionals who don’t use online job boards, social media, and company career sites to generate interviews and offers are missing primary pathways to land their next jobs. Job seekers get results with Ms. Brout’s divergent Sweet Spot Job Search Method and tips on 25 Activities that are more and less effective for self-discovery, job hunting, networking, and finding work we love.

    Visit WordsPerfected.net to learn more! 

    Press Contact: Nancy Brout; 215.385.1050, nbrout@WordsPerfected.net

    Source: WordsPerfected, LLC

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