All posts tagged: Layoffs

‘We’re Just Getting the Crumbs Here’: Striking Contractors Protest Layoffs at Meta’s European Headquarters

‘We’re Just Getting the Crumbs Here’: Striking Contractors Protest Layoffs at Meta’s European Headquarters

Published by skeptic

“We trained the bots. We did the grind. Now we’re being left behind,” chanted a horde of contract workers who gathered outside Meta’s offices in Dublin, Ireland, on Friday afternoon. Waving flags, brandishing signs, and armed with whistles and vuvuzelas, they were out to protest a round of planned layoffs. The workers are employed by Dublin-based company Covalen, which handles content moderation and data labeling services that help Meta to fine-tune its AI products. In April, Covalen told 700 employees that their jobs were at risk, citing “reduced demand,” WIRED reported. A large swath of the affected workers won’t receive any severance because they’ve been employed for less than two years. The rest are being offered the minimum payout required under local labor laws—two weeks’ pay for every year of employment—according to the Communications Workers’ Union (CWU), whose members include Covalen employees. “We’re just getting the crumbs here,” Aadel Obaid, a team manager at Covalen who is part of the planned layoffs, tells WIRED. “Give us a little bit of the pie.” Photograph: Joel Khalili …

Disney’s Marvel Comics Faces Mass Layoffs And New Woke Leadership

Disney’s Marvel Comics Faces Mass Layoffs And New Woke Leadership

Published by Jenni Sidey

The saga of woke comics is the saga of woke America.  Much like video games, comics and superhero movies were ignored by conservative movements as “meaningless kids stuff” until recently, which is part of the reason why those industries were so easily invaded by leftists and used to indoctrinate millions of children and teens a decade ago. Culture is more important than politics.  This is obvious.  It’s a fact that leftists have understood for generations and one that conservatives have foolishly dismissed.  Only in the past few years has there been a shift; at least, the progressive rampage through America’s various media institutions has been stalled and slightly reversed.  But, the most captured platforms are not going to change anytime soon, even in the face of financial decline and mass layoffs.  Disney and Marvel have recently announced a shake-up of the comics division, with over a thousand layoffs this year (after moderate layoffs over the past few years), and new executive leadership.  Far-left DEI advocate Dan Buckley is on the way out.  This change is …

Meta Is in Crisis, Google Search’s Makeover, and AI Gets Booed by Graduates

Meta Is in Crisis, Google Search’s Makeover, and AI Gets Booed by Graduates

Published by skeptic

Leah Feiger: Let’s invest. Zoë Schiffer: They have that going for a while. Leah Feiger: It wasn’t full Google, but it— Zoë Schiffer: Somewhat there. Leah Feiger: —had that vibe. To me, someone so on the outside of this in every single way, I know about these layoffs because they’ve been, A) so chaotic, but B) in some ways, needlessly so. Not to say that other tech companies aren’t firing scores of workers all the time. That feels like something we discuss on this podcast frequently, but this is happening with such a large runway and in a way that’s making employees feel so terrible about themselves. Brian Barrett: Well, because it’s not just the layoffs, right? It’s also, even if you stay there, if you’re not culled from the herd, you are going to have to deal with this world in which you’ve got spyware on your laptops training AI to probably take your job at some point, right? Zoë Schiffer: Explain that a little bit. Brian Barrett: Meta announced, and this was more …

Meta Employees Are Scrambling to Use Up Benefits Ahead of Layoffs

Meta Employees Are Scrambling to Use Up Benefits Ahead of Layoffs

Published by skeptic

Ahead of Meta’s latest round of mass layoffs tomorrow, some employees are deserting offices, abandoning their work, and loading up on perks they might soon lose, several people at the company tell WIRED. Two employees describe a widespread rush to use up an annual $2,000 flexible benefit, which can cover a variety of expenses including health and wellness activities. A separate triennial credit of $200 toward the purchase of audio gear has led to a scramble to purchase Apple AirPods and other headphones. Another source says Meta offices have been largely empty this week, as people prioritize polishing their résumés and gather offsite to commiserate with friends for what may be their final time as colleagues. Employees are variously “paralyzed,” “coasting,” and “panicked,” sources say. Meta plans to lay off about 10 percent of its nearly 80,000 employees on Wednesday, with notices going out to affected workers’ personal and corporate email addresses at 4 am in their local time zone, according to a company-wide memo sent on Monday. The cuts are coming at a time …

Demis Hassabis Thinks AI Job Cuts Are Dumb

Demis Hassabis Thinks AI Job Cuts Are Dumb

Published by skeptic

Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, is keen to talk about the coding skills of his company’s newest model, Gemini 3.5 Flash. The model has been trained to perform complex agentic coding tasks: translate large code bases from one language to another; find and fix bugs lurking deep in knotty code; and even write entire operating systems from scratch. Hassabis does not, however, think this spells doom for software developers. “I have no idea why people are going around talking with certainty about that,” Hassabis tells WIRED ahead of the new model reveal at today’s Google’s I/O event. “Perhaps there is an ulterior motive for putting those messages out; raising money or whatever,” Hassabis says. “From my point of view, from DeepMind and Google’s point of view, if engineers are becoming three or four times more productive, then we just [want to] do three or four times more stuff.” The striking coding abilities of the latest models has led to widespread fear that AI may be on the brink of eliminating programming roles and …

Meta layoffs, AI, and the worsening job market for California tech workers

Meta layoffs, AI, and the worsening job market for California tech workers

Published by Sam Flores

Battered by years of mass layoffs, California tech workers were hoping the job market would rebound this year. But things are getting worse. Now, many are redrawing their career paths. Artificial intelligence has triggered fierce competition for top talent and is also fueling tens of thousands of layoffs this year. The class divide is widening in Silicon Valley as a tiny group of employees is landing unprecedented packages for AI skills, while many others struggle to find work. The have-nots are doing everything that used to guarantee great jobs — refreshing resumes, optimizing LinkedIn profiles and doing interviews — but companies are much more picky these days. The tech jobless are rethinking their lives. Some are taking pay cuts, others are leaving tech. Some are going back to study or launch startups. Some have retired. Basem Istanbouli, a laid-off tech worker, leads a hike with (un)PTO. Basem Istanbouli was laid off by Google more than a year ago but hasn’t landed a new job in the San Francisco Bay Area despite a strong resume with …

NPR offers newsroom buyouts; layoffs could follow : NPR

NPR offers newsroom buyouts; layoffs could follow : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher says the network has a gap of $8 million in its annual budget due to softening corporate sponsorship and the end of federal subsidies for public media stations. Bloomberg via Getty Images/Bloomberg hide caption toggle caption Bloomberg via Getty Images/Bloomberg NPR is restructuring its newsroom, including cutting some reporting and editing jobs, as it attempts to keep pace with changing audience habits while adjusting to an era without federal subsidies. NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher says the network has to fill a gap of $8 million in its $300-million annual budget because of the elimination of federal subsidies for its member stations, which pay NPR to air programs such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered. In a memo to staff, she said the network expects to earn $15 million less in station fees this year and is anticipating a drop in corporate sponsorship revenue. The network is offering buyouts to approximately 300 employees, mostly within newsgathering desks in the newsroom. Staff of NPR’s news programs, including hosts, …

Companies Keep Slashing Employees’ Benefits for the Worst Reasons

Companies Keep Slashing Employees’ Benefits for the Worst Reasons

Published by skeptic

Employee benefits are in the spotlight this week, and that’s because of three recent stories about US companies cutting back on non-wage compensations for workers. A Texas tech consulting firm with a forgettable name—TTEC—suddenly became a lot more memorable when it suspended its discretionary 401(k) match program for 16,000 employees through at least the end of 2026. According to Business Insider, which viewed an internal TTEC memo, the company plans to invest in AI certifications, AI tools and training, and automation, among other things. The auditing and consulting giant Deloitte is also reportedly slashing benefits for some workers starting next year. This includes reducing PTO, halving parental leave, and eliminating a $50,000 reimbursement for family planning services such as adoption, surrogacy, and IVF. San Francisco-based Zoom, meanwhile, has made a smaller-scale change and reduced its parental leave for employees from 22 weeks to 18 weeks for birthing parents. So what’s the driving force behind this? And are there more cuts to come? The latter is impossible to answer, and the former is unfortunately more complicated …

An Engineer’s Post Protesting Laptop Surveillance Is Going Viral Inside Meta

An Engineer’s Post Protesting Laptop Surveillance Is Going Viral Inside Meta

Published by skeptic

Meta’s decision to track employee keystrokes and mouse data is causing an uproar within the company. “Selfishly, I don’t want my screen scraped because it feels like an invasion of my privacy,” wrote an engineer in an internal post seen by nearly 20,000 coworkers this week. “But zooming out, I don’t want to live in a world where humans—employees or otherwise—are exploited for their training data.” The message aimed to rally support for a petition circulating inside the company since last Thursday that demands an end to what Meta calls the Model Capability Initiative. It’s a piece of mandatory software that Meta began installing on the laptops of US employees last month. The tool records employees’ screens when using certain apps with the goal of collecting “real examples of how people actually use” computers, including “mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus,” according to Reuters. Meta has yet to say whether the initial data is paying off. “I’m mixed on Al. On one hand, I really enjoy using it to write software. On the …