More Tech Companies Slash Jobs

Dell Technologies Inc are slashing about 6,650 jobs, or 5% of their global workforce, as they struggle with a slump in the personal computer market and brace for a potential recession. 

 

The move on Monday aligns Dell with a raft of US companies, tech and non-tech that have laid off thousands this year to ride out a demand downturn wrought by high inflation and rising interest rates. 

 

Dell had already rolled out cost-cutting moves such as a hiring pause and limits on travel as they dealt with a post-pandemic collapse in PC sales, which account more than half of their revenue. 

 

However, those moves are "no longer enough", co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke wrote in a memo to employees. 

 

“What we know is market conditions continue to erode with an uncertain future", Clarke added. 

 

Dell are expecting to book costs related to the layoffs in their fiscal fourth quarter, which ends in January. 

 

Rival HP Inc have also said they will cut up to 6,000 jobs. The market for PCs and tablets is set for another year of decline in 2023 with a fall of 2.6%, according to research firm IDC, after rapid growth during the pandemic on the back of remote working. 

 

Already on January 25, IBM Corp announced 3,900 layoffs as part of some asset divestments and missed their annual cash target, dampening cheer around beating revenue expectations in the fourth quarter. 

 

The layoffs – related to the spinoff of their Kyndryl business and a part of AI unit Watson Health – will cause a $300 million charge in the January-March period, IBM said. 

 

Meanwhile, Yahoo Inc. are planning to reduce headcount at their Yahoo for Business ad tech unit by almost 50% by the end of 2023, or more than 20% of the workforce at Yahoo. 

 

According to Chief Executive Officer Jim Lanzone on Thursday, they are “very profitable”, adding that the job cuts were due more to the division’s restructuring than troubles in the ad market. “We would’ve made these changes even at the peak of the market”, he maintained. 

 

Yahoo are “still hiring aggressively”, Lanzone added, and employees who lose their jobs will be considered for other roles at the company. 

 

However you may want to spin it, the fact of the matter is that tech companies are slashing jobs!

Google Parent Alphabet’s Turn to Terminate 12,000 Jobs

Layoffs in the tech sector continue unabated. 

 

Google's parent company Alphabet will terminate 12,000 jobs, in the latest staff redundancies to hit the industry. The cuts are expected to affect 6 percent of Alphabet's workforce worldwide, in teams including recruitment and engineering. 

 

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai accepted "full responsibility" for the cuts, in an internal email. 

 

Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities said the layoffs highlight irresponsible spending across a sector basking in "hypergrowth". 

 

"The reality is tech stalwarts over-hired at a pace that was unsustainable and now darker macro is forcing these layoffs across the tech space", he elaborated. 

 

According to tech site Layoffs.fyi, nearly 194,000 industry employees have lost their jobs in the US alone since the beginning of 2022, not including those announced by Alphabet on Friday. 

 

Hewlett Packard and cloud computing giant Salesforce also announced major cuts this month, as rampant inflation and rising interest rates have slowed growth. 

 

Keep March 15 free! World Speech Day 2023 is coming to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia real soon!

 

 

#StopHateForProfit

The #StopHateForProfit campaign (read my Monday’s post “Facebook's Advertiser Revolt”) ensnared more companies – the latest include Adidas, Best Buy, Clorox, Conagra (the maker of Slim Jim, Duncan Hines and Pam), Denny’s, Edgewell Personal Care (brands include Playtex, Schick and Wet Ones), Ford, HP, Puma and Reebok.

But those who advocate it should know that this boycott against Facebook is unlikely to work. Sure, from a PR perspective, it is seen as a roaring success – but will it make Facebook purge racist, violent and verifiably false content to run rampant on their platform? I don’t believe so. 

After all, this isn't the first boycott of a social media company. In 2017, big brand after big brand announced they would stop advertising on YouTube – after ads were placed next to homophobic and racist videos. 

That particular boycott is now almost totally forgotten. YouTube tweaked their ad policies, and three years on YouTube's parent company Google are doing just fine. 

And there are more compelling reasons to believe this boycott won't hurt Facebook as much as we would like to think. 

First, most companies have only committed to a one-month proscription in July.

Secondly, much of Facebook's advertising revenue actually comes from thousands upon thousands of small- to medium-sized businesses. 

Although the boycotting advertisers include some big-name brands, they aren’t necessarily the biggest spenders on the social networking site in the US. For instance, none of these brands were in the top 100 spenders on Facebook in the said country so far this year, according to marketing analytics company Pathmatics. 

CNN had also reported that the highest-spending 100 brands only accounted for $4.2 billion in Facebook advertising last year – or about 6% of the social platform's ad revenue. 

The vast majority of the ‘other’ companies have not signed up – or rather, they are unlikely to sign up. 

That's because these businesses "can't afford not to advertise". They are priced out of advertising on TV and other ‘traditional’ mass media – and so, more affordable and more focussed ads on platforms like Facebook are deemed indispensable. 

Anyway, Facebook executives including Carolyn Everson, vice president of global business solutions, and Neil Potts, public policy director, held at least two meetings with advertisers on Tuesday, the eve of the planned one-month boycott, three sources who participated in the calls told Reuters. 

But they offered no new details on how they would tackle hate speech, the sources said – and so, their last-ditch attempt to derail the boycott failed. Nothing's new because Facebook are not willing to budge to meet #StopHateForProfit demands! 

The harsh reality is all of this is in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg (left) and he doesn’t care. Except making publicized cosmetic changes here and there just to demonstrate he listens – he is unlikely to do more to stop hate content on Facebook. 

As with the #GeorgeFloyd protests, this boycott will, over time, lose momentum. We can then expect a momentary lull and soon after, it will be forgotten. Zuckerberg knows it.

Servers for Snooping

 In an interview with Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff, Carly Fiorina (left)  boasted about collaborating with US intelligence agencies during her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

 

Fiorina’s close, if little-known relationship with the intelligence community dates back to the weeks after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, when she got an urgent phone call from then National Security Agency director Michael Hayden asking her to promptly provide his agency with HP computer servers – and which she did.

 

The servers were needed for a massive warrantless wiretapping surveillance program, including the bulk collection of American citizens’ phone records and emails – codenamed “Stellar Wind” – that had been secretly ordered by then President George W Bush.

 

And Fiorina said she felt it was her "duty".

 

After Hayden became CIA director in 2006, he named Fiorina as chair of an agency external advisory board consisting of former top intelligence officials, generals and business leaders. 

In that capacity, she made regular trips to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, including overseeing one specific project requested by Hayden: Provide advice on how the CIA could maintain their undercover espionage mission in a culture of increasing government leaks and demands for greater public accountability and openness.

 

[Note: Fiorina made a name for herself in the tech industry, climbing the ranks at AT&T and becoming the CEO at HP – and the first female head of a Fortune 500 company – in 1999, before being forced to resign in 2005. And HP's stock went up 7% the day she left].

 

This is the woman who has stoutly defended the torture practice of waterboarding as a way to "keep our nation safe". Enough said!

 

On Monday, I was at the See Hoy Chan office in PJ to attend the Phoenix Toastmasters meeting. 

I delivered a CC #7 speech titled “Women Prefer Cold Hard Cash” – a good well-researched speech actually that even had humor! I was voted Best Speaker.

 

A good turnout even if guests outnumbered members. We started six minutes late and we finished just before ten o’clock. I would score this meeting a 4 over 10.