I’ve seen this before. The result is a revolving door of temporary work. Because soon companies will be “you already put 6 months in, we don’t have enough signal work 6 more months” and at the year mark they swap you for a new candidate.
And before you say that this is inefficient consider that despite being terrible for morale and efficiency (proven in un’etica studies) companies still maintain the bottom 10% out or up or out policies.
Companies always love their power on their employee over efficiency.
Musk cutting the headcount and everything working fine is a myth he perpetrated. In reality things started to go badly almost immediately, big advertisers left.
He then wrapped x in xAI where effectively they are developing new features in x. So that now we effectively don’t really know what the head count is.
I worked in a company that did that. They couldn't rehire the senior after the junior burned with a bug 700k in 20 min by touching a part of the codebase no one had context for anymore.
In the 70 and 80s ppl kept their lifestyle by having their spouse starting to work.
In the 90s and 2000s it was with credit cards. In the 2010s it was apps offering artificially deflated prices to corner markets. And now it’s gambling and buying burritos w Klara.
I think tech ceo got a little bit too excited and their mask fell off and started saying “oh yeah, you don’t like it? Too bad nothing you can do about it”. You’ll see them quickly backpedal to woke 1.0 when it turns out they were a bit too quick about it.
I don’t think the public hates ai. I think AI needs a lot of money so it loudly only pursued the light-bendingly rich by leveraging the only two emotions they have:
1) greed: you will be able to fire all your employees
2) fear: if you don’t buy it someone else will and that is too dangerous for you
Of course normal people found this incredibly off putting.
It is not my claim it is common knowledge. The problem is users here trying to pretend that a standard legal practice is Zuckerberg taking personal responsibility. No he is just following the advice of his legal team.
On severance:
> the reality is that severance payments are just as much about protecting employers as they are about helping employees. In today’s complex labor landscape, employers are acutely aware of the risks associated with employment disputes and potential lawsuits. By offering severance payments, employers aim to minimize their exposure to legal claims, maintain compliance with labor laws, and safeguard their reputation in the marketplace. This practice is not just about goodwill—it’s a calculated move within the broader context of employment law and labor regulations, designed to manage risk and maintain control over the employment relationship. Understanding the real motivations behind severance payments is essential for both employees and employers navigating the ever-evolving world of employment.
They don’t give severance to be nice, severance is hush money. To get the severance employees have to agree to forgo any legal claim they could have with the company.
They have calculated that it’s cheaper to offer this money than to have to pay lawyers to defend the company from pissed former employees seeking to drag the company to court.
No they couldn’t because the severance is paid out of the money the budget set aside for wages for the year.
So out of the 12 months, they give 4 months to the laid off worker and Facebook pockets the other 8 months.
I believe that it's a bit more complicated than that especially if we look at the contributions of IMEC.
But irregardless I can hand you the point that you are making and then say that yours is a very tight standard that would not pass most of what passes for innovation in Silicon Valley.
The point I'm trying to make for the initial poster is that they are confusing "technological innovation" for money making. And yes you don't have a money printing machine in the EU, but you have A LOT of technological innovation that eventually goes to market through SV.
I think it’s to their credit that they don’t have one and instead got cern.
A bunch of shitty crud apps made by mediocre rent seekers that got rich on tax avoidance, gov money + research, and low interest rates vs actual ground breaking research that benefits humanity. Silicon Valley is probably the worst thing that happened to humanity between the 2008 crash and Covid. People have been figuring it out but not after they have already given these scammers permission to inspect their wallets.
A few companies get almost all investments. They start a lot of projects fast and close the ones that don’t work
If companies stuck to fewer projects, money would be invested in other companies focusing on specific products, you get a lot of companies and not the market concentration you got today (which is responsible according to few economists to a lot of the us labor market dysfunctions it is currently experiencing)
You are forgetting 20 years and billions of dollars developing, in collaboration with research institutes like IMEC and funding from chipmakers like Intel, Samsung, and TSMC.
But it doesn’t fit your ideological narrative of how innovation functions so…
He is not putting the shares down himself. He is just subject to price fluctuations like everyone else — so how is he taking personal responsibility for it?
It would be better because it would create a more diverse work space where multiple employers complete for employees, instead of one company playing musical chairs with people
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/02/technology/el...