Which brings us back to Mr. Musk, and his annihilating of most of the workforce at Twitter while antagonizing many of its power users. Musk recentlythat the site will wind down its long-running legacy checkmark system of verifying users’ identities this weekend, another attempt to steer users toward dropping $8 a month for a Twitter Blue subscription.
Finding the balance for these tech companies is going to prove to be almost impossible. Musk took Twitter right to the edge of a breaking point and then stopped firing. Some people I’ve spoken to who once worked at Twitter have argued that his trimming went too far. Former Twitter employees I’ve spoken to have said the morale at Twitter now has been decimated.
The latest round of layoffs in Silicon Valley as a whole is largely tied to revenues and EBITDA and keeping profit-seeking investors on Wall Street happy. Amazon’s stock is down 40% since this time last year. Alphabet’s stock is down about 28% over this time period. While Meta’s stock is now rebounding the stock was decimated at the end of last year, after Meta’s value fell by hundreds of billions of dollars.
, the very people responsible for developing and fine-tuning these revolutionary technologies may find themselves on the receiving end of an ironic twist of fate. AI systems are growing ever more sophisticated, capable of taking on tasks that previously required a human touch. From customer-service chatbots to advanced machine-learning algorithms that streamline complex processes, AI is changing the landscape of the tech industry at breakneck speed.
The prospect of massive layoffs in the tech sector, once thought unthinkable, now looms larger than ever as a never-ending trimming takes place. As companies continue to push the boundaries of what AI can do, an increasing number of tech workers may find themselves expendable.