10.13.22
Gemini version available ♊︎US Layoffs Accelerating
Reprinted with permission from Ryan
Yesterday, over 1,000 US tech layoffs were announced in one day, and that’s just from looking at Layoffs Tracker.
Some numbers don’t even get published because they try to keep it in an Internal Memo and threaten people’s severance pay if they discuss details with the media.
And companies that lay off generally also do a hiring freeze and don’t replace people who quit. (Stealth Layoff)
Today, there’s several big examples.
For starters, Intel, which just got many billions of dollars in bailout money over the CHIPS Act, which Bailout Biden signed, announced that its sales are a disaster and it will be cutting thousands of jobs as the (Windows) PC market collapses.
Techrights has been covering the demise of Windows “Vista” 11. Microsoft has a self-inflicted gunshot wound. They figured that they could artificially juice new PC sales by disallowing most upgrade installs for PCs that are older than 2018(!) through ridiculous requirements like TPM 2.0 and a software block that blocks some computers even if they have a TPM 2.0.
So Windows “11” depends on a new computer, pretty much, and nobody is buying them because thousands of people lose their jobs each day in America now.
The market share of Vista 11 is very tiny and many people who want an upgrade path are choosing GNU/Linux distributions, Chromebooks, and Macs (if they have money for it in this environment).
Windows was already losing 2% of its desktop marketshare every year for the past several years, according to PornHub Insights and was down to just 64.7% last year (all versions). A trend which will no doubt accelerate.
On top of Vista 11’s failure to achieve any sort of market penetration, Microsoft went ahead and bolted on the new APIs that may even be somewhat interesting into Vista 10 updates. Vista 10 is less bloated than 11 anyway.
Microsoft cutting them off and demanding a new computer is no longer a threat, because the new computer wouldbe a Chromebook or a Mac, or they would format the system and install GNU/Linux.
So Microsoft is in the unenviable position they’ve gotten themselves into of splitting “Windows” into two things that need to be “maintained” and with little to show for it other than the liability.
Microsoft and Intel still have each other, for a combined total of a balkanized legacy platform full of bugs, bloat, security vulnerabilities, horrible power management, and other LULZ.
Now their empire of legacy software doesn’t seem to be saving them, so they’re getting very aggressive and disabling (by default) the “Secure” Boot (Security Theater Boot) certificate that they sign GNU/Linux distributions with so that it adds more of a hurdle for the user to escape while still leaving the possibility open (for now) to avoid triggering a major lawsuit.
Moving on…
Cartoon Network was essentially shut down (Creative Talent like writers/animators sacked). 125 job losses and 43 open positions eliminated, but the parent company has its first Black CEO, says WGN Chicago. (WGN distracts from layoffs by mentioning the irrelevant race of the new CEO of Warner Bros/Discovery.)
Walmart announced that it is laying off 1,500 more people (after the hundreds of corporate jobs) and they’re blue collar workers this time in an Atlanta “fulfillment center” (warehouse).
Crypto.com lied about the size of its layoffs in June. It turns out that it was at least 40% of the people working there. At the time, they said it was 260 employees, and turns out that it was well over 2,000.
Mortgage originator bankruptcies are piling up. Layoffs in banking and credit unions all across the country, thousands. Too many to track or list here individually. Due to mortgage rates spiking, few loans. No real need of loan officers anymore.
Pharmaceutical company layoffs. All over the place. Amneal recently announced it was closing their entire facility on Long Island, cutting 86 jobs.
Oracle laid off 200 more people in California today.
SalesForce in California fired another 90 and went on a hiring freeze.
I could keep going and going, but it’s over 12,000 today alone.
And when you start hitting “days” like this, it’s not hard to see how we’ll all be feeling pretty miserable next year. Investor-facing “news” predicts mass job losses (like this report from Bank of America published by Business Insider…..175,000 job losses per month soon in the “very mild” recession…mild for the billionaires, you know) while consumertard-facing “news” like CNN and Fox are still saying bullshit about strong economy and strong jobs growth.
But articles like “The “quiet quitters’ will be the first to get sacked!” are popping up now too. Victim-blaming. Blame-shifting. Disgusting. Gaslighting. Bullshit. They’re starting to admit you’ll lose your job, but it’s going to be entirely “your fault” you know. They’ll have you know.
Bailout Biden, Trump’s Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and Congress have left us with a jobless economy in hyperinflation where they think that what cures it is to leave people broke so that they’re not just cutting cars, houses, and trips to Disney, but can’t even put food on the table, while they raise our taxes to fund useless new government programs that don’t help anyone and don’t solve any real problems.
Trump threatened to fire Jerome Powell but kept him after Powell promised him cheap money to help him win the election, which is partially where the hyperinflation now comes from. But under Biden, it went on for over another year while the Federal Reserve said “inflation is temporary and not a concern”.
That and Trump’s massive fraud bill, the CARES Act. Now they admit that almost all of the money has been forgiven and there’s hundreds of thousands of fraudulent loans, most of which will just be a taxpayer loss that never gets prosecuted.
This is America now. █
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