Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In recent hours:
- Technology stocks are plummeting in India as the Trump administration raised the H-1B fee, a visa for technical personnel, 100 times to $100,000 (KRW 140 million), Bloomberg reported on the 22nd.
- Seattle, tech boomtown, grapples with a future of fewer tech jobs
- Seattle tech layoffs shake regional economy as Microsoft, Amazon cut tens of thousands
- Is Seattle’s tech scene in trouble? WSJ report highlights concerning trends — with a potential opening for startups
A few days ago we mentioned "Microsoft-Sponsored Xenophobia and Nationalism". Half of the threads we showed have since then disappeared (censored/moderated out of existence), but nevertheless the tone remains very negative:
Microsoft's "value" is basically faked (by at least an order of magnitude), the bleeding (layoffs and other cuts) is never-ending, and seeking cheaper staff elsewhere is likely to become a lot more expensive, no matter what T.A.C.O. or T.A.W.O (Trump Always Weasels Out) does to Microsoft at the end. An associate reminds us that "malignant narcissist" is incurable, untreatable. One way or another they'll make it hard for GAFAM to acquire staff from abroad, so losses will deepen and generally depend on what Microsoft can find domestically (the skills are there, but people won't work 80+ hours a week). In "late stage capitalism" (like cancer) they try to cheapen the labour (lower salaries or longer hours for the same salary); now we're at the age of "late stage hegemony" (India gravitates towards China and Russia).
It's an interesting time, no matter what one adopts morally or politically. There's this good new post in Gopher tonight. To quote:
Still unemployed and lost even the temp job now. Finances are starting to become an urgent problem. The tech industry lost it's moral compass ages ago, but in recent years, it's been shifting away from moral ambiguity straight up into active evil on purpose. As an experienced software developer and systems engineer, I'm sure I could find employment, albeit for less money than in the past, in worse conditions, and, indeed, for a harmful company. And that last bit is the real problem. It's become near impossible to find any employment for a company that doesn't participate (or often these days they outright mandate) AI useage.
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Even when we look beyond the commercial world, and look closer at the open source community, and even the Free Software communities (or what's left of them), you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who actively opposes AI use.
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2) I have been dissapointed with the FSF's response to the rise of "artificial intelligence" within the software world (or perhaps, the lack thereof). We are facing a situation where any GPL-licensed copyleft code that was ever published in any way obtainable on the internet, has been ingested by algorithms, to be later regurgitated into proprietary products for profit.
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To conclude: Given that clearly the FSF's values do not align with my own on a matter that is of utmost importance to the future of software, and given that I'm not really in a position with extra income anymore, canceling my recurring payment, and in the future, come renewal time, my membership, seems like the most reasonable and logical course of action.
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If all the above paints a grim picture, it should. The world is ending. Just when we're at a climate crossroads, the tech world decided to double-down on LLM's, the worst way one could possible compute when it comes to carbon output. Creativity and ingenuity has been distilled down to a commodity to be rented from your corporate robot service, robbed of all humanity.
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Anyway, employment-wise, I don't see any way I can continue in this industry, at all. So as I had mentioned at the end of my vcfmw retrospective, I've started an art business in an attempt to escape the tech world. I can't say it's going well so far, but I'm hoping it will turn around when we start attending events with a booth to sell stuff.
Notice he's not happy with the FSF's stance. RMS persistently speaks out against LLMs, whereas the FSF in general does not say much about the topic/subject (or very infrequently). The FSF needs to become more like RMS, not less like him.
This past summer I sued the person who had helped create Microsoft's project that attacks on the GPL. It's really something that the FSF should have done years earlier (but did not). In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary. █