If the myth of tech over the past decade has been one of constant innovation, algorithmic scale, and new products and devices that “simply work,” the truth is that all of those illusions were made possible by the obfuscation of labor: the contract content moderators who sanitize the feeds of Facebook and YouTube from violence and extremist content; the warehouse workers at Amazon fulfillment centers trying to meet the guarantees of same-day shipping; the gig workers of all kinds — Uber drivers, food delivery cyclists, Instacart shoppers, among them — all of whom are at the whims of increasingly efficient platforms and wayward legislation.
And that’s not even to speak of the white-collar tech workforce that, while better compensated, is still being taken advantage of by NDAs and mandatory arbitration clauses that keep hidden the realities of discrimination and harassment in the office. But now, some workers across tech companies are organizing for better treatment and pay. Others are making efforts to unionize. Most importantly, the movement will reach everyone who works in tech — and anyone who uses those platforms. The story of the tech industry over the next decade will be the reckoning brought on by its workforce.
Bloomberg prompted GPT-3.5 to sort equally-qualified resumes for jobs like software engineer and financial analyst. Over the course of thousands of tests, Bloomberg found resumes with names distinct to Black Americans were least likely to be ranked as top candidates.
Deadline reports that film and TV labor unions are ready to strike if talks break down with Hollywood studios tomorrow. Studios previously narrowly averted a strike with one of the unions, the Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), in 2021.
Now, the IATSE is preparing to bargain for health and pension benefits with two other unions for “the first time since 1988,” according to the Teamsters.
According to Bloomberg, Rockstar will ask employees to return to the office five days a week beginning in April. In an email sent to employees, Jenn Kolbe, head of publishing, wrote security and productivity were the main reasons for implementing RTO as well as the “tangible benefits” of in-office work.
Security issues are indeed a concern for Rockstar as it suffered a massive data breach in which hackers leaked early footage of GTA VI. But it’ll likely be a hard sell convincing employees to return to the office full-time and could result in increased attrition.
Just one day after PlayStation laid off 900 employees (which followed layoffs from Activision Blizzard, Riot Games, Discord, Unity, and others), EA announced on Wednesday that it’s cutting 5 percent of workers, which amounts to around 670 roles.
The game publisher also said that it’s “moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry,” allowing it to focus on its own IP, sports, and online communities.
[Electronic Arts]
Fourteen Amazon employees can no longer access the European Parliament building without an invitation, WIRED reported Wednesday. And it’s all because they skipped a hearing about working conditions in its fulfillment centers and declined to let policymakers tour them (Amazon blamed the busy holiday period, WIRED said).
Wired writes about how tech job interviews have gotten even more demanding after the series of layoffs that rocked the industry these past few years:
Emails reviewed by Wired showed that in one interview for an engineering role at Netflix, a technical recruiter requested that a job candidate submit a three-page project evaluation within 48 hours—all before the first round of interviews.
A Netflix spokesperson said the process is different for each role and otherwise declined to comment.
A similar email at Snap outlined a six-part interview process for a potential engineering candidate, with each part lasting an hour. A company spokesperson says its interview process hasn’t changed as a result of labor market changes.
Nearly 700 workers across multiple Ubisoft offices in France have gone on strike. The strike originally began on February 14th after negotiations between Ubisoft and the STJV (Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo) union fell through, citing a failure to agree on wage increases.
Last year, Ubisoft laid off around 124 employees, the majority of which were in Canada.
[GamesIndustry.biz]
Thanks to AI, rote tasks are ripe for automation. But is that really a good thing?
In a memo obtained by TechCrunch, Mozilla said the company is making a “strategic correction” that will involve “working through a much smaller team to participate in the Mastodon ecosystem.” The company launched its mozilla.social instance last year.
Additionally, Mozilla is shutting down Hubs, its virtual 3D platform initially launched in 2018. Mozilla says the platform’s userbase isn’t “robust enough to justify continuing to dedicate resources” during an “unfavorable shift in demand.” This shift comes just days after Mozilla appointed Laura Chambers as its interim CEO.
From his full interview today with Andrew Ross Sorkin:
“I don’t think most companies engage with employees in the transparent way we do, and I think that creates some of this conversation outside. But I’ve always viewed it as a source of strength for the company and we’ll work through this moment.”
WMG CEO Robert Kyncl -- who thinks you could pay more for Spotify-- revealed the record label will lay off 10 percent of its workforce, or 600 employees. It’s winding down the podcast division behind Rap Radar and Drink Champs, and IMGN Media. It’s also in an “exclusive process” to sell Uproxx and HipHopDX.
Earlier on Wednesday, WMG reported Q1 revenue of $1.75 billion — its highest quarterly revenue since it went public, and net income of $193 million.
Here are just a couple of employee-submitted questions that CEO Sundar Pichai answered during the company’s all hands last week:
“There seems to be a growing rift between leadership and employees. What is leadership’s perspective/awareness of this? Do you think there is a problem, is there anything being done to push us back to a relationship of mutual trust?”
“Why has there been such an extraordinary effort to limit the internal visibility of layoffs announcements? I’ve learned more about layoffs in my own PA from The Verge than from my own employer.”
ICYMI: There’s much from that meeting, including new tidbits about the company’s AI strategy, in the last issue of Command Line.
That’s according to data from tech layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi, which recorded 29,995 job cuts across 112 different companies in 2024. The data also includes the 150 layoffs at Zoom that just happened today, too.
The company, which owns financial services like Cash App and Square, is laying off close to 1,000 employees, according to a report from Business Insider. Here’s what Dorsey told employees in a memo seen by BI:
Why is so much happening in one single day?... We decided it would be better to do at once rather than arbitrarily space them out, which didn’t seem fair to the individuals or to the company When we know we need to take an action, we want to take it immediately, rather than let things linger on forever.
CEO Alex Chriss told employees that PayPal is cutting existing jobs and open roles as part of an effort to “right-size” the company, according to a report from Bloomberg. The layoffs will reportedly impact around 2,500 workers.
PayPal is far from the only company in the tech industry to get hit with layoffs this year. Microsoft, Google, eBay, and many others have also been affected.
It seems as if Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch and Call of Duty esports teams are getting hit with layoffs. On the Overwatch side, the entire observation crew has reportedly been let go along with long-time broadcast talent Soe “Soe” Gschwind and Matt “Mr. X” Morello.
On the Call of Duty side, according to a post from Scott Parkin, senior esports operations manager, Blizzard made the CDL team work a major event over the weekend without telling the team if their jobs were safe — only to lay them off on their first day off. It’s unknown if these layoffs are new or part of the 1,900 people let go last week.
That’s right, Trader Joe’s also thinks the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional, just like Musk’s SpaceX. I’m sure this has nothing whatsoever to do with the case the NLRB is bringing against the grocer, and is just a fun coincidence.
Around 60 workers in Los Angeles, New York, Austin, and places outside the US were laid off at TikTok, according to a report from NPR. The layoffs mainly affect workers on TikTok’s sales and advertising teams and follow a string of job cuts from other tech companies this year, including Google, Amazon, Unity, and Discord.
Update January 23rd, 5:16PM ET: Added updated details about the layoffs.
This vibe check comes from an engineer named Diane Hirsh Theriault who has been at the company for over 8 years:
Google does not have one single visionary leader. Not a one. From the C-suite to the SVPs to the VPs, they are all profoundly boring and glassy-eyed.
With rolling layoffs continuing to hit different teams, including the X “moonshot” division today, Theriault writes that “executives are cashing out their human capital at the very moment it seems to me like they really need it.”
[LinkedIn]
Content moderators for the San Francisco-based AI firm Sama — who are based in its Nairobi, Kenya hub — are suing the company and its client Meta, alleging that the job required countless hours of viewing disturbing content, including sexual abuse and grisly murders, according to FT.
The Verge has reported on how AI efforts at companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Meta are supported by “a vast tasker underclass” of workers across Africa, Asia, and South America.
It’s not clear exactly how many Amazon Prime Video and MGM Studios workers are being fired just ten days into the new year, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, the layoffs are coming, and the number in the hundreds.
In a statement about the firings, division head Mike Hopkins described the move as being meant to increase “our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact.”
The Amazon-owned game streaming platform could lay off around 500 workers as soon as Wednesday, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Twitch laid off dozens of workers as part of Amazon’s company-wide cuts last year, and it recently shut down its service in South Korea due to “prohibitively expensive” costs.
Last year SAG-AFTRA signed a landmark new contract with the AMPTP that included protections around AI-generated performances.
Now it’s signed a contract with an AI voice acting company called Replica Studios that it hopes will make licensing AI performances of actors easier — particularly for video games.
