What do banking problems, layoffs, and Twitter have to do with each other?

Work


Fig. 1. Yeah, this is me. The sign says, “If you’re whining about a labor shortage, STOP ignoring my job applications!” And the QR-code leads here. Photograph by author, January 16, 2023.

There is further evidence for describing our system as neo-feudal.[1]

The latest round of layoffs in Silicon Valley as a whole is largely tied to revenues and [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization] 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 (largely because of laying off more than 25% of its workforce) the stock was decimated at the end of last year, after Meta’s value fell by hundreds of billions of dollars. Wall Street wants to know that these companies are innovating and beating one another in the never-ending tech wars. The math is simple: Work harder, work more, and innovate, or you get fired.[2]

If we had an economic system that actually worked for human beings, the question would not, as it now seems to be in high technology, be how many people we can lay off,[3] but rather, how many people we can employ and employ well.

Beyond that, in accepting an argument that high technology payrolls are bloated, Nick Bilton assumes that Twitter is surviving, simply because it hasn’t completely crashed yet.[4] That’s an astonishingly narrow view as Elon Musk has made the platform a home only for his extremist white Christian nationalist fanboys:[5]

The value that Twitter’s platform produced, by combining valuable streams of qualification and curiosity, is being beaten and wrung out. What’s left has — for months now — felt like an echo-y shell of its former self. And it’s clear that with every freshly destructive decision — whether it’s unbanning the nazis and letting the toxicity rip, turning verification into a pay-to-play megaphone or literally banning journalists — [Elon] Musk has applied his vast wealth to destroying as much of the information network’s value as possible in as short a time as possible; each decision triggering another exodus of expertise as more long-time users give up and depart. . . .

That our system allows wealth to be turned into a weapon to nuke things of broad societal value is one hard lesson we should take away from the wreckage of downed turquoise feathers.

You can say shame on the Twitter board that let it happen. And we probably should. But, technically speaking, their job was to maximize shareholder value; which means to hell with the rest of us.[6]

So whether we speak of the layoffs[7] or of Musk’s demolition of Twitter,[8] the conclusion is surprising only for how increasingly in our faces it is: a raised middle finger for humanity.

Nick Bilton, “Big Tech Companies Are Testing How Far They Can Slash Staff,” Vanity Fair, March 29, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/03/big-tech-layoffs-2023-twitter-meta-amazon-google


  1. [1]David Benfell, “The Silicon Valley Bank collapse exposes our system for what it is: neo-feudalism,” Not Housebroken, March 19, 2023, https://disunitedstates.org/2023/03/19/the-silicon-valley-bank-collapse-exposes-our-system-for-what-it-is-neo-feudalism/
  2. [2]Nick Bilton, “Big Tech Companies Are Testing How Far They Can Slash Staff,” Vanity Fair, March 29, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/03/big-tech-layoffs-2023-twitter-meta-amazon-google
  3. [3]Nick Bilton, “Big Tech Companies Are Testing How Far They Can Slash Staff,” Vanity Fair, March 29, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/03/big-tech-layoffs-2023-twitter-meta-amazon-google
  4. [4]Nick Bilton, “Big Tech Companies Are Testing How Far They Can Slash Staff,” Vanity Fair, March 29, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/03/big-tech-layoffs-2023-twitter-meta-amazon-google
  5. [5]Natasha Lomas, “Twitter is dying,” TechCrunch, March 28, 2023, https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/28/twitter-is-dying/
  6. [6]Natasha Lomas, “Twitter is dying,” TechCrunch, March 28, 2023, https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/28/twitter-is-dying/
  7. [7]Nick Bilton, “Big Tech Companies Are Testing How Far They Can Slash Staff,” Vanity Fair, March 29, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/03/big-tech-layoffs-2023-twitter-meta-amazon-google
  8. [8]Natasha Lomas, “Twitter is dying,” TechCrunch, March 28, 2023, https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/28/twitter-is-dying/

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