Elon Musk. Twitter. Babylon Bee.

[Ken]

Tesla stock down another 15% today. Not a good way to start the new year. It is now at $105. A year ago it was over $400/share so has bled about 3/4th of its value. Seems like Elon needs to stop messing around with Twitter and get back to his core business which is whiffing on its production targets.

We’re in a severe global recession, the worst of my life, which affects how much people can buy expensive, high end vehicles.

I just noticed that around the beginning of the year, Tesla stock reversed its decline and has recovered most of its losses that occurred since the Twitter acquisition.

Yes, he's had a good run this past week. Although Tesla was at 328 when he started the process of buying Twitter and at 228 when he closed the deal. So he still has a ways to go. Apparently Tesla has elevated some new wunderkind from China named Tom Zhu to be his second in command and that has reassured investor that there is an adult in charge: https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesl ... 023-01-03/

I am a Musk skeptic and have been for years. But I do hope that Tesla really succeeds and continues to disrupt the car market. I think that is a good thing and it is making all the other manufacturers up their game. And Tesla is far more than just Musk.

[Josh]

Musk helped get massive rounds of tech layoffs started; he showed you can layoff a lot of staff and the company keeps running just fine.

[Ken]

Musk helped get massive rounds of tech layoffs started; he showed you can layoff a lot of staff and the company keeps running just fine.

Do you think that is a good thing? That the sole objective of tech companies is to maximize profits for billionaire investors?

[Josh]

Musk helped get massive rounds of tech layoffs started; he showed you can layoff a lot of staff and the company keeps running just fine.

Do you think that is a good thing? That the sole objective of tech companies is to maximize profits for billionaire investors?

Not at all, but people with $150k email jobs bragging on TikTok about how little they work isn’t a good thing either. Folks should do honest work for an honest living.

[mike]

Musk helped get massive rounds of tech layoffs started; he showed you can layoff a lot of staff and the company keeps running just fine.

Do you think that is a good thing? That the sole objective of tech companies is to maximize profits for billionaire investors?

Many investors aren't billionaires. Making companies profitable helps all shareholders and stockholders regardless of whether they are billionaires or retirees living off their retirement or investment funds.

[Ken]

Many investors aren't billionaires. Making companies profitable helps all shareholders and stockholders regardless of whether they are billionaires or retirees living off their retirement or investment funds.

True, but the investors who are actually pulling the strings and driving things like layoffs are generally billionaires, not pension funds or small investors.

Here is an actual letter sent by investor Christopher Hohn to the CEO of Google just last week begging for more aggressive layoffs in order to increase his own profit. Who is Christopher Hohn and what is his net worth? He is a billionaire British hedge fund manager who is personally worth about $8 BILLION. He is not just upset that Google has too many employees, but that they get paid too much. Which I guess means he is missing out on that next $100 million he needs to get to $8.1 BILLION. You don't see this sort of thing from say the teacher's pension fund of Washington who is also invested in Google.

You really can't make this stuff up.



Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/google- ... bet-2023-1

[RZehr]

Many investors aren't billionaires. Making companies profitable helps all shareholders and stockholders regardless of whether they are billionaires or retirees living off their retirement or investment funds.

True, but the investors who are actually pulling the strings and driving things like layoffs are generally billionaires, not pension funds or small investors.

Here is an actual letter sent by investor Christopher Hohn to the CEO of Google just last week begging for more aggressive layoffs in order to increase his own profit. Who is Christopher Hohn and what is his net worth? He is a billionaire British hedge fund manager who is personally worth about $8 BILLION. He is not just upset that Google has too many employees, but that they get paid too much. Which I guess means he is missing out on that next $100 million he needs to get to $8.1 BILLION. You don't see this sort of thing from say the teacher's pension fund of Washington who is also invested in Google.

You really can't make this stuff up.



Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/google- ... bet-2023-1

How can we know what the optimal employee count and compensation should be at Google? Maybe he is right. Maybe, now that lockdowns are over, and people are spending more time and money in the real world vs. digital world, it just might be that the tech companies have too many people now.
I don’t know.

[Ken]

How can we know what the optimal employee count and compensation should be at Google? Maybe he is right. Maybe, now that lockdowns are over, and people are spending more time and money in the real world vs. digital world, it just might be that the tech companies have too many people now.
I don’t know.

Who knows.

I'm just putting this out there as an example of how it is the ultra-wealthy billionaire types who seem most eager to fire people or cut their salaries to increase profits when they already have astronomically more wealth than 99.99999% of the planet. Is the point of Google really just to make a multi-billionaire 0.1 billion richer? Maybe instead Google should be putting people to work on long-term research and innovation projects that won't necessarily have an immediate impact on quarterly earnings and next month's stock dividend or buyback. There is a lot they could be doing in digital education, for example, that the don't seem to be.

There was a time in our not to distant past when companies and corporations felt more loyalty to both the employees who built them and the communities in which they reside. And looked more towards the long term. Those days are long gone when it is billionaires a continent away pulling strings to fire as many people as possible and leverage as many pay cuts as possible to bump up quarterly earnings and his stock price.

[RZehr]

How can we know what the optimal employee count and compensation should be at Google? Maybe he is right. Maybe, now that lockdowns are over, and people are spending more time and money in the real world vs. digital world, it just might be that the tech companies have too many people now.
I don’t know.

Who knows.

I'm just putting this out there as an example of how it is the ultra-wealthy billionaire types who seem most eager to fire people or cut their salaries to increase profits when they already have astronomically more wealth than 99.99999% of the planet. Is the point of Google really just to make a multi-billionaire 0.1 billion richer? Maybe instead Google should be putting people to work on long-term research and innovation projects that won't necessarily have an immediate impact on quarterly earnings and next month's stock dividend or buyback. There is a lot they could be doing in digital education, for example, that the don't seem to be.

There was a time in our not to distant past when companies and corporations felt more loyalty to both the employees who built them and the communities in which they reside. And looked more towards the long term. Those days are long gone when it is billionaires a continent away pulling strings to fire as many people as possible and leverage as many pay cuts as possible to bump up quarterly earnings and his stock price.

I don’t know either. It does seem on one hand that companies are quick to lay off. On the other hand, businesses that don’t adjust in a timely manner, may lose even more jobs.
I like the idea of long term investment that keeps good employees working through slow downs. While a restaurant may not be able too, it seems like tech giants could.

[Ken]

How can we know what the optimal employee count and compensation should be at Google? Maybe he is right. Maybe, now that lockdowns are over, and people are spending more time and money in the real world vs. digital world, it just might be that the tech companies have too many people now.
I don’t know.

Who knows.

I'm just putting this out there as an example of how it is the ultra-wealthy billionaire types who seem most eager to fire people or cut their salaries to increase profits when they already have astronomically more wealth than 99.99999% of the planet. Is the point of Google really just to make a multi-billionaire 0.1 billion richer? Maybe instead Google should be putting people to work on long-term research and innovation projects that won't necessarily have an immediate impact on quarterly earnings and next month's stock dividend or buyback. There is a lot they could be doing in digital education, for example, that the don't seem to be.

There was a time in our not to distant past when companies and corporations felt more loyalty to both the employees who built them and the communities in which they reside. And looked more towards the long term. Those days are long gone when it is billionaires a continent away pulling strings to fire as many people as possible and leverage as many pay cuts as possible to bump up quarterly earnings and his stock price.

I don’t know either. It does seem on one hand that companies are quick to lay off. On the other hand, businesses that don’t adjust in a timely manner, may lose even more jobs.
I like the idea of long term investment that keeps good employees working through slow downs. While a restaurant may not be able too, it seems like tech giants could.

I just mentioned education because I have used Google Classroom for years. It's Google's free education app that lets you manage online content and classes. They have more or less let it ossify and other companies like Canvas have very much passed it buy. There is a LOT more they could be doing to improve it and monetize it but it seems to be a forgotten project for Google that they mostly just use as a way to drive people to G-mail and get all kids to open school G-mail accounts and google profiles that will follow them everywhere. But there is so much more they could do with it if they put some programming talent into the job. This guy above seems to think that all Google should be doing is maximizing add revenue. Which seems very short sighted.

But what do I know. I'm not a tech billionaire.