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☆ Bluesky’s user base has doubled in the past 90 days. Is it a mass exodus from X?
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-13 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Bluesky’s user base has doubled in the past 90 days — on Tuesday the company said it had gained 1 million new sign-ups in the past week alone, bringing it to more than 15 million total users. “X usage is at an all-time high and continues to surge,” X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a post Wednesday. Bluesky also saw daily visits jump on Election Day and the day after to 1.2 million and 1.3 million, respectively, up from around 800,000 in the days before. On Bluesky, daily users more than doubled from-mid October to the post-election week. In the run-up to the election, Musk spread false and misleading claims about Trump’s competitor, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Persons: Bluesky rocketed, Elon, Musk, Donald Trump, Charlie Warzel, New York Times ’ Mara Gay, Don Lemon, X, White supremacists, Linda Yaccarino, “, Similarweb, Bluesky, ” David Carr, we’ve, Ed Zitron, EZPR, Zitron, Mike Isaac, ”, Trump, MAGA, Kamala Harris, Vivek Ramaswamy, Vladimir Zelensky, Musk’s Starlink, That’s, – CNN’s Liam Reilly, Matt Egan Organizations: New, New York CNN, Apple, New York Times, CNN, Guardian, ” New York Times, Trump, Twitter, “ Department, Government Locations: New York, anecdotally, Bluesky, ”, Russia

☆ OpenAI's CTO treats creativity like a problem to be solved — and that itself is the problem
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-25 | by ( Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

You can opt-out at any time by visiting our Preferences page or by clicking "unsubscribe" at the bottom of the email. download the appSign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. Advertisement"These people treat creativity like a problem to be solved," he continued. "All these things shouldn't be there in the first place, but all these things are work that some people have to do. "I think we need to have an honest public debate about the advantages, but also the pitfalls and dangers of AI technology," Astray said.

Persons: —, Mira Murati, Jeffrey Blackburn, ChatGPT, Murati, Ed Zitron, Zitron, Boris Eldagsen, OpenAI's DALL, Eldagsen, FABRIZIO BENSCH, Miles, doesn't, OpenAI, Sam Altman Organizations: Service, Business, Dartmouth, OpenAI, Sony, Reuters Locations: OpenAI

☆ The fight over return-to-office is getting dirty
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-07 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Evidence is as evidence doesAs the return-to-office battle has heated up in the past six months, there has been a marked increase in declarations that remote work is less productive. The researchers determined that remote workers were 18% less productive than their in-person counterparts. Just the vibesDespite the limited evidence against it, corporations are increasingly trying to kill remote work. That's what makes the move to kill off remote work so frustrating. It's not clear that the return-to-office move is about making workers more productive or building a better culture.

Persons: it's, Mike Hopkins, they're, India —, Nicholas Bloom, who's, David Baszucki's, Geico, Amazon's Andy Jassy, Geico's Todd Combs, there's, Safra, Larry Ellison, wrongheaded, galvanizing sycophants, Ed Zitron Organizations: Amazon, Amazon Studios, National Bureau of Economic Research, Journalists, Stanford, Meta, —, Writers Guild of America, SAG, United Auto Workers Locations: India

☆ The one job AI should actually replace: CEOs
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-11 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

The only job that seems to be safe from the rise of ChatGPT and other AI tech is, oddly enough, the most expensive and easily automated role: CEO. Let's replace our CEOs with AI. Actually, AI is too advanced for that job, all you need is a Fisher Price tape recorder loaded up with a bad bunch of ideas." What better way can we hold a chief executive accountable than making sure they actually execute? Or perhaps the chief executives need to be far more afraid of losing their jobs to equally capable robots.

Persons: Scott Seiss, Fisher, it's, I'm, Proctor, A.G, Lafley, isn't, doesn't, Elon, David Zaslav, Zaslav —, Zaslav, shelve, I'd, Said, Ed Zitron Organizations: Harvard, Gamble, TSR, Warner Bros, Hollywood, Alliance, Television Producers Locations: Let's, California

☆ The AI boom is screwing over Gen Z
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-17 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Now, with the advent of generative AI, organizations are starting to automate many "junior" tasks — stripping away their dubious last attempt to "teach" young employees. America's young workers are headed toward a career calamity. Nobody wants to teach anymoreEven before the rise of AI, young people were facing an early-career crisis. This lack of care is clearly weighing on the young workers who need career development the most. Humans can be enhanced by AI, helped by AI, but replacing them with AI is a shortsighted decision made by myopic bean counters who can't see the value in a person.

Persons: there's, Gen, Gen Zers, it's, Gen Z, Louis, Zers, millennials, Peter Cappelli, Capelli, Paul Osterman, they'd, Osterman, they'll, ChatGPT, Qualtrics, What's, they're, Ulrich Atz, Tensie Whelan, New York University's, Atz, Whelan, —, There's, Knight, It's, Ed Zitron Organizations: Management, Federal Reserve Bank of St, National Association of Colleges, Employers, University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, US Department of Labor, MIT, Pew Research Center, National Bureau of Economic Research, Gallup, Workplace Intelligence, Amazon, Boston Consulting Group, New York, New York University's Stern Center, Sustainable Business Locations: America, New, Fortune

☆ The metaverse isn't dead, says the billionaire CEO behind Fortnite— and he's jokingly trying to hold a wake so 600 million gamers can mourn its passing in 'real-time 3D'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Tim Sweeney on Tuesday mocked the notion that the metaverse is dead. But Sweeney is a long-term supporter of the Metaverse, putting in some serious money into the platform. Tim Sweeney, the billionaire CEO of Epic Games, doesn't think the metaverse is dead. After all, Epic Games — developer of Fortnite — is putting serious money into the metaverse. Moreover, Meta's still trying to convince users that the metaverse is alive and kicking and could potentially be lucrative.

☆ The Metaverse, Zuckerber's Tech Obession, Is Officially Dead. ChatGPT Killed It.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

The Metaverse, the once-buzzy technology that promised to allow users to hang out awkwardly in a disorientating video-game-like world, has died after being abandoned by the business world. After a much-heralded debut, the Metaverse became the obsession of the tech world and a quick hack to win over Wall Street investors. Once the tech industry turned to a new, more promising trend — generative AI — the fate of the Metaverse was sealed. But the short life and ignominious death of the Metaverse offers a glaring indictment of the tech industry that birthed it. Roblox, an online game platform that has existed since 2004, rode the Metaverse hype wave to an initial public offering and a $41 billion valuation.

☆ Tech Companies Are Ruining Their Apps, Websites, Internet
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Google, Amazon, Meta, and other tech companies have monetized confusion, constantly testing how much they can interfere with and manipulate users. Abandoning the core productIn the 2000s and early 2010s, tech companies actually produced new, interesting products. This fueled Silicon Valley's explosive growth: Companies saw their valuations soar, revenue growth was exponential, and new users were joining by the boatload. There are ways to integrate new technology into a core product that doesn't end in disaster. Netflix was able to iterate on their core product — letting people watch movies — in a way that actually made that experience better.

☆ Blame the CEO for Tech Layoffs at Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Amazon
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

CEOs made mistakes, workers bear the bruntIn their layoff announcements, pretty much every tech company placed the blame for the cuts on the economy. While they may protect the CEO's reputation or placate investors, layoffs are immensely damaging for workers, even well-paid tech employees. With great power comes no responsibilityThe blame-shifting of these tech companies and their CEOs is not unprecedented, or even that uncommon. CEO pay skyrocketed by 1,460% from 1978 to 2021, and the ratio of average-worker pay to CEO pay ballooned from 20-to-1 in 1965 to 399-to-1 in 2021. Instead, tech CEOs have passed the pain off to people who in many cases were performing well in their roles.

☆ Hate Elon Musk all you want, but he's got one management trick that every boss should emulate
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Managers have become alarmingly distanced from the average worker, making calls based on guesses that aren't informed by actual labor. Musk has demanded that managers are able to create "good code" yet does not appear to be much of a coder himself. Jackson Palmer, a cocreator of dogecoin, said Musk was a "grifter" who "had trouble running basic code" in their interactions. He's targeted critical teams at Twitter and pushed others to quit, which have resulted in a huge upswing in hate speech on the platform. In fact, by his own logic of how managers can contribute to the company, Musk should be summarily firing himself any day now.

☆ Delivering bad news to your coworkers is never easy. College classes and executive coaches are trying to teach how to do it.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Alexandra York | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

He hoped to learn how to better manage business success, business failure, and his mental health. He added: "Because a lot of those are what contributes to the difficulty in mental health for founders." "As a founder, balancing mental health and the success of the company almost seem opposite," Yan said. "Small triggers may affect your mental health," like when cofounders are angry at one another or when the staff is underperforming, he said. "When you don't deal directly with problematic employees, you're sending the clear message to others that their work doesn't matter," she said.

☆ Elon Musk runs 3 companies — and his executive juggling act is the perfect example of how the modern CEO job is broken
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

Musk is currently the CEO of three different companies: SpaceX, Tesla, and, of course, Twitter. But like many CEOs, he's accumulated a huge fortune by juggling several companies and directorships at once. While Musk may be an extreme case, he's also the perfect example of the modern CEO: a chaotic blend of unproductive micromanagement and highly-paid absenteeism. In the extreme, some CEOs like Musk have taken on the management of multiple large companies. And Musk isn't the only executive who would be better served focusing on one task.

☆ Consultants peddling job advice have created a 'workplace industrial complex' that's making them rich — and your job more miserable
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

It can be head-spinning to keep up with the sudden trends taking hold in the workplace: Workers are "quiet quitting." Old problems, new namesThe perfect example of the workplace-industrial complex in action is the recent freakout over "quiet quitting." And that's how companies end up hiring consultants who charge $10,000 to $15,000 a day to "help with quiet quitting." But in reality, the workplace-industrial complex exists as a self-propelling public-relations engine for the worst impulses of the management set. Simple answers, difficult solutionsWhat's both confusing and annoying about the state of the workplace-industrial complex is that it's helpful to no one.

☆ Late-night emails, ruined weekends, and crazy workloads: Toxic managers are creating a burnout crisis
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-22 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Burnout almost always grows out of a poor work-life balance, but understanding that balance — much less recalibrating it — is difficult to do. No amount of free time can fix a work-life balance ruined by a poorly managed company or department. Readjusting work-life balance and ending burnout requires companies and managers to allow employees to mentally disconnect from their work. Beyond vacations, creating a positive work-life balance requires companies to create a culture that prioritizes people recharging. It also means that management must take the responsibility of maintaining a healthy work-life balance away from their employees and put it on themselves.

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