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☆ Amazon’s 18,000 job cuts don't go far enough expect more layoffs
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Paulina Likos | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Amazon 's (AMZN) plans to cut 18,000 workers is a drop in the bucket relative to its workforce of roughly 1.5 million. "They hired a huge number of people ... firing 18,000 people frankly is nothing," Jim Cramer said Thursday on CNBC. If there are more cuts ahead, the market will likely reward the stock and push it higher. Meta announced in November it was letting go of roughly 13% of its workforce , but those cuts are insufficient, too. As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade.

☆ In Salesforce layoffs, MuleSoft is hardest hit as the company cuts the first 1,000 employees of its planned 10% workforce reduction
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( Ashley Stewart | Ellen Thomas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Salesforce plans to cut 10% of its workforce, co-CEO Marc Benioff told employees Wednesday. MuleSoft was the hardest hit by layoffs so far, which amount to around 1,000, insiders said. Salesforce has already laid off about 1,000 employees as part of a plan to slash 10% of its workforce, and the MuleSoft unit was the hardest hit so far, insiders said. A Salesforce spokesperson referred Insider to the email when asked for comment on the details of this report. Benioff has been stoking employees' fearsBeyond MuleSoft, Benioff stoked many Salesforce employees' fears in a recent all-hands when asked about the possibility of future layoffs and how the company planned to balance cost-saving with employee morale.

☆ Southwest Meltdown Shows Airlines Need Tighter Software Integration
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-02 | by ( Belle Lin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

Southwest’s software wasn’t designed to solve problems of that scale, Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson said Thursday, forcing the airline to revert to manual scheduling. Unlike some large rivals with hub-and-spoke networks, Southwest planes hopscotch from city to city, which may have been another complicating factor. Mr. Alamzad said the most serious IT challenge airlines face stems from the applications developed in silos by vendors or the airlines themselves. Southwest recently completed an upgrade of its new reservation system and had been working through multiyear upgrades to systems used in its operations. Other carriers have given priority to upgrading customer-facing reservations platforms and flier loyalty programs over operations systems, Mr. Alamzad said.

Wickr Me, an Amazon-owned encrypted chat platform, stopped accepting new users after Dec. 31 and will shut down completely on Dec. 31 of this year, according to an announcement from the company. In June, an NBC News investigation revealed that Wickr Me had become a go-to product for many people trading child sexual abuse material. The investigation identified 72 court cases from the past five years in which the defendant allegedly used Wickr (as it’s commonly known) to trade child sexual abuse material. In its statement in November, the company explained that it was shutting down Wickr Me to devote more resources and focus toward its business-to-business products, AWS Wickr and Wickr Enterprise. In 2016, one of the first successful prosecutions against someone trading child pornography on the app was reported by the Deseret Morning News.

☆ Our predictions for big themes in 2023, from China tensions to the abundance agenda and tech discipline
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-01 | by ( Matt Turner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

On the agenda today:But first: Now that it's 2023, I want to share some of the things I'm personally fascinated with that I think will be big themes for the year ahead. 3 big themes for 2023China tensions: The fate of the world economy may depend on what happens to a company in Taiwan most Americans have never heard of. These are all huge storylines for 2023 driven by increasing tensions between China and the US. Big tech companies are making their performance reviews tougher. What do you think are the big themes that will shape 2023?

☆ Without radical changes, TikTok could vanish from the US
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Jordan Parker Erb | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

From burnout among open-source developers to the downfall of Andreessen Horowitz's buzzy tech publication, Future, it's a packed edition. The worker told Insider that they used "exam dumps" to pass technical certifications, and that the answers were easy to find online with a quick Google search. This year, developers told us that they're fed up, and some are quitting and even sabotaging their own projects. Despite the 10% raise, doled out in April, Mailchimp employees told Insider that people nonetheless felt belittled and were quitting in droves. Earlier this year, Andreessen Horowitz's buzzy tech publication Future shut down.

☆ Microsoft's most significant departures and hires of 2022, including execs who resigned following Insider reports on misconduct allegations
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

The list includes executives who resigned following Insider reports on misconduct allegations. The company's most significant departures include executives who resigned following Insider reports on misconduct allegations. Current and former Microsoft employees said Kipman repeatedly got away with inappropriate behavior toward female employees, including unwanted touching. Kipman resigned less than two weeks after Insider published the story. Kipman, Keane, and Ma have not responded to Insider's requests for comment.

☆ I cheated on an exam to boost my career in the tech industry. But now I think using 'exam dumps' is dangerous.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Rob Price | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Early in their career, an anonymous tech worker used "exam dumps" to pass technical certifications. I didn't want to risk failing and having to pay for it all over again — so I cheated with "exam dumps." "Exam dumps" are basically answer keysThese are cheat-sheets with the answers to the exam questions and they're shared or sold online by others in the industry. I've used them, but I realize now that they're harmfulDespite, benefitting from exam dumps, I don't use them any more. I wouldn't want to use exam dumps again, in part because using dumps made me feel less confident about myself, and made earning the certification feel like less of an achievement.

☆ Amazon lost half its value this year as tech stocks got crushed and recession fears grew
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Annie Palmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon and then CEO of Amazon Web Services, speaks at the WSJD Live conference in Laguna Beach, California, October 25, 2016. It was a brutal year for mega-cap tech stocks across the board. Only Tesla , down 68%, and Meta , off 66%, have had a worse year among the most valuable tech companies. That drove Amazon's stock to record highs as sales soared. It's since paused or abandoned plans to open some new facilities, and its head count shrank in the second quarter.

☆ Wall Street names these 20 Club stocks as top picks for 2023. Here's the list and our takes
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Paulina Likos | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +16 min

Club take: We've pared back our position in AMD this year as the semicondcutor company worked through its inventory correction. The company has to do more in terms of managing its costs, but it will likely be a priority in 2023. Analysts described growth outlooks in these segments as "robust" and expect them to drive revenue growth and margin expansion. BofA calls the Club stock a "top tier operator" and expects the company to grow revenue in the coming year despite fears of an economic downturn. Analysts expect to see strong data center growth next year, a business they said could reach $20 billion by 2023.

☆ CIO 2023 Priorities: Always Be Modernizing
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Belle Lin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +2 min

Technology executives in a recent CIO Journal end-of-year survey shared their priorities for 2023. Newsletter Sign-up WSJ | CIO Journal The Morning Download delivers daily insights and news on business technology from the CIO Journal team. “And this year we are doubling down to maximize the potential of our [over] 500 petabytes of data.”Ramon Richards, CIO, Fannie Mae Photo: Cade Martin PhotographyAt mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae, CIO Ramon Richards said one of his 2023 technology priorities includes continued cloud adoption. “We’ve built a strong foundation and are reaching maturity on many aspects of our digital transformation, which allows us to allocate more capacity to deliver on Fannie Mae business priorities next year,” Mr. Richards said. David Vidoni, vice president of information technology at Pegasystems Inc., said the top technology priority in 2023 is to continue modernizing its business systems.

☆ Big Tech predictions for 2023: A rival for Twitter, Amazon deceleration, Google's AI wake-up call, Microsoft's serious game, cloud bills, and DTC decline
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Hugh Langley | Kali Hays | Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

The painful adjustments will ripple across the industry in 2023.Insider's Big Tech reporters share what to watch this coming year. At $44 billion, the debt-fueled deal was completed quickly at valuations from the frothy tech bull market of 2021. Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesThe slow breakdown of Twitter under Musk appears to be upon us. Mastodon has experienced a major influx of users, hitting more than 5 million accounts after Musk took over Twitter. With intense tech antitrust scrutiny, these new services are unlikely to be gobbled up by Big Tech.

☆ How Amazon's cloud unit is helping researchers analyze genetics
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Ashley Capoot | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Amazon Web Services recently launched general availability for Amazon Omics, which helps researchers store and analyze omic data like sequences of DNA, RNA and proteins. Amazon Omics helps researchers sort through their data by providing them with three components that they can leverage individually or as a collective. More than a dozen customers and partners tested a beta version of the service and are already using Amazon Omics. He said the department spent five years expanding the infrastructure to analyze omics data, and now it's no longer something they need to build or maintain themselves. C2i is a biotechnology company that's working to use genomic data to develop personalized treatments for cancer.

☆ Jeff Bezos' leadership style propelled him to become one of the richest men in the world. Here's what you can learn from it.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Elle Hardy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Former CEO Jeff Bezos, who stepped down in late 2021, led with a slogan of step ferociously. After he predicted that ecommerce was about to take off, Bezos founded Amazon as an online book retailer in 1994. According to the man himself, the value that "surprises people" is Amazon's fourth leadership principle: "are right, a lot." "No PowerPoints are used inside of Amazon," Bezos has said. Bezos ran elements of Amazon like a startup, such as being notoriously frugal when it came to company expenses.

☆ Top Wall Street analysts say buy these stocks in a challenging 2023
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-25 | by ( Tipranks.Com Staff | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

related investing news Analysts' favorite growth stocks for 2023 include two electric vehicle charging companies expected to double Goldman Sachs unveils its top buy-rated stocks for 2023 A long-term focus allows investors to tune out the noise from daily volatility and focus on building a strong portfolio. Here are five stocks chosen by Wall Street's top pros, according to TipRanks, a platform that ranks analysts based on their past performance. "While a softer 2023 is expected, Nova expects to once again outpace WFE spending," said Miller. MetaComing to yet another one of White's favorite stocks, Meta Platforms (META), the analyst remained bullish with a buy rating and a $150 price target. The company is wrapping up a difficult year full of challenges, which are expected to carry over into 2023.

☆ Here's how much money Google estimates Microsoft's cloud business is actually losing
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Google has for years been playing catch-up in the cloud infrastructure market, where it's seen in the industry as a distant third in the U.S., behind Amazon and Microsoft . The challenge for investors is that the three companies don't report cloud infrastructure metrics in a way that makes them easily comparable. The Azure and other cloud services metric also includes, among other things, enterprise mobility and security, or EMS, tools that can be sold separately. Google parent Alphabet, meanwhile, doesn't tell investors how much revenue or operating income the Google Cloud Platform, or GCP, generates. It only discloses those figures for what it calls Google Cloud, which includes subscriptions to Google Workspace collaboration software, as well as GCP, a direct Azure rival.

☆ These S&P 500 stocks are expected to post the biggest gains in the new year
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Tanaya Macheel | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

While there's still time for stocks to turn around for the month, hopes for an end-of-year "Santa Claus rally" have fizzled out. However, analysts see the potential for big gains in some stocks despite the potential volatility ahead. Each of the 15 stocks below has at least about 50% upside to the average analyst price target. Discovery each have more than 100% potential upside, according to the target calculated by FactSet. The stock has upside potential of 51% from its current average price target.

☆ If TikTok gets banned in the US, Oracle could be the secret loser
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Paayal Zaveri | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

TikTok's US user data is on Oracle servers, so a ban would hurt its fast-growing cloud business. Any federal TikTok ban would have far-reaching implications for the future of tech regulation, for America's relationship with China, and for the growing ecosystem of creators on the app. But the entity that might take the hardest impact from any TikTok ban is one you may not expect: Oracle, one of its biggest partners in the US. "It's been a coup for Oracle to get this, and if they lost it because of the TikTok ban, those are tough shoes to fill." The deal was a huge boon to Oracle's cloud business, and is likely one important reason the cloud infrastructure business is growing so quickly, analysts told Insider.

☆ A long-overdue reality check for tech stocks has reset the bar for 2023
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Samantha Subin | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

Despite the comedown, many stocks still are expensive on a price-to-earnings basis when compared with the broader S & P 500, which trades at 18 times earnings. As of Monday's close, Meta shares trade at 11 times earnings on a 12-month trailing basis, down from 24 times at the start of 2022. PE ratios for all three stocks have come down significantly this year, with Cisco trading at 17 times earnings, compared to more than 23 times at the start of 2022. Within the semiconductor sector, Meeks favors names operating within industrials and autos, that are better positioned in a slowdown. While risk-averse tech may be the name of the game for 2023, some investors caution opting out of growth altogether.

☆ I run NORAD's Santa tracker program. It takes thousands of volunteers and state-of-the-art tech to give kids Santa's real-time location.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Taayoo Murray | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Lieutenant Sean Carter is a public-affairs officer who runs the NORAD Tracks Santa program. The tradition started by accident in 1955, and now an average of 1,500 volunteers help every year. I'm also the NORAD Tracks Santa program manager. Before taking over as the NORAD Tracks Santa program manager, I briefly worked in public affairs at Space Base Delta 1 — a Space Force unit responsible for installations all around the globe. NORAD has other events, but for the past 67 years, one of the Department of Defense's largest outreach events has been NORAD Tracks Santa.

☆ Amazon has only gotten started with its ambitions to be a serious player in healthcare. Here are 3 acquisitions it could make next year.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

The next month, it abruptly announced it would shut down Amazon Care, its app-based primary-care service for employers, three years after launch. In November, Amazon launched Amazon Clinic, a virtual service where patients can pay Amazon directly to get treatment for common conditions like allergies and acne. Natalie Schibell, a vice president and research director at Forrester, said that was a sign Amazon had learned from its mistakes at Amazon Care. When Amazon shuttered Amazon Care, it put those mental-health ambitions on hold. Lennox-Miller said Amazon could buy health data startups the company had already invested in, like the health-equity-focused Harmony Health or the value-based-care data company Clinify Health.

☆ U.S. Navy awards Amazon Web Services contract worth over $700 mln
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

Dec 19 (Reuters) - The United States Navy on Monday awarded Amazon.com Inc's (AMZN.O) cloud computing division a five-year enterprise software license contract worth $723.9 million. The deal will provide the Navy with access to Amazon Web Services' (AWS) commercial cloud environment, Professional Services and its training and certification courses. Earlier this month, the Pentagon awarded cloud computing contracts worth $9 billion to Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google, AWS, Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Oracle Corp (ORCL.N) as part of the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract. The Pentagon said work will be performed for a maximum of five years from December this year through 2028. Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini GanguliOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ A data tool Blackstone built for its real-estate empire is now being used across its PE portfolio. Here's why it could play a key role in the investing giant uncovering new deals.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Carter Johnson | Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The firm built Data Direct for its real-estate business, but is now using it across private equity. Blackstone Chief Technology Officer John Stecher told Insider that Blackstone now uses Data Direct — previously called Real Estate Data Direct — across both its real estate and private-equity portfolios. From real estate to private equityInsider first detailed the launch of Data Direct, then known as Real Estate Data Direct (REDD), last year. Data Direct, at its heart, is a data tool, and its success is predicated upon importing reliable information in the first place. Having good, clean data has made Data Direct very successful," he added.

☆ Jim Cramer's Investing Club meeting Monday: Industrials, buying tech, Eli Lilly
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Krystal Hur | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Every weekday the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a "Morning Meeting" livestream at 10:20 a.m. Still bullish on Eli Lilly The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) added Eli Lilly 's (LLY) new type-2 diabetes drug Mounjaro to its list of drugs in short supply , highlighting strong demand for the medication. As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB.

☆ Amazon helped rescue the Ukrainian government and economy using suitcase-sized hard drives brought in over the Polish border: 'You can't take out the cloud with a cruise missile'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-18 | by ( Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

In one initiative, Amazon sent suitcase-sized computer drives to back up critical data to the cloud. Using suitcase-sized solid-state hard drives, called Snowball Edge units — delivered to Ukraine through the Polish border — Amazon has helped back up critical infrastructure and economic information beginning the day Russia launched its invasion. In July, Amazon was awarded the Ukrainian peace prize for its work assisting the invaded country in backing up essential files to the cloud. "It's a tense moment around the baggage carousel," The Los Angeles Times reported Maxwell said. "You can't take out the cloud with a cruise missile," The Los Angeles Times reported Maxwell said.

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