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☆ Premarket stocks: Meme stocks have revolutionized investor days
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

But they’re also bowing to pressure from retail investors to be more transparent. What’s happening: Investor days evolved from analyst days — meetings that large, public companies historically held privately for their core institutional investors and Wall Street analysts. But the recent influx of retail investors into the stock market has changed that. “A lot of these companies know they need to focus on retail investors now,” said Katie Perry, general manager of investor relations at investing platform Public. ▸ Tesla’s first-ever investor day will be live-streamed Wednesday from its Gigafactory in Austin, Texas.

☆ Salesforce's Marc Benioff has revised a plan to stack rank a bottom 5% and ordered employees back to the office, according to leaked messages
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Ellen Thomas | Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has made revisions to the company's annual strategic plan, including return-to-office mandates and policies that would have implemented stack ranking, according to an internal Slack message viewed by Insider. "He's still pushing performance culture," a Salesforce employee who read the revised draft told Insider. It currently requires three days a week in the office for non-remote employees and four days a week for employees in "non-remote" and "customer-facing" roles. Revenue for fiscal 2022 grew 25%, to $26.5 billion, according to the company's annual report. Or, as an employee previously posted in a Slack channel, "Can execs commit to never referring to Salesforce employees as 'family' again?

☆ Salesforce engineers are about to be hit with new performance metrics, while some salespeople are being pressured to quit
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Ellen Thomas | Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Some Salesforce employees have been offered a "Prompt Exit Package" instead of a layoff, with less severance. Employees say the company is ratcheting up performance expectations as activist investors invade. "The company is pushing hard for productivity tracking and metrics on all facets," one employee told Insider. Salesforce cut a few hundred salespeople in November, a person familiar with the matter told Insider, and the company told Insider the cuts were made for "accountability," implying that performance was a consideration. In some cases, the company has presented employees with PEP offers in the same week it has executed mass layoffs, employees told Insider.

☆ Elon Musk says Twitter ‘trending to breakeven’ after near bankruptcy
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-05 | by ( Ashley Capoot | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Elon Musk Twitter account displayed on a phone screen and Twitter logo displayed on a screen in the background are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on November 22, 2022. Twitter CEO Elon Musk said Sunday that the last few months have been "extremely tough," but the social media company is "now trending to breakeven." "Twitter still has challenges, but it is now trending to breakeven if we keep at it. Twitter launched — and relaunched — its updated Twitter Blue subscription service in December after Musk had pulled and delayed the service in November. "I'm worried about me too," Musk wrote in response.

☆ I work in HR. Here's the hardest layoff I've ever done.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-04 | by ( Shana Lebowitz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Angela Champ is an HR executive. At one former company, Champ said, the layoffs were scheduled in 15-minute increments over the day. The downsizing described in the essay below took place at a company where Champ was previously employed. We had simultaneous terminations going on, and each HR business partner was assigned one or two people. Another HR person would go and gather the person's belongings — their purse, their keys, their lunch bag — and bring them to the room.

☆ Reddit employees who lost their jobs are livid that the company is painting them as low performers: 'A cruel and dishonest way to kick a person when they're down'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Dan Whateley | Sydney Bradley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

A Reddit spokesperson declined to share the number of employees the company had let go so far, or planned to in total. In total, 10 former Reddit staffers who lost their jobs in January told Insider they did not consider themselves low performers based on their past feedback from the company. One current staffer told Insider they felt they may have been on the chopping block in January and narrowly avoided a termination. Some moved from business development jobs to work on creator services within its community-management and product teams, the Reddit spokesperson previously told Insider. Reddit also informed employees about a cut to some benefits late last year, eight current and former staffers told Insider.

☆ Tyre Nichols' death has reignited the debate around police brutality. Here are 5 proven ways to reduce it - and 2 strategies that don't work.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Michelle Mark | Marianne Guenot | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Here are five proven, data-based changes that could make a difference, and two approaches that don't seem to work, according to Campaign Zero. Track complaints about officers' use of forceMost complaints against officers aren't public, making them hard to track. These changes, along with requiring departments to report and publish online data on all uses of force, could reduce police violence. Body cameras are another method that haven't been proven effective when it comes to excessive force instances. Research has shown that 93% of prosecutors' offices have used body cameras mostly in cases against citizens, not against police.

☆ Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon gets 29% pay cut to $25 million after tough year
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Hugh Son | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

David Solomon, Chairman & CEO of Goldman Sachs, speaking on Squawk Box at the WEF in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 23rd, 2023. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon will get a $25 million compensation package for his work last year, the bank said Friday in a regulatory filing. The package includes a $2 million base salary and variable compensation of $23 million, New York-based Goldman said in the filing. Solomon's pay, while large, is about 29% lower than the $35 million he was granted for his 2021 performance. Solomon's pay package is smaller than that of CEOs Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and James Gorman of Morgan Stanley , who were awarded 2022 compensation of $34.5 million and $31.5 million, respectively.

☆ A married couple with a 4-month-old baby were both laid off by Google, while one of them was on parental leave
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Allie went on parental leave shortly before, and planned to be off for around eight months in total. Steve took two months of parental leave in late 2022, and was set to take a further two from March. Google laid off around 12,000 employees, or roughly 6% of its workforce, on Friday. A class-action lawsuit filed against the company accused it of violating the Family and Medical Leave Act by terminating workers on or soon to take parental leave. Perhaps ironically, the generous parental leave was one of the things that attracted both workers to Google.

☆ A Google software engineer says it was a 'slap in the face' to find out he was laid off via email after 20 years at the company
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Jeremy Joslin, a 20-year Google engineer, says being laid off via email was a "slap in the face." Jeremy Joslin, who according to his LinkedIn profile had worked at the tech giant since 2003, said on Friday that the company told him over email. "It's hard for me to believe that after 20 years at Google I unexpectedly find out about my last day via an email," he tweeted. After 17.5 years at Google, it was kind of a tough way to discover that I'd become a Xoogler." "Not the same company I started at 20 years ago," he said on LinkedIn.

☆ Twitter is down to fewer than 550 full-time engineers
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Lora Kolodny | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Twitter's full-time headcount has dwindled to approximately 1,300 employees, including fewer than 550 full-time engineers by title, according to internal records viewed by CNBC. Around 75 of the company's 1,300 employees are on leave including about 40 engineers. The company's trust and safety team, which makes policy recommendations, design and product changes with the aim of keeping all of Twitter's users safe, is down to fewer than 20 full-time employees. Before Musk led a $44 billion leveraged buyout of Twitter last year, Twitter's headcount stood at about 7,500 employees. Since taking over Twitter, Musk has faced a shareholder backlash at Tesla for being distracted, for stirring up political controversy with his strategy at Twitter, and for selling billions of dollars worth of his Tesla shares to finance his Twitter takeover.

☆ New York state to forgive $672 million of overdue gas, electric bills
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Jan 19 (Reuters) - New York state will forgive $672 million worth of unpaid gas and electric utility bills from the pandemic era for about half a million customers, in what the governor's office said was "the largest utility customer financial assistance program in state history." The relief is expected to prevent potential service terminations for more than 478,000 residential customers and about 56,000 small businesses, while avoiding significant downgrades to their credit, the office of Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement. The debt-forgiveness program by the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) will give one-time credits to all residential non-low-income customers and small-commercial customers for any utility arrears through May 1, 2022. Utilities provided a record $101 million in this round of pandemic debt relief, following a $36 million contribution to a similar $567 million program in June last year to help low-income customers pay off past electric and gas bills, the statement said. Reporting by Deep Vakil in Bengaluru Editing by Matthew LewisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Elon Musk’s Twitter accused of unlawful staff firings in the UK
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

The letter also said Twitter has failed to provide information about the selection criteria used to determine the layoffs. The letter states that 43 affected UK employees are prepared to take the issue to an Employment Tribunal, a UK system for employees to bring legal disputes against their employers, if the company does not agree to cooperate with negotiations over the layoff process. The warning marks the latest challenge to Twitter from former employees affected by mass layoffs that took place after Elon Musk acquired the company in October. Twitter is also facing four proposed class action lawsuits in the United States related to the layoffs. (Typically, negotiations over mass layoffs by UK companies involve discussions of the reasons for terminations and how to minimize their size and impact.)

☆ Frustrated former Twitter staff had to wait 2 months after being laid off to get their severance agreements. Twitter blamed the delay on staff suing the company.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Grace Dean | Sindhu Sundar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Some Twitter staff who were laid off in November finally got their separation agreements on Saturday. When they did finally come through, Twitter blamed the delay on staff taking legal action related to their terminations. That suit was filed by plaintiffs including Emmanuel Cornet, who Twitter laid off in early November, and others who are officially being laid off this month and next. Some former Twitter workers told Insider's Kali Hays that they were disappointed by the severance the company ultimately offered them. Those benefits Twitter had offered before Musk's takeover included two months severance pay or more, along with other bonuses, according to the lawsuit.

☆ What the job market could look like in 2023, based on a surprisingly strong end to 2022
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Jennifer Liu | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

It could be a sign the 2023 job market will launch on strong footing, economists say, even with fresh staffing cuts announced this week. Meanwhile, there were 10.5 million job openings, or roughly 1.7 vacancies per available worker. "In aggregate, layoffs are still way lower than pre-pandemic," Pollak says. As of November, job openings ticked up for professional and business services, as well as manufacturing, and hiring shot up in health care and social assistance. Even finance openings and information openings are up compared with February 2020.

☆ Slack is cutting 10% of its product and engineering org 18 months after Salesforce spent $27.7 billion to acquire it
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Ellen Thomas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Salesforce has targeted Slack's product and engineering organization for layoffs, sources tell Insider. Slack is laying off 10% of its product and engineering organization, according to two people familiar with the matter. Yet some Salesforce managers, even senior managers and senior vice presidents, were blindsided yesterday as they had no forewarning when the layoffs would commence, Salesforce employees told Insider. In five Slack exchanges viewed by Insider, managers told direct reports they had learned of the layoffs from Benioff's company-wide email. Insider confirmed that roughly 1,000 Salesforce employees were notified on Wednesday of their terminations.

☆ South Carolina Supreme Court overturns state abortion ban
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Dan Mangan | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

The decision by the South Carolina Supreme Court is based on the state's own constitution, which, unlike the U.S. Constitution, explicitly gives citizens a right to privacy. President Joe Biden's press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, in a tweet wrote: "We are encouraged by South Carolina's Supreme Court ruling today on the state's extreme and dangerous abortion ban." The South Carolina Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the state's ban on abortion after around six weeks of pregnancy, ruling that the law violated the state's constitutional right to privacy. South Carolina's abortion ban was again blocked in August, this time by the state Supreme Court, after a new lawsuit was filed seeking to invalidate it. The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court invalidating the federal right to abortion effectively left it up to individual states to regulate pregnancy terminations.

☆ Panama says it rejects First Quantum's legal bid to avoid halting operations
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-31 | by ( Valentine Hilaire | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

PANAMA CITY, Dec 30 (Reuters) - The Panamanian government has rejected Canada-based miner First Quantum's (FM.TO) legal proceedings to avoid halting operations at the Cobre Panama mine, the Commerce and Industry Ministry said in a statement on Friday. First Quantum had notified the country about two arbitration proceedings days after the order to halt operations. "The government is prepared to face all potential legal scenarios that may arise and will continue to ensure that workers' labor rights are maintained and protected," the ministry statement said. Panamanian government and First Quantum representatives have been meeting in the last days to reach an agreement. Reporting by Valentine Hilaire; Editing by Sarah Morland and Leslie AdlerOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Jobs report hangs over markets in first week of new year
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Patti Domm | In | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

The first week of the new year will be a busy one with December's jobs report looming Friday, and many investors may be looking for ways to fix up their portfolios after 2022's battering. What to watch Friday's jobs report is one of two big events on the market calendar in the coming week. The jobs report is very important because it is the final employment report the Fed will consider before its next meeting, Feb. 1. For all years since 1945, the S & P 500 has averaged an 8.6% gain and was up 70% of the time. The worst major S & P industry sector of 2022 was communications services, down 40.4% as of Thursday's close.

☆ Panama, Canada's First Quantum talks to continue on Wednesday - sources
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Valentine Hilaire | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

PANAMA CITY, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Representatives for Panama's government and Canada's First Quantum Minerals are set to meet on Wednesday for a third day of talks to solve a dispute over the miner's operations in the country, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Neither the government nor First Quantum, which operates in Panama through its subsidiary Minera Panama, immediately replied to requests from Reuters for comment. In 2021, First Quantum paid $61 million in royalties to Panama based on the output of its flagship Cobre Panama copper, according to the company's annual report. On Dec. 14, the parties missed the government's deadline to seal the agreement, prompting Panama to order First Quantum to halt operations at the mine. In 2021 the mine represented 80% of the country's total exports, Quantum Minerals says.

☆ I'm a 31-year-old Black woman in HR who makes over $200,000 a year. Job-hopping has a stigma, but it's always helped me make what I'm worth.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-24 | by ( Rebecca Knight | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

I should know: I'm a Black woman in HR, and at the age of 31, I'm working at my fifth employer, and I earn about $212,000 a year. I got into HR almost by accident, but it's a field I'm passionate about, and I'm good at my job. Entry-level HR manager, $52,000After I graduated from college, I entered an executive training program at a major retailer outside of Washington, DC. HR manager, $56,000My next job, also at a retailer, was strictly HR. When it's time to leave this company, I'm betting I'll do just that.

Barbara Skrobol at the grave of her sister in law, Izabela Sajbor, in southern Poland last month. Under communism, Poland had been a destination for women seeking abortions from more conservative Western European countries where it had been illegal. The ruling worked: Almost overnight, the number of legal abortions in Poland decreased by 90%, according to abortion rights advocacy groups. Mo Abbas / NBC NewsLike women living in anti-abortion U.S. states, Poles can travel to seek an abortion. Beneath her sister-in-law’s name on her headstone, the family has etched the words “Not One More” — a slogan that’s been widely used by protesters and Poland’s abortion rights movement.

Known in the legal world as the “death penalty” of child welfare, it can happen in a matter of months. One in 100 U.S. children — disproportionately Black and Native American — experience termination through the child welfare system before they turn 18, the study found. Still, longer timelines can also reflect a stronger focus on family reunification and a willingness to devote greater resources to meet that goal, child welfare experts say. And some child welfare advocates have criticized the law’s focus on narrow initiatives like parenting classes, which they say fail to address poverty and the other root causes of neglect that prompt most child welfare cases. Snodgrass said she never imagined when her child welfare case started that she could lose her rights to her children.

☆ Twitter has lost its last deputy general counsel as its legal team shrinks, a report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Twitter deputy general counsel Regina Lima has left the company, Bloomberg Law reported. The social-media platform's legal team, which once stood at close to 200, is now largely depleted. Before Elon Musk took control of Twitter in late October, the company had around 200 staff on its legal team, according to Bloomberg Law. Twitter's legal team was shaken up as soon as Musk's purchase of Twitter went through. After Gadde and Edgett's terminations, James Baker, a former FBI general counsel, was the company's most senior lawyer.

Meanwhile, Twitter’s resources to fight child sexual exploitation content online (and what is sometimes called child pornography or child sexual abuse materials) are thin, following layoffs, mass-firings and resignations from the company. Child sexual exploitation content has remained a problem for Twitter, though most major social media platforms continue to deal with it in some form or another. Moderation of this content usually relies on a combination of automated detection systems and specialized internal teams and external contractors to identify child abuse content and remove it. “So, I mean, that is disheartening.”It’s unclear how many Twitter employees remain to work on child safety issues. A search on LinkedIn for current Twitter employees who say they work on child safety turned up only a few accounts.

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