2024 has seen two mass layoffs at Microsoft, with 1900 staff laid off in January, before a further 650 Xbox employees were shown the door in September.

Regardless, Microsoft’s shares are up and the company’s market value is now higher than $3tn, as it works to capitalise on the rise of AI.

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    When I entered the work force in 2005, it was with a company that had never had a layoff in its thirty-year history.

    Then, in 2009, they had their first layoff, and I learned later our CEO had taken an 80% pay raise that year.

    Taxes aren’t theft. Literally firing people and taking their salaries is theft.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Taxes are theft the specific way they are designed in most countries.

      Another example of theft is a hired administrator administrating by the criterion of their own pay.

      I mean, it is understandable how this works - their pay is a counterweight to the incentive to “mismanage” the company if someone else pays a fitting price. The issue here is that these two incentives do not completely neutralize each other, in some dimension their components add up.

      Why I had to say that taxes are still theft - because a CEO is equivalent to a state official in this issue. It’s the same problem.

      Political ideologies divide these problems, because political ideologies are like hedge funds, they diversify investments, so that every political ideology could be usable in every landscape for every policy. They are the opposite of consistent, by design.

      • HerrBeter@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Taxes aren’t because they come from societal structure i.e agreement that we’re better off pooling resources

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              OK.

              The CEO is supposed to maximize the profits of investors or owners or whatever, not act like in this example.

              Just like the government to which you pay taxes is supposed to use it for some public good.

              Neither do what they are supposed to do, because that requires some kind of checks by a mechanism above both, and there’s no such.

              Is that more clear, or have my bad English and bad explaining skills failed you again?

              • syreus@lemmy.world
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                7 days ago

                This is much better but your previous comment was awful. It read like a LLM alone wrote it.

                That being said I can’t tell you why specifically it reads like that. I’m forwarding it to my friend who is a English professor to find out. If English is your second language then just keep at it and please don’t take the criticism here personally.

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              OK. I further made equivalence between that CEO and the government which you charge with making use of taxes.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          and I feel dumber to have read your comment

          Then I have improved your self-consciousness. Thank you.