Google employees “want a say in and control over the products they build,” reports Fortune, in an article headlined “Inside Google’s Civil War”: As the so-called techlash has cast a pall over the entire sector, organized employee pushback is slowly becoming part of the landscape: Amazon workers are demanding more action from the company on battling climate change; at Microsoft, employees…
Tag: Silicon Valley
Critics Call White House Social Media Bias Survey A ‘Data Collection Ploy’
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post:
Venky Ganesan, a partner at technology investor Menlo Ventures, told The Washington Post that the White House’s new survey about bias on social media is “pure kabuki theatre” and an attempt to curry political points with conservatives. He said the Trump administration’s repeated accusations that tech companies censor conservative voices are unfounded because even though…
‘Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco’
Instead of regulating Facebook like a traditional telecom or media company, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Elaine Ou argues “Facebook should be regulated the same way as other vices like tobacco, alcohol and gambling”: Facebook achieved outsize market share with an addictive product. A competing platform would need to do an even better job of exploiting psychological vulnerability to topple the incumbent. But…
TikTok is China’s Most Important Export Right Now
Silicon Valley may have begun the era of social media, but its future could be in China. From a report: Tensions between America and China are pushing the world’s two largest economies into an escalating trade war. President Donald Trump continues to threaten a tariff hike on more Chinese goods. So it’s a strange time for one of the most popular…
Some of China’s ‘996’ Tech Tribe Quit, Seek Less Stress
An increasingly growing number of millennials in China are beginning to question the value of working long hours in the tech sector and deviate from the longstanding 996 work environment (working 9am to 9pm for six days a week) that many local companies religiously follow. From a report: In April, protests from tech employees against excessive overtime surfaced online, sparking an…
Is Big Tech Needlessly Ruining Entire Industries?
Salon tech editor Keith A. Spencer just published a new article describing what happens when “venture capital-backed entrepreneurs jackhammer their way into a new industry, ‘tech’-ify it in some way, undermine the competition and declare their new way superior once the old is bankrupted.” – Being a taxi driver was once a much-vaunted job, so much so that a taxi medallion…
Applying For Your Next Job May Be an Automated Nightmare
merbs writes: If you think looking for a job is already daunting, anxiety-riddled, and unpleasant, just wait until the algorithms take over the hiring process. When they do, a newfangled ‘digital recruiter’ like VCV, which just received $1.7 million in early investment, hopes it will look something like this: First, a search bot will be used to scan CVs by the…