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Microsoft Dethrones Apple as the Largest US CompanyPosted by msmash on Thursday January 11, 2024 @11:40AM from the catch-me-if-you-can dept.The stock market has a new, but familiar, monarch. Microsoft's AI-powered stock rally has made the software giant the largest U.S. company by market value, surpassing Apple for the first time since November 2021. WSJ:CitarShares edged higher Thursday morning, bringing Microsoft's market value to nearly $2.87 trillion. Apple, meanwhile, fell 1%, pulling its market capitalization just below that threshold. Either Apple or Microsoft has held the title since Feb. 4, 2019, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Microsoft's stock has been on the rise for the past year thanks to the continued growth of its cloud computing division, even as major competitors like Amazon and Google have experienced a gradual slowdown in sales growth.
Shares edged higher Thursday morning, bringing Microsoft's market value to nearly $2.87 trillion. Apple, meanwhile, fell 1%, pulling its market capitalization just below that threshold. Either Apple or Microsoft has held the title since Feb. 4, 2019, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Microsoft's stock has been on the rise for the past year thanks to the continued growth of its cloud computing division, even as major competitors like Amazon and Google have experienced a gradual slowdown in sales growth.
Inflation’s Pace Quickens in December, Led by Housing CostsThe end of inflation? The end of the pinch to paycheck-to-paycheck wallets?Hardly.And, per the latest Consumer Price Index data, released Thursday (Jan. 11) by the Labor Department, the most basic of expenses — especially shelter — proved to be more expensive headed into the end of the year.December’s overall headline numbers showed that prices were up 0.3% in December, up from 0.1% in November. And on a trailing 12-month basis, prices were up 3.4%, as measured last month. That’s higher than the 3.1% trailing 12-month rate seen in November.The Basics Are More ExpensiveMore than half of the monthly increase, the government said, could be traced to the cost of housing, where those prices were up 0.5% in December. The growth in that expense compares negatively, so to speak, with the 0.4% and 0.3% pace seen in the previous two months. The cost of rent is 6.5% higher than it was a year ago.Other staples are proving more costly, too, though moderating a bit. The cost of food at home was up 0.1% month at home, indicating that the filling the grocery cart is less onerous than has been the case recently — but it’s still more expensive. Overall, the prices paid to eat at the dinner table, or out at a restaurant, are 2.7% higher. And dining out, which has been a mainstay of the last several months, of card spending, as detailed in last quarter’s earnings reports — has been ratcheted up by more than 5% since the end of last year.At this writing, on Thursday morning, the stock markets are trending lower. One of Wall Street’s favorite parlor games has always been to take sides on whether the Fed will raise or lower rates — and when. Everyone’s been waiting for some confirmation as to when rate cuts might begin, specifically in the current year. Now, with inflation a little “hotter” in December than might have been expected, the timeframe may be pushed out a bit.We’ll get a sense of how the year-end inflationary trends may have impacted spending as the banks and the payment networks start rolling out their latest earnings reports as soon as Friday (Jan. 12). JPMorgan, among other marquee names in financial services, will present its own debit, credit and loan metrics, giving some insight into how consumers have been holding up. Buy now, pay later (BNPL), as an option to keep even the essentials more affordable (including groceries) has been gaining ground, as we’ve documented on a consistent basis.And in the meantime, PYMNTS Intelligence data found, in parsing the paycheck-to-paycheck economy and headed into the last few months of the year, that a third of consumers were turning to credit products to manage their finances. As many as 21% utilized it as their top strategy. But there may be some ominous signs in the mix: for those who cover expenses in financially difficult times with credit, there’s been a negative impact to their credit scores, hitting 75% of those consumers.December’s data underscore that there’s no relief on the short-term horizon.
Deutsche Bank Faces Spanish Proceedings Over DerivativesCNMV says lender may have committed serious law infringementDeutsche Bank says it’s reviewing and enhancing controlsSpain’s securities regulator has started “disciplinary proceedings” against Deutsche Bank AG linked to the sale of derivatives in the country.“The advisory service provided to Spanish clients in relation to highly complex and high-risk financial derivative instruments on currencies” may constitute a “very serious infringement” of Spanish law by Deutsche Bank, the regulator known as CNMV said in a statement Thursday.(...)
Dow slides more than 200 points after hotter-than-expected inflation report: Live updates(...)December’s consumer price index report came out slightly higher-than-expected, reflecting a 0.3% increase in consumer prices for the month, pushing the annual rate to 3.4%. Economists polled by Dow Jones had predicted that the CPI rose 0.2% in December and 3.2% on a year-over-year basis.Core CPI, excluding volatile food and energy prices, came out in line with expectations, however, pointing to persistent—yet easing—inflation pressures. The data released on Thursday suggests that future interest rate cuts may be slower to come.
CitarMicrosoft Dethrones Apple as the Largest US CompanyPosted by msmash on Thursday January 11, 2024 @11:40AM from the catch-me-if-you-can dept.
Microsoft Dethrones Apple as the Largest US CompanyPosted by msmash on Thursday January 11, 2024 @11:40AM from the catch-me-if-you-can dept.
Rental giant Hertz dumps EVs, including Teslas, for gas carsJan 11 (Reuters) - Rental firm Hertz Global Holdings (HTZ.O) said on Thursday it would sell about 20,000 electric vehicles, including Teslas, from its U.S. fleet due to higher expenses related to collision and damage, and will opt for gas-powered vehicles.Shares of the company, which also operates vehicles from Swedish EV maker Polestar among others, fell about 4%. Tesla's (TSLA.O) stock was down about 3%.Hertz also expects to book an about $245 million charge related to depreciation expenses from the proposed EV sale in the fourth quarter of 2023.Hertz's decision underscores the bumpy road EVs have hit as the growth rate on sales of those vehicles has slowed, causing carmakers like General Motors (GM.N) and Ford (F.N) to scale back production plans of those vehicles.Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas in a note said the car rental firm's move was a warning across the EV space and it was another sign that EV expectations need to be "reset downward across the market.""While consumers enjoy the driving experience and fuel savings (per mile) of an EV, there are other 'hidden' costs to EV ownership," Jonas added.Hertz had said it would order 100,000 Tesla vehicles by the end of 2022 and followed that with a decision to buy up to 65,000 units over five years from Polestar."Expenses related to collision and damage, primarily associated with EVs, remained high in the quarter," Hertz said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.German rental car company Sixt said in December that it had not purchased Tesla vehicles since 2022 and is selling its fleet of Teslas "as part of our regular de-fleeting process".Sixt said on Thursday it still plans to offer a range of electrified vehicles and "stick to our goal to electrify 70-90 percent of our rental fleet in Europe by 2030."Hertz said it would continue to focus on improving profitability for the remainder of its EV fleet.Wholesale used-EV prices fell for most of 2023 as prices for new EVs fell and inventories of unsold electric vehicles rose, according to Cox Automotive data.Cox forecast before Hertz's announcement that used-EV prices would decline more than overall used vehicle prices during 2024."While 20,000 cars isn't a large number in the total used vehicle market, it does mean Hertz will be taking a major loss on each of these sales while further contributing to the trend of falling used EV values," iSeeCars.com analyst Karl Brauer said.The car rental firm is selling some Tesla Model 3 for as low as about $20,000, nearly half the purchase price for the cheapest variant of the compact sedan.Hertz previously set a target for 25% of its fleet to be electric by the end of 2024.The company's used car website lists more than 700 EVs on sale including BMW's i3, Chevrolet's Bolt and Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y SUVs.Polestar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The immigration smokescreen is beginning to liftGovernments are performatively hostile to asylum seekers to distract voters from economic migrantsRich countries’ management of immigration has long employed the kind of misdirection of which a stage magician would be proud. For decades now, governments in the US and western Europe — particularly the UK — have been performatively hostile to small groups of migrants, usually those seeking asylum. But this has provided cover quietly to admit large numbers of economic migrants, giving nativist voters what they want in principle and worker-hungry businesses what they need in practice. This organised hypocrisy seems to have held together so far. But public patience with the double-dealing may be running short.As the Dutch academic Hein de Haas explains in an illuminating new book about migration, governments face a trilemma. They cannot simultaneously maintain economic openness, respect foreigners’ human rights and fulfil their own citizens’ anti-immigration preferences.“One of the three has to go,” de Haas says. “The most attractive option for politicians is to suggest they will clamp down on immigration through bold acts of political showmanship that conceal the true nature of immigration policies.”The UK has been pulling this trick for more than 20 years. In the early 2000s, with immigration already rising, Tony Blair’s government shifted from the traditional British stance of net zero immigration to “managed migration”, explicitly recognising migrants’ contribution to economic growth.But that was accompanied by an ostentatious clampdown on asylum seekers and toughening of border controls. Government papers released a few weeks ago showed that the Blair government contemplated measures such as opening migrant camps on the Scottish island of Mull or the Falkland Islands and, extraordinarily, potentially over-ruling the European Convention on Human Rights.In the event, pragmatism and the inept bureaucracy of the UK Home Office, which lost tens of thousands of asylum seekers’ applications, meant many were given a right to stay. This mass regularisation exercise was largely continued by Theresa May, the Conservative home secretary from 2010-2016, in her spare time from the inane theatre of despatching migrants “go home” vans to drive aimlessly round the streets of London.The campaign for Brexit in the 2016 referendum focused on restricting foreigners’ rights to come to Britain. Boris Johnson, the Brexiter who became prime minister from 2019, concocted an absurd plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda for possible settlement there. But this, it transpired, was another smokescreen, as Johnson also relaxed visa restrictions for international students and health workers. Immigration to the UK rose, even allowing for the one-off effects of admitting large numbers of Ukrainians and Hongkongers for humanitarian reasons.Similarly, before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the US let in large numbers of people during Donald Trump’s presidency, despite his plans to block migrants from Muslim countries and to build his “beautiful wall” on the Mexican border.Meanwhile, the EU collectively and Italy individually made deals with Libya in 2017 to return asylum seekers to detention camps in which inmates are raped and tortured — a far more repellent policy than anything the UK or Trump ever implemented. And yet total immigration to the bloc continued at elevated levels even after the surge of asylum seekers from Syria and elsewhere in the 2015 migration crisis had subsided.De Haas says governments serious about deterring irregular immigration would spend less on the theatrics of border security and more on finding and deporting undocumented immigrants in the workforce. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, notorious for its tough border policies, spends just one-eighth of its budget on domestic homeland security investigations. Since 1986, when employing undocumented immigrants was made a criminal offence, there have generally been only 15-20 prosecutions a year, with derisory fines ranging from $583 to $4,667. There’s a similar lack of enforcement in Europe.But have some voters and legislators finally detected the sleight of hand? In the UK, Rishi Sunak, Johnson’s successor as Conservative prime minister, has haplessly continued to try to implement the wildly impractical Rwanda plan. Its failure has stoked anti-immigration sentiment among many Conservative MPs.There was a purge of business-friendly moderate centre-right types in his party after Brexit, leaving too few MPs pushing back against the nativist ideologues. Sunak has been forced to appease the latter by taking various economically damaging moves, including raising the salary threshold for family visas and preventing foreign students bringing relatives to the UK despite Britain’s huge export earnings from higher education. In the EU, leaders such as Italy’s rightwing populist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who surfed into office in 2022 on a wave of anti-immigration rhetoric, are still playing the old double-dealing game. Her government has blocked humanitarian groups from rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean while creating nearly half a million work permits for non-EU immigrants.The EU collectively, which fears losing the global competition for high-productivity workers, is similarly trying to attract skilled non-EU migrants with a “talent pool” scheme aptly nicknamed “Tinder for jobs”. But a wave of fervently anti-immigration candidates are high in the polls ahead of the European parliamentary elections this year. If Trump is re-elected in 2024, his repulsive comments about undocumented immigrants poisoning America’s blood will also create expectations of a general clampdown. Perhaps, particularly in the UK, the tough-on-refugees, soft-on-workers game is up. Audiences have worked out the trick and are heckling the conjuror. But if the alternative is taking the risk of actually being honest with voters, governments might think it’s worth trying the well-practised ruse once again.
Hotter Than Expected CPI Led by Rent, Up Another 0.4 Percent
Capital Calls: UK real estate mergerImperial Metric. Britain’s property sector is getting the message on the weak UK economy. LondonMetric Property’s all-share merger with similarly sized LXi REIT creates a 4 billion pound ($5 billion) group that will constitute the country’s fourth largest landlord. Both sides derive something from it.LondonMetric isn’t getting a bargain. The discount from the deal implied on LXi’s net tangible assets (NTA) is just 4%, while the market in general is around 15% and bigger players like British Land are more like 30%, based on the latter’s September valuation, Breakingviews calculated. But it does allow the buyer to diversify away from managing warehouses, to other areas like hospitals and leisure facilities like Alton Towers.More importantly, both sides get a financial benefit. With interest rates spiking over the past year, LXi would be able to bring the average cost of debt down to 3.9% from over 5% on its 1.2 billion pounds in gross debt. And LXi boasts a lower operating cost of 7% as a percentage of gross rental income, which will reduce LondonMetric’s equivalent level when they combine. With the UK set to grow only 0.6% in 2024, according to the International Monetary Fund, that gives greater protection against the duo’s tenants having a trickier time. (By Yawen Chen)
Cita de: Lem en Enero 11, 2024, 10:32:50 amCita de: Cadavre Exquis en Enero 11, 2024, 08:04:04 amCitarThousands of Software Engineers Say the Job Market Is Getting Much WorsePosted by BeauHD on Wednesday January 10, 2024 @06:30PM from the sea-change-in-the-coding-world dept.An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard:CitarFor much of the 21st century, software engineering has been seen as one of the safest havens in the tenuous and ever-changing American job market. But there are a growing number of signs that the field is starting to become a little less secure and comfortable, due to an industry-wide downturn and the looming threat of artificial intelligence that is spurring growing competition for software jobs. "The amount of competition is insane," said Joe Forzano, an unemployed software engineer who has worked at the mental health startup Alma and private equity giant Blackstone. Since he lost his job in March, Forzano has applied to over 250 jobs. In six cases, he went through the "full interview gauntlet," which included between six and eight interviews each, before learning he had been passed over. "It has been very, very rough," he told Motherboard.Forzano is not alone in his pessimism, according to a December survey of 9,338 software engineers performed on behalf of Motherboard by Blind, an online anonymous platform for verified employees. In the poll, nearly nine in 10 surveyed software engineers said it is more difficult to get a job now than it was before the pandemic, with 66 percent saying it was "much harder." Nearly 80 percent of respondents said the job market has even become more competitive over the last year. Only 6 percent of the software engineers were "extremely confident" they could find another job with the same total compensation if they lost their job today while 32 percent said they were "not at all confident."Over 2022 and 2023, the tech sector incurred more than 400,000 layoffs, according to the tracking site Layoffs.fyi. But up until recently, it seemed software engineers were more often spared compared to their co-workers in non-technical fields. One analysis found tech companies cut their recruiting teams by 50 percent, compared to only 10 percent of their engineering departments. At Salesforce, engineers were four times less likely to lose their jobs than those in marketing and sales, which Bloomberg has said is a trend replicated at other tech companies such as Dell and Zoom. But signs of dread among software engineers have started to become more common online. In December, one Amazon employee wrote a long post on the anonymous employee platform Blind saying that the "job market is terrible" and that he was struggling to get interviews of any sort."In the age of AI, computer science is no longer the safe major," Kelli Maria Korducki wrote in The Atlantic in September. AI programs like ChatGPT and Google Bard allow users to write code using natural language, greatly reducing the time it takes workers to complete coding tasks. It could lead to less job security and lower compensation for all but the very best in the software trade, warns Matt Welsh, a former computer science professor at Harvard."More than 60 percent of those surveyed said they believed their company would hire fewer people because of AI moving forward," reports Motherboard.Saludos.Acerca del amigo Welsh:- Tiene una startup AI https://www.fixie.ai. Pump que te pump.- Lamentable charla cancamusera en YT, en el por otro lado respetable canal CS50: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhCl-GeT4jw.. tl;dr no harán falta programadores porque no habrá programas: le pediremos a la LLM-oráculo y ella nos dará el resultado. Momento exacto en https://youtu.be/JhCl-GeT4jw?t=1780No harán falta médicos porque no habrá que hacer diagnosis. Le diremos a la IA qué nos pasa y ella sola dirigirá el robot que nos pondrá el tratamiento o nos operará.No harán falta arquitectos ni ingenieros. Le daremos a la IA todos los requisitos que necesitamos en nuestra construcción y ella sola hará los cálculos y los planos de todo.No harán falta ingenieros aernáuticos. Le diremos al IA las aeronaves que queremos tener y ella sola diseñará lo que necesitamos. No harán falta abogados. Le daremos la IA todos los inputs del caso y ella sola generará la defensa que necesitamos. Incluso la leerá en voz alta en el juicio.Y así podría seguir y seguir hasta decir que "no hará falta gente en el mundo.. la IA hará todo en un mundo completamente mecanizado y servirá "al sistema" en vez de servir a la gente".El Powerpoint lo aguanta todo, hasta a los CEOs imbéciles.
Cita de: Cadavre Exquis en Enero 11, 2024, 08:04:04 amCitarThousands of Software Engineers Say the Job Market Is Getting Much WorsePosted by BeauHD on Wednesday January 10, 2024 @06:30PM from the sea-change-in-the-coding-world dept.An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard:CitarFor much of the 21st century, software engineering has been seen as one of the safest havens in the tenuous and ever-changing American job market. But there are a growing number of signs that the field is starting to become a little less secure and comfortable, due to an industry-wide downturn and the looming threat of artificial intelligence that is spurring growing competition for software jobs. "The amount of competition is insane," said Joe Forzano, an unemployed software engineer who has worked at the mental health startup Alma and private equity giant Blackstone. Since he lost his job in March, Forzano has applied to over 250 jobs. In six cases, he went through the "full interview gauntlet," which included between six and eight interviews each, before learning he had been passed over. "It has been very, very rough," he told Motherboard.Forzano is not alone in his pessimism, according to a December survey of 9,338 software engineers performed on behalf of Motherboard by Blind, an online anonymous platform for verified employees. In the poll, nearly nine in 10 surveyed software engineers said it is more difficult to get a job now than it was before the pandemic, with 66 percent saying it was "much harder." Nearly 80 percent of respondents said the job market has even become more competitive over the last year. Only 6 percent of the software engineers were "extremely confident" they could find another job with the same total compensation if they lost their job today while 32 percent said they were "not at all confident."Over 2022 and 2023, the tech sector incurred more than 400,000 layoffs, according to the tracking site Layoffs.fyi. But up until recently, it seemed software engineers were more often spared compared to their co-workers in non-technical fields. One analysis found tech companies cut their recruiting teams by 50 percent, compared to only 10 percent of their engineering departments. At Salesforce, engineers were four times less likely to lose their jobs than those in marketing and sales, which Bloomberg has said is a trend replicated at other tech companies such as Dell and Zoom. But signs of dread among software engineers have started to become more common online. In December, one Amazon employee wrote a long post on the anonymous employee platform Blind saying that the "job market is terrible" and that he was struggling to get interviews of any sort."In the age of AI, computer science is no longer the safe major," Kelli Maria Korducki wrote in The Atlantic in September. AI programs like ChatGPT and Google Bard allow users to write code using natural language, greatly reducing the time it takes workers to complete coding tasks. It could lead to less job security and lower compensation for all but the very best in the software trade, warns Matt Welsh, a former computer science professor at Harvard."More than 60 percent of those surveyed said they believed their company would hire fewer people because of AI moving forward," reports Motherboard.Saludos.Acerca del amigo Welsh:- Tiene una startup AI https://www.fixie.ai. Pump que te pump.- Lamentable charla cancamusera en YT, en el por otro lado respetable canal CS50: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhCl-GeT4jw.. tl;dr no harán falta programadores porque no habrá programas: le pediremos a la LLM-oráculo y ella nos dará el resultado. Momento exacto en https://youtu.be/JhCl-GeT4jw?t=1780
CitarThousands of Software Engineers Say the Job Market Is Getting Much WorsePosted by BeauHD on Wednesday January 10, 2024 @06:30PM from the sea-change-in-the-coding-world dept.An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard:CitarFor much of the 21st century, software engineering has been seen as one of the safest havens in the tenuous and ever-changing American job market. But there are a growing number of signs that the field is starting to become a little less secure and comfortable, due to an industry-wide downturn and the looming threat of artificial intelligence that is spurring growing competition for software jobs. "The amount of competition is insane," said Joe Forzano, an unemployed software engineer who has worked at the mental health startup Alma and private equity giant Blackstone. Since he lost his job in March, Forzano has applied to over 250 jobs. In six cases, he went through the "full interview gauntlet," which included between six and eight interviews each, before learning he had been passed over. "It has been very, very rough," he told Motherboard.Forzano is not alone in his pessimism, according to a December survey of 9,338 software engineers performed on behalf of Motherboard by Blind, an online anonymous platform for verified employees. In the poll, nearly nine in 10 surveyed software engineers said it is more difficult to get a job now than it was before the pandemic, with 66 percent saying it was "much harder." Nearly 80 percent of respondents said the job market has even become more competitive over the last year. Only 6 percent of the software engineers were "extremely confident" they could find another job with the same total compensation if they lost their job today while 32 percent said they were "not at all confident."Over 2022 and 2023, the tech sector incurred more than 400,000 layoffs, according to the tracking site Layoffs.fyi. But up until recently, it seemed software engineers were more often spared compared to their co-workers in non-technical fields. One analysis found tech companies cut their recruiting teams by 50 percent, compared to only 10 percent of their engineering departments. At Salesforce, engineers were four times less likely to lose their jobs than those in marketing and sales, which Bloomberg has said is a trend replicated at other tech companies such as Dell and Zoom. But signs of dread among software engineers have started to become more common online. In December, one Amazon employee wrote a long post on the anonymous employee platform Blind saying that the "job market is terrible" and that he was struggling to get interviews of any sort."In the age of AI, computer science is no longer the safe major," Kelli Maria Korducki wrote in The Atlantic in September. AI programs like ChatGPT and Google Bard allow users to write code using natural language, greatly reducing the time it takes workers to complete coding tasks. It could lead to less job security and lower compensation for all but the very best in the software trade, warns Matt Welsh, a former computer science professor at Harvard."More than 60 percent of those surveyed said they believed their company would hire fewer people because of AI moving forward," reports Motherboard.Saludos.
Thousands of Software Engineers Say the Job Market Is Getting Much WorsePosted by BeauHD on Wednesday January 10, 2024 @06:30PM from the sea-change-in-the-coding-world dept.An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard:CitarFor much of the 21st century, software engineering has been seen as one of the safest havens in the tenuous and ever-changing American job market. But there are a growing number of signs that the field is starting to become a little less secure and comfortable, due to an industry-wide downturn and the looming threat of artificial intelligence that is spurring growing competition for software jobs. "The amount of competition is insane," said Joe Forzano, an unemployed software engineer who has worked at the mental health startup Alma and private equity giant Blackstone. Since he lost his job in March, Forzano has applied to over 250 jobs. In six cases, he went through the "full interview gauntlet," which included between six and eight interviews each, before learning he had been passed over. "It has been very, very rough," he told Motherboard.Forzano is not alone in his pessimism, according to a December survey of 9,338 software engineers performed on behalf of Motherboard by Blind, an online anonymous platform for verified employees. In the poll, nearly nine in 10 surveyed software engineers said it is more difficult to get a job now than it was before the pandemic, with 66 percent saying it was "much harder." Nearly 80 percent of respondents said the job market has even become more competitive over the last year. Only 6 percent of the software engineers were "extremely confident" they could find another job with the same total compensation if they lost their job today while 32 percent said they were "not at all confident."Over 2022 and 2023, the tech sector incurred more than 400,000 layoffs, according to the tracking site Layoffs.fyi. But up until recently, it seemed software engineers were more often spared compared to their co-workers in non-technical fields. One analysis found tech companies cut their recruiting teams by 50 percent, compared to only 10 percent of their engineering departments. At Salesforce, engineers were four times less likely to lose their jobs than those in marketing and sales, which Bloomberg has said is a trend replicated at other tech companies such as Dell and Zoom. But signs of dread among software engineers have started to become more common online. In December, one Amazon employee wrote a long post on the anonymous employee platform Blind saying that the "job market is terrible" and that he was struggling to get interviews of any sort."In the age of AI, computer science is no longer the safe major," Kelli Maria Korducki wrote in The Atlantic in September. AI programs like ChatGPT and Google Bard allow users to write code using natural language, greatly reducing the time it takes workers to complete coding tasks. It could lead to less job security and lower compensation for all but the very best in the software trade, warns Matt Welsh, a former computer science professor at Harvard."More than 60 percent of those surveyed said they believed their company would hire fewer people because of AI moving forward," reports Motherboard.
For much of the 21st century, software engineering has been seen as one of the safest havens in the tenuous and ever-changing American job market. But there are a growing number of signs that the field is starting to become a little less secure and comfortable, due to an industry-wide downturn and the looming threat of artificial intelligence that is spurring growing competition for software jobs. "The amount of competition is insane," said Joe Forzano, an unemployed software engineer who has worked at the mental health startup Alma and private equity giant Blackstone. Since he lost his job in March, Forzano has applied to over 250 jobs. In six cases, he went through the "full interview gauntlet," which included between six and eight interviews each, before learning he had been passed over. "It has been very, very rough," he told Motherboard.Forzano is not alone in his pessimism, according to a December survey of 9,338 software engineers performed on behalf of Motherboard by Blind, an online anonymous platform for verified employees. In the poll, nearly nine in 10 surveyed software engineers said it is more difficult to get a job now than it was before the pandemic, with 66 percent saying it was "much harder." Nearly 80 percent of respondents said the job market has even become more competitive over the last year. Only 6 percent of the software engineers were "extremely confident" they could find another job with the same total compensation if they lost their job today while 32 percent said they were "not at all confident."Over 2022 and 2023, the tech sector incurred more than 400,000 layoffs, according to the tracking site Layoffs.fyi. But up until recently, it seemed software engineers were more often spared compared to their co-workers in non-technical fields. One analysis found tech companies cut their recruiting teams by 50 percent, compared to only 10 percent of their engineering departments. At Salesforce, engineers were four times less likely to lose their jobs than those in marketing and sales, which Bloomberg has said is a trend replicated at other tech companies such as Dell and Zoom. But signs of dread among software engineers have started to become more common online. In December, one Amazon employee wrote a long post on the anonymous employee platform Blind saying that the "job market is terrible" and that he was struggling to get interviews of any sort.
New inflation data shows ‘more work to do’, says top Fed officialClaire Jones in WashingtonA top US Federal Reserve official has said fresh inflation data shows there is “more work to do” for the central bank to hit its 2 per cent goal.“March is probably too early in my estimate for a rate decline because I think we need to see some more evidence,” Cleveland Fed Loretta Mester said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “The December CPI report just shows there’s more work to do, and that work is going to take restrictive monetary policy.”However, Mester cautioned against reading too much into Thursday’s inflation figures.“We don’t want to see the progress in inflation stall out, but I don’t think this report suggests that’s happening.”