says as well that at the it cancelled for the white house was present along with representatives of the d o. j. they had been given complete permission to look where they wanted to. the biden's were not in the house at the time of the search, according to the personal lawyer, bob bower. and now bowers said as well that these documents appeared to come from a time when a biden was in the senate, as well as some documents that were associated with him while he was vice president . so not clear exactly what these documents were, but this is yet another drip drip in the ongoing process of finding these documents . the biden administration has attempted to take the heat out of it and has largely succeeded by giving an open door to the department of justice in it's ongoing investigation from the fight time that the 1st documents were discovered in november. they immediately handed everything over to the department of justice, opened doors to the f b. i told them they could look where they want to to when they want to. to said

there's been complete cooperation from the biden administration, with the officials as a continue this investigation, remembering as well that a special counsel has been appointed to investigate the matter. just as there's a special council investigating the documents that were taken by former president trump. when he left the white house or mike, many thanks, were mike hannah live in washington, d. c. a river in the balkans, usually renown fritz, stunning natural beauty has been transformed, transformed into a floating rubbish heap. this is drone video showing waste that's built up behind a barrier in the greener river, who runs from montenegro through serbia and bozier. much of the rubbish was dumped in poorly regulated riverside landfills all directly into the waterways themselves . the problem has be made worse because of recent heavy rain day. jennifer tula is an environmental activist trying to bring awareness to the floating health hazard.

a log and nobody wants to know which was going years or a guardian is an behind us. there's a barrier that contains the floating waist that comes from the upper basin of the dream river, as well as some from the limb river there. so this is, has been prevalent for the past 2 decades in visegrad, and it poses a significant role ecological disaster. are what are the in addition to floating waste such as plastic, are also various and household items including refrigerators and stoves. we will keep all of what it, in addition to posing a significant health and environmental problem. this is a source of great embarrassment. all of us, as we seem unable to solve this issue for such a prolonged period or of this effectively transforms visegrad into a de facto regional landfill. whether one chooses to acknowledge that or not i'm on our tourist in australian beach side town of portland's dale of come face to face

with an unexpected visitor. a giant seal came ashore and set off, exploring the small town south of melbourne. australian fur seals can be dangerous, but some people ignored warnings to keep their distance. police and conservationists eventually managed to lower the seal back into the water, unharmed off a goes. news continues here and i want to say are off the inside story. ah . 12000. what has gone from google that brings up a 5 by big tech companies to more than 200000 in just over a year. why are so many jobs being lost in the sector world wide at his big tech, in big trouble? this is inside story. ah,

hello, welcome to the program. i'm adrian finnegan, 12000 google employees opened an e mail on friday, telling them that jobs are gone. the tech giant is the latest to announce big layoffs of stuff. it follows others like meta, the owner of facebook and whatsapp, as well as twitter of microsoft. different reasons have been given for such major job cuts, some blame over recruitment during the height of the pandemic. others wrong strategies for the future. and then of course, there's the worsening economic climate. his a closer look at what's been happening in the industry more than 200000 people, as we said, have been fired in the sector in the past 12 months, google the latest to announce cuts sharing 12000 jobs. that's around 6 percent of

its workforce. meta, the owner of facebook, instagram and whatsapp is cutting $11000.00 jobs or 13 percent of its workforce and microsoft is laying off $10000.00 employees. medi it is video game division. ah, so let's bring in our guests for today's discussion from dublin, we're joined by elaine book, science and technology journalist and also host of the for tex sake podcast from new york. jim addison, who was the chief executive officer of beacon software and social media sector, lead of glassware ventures, and again from dublin, adrian wexler, technology editor of the irish independent newspaper. good to have all of you on inside story. welcome to the program. a le, let's start with you to these job cuts indicate that big tech is in big trouble. but if so, why? i certainly think that people will definitely feel that way that this, this a signal that all of tech is in trouble. but at the end of the day,

these companies are still hiring in some areas. i mean, amazon also announced at 800000 jobs last and this week, and his name says, creating a 1000 jobs in virginia with the launch the new data center. as are the areas that grows for them will still see at job creation and, but it does seem that certain areas they're going to pull back on. in the case of google, you're looking at a lot of their kind of, their baths, their research and development side of things. the things that maybe won't turn a profit until they've had a long, long years of development. so they may go back on a lot of that stuff and they may also kind of click back on the support services that they offer in terms of their ad tech because they have agencies that can support that staff and was definitely been talk of that happening and all righty and be ahead of the the job cuts and he took galena about them perhaps coming back or in areas that that won't turn a profit for some years to come. but his isn't that short sighted of them. i suppose it's not sure if what their goal is is the the current market,

i'm making sure those improvements are common here. the timing up of microsoft. google's maintenance comes just the therapist to report their full year figures for 2020 chose that's expected in early february. and it seems that they, they might be anticipating what, what would be sought market ripples coming from those earnings at announcements. and what we see when these jobs cook nations are, are made is that the stock market price tends to go off and google to sell saw 5 percent rise and share price on this 9th. and so essentially it seems to be, they are thinking in the short term of the stock market price and hedging may be for an issue that's coming with the earnings call in february. and they're trying to anticipate the closing to madison in new york. we listed some of the, the reasons why tech companies are cutting back on, on that workforce. one of them being the pandemic boom, not carrying through after the pandemic. why couldn't the vision reason the tech industry of, of foreseeing that why didn't the boom continue as life returned to normal for many

of us while i drink, i mean, it's interesting, you know, the phrase that comes to mind to me is what goes that? what must go down, right? and i, you know, the demick was remarkable and unprecedented in modern times. and i'm not sure anybody knew exactly what was going to happen afterwards. so in many ways it feels like what's been changed here is this era of expectations of inevitability. then everything is going to continue to go up into the right for these tech companies. that's clearly not true. they're public companies. they have stock prices. and when the stock prices go down, they faced the same kind of pressures that the automakers and the drug manufacturers and everybody else faces. and, and this is that lay well worn playbook when your socks under pressure. you, you cut costs and now we're seeing it for an exact so it's capitalism, a work here. it really is. and it's really unfortunate. i mean, i don't think we should ever be glib about 10000 or 100000 people. these are real people losing their jobs, they have paychecks, they have family,

they have mortgages, so there is a very significant human costs. the flip side of that though is, you know, we're so pleased when we see great job growth when we see companies hiring. one of the expectations, at least in the united states, is different. obviously in different countries is if i'm going to hire people and you're going to be excited when i do that, i need to actually be able to reduce and let people go when times aren't so good. so that's, that's the downside. and none of us like to see that, but that's the reality in order for people to be willing to hire when times are good. they also have to be able to let people go when times are not so good. adrian in dublin, each company is cutting back, so would we between 5 and 10 percent of its workforce is, is that just coincidence? i wonder, what percentage of tech sector workers are actually contractors of freelance. all of these cuts go to affect them to people who are not on the full time payroll. they're not full time employees. it could well do so if you take one company that has an outcome, for example, google here in dublin, they employ 10000 people,

half of which are full time, stop, half of which are contractors. now the full time staff, the employees could go and say, 5000 to maybe 44700. we don't know what the figure will be or the contractors are. we won't know for a while. they would be big out sourcing firms like accenture. so there is potentially a 2nd tier effect on the contractors as well. don't forget. so that's employment in these tech companies went up by about a 3rd in the pound damage. so amazon, for example, was in seattle was hiring $5000.00 people every year in addition. so that the cuts we're seeing now are not good and it may be canary in the coal mine in terms of a wider recession. but they're bringing the tech industry back to round the levels they were a year ago. and most of them that i talked to are all here in dublin for example, most than that i talked to are still talking about hiring typically in the 2nd half

year. ok. so it's not necessarily going to have a detrimental impact upon the economy. the in dublin less as you say it's, it's a carrying a coal miner. this was to come, not just in the tech sector there, narratives clashing here because there was a feeling that there was overheating going on in most western cities in the world. for example, there's as in crisis, a good chunk of that was caused by tech companies that have expanded, though so quickly. now we most and overlook the fact. i think jim, i had mentioned that and you mentioned it of a potential recession, particularly in the u. s. which many of the tech companies which are sharing jobs, that's really the market they're, they're guided by also don't underestimate regulatory impact in markets like europe. here we've seen piece of legislation like digital services act companies like mehta and google, which are deeply reliant on advertising and personalized advertising. they're

taking, potentially a big hit there as well. there are many factors that play elaine. you touched on something about a ago when you said that that the downturn doesn't appear to be affecting all companies. equally. apple, as you say, yet to announce job losses. that doesn't mean to say that, that they won't be any but it, but it has yet to announce any there are other companies to does that perhaps signal that but other companies were, were more cautious in the 1st place when it came to hiring. during the pandemic, they didn't gamble on the pandemic. boom. yeah. even for even those who said that they were being cautious still seem to fall into this trap. i mean, technically speaking, google was externally reporting that it was on a hiring freeze from 2022. within a transpires, they hired by $30000.00 people at mostly at the top of that year. maybe the hiring freeze didn't break and month later. but it does seem to be that even those who are

attempting to be cautious and maybe our be saying that they're being cautious still fell into a trap. the, they just kind of believes the boom would continue forever and ever, and hoped that it would shock bye as another example. c. e. o to tobias ok. they had said in an earnings a forest showed massive grocer in the pandemic. but they knew that this kind of e commerce growth was not sustainable. it was panoramic glad. and it was because of the crisis situation. and people being at home and e commerce, having a boom because of that. and still they then a few months later, a new job course because they had over anticipated how much that growth would sustain. so even those who are aware of it and reported themselves being where it's still silence the attract. we've had companies here in our lives that are unicorn growth stage, the growing and scaling companies and, and just recently hitting a 1000000000 dollar evaluation like way fire, who are now having to call back a very recent hiring funds to the, to seem to be that even though they're very much aware that they shouldn't fall

into this trap of over hiring at for what is a crisis economy. it still seems to be something that they fall at fall into. jim, want to come back to what you were saying earlier on. what about about this being capitalism? at work? these companies are still for the most part, making money, in some cases, they're making a lot of money. ok, sure, i get it. what you were saying? you can't have people on the payroll who are surplus to requirements. but who's driving the cutbacks is this, is this the companies themselves? the, the accountant saying, well, right, we're a bit heavy here. we need to let people go or is this shareholders? this is people who are looking to profit out of the sex. the success of these tech companies. ultimately it is the shareholders. i think you'd, you just nail that, and of course, the accountants keep track of what we report to the shareholders. and so if you're an executive at one of these companies, it's interesting, there is a contagion that goes on for both good and bad. you know, it's, it's easy to talk about, we should be disciplined, we should be cautious,

we shouldn't, over a higher, we shouldn't over eat to use the phrase. somebody used earlier. that's all. well, instead of done in that sounds good. but then when you're in a bull market and things going crazy, you know, your own employees are wondering, why are we not capitalizing on this opportunity? why are we not growing? why are we not hiring? and so everybody gets caught up. and this idea that we've got to keep up, and then of course, when inevitably the music stops and things slow down. you've got real shareholders including active as shareholders, which largely had ignored tech companies. the activist shareholders work. we're not really in and around big tact where they take a steak and your company. they start nominating new members to your board. they start putting pressure on you. now you look like a lot of other public companies is ok. our stock price, as long as it was going up, i could get whatever err cover i needed to do that. once it starts going down, i've got to respond to the market. so it is very much the shareholders in the stock market, ultimately driving it. right. so in terms of, of innovation and the impact that these tech jobs have had and continue to have on all our lives. the question jim is, should active

a shareholders be able to wield so much power? to what extent are they holding back innovation in these companies? yeah, that's a great question about the stock market and the role of publicly traded companies and you know, who takes what position. i think you, in general, if you wanted to argue that points purely around technology and i'll take that element of your question. i mean, these are the most innovative technology companies in the world. and as painful as it is, especially if you're one of the say, 10000 people who's lost your job, we're talking about 5 percent, 10 percent, 13 percent, i think was the number you mentioned for, for facebook and meta. so these are not for the most part, massive cuts. now twitter is a special exception. you know, a company that had other problems and, you know, on my cool, so let's set that aside. but, but these are still amazing engines of innovation and it would be wildly extreme to say ok, all the sudden google and microsoft and amazon and facebook are no longer going to

be innovative because they cut 5 or 10 or 13 percent of their employees. i think that's generally an unlikely, unsustainable, and you outside looking in, you're not going to see any appreciable difference in the output of those companies in the near term. ultimately, there certainly will be an impact, but it won't be visible to you. and by and large, lame was saying earlier on, perhaps, you know, it may be a little a little short sighted let's, let's put that question that to both adrian and elaine, in terms of, of the future adrian and driving the innovation that we've all lived over the last 20 years and will were promised, continue to change our lives for the better not always but, but mostly a job losses on the scale going to going to get a whole things back. and what's your view on this, on this shareholder activist point that we were discussing? well, to, to point on that, 1st of all, you probably remember the big dotcom crush in 1999. and there were a few companies that were on the up at that time and who crashed along with crash.

one of them was a small company called amazon, and everybody said that amazon was finished and you know, it was 2 m basis. we know 20 years later, amazon is arguably the world's dominant, a retail company because it exactly as he does say, it twigged the change in our behavior and how the economy works. and you may see that in effect now. i mean jim makes an excellent point. it's only 10 percent in most cases of staff that are being left go many startup companies that i talk to. they the downturns like this, where there's a certain number of people being let go from the big companies are actually very good for them because they find it very difficult to hire people in normal boom times now they might be able to afford to hire a director of engineering, i know they're very valuable staff, so it's very possible that actually you might see this lighting if you want to call it fast. you might see new blood, a new companies and new ideas,

a new startups that is something i want to. i want to home in on, in a few moments when the 1st selena i want to ask you a specific question about about meta here and, and mark zuckerberg in particular with a wrong to bet so heavily on, on what medical's the matter, the us and, and the rest of us might call virtual reality or want to that the job losses at meta say about about his leadership. they definitely call into question, but mexico berg is particularly powerful that matter in the he's also the largest shareholder and to hold a lot of play because of that position. and i think the, the question is like we were talking about how innovative these companies truly are . i mean, they're labeled as innovative companies and they're very wealthy and powerful. so we see them that way. but a lot of the innovations these days are bought in and even in the case of the matter 1st from oculus, which was bought by faithful a number of years ago. and it see, it don't seem to have been a bit of a passion project for some time. now, he has

a decision that we will all be operating about a birth, despite report from people who do have to live and work in this for the sake of their jobs are not really enjoying it. there's not really a user demand side for this. and so you see this kind of problem in better where it's a bit of a loan tack, visionary. and if you've got everything on that loan, talk visionary, having the right vision. well then you're going to come to the problems that they're facing, where they are investing a lot of money into a last name division. that doesn't seem to have the solid future that the c e o credenza to have. in the case of bill, you have essentially an advertising business for the large part of its existence. they are now trying to compete with cloud services where amazon web services absolutely takes the talks about there. and then microsoft would be a just a 2nd. the google is even the 3rd player among the big tech giants enough space, but that is a space where they do seem to see there's opportunity they are making caught there, but not in close to facing rolls, not an engineering type roles. and,

and google don't need to find a new revenue stream because the ad tech advertising business definitely isn't going to sustain the size of the company. that it is not the way to focusing. but then it's talking about pivoting to a, i essentially, and that's where we get what, where i question the most of these companies because they are just following trans grace singularity, we now have twitter copying and take talks interface with for you and following. and you see that happen all the time across these companies. they coffee and they acquire and new ideas actually, irons often brought before. i think apple is actually quite good, a brand new ideas out there, but they're very smart about if they understand market research and all that kind of stuff. and then in terms of the matter, you have mac soccer burg trying to bring a new idea to the for that he doesn't seem to understand doesn't resonate with the everyday person to join up. just saying about marks. i would like a book here and, and his leadership to, to what extent you think he's holding better back was interesting. his, his vision for virtual reality and the bed of earth. i think many of us myself

included question that it seems very dubious, but it was interesting just a few minutes ago we were talking about companies being short sighted. right? i mean, it's like going to be criticized no matter what you do and in bear just a mark sucker berg, you know, the 4 of us can all have our opinions. none of us who founded a company that became worth $500000000000.00 or more. so you probably deserves the benefit of that out. but that being said, i'm just like most people intensely skeptical that that's a world we want to live in. and i think history may prove that that was really a poor judgment, or it's entirely possible that he is playing the long game like we talked about. he's trying to be strategic and innovative for the future. and maybe the metal roof will play out in ways that we don't understand and can't predict. and i guess that's the role of a visionary. and you know, it is true that he controls the company. he's a super, super voting rights as a shareholder. so effectively, he can ignore the outside noise, probably in a way that most other companies, including, you know, google and even amazon cannot. so he can certainly insulate himself from,

from the criticism if that's what they choose to do. adrian, i want to pick up on what he was saying, and also what jim was saying about visionaries there, where, where are the, the, the future is if visionaries, to what extent will nimble a smaller companies who can innovate faster than the b m, or take a share of the business, as we all know today about amazon, apple and microsoft. net metal, netflix and, and so on. in 10 years time, even 5 years time will over new companies have become household names at the expense of the current crop. oh, i think so. i mean, there used to be an hour to a couple of years ago that the fang companies, the facebook and amazons and apples and google to netflix is we're too big to disrupt every 2 or 3 years. that is complete. that is proven to be completely wrong . 5 years ago, very few people had heard of a company called tick tock. now it is by far the hardest social media company in

terms of downloads and it is the it has its rivals absolutely scrambling in the last few months. one technology has free to google. i have completely chat g p t artificial intelligence. microsoft is reportedly investing up to 10000000 in the search industry on a search business and how we actually search for things on line within the next 18 months might be completely different to one that has been in, in the last 5 to 10 years. so if you're asking me for a 10 year prediction, i would say, but it's, it's almost certain that 2 or 3 of the big players who we cannot have imagined ever have living with us at that time, will the new companies ok. elaine big tech companies, of course, are global concerns. other regions of the world will be affected more than others in these job cuts where wages and staff costs a higher for example. and are we likely to see the center of gravity shift?

all right, these, that global concerns, but that the mostly based in silicon valley do you think that these companies should now be looking over their shoulder at places like china and india, where the competition is likely to emerge and, and take that crown if you like, as as the b m also the tech industry. absolutely, and as h, a printer has happened with tick tock, where at silicon valley maybe was paying too much attention to talking to the complete exploded in their faces. and they suddenly were paying rival and off the back for to this massive chinese tech fire. and, and trying to help produce some incredible tech companies that absolutely compete at the same level of those silicon valley giants. and there's no reason why you couldn't do that with the level of engineering a tech town that comes out of india. and it could be a completely different landscape in the future where we don't speak about silicon valley, the way that we do now as this innovation center,

i think the glass of that reputation has long been worn away and on it is really loose and base in the current context and i think as agent point structure as well and pivots to ai, what you might see is the people who've been doing the work and i before now before this kind of appetite ad grew in the last couple months because of the recent releases they might have a much better understanding of this technology because there's a lot of ethical and, and bigger considerations. the have to come before us in the mentation. what i'm afraid that the big tech giants will panic and start implementing best of willy nilly with a really taking those iterations. and that could be to the detriment of all of us, including a gym. the final question here, i've got about a minute in which you can answer this. will the big companies themselves, adrian, i think, brought up regulators and anti competitive practices. will the big companies

themselves be able to survive? to what extent are they going to become too big for their own good and, and the regulators will split them up. you know, i've, i've long thought the anti trust is probably the biggest threat that these companies face. and that's probably still true, although it is interesting, they can argue and say, hey, look, we just laid off $10000.00 people. how big and how dominant and how you know, how can in control, can we really be when we're doing this? so i think that actually will ease some of the regulatory concerns and everybody is and should be concerned about job loss, including regulators. right. and so that's the, that's always been the rebuttal is when you try to break us up where you may not have the engines of growth anymore, you may lose high paying jobs, you know, all, all of those kinds of thing. but i do think there are still substantial regulatory issues anti trust that we should also mentioned you raised china. authoritarian government, we know are on the rise around the world. so it's a successful and powerful, it's tick. tock is, i don't think ultimately it's a technology choice as much as it is a geo political choice. it's entirely likely that tick tock good at the band in the

u. s. and that's again, that's political not, not technology fascinating, really enjoyed this discussion. many thanks to all of you, elaine book, jim anderson at adrian westlaw. as always, thank you for watching. don't forget, you can see the program again at any time by visiting our website. that's our 0 dot com to further discussion. join us on our facebook page. you'll find that at facebook dot com forward slash ha inside. sorry, and of course the conversation continues on twitter handle at a j inside story for me, adrian, for the good of the whole team here. and so thanks for watching. we'll see you again. i ah and a free lisa,

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