Tag: labor and employment

LinkedIn is cutting more than 650 jobs
Technology

LinkedIn is cutting more than 650 jobs

New York CNN  —  LinkedIn is laying off 668 people across its engineering, product, talent and finance teams as part of a broader restructuring, the social media platform announced Monday. In a blog post, the social media site for professionals said it is making changes to its organizational structure and streamlining its decision making. “Talent changes are a difficult, but necessary and regular part of managing our business,” the company said. Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016. The company is dedicating many of its resources toward artificial intelligence. Recently, LinkedIn announced an AI-assisted candidate discovery for recruiters using the site. And in Microsoft’s most recent earn...
Nokia layoffs: Company will slash up to 14,000 jobs
Technology

Nokia layoffs: Company will slash up to 14,000 jobs

Hong Kong CNN  —  Nokia will slash up to 14,000 jobs in a major cost-cutting drive to address a “weaker” market environment, it said in a statement on Thursday. The Finnish telecom giant, a major provider of 5G equipment that employs 86,000 people, announced the move as part of a wider restructuring that will lower its headcount to between 72,000 and 77,000. The move will help the company reduce staffing expenses by 10% to 15%, and save at least €400 million ($421.4 million) in 2024 alone, the company projected. Overall, it said the reductions are expected to trim Nokia’s costs by up to €1.2 billion (nearly $1.3 billion) cumulatively by the end of 2026. Nokia (NOK) said it would “act qui...
Stellantis to put second EV battery plant in town where EVs threaten current jobs
Technology

Stellantis to put second EV battery plant in town where EVs threaten current jobs

New York CNN  —  Stellantis and Samsung plan to build a second EV battery plant in Kokomo, Indiana, a town where many current Stellantis workers see such plants as a threat to their current jobs. EV battery plants are a critical part of the plans of traditional automakers to transition from gasoline-powered cars to electric vehicles in coming decades. But they could be a threat to existing jobs building engines and transmissions, which are not needed in an EV. Stellantis has four plants in Kokomo alone building engines and transmissions, employing more than 5,000 hourly workers between them. Stellantis, which builds cars under the Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler brands, along with unionized rivals Gener...
A woman was found trapped under a driverless car. It’s not what it looks like, the car company said
Technology

A woman was found trapped under a driverless car. It’s not what it looks like, the car company said

CNN  —  A pedestrian in downtown San Francisco was found critically injured and trapped underneath a driverless car Monday night. But the company that operates the autonomous car says it’s not at fault. San Francisco Fire Department spokesperson Justin Schorr told CNN early Tuesday that the victim has multiple life-threatening injuries. The driverless vehicle was operated by Cruise, a San Francisco-based self-driving car company and subsidiary of General Motors (GM). But the company says another vehicle was to blame for the pedestrian’s injury. “A human-driven vehicle struck a pedestrian while traveling in the lane immediately to the left of a Cruise AV,” said Cruise spokesperson Navideh...
Epic Games, maker of Fortnite, to lay off 16% of its workforce
Technology

Epic Games, maker of Fortnite, to lay off 16% of its workforce

CNN  —  Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, said on Thursday that it will lay off 16% of its staff, around 830 employees, as it attempts to reverse what CEO Tim Sweeney called “unrealistic” spending. In a letter to employees Thursday, Sweeney said the video game company had been “spending way more money than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic.” “I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic,” Sweeney said in the letter, which the company shared publicly. He added that Epic plans to divest from the online independent music platform Bandcamp, which it bought last year and which will now be acquire...
How companies are embracing generative AI…or not
Technology

How companies are embracing generative AI…or not

New York CNN  —  Companies are struggling to deal with the rapid rise of generative AI, with some rushing to embrace the technology as workflow tools for employees while others shun it – at least for now. As generative artificial intelligence – the technology that underpins ChatGPT and similar tools – seeps into seemingly every corner of the internet, large corporations are grappling with whether the increased efficiency it offers outweighs possible copyright and security risks. Some companies are enacting internal bans on generative AI tools as they work to better understand the technology, and others have already begun to introduce the trendy tech to employees in their own ways. Many prominent ...
Black creators built TikTok. But Black employees say they experienced ‘toxicity and racism’
Technology

Black creators built TikTok. But Black employees say they experienced ‘toxicity and racism’

New York CNN  —  Nnete Matima said she was attracted to work at TikTok because of how the social media platform was “really built upon Black culture” and the work of Black creators. She saw and welcomed TikTok’s public pledge of support for the Black community in the wake of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd and applied to work for the company because she felt its corporate values “really resonated with me,” Matima told CNN. Shortly after she began working at TikTok-parent company ByteDance last year, however, she alleges she encountered “toxicity and racism” in the workplace. Her manager would refer to her as a “black snake” behind her back and set unrealistic and uneven expectations for her com...
Google is laying off hundreds in its recruitment division
Technology

Google is laying off hundreds in its recruitment division

New York CNN  —  Google confirmed it will lay off hundreds of staff members who helped recruit and hire employees, as Silicon Valley continues its cost-cutting efforts. The latest cuts come after Google parent Alphabet in January eliminated 12,000 jobs, or about 6% of its workforce, across the company as it grappled with economic uncertainty that hit the company’s bottom line last year, especially its core advertising business. During Google’s July earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said the company was continuing to slow its “expense growth and pace of hiring.” “We continue to invest in top engineering and technical talent while also meaningfully slowing the pace of our overall hiring,...
Former Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang quits cloud in surprise move amid landmark restructuring
Technology

Former Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang quits cloud in surprise move amid landmark restructuring

Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, which explores what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Hong Kong CNN  —  Daniel Zhang, the outgoing chairman and CEO of Alibaba, has stepped down from his position running the company’s cloud division in a surprise move announced just months after he assumed the pivotal role. Alibaba’s stock tumbled 3% on Monday in Hong Kong following the announcement. Zhang will now fully exit the Chinese tech giant’s core management team as it undertakes its biggest ever restructuring amid a worsening downturn in the world’s second largest economy. Just three months ago, Zhang, 51, said that a ke...
Chuck Schumer to host AI forum with Zuckerberg and Musk among attendees
Technology

Chuck Schumer to host AI forum with Zuckerberg and Musk among attendees

CNN  —  More than a half-dozen leading tech CEOs will be among those attending a highly anticipated artificial intelligence event hosted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer next month, according to the senator’s office. The September 13 event will involve Google CEO Sundar Pichai and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt; Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella; Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang; and Elon Musk, CEO of X, the company formerly known as Twitter. It is the first of nine sessions Schumer has said will begin this fall to discuss the hardest questions that regulations on AI will seek to address, including how to protect workers, national security and copyright...