The American magic of capitalism where you can fire 15,000 workers and no single senator, House or even a minister (secretary) will even notice. Yes, “Intel is embarking on a significant downsizing as part of a broader cost-saving initiative aimed at stabilizing its financial outlook and revitalizing its market position. The company has announced plans to reduce its workforce by over 15%, translating to more than 15,000 job cuts out of its current 125,000 employees.”
Most employees except the executives are under “as is” contract which means you can go to work, and your entry badge has been deactivated because last night, the executives decided to fire 2,000 people. Humans are numbers and it is plug and play! That is the other side of capitalism which we do not discuss here; those affected, we wish you strength.
But capitalism does not stop there, as Microsoft tells its shareholders that ChatGPT’s OpenAI, a company which it has supported with $13 billion, is now a competitor. How can you invest $billions in a company and that firm later becomes a competitor? How was that type of agreement a possibility that OpenAI could unveil SearchGPT in a world with Bing?
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Good People, these are things our African economies do not see at scale. And it seems this could also be the reason these American companies rule the world of tech – ability to hire and fire easily, and structure partnerships many of us commoners here cannot understand! But we the people need to make efforts to understand. I cannot imagine giving a company $13 billion and that company tomorrow will compete against me – no way!
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Intel will still have about 110k after firing 15k, which is still significant; considering the fact that it has been unable to compete in the AI space. We also need to ask the sort of tasks those fired have been performing and how much of impact they could have going forward. X (Twitter) is still standing after firing more than half of its employees, yet it has churned out more features within the same period; talking about efficiency.
For that of Microsoft and OpenAI, we often feel that the big guys make the best judgment, since they have been doing big stuff; so you may not stand a chance challenging their thought process, especially if you haven’t built or managed something as big as theirs. We will take it that Microsoft knew what it was doing, since they cannot invite us to help them see what they might not be seeing. When you are very successful, it affords you certain privileges to make mistakes without major consequences.
We will not be able to try it in Africa because we usually have a one way ticket, if you aim and miss your mark, you could go back to ground zero and start all over again. When that is your lot, you must aim very well before shooting. Maybe we must learn how to quickly fire people who are unproductive.