#om malik

[maureen2musings]

I like the muted sounds, the shroud of grey, and the silence that comes with fog

annahilja

[nobeerreviews]

I like the muted sounds, the shroud of grey, and the silence that comes with fog.

-- Om Malik

[serpentinesheldonserpentine]

Is Artificial Intelligence the “serviceable villain” of layoffs?

King Lear had Oswald, and huge corporations like Meta have Artificial Intelligence to blame for their misdeeds.

Meta joins other companies in saying

Au revoir, auf wiedersehen

You won't see another morning, You won't see another evening

Good night,

Buenos noches o señor Senorita see ya later

Buenos noches bye-bye

To thousands.

But is it really the fault of spending on AI?

Tech veteran, investor, and thinker Om Malik has a perspective that I think is worth exploring. Om writes:

I have been watching companies make announcement after announcement, and all I see are the sins of their past. Meta is laying off another 8,000 people. So many of them are coming from ill-fated projects like Reality Labs. It is a company that got bloated, over-hired, and, believe it or not, didn’t have a clear idea of its own sprawl.

For context, Meta has cut close to 36,000 jobs since 2022. The first rounds were honest about pandemic over-hiring. The 8,000 being slashed in May, plus 6,000 open roles closed, are now being sold as an AI story. The company still has 78,000 employees, give or take a few hundred. Same problem, new script.

Meta lost $4 billion in Reality Labs in the first quarter of this year alone. CNBC reports the unit has accumulated over $80 billion in operating losses since late 2020. That tells you how bad things are from a management and strategy standpoint. I don’t even need to call an insider to confirm the mess.

As I have said before, the greatest myth in this business is that the technology industry is some kind of mystical master of efficiency and modern management.

I’m not criticizing pandemic over-hiring, but that bill has come due. Smart Steve told me “since everyone worked from home during COVID, the costs of office space and effective onboarding for new staff were nil. So, like a bear getting fat before winter we saw companies staffing up (over staffing) as a hedge against an unknown.”

Friends, I’m retired but I live on my investments. So I try to stay tuned into what’s happening and it’s no surprise to me that companies are lying to us about the immediate impact of Artificial Intelligence on their performance. It sounds better than “we mistakenly hired thousands of people and failed to make them productive.”

If you find yourself looking for work, please don’t despair. You may end up working in a field you never before considered. But you will find work. Unless you’re a cold blooded Wharton finance bro bound for Singapore, the USA remains the last good place to work and live. Please also acknowledge that believe it or not, our country is now at war and that impacts many parts of our economy.

Om Malik writes at

About Om Malik

Meditations on technology, science, future, life, and photography Hi, I am Om.  Photo by Chris Michel I am a San Francisco-based writer, pho

Smart Steve writes regularly on LinkedIn, but he’s practically family and giving out his information kills the anonymity I enjoy around here.

[mudwerks]

I have tried my best to stay off social platforms. They are now anti-social amplifiers of negative energy, feeding off an unquenchable thirst for attention. It was quite evident in some of the things that were being said on various platforms as the fires raged. I won’t lie — I have a special kind of disdain for those who gloat, joke, and take pleasure in others’ misery. There is nothing worse than those using tragedy to self-promote. The LA fires are a good reminder for all of us to see the naked truth about people and simply cut them from our attention space. I will address this as part of a longer piece later this month.

Wait, is it 2025 already? – On my Om

Om Malik

[beforevenice]

I like the muted sounds, the shroud of grey, and the silence that comes with fog.

// Om Malik

[anonymoushijaabi]

“I like the muted sounds, the shroud of grey, and the silence that comes with fog.”

~ Om Malik

[photomatt]

“This has always been a city of thoughtful rogues, greedy do-gooders, irreverent theologians, socialist entrepreneurs, hedonistic environmentalists, sensitive newspapermen, philosophical rockers, and high-minded sensualists. And through the years, these mavericks have carried, like an unruly band of Olympic torchbearers, the rebellious, restless, life-affirming fire that was lit in 1849.”

Gary Kamiya, Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco, via Om’s great essay On (not) leaving San Francisco.

[transpondster]

Juul & its House of Smoke & Horrors

Back in the day, when Silicon Valley was about silicon and technology, our industry elders used to wisely caution that Silicon Valley doesn’t invest in tobacco, alcohol, porn, and guns. Not anymore…

In a CNBC news report, Juul spokesman Matt David said: “Like many Silicon Valley technology startups, our growth is not the result of marketing but rather a superior product disrupting an archaic industry.” First of all, there is nothing technological about this company — unless you count behavioral addiction as a common ground with Facebook and others like them.  It is utter bullshit, and reporters should know better than letting this slide without serious questioning. 

From Business Insider (which called it iPhone of e-cigarettes) to CrunchBase, everyone seems to marvel over their growth rates, their post-Unicorn valuations, and jaw-dropping success at raising capital. And very rarely have I seen anyone stand up and point out that it is no different than traditional tobacco peddlers like Marlboro and Camel. They are peddling nicotine-based addiction. By focusing on charming founders, their backgrounds, large amount of funds raised and crazy valuations, no one is asking the right question: why are we supporting this company that is essentially Camel 2.0?