Thus ends my Twitter addiction
And, what happens when no one is net-hiring?
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Thus ends my Twitter addiction
After around 17.5 years on Twitter, I think that I am finally falling out of love. I have lived on Twitter — or X, Twttr, whatever you want to call it — since I realized back in 2007 or 2008 that I could post as much as I wanted and folks couldn’t stop me.
That’s not a glib sentiment. Folks take for granted today that they have unlimited digital space to share their thoughts against a platform-supplied audience. Social media like Twitter was once as revolutionary as the advent of blogging when it came to giving people a voice.
And boy do they ever. The LA fire tragedy, however, has changed my thinking on the platform. Twitter was once the place to be during breaking news events. Reporting flowed rapidly with a mix of on-the-ground regulars to help advance the story. Those days are behind us. Instead, Twitter during the LA fires was net-negative to my personal news gathering; I spent more time personally debunking bullshit claims than I did learning.
Instead of news and common cause, Twitter treated the LA fires as a great time try to score virtual points by virtue signaling as hard as possible for current right-wing cause(s) célèbre. You can see my notes for TWiST on the LA budget and so forth here, but damn.
If Twitter is not a great place to be a person or a great place to gather news, then what is it good for? Thanks, Elon; I now spend more time on niche subreddits looking at deranged Factorio builds.
Not that I am leaving Twitter — I will never, ever log off. But I am certainly using the service less, and more as a notetaking tool than anything else.
Great, now the Fed’s never going to cut
Thanks to Chris Paschall over at TWiST, I have the following graphic to share:
The above data is great news. And because it is in fact so great, the stock market is currently puking up its breakfast:
CNBC red ink aside, you might wonder why.
Simple. The stock market is trading more on expected future rate cuts than trailing economic performance. This might seem odd, but it’s not a new phenomenon. Instead, it’s a slightly weird down-is-up situation. Or, you could view the inverse market reaction to better-than-expected economic results as investors re-pricing their optimism that rate cuts would land at a certain cadence this year.
Now people are wondering if they will come at all.
Notably the next President wants to both lower interest rates and reduce inflation. How that circle will square should prove interesting.
Static team size
Closing out this morning, we’re starting to see the impact of AI on tech hiring. There have been reports of AI replacing workers — to varying degrees of success — but I think the larger trend to watch is teams that no longer grow. Instead of rapidly shrinking, even if the latter gets more coverage than the former.
From an interview with 20VC, transcribed by SalesForceBen, here’s SFDC CEO Marc Benioff on the impact of AI on his engineering team:
“We’re not adding any more software engineers next year because we have increased the productivity this year with Agentforce and with other AI technology that we’re using for engineering teams by more than 30% – to the point where our engineering velocity is incredible. I can’t believe what we’re achieving in engineering.”
The company will still hire engineers. Backfills remain a thing. But any more sounds like no more net hires which is a huge deal. Previously, tech companies hoarded talent, fought for talent, and bought talent. Now, that’s less of a thing?
Microsoft’s headcount growth has halted, in another example of the trend
Here’s revenue per employee annual percentage change for a few tech companies:
Meta has the worst result, but it’s still positive. Nvidia is the clear outlier, but Microsoft is a good ur-example of what a company can do when it decides to stop net hiring and can still grow.
AI is coming for developer job growth. And sales and marketing job growth. And, well, every other sort of job growth that we see at tech giants. Smaller companies, too. Buckle up.
Will static team size impact startup exits?
You wonder what will happen to startup acquihires if big tech companies wind down their hiring cadences. It’s not hard to guess that acquihire prices will decline if talent is worth less than it was; but don’t worry that acquihires are over, they are not. But I expect acquirers to want fewer, stronger hires from buys than before.
The impact of AI on the job market seems to be coming for the average players first. The outlier employees will be fine. But as most of the national labor market are average-ish — tautology, forgive me — you wonder what they will do with their skills. And, what percentage of their income they can regain once they find new gigs.
If you are a founder or venture investor and have a take on this riff, hit reply. I want to know what you are thinking.