Hello, and welcome to Thursday. This is Matt Weinberger, filling in once again for Jordan Erb. Did you know that the word "Thursday" is derived from "Thor's Day" in Old English? That's all the excuse I need, personally, to spend even more time with "God of War Ragnarok." That's not an ad, I'm just a big fan.
A dark cloud continues to hang over the tech sector: Elon Musk is cleaning house at Twitter of internal critics, Amazon employees are said to be cracking jokes as they process this week's job cuts, and Googlers are making memes to cope with the anxiety that they could be next for layoffs. Meanwhile, former Yahoo CEO and one-time Google exec Marissa Mayer is sounding the alarm bell that the web itself could be degrading in quality.
Normally, this is where I'd say something like "it's not all doom and gloom," but...it kind of is, lately. Sorry.
There's much to discuss, so let's go.
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1. Google employees meme past the graveyard. Google's parent company Alphabet has so far stayed out of the conversation around cost-cutting in big tech. Don't expect that to last forever.
- Pretty much every single one of Google's peers has conducted sweeping layoffs in recent weeks. Googlers are expecting that at this point, it's a question of when the axe will fall, not if, Insider reports.
- Insider's Rosalie Chan and Hugh Langley have the exclusive look at the memes that Googlers are sharing with each other internally to cope with the anxiety. Come for "The Office" memes, stay for the "Squid Game" reference.
- Earlier this week, activist investor TCI urged Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai to get costs under control. In particular, TCI says that Alphabet has too many employees who are paid too much. And a Wall Street analyst warned on Wednesday that layoffs are practically unavoidable at this point.
Read more about the anxiety at Google here.
In Other News:
2. Elon cleans house. Elon Musk fired as many as two dozen Twitter employees this week who had criticized his leadership style. Now, Twitter employees are deleting internal Slack messages they fear Musk won't like, so as to avoid his wrath. A Twitter exec went so far as to warn employees to use Slack "wisely."
3. Marissa Mayer sounds the alarm for Google. Mayer, formerly the CEO of Yahoo and one of Google's earliest executives before that, worries that the search giant is trying to get ahead of a general degradation of the quality of the web. Read more from Insider's Tom Dotan here.
4. Amazon employees have a laugh at The Lord of The Rings' expense. With Amazon still reeling from the impact of this week's layoffs, some staffers are cracking jokes internally that the writers of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" should have been the ones to lose their jobs after the Amazon Prime show's mixed reception.
5. You can take the exec out of Amazon, but you can't take the Amazon out of the exec. Insider's Diamond Naga Siu and Katie Malone spoke with 5 former Amazon executives who dish on what they took with them when they left Amazon — and what they left behind. Read more about life after Amazon here.
6. Investors sue celebs who promoted FTX. Tom Brady, Steph Curry, Larry David and other celebrities all took money from FTX to promote the crypto exchange to mass audiences. Now, with FTX all but DOA, investors have filed a lawsuit alleging that those figures misrepresented the facts and left customers holding the bag.
7. Finance influencers are cashing in. 29-year-old YouTube star Joshua Mayo earned some $55,000 in October via the ads on his personal-finance advice channel. Insider's Amanda Perelli breaks down how he built his audience and his ad revenue. Read more here.
8. A show of support for Elizabeth Holmes. With the disgraced Theranos founder's sentence expected to be handed down on Friday, over 130 letters from friends, family, and figures like Cory Booker and Tim Draper filed letters urging the court to go easy on her.
Odds and Ends:
9. Trade your pickup for a Toyota Prius. In a new report, Consumer Reports says that pickup trucks are the most unreliable car category — and hybrids like Toyota's famed Prius lead the pack on the same metric, alongside SUVs.
10. Capture the moment in Windows. I'm a big fan of Microsoft Windows, generally speaking — while I use a Mac for my day-to-day work, PCs have come a long way. But I can't always remember how to take a screenshot in Windows. Luckily, we have this complete guide to taking a screenshot in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
What we're watching today:
- TechCrunch is holding its Sessions: Crypto event in Miami on Thursday. Speakers include Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao and OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer.
Curated by Matt Weinberger in San Francisco. (Feedback or tips? Email mweinberger@businessinsider.com or tweet @gamoid.) Edited by Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.
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