Tausi Insider

Facebook’s parent company Meta is cutting more than 11,000 employees, roughly 13% of its workforce. This mass layoff is the first in Meta's 18-year history. https://www.tausiinsider.com/i-got-this-wrong-mark-zuckerberg-on-metas-mass-layoffs/?feed_id=445973&_unique_id=649fe42b166e4

Hybrid workplaces are now ubiquitous as a byproduct of the pandemic. KAITI SULLIVAN/The New York Times News Service Mary Ann Yule is the chief executive and president of HP Canada. When I was raising my two boys and trying to advance my career in tech, I often faced seemingly impossible choices. Trying to juggle drop-offs, school events, sports and other family activities with travel, meetings and work at the office – it seemed like I could never do enough. That level of pressure can take a heavy toll. I have seen women pass up projects and promotions and even leave promising careers because of the balancing act required. Today, though, hybrid workplaces are ubiquitous as a byproduct of the pandemic. More professional women have an opportunity to re-enter the workplace on their terms, while improving the balance between their work and home lives. As we continue to edge toward a new normal, some particularly loud voices in the tech industry have begun to call for a return to the offic...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. The state of the economy in the technology industry has greatly affected the M&A market. In times of uncertainty, companies are often more likely to engage in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to gain market share or merge their position. One of the key drivers of this activity was economic uncertainty, as companies sought to bulk up to weather any potential storms. Low-interest rates and increased access to capital also played a role, making it easier for companies to finance deals. The healthcare, technology and consumer sectors were active in M&A activity as companies looked to tap into growing markets. In 2023, the outlook for M&A activity will be favorable. They project the economy to continue to expand, although at a sluggish pace than in recent years. Related: An M&A Wave Is Coming: 4 Ways to Determine Whether You Should Sell M&A market overview Uncertainty fuels M&A...

Trevor Lai, a former Meta employee laid off by the company in November, plays with his dog Ekko at his apartment in downtown Seattle on Dec. 22. Lindsey Wasson/Tausi Insider A northern Silicon Valley success story has placed Canada in the midst of the sudden plunge in fortune for the tech sector, and the hundreds of thousands of Canadians whose skill and ambition made them coveted engineers, programmers and leaders. More than 150,000 tech workers have been laid off this year, according to an online tally. The cuts have been wide and deep, slicing across companies, global offices and nationalities – Canadians included. But could their losses be Canada’s gain? It’s a potentially critical question for the entrepreneurs and visionaries who see a moment for this country to find serendipity in grim times. The dramatic change in Silicon Valley’s fortunes has created “opportunity for Canada to reclaim some of its talent,” said Jennifer Holmstrom, a Canadian who leads talent and recruitment ...

Ireland on March 15, 2022 imposed a fine on Facebook parent company Meta for breaching EU data privacy laws. OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP/Getty Images Byron Holland is president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. It seems that surveillance capitalism and hyper-personalized ads have become an inescapable part of our one-sided social contract with Big Tech. But last week, the European Union made clear to Meta (formerly Facebook) that some of its advertising practices won’t be tolerated, ruling that Facebook and Instagram can’t force users to accept personalized ads without their explicit consent. The EU ruling represents a blow to Meta’s surveillance-based business model. Canadians may wonder what it will take for our country to follow other jurisdictions’ lead and place our citizens’ privacy interests ahead of Big Tech’s financial interests. The EU’s landmark privacy legislation, the General Data Protection Regulation, created stronger privacy rights ...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. With the recent collapse of FTX, investors now worry about the future of cryptocurrency. While some blame the technology, we should remember that people are corruptible, not blockchain. The ledger-based technology making cryptocurrency possible is as much a breakthrough today as it was yesterday. Unfortunately, crashes like FTX play into fears that blockchain is more hype than breakthrough. Will blockchain once and for all prove not very useful in the enterprise? When blockchain technology spawned a new way of thinking about money and creating wealth, many in the enterprise IT space began thinking about using blockchain technology to streamline business processes. For example, the global supply chain is still not working as well as it could. More than a decade later, enterprise adoption of blockchain technology is crawling at best and stalled across the board in many of the world's largest compan...

Toast, a women's collective and talent organization, was started by Canadian tech workers Marissa McNeelands, left and April Hicke, shown in this undated handout photo HO/The Canadian Press When Marissa McNeelands was hiring a senior artificial intelligence product manager last year, she asked recruiters to suggest an equal number of male and female candidates. They didn’t put forward any women, but she knew there had to be some who were more than qualified for the job. “Really it was going into my network, talking to people, pushing people to apply,” McNeelands, a Toronto artificial intelligence worker, recalled. “I find with so many women they just need that extra little push to be like ‘yeah, you are qualified, go for it, ask for more money.’” That experience and others like it are why McNeelands thinks Canada needs Toast, a women’s collective and talent organization, she and April Hicke, a digital product director in Calgary, dreamed up at Mont Tremblant’s spa in Quebec last ...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. The technology industry has been hit hard by the economic downturn in 2021-22, with over 150,000 workers losing their jobs since June 2022. This presents a formidable challenge for companies in the technology sector. With proper guidance and focus, tech companies may avoid making costly mistakes that could harm their business in the long term. The projection is that the economic downturn will likely continue into 2023, and technology companies must be prepared. Nevertheless, technology companies can still make it through this challenging period with the right strategies and focus. According to Daugherty, Bolumole & Grawe (2019) , one area that can offer a formidable edge in this regard is mastering sales and marketing. This article will examine sales and marketing tips that tech companies should consider in 2023. Related: 6 Recession-Proof Business Marketing Strategies 1. Keep pricing and quotas ...

Amazon is cutting 18,000 people from its workforce. Mark Lennihan/The Associated Press The U.S. tech giants that built the digital economy and generated trillions of dollars of wealth in the process are suddenly taking a less costly and less innovative approach to innovation. A surge in interest rates last year ended an era of cheap capital, clobbered valuations and dammed the flood of money that the pandemic brought to Big Tech. C-suites have been shuffled. Forward-looking features, such as Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa voice service, are getting less investment, while more wildly speculative projects – say, the metaverse – are proving to be money pits. For all their talk of innovation, companies such as Amazon AMZN-Q, Alphabet Inc. GOOG-NE, Meta Platforms Inc. META-Q and even Apple Inc. remain deeply dependent on the same core business lines of a decade ago. Cost-cutting is now the norm – more than 175,000 people have lost their jobs in the sector worldwide since the downturn began in la...

Common stereotypes place an expectation on women to react more positively to negative events. Delmaine Donson Content from The Globe’s weekly Women and Work newsletter, part of The Globe’s Women’s Collective. To subscribe, click here . Clinical social worker Sarah Ahmed commonly comes across people who are struggling or unhappy in their jobs, but can’t name or validate their experiences. “They’re quick to negate that by saying, ‘Well, I’m grateful I have a job,’” says Ms. Ahmed, who co-founded the Toronto-based private mental health practice Wellnest. This, she says, is a classic example of how “toxic positivity” can hamper one’s personal or career growth. When employees get the message at work that only positive feelings are acceptable, people can feel as though their only option is to look on the bright side. Dr. Sonia Kang, an associate professor of organizational behaviour and special adviser on anti-racism and equity at the University of Toronto, says there are many situations i...

Microsoft Corp’s lackluster quarterly outlook points to more gloom ahead for the tech sector, analysts said, after the tech bellwether warned its customers were cautious about spending in a turbulent economy. Microsoft MSFT-Q, the second most valuable U.S. company, sounded a cautious note in its quarterly earnings report as a steep fall in client spending has sparked a series of high-profile layoffs in the tech industry. The warning sent Microsoft’s shares down over 3%, while those of big-tech peers Amazon.com Inc AMZN-Q, Apple AAPL-Q, Alphabet GOOGL-Q and Meta Platforms META-Q fell as much as 4%, weighing on the Nasdaq Composite. Shares of other cloud companies including Salesforce Inc CRM-N, IBM Corp IBM-N and Oracle Corp ORCL-N all declined. Microsoft’s Chief Executive Officer, Satya Nadella, and other Microsoft executives used the words “caution” and “cautious” at least six times on the one hour call on Tuesday. “Microsoft is the biggest bellwether for enterprise and cloud spend...