Comment by birdymcbird | Hacker News Reader

Comment by birdymcbird | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

- More gentleman layoffs at Google

- At least 2 rounds of hard layoffs at Amazon, plus gentleman layoffs. No more Bezos billion dollar Prime Video projects. Shedding at least 10-12% of white collar work force to signal to the market they’re trying to prop the stock

- The economic hard landing

- Disney stock will fare much better under Iger

- Additional rate hikes from the Fed, at least 100bps but maybe 150

- Twitter won’t have the demise the media has been predicting. Musk probably continues making changes and shortly doing about face turn on them.

- Russia continues getting backed into a corner with Ukraine faring better and better thanks to US and Western support. Don’t know if it will happen but increasing probability Russia uses a tactical nuke in Ukraine. Doubt it comes down to WW3, we’ll try to immediately broker a peace deal, rather than getting ourselves (US) in a thermonuclear endgame with Russians

- Streaming recession with new shows put on hold

- More advances in AI like openai. Within big tech companies? Not so much.

- Big tech culture shift, cleaning house and going back to roots or at least trying to find that soul. Focus on bottom line metrics. Oat milk lattes, no so much.

I tried searching, but what is a gentleman layoff?

Gentleman layoff is how you layoff quietly without too much attention. Quietly raise low performer target %.

Your unregretted attrition targets were 4%? Great! This year they’re 8%.

Mr. Managers, please produce this list by end of month.

Layoffs with a very good severance package.

It's more commonly (but still not very commonly) called a "gentlemen's layoff", but confusingly seems to (also?) mean pretty much the opposite of what curtisblaine said: "Elon Musk and Jason Calacanis messaged about how return-to-office mandates could be used as a ‘gentlemen’s layoff’ to get workers to voluntarily quit" - https://archive.ph/tC9H4. No idea which sense birdymcbird intended.

I never layoff and tell.

"but increasing probability Russia uses a tactical nuke in Ukraine."

Not likely. They would have nothing to gain from it. In their narrative, they are protecting the ukrainians ( which are actually russians, whether they want or not) from the fascist ukrainians. Nuking russian soil does not go together with this and Putin struggles already to not loose his base. And any military advantage this would gain, would be offset by massive upscaling of international aid. Also the russian army is in no shape anymore, to fight in fallout areas.

I expect a stalemate at the current frontlines, with not much changes in the long term.

I agree it is not likely but their made up reasons have nothing to do with it. The narratives shift weekly and at no point they've been internally consistent.

Hm, I surely did not follow every speech of Putin or RT news in general, but as far as I did, the narrative that the Ukrainian needs to be liberated as Russians, did not change and has been pretty consistent.

What did change, were the various threats towards the west and stated goals of what to achieve and back and forth with mobilisation and such.

Putins goal is clear, he wants a Eurasian Empire. But he is apparently not clear on how to achieve it.

(For example he would like Belarussia to join russia and join the war, but so far he was not able to enforce it )

No, the narrative is anywhere from "we're defending Russia proper from invasion" to "we're going after every Ukrainian and their children" between different (and sometimes the same) TV hosts and public figures.

Like I said, I am not really a follower of russian TV, I mainly just read various Speeches Putin gave. And there was never anything close of "we're going after every Ukrainian and their children", that I remember.

It was variations of "the NATO is coming closer to us everyday and we have to fight back". If you know more and different, pls share.

You must have missed the speech when Putin officially annexed the territory he grabbed thus far. The imperial irredentism has little to do with the NATO narrative. But as I said the consistency in Russian propaganda is never sought after, neither by the propagandists nor the willing recipients.

Also, https://www.newsweek.com/russian-state-tv-boss-says-drown-uk...

"You must have missed the speech when Putin officially annexed the territory he grabbed thus far"

I am pretty sure I have read it, but I don't remember anything close to what is in that TV show, which is indeed very disturbing, as it is state TV.

> Nuking russian soil

Russia annexed only parts of Ukraine so far. I can see them spinning a nuke over Kiev as defense of annexed territories.

It would also fit their narrative of "only using nukes in defense" as they would claim Russian territory is being attacked.

"It would also fit their narrative of "only using nukes in defense" as they would claim Russian territory is being attacked."

Their narrative is, that there is no ukrainian state. It is all russia. And Kiev is like a mothertown of russian culture.

So if extremly cornered and desperate, they might use a nuke to protect the crimea, but they could never nuke Kiev and live to tell the tale.

But... how else are we going to keep up the image that we're on the side of the good guys?

People have been saying this shit for months, about how Russia will invade the rest of Europe, or drops nukes, or go crazy, and low and behold, they so far only did exactly what they said they were going to do, nothing more.

If you cant support the war given those facts, and need to make up stories about nukes and total conquest, then maybe war isnt good no matter which side youre on.

…exactly what they said? They were saying they are not going to invade as late as February 20, 2022. Then they said their objectives are total conquest on February 24, 2022 in a public TV address. They threatened nukes (everyone from Putin himself to TV pundits) for months until Xi publicly chided him.

But I am impressed how one can take perhaps the most morally unambiguous conflict in the century so far and still make it an uncertainty.

Was there something ambiguous about destroying the most prosperous African nation?

I guess that part when Gaddafi promised to massacre the revolting cities street by street got many frowning.

Your intel is six years out of date:

https://www.salon.com/2016/09/16/u-k-parliament-report-detai...

Of course, those of us who pay any attention whatsoever already knew that back in 2011.

Are you refering to Libya?

If so, you mean that Gadaffi was a saint or something?

Sainthood is not the standard to which any politician is held.

I call your lockebie bombing.

I raise you 1 bush iraq invasion and 1 obama Afghanistan quagmire and drone assassinations.

I'll throw in a trump TMZ secret bus recording too, just for kicks.

>how else are we going to keep up the image that we're on the side of the good guys?

Everything we are seeing and hearing from the people in the liberated areas seems to be working pretty well. I guess they bought into the narrative too.

Of course theyre happy, whats your point

> Of course theyre happy, whats your point

I'd guess it's more the stories of the Russians raping and torturing them that is making it so obviously unambiguous that the Ukrainians are the good guys.

> - More gentleman layoffs at Google

more in addition to what?

Gentleman layoffs are when you increase bottom performer targets. You don’t formally lay then off with generous severance but manage them out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com