Category: business

Acquisitions fueled the company’s headcount growth. Tableau, then Salesforce’s most expensive deal when it was bought in 2019, came with 4,200 employees while Slack, purchased in 2021, and Mulesoft, acquired in 2018, together brought another 3,700, according to company filings. The three deals combined cost almost $50 billion with the estimated $27.7 billion for Slack leading the way. Workers across these acquired divisions were pummeled by the job reductions, particularly in recruiting and customer success roles, according to company employees. Tableau is increasingly being treated as a visualization tool for data contained in Salesforce’s other services rather than a standalone program — co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff highlighted the new integrations in a December keynote speech. The division has trailed the rest of the company in sales growth since the acquisition.

Salesforce also plans to pare back its office footprint. The company currently has four offices in the Seattle area, more than any other city, according to the company website. Three were inherited in the Tableau deal. Salesforce declined to comment on whether it would be reducing space in the Seattle area. Asked about the effect of Wednesday’s job cuts on Tableau, a Salesforce spokesperson said the unit “is a vital part of our product strategy.” Tableau contributes to a product that “processes over 100 billion customer records, and helps our customers understand and act on their data,” the spokesperson said.

Jassy said that he was hoping to notify all impacted employees prior to his statement, but was forced to comment due to a report in the Wall Street Journal regarding the staff reductions. “We typically wait to communicate about these outcomes until we can speak with the people who are directly impacted. However, because one of our teammates leaked this information externally, we decided it was better to share this news earlier so you can hear the details directly from me,” he said. “We intend on communicating with impacted employees (or where applicable in Europe, with employee representative bodies) starting on January 18.”

The failure of coal and gas highlights how even the power sources that have long served as the backbone of the US electrical grid can still falter, especially as the South sees its population increase and relies more on electric heat. TVA saw power generation from coal plants drop about 68% from more than 4 gigawatts early Dec. 23 to a low of about 1.5 gigawatts on Dec. 24, according to federal data. While gas generation increased Dec. 23, on Dec. 24 it fell roughly 25% from about 11.5 gigawatts to less than 9 gigawatts as the utility ordered outages for almost six hours. High winds damaged several of the protective structures at the Cumberland Fossil Plant, the biggest TVA coal plant, as well as multiple gas-fired combustion turbines used during peak power periods, a TVA representative said in an email.

It’s catching on in the tech world. Uber boss Dara Khosrowshahi and his team invoked (PDF) the term seven times during the ride-hailing firm’s investor day. At a similar event in June executives from music streaming service Spotify mentioned (PDF) it 14 times, with another 47 references to the abbreviation LTV. Earnings transcripts for 4,800 U.S.-listed companies analyzed by Bedrock AI show executives and analysts mentioned “lifetime value” over 500 times between October and mid-December, up from just 47 times in three months to March 2019.

The problem is that everyone seems to have a different definition of lifetime value. Food delivery firm DoorDash looks at it as a metric to measure “customer retention, order frequency, and gross profit per order” over a fixed payback period. Uber and its Southeast Asian peer Grab treat it as the ability to bring in one customer and then cross-sell different services at a lower cost. The $49 billion e-commerce firm Shopify defines lifetime value as the total amount of money a customer is expected to spend with the business over the course of an “average business relationship.” But lifetime value isn’t a silver bullet, as Gurley noted a decade ago. As capital becomes more scarce, generating free cash flow remains the most important target. As with previous buzzwords, investors may find that references to lifetime value do more to confound than clarify.

“Crunching” in the video game industry is a common practice, but it’s become controversial in recent years, even while game developers continue working late into the evenings and weekends, sometimes secretly. Despite wishing to avoid crunch, some Blizzard employees in recent months find themselves facing down long hours again, unwilling to publish an unfinished product. They described consequences of crunch that included chronic back injuries, insomnia and anxiety, as well as less time to spend with family or to maintain romantic relationships. […] “We were never going to hit our date without crunch,” said a former Blizzard employee of a previously-intended “Diablo IV” internal release date. “And even with crunch, I don’t even know if we would have hit our date.” Activision Blizzard is offering “Diablo IV” developers a deal in which they will gain twice as many company stock shares when the game releases. Employees said they were offered more stock to stay on based on their position and seniority, from around $5,000 in value for entry-level workers to upward of $50,000 for more senior employees. […]

“Diablo IV” had multiple internal, unannounced release dates. At one point, 2021 was floated as an internal goal. A more specific date emerged — December 2022 — after the title was publicly announced in 2019 at the company’s annual gaming convention BlizzCon. Developers appealed for more time to avoid massive cuts to the game. After moving the date to April 2023, the team felt it still needed more time and was able to get the June date approved. The June date feels harder to move, several employees say. “We’re at the point where they’re not willing to delay the game anymore,” said a current Blizzard Albany employee. “So we all just have to go along and figure out how much we’re willing to hurt ourselves to make sure the game gets released in a good enough state.”

News of Snap’s stricter in-office policy was first reported by Bloomberg, which cited an internal memo from CEO Evan Spiegel telling employees they may have to “sacrifice” some amount of “individual convenience” but it will benefit “our collective success.”

“Zoom has a fundamental flaw — it has needed to spend heavily to keep hold of market share. Spending to cling onto, rather than grow, market share is never a good place to be and was a sign of trouble ahead,” Hargreaves Lansdown equity analyst Sophie Lund-Yates said. The company’s operating expenses surged 56% in the third quarter as it spent more on product development and marketing. Its adjusted operating margin shrank to 34.6% from 39.1% a year earlier.

The new facility will be used to manufacture 3nm chips, according to the paper, which cites anonymous sources “familiar with the expansion plans.” The scale of this project is expected to be comparable to the existing plant. Reports last year suggested that TSMC was already considering constructing up to five additional semiconductor factories in Arizona, on top of the one just completed, which is not scheduled to start up production of chips until 2024. The move to build another plant comes despite the Taiwanese chip behemoth announcing recently that it was cutting back on its capital investment budget in the face of a market slowdown which led to TSMC predicting that Q4 revenue growth will likely be flat. However, the fact that TSMC is still considering further facilities in Arizona could be seen as vindication that the US CHIPS Act, which includes subsidies and other incentives for semiconductor companies like TSMC to build on American soil, is having the desired effect.

There’s 30 pages of rules…

Under proposed rules that were quietly and unexpectedly made public on Friday — which will, among other things, prohibit hosts from renting out an “entire registered dwelling unit” — Airbnb hosts will be required to submit diagrams of their apartments as well as proof that their listings are permanent residences. Hosts also will be required to list the “full legal name of all permanent occupants of the dwelling” as well as their relationship to the host….

If hosts fail to comply, they can be fined up to $5,000 under the new rules, while Airbnb and other platforms are required to verify the rental on its systems and could be on the hook for a $1,500 fine per violation. Last year, the city council passed the registration law, but little was known about the details and requirements, which will become effective Jan. 9 and enforced by May 9….

Among the requirements, said the source, is one that bars hosts from putting locks on doors that separate the guest from the host, directing that “a registered host shall not allow a rentee to have exclusive access to a separate room within a dwelling” and specifying that, for example, “providing the rentee with a key to lock the door when such rentee is not in the dwelling is prohibited….”

It’s the latest salvo in the fraught relationship between New York City and Airbnb, which has long pushed back on the city’s efforts to regulate the industry. Meanwhile the city blames Airbnb, in part, for its housing shortage.

Thanks to Slashdot reader quonset for submitting the story!