Chip wars continue, AI doubts and VR hesitancy: Top Technologies to Watch in 2023 | Ep. 2
what big Tech news from 2022 we're going to carry over into 2023. what will be the next killer app or technology that dominates the year and will we ever stop talking about the pandemic we're going to cover those topics and more on today in Tech [Music] welcome back to today in Tech I'm Keith Shaw we've got a big panel of really cool people to talk about the technology trends for 2023. joining me today is Ken Mingus he's the executive editor of Computer World Mark ferranti he's the executive editor for news at Foundry which is also idg company and John gold a senior News writer at Computer World welcome to the show everybody thank you Happy New Year yeah thanks happy New Year all you guys I'm glad you guys are Are all uh agreed to do this and uh let's just jump right into it uh the top 12 Tech stories of 2022 this was an article on computer world that uh John kind of put together uh along with Mark uh where you looked bet you know back at the biggest technology stories from last year and so what I want to ask everybody is how many of these these topics do we think will then carry over into 2023 we're already seeing that and it's only one week into January um I think you know again one of the biggest continual problems for for technology in the it group at a lot of companies is this Chip War that's going on between the US and China a lot of the chip shortages Mark like kind of explain sort of what what happened last year and then you know how far into 2023 this might happen or continue right sure well the Chip War as we call it make no mistake about it it's a big deal it's going to have ramifications probably for the rest of the decade um so what are we talking about um so recently what happened in October and December the bite Administration put restrictions on American exports to China of certain Advanced chips particularly chips involved in Ai and semiconductor making equipment so there were restrictions announced in October and then in December they affect I believe over 50 companies at this point and uh specifically their restrictions on gpus right graphical processing units tpus tensor processing units and other Advanced uh application specific integrated circuits mainly focused around uh technology that that goes into artificial intelligence applications and the stated purpose of the restrictions is to deny China access to advanced technology for military modernization and human rights abuses but the new trade rules really come at a time when the U.S is getting increasingly worried about China's Growing geopolitical Power and are going to affect not only computer equipment but many consumer products built on the restricted semiconductor technology they also really single the end of the era of ever explain ever expanding globalization right right because when you think about it there are a lot of different products built on these these these chips right you know not just AI applications but high performance computers electronic vehicles and the list goes goes on and on so you know the first disruption will occur obviously for big Chinese companies like Alibaba and Baidu but the supply chain effect is going to Ripple around the world is is this a different issue than the supply chain shortages that we saw sort of post-pandemic or the at least have the first wave of the pandemic is that Is this different than a lot of the chip shortages that happen there uh in in that way wave hasn't happened yet so we might see even more shortages coming forward because it did seem like a lot of the supply chain and Logistics issues that we saw in 2020 sort of eased in 2021 and 2022 at least it got you know I could buy some some some phones and things like that that I that I couldn't get in 2021 do you think that this is the next shortage is about to happen or are you already seeing that uh well I mean the restrictions were just put in place so well first of all to answer your question yes it is different it's a different thing all right because the first supply chain issue involving chips was due to lockdowns of the pandemic so these are you know Biden Administration restrictions put on more advanced chips so it is a different like way it'll be a different sort of supply chain disruption okay just to jump in real quick talking about the the supply chain because I do think that's going to be one of the issues that's going to continue to to Bubble Up over you know in 2023 and and as Mark May mentioned earlier over the decade it's not just there's a lot going on with chips supply chain here in the U.S you've got the serious efforts that will be Shoring and bringing chip manufacturing back to the U.S you've got companies trying to figure out like apple for instance and
I know we wanted to talk about that a little bit down the road uh looking to to basically reconfigure their supply chains because they don't really want to have all of their Hardware made in China so you've got all of these kind of cross currents that are sort of impacting you know a lot of tech companies whether they are making things in China relying on products from China that rely on these chips you've got you know the government jumping in with the with the bite Administration uh on the you know as we started talking about and then also this effort to bring chip manufacturing back to the US so there's there's a lot of things going on at once and I don't think we quite know exactly you know where we're going to find the pain points yeah you know that's what I wanted yeah go ahead that it's you know it's so hard to you know this is so complicated and to my understanding is you know not how is you know largely unprecedented in the you know the annals of how the tech industry actually functions so like you know it's just incredibly difficult to figure out um like Ken said you know exactly you know where this is gonna wind up you know how this is going to affect companies uh going forward yeah if you are sort of in charge of of uh you know if you're a CIO or if you're an I.T leader and you're trying to like figure out what to do you've probably already started working on your supply chain and Logistics correct and and obviously manufacturing getting manufacturing to come back to the U.S Shores it's you know it's like turning a tanker a big tanker around it's it's going to take a while it's not going to be immediately you can't just open a factory because it's in America right like there's a lot of steps that happen do you think that that'll still happen or will or you think you know companies might just take a wait and see and and wait for the the waves to settle so to speak well burned ship makers are already have already announced plans you know over the last few months to build factories here in the United States but you know we have to realize it's going to take years yeah before the United States is supplying uh a decent amount of you know a decent quantity of of advanced chips um here's one data point all right tsmc right the big taiwanese-based uh manufacturer is building a plant in Phoenix but they're not going to be building uh two nanometer chips there for another few years whereas I think by this year they're going to be producing those chips in Taiwan so you know it'll be minimum three to five years before we sort of catch up to nearly where we want to be so it might take really the rest of the decade actually I just want to throw one more wrench into this into this uh game plan as we're talking about it since we're thinking ahead but you know at the same time that the companies are dealing with supply chain issues and concerns about chips and Manufacturing you know we still have the ongoing issue of tech talent and especially in terms of moving some of this back to the US yes it certainly takes a long time to get a chip manufacturing plant you know approved cited built up and running but you got to have people that know what they're doing running it and at least in the U.S you know there's a again I'm going to use this word again cross-currents in terms of being able to find Tech Talent here that you know can can operate these facilities so you've got you know and this is true it's not just true of manufacturing or even chip makers it's true of the tech industry at large in terms of you've got so much churn with people with employees with talented employees who are changing jobs demanding remote work you know trying to figure out what a hybrid workplace means you've got hiring managers who can't find them or is aren't you know there are issues with inflation and salaries and it's just a very unsettled World we're living in John made the point that this is very different from you know the setup we're all used to in terms of Technology and Manufacturing and Supply chains it's sort of fall out from the pandemic but it's not directly you know the pandemic is sort of waning it's sort of the after effects now right it's going to take a long time to settle down yeah a lot of those Trends you know are one of the reasons why Robotics and automation have been such a hot topic for a lot of the manufacturers out there um again if you you don't want to build a new Factory in the U.S and then men you know build it with Factory workers from the 1980s or 1990s the workers you're going to need are going to need to know how to operate robots and and work with robot spots and I think that's that's sort of driving the adoption of more robots in manufacturing and supply chain and warehouses and things like that so um it's good for the robotics industry or people that make robots but but again you still have a talent you know shortage on almost any any kind of given uh sector John were you going to jump in with something else and then I was going to ask one more yeah I was just going to say her uh Ken's cross currents you know it's just it it feels like you know to answer the basic question of whether or not it's a you know companies are going to be able to just kind of wait and see it's you know the answer is kind of they can't you know at this point it's a very 20 20 story in that you know it's a massive you know uh sort of sea change that's happening you know right now and companies are having to deal with the immediate effect right now but we're you know again we're still talking about consequences that you know I feel like most people just have no idea because it's you know we've never had to cope with something it does seem like it's a kind of a downer to talk to jump off with that one I was hoping that there's is there any good news in this in this area with the chip shortages is there anything that some sort of Silver Nugget or gold nugget that we can kind of take out of this maybe it will make uh the U.S uh get get more serious about education
stem education for young people I mean that's the only way uh and the Western allies I mean that's the only way uh you know we're going to be able to handle these disruptions uh and and then the new technology uh that that that's evolving uh and but to go back to a point that that you made uh Keith uh cios you know multiple sources have been telling us uh the cios need to reassess their vendor selection criteria uh from the set the standpoint of supply chain resiliency right uh and to John points as well John's Point as well you know how exposed are they to for example the China semiconductor chip right uh issue you know they need to identify potential uh vulnerabilities and high-end high-tech projects you know including Enterprise High Performance Computing and does that mean that looking looking at startups that are that are in the space or looking at at sort of just diversifying uh who you're working with well looking at you know their bill of materials for example where where are their supplies coming from where are the components coming from yeah uh are key components coming from China if so maybe we'd better look for you know other suppliers in other countries right right right yeah I think that's you know that's a really good broader point is that you know I think it will you know on both you know in the on the manufacturing side and you know on the you know um then on the Enterprise side you know it's going to shake a lot of complacency out like you know it's it's important to remember that you know the reasons that we've got these um you know these new policies in place from from the Biden Administration um and I think even the Trump Administration uh before you know these aren't necessarily this isn't pure protectionism this is you know these aren't crazy concerns without waiting into you know exactly how valid you know any of the you know possible security impacts are you know these you know like I say it's not just protectionism this isn't some you know kind of off-the-wall you know conspiracy theory about potential security risks right all right maybe the Silver Lining is as you say it's a wake-up call to the us and our and Western allies about uh education about bringing some manufacturing back to our own Shores but again this is this is something that's not going to be fixed in six months so no yeah no one more quick point before we move on you know I literally was just editing a story that we've done in computer world today um from Johnny Evans who covers apple and it's about Apple's efforts to reorient its supply chain and start making products in India and Vietnam and other places so it's not just the us there are other countries that will see some success here as these big Tech firms move in and diversify their manufacturing I mean again it's it's not U.S but uh you know there are a lot of places where these devices Hardware iPhones whatever can be made right I think you're going to see other companies doing the same thing you know not necessarily leaving China but again you want to spread that around so that you can minimize disruptions down the road if and when they occur yeah I think I think a lot of companies want to get away from the are the idea of any sort of disruption whether it's you know the pandemic in China or the Ukraine Russia incidents and you know realizing how much they contributed to the whole global economy getting away from those and be ready it's almost like diversifying your your Investment Portfolio which has always been like the a better idea than just having stock in one company um all right I want to jump on to the next the next kind of um trend of the year and this is around artificial intelligence um a lot of coverage over the last few weeks about this whole chat GPT uh open AI dialogue Creator but not only just chat GPT but like just the idea of artificial intelligence and machine learning we've seen it in the robotic space and we've seen it as as companies are moving towards more of an edge Computing uh design and architecture on for high industrial Robotics and other types of things you know I we did a show here with with uh Chris and I Chris behind the the cameras here we talked about chat GPT and and lens Ai and both of us were stunned about how cool it was in terms of what an AI could do I I wanted to ask you guys too if you guys played around with this stuff and does it impress you or are you less impressed than than maybe you know a regular guy like me um and then how do you see sort of this evolving do you think that people should take a a hands-off approach do you should they should embrace this what are your thoughts um Ken I'm just going to start with you because okay that's fine yeah it's interesting because I want to raise a cautionary tale here first of all it's very cool technology and I think one of the things about how chat gbt and some of these other things from the open AI Foundation they sort of caught the imagination of more mainstream Tech users it's like wow we can do this or we can try that or we can have this rate this content we've had a couple of pieces on Computer World sort of raising some red flags because if you're looking at something like you know you you want you you use the uh open AI chat gbt to create some content like you want to you know let's say you want to write a story or have a you know a term paper about some particular topic and it can generate you know pretty natural sounding English language right paragraphs of information but you have no idea exactly where that information is coming from I mean we've talked about it as editors you know like is there a role in in journalism for something like this and one of the things Mark has promised me that it's not going to replace me yet as long as it doesn't replace editors and reporters I think we're all for it well have you guys have you tried to ask the chat GPT to write a news story about about something and does it come up with does it come up with direct quotes because I always felt like if if you had a direct quote in an article that it that it sounds more legitimate as a news story I I've asked it to write stories and it hasn't given me quotes yet yeah but the unsettling thing is the language is is fine but again as Ken points out you don't know where the information is coming from and sometimes it makes things up or is absolutely wrong so I mean I could see it being used to give you maybe a framework or or you know let's say you could you could tell chat GPT write me a 600 word story on the the US China Chip War right and it will write you a story and the language will be fine but again you don't know where the information is coming from however it might bring up points that you wouldn't have thought of right so it can be helpful in suggesting things but um until we can solve the issue of providence of the data where is the information coming from there's just no way at least as an editor I could rely on it to to be a a human-like reporter right like go ahead John oh I was just it reminds me I haven't played around with it extensively so grain of salt um but what I have seen of it reminds me a lot of like a student writing a paper like like a talented student writing a paper the day before it's due without having done the research it's like it sounds very natural it's very but it'll be very confidently wrong about something and and as a Kansas it will frequently just kind of make things up but they but like plausibly which is which is really interesting and again vaguely terrifying in some ways yeah I think Joanna Stern from The Wall Street Journal used it to write to see if it could pass in AP Literature uh test or or you know write an essay for AP Literature and it did I mean I I would I I might just tell my kids to say hey if you've got well okay I'm not going to tell them that but I mean it's like oh yeah wow essay and they hadn't written the book yet I mean you know do they write an essay around it I don't know I would use it as maybe use this as a framework and then maybe come then and then rewrite it yourself or I don't know I mean so I I plugged in I asked chat GPT to write me an opening for this show like hey you know write write a script that that gives an introduction to the top technology trends of the year and it came up with three or four of the technology trends that we were going to talk about anyway so it did know that but when you read it it's just sort of it's just got no soul I it hasn't figured out the soul part of it yet where the turn of phrase that that sounds interesting it it's and and again I'm going to piss off a bunch of marketing people right now it sounds like it was written by someone in marketing um or like like a one of those blog posts that you see for uh you know and I used to write some of these too so I'm not gonna criticize it too much but even you're the chat gbt gbt maybe it's just me yeah uh maybe you can do your job I was talking about I was talking about this this subject too with a bunch of my uh friends that I play D D with oh God I'm such a nerd um but um they were talking about he was you know the dungeon master that that runs our games he was using it to actually come up with some backstory ideas for or write a story about certain characters and the more specific you get about the character the better the story comes so I took the record I want to help myself nerdy enough to find that really cool yeah so I have a so I have a lizard man character who's a fighter and a gladiator and so I told Chad gbt to write a backstory for this Gladiator and and use that to sort of then build on my role-playing character later and it came up with I think six paragraphs but the story it came up with was generic if as you would think a a Gladiator characters like you know the you know so I'm going to just read you some of it okay this then again as a young lizard man your character was taken from your home and forced into the brutal world of gladiatorial combat you were trained to fight and entertain pitting your skills against all manner of creatures both monstrous and intelligent and again there's five other paragraphs where he gets rescued from uh Rebels that are trying to take over you know the little town and you fight in the rebellion and then you win and and but then you were hurt and then you decide well I'm going to become a freelance Adventurer which is what you would write anyway as a as a gladiator like my original backstory for this character was yeah I was freed from the Gladiator pits and you know and now I'm I'm looking for Adventure on my own so but again this question it did this in five seconds that's like yeah that that is fast but question I mean and this is what I want to want us to think about with this stuff the the basis of the information for which that is written where is that coming from because it's more to Mark's point if you can't vet any of this stuff into John's point you know the the the AI here doesn't understand the difference between something that's real and something that may be right misinformation disinformation 10 years out of date you know and and so it's pulling together from a I don't know what sources but without knowing what the sources are right you know I'm not sure can you dig into the site to see if if they give you a list of like have they talked about where what the training sort what the training data is for something like this or is it just like well I don't know we just scanned the internet we just basically have tell the AI to basically scan the Internet it's probably read a bunch of like for this d d type thing it's probably scanned a bunch of stories uh around Dungeons and Dragons in it you know I think again the the term Gladiator so it's like all right well here's the history of you know they probably went to Wikipedia and find out what Gladiators did I think then you've got an issue of intellectual property okay so the you know yeah chat GPT is repackaging this stuff does it have the legal right to use it do you have the legal right to use it it's like there this is technology that is once again far outpacing our ability to to you know regulate it uh you know and deal with it you know legally well so could it could be interesting could anybody take advantage of this like we're you know it's I think today there was a story that Microsoft announced that it's going to integrate some of the chat GPT stuff into Bing which is like wow we're gonna make Bing relevant again good luck again was it relevant before Oh that's true make big relevant and then not say it again well you know what kind of can a business use this or is this all is this just going to be a cool parlor trick well you know it can be used by it for you know we're editors writers so we focus on the the natural language ability but if you're a programmer you can ask for help on programming right um I I asked uh chat gbd last night what programming tools would you use to create neural networks to create new video games and it gave me uh uh they're advancing four sections it mentioned tensorflow pytor uh Keras is that how you pronounce it and deep learning 4J and then I asked it to give me an example of deep learning 4J code that I could use to start building a neural network for creating a new video game and guess what in about a minute it spat out wow tons of code for me and I've talked to programmers who have done this and they uh a couple of them said well yeah it spat out code for me the code actually didn't work but again it gave me it gave me a framework to to take off from much like we could possibly use it as a framework for ideas for a story Homer programmers could use it as to get ideas for programming you know different approaches even maybe sample code that they could tweak yeah yeah uh I'm not a big time programming I'm sure you're not announcing your next career you know you're going to be designing uh games with neural networks right yeah John yeah go ahead you had it you had an you I thought yeah I mean I think that's you know that's kind of the point I think you know as it what it is now and what we're all reading about now um is is a part of a trick but you know where it gets really interesting is where you know this is no unless I badly misunderstand something here this is an open source project you know people are going to come in and like use it to for you know much more specific things so you know we talked about its limitations you know from the natural language perspective you know could you as say a PR firm you know give it a set of bounds you know give it a set of information to work from and have it you know generate press releases at the touch of a button or you know things like that or you know even much more as we've been talking about with you know Mark's nascent video games company um it's you know there are you know just using it to kind of give you the the framework the idea right of how you know a given project ought to be structured I always thought that press releases were already written by a robot anyway like the most of the ones that I see that one yeah yeah um again I I think what's interesting now is to see the creative things that come out of this and see you know whether or not then but but again I think your points on on the the where is this coming from and what's the data and again I wouldn't do it for any sort of serious thing yet but maybe this is just the first step towards towards that have you guys played around with the artwork stuff have you seen the dolly and the uh the lens of AI stuff and incredible incredible yeah as a proof of concept it's amazing it's very cool and and this has just happened within the last year like the year the early stuff was was Goofy like and you could just tell it was just awful AI just horrible images that you'd get but now you could actually you know with the dolly too that that came out you could have it do some really amazing looking artwork and I was impressed with just how how good it made me look on on my selfies I was like I don't you know because it was almost like actor level quality that you know they took away all my flaws right so all right moving on Apple hey all right Ken Here We Go Again Apple what can we expect from them this year um I think from a consumer Tech side I'm I'm excited to see if they actually come out with their AR VR headset goggles that might push the AR VR Market forward a little bit but beyond that what else do you see from Apple this year did Apple have a good year last year in your in your opinion or um and again and I know it's tough to it's tough for you to criticize Apple so just tell an Apple guy I know I admit it all right you know Apple had a good apple apple did have a good year you know you're everybody's waiting for the Apple goggles AR VR Apple reality whatever it's called the assumption is that that is real and will be released this spring or maybe by WWDC in June uh and I you know again though I'm I'm it's this is another one of those examples and I have to wait and see what what Apple puts out I'm just not quite sure what the product who the product is designed for I I don't think it's going to be designed for consumers off the bat so it may be something for um designers Architects engineers others you know who need to have some sense of a virtual space that they're designing or working in um that's a guess I don't know yeah but I think it will you know Apple will probably surprise us with some very cool technology around that um real quick you know looking at what's been going on the last two or three years and what I expect to continue this year and going forward from Apple Apple's done a surprising amount of work to worm its way into the Enterprise and to you know to make it I mean it started off obviously with the devices the iPhone the iPad Max everybody has thought they were for designers and artists you know but everybody not everybody but a lot of people have these devices and so Apple has become very good at helping companies manage provision protect secure you know with mobile with MDM stuff uh mobile application management things like that so I would just say you know the the untold story or the Lesser told stories that apple is really making a name for itself in in Enterprise I.T kind of coming in the back door that way I don't know Mark Mark or John do you guys see anything like that from you know from what you've been reporting or hearing you know well first of all I should mention that here in in a computer World story written by I think Johnny Evans uh mentioned that jamf which which supports Mac products uh confirmed 10 consecutive quarters of Apple in the Enterprise growth uh as back see wider deployment across every business and that apparently has not been slowing down so they've definitely seemed to have uh momentum in in the Enterprise yeah that's a good point yeah I think part of that is also this kind of consumerization of tech you know uh over the last 10 years uh you know it departments have sort of been forced to allow more Choice among staff as to the sort of devices so sometimes grudgingly accept that choice right right right I you know when I when I rejoined Foundry here like I was given the choice and I said you know I want I want this only because I've just been using it for the last 10 years it's it just makes me more comfortable with but all of the software still would be available on any other computer if if I wanted it it's just again I did think that they just didn't want to make waves with the new guy this this guy you know and I mean we I again back to chips Apple of course has been you know has is producing its own Apple silicon now um you know they've done really well in Market yeah the M2 you know well first with the M1 the M2 expecting an M3 maybe a Mac Pro so I would say between all of those you know different things going on and the Apple reality glasses or whatever um I think Apple's certainly well positioned for a good 2023. I think it so it is interesting that you think that this would be an Enterprise play for these AR VR glasses does that diminish the excitement from the rest of the Apple Community if they actually come out like that wouldn't matter right if it was five it was no I mean don't get me wrong I do I do not expect to be buying Apple reality glasses this year I mean I I would love no seriously because it's a sort of again unless they have come up with some use that I can't Envision and that's very possible um it's something that I think they'll need to put out a product that has certain specific uses and then let developers take that and build on it and build out you know in terms of of expanding the the the the footprint I guess of of people who would be buying yeah I mean you know from the AR VR perspective you know we've been seeing VR stuff for 10 years now I want to say and it's never you know everyone keeps saying this is the Year this is the Year this is the year but this is technically the year where Sony's going to come out with its second one for the PlayStation meta slash Oculus keeps coming out with with with versions that keep reducing the price I think they with 5G networking and possibly Wi-Fi six you've now got a wireless component you don't have to have a headset that has wires all over the place but again that's more gaming and entertainment I still don't think they've solved the issue of guys with glasses or people with glasses and and motion sickness I I you know the Sony the first Sony one gave me motion sickness when I tried it it's fun to play it's but then I wouldn't do it long term again you've got I've actually had pretty good luck with uh the with the HP Reverb but oh John yeah yeah um and that's that was actually sort of the point I was thinking about is that you know I it's really cool for you know people in weird little nerdy entertainment niches like you know people who like flight Sims like me um and you know it's wonderful for that but I think you know and I think Ken's exactly right is you know it's going to take a lot you know a whole ecosystem has to sort of spring up around it you know there has to be so much more development you know Enterprise applications for this kind of thing you know they need to be a lot more robust you know they need to be um a lot more reliable you know for I don't know like the AR use case where you know you've got a technician you know with you know sort of like an overlay you know being shown where a part goes or like you know or diagnosing a problem that way um you know that's that's been talked about as as we said you know for for years now um and I you know it just doesn't feel as though it's you know in the immediate offing um and I'm you know wondering you know it'll be interesting to see whether you know um Apple getting into the market really moves an eagle there if that's the case then it would probably be at the WWDC right can like for because again if you're promoting it to get developers excited about it thank you or or you announce it in the spring and then demonstrate it at WWDC and roll it out in the fall you know it's hard to say because Apple's schedule of releases is is has really you know it used to be very regular it's much less regular now I mean at one point this was expected last fall and then it was pushed back to after the first of the year and then seems like maybe the spring so yeah at the rate we're going it might be WWE once they make that announcement Ken I'm sure you and I will have a long conversation about this on camera I would love to be able to try it out I was going to say though is you know if there is a company that can take a technology like this and produce something that has resonance in the market it's probably Apple yeah you know whatever that is they've done it before right with phones with uh with music yeah but I don't know I really wonder if we're going to see widespread use in the Enterprise anytime in the vaguely it's the use case I keep coming back to what yeah what do I need this for like yeah to talk to you guys in this setting I don't particularly want to put on special glasses or make us feel like we're in the same room right I think I think what we would need is more of an AR versus the VR part of it if it's AR and you know and it looks like a fashionable set of glasses and not remember like the Google Glass stuff that was just oh my it was yeah I think it's a good point yeah it has to be also you know you have to make one of people wear them you know yeah that's the other thing Keith I mean it's kind of it's kind of a strange thought if an Enterprise making you put on a specific piece of apparel to do something with what's that Apple TV movie uh whether you split the brain and you know oh Severance yeah great job Severance thank you I love it the TV show sevens yeah that's a great show all right so it's really great all right we could talk forever on this but I want to do one more before we we kind of cut out here uh the tech layoffs that we saw at the end of 2022 you know I thought maybe this was a seasonal thing it was the end of the year companies wanted to get their balance sheets in order they realized that they they were probably too uh heavy in certain areas but we're now seeing that continue into January Amazon just had another uh big announcement of a lot of of layoffs um do you guys think that this is still seasonal this is like you know maybe at the end of the Christmas season when retail does it or it does is this the starting point of something that could last through through 2023 Mark you want to jump us start us off well I I think what what the companies are saying basically what is that they uh you know the big the big companies especially those with a big retail businesses right like like Amazon um they're saying that uh they over hired during the pandemic right Amazon you know the retail sales did really well because people were in lockdown and so they went to e-commerce they hired a lot of people and now oops you know we're heading into what might be a recession they want to balance their books right so they're laying off about 20 000 people and uh on a smaller scale that's true throughout the industry so um if you want to look at things positively you could say okay they're cutting back now so they can weather this storm through 23 and if things don't get a lot worse they're good for the moment yeah but we don't know what's going to happen right so uh if we knew what was going to happen we'd be rich by the end of the year because we could place our bets on the stock market right so we don't know what's going to happen but I would say hopefully the biggest layoffs have have happened you know end of last year going into the next few weeks going into the next month yeah I don't have a crystal ball yeah I mean you saw sales and neither do the economists right the economists don't know what's going on right right I mean Salesforce did announce I think 10 of its Workforce yeah do you think that this has a domino effect though like you you or is it just focus on your company and see what you works for your company or because again I've we've done a video too where I've talked to Lucas from Computer World about um whether this year is a good year to sort of look for a job before you get laid off and so go watch that video if you if you're interested in that topic but uh you know do you think that again this is something that might just be the next couple couple weeks couple months and then things will normalize or but but again we can't really predict that either I just was going to say real quick it felt like for a while in 2022 when we first started getting these reports of layoffs this was coming when inflation was was running rampant when the you know the Russian Ukraine war was going on uh you know there were covered problems in China and it felt like all hell was breaking loose in so many places that once one big company started announcing layoffs others were like oh God I guess we should be doing layoffs because it felt like there was this domino effect throughout the year you know but if you look at the economy in at least in the U.S okay yeah there've been some inflationary pressures but unemployment is it like 3.5 percent in the tech industry it's like two percent and change so I mean if you're going to
be late God forbid you know but if you're going to be laid off this is not the worst economy in the world to be looking for that job right you know right that's a good point and let's keep in mind a lot of these layoffs are not uh uh among uh Tech Personnel right a lot of layoffs are corporate um support staff mid managers mid-level managers yeah people on the retail side uh but not the core Tech teams I mean there have been layoffs right among Personnel um but I don't think the bulk of layoffs have been uh for Tech specific Personnel so I think we need to differentiate between a tech company laying off and exactly who they're laying off right um I mean I I don't we don't really know for sure yet but the big amazon layoffs I don't you know the bulk of them didn't take place for example well we know this the bulk of them didn't take place uh for AWS right right right so and that's their biggest most of those people are okay right yeah and if you do it again to catch point if you do get laid off and you're a tech professional you know what there's a dearth of tech town in not only us but in the west and around the world right so right you it's terrible thing to be laid off but um they are there are job opportunities out there all right we are coming up on kind of where I want to stop so um we're gonna end on a good note here uh we're gonna come back in next year and see how we did in terms of some of these big trends I'm sure that you know something something news like again you can't really predict the news so maybe there'll be a bigger bigger Trend that we missed but I think in general these are the the big trends that that uh people should be watching if they're into technology um so again I want to thank my guests on this one John gold Mark Ferrante and Ken Mingus thanks as always for joining us and uh that's all the time we've got for today's episode if you like what you saw hit that like subscribe button uh join us each each new week for technology news and Analysis on today in Tech I'm Keith Shaw thanks for watching foreign
2023-01-11 03:42
