Big Tech CEOs Are Asking Employees to Step up — or Step Aside

Welcome to another week, readers. Writing to you from New York, I’m your host, Jordan Parker Erb.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve watched as Elon Musk has shifted Twitter’s culture. One of the biggest transitions was his decision that employees will be fired unless they work at an “extremely hardcore” rate to build “Twitter 2.0.”

But Musk isn’t the only one upping the expectations for workers. Across the industry, tech CEOs are asking their employees to step up — or step aside.

Let’s get started.

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1. It’s not just Elon Musk: Major tech CEOs are asking employees to step up or risk getting fired. After taking over at Twitter, Musk notoriously asked staffers to work “long hours at high intensity” or quit. But other tech CEOs from firms like Meta and Amazon have also been turning up the heat on employees. 

• At Facebook, for example, CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told staff in early July that he would be “raising expectations and having more aggressive goals.”
• Alphabet, too, has outlined plans to “make the company 20% more productive” when CEO Sundar Pichai sounded the alarm that employee productivity needed to improve. 
• Already famously frugal, Amazon urged the company during an all-hands meeting in early October to “double down on frugality” and told employees to “accomplish more with less,” according to leaked slides from the meeting.
• Though their language was more diplomatic than Elon’s, the message was still similar: Employees will be expected to step up or find somewhere else to work.

Here’s what more tech CEOs are expecting.

In other news:

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3. Microsoft’s former VP of HR shares one interview question that makes or breaks job candidates. The question — “tell me something you’ve learned in the last couple of days” — helped him learn everything he needed to know about the applicant. He explains why, and what he would look for in an answer.

4. A laid-off DoorDash employee said they were depending on it for their H1B visa. The employee was one of 1,250 workers who were laid off last week. Now, without DoorDash’s visa sponsorship, the worker is no longer eligible for permanent residency in the United States. Read their story here.

5. These top investors are searching for the next fintech darling. While fintech investing has seen a slump in the past few months, we spoke with 11 VCs who are bullish around payments and think the sector is going to gain traction soon. Meet the 11 VCs here.

6. Twitter is now relying more on AI to identify harmful content. That’s according to the company’s new trust and safety chief, who also said Twitter now favors restricting distribution rather than deleting certain content. Here’s what else the chief said.

7. Buzzy startups failed to fix mental-health care. In the past two years, startups looking to fix mental health care got a record $7.8 billion in investment from venture firms like SoftBank. But many of them spent too much cash competing for patients, wreaking havoc on their finances, and now their mistakes are fueling the space’s next generation. 

8. As Meta pulls back on offices to cut costs, TikTok looks to expand. TikTok is searching for a new 150,000-square-foot office in Los Angeles just as the company’s rival Meta has backed away from its own office expansion in the city. Here, a tale of two tech giants.

Odds and ends:

9. Can you guess Spotify’s most-streamed “throwback” song of 2022? Here’s a hint: The pop song — which was first released in 1985 — saw a chart resurgence back in June thanks to the latest season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things.” See if you guessed correctly.

10. The electric Hummer isn’t as great for the environment as you might think. In a way, the new Hummer simply repackages many of the same flaws of hulking SUVs and trucks of years past (and uses significantly more electricity than other EVs) — proving not all EVs are created equal.

What we’re watching today:

Curated by Jordan Parker Erb in New York. (Feedback or tips? Email jerb@insider.com or tweet @jordanparkererb.) Edited by Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.