I've spent much of my life working for small or mid-sized companies. I left one such company (on good terms) shortly before the owner/CEO passed away. He had always had a plan to keep the business going by making it a partnership in thirds. His vice president had a chunk of the company and their bookkeeper held the last third. He held out from selling out to a larger business that expressed interest in merging, when he figured out they really only wanted our customer list. Most of our employees would be on the chopping block. Sadly, his VP developed Alzheimer's right around the time the owner died, and the bookkeeper didn't really have the interest in owning/running the whole company on her own. So they're no longer around.

I'm also working, now, for one where the owner decided he wanted to retire. In his case, he sold to Private Equity, but only after being "sold" on the idea it was a good match for our business. (Supposedly, this was a firm who was very selective who they bought out, and had similar goals to expand the business, etc. etc.)
So far, it's shaping up to be every bit as bad as people always warn. I'm looking for an exit. Yes, they're trying to merge with several other companies and "grow", but it's all being done with zero interest in spending on more labor for people doing the computer support required to keep it all going. They're also floating some ideas to convert one company they're buying to operate exactly like ours does, and I can already see reasons that's a bad idea.
 

I think there's reality in what you're saying - but do we know who all these people are who they're laying off from "big tech"? At least from the buzz I see on sites like LinkedIn, it's pretty often their rank and file software developers!

The problem with "middle management" is they tend to be extremely difficult to get rid of. They're the ones usually tasked with reporting to leadership how well various groups are performing, and conversely, tasked with handling job cuts in a sane/sensible manner. So THEY get to pick who gets eliminated ... from the workers they have sway over. They can selectively cut a few high paid engineers or product testers or whoever makes the balance sheets look good to get off the payroll, and placate leadership. No middle managers affected directly....

Sometimes, they cull themselves out due to bad behavior that goes public and creates a PR issue. But that's relatively rare vs how many are employed.

The other nasty thing about management people is that employment has a lot to do with "who you know". These people make connections and friends with others in their same circle. So as soon as company A terminates one of them for poor performance? They get hired elsewhere in a similar position, to act as a parasite on productive in company B.

Obviously, the software giants out there like Adobe and Microsoft aren't going away. They provide so many entrenched software apps/tools that do tasks people need in the business world, and that employees are actually trained in/familiar with using.

But increasingly, the code they're cranking out is underwhelming and not exciting NEW users to adopt any of it.

I don't see how any of them can achieve much growth without developing compelling, brand new applications first? This is like Pepsi or Coca Cola at this point. Everyone who wants to resell or buy it is already a customer.

My experience w/Adobe, especially, is that the subscription model is horribly frustrating. EG. Our office has an annual small business subscription for several Adobe products. Each year, when they're about to expire, we do the renewal but it's over the Xmas holidays so Adobe doesn't really get everything complete with the renewal until early January. All of a sudden, our users get disruptive emails about their licenses being removed and the helpdesk is flooded with panic tickets. Then, things get ironed back out and it's all working again 1-2 days later. But worse yet, if we own say 50 licenses for Acrobat Pro and then a 51st. user needs it? We have to add one license to the subscription, mid-year, for them. If they use it for X number of months but then leave the company, Adobe won't let us remove the license again until the next renewal period. So we're paying for an unused "slot".

All of this hassle plus the fact the software updates are usually minor or nothing we use/need means we're not exactly going around raving about what great apps they are and encouraging others to subscribe.

One problem I've encountered now in a couple different places I lived is old/failing infrastructure. In one small city (population 6,000-ish), they had a fancy, costly reverse-osmosis water filtration plant that met all the latest government regulations, but most homes still had water that ran a gross yellow/brown at random times of the year, or problems with low water pressure.

The water lines to homes were often around 100 years old, as well as the sewer system. Nobody had ever really budgeted for upgrading or replacing the sewers because residents *always* complained (even ousting one mayor who campaigned on modernizing it). They simply didn't want to be the ones stuck footing the bill for the whole thing, by way of higher monthly sewer or water bills. After all, water was still flowing and toilets were still flushing -- and there HAD to be some other way it would get done, right? And after the new treatment plant was mandated, bills went way up already.

Where I live now, the water bill is at least $150 a month or so for 2 adults and no kids (and we don't even water our lawns). We have a newer clothes washer that's supposed to use minimal water, too. They keep telling us a lot of funds are going to modernizing the sewer system, and I do see them tearing up roads all over town to replace pipes. So I feel like it's a bill that's unpleasant, but probably necessary to pay. The part that really kills us though is the hit we take on the electric bills. The house is all electric and built back in the 1940's -- so no insulation to speak of. Just brick behind plaster walls. In cold winter months, bills easily exceed $550-600. Already replaced every bulb in the place with low power LED bulbs, but I've been warned not to blow insulation in the walls or else risk mold/mildew problems, long-term. These old homes were designed assuming they could breathe more.

Unfortunately, your comment that "as always, depends on the work" is the catch with all of what you described. It's awesome that a properly applied DEI hiring policy for orchestras resulted in a near 50/50 mix of male and female musicians performing symphonies. But that's also a situation where realistically, none of the "customers" (the people buying the tickets to hear performances) care about anything but the music that's being performed. Gender has nothing to do with that outcome.

Hiring the "most skilled" person for a given job is often more of a "mushy" dance around finding the best possible combination of hard skills and at least some of the things you're not allowed to say you're *really* looking for. For example, I've worked at marketing companies before and their top performing salespeople creating new leads and/or closing deals are universally physically attractive and mostly younger. It would be a lie to pretend that's just coincidence.

I'm not sure this analogy is completely accurate (but generally not bad). I think a better representation of reality in America would be, "I buy a lot from the pizza places that sell this great, imported pizza. They don't really buy anything from me. I'll let government throw an extra 10% tax on imported pizza because they're trying to get people like me to buy more locally made pizza instead."

Of course, as we all know -- the "locally made pizza" in this analogy is sometimes impossible to find, or requires a lot of extra effort to obtain. And traditionally, the people making it have been charging a premium price for it already.

I think the bottom line is, it's complicated and there's typically nothing good that comes of letting one's government hike taxes or fees on a product or service that the free market had already priced based on what the market would bear. Long-term? Even if tariffs don't directly get applied towards helping encourage growth of business in the country? They *could* encourage more people to start businesses making the products or providing the services people kept buying from other countries. (If everyone's paying more anyway? It means it's a little easier to compete and remain profitable.) But it's all just attempted manipulation of human behavior without a certain outcome.

You're essentially claiming credit card issuers would go under if interest rates were "only" 10%? Laughable! Look at how much they earn on card processing fees alone before stating that with a straight face.

Yes, yes I do. Maybe not in some of our own lifetimes ... but I think there was absolutely more of a concern for at least trying to do what was best for the common man. Once upon a time, America had a strong middle class and businesses still valued experience -- rewarding employees for sticking around until retirement. History has always been full of big mistakes or oversights. But I'm old enough to recall life back in the 1980's, and despite the insanity of everyone living in constant fear that "they might launch the nukes" and kill us all? We *still* were categorically happier and less stressed about life than today. I wasn't alive for the 1950's but I get the feeling things were even more optimistic in that part of American history.

All the comments so far here are utterly ignoring the whole discussion point; would a 10% cap on credit card interest rates be a good or a bad thing? All the Trump haters can say is, "End the tariffs!" instead. The two literally have nothing to do with each other! I'm not a fan of the tariff situation either, but most of what I buy is relatively unaffected by it, to be honest. My groceries are almost all sourced here in America. (Might get the occasional package of tomatoes from Canada or Mexico, but prices are where they've generally been for the same ones grown in the USA.) Even things like 3D printer filament haven't really been a big deal. They may have tariffs on the Asian imported stuff but those companies seem to have found ways to keep selling me 10 packs of PETG or PLA for as little as $89 or so including shipping, on various sales. It's probably more of an issue if you want to buy certain makes/models of vehicles or what-not, but again, it's just not impacting me heavily in daily life.

Credit cards with exorbitant interest rates are just a tax/punishment on the financially struggling. Everyone else pays their card(s) off in full to avoid all the interest charges anyway. If a Democrat suggested this same proposal Trump just did? Slashdot would be all buzzing at how great a move it was.

Pfft....

I'm not opposed to a mandate that there's some maximum number of lumens of light output allowed for an automobile headlight. Frankly, I always assumed that type of law already existed somewhere?

But I've experienced the other end of the spectrum, too. EG. Purchased a new Jeep Wrangler Unlimited back in 2014, just before they started putting LED headlights in them as OEM. The light output was so weak, it was pathetic -- especially given this was a vehicle you'd presumably also use off-road! I felt like I was driving around at night with a couple of candles in there.

The LED or halogen headlights really improve visibility, including a better view of what's past the shoulder of a road (like deer). My experience has been, the majority of drivers angry about headlights being too bright turns out to be the fault of these automatic dimming headlight systems. Most of them just don't toggle the lights from bright to dim in time to avoid blinding drivers coming the opposite direction or who come up on you at an intersection. They also do a lot of false toggling; turning brights back off when they see some light over a garage door or driveway near the road, or some street lamps.

I don't want to see them apply blanket restrictions that might hamper improving the technology.... Relatively bright headlights are a GOOD thing.

I work with both platforms on almost a daily basis, so I'm quite familiar with how Apple does things vs. the Microsoft way. And frankly, both suck, in different ways. In the world of Windows, they may have Windows executable certificates that never expire -- but they also have an OS that *constantly* breaks things in often totally unexpected ways. Look at the latest complaint about OneDrive prompting users to use it for backups on a new install, only to discover they can't turn the backups off again without it erasing the LOCAL copy of the backed up content! Utterly unacceptable trash move there, Microsoft.

And $99 a year to be an Apple developer isn't so bad, IMO. It's just enough cost to ensure someone is serious about what they're doing. It's literally less than people pay for a year of Netflix watching. I bet it cuts down significantly on software that's just spyware/malware crap - because script kiddies don't want to hax0r computers badly enough to spend $99 a year to do it.

As an Apple card and Apple savings holder - this is just disappointing because Chase is slowly taking over all my finances. I let them quote me for a home mortgage loan a few years ago, but found a better rate and more reliable customer service with another loan servicer, so went with them. Great, but 30 days later? Chase announces they bought my loan. I already had one of their credit cards, and now they'll have my Apple savings account AND Apple credit card too.

Ok, my confusion was with this statement: " Logitech has since acknowledged the situation and said that its G Hub app -- a similar management software for gaming devices under the Logitech G brand -- was also affected."

As far as I was aware, all those G branded gaming devices and the related G Hub software was primarily Windows-centric. (Most gamers aren't using the Mac platform.)

I agree I made a false assumption there. But my original statements are still basically valid. In this instance, they're complaining that the Mac version of the app broke because a *developer* certificate Apple checks expired. It wasn't a typical SSL web certificate at fault. Acknowledged ... but who is responsible for renewing these? I'd presume that's on Logitech and was part of an agreement they signed when they started publishing Mac applications.

This same problem happens quite a bit with Windows applications if they rely on back-end web/cloud services and an SSL cert. isn't renewed in time.

Some of the comments here show complete ignorance. The Logitech app for their mice has zero to do with Apple! Neither is it some "consequence of using a Mac". Logitech even said, right in the original article summary, that their Windows G-Hub application was also affected!

The real problem, as I see it, is that too many utilities or applications people traditionally assume are stand-alone actually function interactively with cloud servers. When an SSL certificate expires, things break.

You don't even really need these additional software applications to use basic input devices like keyboards or mice, except 3rd. party manufacturers love to enhance these items with non-standard wheels, buttons, colored lights or sliders. The base operating systems don't recognize all of that extra stuff.

I don't care where your beliefs lie here... Slashdot posted this as though it was a factual news item, when in reality? This is just an opinion piece.

Personally, as a U.S. tech worker who has been in the industry for a long time now? I can't say I mind very much if we're repelling people coming here from other countries who want our tech jobs. If you're good at what you do and you live elsewhere, why not do it in your own country? The world wide web itself is a global initiative that for far too long was kept going more by the help and funding from U.S. interests than anyone else on the planet.

America has a real problem these days with corporate mergers and buyouts by private equity firms, creating downward pressure on salaries of I.T. workers, and growing demands on their time and energy. There's a real grind happening in the industry, where a company is owned by investors who just want to squeeze maximum revenue from it and throw it away when it stops producing for them. Investment in labor is minimal.

Having even more competition for tech jobs from people coming in from elsewhere just escalates the problem. I'd rather see more companies struggle to find qualified candidates until they raise the salaries and benefits offered enough to attract them.