The widespread tech layoffs over the past few months, and in January and February 2023 alone, have been causing concern for some. Is it a sign of a possible recession and economic avalanche that will see the unemployment rate skyrocket in different countries?
I am not an economist, so this is just more observational. But, I don’t believe the widespread tech exodus we are currently witnessing is symptomatic of an economic storm battering down on the tech sector. It’s a correction.
ChatGPT is an AI-powered conversational API by Open AI that generates a lot of hype and fear amongst consumers, professionals and experts alike. Depending on who you talk to, ChatGPT will either revolutionise how we work, or it’s coming for our jobs and will taint academia.
You might have seen some news stories, including the impressive feats of ChatGPT passing prestigious law and business exams. And while these stories are understandably concerning, AI is based on learning and is no different from people reading books and learning materials available online to do the same thing.
Have you ever stopped to think about the impact social media has on your peace of mind? It was a realisation that came too late towards the end of 2022. The constant arguing, negativity, and drama on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn took a toll on my mental health and well-being. I realised I needed to step back and break free from the negative echo chamber.
You might not realise it, but even seemingly harmless platforms like LinkedIn can have a negative impact on your life. What started as a professional networking platform has fallen prey to the negativity that plagues other social media platforms like Facebook. The constant barrage of conflicts and drama was too much for me to handle.
In case you weren’t aware, recently one of Australia’s large telecommunication companies Optus suffered one of the largest cybersecurity breaches to date. While the extent of the data breach has yet to be revealed, Optus has 9.7 million subscribers and the data taken allegedly could go back to 2017 and involves former customers.
Allegedly, the data could contain data on over 11 million current and former Optus customers. In any other part of the world, this would have resulted in very large fines. In Australia, no such legislation exists to hold any company accountable for a breach like this.
I am an avid reader of Medium, and it’s no secret that the quality of Medium articles has gone downhill over the last couple of years. Clickbait articles are intentionally titled and written to garner a response but lack substance. Amongst the shining gems, is a pile of faeces.
One recently caught my eye. An article titled. It’s 2022, Please Don’t Just Use “console.log” Anymore.
You are probably already rolling your eyes at the title without even reading the article.
If I had a dollar for every time my wife and I discovered a great show on Netflix only to discover it was cancelled after one or two seasons, we would be stupidly rich.
Netflix recently revealed they’re losing subscribers. You probably already knew this because you’ve either cancelled your Netflix account, considered cancelling it or seen the numerous news stories about their untimely demise.
What some people don’t realise is Netflix, like other companies, pulled out of the Russian market over its unwarranted invasion of Ukraine and lost 700,000 paid subscribers. Between April and July, Netflix lost one million subscribers.
Say what you will, but since its introduction in 2009, Node.js has been the undisputed king of server-side Javascript. Created by Ryan Dahl, Node.js had virtually no competition for years.
Until recently, the only person to truly challenge Node.js was Ryan Dahl with his runtime Deno that improved upon some of the flaws that Ryan saw in Node.js which that were systematic and difficult to fix.
Well, there is a new competitor NOT written by Ryan this time called Bun. Who said 2022 had no surprises left?
In my LinkedIn feed of late, I see a lot of layoffs. Most of those layoffs are talent acquisition roles, some development and design, but largely talent acquisition.
If you’re not familiar with the role of talent acquisition, it’s a fancy way to describe an internal recruiter, someone who seeks out candidates for a company.
Well, Twitter just laid off 30% of its talent acquisition team. While the exact number isn’t known, 30% is quite a sizeable percentage of people to layoff as Twitter is amidst a hiring freeze and cutting back on new hires.
In recent years, there has been an explosion of front-end development frameworks and libraries. While this has made development more manageable and efficient, it has also led developers to become increasingly reliant on these tools. As a result, when something goes wrong with the library or framework, it can be difficult to determine the source of the problem and fix it.
You can cross your fingers and hope someone in a comment on a GitHub issue has a workaround or there is a pull request with a fix. But, I’ve seen how fragile the front-end ecosystem can be when a single library lags behind the updates of other packages it depends on and things can quickly fall apart.
As everyone predicted and expected, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) just announced a July 2022 rate hike of 0.5%. Taking the official cash rate to 1.3%.
In the official statement, Philip Lowe details the decision and an insight into what the RBA believes is causing Australia’s inflation.
I’ve bolded some important parts of the announcement we’ll explore.
At its meeting today, the Board decided to increase the cash rate target by 50 basis points to 1.35 per cent. It also increased the interest rate on Exchange Settlement balances by 50 basis points to 1.25 per cent.