KUOW Blog
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2 observations around the trend of tech layoffs: Today So Far
- Major tech companies are laying off tens of thousands of employees in the United States and beyond. A couple themes seem to keep coming up among these corporate announcements.
- Washington lawmakers are considering a wealth tax. It's not a capital gains tax, exactly, but it's in the same territory.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for January 20, 2023.
First it was Amazon. Then it was Microsoft. Now, it's Google. The tech layoffs keep coming.
In truth, it was also Salesforce, Meta, Twitter, Sophos, Coinbase, and a bunch of other tech companies laying off employees in recent weeks, but the above mentioned are shedding a decent share of their global workforces. Amazon is letting go of 18,000 people. Microsoft is laying off 10,000. Now Google says it will lay off 12,000 employees. That adds up to about 6% of Google employees worldwide. Employees in the United States have already been notified. Layoffs in other countries are expected to come soon. It is unclear how much this will affect Google's Seattle-area workforce. Last I checked, the company had a little more than 7,000 employees in Seattle.
Amazon is not only laying off workers, it is also moving out of some of its Seattle offices, KIRO 7 reports. Amazon's lease at the West 8th Tower in the Denny Triangle expires in April, and the company is just going to let it expire. Amazon says that a lot of its office workers are still remote and the need for the office space is not as high was it was before the pandemic sent such workers home. The company is also cutting its AmazonSmile program, which donates to charities customers choose. NPR called this a "cost-cutting effort." This speaks to a couple themes that have emerged amid a lot of these layoffs.
First, a lot of companies went on a hiring spree during the first couple pandemic years when people stuck around home more often. Now, things are easing up and these companies say they need to adjust. As Google CEO Sundar Pichai just wrote to employees, "we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today." Amazon is going through a similar change. Within such adjustments is the fact that office work has changed. Many jobs (sure, not all jobs, but many) do not need commutes and cubicles. Unlike Starbucks, which wants workers in the office three days a week (seems like Starbucks has a goal of becoming the Seattle employer with the most disgruntled employees), Amazon appears to be more inclined to just nix office space and adapt.
Another theme is artificial intelligence. Tucked into a string of corporate jargon explaining the layoffs, CEO Pinchai includes this mention: "I am confident about the huge opportunity in front of us thanks to the strength of our mission, the value of our products and services, and our early investments in AI. To fully capture it, we’ll need to make tough choices." He adds that Google is ready to pursue this AI opportunity "boldly and responsibly."
And then you have Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who recently said, "The next major wave of computing is being born with advances in AI" while talking about the company's job cuts. How will AI relate to the future of tech jobs, or the products these companies are cranking out? That remains to be fully realized. What is clear is that in the face of economic challenges, "AI" is a term that is getting thrown around.
KUOW's Joshua McNichols recently reported that there is a silver lining amid all these layoffs — there are a lot of tech jobs in the region.
“If you’re a tech worker, and you got laid off by a big company like a Microsoft or an Amazon, or any of the others, you’re gonna find yourself gainfully employed in less than 90 days,” Michael Schutzler with the Washington Technology Industry Association told KUOW. “That seems to be a national average now. People are turning over into into other wide open jobs in the tech sector within three months.”
Washington state lawmakers have joined a multiple-state effort to establish a "wealth tax." In our state, this is coming from Democrats Sen. Noel Frame and Rep. My-Linh Thai. Similar proposals have emerged in eight other states.
“Here in Washington state, we are going to fund our future by enacting a narrowly tailored property tax on extreme wealth derived from the ownership of stocks, bonds, and other financial assets, with the proceeds dedicated to education, housing, disability services, and tax credits for working families," Frame said.
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WA Democrats join nationwide rollout of ‘wealth tax’ proposals
Washington state Democrats Sen. Noel Frame and Rep. My-Linh Thai announced legislation Thursday to create a state wealth tax on financial assets in excess of $250 million. They say it could generate an estimated $3 billion per year to fund housing and education, and decrease the tax burden on working-class people.
The rollout was part of a coordinated push nationwide, with similar proposals from Democrats across eight states. Frame called the legislation “the next step in the fight for progressive tax reform in Washington state.”
“Here in Washington state, we are going to fund our future by enacting a narrowly tailored property tax on extreme wealth derived from the ownership of stocks, bonds, and other financial assets, with the proceeds dedicated to education, housing, disability services, and tax credits for working families," she said.
Two-thirds of Democratic lawmakers have already signed on as sponsors of the proposal, Frame said. Thai said she expects the bill to be heard in committee.
Frame said she fully anticipates a legal challenge if the bill passes, but she believes this tax proposal complies with the state constitution, which she said grants lawmakers “fairly unbridled” powers of exemption.
“It’s a broadly applied property tax and a broadly applied exemption,” Frame said. “Everybody’s subject to it, and everybody gets their first quarter billion of assessed value exempt before the tax goes into effect.”
Jason Mercier is the government reform director for the Washington Policy Center, which has argued against new taxes. He called Frame’s legal interpretation a “very novel argument.”
Mercier said the state’s bipartisan tax structure work group found the wealth tax unpopular and declined to recommend one. But he said today’s launch, which was also attended by House Finance Committee Chair April Berg, was a strong show of support for the proposal.
“We knew these bills were coming,” Mercier said. “The amount of sponsors and having [committee] chairs on there kind of changes this from being a conversation bill to a bill that they might try to push through.”
Mercier said these taxes would be the first of their kind in the U.S. But other countries, including France, have abolished them after concerns emerged that they drove wealthy residents to move elsewhere.
Supporters said the wealth tax would be a necessary correction to Washington’s current tax structure, which Frame called “the worst in the country.”
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Sawant's plans beyond Seattle City Hall: Today So Far
- Seattle Councilmember Sawant will not run for reelection. She plans to do this instead ...
- FBI has been concerned about neo-Nazis targeting the energy grid. There have been 15 such attacks on substations in the Northwest since last summer.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for January 19, 2023.
Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant will not seek reelection this year, opening up District 3 to a newcomer after 10 years in office.
Sawant's announcement Thursday served two purposes. One is straightforward: She's not running again. The other is to establish an argument for her next steps. Those next steps include forming Workers Strike Back, which she hopes will be a new movement to further the causes she has championed along with her party, Socialist Alternative. Within this argument that Sawant lays out are some fighting words against Democrats, including Seattle's Pramila Jayapal, who represents the region in Congress. She also isn't a fan of Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and calls them both "sell outs," in a "guest rant" in The Stranger today.
After establishing that Democrats basically suck, Sawant says that Workers Strike Back will be the solution. It is here, after leaving office at the end of 2023, that she says she and her supporters will "continue to be disturbers of the political peace in Seattle." Read the full story here.
It's worth noting that earlier this week, Central District's Joy Hollingsworth announced her campaign for District 3. Read more about that here.
While the recent arrests for the Christmas attacks on substations in Pierce County appear to have been motived by a desire to rob local businesses, the FBI has been concerned about such attacks on the power grid for months now. Why? Answer: Neo-Nazis.
Two Puyallup men said they were knocking out power in December in order to commit burglaries at local businesses. Which sounds a bit odd. All that work, over hours, putting their lives in danger, to knock out power at four substations, and all they reportedly got was $100 from a local restaurant's cash register. I suppose if you don't hesitate to poke at a substation processing hundreds of thousands of volts, you may be operating at a level where that all makes sense.
There is no indication that these two men were motivated by extremist ideologies. But according to an FBI memo that KUOW and OPB obtained, the agency has been on alert for neo-Nazis and other extremists with similar intentions. Such extremist reasoning, however, may be just as odd as the alleged Puyallup burglars'.
“The individuals of concern believe that an attack on electrical infrastructure will contribute to their ideological goal of causing societal collapse and a subsequent race war in the United States,” according to the FBI memo.
As KUOW's John Ryan reports, instructions on how to attack the power grid have been going around online extremism websites and discussion boards for a while now, along with calls to attack substations. During this same time, the Northwest has experienced 15 such attacks. In more recent months, the FBI has noted a rise in such threats. One FBI alert in November stated, “The FBI has received reports of threats to electrical infrastructure by threat actors who espouse RMVE ideology to create civil disorder and inspire further violence." That abbreviation, "RMVE," is FBI speak for "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists."
This idea may sound quite illogical to anyone with ... the ability to process logic. The basic thinking here is that the only thing keeping us all from attacking people different than ourselves are light bulbs, binge watching Netflix, and easy access to TikTok. Once those things are powered down, obviously, all hell will break loose. Once Joe Neighbor realizes that he can't microwave his dinner, he'll scratch his head and say to himself, "Huh, I should go pick a fight."
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Tri-Cities lawmaker wants wind turbines to turn the lights off — sometimes
A lawmaker in the Tri-Cities wants to limit how long warning lights on top of wind turbines can stay on. Such lights, way up high, warn airplane pilots of their presence.
Residents near wind turbines say the blinking red lights on top of the tall structures are hypnotic, distracting, and a nuisance. While the lights keep aircrafts safe, Tri-Cities Representative April Connors says they don’t need to blink constantly from sundown to sun up.
RELATED: Pacific NW 'hydrogen hub' pitch to federal government treated as top secret
Connors is proposing a bill that would essentially have someone flip the light switch on when it's needed, and off when it's not. HB 1173 would require radar monitors to turn on the lights as planes approach. The bill would also require Washington state adopt light mitigation rules by January 2025.
“It’s a monitoring system that works with the radar on the airplanes, that when they’re close by, the lights turn on. When the airplanes go safely by, they turn back off.”
Wyoming, North Dakota and New Hampshire use similar types of aircraft detection lighting systems.
Tri-Cities residents also say a controversial renewable energy project, called the Horse Heaven Hills Energy Center, would bring hundreds of blinking red lights very close to many homes. However, business groups worry retrofitting existing wind turbines could raise energy costs.
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Sustainable wines hitting Washington store shelves this spring
Growers have harvested the first grapes under Washington state’s new sustainability program. Wines with the new "Sustainable WA" label should hit store shelves by spring.
“We have had very long-term, dedicated consumers of Washington wine that have expressed an interest in sustainability in all of agriculture, but certainly in the wines that they drink," said Vicky Scharlau, executive director of the Washington Wine Commission, adding that Northwest wine drinkers have long pushed for sustainability practices in vineyards.
To earn the new sustainability label, Washington grape growers must commit to sustainable vineyard practices, such as using water effectively, and pass a third-party audit to meet the new standards.
“It’s about being able to say, here we are; we’re Washington state; we’re sustainable. And we’ve got a third-party stamp to be able to provide a consumer that gives them confidence in that product, even more confidence than they had before,” Scharlau said.
Read the full story on sustainable wines by Lauren Patterson at Northwest Public Broadcasting.
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Laid off from Microsoft or Amazon? Seattle's still full of opportunities
Getting laid off is hard. But between job openings and startup opportunities, losing a job can be the beginning of a new journey, especially in the Seattle region's tech economy.
Layoffs at Microsoft and Amazon total 28,000 nationally. In the Seattle region, where both companies are headquartered, more than 3,000 people will lose their jobs.
These companies are responding to economic uncertainty — it's getting more expensive to borrow money and stock prices are declining. That means companies that may have over-hired in recent years now have to tighten the belt by about 5%, according to Michael Schutzler of the Washington Technology Industry Association.
But there are still tens of thousands of open tech jobs in the greater Seattle area, Schutzler said.
“If you’re a tech worker, and you got laid off by a big company like a Microsoft or an Amazon, or any of the others, you’re gonna find yourself gainfully employed in less than 90 days,” he said. “That seems to be a national average now. People are turning over into into other wide open jobs in the tech sector within three months.”
Within a company like Amazon or Microsoft, areas of emphasis are constantly in flux, Schutzler said. Right now, these companies are expanding their Artificial Intelligence operations, even as other parts of their operation deflate.
The tech economy as a whole is even more diversified, he added.
“The second largest software employer in downtown Seattle after Amazon is Starbucks. They’ve got close to 7,000 software employees at Starbucks. They’re huge. Starbucks has been competing for years with Amazon for talent. And so if Amazon’s letting people go, then other companies that are competing for talent, in the health care sector, in the retail sector, in the manufacturing sector — all of which are technology-driven these days — this is a boon for them because they’re gonna be able to get talent they haven’t been able to get.”
But there are some challenges, Schutzler said, considering many people who get laid off may lack the skills to fill available positions. But the variety of tech skills mean there’s probably a job out there for most people.
People who don’t fit in the new positions — or choose not to take those positions — may decide it’s finally time to start a new company that they control.
Heather Redman is a Seattle-based investor with venture capital company Flying Fish. She looks for companies that focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence.
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Seattle's Socialist Councilmember Sawant plans exit from city hall
Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant will not run for reelection in 2023, opening up District 3 to a newcomer after nearly 10 years in office. Her announcement Thursday also details the next steps she plans on taking to "continue to be disturbers of the political peace in Seattle, as well as nationally, whether inside or outside City Hall."
"While I’m sure the corporate establishment in Seattle will be very happy with the news that I am not running again, they shouldn’t rush to mix their martinis just yet, because we are not done here," Sawant writes in a "guest rant" for The Stranger.
Aside from stating a list of accomplishments, such as new taxes on large companies like Amazon, renters rights, and a higher minimum wage, Sawant also had some unkind words for Democrats. She called Seattle Congressmember Pramila Jayapal and New York's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez "sell outs" while further arguing that the Democratic Party is "moving further and further right in their loyal support of the corporate elite."
"We cannot put our faith in the AOCs or the Pramila Jayapals, even though I understand there were many who had high expectations for them," Sawant wrote.
This lack of faith in the Democratic Party, to ultimately overthrow capitalism, is part of Sawant's argument to start a new political movement, along with her party, Socialist Alternative, called Workers Strike Back.
At a press event Thursday morning, Sawant's supporters called for more militant action on behalf of workers, action that Democrats and unions have failed to provide.
"Workers Strike Back is meant to be a national movement," Sawant said, noting that a launch event is planed for March 4 in Seattle, and in other cities across the United States. "We're not going anywhere, right now, because we have a whole year ahead of us in City Council office. ... Workers Strike Back is going to be built in multiple cities."
"Having one city council office cannot replace a nationwide movement and it is necessary at this point that Socialist Alternative, union members, and others throughout the nation who want real social and economic justice, that we build a much wider campaign that brings together people from many cities."
Sawant said that Socialist Alternative is not running a candidate to take over for her on the Seattle City Council. Instead, it is putting its effort behind the Workers Strike Back launch.
"This is a beginning and we hope that rank and file workers and young people across the nation will be inspired and join us."
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Incarcerated people would earn minimum wage under new proposal
Many people incarcerated in Washington state have a job inside prison. They work in kitchens and laundry facilities and do custodial work, among other things. The most they can be paid is $2.70 an hour. Now, there's a proposal in the state Legislature to pay incarcerated workers the state minimum wage, $15.74 an hour.
Democrat State Rep. Tarra Simmons of Bremerton is sponsoring the bill. She's also the first-ever formerly incarcerated person to be elected to the state Legislature. KUOW’s Kim Malcolm asked her why she is advocating for this change.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Tarra Simmons: I think it's really important, both for moral reasons and knowing that this practice is part of the slavery loophole, but also to set people up for success upon reentry, so they can save money for housing and transportation when they come home. Also, while they're currently incarcerated, they can still pay their child support and their victim restitution. I think this will set people up for success, reduce recidivism, and increase public safety.
Kim Malcolm: You mentioned the slavery loophole. Explain that for people in this context.
The 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except for punishment for a crime. I experienced it myself. I was forced to work for 42 cents an hour while I was incarcerated. I had a variety of jobs. I worked in the laundry, in custodial, and in the kitchen. Some people even manufacture our license plates or build our furniture for our state agencies. If you refuse to work, you are threatened with a major infraction, which means you can go to solitary confinement, lose visitation with your children, or even lose "good time."
There are things you have to pay for in prison, right?
Yes, absolutely. You have to buy tampons, for example, Q tips, and toothpaste. And if you want any coffee, or anything else, you have to pay for that as well. You also have to pay for medical care. You have to pay a copay for that. We even charge people for the cost of incarceration. There are a lot of costs associated with being incarcerated, but no way to actually make money.
If you had earned Washington's minimum wage back when you were incarcerated, how would that have changed things for you?
It really would have changed things for my children. My children were living in poverty while I was incarcerated as I wasn't able to help them at all. It also would have helped me when I got out of prison. I ended up working for a minimum wage job, and the courts were garnishing my minimum wage in order to pay off my legal financial obligations. Had I been working while I was incarcerated, and able to pay that debt off, I would have had money for housing when I was released. Instead, I went homeless while I was studying for the law school admission test. I think this policy would have really helped me in several ways, and it would have helped my children as well.
There are always going to be opponents to measures that try to boost benefits for people who are incarcerated. What would be your message to people who just don't agree with what they're hearing here?
I would say, if we want to make sure that people don't go back to prison, we need to give them a hand up. We need to help people get into programming and counseling and substance use disorder treatment while they're incarcerated, and also leave incarceration with the ability to not re-offend, but the ability to take care of themselves. This is really about increasing community safety and making sure that when they leave prison, people have money for housing and transportation. Currently, people are leaving with $40 and a bus ticket, oftentimes.
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Inflation and Seattle's livability gap: Today So Far
- Inflation is easing up across the USA, but it sure doesn't seem like it around Seattle.
- Microsoft is laying off 10,000 employees.
- Washington lawmakers consider bring up the minimum wage for incarcerated people.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for January 18, 2023.
After informing my friend that I could not afford a quick trip to Seattle, because I had to save money until my next paycheck, she countered that it was free to ride the ferry one way, only $8 bucks for the return trip, and I could just hang out, and not buy any drinks. That sounds like a fun time, huh?
This was years ago, when I was living on Bainbridge Island, barely making ends meet. In fact, I couldn't actually live on Bainbridge. I technically lived just off of it, on a boat. What I didn't tell my friend, at the time, was that I only had about $25 to get through the next week and a half. I was carefully planning meals, and walking to work so I wouldn't put any money into my car. My friend meant well. I was never miffed by anything she said. She just wanted some time out with pals. But she lived in another world that lacked a certain understanding; the sort of world where she would lecture me about spending just a little more to buy organic food, because it is healthier and in the long run, good health would cost less than medical bills due to bad nutrition. An awareness that one organic apple would take a debilitating bite out of the $25 that was getting me through the "here and now" was just not accessible to her. Therefore, there was a gap between how we were living in the same place.
I think of that time when I hear about the impacts of inflation on the Seattle area today. Axios reporter Christine Clarridge told Seattle Now this morning that our region's financial outlook heading into 2023 poses a risk of widening the gap between those making ends meet, and others who struggle to keep up. Some good news is that rent in the region is going down a bit, but the bad news is that it isn't going down fast enough to compensate for how bad rent is in the first place.
Clarridge recently reported that, while inflation is generally going down nationally, the Seattle area is an outlier and "inflation is not cooling as quickly." Food, housing, and energy costs are all up. In fact, food costs are up 11% from a year ago. An easy example is a trip to your local grocery store. Clarridge did just that. Her budget had become accustomed to 88 cent green peppers, but they are now close to $2. Milk prices were about double than she expected. Chicken, eggs, and so on, all up.
"My ordinary grocery bill would be about $90 for the week, for one person. It was twice that yesterday," Clarridge said. "It seems like there was a huge jump. It wasn't in any particular category, it was across the board."
This isn't a Seattle problem, as Clarridge explained to Seattle Now, "This is a world problem," driven largely by supply chain issues and labor shortages. Check out Clarridge's full conversation with Seattle Now here.
Another sign things are getting tight around here, and globally — Microsoft is laying off 10,000 employees. That's about 5% of its total employees. Early reports indicate this will affect about 878 Microsoft workers in the Bellevue, Issaquah, and Redmond areas. In commenting about the move, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that part of this change will be an expansion into AI technology. In a blog post, Nadella also said that the layoffs are partly in response to changing pandemic conditions and the potential of a recession in the coming months.
"We’re living through times of significant change, and as I meet with customers and partners, a few things are clear. First, as we saw customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic, we’re now seeing them optimize their digital spend to do more with less. We’re also seeing organizations in every industry and geography exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one. At the same time, the next major wave of computing is being born with advances in AI, as we’re turning the world’s most advanced models into a new computing platform."
Lawmakers in Olympia will consider a proposal this session that would up the pay for incarcerated people in Washington. The bill is being pushed by State Rep. Tarra Simmons (D-Bremerton), who was once incarcerated herself. House Bill 1024 (Real Labor, Real Wages Act) would bring the rate up to Washington's minimum wage of $15.74.
"The 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except for punishment for a crime. So this is often referred to as the 'slavery loophole,'" Simmons told KUOW's Soundside.
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Washington lawmakers discuss an alternative to jail for mental health crises
First responders in Washington state have few options when they encounter a person having a mental health episode. In many cases, the default option is jail.
Now, a legislative committee is pondering a new option designed to get people the short-term help they need without routing them through the criminal justice system.
Senator Manka Dhingra (D-Redmond) wants to institute a new system for Washington, based on an idea she learned about in Arizona — a 23-hour crisis relief center. She has proposed SB 5120 to set up a similar program locally. The center would be a place where people with mental health issues can stay for up to a day.
Dhingra says that for people with an acute mental health situation, it’s a better alternative than jail. That point was reinforced by Sarah Chesemore, a Bellevue mother whose daughter has struggled with mental illness. She testified Friday at a Senate Health and Long Term Care Committee hearing.
“You go to the emergency department and you sit in very uncomfortable, hard chairs in the waiting room, watched by security and others there for medical reasons," Chesemore said. "The treatment rooms are not calming. The ED environment is chaotic and stressful. This is not conducive to de-escalation.”
Most who testified at Friday’s hearing applauded the goal of the proposal, but said there are details to work out. One is whether legislators are willing to spend money to establish crisis centers around the state.
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Screaming Trees cofounder Van Conner passes away at 55
Screaming Trees cofounder Van Conner has passed away at 55.
In a post on Facebook announcing that his brother had died Tuesday night, Gary Conner said that Van battled health issues over the past year, but said that, "It was pneumonia that got him in the end."
Van Conner played bass and wrote songs for Screaming Trees. He formed the band with his brother, Gary Lee Conner on guitar, and singer Mark Lanegan in 1984 in Ellensburg, Washington. The band evolved into the 1990s, amid the Seattle grunge era, alongside other major names like Mudhoney, Nirvana, and Soundgarden.
RELATED: Mark Lanegan, Screaming Trees singer and voracious collaborator, dies at 57
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Microsoft's new unlimited vacation policy may not be so simple
Microsoft has a new unlimited vacation policy as of this week.
It applies to full-time salaried employees in the United States — that is, those employees remaining after major job cuts announced Wednesday morning.
Microsoft is laying off 10,000 employees between now and March, according to a memo CEO Satya Nadella sent to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The news comes just days after the company implemented its new vacation policy, which some analysts say benefits employers more than employees.
"People have different opinions on why companies implement this. It's often pitched to employees and prospective employees as a benefit," says Taylor Soper, managing editor of GeekWire, who recently reported on the various pitfalls of an unlimited vacation policy. "Others say this is more about the bottom line, in that it prevents companies from needing to pay out unused PTO when an employee leaves the company."
Then there's how "unlimited" is understood at the company and even among individual teams — the policy is not a free pass to take a permanent paid vacation.
Employees will still need their manager's permission to take time off, for example. Soper says that means the policy could be enforced differently from one manager to another, potentially deepening inequities. Soper says experts have found policies like this may actually increase sexual, racial, or gender discrimination.
"If the company doesn't have a well-structured and transparent policy around unlimited PTO, that can create more problems," he says. "And some studies show that when you have an unlimited PTO policy, employees actually take less vacation than when there was the traditional PTO policy in place."
In any case, the shift at Microsoft is part of a broader trend in tech.
"We're seeing some layoffs. We're seeing some belt-tightening," Soper says. "So, those who say that this is more about the company's bottom line, there may be more meat to that."
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