Peter Riley4,000 gone at #Block — the company behind #Square #Afterpay and Cash App.
#Atlassian 10 per cent of staff.
#Meta offed 20 per cent.
#Amazon cut 16,000 workers in January.
#WiseTech kicked out 2,000.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-25/did-ai-really-take-block-jobs/106478254
☮ ♥ ♬ 🧑💻“Australia has suffered its first major round of AI #JobCuts as the country’s largest locally #listed #software company axed almost one-third of its #workforce to manage deep fears in financial markets that new #CodingTools will make big technology firms vulnerable to disruption.”
“#WiseTech Global will cut about 2000 staff – nearly one-third of its workforce of 7000 – over the next two years as chief executive #ZubinAppoo bets the logistics software giant’s future on #ArtificialIntelligence.” … “‘We’re not halving the capacity,’ Appoo said. “We’re halving the #HumanCapacity, but we’re significantly increasing the overall capacity through agentic AI.
“The era of manually writing code as the core act of engineering is over,” Appoo declared, calling AI “the most significant shift in decades” for software development.”
#WhiteCollar / #ZeroHourWork / #SofwareEngineers / #Straya <https://www.smh.com.au/technology/ai-to-blame-as-wisetech-cuts-2000-jobs-20260225-p5o5a2.html> / <https://archive.md/9UVCF>
Vijay PremaLately I've been tossing around this concept of "user-quality".
It's not something I have heard talked about much in tech.
The idea is that instead of trying to design and scale your app to the maximum number of users (usually the "marginal user"), design it around only attracting or grouping users based on "quality". What is quality? for me that is only interacting with users with good intentions, and/or good first-hand knowledge.
PUPUWEB BlogWiseTech shares drop 22% as most of its board, including the chair, resign over clashes with co-founder Richard White’s role. Major shift for the Australian tech firm. #WiseTech #TechNews #CorporateGovernance #BusinessNews #StockMarket #LeadershipChanges
https://posivi.com/wisetech-shares-drop-22-as-most-of-its-board-resign/
While I believe in mindfulness and awareness a lot more than simplistic blanket bans (that can just be circumvented), the fact that Australia recently banned most major social networks for under 16s, should highlight just how toxic these apps are even for adults who care about their own wellness.
The ban includes Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, Instagram and X. Notably, Youtube is exempt even though I think its just as bad when accessed directly instead of an alternative client.
Quitting the "scrollables" is totally worth it.
I quit all the big centralized scroller apps. Yes finally even YouTube has been deleted from my phone and blocked/privacy-redirected on my laptop.
Now I use:
- Miniflux RSS feed
- Curated Mastodon feed
- Podverse podcasts
- Freetube + Grayjay for music and video search/follow
- Kavita ebooks
I could reduce to just RSS but the other clients are nice to use for their respective media type.