CHARTS: We analyzed revenue per employee to show why Amazon, Meta, and others are axing workers with brutality and speed

Tech companies are trying to get efficient but many have a lot of work to do.

iStock; Marianne Ayala/Insider

• Mass layoffs at tech firms indicate they want to become efficient.
• One productivity metric to watch is revenue per employee, which has fallen at some big firms.
• We crunched the numbers to show the bloat — with one notable exception.

Tech's year of efficiency is in full swing, but some companies have more to do than others to turn their fortunes around. 

More than 300,000 workers in the sector have been laid off since the beginning of 2022, as companies discover that their pandemic gains aren't permanent and the economy slows down.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has talked about the need to get "leaner" and flatter." Amazon boss Andy Jassy stipulated the importance of simplifying in a note announcing the firm's second round of layoffs. The two companies have laid off a collective 48,000 staff in the last five months.

Tech investor and PayPal mafia member Keith Rabois recently said it's about time major firms cut back after years of over-hiring. As he sees it, the biggest tech firms are bloated and unproductive and he's called for a refocus on one particular metric: Revenue per employee.

This is a get-back-to-basics measure of efficiency and productivity, assigning a hard dollar value to individual workers. It's calculated by dividing a company's annual revenue by the number of its employees. A company might appear financially healthy if it's doing massive revenue — but if it has masses of workers and poor or waning profitability, low revenue per employee might signal inefficiency and bloat.

But just how bad is it?

We crunched the numbers for big tech companies between 2018 and 2022 — and the analysis shows why so many are brutally cutting back on jobs.

1. Tech giants grew. They didn't become more efficient.

Tech companies swelled in the years up to and during the pandemic, but more manpower didn't necessarily mean more money.

The chart shows Amazon, Meta, and Twitter in particular hired heavily from 2018, but also experienced declining revenue per employee. It probably isn't a coincidence that all three companies have been among the most aggressive with job cuts over the past few months.

Amazon's workforce grew from 647,000 five years ago to 1.5 million last year, a period of time in which its revenue per employee declined 6.9% to $333,550. Meta's revenue per employee fell 14% in that time as the firm more than doubled its workforce. Twitter's revenue per employee cratered by almost 60%.

Pursuing a bigger workforce may have stunted productivity, according to John Van Reenen, professor of economics at LSE. "It's possible because often CEOs think 'bigger is better' and it's nice to build an empire to look important," he said.

2. Size isn't everything

And how have tech companies fared against each other? 

 

Twitter produced the least revenue per employee by the end of last year — $317,333 — though this isn't necessarily a surprise, given it only employed 7,500 staff. By comparison, Alphabet generated $1.5 million per employee in 2022, with an employee base of 190,234.

The chart above shows Amazon and Salesforce are producing roughly the same revenue per employee as Twitter despite having tens of thousands more workers: each employee at Amazon generated $333,550 in revenue last year, while Salesforce employees generated $394,911. Bigger doesn't always mean better.

In Google's case, increases in employee numbers each year did coincide with small increases in the revenue generated by each person — until the market fell into a panic. 

Apple, Microsoft, and Salesforce were the only other companies that managed to increase productivity in that time by improving revenue per employee while also increasing the size of their workforce. 

For Van Reenen, what this highlights is that rather than there was an expansion drive to meet the demand for tech from "a huge boom in online shopping and software tools designed to facilitate remote working." 

That, in some cases, was a mistake — something Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg admitted as he announced layoffs. 

"Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended," he said in November. "I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected."

"What tech bosses hadn't taken fully into account was that there would be a switch back to the offline world as things returned to a kind of normal," Van Reenen said. 

3. One company to rule them all

Apple hasn't had to make the drastic cuts that its peers have done, and the chart below shows one reason why.

Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, Apple's revenue per employee has soared, climbing from $1.9 million that year to $2.4 million in 2022. 

 

Though the chart shows how revenue per employee rose, on average, for Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Twitter from 2020 to 2021 amid the pandemic tech boom, they collectively struggled to maintain that momentum. Apple bucked that trend.

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Ancient Egyptian zodiac symbols were found in a temple after archaeologists cleared away 2,000 years' worth of grime

These two ancient Egyptian zodiac signs were uncovered in the Temple of Esna, Egypt. On the left is a Sagittarius, and on the right is a Scorpio.

Ahmed Emam, Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

• Ancient Egyptian star signs were found under a thick layer of soot and dust in the Temple of Esna. 
• The colors in the full set of Egyptian zodiac symbols are vivid after being protected by the grime.
• They also found depictions of beasts, including a snake with a ram's head and a bird with a crocodile's head.

A rare full set of ancient Egyptian astrological symbols has been uncovered under 2,000 years' worth of grime in Luxor's Temple of Esna, in southern Egypt. 

The set is just one of three full sets of ancient Egyptian zodiac signs uncovered in Egyptian temples, said Dr. Daniel von Recklinghausen, a Tübingen Egyptologist who worked on the project. 

"Representations of the zodiac are very rare in Egyptian temples," Professor Christian Leitz, an Egyptologist of the University of Tübingen who worked on the project, said in a press release. 

The temple was already famous for its astronomical ceiling, but some of the star signs had not been detected in previous archaeological missions, Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in a briefing per Arab News.

With these last signs uncovered, the archaeologists were able to confirm the temple contains a full set of the 12 Egyptian star signs, from Aries to Pisces, Hisham El-Leithy, head of the Egyptian expert team, per Arab News.

The symbols were hidden under a thick layer of muck

The zodiac sign Sagittarius

Ahmed Emam, Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

The discovery was made by a joint team of experts from the Egyptian Center of Documentation of Antiquities and the University of Tübingen, Germany, who are renovating and documenting the temple's original colors.

"The zodiac was used to decorate private tombs and sarcophagi and was of great importance in astrological texts, such as horoscopes found inscribed on pottery sherds," said Recklinghausen, adding: "However, it is rare in temple decoration."

Several of the signs are recognizable to us. These include the Sagittarius, which is represented by a horse with the torso of a human archer — though in ancient Egyptian times, he also had a spiked tail and wings. 

The scorpio is also easily recognizable, represented by a scorpion surrounded by stars. 

An ancient Egyptian representation of the zodiac sign Scorpio.

Ahmed Emam, Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

These symbols were hidden under nearly 2,000 years of dust and dirt which has kept them in an incredible state of preservation. 

This is what the Sagittarius looked like before restoration.

Ahmed Emam, Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

The Temple of Esna took 400 years to complete

The symbols were found in the Temple of Esna, an ancient Egyptian temple that dates back to the Greco-Roman times and was completed in A.D. 250, per Egypt Independent.

The Temple of Esna.

Ahmed Amin

Only the Hypostyle Hall remains of the temple.

This vestibule, a 121-foot-long, 65-foot-wide, and 50-foot-high sandstone structure held up by 24 columns, took 400 years to complete, per a press release.

Restoration process in the Temple of Esna.

Ahmed Amin

Every inch of the temple, which also contains 18 decorative free-standing columns, is covered in intricate designs.

A column in the Temple of Esna being restored.

Ahmed Amin

The team has been renovating the temple for the past five years. These zodiac symbols were uncovered in the latest series of renovations, which revealed the designs in brilliant colors. 

Ancient Egyptians adopted astrology late in their reign

These symbols show the decans, which are zodiac symbols representing the 12 hours of the night.

Ahmed Emam, Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

Egyptians were introduced to astrology quite late in their rule, during Greco-Roman times. 

"The zodiac itself is part of Babylonian astronomy and does not appear in Egypt until Ptolemaic times," said Leitz. 

Some of the symbols of their zodiac system have been lost in time. Pictured above, for instance, are the Decans, used to measure the twelve hours of the night.

Zodiac symbols were not the only discovery in this latest round of renovations. The archaeologists also uncovered representations of the planets Jupiter, Saturn and Mars.

They also found various fabulous beasts, including a snake with a ram's head and a bird with a crocodile's head, the tail of a snake, and four wings, per the press release.

Depiction of winged snakes and an animal with bird, crocodile and snake features

Ahmed Emam, Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

The temple of Esna is teaching us a lot of information about how ancient Egyptians read the stars.

One inscription, uncovered in a previous round of renovation, showed how Egyptians compared the Big Dipper to a bull's leg tied to a stake by a goddess in hippo form, per a press release.

According to an accompanying press release, the Big Dipper was considered to be the manifestation of the evil god Seth who murdered his brother Osiris.

The depiction shows the hippo goddess holding Seth back to prevent him from reaching Osiris in the underworld.

A painting in the Temple of Esna shows the Big Dipper, in the shape of a bull's leg, being held back by a goddess.

Ahmed Amin

 

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A 15-year-old suffered hot oil burns while using a deep fryer at a McDonald's restaurant in Tennessee, the Labor Department says

A 15-year-old McDonald's worker suffered hot oil burns while using a deep fryer, the DOL said.

Matthias Balk/Picture Alliance via Getty Images

• A 15-year-old McDonald's worker suffered hot oil burns while using a deep fryer, the DOL said.
• The restaurant in Tennessee illegally allowed the minor to remove french fries manually, per the DOL.
• The DOL assessed a $3,258 civil penalty to the franchisee that operates the restaurant.

A 15-year-old McDonald's worker suffered hot oil burns while using a deep fryer at a restaurant in Tennessee, the Department of Labor said.

The restaurant in Morristown, north-east Tennessee, had illegally allowed the minor to remove french fries from a hot oil deep fryer manually, the DOL said. The worker was injured in June 2022.

Child-labor laws strictly regulate which tasks 14- and 15-year-old workers can perform, including a ban on all activities related to baking. While they can perform some cooking tasks, these are heavily restricted and they can only use deep fat fryers that are equipped with devices to automatically lower and raise the baskets into and out of the oil or grease.

The DOL assessed a $3,258 civil penalty for Faris Enterprises, the franchisee that operates the restaurant.

Lisa Kelly, the district director in Nashville, Tennessee for the DOL's Wage and Hour Division District, said in a press release that there had been an "alarming increase" in child labor violations since 2018. The DOL assessed nearly $4.4 million in civil money penalties in 2022 related to violations of child labor laws.

The DOL said that the restaurant had also violated the Fair Labor Standards Act when it deducted pay from two workers to account for uniforms and cash register shortages.

While employees are allowed to charge employees for their uniforms, in the case of the Faris Enterprises staff this pushed their rate of pay below the overtime premium of one-and-a-half times their regular wage for hours worked over forty in a workweek. The employer had previously violated minimum wage and overtime laws, the DOL said.

The agency recovered $45 in back wages for the two workers and assessed $882 in civil money penalties.

Faris Enterprises did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

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I got laid off from Meta. Here's how being a TikTok and Instagram creator gave me more time to evaluate my future after being let go.

Rawan, who prefers not to publicly disclose her last name, got laid off from her product-marketing job at Meta in November 2022.

Rawan

• A Meta employee built a social-media following by sharing career advice on TikTok and Instagram.
• But she was laid off last November after three years in data strategy and product marketing.
• Now she's working as a creator while she decides whether to go back to corporate work.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Rawan, a social-media creator who was laid off by Meta in November. Insider is keeping Rawan's last name anonymous to protect her privacy. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

When I joined Facebook in 2019, it was the tech company that resonated with me the most. I grew up in the age of Instagram and Facebook, and I felt like the company had a mission that I valued, one that was centered around people.

In my first two and a half years at Meta, I sat on the team that facilitated and managed the machine-learning and model-training processes — I managed the strategy and operations behind these processes. 

Even prior to joining Meta, I had been sharing my career journey on social media. I was on Instagram, and I was mostly doing it for family and friends.

I've always considered myself a creative person, and I never really had that creative outlet in my nine-to-five. That's a big part of why I started creating content.

I came at content creation not even knowing that I could make money

When I started sharing career resources and study- or work-abroad opportunities on social media, I genuinely wanted to help people.

Being the eldest daughter in my family and not having formal guidance, I went through a lot of my career via trial and error, and there were many times I thought, "If only I knew about this earlier, it could have made things so much simpler for me." I've always been that friend or that cousin who's looking to push people to make connections, and I felt like I could help others.

I think a lot of first-generation, Black, and Muslim women resonated with my story. They were curious about my career trajectory, and at first, I became a sort of informal mentor, responding to DMs and giving occasional advice.

Over time, I recognized that there was a need for people who look like me in this space, and others had a desire to learn about the different career paths they could pursue, so I started creating content in a serious capacity on TikTok during the pandemic. Now, my profile there has about 190,000 followers, and I also have 50,000 followers on Instagram.

As my following grew, there were all these amazing brands reaching out to me, including Amazon Web Services, LinkedIn, and Canva. It started as just a passion project, and I soon realized it could be a business.

@rawantheplug If youre tryna step into ur digital nomad era, these are the websites to go to 👩🏽‍💻 #digitalnomad #remotework #wfh #traveltok #careertok #techtok ♬ original sound - Madeline Lu

In early 2022, I decided I wanted to create more synergy between my job and my hobby as a content creator, which is what inspired me to start looking at teams at that supported creators and built products.

In my last six months at Meta, I moved into a product-marketing role, where I worked very closely with creators. But then I was laid off in November 2022.

Before the layoffs, I never thought I'd be impacted. In my time at Meta, I always got stellar performance reviews, and I even got promoted. I remember even joking and laughing with my manager about getting laid off.

That Wednesday morning when I got the email, I was in shock. It took me a few weeks to process what had happened.

It was a whirlwind of emotions. I was planning to go to a friend's wedding in South Africa shortly after, and I was pondering, "Do I be financially responsible and stay in the States to get a head start on my job search? Or do I go to the wedding?" I ended up booking my trip to South Africa 48 hours before leaving the country.

Being a creator has liberated me from the urgency to figure out my next step

Being laid off has changed my perception on corporations and nine-to-five jobs. We saw all these aspirational companies with values including work-life balance, employee retention, all these benefits. The idea is you get into these corporations, and you stay there until you retire — you're set for life. The layoffs completely shattered that idea. Being laid off altered by brain chemistry, as people on TikTok say.

Now, I don't know if I want to work at a corporation, and being a content creator has liberated me from the urgency to figure out my next step right away. It fills up my time, it allows me to build new skills, and it allows me to work with great brands. It's been nice to have that extra cash as a cushion. And if I wanted it to be a full-time role, I absolutely could make it one.

After I got laid off, I was worried that my career content would lose credibility. Instead, I got hundreds of comments across TikTok and Instagram, and this showed me that my community is really here for me, and that it's resilient.

I recognize that this is a tough time for those looking for jobs, so I'm more motivated than ever to continue helping people with resources that can elevate their careers and their college journeys.

I don't feel the need to hop back into the job market without being intentional about what I want to do next. I'm taking the time to talk to mentors and consider multiple career paths.

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People on Chinese social media say Trump's indictment embarrassed the US and made China look so good, he should just join the Chinese Communist Party

A Weibo montage of AI-generated images shows what life would be like if "comrade" Trump retires and "returns home" to China.

Screenshot/Weibo

• Donald Trump's indictment has birthed scores of memes on Weibo, China's version of Twitter.
• Weibo users called Trump "Comrade Nation Builder" — a hero who's helping China by hurting the US.
• They're jokingly sending Trump messages of support and posting melancholic AI-generated montages.

Former President Donald Trump's indictment has Chinese social media users posting a flurry of memes calling him "Comrade Nation Builder" — a hero who's strengthening China by embarrassing the US.

The idea behind the "Comrade Nation Builder" nickname on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, is that Trump is an ally of China who went to Washington for the sole purpose of sabotaging America with wild antics and outrageous policies.

With Trump indicted by a New York grand jury on Thursday, Weibo users are now pretending to express passionate concern for their "comrade," joking that he's under persecution for supporting China. Insider's sweep of Weibo on Thursday surfaced dozens of posts lauding Trump's actions as efforts to boost China by tearing the US apart.

"Comrade Nation Builder, in the police station, in the courts, you must surely endure, we are waiting for you to retire so you can return and watch the sunset with us," read one popular post on Friday. It features a montage of AI-generated images stitched together to show Trump retiring in China after having fulfilled his "mission."

In the images, Trump does taichi exercises with Chinese seniors, lugs groceries home from a wet market, and laughs with Chinese people on a subway. "Red Sunset," the melancholic theme song of a state TV channel that runs programs about the lives of the Chinese elderly, plays over the montage.

The montage also bizarrely takes clips out of context to make it seem as though Trump is in a relationship with former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

—Matthew Loh (@ma2loh) March 31, 2023

In the comments, Weibo users poured their hearts out for "Comrade Nation Builder."

"Your last mission, return home safely," commented one Weibo user.

"Would you like to join the Party, Comrade Nation Builder?" another wrote, referring to the Chinese Communist Party, helmed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping. 

Another batch of AI-generated images posted on Weibo shows Trump in jobs often worked by elderly men in China, such as a construction worker, a trishaw driver, and a deliveryman.

"Comrade Nation Builder's retirement and re-employment life after completing his mission and returning to China," the post's caption read.

A montage of AI-generated images showing Trump retiring in China.

Screenshot/Weibo

Meanwhile, a livestream of a faux news broadcasts announcing Trump's indictment plays heroic themes from Hollywood films, such as music from Star Wars and Indiana Jones. People wrote sarcastic encouragements for Trump in the video's comments.

"Comrade Nation Builder, how difficult your work has been! It really hasn't been easy for you," wrote one.

"Nation Builder — if it doesn't work out, then just come home," another posted with a crying emoji.

Trump's indictment is linked to the Stormy Daniels hush-money payments case, which is thought to be central to the investigation into the former president. He faces more than 30 felony charges, CNN reported, citing sources familiar with the case.

In the weeks before Trump was indicted, some Weibo users voiced their support for him and called on his "redneck supporters" to "rally around their king.

It is unclear if these messages were genuine expressions of grassroots support for Trump in China. This is because Weibo is a heavily moderated platform that's tightly censored by the Chinese government and does not consistently reflect a comprehensive perspective of moods on the ground in China. 

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These are the 10 top cities Americans are looking to move to, according to a report — and of them 5 are in Florida

Alexander Spatari/Getty Images

• Florida dominates the list of US cities that Americans want to relocate to, according to Redfin.
• Miami topped the list. Four other Florida cities, including Tampa and Orlando, made the top ten.
• Phoenix, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Sacramento, California also attracted a lot of interest from Redfin users.

Florida dominates the list of US cities that Americans are looking to relocate to, according to a report by Redfin.

Miami was the most popular destination for Americans looking at property listings in a different metro area to where they currently lived, the report said. Four other Florida cities – Tampa, Orlando, Cape Coral, and North Port-Sarasota – also made it to the top ten.

Overall, between December and February, the top five states homebuyers searched to move to were Florida, Texas, Arizona, Tennessee, and South Carolina, Redfin said. The top five metro areas were Miami, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Sacramento, California, Tampa.

Listings in Miami, Tampa, and Orlando attracted more people from New York City than from any other city. Cape Coral and North Port-Sarasota, meanwhile, attracted the most people from Chicago.

The report's findings backed trends established during the pandemic, with the rise in remote work driving people to move away from expensive office cities in favor of areas with low taxes, cheap housing, and a sunny climate.

"Relatively affordable Sun Belt metros perennially top the list of places people are looking to move, due mainly to their comparatively cheap housing and warm weather," Redfin said in its report.

"While homes in these places cost considerably more than pre-pandemic, they remain comparatively affordable," Redfin said in the report. "The typical home in most of the popular destinations is less expensive than the typical home in the top origins." It noted that, for example, the typical Miami home sold for $485,000 in February and the typical Phoenix home sold for $425,000, compared to $640,000 in New York City.

Redfin based its findings on how many more of its users looked at listings between December and February for properties in an urban area than the number of people looking to leave. The data excludes rental listings and only includes people looking to buy homes.

The top ten destinations for Americans looking to relocate outside their metro area, according to Redfin, are:

1. Miami, Florida
2. Phoenix, Arizona
3. Las Vegas, Nevada
4. Sacramento, California
5. Tampa, Florida
6. Orlando, Florida
7. Cape Coral, Florida,
8. Dallas, Texas
9. North Port-Sarasota, Florida
10. Houston, Texas

Some people, however, are bucking the trend by moving out of the Sunshine State. Factors including low wages, the stifling heat, and dangerous critters are pushing people out of the state. One person previously told Insider that after a while the feeling that you're on vacation "wears off." She moved back to Virginia just five months after relocating to Florida.

Climate change is also forcing people out of the state, with violent storms destroying homes in the Keys.

Between July 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021, around 220,890 more people moved to Florida from elsewhere in the state, US Census estimates show. Florida – the US' third-most populous state – saw its population grow by 14.6% between 2010 and 2020, according to US Census data. This is double the rate of overall US population growth, and some critics argue that this rate could be unsustainable if the state isn't able to develop the infrastructure to support the huge inflows.

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US stocks could end this year 14% higher because banking turmoil will trigger a Fed pause, veteran investor Ed Yardeni says

The S&P 500 could rally 14% by the end of the year, Ed Yardeni said.

Adam Jeffery/CNBC/NBCU/Getty Images

• The S&P 500 could hit 4,600 points by the end of this year, according to Ed Yardeni.
• The veteran investor turmoil in the US banking sector to lead to the Federal Reserve pausing its rate hikes.
• "This banking crisis is going to be very well-contained," the veteran investor told CNBC on Wednesday.

US stocks could rally 14% by the end of the year, as the recent banking turmoil will likely to lead to the Federal Reserve pausing its rate-hiking campaign, according to Ed Yardeni.

The Yardeni Research president expects measures taken by the US central bank and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a government-run body that insures deposits, will keep the fallout in check.

"The financial crisis we've had here — this banking crisis — is going to be very well contained by both the Fed and the FDIC," the veteran investor told CNBC's "Closing Bell" on Wednesday.

"And at the same time, I think it's going to keep the Fed from raising interest rates even further," he said.

"I don't see the Fed lowering interest rates. But I think they are currently now at a restrictive enough level where they don't have to keep raising interest rates."

A pause in rate rises by the central bank will power gains in the S&P 500, according to Yardeni.

He expects the benchmark US stock index to reach 4,600 points by the end of 2023 – which would represent a 14% rise from its Wednesday closing level of 4,028.

The Fed has lifted borrowing costs from near-zero to just under 5% over the past year in a bid to bring inflation down to its 2% target level.

But CME Group's Fedwatch tool shows that most traders expect it to pause its tightening campaign at its next meeting in May in a bid to contain the turmoil sparked by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

SVB's swift collapse earlier in March came after it disclosed massive losses on sales from its bond portfolio, with the crash in value fueled by the Fed's aggressive tightening campaign. Bond prices tend to fall when borrowing rise, because investors can get a better return from parking their cash in savings accounts.

A Fed pause would help prop up the value of struggling banks' investments and prevent the current situation from escalating into a full-blown crisis.

Meanwhile, some analysts have warned the turmoil could drag on stocks by fueling a credit crunch, as under-pressure banks become more conservative in making loans to listed companies.

But Yardeni shrugged off those concerns, saying stocks have already shown they can weather the tightening in credit conditions over the past year.

The main victims of the Fed's rapid hikes were assets that had seen their prices balloon due to low interest rates after the pandemic, he told CNBC. He listed meme stocks, Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, and the exchange-traded funds offered by Cathie Wood's Ark Invest as three examples.

"I don't think we're looking at an economy-wide credit crunch," he said. "I think standards are going to tighten. I think we've already seen a lot of bubbles burst without taking the economy down."

"We saw that last year with the meme stocks, with the SPACs, with the Ark stocks," he added.

Read more: SVB's collapse was fueled by 'people on iPhones' and won't spread across the US banking sector, Blackstone CEO says

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Just months after buying the platform, Elon Musk is officially the biggest account on Twitter, leapfrogging former president Barack Obama to reach 133 million followers

Elon Musk.

Noam Galai/Getty Images for Heidi Klum

• Elon Musk overtook Barack Obama on Thursday to become Twitter's most followed account.
• Five months after buying the social-media platform, Musk has over 133 million followers. 
• The Twitter CEO posted 72 times on Monday, and has his tweets boosted by engineers, per Platformer.

Elon Musk became Twitter's most-followed account on Thursday, overtaking Barack Obama's 133 million followers by about 40,000 at the time of writing.

It comes five months after Musk bought the social-media company for $44 billion, beginning a reign full of controversial changes. 

Musk's ascent to Twitter's follower peak comes two days before Twitter removes the blue checkmarks for "legacy verified" accounts — those who were given the symbol to distinguish them from impersonators, as opposed to users who subscribe to Musk's flagship Twitter Blue service.

According to the follower-tracking site SocialBlade, Musk saw the biggest increase last April – the month he first offered to buy Twitter – gaining 9.7 million followers. The month after taking over the company, his follower count rose by 6.9 million.

The Twitter CEO became the sixth-user to cross the 100 million mark last June, according to The Verge, which first reported the news.

While Obama only tweeted 24 times in the last month per SocialBlade, the Twitter CEO's daily average is 26 – including 72 tweets on Monday.

In February, Musk fired one Twitter engineer who suggested his tweets might be getting less traction because of declining public interest in him, per Platformer.

The tech newsletter also reported that Musk asked engineers to find new ways to promote his tweets after President Joe Biden's post about the Super Bowl received more likes than the Twitter CEO's. Musk blamed a "disgruntled employee" for leaking the information, and said it was actually caused by a glitch.

But the Twitter CEO is also among 35 VIP users – a list also including LeBron James, Ben Shapiro, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – whose views are being secretly boosted, Platformer reported this week.

Twitter Blue is due to shake things up on the platform again from April 15, when only paying subscribers will be able to vote in polls or appear in users' "For You" feeds.

Insider contacted Twitter for comment. The company responded with an automated message that didn't address the inquiry.

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David Einhorn bet on Apple before Steve Jobs' return - but quickly sold his shares and missed out on a massive profit

David Einhorn.

Adam Jeffery/CNBC/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

• David Einhorn bet on Apple before Steve Jobs returned as CEO in 1997 and revitalized the company.
• Einhorn's Greenlight Capital promptly sold its stake, missing out on a massive return.
• Greenlight built and exited a billion-dollar position in Apple between 2010 and 2018.

David Einhorn invested in Apple before Steve Jobs returned as CEO in 1997 and oversaw the launch of the iPod, iPhone, and other revolutionary products. But the investor promptly sold his shares for a 30% or 40% profit, meaning he missed out on a massive long-term gain.

"That's probably the worst sale of my entire career," Einhorn said on the "Invest Like the Best" podcast. "If we just kept that Apple stock at that value — because we were literally talking about a $1 billion company or something like that, we probably owned a couple percent of it — that would have been really awesome if we had just kept that."

Einhorn's Greenlight Capital likely paid a fraction of a dollar per Apple share, adjusted for four stock splits since the mid-1990s. The technology stock has soared from around 25 cents on a split-adjusted basis in 1997, to $161 as of Wednesday's close — a roughly 600-fold increase. Apple now commands a $2.5 trillion market capitalization, making it the world's most-valuable public company.

The Greenlight chief didn't say how much he invested. A $100,000 stake in Apple in 1997 would be worth over $60 million today, based solely on the stock's appreciation and ignoring dividends and any dilution. Greenlight declined to comment.

A second bite of Apple

Einhorn bought Apple stock again more than a decade after his first investment.

Greenlight reinvested in the company during the second quarter of 2010, purchasing a split-adjusted 8.75 million shares worth $79 million at the time, Securities and Exchange Commission filings show. That stake would be worth $1.4 billion today, as Apple's stock price has surged more than 15-fold since then.

Einhorn's fund boosted its bet by more than seven times, amassing as many as 67 million shares by 2013. The holding was worth around $1 billion then, making it the largest position in Greenlight's roughly $7 billion US stock portfolio. The same stake would be worth about $11 billion today.

The mainstream view at the time was that Apple's outsized profit margins would shrink due to fierce competition and smartphones becoming a commodity. Analysts also expected the company to fall by the wayside after Jobs' death in 2011. 

"Keep in mind, when we owned Apple, the consensus was it was a low-quality business," Einhorn said. "It was a one-hit wonder, that the founder died somewhere in the middle of our holding period and wouldn't be replicated, that the margins would be competed away and the company would essentially disappear."

However, Einhorn and his team recognized the stickiness of Apple's ecosystem of hardware, software, and services, and the immense value it provided to customers. Wall Street eventually embraced their contrarian view, and the tech stock surged.

Greenlight gradually pared its Apple wager and exited it completely in the third quarter of 2018. The stock more than quadrupled during its holding period, from below $10 a share to upwards of $44.

"We sat there for about five or six years with it as our largest position," Einhorn said. "We no longer hold the stock because I think everybody sees it the same way now."

Einhorn may have cashed in some of his Apple shares after they ballooned in value to avoid overconcentrating his portfolio in a single stock. Still, it's worth noting that Apple stock has roughly tripled since his exit. He may well regret selling the second time as well as the first.

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Check out these images of what an AI created when trying to read a person's mind

The photo on the left is the image participants were shown. On the right, is the image AI generated from human brain waves.

Beyond the Brain study

• Researchers turned human brain waves into AI-generated pictures of what a person was seeing.
• Their work is focused on decoding brain activity to understand a person's thoughts. 
• The experiment, published in November, included dozens of the reference images and the corresponding AI-generated interpretations.

Imagine you're thinking of a goldfish.

Now, what if artificial intelligence could interpret what you're thinking and turn that into an AI-generated image of a goldfish — or at least a pretty close version of it?

It may sound like something out of science-fiction, but a preprint study published in November tried to do exactly that, producing some fascinating AI-generated images in the process.

The images you'll see below on the left show the reference image that was shown to participants in the study. The images on the right are what the AI generated after parsing the participants' brain scans.

The images show that the technology — designed to reconstruct images from reading recorded human brain activity — isn't perfect.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

But a team of researchers from Stanford University, the National University of Singapore, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong is getting closer to being able to achieve this feat.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

In an experiment, the team collected data of participants' brain activity while they were shown pictures. While the team of researchers collected samples from many participants, the study published AI photo results from only one of the participants involved with the study.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

The researchers found that the AI was able to generate images that matched the original photos' attributes — such as color and texture — and overall theme 84% of the time, NBC reported.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

Source NBC.

 

An AI model was then fed the data, and reconstructed images based on the participants' thoughts while they were inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. The team published their findings — including the resulting pictures — in a paper in November.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

Source: Seeing Beyond the Brain study.

The team's work is focused on understanding activity from human brain scans, and ultimately using that data to decipher what a person is thinking.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

But in order to generate these images, the AI model used in the experiment had to go through hours of training.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

The AI model, known as Mind-Vis, was trained on a large pre-existing dataset with over 160,000 brain scans.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

For the second part of its training, the AI was trained on another dataset from a small group of participants whose brain activity was recorded by an fMRI machine as they were shown images.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

From this, the AI model learned to link specific brain activities with visualizing image features — such as color, shape, texture. To train the AI model, each participants' brain activity also had to be measured for 20 hours, NBC reported.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

For the actual experiment, participants inside of an fMRI machine were once again shown a series of new images, and their brain activity was recorded by the machine.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

After all that, the AI was able to generate images based on assessments it made from participants' brain activity.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

This experiment is just one of several similar brain activity and AI-image experiments that have cropped up in the last few years.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

In early March, Vice reported about a group of researchers from Japan's Osaka University who conducted an experiment with similar aims. The results of their experiment were released in December. But in their paper, the researchers explained their study didn't involve training an AI model to create the images.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

Sources Vice and Osaka University study.

In 2019, Futurism reported about an experiment from a team in Russia where an AI sketches what a person, who is wearing an electrode cap, is seeing at that moment.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

Source Futurism.

The technology still has a ways to go before it can be widely used.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

But Zijiao Chen, a doctoral student at the National University of Singapore and one of the researchers on the study, wrote in an email to Insider, that as the technology is further developed, it could be used in medicine, psychology, and neuroscience.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

Treatments for people with neurological disorders could potentially be created with this technology, Chen wrote. For example, people who are not able to verbally communicate could communicate instead with their thoughts.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

Chen wrote that her team hopes that, as the technology improves, people will eventually be able to "control a computer by just thinking of the commands instead of typing on the keyboards."

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

In a perfect world, Chen added that we could even get to a point where phones are no longer needed to communicate. Instead, people could send messages just by thinking.

Photos on the left are the images participants were shown. On the right, are the images AI generated.

Seeing Beyond the Brain study

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Pepsi's new logo takes inspiration from its '90s design, tapping into Gen Z nostalgia for the era

The current and upcoming Pepsi logos.

Courtesy of Pepsi

• Pepsi unveiled a new logo on Tuesday, which closely resembles its '90s design.
• The redesign comes alongside rising popularity for the '90s era among Gen Zers.
• And it goes against the recent trend of minimalist logos with little-to-no identity.

Pepsi unveiled a new logo on Tuesday, which appears to take inspiration from its 1990s design amid a surging nostalgia for the era thanks to Gen Z.

The cola's new emblem sees the circle return to a more standard striped pattern, with the wording placed inside. PepsiCo's chief design officer, Mauro Porcini, told CNN that's because most people asked to draw the logo from memory still produce something like the design used from 1987-1997.

"We couldn't ignore that kind of insight," he said. "Instead of rejecting it, we decided to embrace it."

The company's press release pointed to more vibrant colors and a modern font as part of the update. It is expected to roll out in North America this fall, before being offered around the world in 2024.

The old Pepsi logo, pictured in 1990.

Jean-Erick PASQUIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

But taking inspiration from a previous design also comes as Gen Zers bring back several trends from the '90s. That includes fashion trends like baggy jeans – or as the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, the preppy aesthetic that was channeled by brands like Ralph Lauren in the '90s.

This nostalgia for the period when Gen Zers were either in early childhood – or before they were born –might be most apparent in style choices, but now it looks like Pepsi is calling back to this era as well.

A Pepsi spokesperson did not immediately reply to Insider's request for more information, sent outside US working hours.

The return to the '90s emblem also goes against the trend of everything from fashion houses to soccer clubs modernizing their logos with simplified designs.

—David Perell (@david_perell) July 9, 2022

 

Last year, one viral tweet questioned why the likes of Yves Saint Laurent and Balenciaga were doing away with their stylized fonts in favor of basic ones with similar appearances.

Burberry was among those companies, replacing its knight logo and serif font in 2018, before bringing them back in February this year.

But despite the minimalist trends, a 2019 study in the Harvard Business Review found that logos with a visual reference – like Apple or Starbucks – resonate with consumers more than those with abstract symbols.

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Macy's CEO Jeff Gennette to retire after 40 years at the department store

Jeff Gennette has worked at Macy's for four decades.

Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

• Macy's CEO Jeff Gennette will retire and step down from his role in February 2024.
• Gennette has been at the department store chain for 40 years.
• Several other retail companies have lost their CEOs in recent months. 

The chief executive of Macy's announced plans to retire in February 2024 after working for the retailer for 40 years. 

Jeff Gennette joined Macy's in 1983 as an executive trainee and worked his way up the ranks, becoming CEO in 2017.

Macy's said Wednesday that Tony Spring, CEO of Macy's sister company Bloomingdale's, will take over Gennette's role. CFO Adrian Mitchell will add the role of COO to his responsibilities – overseeing stores, tech, and supply chain needs, Macy's said. 

Gennette is credited with launching Macy's turnaround effort in 2020, known as Polaris. In its bid to cut costs and boost growth, the company closed underperforming stores, slashed thousands of corporate jobs, and streamlined its offices. 

In an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, Gennette said: "We are a smaller, scrappier, more customer-focused company than we were when we went into the pandemic. We've eliminated layers, increased spans of control and really focused on how this team will become a modern department store."

Despite these changes, Macy's still faces industry-wide challenges such as inflation, which is squeezing consumer spending. 

One commentator says the company also lacks innovation. 

"Macy's starts off with some great ideas – such as adding the Story brand or Toys R Us sections – but then, over time, these developments get sucked into the general malaise of Macy's," said Neil Saunders of GlobalData Retail in a note to clients earlier this month.

"They end up being damp squibs rather than initiatives that propel the business forward."

Macy's joins a growing list of retailers that have lost their CEOs in recent months. Experts say the pandemic and the resulting supply chain breakdown have contributed to this turnover. 

"Everyone was forgiving during the pandemic, but now we're anticipating we might get into rougher waters," Felipe Caro of UCLA's Anderson School of Management recently told Insider.

"Many boards are saying, 'Do we have the right person? We better make these changes given that things are not going to get any easier.'" 

Gennette told Bloomberg that while he isn't looking for another CEO role, he may not retire from the workforce entirely: "I'm looking forward to spending more quality time with my family, but I'm still going to be relatively young."

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Trump faces a potential indictment by the Manhattan DA's office. His GOP opponents are far behind him in the 2024 presidential race, and falling further.

Former US President Donald Trump.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

• Former President Trump remains at the top of the 2024 GOP pack as he faces several criminal probes.
• In 2 new polls, Trump increased his national lead over Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in recent weeks.
• Trump has the ghosts of 2020 on his mind, and he won't pull any punches to win the GOP nomination.

Former President Donald Trump faces legal peril on multiple fronts.

In recent weeks, the possibility of an indictment by New York prosecutors has further animated Trump, with the former president casting the many criminal inquiries into him as political persecution aimed at his MAGA movement.

"When they go after me, they're going after you," he told his supporters on Saturday at a rally in Waco, Texas.

Republicans appear to be taking the message to heart, based on recent polls showing Trump with a growing national lead over his top potential competitor — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — in a GOP presidential primary matchup.

A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted from March 14 through March 20 showed Trump ahead of DeSantis 44%-30%, a slight increase from the former president's 43%-31% polling edge early last month; a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll conduced on March 22 and March 23 had Trump ahead 50%-24%, up from his 48%-28% advantage over DeSantis in a January survey.

Trump has come out swinging against DeSantis, who hasn't officially joined the primary and is expected to enter the race later this year. But DeSantis has so far been unable to capitalize on Trump's setbacks. Neither has his most prominent GOP primary opponent: former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.

How has Trump continued to ride high among Republican voters despite his litany of legal challenges?

Trump decried a potential indictment by the Manhattan District Attorney's office during a rally in Waco, Texas, on March 25, 2023.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Trump versus the world

During the 2016 GOP presidential primaries, Trump's political brand was built on rejecting the political establishment. And throughout his White House tenure, Trump openly spoke out against the "deep state," a network of government figures that he claimed sought to undermine his presidency.

He repeated the unfounded assertion while in Waco last weekend. 

"Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state," the former president warned his supporters as he spoke of his third White House campaign.

A special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice is investigating Trump's handling of classified documents after leaving office and examining the then-president's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. District Attorney Fani Willis of Fulton County, Georgia, is probing whether Trump and his political allies criminally interfered with now-President Joe Biden's 2020 victory in the critical swing state.

And Trump faces a potential indictment from the Manhattan District Attorney's office over his involvement in a hush-money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in advance of the 2016 presidential election.

"When this election is over, I will be the president of the United States," he continued. "You will be vindicated and proud, and the thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system will be defeated, discredited, and totally disgraced."

Trump remains incredibly popular with Republicans

In railing against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr., Trump has sought to equate a potential indictment to a partisan affair. Among Republicans already inclined to potentially back Trump once again, such a message can be an effective way for the former president to bring voters on the fence about supporting him again back into the fold.

A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll, conducted from March 20 to March 23, showed that 80% of Republicans felt the investigations into Trump were a "witch hunt," while just 18% of GOP respondents thought the probes were "fair."

Such a shift would be detrimental to a candidate like DeSantis, who has already hinted that he would offer himself as a conservative without the theatrics of Trump.

And Trump's GOP opponents will have to face a daunting statistic; in the poll, 76% of Republicans surveyed said they wanted the former president back in the White House.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is among several high-profile Republicans who may challenge Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Trump's actual rivals are untested candidates at a national level

While Trump in 2016 vanquished a raft of experienced GOP politicians seeking the Oval Office, from former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to then-Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, he's now in the position of having been the party's standard-bearer in two national elections.

Although Trump may have been a political novice seven years ago, his ability to diminish and demean his opponents gave him a clear edge with a conservative electorate that wanted a more unconventional nominee.

In 2020, Trump faced near-unanimous support for a second term, with the campaigns of former Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, former Gov. Bill Weld of Massachusetts, and former Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois barely registering among GOP voters.

However, Trump is especially motivated to avenge his 2020 loss to now-President Joe Biden, as he continues to repeat debunked claims of voter fraud in that election.

Haley has never run for president. If DeSantis and candidates like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina enter the race, they'll all be untested on a national stage — especially running against a figure like Trump. And the former president has already shown that he won't hold back on slamming DeSantis, calling his onetime political ally "Ron DeSanctimonious" and an "average governor."

Barring a major change of heart among Republican voters, Trump is poised to cruise to victory in the primaries — even with the continued threat of criminal probes hanging over him.

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Alibaba shares surged 16% on hopes that the Chinese tech giant's restructuring means Beijing's tech crackdown is finally ending

Chinese tech behemoth Alibaba is splitting up into six business units.

CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

• Shares of Alibaba and its major shareholder Softbank surged in Asian hours on Wednesday.
• That's after Alibaba announced a massive company restructuring on Tuesday.
• Analysts say Alibaba's split into six units will unlock the value of the company.

Alibaba's massive restructuring plan announced Tuesday is boosting hopes that China's crackdown on the tech sector is finally ending — and this sent shares of the e-commerce giant surging.

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed shares rose as much as 16% on Tuesday, closing 12% higher at 94.55 Hong Kong dollars, or about $12.

Shares of Softbank — a major shareholder owning a 13% stake in the Chinese tech giant — also closed just over 6% higher at 5,190 Japanese yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The rally follows Alibaba's announcement of a major reorganization, which will see the company split its business into six independently operated units covering cloud, Chinese e-commerce, global e-commerce, digital mapping and food delivery, logistics, and media and entertainment. Each unit will have its own board and CEO and will be able to explore funding and listings. 

Even Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma recently returned to mainland China after first disappearing from public just as Beijing started to crack down on the tech sector in late 2020. At the time, Ma had angered Beijing with a speech criticizing China's financial regulatory system.

Ma's return was seen as a signal that Beijing may be taking a friendlier stance toward private enterprises and is ready to end the regulatory scrutiny on powerful big tech companies.

"Baba's breakup may be an important experiment," Bank of America analysts wrote in a Tuesday note seen by Insider, referring to Alibaba's stock symbol on the New York Stock Exchange. As China has "always required its biggest sectors and firms to 'contribute to the society,'" Alibaba's split could address various concerns including anti-trust and policy risks, the bank suggested.

Alibaba itself could also be seeking more lenient regulatory oversight with the split, wrote Oshadhi Kumarasiri, an equity research analyst at LightStream Research.

"This could potentially allow each entity to operate under a more manageable regulatory framework, rather than having one large entity that may be subject to more stringent regulations," Kumarasiri wrote in a Wednesday note published on the Smartkarma research platform.

The separation of business units also limits the impact of unit-specific factors to the entire group, Shawn Yang, the deputy research head at Hong Kong-based Blue Lotus Research Institute, wrote in a Wednesday note published on the Smartkarma research platform.

Alibaba shares on the New York Stock Exchange were down 1.1% in pre-market trade.

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AI systems like ChatGPT could impact 300 million full-time jobs worldwide, with administrative and legal roles some of the most at risk, Goldman Sachs report says

Generative AI could lead to "significant disruption" in the labor market, says Goldman Sachs.

Kilito Chan/Getty Images

• Generative AI could lead to "significant disruption" in the labor market, says Goldman Sachs.
• Researchers at the company estimated that the new tech could impact 300 million full-time jobs.
• AI systems could also boost global labor productivity and create new jobs, according to the report.

Generative artificial intelligence systems could lead to "significant disruption" in the labor market and affect around 300 million full-time jobs globally, according to new research from Goldman Sachs.

Generative AI, a type of artificial intelligence that is capable of generating text or other content in response to user prompts, has exploded in popularity in recent months following the launch to the public of OpenAI's ChatGPT. The buzzy chatbot quickly went viral with users and appeared to prompt several other tech companies to launch their own AI systems.

Based on an analysis of data on occupational tasks in both the US and Europe, Goldman researchers extrapolated their findings and estimated that generative AI could expose 300 million full-time jobs around the world to automation if it lives up to its promised capabilities.

The report, written by Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani, said that roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation while generative AI could substitute up to a quarter of current work.

White-collar workers are some of the most likely to be affected by new AI tools. The Goldman report highlighted US legal workers and administrative staff as particularly at risk from the new tech. An earlier study from researchers at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York University, also estimated legal services as the industry most likely to be affected by technology like ChatGPT.

Manav Raj, one of the authors of the study, and an Assistant Professor of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told Insider this was because the legal services industry was made up of a relatively small number of occupations that were already highly exposed to AI automation.

Goldman's report suggested that if generative AI is widely implemented, it could lead to significant labor cost savings and new job creation. The current hype around AI has already given rise to new roles, including prompt engineers, a job that includes writing text instead of code to test AI chatbots.

The new tech could also boost global labor productivity, with Goldman estimating that AI could even eventually increase annual global GDP by 7%.

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