Internal memos
Vice Media pulls plug on employee town hall meeting after onslaught of “thumbs down” emojis
The embattled “news organization” was holding a town hall where chief content officer Cory Haik was giving an update on a recent round of layoffs when the angry “thumbs down” emotes started flooding the stream from disgruntled employees.
That’s when CEO Bruce Dixon cut in–while Haik was still talking–to say “It’s impossible to ignore the emojis from our side. And I think we’re going to organize this in a way where we can actually give the information to people who want to receive it in the way it’s meant,” he continued. “Thank you for your time and your presence in terms of trying to explain that. I think let’s progress with our own town halls on this. Thank you for all the questions we have received, we’ll do our best to answer those in a forum that makes sense for this company.”
Silver spoon Disney heirs “rally” behind Bob Iger
Today in news that shouldn’t be news: eight grandkids of Walt & Roy Disney have come out in support of Bob Iger in his battle with Nelson Peltz. Why does Business Insider care? Who the hell knows, but they’ve given them glowing biographies including quoting Abigail Disney’s spurious claim that “she and her siblings grew up upper middle class before Disney’s stock price skyrocketed.”
Wow! That totally qualifies her to step into this fray.
Let’s see. On one hand, we have a 134 slide presentation with financials and concrete plans. And on the other, we have eight grandchildren rambling on about movie villains. Appeal to emotion, anyone?
Internal memo from CEO Sundar about Google’s Gemini
From: Sundar Pichai
To: Google
—
“Hi everyone I want to address the recent issues with problematic text and image responses in the Gemini app (formerly Bard). I know that some of its responses have offended our users and shown bias — to be clear, that’s completely unacceptable and we got it wrong.
Our teams have been working around the clock to address these issues. We’re already seeing a substantial improvement on a wide range of prompts. No Al is perfect, especially at this emerging stage of the industry’s development, but we know the bar is high for us and we will keep at it for however long it takes. And we’ll review what happened and make sure we fix it at scale.
Our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful is sacrosanct. We’ve always sought to give users helpful, accurate, and unbiased information in our products. That’s why people trust them. This has to be our approach for all our products, including our emerging Al products.
We’ll be driving a clear set of actions, including structural changes, updated product guidelines, improved launch processes, robust evals and red-teaming, and technical recommendations. We are looking across all of this and will make the necessary changes.
Even as we learn from what went wrong here, we should also build on the product and technical announcements we’ve made in Al over the last several weeks. That includes some foundational advances in our underlying models e.g. our 1 million long-context window breakthrough and our open models, both of which have been well received.
We know what it takes to create great products that are used and beloved by billions of people and businesses, and with our infrastructure and research expertise we have an incredible springboard for the Al wave. Let’s focus on what matters most: building helpful products that are deserving of our users’ trust.
-Sundar”
Sony laying off 900 PlayStation employees
~8% of their workforce and closing the entire London studio.
Here is the internal memo from Sony Interactive’s President & CEO:
From: Jim Ryan
Subject: Important Update Regarding Organizational RestructuringTeam,
It is important to provide you with updates about the business as often as possible. Today, I am writing with sad news. Through discussions over the past few months about the evolving economic landscape, changes in the way we develop, distribute, and launch products, and ensuring our organization is future ready in this rapidly changing industry, we have concluded that tough decisions have become inevitable. The leadership team and I made the incredibly difficult decision to restructure operations, which regrettably includes a reduction in our workforce impacting very talented individuals who have contributed to our success.
After careful consideration and many leadership discussions over several months, it has become clear changes need to be made to continue to grow the business and develop the company. We had to step back, look at our business holistically, and move forward focusing on the long-term sustainability of the company and delivering the best experiences possible for our community. The goal is to streamline our resources to ensure our continued success and ability to deliver experiences gamers and creators have come to expect from us.
I want to be as transparent as possible with you, our partners, and our community about what this means:
We envision reducing our headcount by about 900 people, or about 8% of our current workforce There will be impact for employees across all SIE regions – Americas, EMEA, Japan, and APAC Several PlayStation Studios are affectedI know that receiving this news will be hard and unsettling and you are wondering what this means for you. Timelines and procedures for how we approach this will vary based on your location due to local laws and regulations.
For those of you in the US, all impacted employees will be notified today. In the UK, it is proposed: That PlayStation Studios’ London Studio will close in its entirety; That there will be reductions in Firesprite studio; And that there will be reductions in various functions across SIE in the UK.The proposed changes mean that we will enter a period of collective consultation before any final decisions are taken. All employees who are part of the collective consultation will be made aware of the next steps today.
In Japan, we will implement a next career support program. Details will be communicated separately. In other countries, we will begin conversations with those who are potentially at risk or impacted as a result of this proposed course of action.For those who will be leaving SIE: You are leaving this company with our deepest respect and appreciation for all your efforts during your tenure.
For those who will be staying at SIE: We will be saying goodbye to friends and colleagues that we cherish during this process, and this will be painful. Your resilience, sensitivity, and adaptiveness will be critical in the weeks and months to come.
This will not be easy, and I am aware of the impact it will have on wellbeing. Affected employees will receive support, including severance benefits. While these are challenging times, it is not indicative of a lack of strength of our company, our brand, or our industry. Our goal is to remain agile and adaptable and to continue to focus on delivering the best gaming experiences possible now and in the future.
Thank you for your understanding during this difficult period. Please be kind to yourselves and to each other.
Jim
