00:01:47.020Hello, and welcome to Microsoft Ignite.
00:01:50.500We've got a big day ahead and lots in store for you.
00:01:54.900First, we want to acknowledge that the land where the Microsoft campus is situated
00:01:59.900was traditionally occupied by the Sammamish, the Duwamish, the Snoqualmie, the Suquamish,
00:02:08.020the Muckleshoot, the Snohomish, the Tulalip, and other Coast Salish peoples since time immemorial.
00:02:15.940A people that are still here, continuing to honor and bring to light their ancient heritage.
00:02:22.780My name is Allison Wines. I'm a senior program manager in our developer tools division.
00:02:28.440I'm an Asian white female with dark brown hair wearing a red sleeveless top.0.97
00:02:34.240She even describes her appearance, you know, just in case any blind members of members of the Sammamish or Duwamish tribes happen to be to be listening.
00:02:43.420It's very thoughtful and inclusive, the kind of gesture you make when you have goodwill to spare.0.56
00:02:49.380It's the corporate equivalent of throwing an extra 50 bucks in the collection basket because, you know, you've had a good year.
00:02:54.860For the 220,000 or so people who work at Microsoft, this was the company culture.
00:03:00.280And they had a good thing going in some ways.
00:03:05.400Well, fast forward just a few years later, and things have changed quite a bit.
00:03:09.520On Monday, Microsoft announced that they're offering buyouts to 60,000 of their 220,000 employees, more than a quarter of their global workforce.
00:03:19.600Yes, a quarter of Microsoft's workforce just received an offer to leave the company.
00:03:25.140Now, if for some reason you still don't believe that AI is going to have massive and very rapid impact on the economy in a very short period of time, then this is a story you need to pay attention to. Watch.
00:03:38.080We also have some breaking news crossing the Bloomberg Terminal.
00:03:41.360Microsoft is offering buyouts to 60,000 employees.
00:03:45.620Here with us for the story, Bloomberg's Brody Ford.
00:05:01.580They clearly don't believe that these workers are essential, and therefore these buyouts will almost certainly become layoffs before long.
00:05:09.840There are estimates right now that only around 5% to 10% of Microsoft's employees are expected to take this buyout.
00:05:16.820So it's probably not going to clear enough employees out.
00:05:20.900And employees at Microsoft seem to recognize that.
00:05:23.960But take this social media post, for example.
00:05:25.680It's from a Microsoft employee who just received the buyout, rather the offer in their email, which he believes is a sign that he's going to be laid off soon.
00:05:34.100So it's apparently only a certain number of employees got the email, even if they were eligible for the buyout.
00:05:52.000My thought process is getting the email means you're on the layoff list. By hook or by crook, we will get rid of you. Thing is, I joined three months ago. I have very low knowledge about the code base. Guys, I feel desperate. What's next? I have three years of experience. That's it. No family business, six months of spending money, nothing more.0.79
00:06:12.760now on the one hand reading this you've got to envy the guy for getting a buyout after spending
00:06:19.260three months at the company normally when you have only three months on the job they just
00:06:23.460get rid of you uh without any severance package and that's it see you later but in general this
00:06:29.420is a very sobering and common problem that young americans have and as they're getting laid off
00:06:34.940they're noticing that h1b visa holders foreigners who microsoft has brought to this country aren't
00:06:42.140being impacted to any significant degree. In fact, Microsoft currently has thousands of listings for
00:06:48.280H-1B employees, which at least in theory are supposed to be jobs that Americans can't fill.
00:06:54.860I saw this screenshot posted by an account on X supposedly leaking some internal Microsoft
00:06:59.820communications following the big announcement on Monday. I haven't authenticated it, though I have
00:07:04.820no reason to doubt that it's real, but it really doesn't matter because the point is a good one.
00:07:09.900And the message reads, quote, if Microsoft is actively encouraging thousands of employees to leave, how should the public reconcile that with claims that the company needs foreign workers because it cannot find sufficient qualified talent in the United States?
00:07:25.800How can the company credibly maintain that it's not abuse the labor certification process if it's simultaneously trying to reduce its existing workforce while asserting that it needs immigration sponsorship to fill talent shortages?
00:07:37.900Then there's a dismissive HR lady reply that reads, I believe you still work with immigrant
00:07:44.240colleagues in your team. That's very interesting. You posted such comment here. So basically,
00:07:49.420shut up and don't ask any questions. It'd be very racist to notice that at the precise moment,0.98
00:07:54.940Microsoft is planning to get rid of a large portion of its workforce. It's also claiming
00:07:59.160that it desperately needs to look overseas to find talent. Let's take a step back and
00:08:04.940So pause to consider the implications here. Microsoft has never done a voluntary buyout
00:08:11.420on this scale before. Very few other companies have. It's reminiscent of GM's massive buyout
00:08:18.700in 2006 when around 35,000 workers agreed to an early exit. And as far as I could tell,
00:08:24.520this is the single largest buyout since then. Overnight, one of the largest companies in the
00:08:30.880world, a place that many college students would kill the work for, just announced that it's happy
00:08:36.480to get rid of 25% of its workforce. They're exempting a small number of divisions, including
00:08:41.440cybersecurity, data centers, and marketing. But for the most part, except for the foreigners,0.98
00:08:46.500everyone is potentially on the chopping block. Even vice presidents are getting these buyout
00:08:50.900offers. And we can only assume that the division in charge of land acknowledgements is, you know,
00:08:56.820may be vulnerable as well. Although maybe not, they're pretty essential. On some level, it might
00:09:02.780seem obvious what's going on here. It's the same reason that Meta cut 10% of their workforce earlier
00:09:07.780this year. It's why Oracle got rid of 21,000 jobs or 13% of its workforce. It's why Amazon seems to
00:09:15.140announce new layoffs like every other day. And that is that AI has made most of these jobs
00:09:21.900redundant. You know, that's the conclusion that most people are drawing here, and it's probably
00:09:28.020correct to a certain degree. We also have to acknowledge another possibility, which I haven't
00:09:33.320seen many people point out, with the exception of a tech CEO named Brad Groh. It's very possible
00:09:40.080that Microsoft, like so many other AI companies, has realized it's spending a ton of money on AI
00:09:47.040without any money, anything to show for it.
00:09:50.540AI is extremely expensive to maintain.
00:15:54.080They figured that these days would most likely
00:15:56.840buy a small, basic house in need of work.
00:16:00.040So you heard that correctly. The city of San Francisco will pay half the cost of childcare for families making up to $325,000 a year. I mean, that's a household income that in virtually any other state would be pretty comfortable at a minimum.
00:16:19.020But in San Francisco, making $325,000 a year, you're essentially on welfare.
00:16:26.540So let's break this down and talk about how exactly this happens.
00:16:31.780And we're still talking about this same couple, John Marmon and the woman.
00:16:37.180Quote, each month, the couple pays $6,400 for their home mortgage and $2,200 for two car payments, car insurance and gas,
00:16:46.520since they're unable to reach their jobs without their vehicles.
00:16:49.720Cell service and home Wi-Fi is another $300 a month.
00:16:53.180They put a little each month toward life insurance,
00:16:55.400their children's college accounts, and retirement.
00:16:57.720They spend more than $150 each week on groceries
00:19:32.880I would say. But there's an amusing element in that paragraph where Emma Hare, the legislative
00:19:39.560aide, wonders whether it's appropriate for her to receive welfare when so many people are homeless
00:19:45.020and unemployed in her city. Her policy brain has to really ponder that question. But in the end,0.84
00:19:53.140shockingly enough, she's happy to take the money. All of the left-wing idealism and all the concerns
00:19:59.000about wealth inequality and racial equity or whatever suddenly go out the window when the
00:20:04.900government offers to reduce your child care bill by 50 percent. Even if you're making $300,000 a
00:20:10.480year, you'll take it. The fentanyl addicts can fend for themselves, I guess. How many of those
00:20:17.340addicts have children, by the way? Is there any universe in which Emma Hare needs this money more1.00
00:20:23.200than the children of homeless fentanyl addicts? Well, maybe there is. You know, San Francisco,1.00
00:20:30.580despite all of its wealth, is apparently the kind of place where high net worth individuals
00:20:34.520need welfare. And that's yet another clear sign, as if we needed it, that the blue state model
00:20:41.760has totally failed. And this is without even talking about the rest of California, which is
00:20:48.100somehow in even worse shape, Los Angeles in particular, even the former communist countries0.82
00:20:54.840behind the Iron Curtain, by some metrics, are doing a lot better. Now, yeah, they don't have0.99
00:21:00.760anywhere near as much money, but on the bright side, the former Eastern Bloc countries have
00:21:05.060a home ownership rate that sits above 85%. Poland is around 87%. Romania is around 95%.
00:21:11.600percent. Hungary and Slovakia are over 90 percent. And the vast majority of these homeowners have
00:21:17.860zero mortgage debt. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the homeownership rate is below 40 percent.
00:21:23.960And most of those homeowners have massive debt. And they need welfare, apparently.
00:21:30.040In terms of crime and violence, it's not even really a contest. Warsaw and Prague are much
00:21:36.340safer than San Francisco. And they're dramatically safer than some of the worst neighborhoods in
00:21:41.140San Francisco like the Tenderloin. The public schools are safer too. It's actually kind of
00:21:48.060remarkable when you think about it. Whether they have money or not, leftists inevitably turn
00:21:52.380everything they touch into a dystopia. I mean, France is poor. Talked about that last week.
00:21:58.280It's a dystopia where everybody's on welfare. San Francisco is rich and it's still a dystopia
00:22:05.440where everybody's on welfare. This is an ideology that's incapable of producing an
00:22:10.820ideal outcome no matter how many resources you give them. We're seeing the same level of
00:22:16.460dysfunction in every major American city, all of which are run by the same political party.
00:22:21.860As the Wall Street Journal reported recently, quote, the number of children under 18 living
00:22:26.700in big U.S. cities is down 6% in the past decade compared with a 1% decline nationwide.
00:22:33.160The drop is especially stark among families with little kids.
00:22:36.520The number of children under age five in big cities fell 15 percent, compared with a drop of 7 percent nationwide.
00:22:44.100Even cities that are gaining population are losing children.
00:22:47.660In all, the number of children declined in about two-thirds of the 38 U.S. cities with more than 500,000 residents.
00:22:54.140now the main self-reported reason that this is happening as you expect is that people think it's
00:23:01.820too expensive to have kids in just the past decade the percentage of americans who say
00:23:06.120that raising children is unaffordable has increased by 20 percent when the times did another story on
00:23:13.080this crisis recently they found that adults in their 30s all had the same complaints
00:23:16.940quote nearly two dozen people in their early 30s said in interviews that
00:23:21.680The image of adult life that they had been promised turned out to be a sham.
00:23:26.040Many work full time and earn enough to cover the cost of basic groceries, even if it means trips to three stores.
00:23:32.080But their salaries are losing ground to inflation and their health care costs are skyrocketing.
00:23:37.200They're cutting back on salon visits, social activities and fresh fruit runs, and they feel priced out of adulthood.
00:23:43.460On Thursday, the long-running Harvard Youth Poll found for the first time in its history that more young Americans expect to fall behind rather than surpass their parents economically.
00:23:54.920Never trust anybody over 30 was a rallying cry of the 60s.
00:23:59.480The lead character of 13 going on 30 awoke to a thriving career in a posh apartment.
00:24:04.820A pop star even used 30 as a meditation on marriage and motherhood.
00:24:09.080But so much about the lives of Americans has changed during the last three decades.
00:24:13.460In 1990, a wedding at 26, a baby shower at two by 28, or a first home around 30, was ordinary.
00:26:57.940And we have to be honest about the fact that as bad as these trends are, AI is likely to make them substantially worse.
00:27:06.480We're already well below replacement level, and if these layoffs continue, we'll be close to an extinction-level event within a century.
00:27:14.380As even the New York Times has acknowledged, with birth rates this low, the only way Democrats can remain in power is to import foreign voters.0.64
00:27:24.480And that's, of course, exactly what they're doing.
00:27:26.940Again, this is a quote from the New York Times, which would call you racist for talking about demographic replacement, even as they acknowledge that that's exactly what's happening.
00:27:34.680quote, the only three of these large states to have lost population since 2020 are the three
00:27:41.540reliably blue states. The two biggest red states, Texas and Florida, have experienced population
00:27:46.780surges. It's almost entirely about domestic migration. About two and a half million people
00:27:52.440in total left California, New York, and Illinois, and nearly as many arrived from other states in
00:27:57.460Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. To provide more context, California and New York
00:28:03.120over the past decade have both drawn people from other countries and lost some of their
00:28:07.840residents to other states. California and New York are the embodiment of the melting pot.
00:28:12.660Younger people come from around the world and older people leave for the rest of the country.
00:28:18.440Yes, younger people come from around the world and older people leave for the rest of the country.
00:28:24.520That's the model that Democrat-run states are running with. And as you can see from this chart,
00:28:33.120You know, that's exactly what's happening. The Republican states like Georgia and Texas and Florida are the safe havens for liberals fleeing states like New York and California. They're deliberately driving out as many Americans as possible and replacing them with foreigners who will vote Democrat in every election.
00:28:50.620everyone who remains, including both the foreigners and the diehard leftists who are in love with0.84
00:28:56.420San Francisco's culture or whatever, is dependent on welfare to survive. And when people are
00:29:02.640dependent on welfare, they're going to vote for the party that keeps the welfare checks coming.
00:29:08.900Even leftists making $300,000 a year are happy to take a welfare check. And indeed, it seems like
00:29:15.660the entire point of the AI economy in the hands of leftists is to make everyone as dependent on
00:29:21.720the government as these people are. That's what they've done to their most loyal supporters in
00:29:27.180San Francisco. It's what they're planning for every major city in the country. In one week,
00:29:34.140there's a very real chance that Democrats are going to get much closer to realizing that goal.
00:29:40.860Now, it's not a foregone conclusion, and the polls aren't always accurate.
00:29:46.080But at the moment, we've got to be honest, they're all trending in the same direction.
00:29:49.580And regardless, we just saw in Brazil, the left has no problem stealing elections anyway.