Meta & Microsoft Layoffs Hit Big Tech as Trump Gold Card Flops

Ultimize. According to reporting from the New York Times, Microsoft is offering early retirement buyouts to roughly 7% of its US workforce, targeting long-tenured employees as it pours massive amounts of money into artificial intelligence infrastructure. Now we're talking about a company with roughly 125,000 US employees, and thousands are are now being kind of nudged towards the exit. Not because Microsoft is struggling, but because it's spending aggressively on AI, data centers, chips, infrastructure. This is a $400 billion arms race across big tech, and Microsoft isn't alone. Meta is cutting about 10% of its workforce, it just announced. Amazon's already slashed tens of thousands of corporate jobs. All of this is happening while these companies are telling investors, "Don't worry about profits right now, we're building the future." Translation: humans are expensive, servers depreciate, but they don't complain on Slack. Now, here's where I feel like I'm kind of recycling a script I've basically delivered every day for the last year. But now it's not theoretical anymore. It's showing up in real headlines, real layoffs, real buy-offs. Buyouts. We're watching slowly but unmistakably the end of the safe tech career. Believe it or not, that was a thing. For about 40 years, the advice was simple: learn to code, major in computer science, get into a big tech company, and you're set for life. That advice is aging about as well as telling your kid to become a fax machine repair technician. We're not that far away from this reality. And this is what's kind of bizarre. Telling your kid to major in computer science, even at a place like MIT, may soon sound like saying, uh, why don't you go to acting school? Have you ever considered culinary school or being a chef? Not because those are bad professions, but because they're wildly uncertain. Microsoft is offering buyouts to about 7% of its US workforce, thousands of employees, while spending billions on artificial intelligence. At the same time, Meta is cutting 10% of its staff, and Amazon has already laid off tens of thousands. This is not a recession story. This is a replacement story. Big Tech isn't shrinking because it's failing. It's shrinking because it's investing in a future that requires fewer humans, or maybe no humans. If you work in tech right now, here's the uncomfortable truth. You should be spending every waking hour outside your job preparing for your next one, updating your resume, polishing your LinkedIn, building skills, that are not easily replaced because your employer is actively investing billions of dollars figuring out how to need fewer of you. And we're not that far away from a world where telling your kid to major in computer science sounds like telling them just, you know, be a stand-up comedian. Not because it's bad, but because it's no longer predictable. Now, let's be fair. AI is not causing mass unemployment Yet unemployment rates are still historically low. But let's not kid ourselves about how the stat works. If someone with $100,000 in graduate school debt is driving for Uber 14 hours a day, technically they are employed, but they are one bad week away from financial panic if they're not already in it. And here's the shift almost nobody wants to say out loud: the real money in tech is no longer in being an employee. It's in being an owner, a founder, or an owner of the stock. Here's the reality no one wants to say about the future of work. Yeah, 90% of small businesses fail, but 100% of business owners cannot be fired. They can fail, they can struggle, they can go broke, but they can never be sitting in a Zoom call being told your role has been eliminated so we invest more in AI. That's only if you're the owner. For 40 years, working at a big tech company was the safest path to wealth. Well, that path is disappearing. The winners in this next era are not just the best engineers. They're the founders, the communicators, the people who can tell stories, raise money, and sell a vision. Because in an AI-driven world, the code gets cheaper, but the ability to persuade, that gets more expensive. Valuable. And here's where it gets even more uncomfortable. The people most likely to win in the next era of technology are not necessarily the best coders. They are the best communicators, the founders, the storytellers, the people who can raise money, sell a vision, and convince others to believe. Because in an AI-driven world, the code gets cheaper, the story gets more valuable. This is not the end of work. It is the end of predictable work. It's the end of a safe career path. And it's the beginning of something far messier, a world where your ability to communicate, persuade, and create opportunity matters more than your ability, in some cases, to even execute tasks. And make no mistake, AI's coming. Not all at once, not in some dramatic overnight collapse, but in a slow, steady, relentless way that makes headlines like this feel routine right up until the day it's your job in the article. You know, there's one thing I always find interesting. People will listen to a podcast like this, get ideas, maybe even feel a little motivated, and then just move on with their day. Nothing actually changes. And I get it. Information alone doesn't do it. Repetition does. That's actually why we built Ultimize. So if you're getting any value from this, just go to ultimize.com. That's spelled U-L-T-A-M-I-Z-E dot com. There's a free course waiting for you there. You can start with communication skills. You can start with building better habits. But the whole idea is simple. Don't just hear something once. Actually build it into your life. Again, it's free. Go to ultimize.com. According to reporting on sworn testimony before Congress, Howard Lucknett admitted that only one buyer has actually been approved for the so-called Gold Card Visa program. He's our Secretary of Commerce. Now, he previously claimed on a podcast that 1,000 of these million-dollar gold visas had been sold. Let's be clear on the scale here. This isn't a disagreement about interpretation. This isn't spin. This isn't, well, it depends on how you define sold. This is one, one, literally one sale versus 1,000 sales. And you can make the case fairly that every administration in history has occasionally shaded the truth. Politicians round numbers up in their favor. They exaggerate accomplishments. They frame things in the most flattering possible light. Going from 920 and rounding it off to 1,000, okay, that's politics. But going from 1 to 1,000, that's not politics. That's Pinocchio with a nose that stretches from Des Moines, Iowa all the way to the moon. The US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick just admitted under oath that only 1 person has been approved for a $1 million Gold Card visa after previously admitting he'd sold 1,000 of them. That's not rounding up. That isn't spin. This is the difference between 1 and 1,000. And historically, politicians at least tried to hide the gap. They'd hedge, they deflect, they'd act a little embarrassed if they got caught. But here, no embarrassment, no correction. There's no consequence. The message seems to be, say whatever you want as long as it makes the administration, i.e., Trump, look good. And that's the bigger story here, because it's not just about one claim, it's about a pattern. In past administrations, Republican or Democratic, it was at least a basic understanding if you got caught lying, it was a problem. Maybe you walked it back, maybe you issued a clarification, you looked uncomfortable standing at the podium. At least sometimes you'd even lose your job. There was at least a sense that lying was risky. That it might cost you something. Now the incentive structure appears completely flipped. There's no penalty for saying something wildly untrue as long as it makes Trump look strong, successful, or victorious. In fact, the opposite seems closer to reality. If you repeat the message, if you amplify the narrative, if you say it confidently enough, you're protected, you're supported, your job is safe. Think about the incentive system this creates. If you're inside the administration, what's the safest move? Tell the truth, even if it makes the administration look bad, or tell a massive flattering story, even if it's not remotely accurate? Because right now it appears the safer career move is to tell the bigger story, the more dramatic claim, the more impressive number. Because no one is being punished for exaggerating success or just making it up out of whole cloth. But if you tell the truth and it contradicts the narrative, that's when people get sidelined. That's when people disappear. That's when people lose influence. And that's how you end up with something like this. That's not a small exaggeration, not a rounding error, but a claim so detached from reality that it feels surreal. One versus 1,000. That's not messaging. That's not miscommunication. It's just out-and-out demagoguery. And it's frankly, it's frankly despicable. My friends watching on YouTube, I had the wrong graphic up. Sorry about that. Gotta pay better and closer attention to that. So this gold card flop thing, What's left unsaid is at this stage, more and more people around the world don't want to come to America. I, I, yeah, I understand there's refugees who'd love to go anywhere other than where they are, and they are aspirational poor and middle-class people who would love to be able to come into the US for free. But the idea that people who are already successful in their own country who have a million-plus dollars to pay an admission fee, they don't want to come to America anymore. They'd much rather go to Canada. They'd much rather go to Portugal. There's a million other places they'd rather go, which is another reason why this, this whole plan has been such a disaster. So again, you, Step 1, destroy America's brand, which Trump has done well. We're now seen as less favorable than China. Communist China has a higher brand approval rating around the world than the United States. So step 1, trash our brand. Step 2, try to make money on the brand by selling it for a million dollars. Step 3, no one buys it. Step 4, lie and say everyone's buying it. This is an absurdity. Thankfully, the one silver lining here is Americans seem to be getting it. This president is now the least popular president in half a century in America, and I'm hoping we haven't gotten anywhere close to the bottom yet. I frankly won't be happy until his approval rating is Zero. You ever notice how we all say the same thing? I know what I need to do. I just need to do it. That sentence alone has probably caused people years of progress because knowing isn't the issue. It's having something that actually nudges you again and again to follow through. That's the whole idea behind Ultimise. So if you're getting anything out of this right now, take 10 seconds and go to ultimise.com. There's a free course waiting for you. Communication skills, habits, your choice, and it's built to help you actually apply what you already know. It's totally free. Just go to ultimize.com, ultimize.com. I'll be honest with you, most people don't have a learning problem. They have a consistency problem. They'll watch something, listen to something, get fired up for a day, and then life takes over. And everything resets. That's exactly the gap I'm trying to fix with Ultimize. So if you're getting something out of this show right now, go to ultimize.com, U-L-T-A-M-I-Z-E, and get a free course. There's one on communication skills, one on building better habits. And the whole idea is to make this part of your daily routine, not a one-time thing. It's simple, it's free, and it actually works if you use it. Ultimize.com. Okay, we are back. We have fixed our technical difficulties. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered, and we're going to hop right into the next news story. According to recent ratings data, the CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil has been slipping, falling below 4 million viewers in multiple recent weeks and hovering closer to the mid-3 million range. Meanwhile, ABC World News Tonight is pulling more than 8 million viewers, and NBC Nightly News is sitting comfortably above 6 million. Now, that's not a gap, that's a canyon. And here's the problem: when you're a network evening newscast, you don't have 24 hours like cable. You don't get to warm people up all day. You don't get multiple bites at the apple. You get one shot, 30 minutes. That's your entire business model. So if you're pulling half the audience of your competitors The economics just don't look bad. They start looking unstable. CBS Evening News is now dipping below 4 million viewers while ABC News is over 8 million. NBC is at 6 million. And here's why that matters. Network news isn't cable. You don't get 24 hours to build an audience. You get one half hour. That's it. That's your entire revenue engine. So if you're stuck at 3.5 million viewers while your competitors are doubling you, This isn't just a ratings story. This is a business model problem. The math doesn't work. And the math doesn't work, eventually the content changes. Now, let's talk about why this might be happening. Because the new leadership led by Barry Weiss and backed by ownership tied to David Ellison seems to have made a very specific bet. The bet appears to be what America really wants is another network that feels like Fox News, but maybe a little softer, Fox News light, diet Fox, Fox, but with fewer calories and slightly more eye contact. Now look, Fox News has great ratings, no question, but that's like saying Coca-Cola has great market share. Of course it does. But if you decide today, I'm launching a brand new cola company, good luck getting shelf space, good luck getting distribution. Good luck convincing people to switch from Coca-Cola to your brand. That market is taken. And the same is true for television news. CBS seems to be making a bet that what America needs is yet another version of Fox News. But here's the problem: Fox already exists, and it's dominating its lane. Trying to build Fox News Lite is like launching a new cola company. And hoping people forget Coca-Cola exists. That's not how markets work, and it's especially not how television works, where habits are everything and loyalty is already baked in. And let's not forget, the first reported choice to anchor the new era of CBS News was Bret Baier. He's the Fox News guy. That tells you everything about the strategy. It's not subtle, it's not nuanced. It's basically, let's take what works over there and try to recreate it over here, except you don't have the same audience, you don't have the same infrastructure, and you definitely don't have the same time slot advantages as cable. So what happens next? Well, if the ratings keep sliding, I have a prediction, and this is kind of tongue-in-cheek but maybe not. We're about 3 months away from the 6:30 PM time slot on CBS being sold off to an infomercial. Not just any infomercial, a premium, high-quality, deeply serious news-adjacent infomercial produced by Byron Allen. Tonight at 6:30, hard-hitting journalism brought to you by the revolutionary nonstick Freedom Pan. It slices, it dices, it tells you inflation is down while your grocery bill doubles. And honestly, at the current ratings trajectory, that might be the highest margin programming they've got. Or a better idea, bring back Stephen Colbert's old right-wing parody character. Let him anchor the news, but this time don't tell the audience it's satire. Just let him go full monologue every night, somewhere between Bill O'Reilly and performance art. 30 minutes, no correspondence, no reporting, just make up stuff. Just one guy confidently explaining the world with absolute certainty. At least then the audience would know what they're getting. Because right now the biggest problem for CBS isn't just ratings, it's identity. Who is this for? Why should anyone switch? What's the unique value here? Because slightly different version of something people already have is not a winning strategy in media or anyplace else. And the ratings, they're really starting to reflect that. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. Special hello to all of my old friends and new friends on TikTok. We have been broadcasting here live for coming up on a year on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitch, X, and a handful of other places. We were doing it live on TikTok, but we just had technical issues. Now I've got the right stand, so all I have to do is throw my phone down and we can do this live on TikTok every day as well. So thanks so much for old TikTok friends joining us again. I'm gonna sign off on our regular broadcast across all social media platforms, but spend a couple more minutes with my friends on TikTok. Thanks for joining me. Have a great week.