Speaking to the US Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday to give his semiannual monetary policy report, Powell told elected officials that AI’s effect on the economy to date is “probably not great” yet, but it has “enormous capabilities to make really significant changes in the economy and labor force.”
No timeline given, but another signal that labor disruption is on the horizon. And fiddling with interest rates isn’t going to fix this one.
Since the start of 2023, more than half-a-million tech workers have been laid off, according to industry tallies. Headlines have blamed over-hiring during the pandemic and, more recently, AI. But beneath the surface was a hidden accelerant: a change to what’s known as Section 174 that helped gut in-house software and product development teams everywhere from tech giants such as Microsoft (MSFT) and Meta (META) to much smaller, private, direct-to-consumer and other internet-first companies. For almost 70 years, American companies could deduct 100% of qualified research and development spending in the year they incurred the costs. Salaries, software, contractor payments — if it contributed to creating or improving a product, it came off the top of a firm’s taxable income.
Eoin Hinchy, cofounder and CEO of workflow automation company Tines, said his team had 70 failures with an AI initiative they were working on over the course of a year before finally landing on a successful iteration.
As Jim Collins says, bullets then cannonballs. ‘AI’ covers so many types of solutions that to say you’re doing ‘AI’ is a lot like ‘we have a website’ in the late 90s. Congratulations on recognizing that the internet/ai is transformative. But deploying solutions will take time and effort. There are still no silver bullets.
Nadella had spent 22 years pulling himself up the ranks with his smarts and drive. And his likability. The latter trait was a rarity at the company. Nadella knew its culture intimately, and he knew he had to change it. … But Nadella wrote a 10-page memo arguing that Microsoft’s revival would come from a growth mentality. As he later put it, he wanted to change the corporate personality from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all”.
Microsoft was the leading applications provider internationally; in the U.S. its products were behind word processors and spreadsheets lost to history, like Wordstar and Lotus 1-2-3.
I didn’t realize MSFT found success internationally before taking over the States. My earliest computer memories are of a Windows 3.1 beige box, I went through all the 95, 98, ME, XP upgrades along the way before switching to Apple in college.
Here I am 30 years later still tinkering. There’s a WIRED article that’s a much deeper dive on the history of MSFT https://www.wired.com/story/at-age-50-microsoft-is-an-ai-giant-an-open-source-lover-and-bad-as-it-ever-was/
the percentage of employed individuals with more than one job has decreased since 1996, falling from a peak of nearly 7% in November 1996 to 5.5% in December 2024. During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, this rate dropped to approximately 4%, but it has since rebounded to prepandemic levels. … First, the average age of multiple jobholders has consistently increased over the last three decades, aligning with population aging. As shown in the third figure, the most substantial increase occurred between 1994 and 2012, when the average age of multiple jobholders rose from approximately 37 to 42.
35% of apps now mix subscriptions with consumables or lifetime purchases, and the trend is growing. Gaming (61.7%) and Social & Lifestyle (39.4%) are leading the way, showing that hybrid monetization models are a strong way to capture more revenue without losing the benefits of subscriptions.
Deep dive (in pdf https://www.revenuecat.com/pdf/state-of-subscription-apps-2025.pdf) of various app metrics if you’re into that sort of thing. Product differentiation is still key in market adoption.
