Calling it a "K-shaped economy" makes massive inequality sound like a neutral economic phenomenon rather than a policy choice. It's like calling a house fire "thermally divergent home heating patterns."

Nextdoor published a "Transparency Report." The link returns a 404 error. I can't think of a more perfect metaphor for corporate transparency.

A terrible story for those that lost their jobs, but truely a story about the insanity of late stage capitalism and charismatic CEOs. atwillemployee.substack.com/p/the-wework...

Some US AI startups are now proudly adopting "996" culture (9am-9pm, 6 days/week) - a work schedule so brutal that even China's government condemned it. American founders saw a labor model that killed workers and thought "perfect, that's how we'll win the AI race." Good stuff.

Got rejected for a job Thursday. Today: rejected again. Same company, same job. Most companies ghost you. This one rejected me twice to make sure I got the message. Waiting for email #3: "Circling back - still not hired".

U.S. employers announced 108,435 layoffs for the month, up 118% from the same period a year ago and 205% from December 2025. The total marked the highest for any January since 2009 (when we were in the middle of the financial crisis). this time? Greed? AI? Offshoring? Probably all of the above.

As we approach the Super Bowl, and a surge in gambling addiction, some might find this interesting. open.substack.com/pub/atwillem...

And just a reminder: Since the pandemic, Pepsi have increased prices by 15%. Twice. And embraced shrinkflation to make sure that you get less for the increased cost. Pulling back slightly because they got too greedy, and pretending they're listening to customers is prime corporate gasslighting.

PepsiCo Foods US CEO Rachel Ferdinando said that she’s “spent the past year listening closely to consumers, and they’ve told us they’re feeling the strain” and that “lowering the suggested retail price reflects our commitment to help reduce the pressure where we can Translation: We got too greedy

Profit first. There's always the food banks for those laid off.

I was today years old when I learned that the Melania documentary is a real thing, and not a spoof trailer for a documentary that nobody would ever want to watch.

Starbucks scraps $250,000 cap on boss's use of company jet... If your CEO needs unlimited private jet access and $1.1M in security because of 'credible threats,' maybe - just maybe - you should ask why people are that angry instead of just building a bigger moat.

Roblox Chose Profit Over Protecting Children open.substack.com/pub/atwillem...

UPS shares rallied to their highest levels in nearly a year. Was it because of the better than expected Q4 numbers, or because they're laying off another 30,000 workers. Got to keep those shareholders happy.

Corporate leaders when they let their mask slip...

🔌 🧵 Ah, Data centers... 1/4 Your electric bill is going up because AI companies need massive data centers. But here's the scam: you're paying for the infrastructure they're using.

I miss the time when reviews and review scores were actually helpful.

I read that "After a year marked by AI-driven layoffs, influential leaders and top executives are now warning that we can expect to see a huge ramp up in anxiety around the technology in 2026." -This is only partly true. Sometimes it's AI, but often it's offshoring or just greed behind the layoffs.

For those of us who have had to suffer from 'customer service' atwillemployee.substack.com/p/late-stage...

In the 1980s, there were over 70 domestic airlines operating in the US. Now, it's 12, and the big four (United, Delta, American and Southwest) hold around 80% of the market. Consolidation killed competition. Now they compete on who can treat you worst while charging the most.

There’s something almost performatively callous about an automated job rejection email hitting inboxes at 9 PM on a Saturday - like the system and company is so indifferent to us as humans that it can’t even be bothered to queue the email for Monday morning.

I have a Yahoo account for less important stuff. They regularly show me the below. Translation: "Let us scan your emails so we can sell more targeted ads that make us more money." When I click "Reject all," I get an error message. It's not a bug. They just don't like taking no for an answer.

Hundreds of Workday applications. AI rejection emails for jobs I'm overqualified for. Months of effort. And the reward? Wages that are the same as 5 years ago - which means 18% less after inflation. I'm not job hunting. I'm desperately searching for a pay cut.

The Demorcats are as much the party of the rich as the Republicans. They have sane social values, but they still take the same $$$ from big tech, banks, and pharma.

Over half of Congress members are millionaires. Turns out it's hard to regulate the rich when the people writing the rules ARE the rich.

When companies lay people off and cite AI (see more Amazon layoff news today). It's often just an excuse. As a reminder, ChatGPT thought my political analysis below was "a thoughtful metaphor about democracy and discourse"

Militarized police with faces hidden seize people off streets, assault them, or even murder them. Half the country is horrified. Half the country shrugs or cheers. Private prisons profit either way.

Salesforce COO: "Do we need to hire everybody in San Francisco when we can get really incredible labor in India?" (Translation: Why pay $150K when we can pay $35K?) The offshoring of skilled jobs is accelerating. Blaming it on AI is - for the moment - a distraction tactic.

Severance pay isn't generosity. It's buying your silence. Sign this, get a few weeks pay, never say anything bad about us. Forever. They're not compensating you. They're insuring themselves against the truth

Oswald Mosley's grandson runs Palantir UK. For those unfamiliar: Mosley was Britain's most prominent fascist leader in the 1930s. Palantir is a surveillance tech company named after the all-seeing orbs from Lord of the Rings. Sometimes reality doesn't need satire.

Companies like Mercor & Turing post 1000s of "expert" positions with AI interviews. You upload your resume, answer questions for ~20 minutes, never hear back. You can't tell if you failed the interview or if the interview WAS the job - harvesting your expertise to train the AI that replaces you.

1/3 Nextdoor is the bed bugs of social media. You never invited it into your house, but somehow it's there. You try to get rid of it. You follow every instruction. It keeps coming back.

When you murder someone in front of multiple witnesses and it's all captured on camera, isn't the murderer usually arrested? Asking for a concerned nation.

Seen on Reddit today. The manufacturing jobs went decades ago, the customer service jobs in the last ~10+ years, and now all the other jobs. What I don't get, is once all the jobs are gone, nobody will be able to buy the increasingly crap services and products that the companies are selling.

🚚 DoorDash tip theft 🧵 1/8 In 2025 Doordash agreed to pay $17 million to settle a lawsuit for stealing tips from delivery workers between 2017-2019. Here's the scam: if a driver was guaranteed $10 and you tipped $5, DoorDash effectively kept your $5 tip and the driver still (only) got $10 total.

I write longer pieces on corporate manipulation & dysfunction over on Substack. Latest: Greedflation, the data, and what CEOs actually told investors while blaming inflation. open.substack.com/pub/atwillem...

🚜 🧵 1/7 A farmer buys a $250,000 John Deere tractor. It breaks during harvest. They can fix it themselves - but the tractor won't start after the repair. Why? John Deere owns the software, and only authorized dealers can make it run. Farmers don't fully own what they bought.

My health insurance went up 25% after the government cut subsidies. My home insurance went up 25% for no apparent reason. They're not colluding. They're just all watching each other raise prices and realizing nobody's stopping them.

I’m gonna steal my neighbor’s car - as an investment prospect.

Ah Meta. Short 🧵 1/3 Meta leaked docs reveal what we already knew: while Mark Zuckerberg testified about protecting teens, internal teams had one goal - Have Instagram win back the 8.4% of monthly teen users they'd lost and beat TikTok by 2027.

Latest startup trend: take your shoes off at the office so you "feel at home." You know what would make me feel at home? Being at home. Or only working the 40 hours I'm paid for. Also, job security. But sure, shoes off works too.

I have dozens of accounts across iCIMS and Workday. Same information re-entered, hundreds of times. Both are "highly configurable" - for the companies hiring, not the people applying. Your time means nothing. You're just another application to ATS auto-reject without even letting you know.

Over 100 WARN notices had already been filed for January layoffs. Some companies struggling, most just greedy. Nothing says “Happy New Year” like mass unemployment to boost shareholder returns.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Billionaires building survival compounds aren't paranoid. They're reading the same publicly available data you are - climate models, resource projections, inequality trends. And rather than using their almost infinite resources to help, their choice is bunkers, not solutions.

CEO posts "leadership wisdom" on LinkedIn. The first 10 likes arrive within minutes - all from employees. Comments: "So true!" "Great perspective!" "Thanks for this!" Engagement from outside the company: zero. It's not thought leadership. It's a loyalty test with a paper trail.

Per Oxfam: Since 1989, the top 1% gained 987 times more wealth per household than the bottom 20%. Not ten times more, or even a hundred times more... Nearly a thousand times more. And politicians still call this a "healthy economy." It's inequality by design, then gaslighting about the results.

The stock market hit record highs! The top 1% owns 54% of it. The bottom 50% owns 1%. So when they tell you the economy is booming, what they mean is: their economy is booming.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are lowering credit requirements to reach subprime borrowers again. Last time we tried this, the housing market collapsed, we bailed out the banks with taxpayer money, and exactly zero executives went to jail. But I’m sure it’ll be different this time.