YouSaid · the spoken record

Alex Kantrowitz

lines on the record: 90
first: 2020-05-04
most recent: 2020-05-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Thank God we didn't trust fall. I hate trust. I would have dapped out on that too. Yeah, there was just, there was a role play and I forgot the exact activity, but they wanted me to go up there and tell someone they were deficient in something. And even in a completely fake scenario, I was like, there's no way I'm doing that. Like I can't possibly do that, which is sort of this weird feeling we have before anybody gives feedback. And I think one of the problems is too many feedback cultures are just there to let people know where they stand. Like people view feedback as something that, well, you should really have people know where they stand before they get their review. So it's not a surprise. That's ridiculous. It's like totally the opposite of what a feedback culture should be about. A feedback culture should be about you should feel comfortable bringing your ideas to anybody along the chain. And you should feel comfortable accepting ideas and valuing ideas that are not your own. And they do that well inside Facebook. And that's why they've also been able to get ahead of some of the trends that might take them out.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Give and receive feedback. And actually, I was able to sit into one of them for the book, and that was pretty interesting. I, you know, wanted to dissolve into my chair for a few of the role plays, but otherwise it was fun.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Totally. Yeah, I think the sayings and the posters on the wall, those aren't the important things. The important things are the actions. And sometimes, you know, people in a company, they need this rallying cry to be able to do it. But do I think it would be more important? If you have a company and one of your values is think big, but managers still tell people, don't come to me with that, you're low down on the totem pole. We don't really care what you think. That's terrible. But, you know, if they don't have a mantra and they do, there are managers that are taught, hey, when there are people down the line that actually have ideas, can you take them seriously and bring them to us? Or even better, institutionalized systems. And I think that's, again, what the tech giants have done well. So like, for instance, Facebook, the way that they get ideas across is through this feedback culture. They're very good at listening to ideas internally. Maybe not as well externally, but they have this feedback culture. And yeah, they have posters on the wall that say feedback is a gift and maybe that's a little culty. But they also have, you know, day or too long feedback trainings where people are taught to”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Move fast and break things. That was the famous Facebook thing, which they've kind of pulled away from. They're trying to pretend they never said it. They're doing a Trump kind of, oh, we never didn't mean it that way. And then try to get technical. They actually meant about software, but actually it was a bigger idea around.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I've worked at many companies. In fact, one I used to work at, the reason I left, the person said, why are you leaving? And I said, think small and then think smaller. Like that's how you think here. You know, you think, what's the smallest way you can think? But a lot of these are bromides, like move fast and break things. They're thoughtless, you know, think big. You see all their principles. Netflix had a really interesting version of that in their book, which I actually thought was quite a thoughtful sort of guide to the world or their world. But some of it is sort of I don't know what to say it's creepy. There's something off about it, but you feel like these are these give people saying them out loud is important.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Welcome your ideas, but this is an expectation of you to come with ideas. And then when people do come with ideas, they've got the system to make sure that their ideas are taken seriously. And I think in too many, so this is something that the actual private sector can do, right? In too many companies, we have people that will tell their direct reports or tell other people in the company, yeah, I don't really know because it didn't come from them. And I think if we readjust our thinking to say, hey, like one of Amazon's leadership principles, and I know Amazon leadership principles are this sort of complicated thing where people hold them closer than their own religions and people who are married in Amazon, they start evaluating their marriages with their coworkers based off of these principles. They teach them their kids. But one of them that I think is actually good is think big, which is funny because it's so simple. But how many companies teach people to think small or not to think at all, right? And when one of the guiding values of your company is to think big, all of a sudden people take that seriously and they come in, they start with that creativity.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So I actually spoke to the World Economic Forum about this who've studied it. And they say that things that we need are creativity, originality, and initiative. Those are the things that we need. And those are the things that the tech giants incentivize well inside their companies. So people have asked me, like, I've been doing this book tour and people have said, well, how do they incentivize it? How do they inspire it? And the first thing companies need to do is give permission to people to be like this. You know, actually, we have there's this unfortunate view that humans are not very, you know, that humans don't want to do much, they're not creative. I think this is learned behavior, right? What we see often is people come into companies at the beginning. They're filled with ideas. Here's what we can do. Here's how we can become better. And then companies beat this behavior into them where they teach them, actually we don't really want you to bring ideas to us. What we really want you to do is perform this low value task over and over again, right? And I think what the tech giants do well is they say not only do we”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A good question. I mean, I'm gonna, I have to tap out because I think that education policy is a really complicated thing and people without a lot of experience that tend to wade into them are generally victims of overcoming.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what would a school look like? There's been a lot of those testing schools, they're in Silicon Valley. A lot of these people in Silicon Valley's kids go to some of these schools, these maker schools or schools without walls or things like that.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the people that I spoke with said that we need to stop emphasizing letter grades as much. Maybe take the pluses and minuses off of letter grades, which is something that Adam Grant has suggested. We could also teach our courses differently, give a little bit more room for experimentation to students and start giving less defined work. If we say you have to do, you know, fill out this worksheet and answer this multiple choice test, what type of behavior are you teaching? You're teaching behavior that's ultimately and thinking that's ultimately not going to be very helpful moving forward”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't malign things like that at all. I think those are fascinating. I mean, some of them are silly. I mean, it does focus on the silliness of people, but even today during this coronavirus, there's been so much really wonderful stuff, comedy.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, so if they called me up on the phone, I would say start with education. And I know I've mentioned it before, but it really is a problem where we're not teaching people to be able to think outside the box and be okay with, I know it's cliche, but to be okay with failure and to be okay with not getting an A. And as long as we're producing generations of people who are going to not think that way and they're coming out of school and they're expected to hit a few buttons and that's how they're going to make money, that's going to be a problem. And I know, you know, it's funny, like people malign social media a lot, but actually you look at Tic Tac and you see all these TikToks and videos on Facebook and YouTube that the younger generations are producing. And it might be like the one place that's actually teaching them creativity to be able to think.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What does that look like? What do they have to do? So suddenly Alice Cantrix is president of the United States or not that, but something like that where you're in charge of President of the Internet or they create internet. What it has to be done, there's been sort of, I consider the middling efforts by the Bush and the Obama administration in this area. What are the key things that have to happen?”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and the economy driven by technology. So we definitely need people that are elected representatives and then people inside the government that understand what's going to happen here.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Yeah, so I would say the companies that do this definitely have responsibility to retrain and not just retrain like here's a new skill, but here's a new way to think. And I think that if we let the government off the hook on this part and say that they don't have a huge responsibility to educate differently, to reimagine the way that we educate, to reimagine the way that we talk, what about our social safety net? like to reimagine our social safety net if we let the public sector off the hook we're going to be in some serious trouble so i do really think that there's got to be private public uh you know collaboration i know mark cuban was on the show a couple weeks ago and he mentioned that nobody in the race uh and few people in politics actually have the technological aptitude to be able to legislate on these things and that's why he's considering a run for president right and isn't that a shame right that the two major party candidates are considered and probably so they they don't have enough technological experience economy”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is that fair to workers to be doing that when they're not equipped to who's responsible when you're talking about that idea? Now, it's a great idea to replace pricing with computers. It makes sense. It makes sense to have autonomous vehicles over drivers eventually. It makes sense on a larger scale. But in terms of a societal scale, it's problematic since we're not prepared as a society to do that.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're here with Alex Cantruitz. He's a writer at BuzzFeed. He's also the author of a book called Always Day One. It's about how Tech Titans are going to stay on top forever. We're just talking about the idea of how we have to change the idea of what work is. And I think this gives us one of the things that this crisis gives us. Everyone keeps talking about we're going to get back to normal. And I'm like, no, no, this gives us an opportunity to change normal or to there isn't going to be a normal. And I think accelerate trends that were happening already. And this idea that you were talking about previously that we go into an ideas economy and more so that you have to be creative and entrepreneurial is critical. And we have to teach people to do this. And I think one thing that tech has done before other people is the idea of replacing itself, constantly sort of improving, improving, improving.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're going to have a really hard time being creative. So I do think that, yes, there are processes that private companies and the government can even put into place that will enable them to be more effective, but they have to go hand in hand with a policy infrastructure that enables us to get through to this future.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think that we won't necessarily see job loss from automation, but people who think that we're going to get through this and necessarily grow jobs are crazy. Like it's not going to happen. We won't be able to get through this unless we have some common sense solutions. I think from a political level and from an education level, you know, because if let's say we do move into this world that I'm imagining, right, which I believe is going to happen, where ideal work becomes more prominent, then the education system that we have today really isn't working. For the last chapter of the book, I go back to Cornell School of Industrial Labor Relations. And I go and speak to one of the professors there. And I say, what do you think is going to happen in the age of automation? And he kind of had to almost shake me and be like, you're not getting it. It's not automation that's the problem. It's that we have an education system that teaches people to memorize and spit back and to do nothing but optimize towards getting A's. And when they get into the workforce.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then it became hands off the wheel. This concept of automation, they do celebrate it there. And when I went to visit, I think it was Kensington or part of Seattle outside of Seattle they had the new facility. And all I could think of when I was there was this is designed for no people. Even though Amazon was assuring me, they've hired more people than ever. They're doing new special things and they've taken away all the tasks that are kind of wrote, I guess. That was, you know, the idea wrote. Although some of the tasks remain pretty wrote, it looked like a place that eventually would have no people. Is that a fair feeling about that, or is it just the idea of making people do the things that are ideas and computers do, the things that are automatable? I don't think that's a word.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was initially called Inside People in the Company used to call it Project Yoda, like instead of the vendor managers doing the job, they let the machine use the force, which is machine learning. And then it became hands off the wheel.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alex, for goodness sake. Yeah, but I mean, it's much more fun to try to trick Amazon. But like you can read Jeff Bezos' shareholder letters, and this store is going to become a cornerstone of their physical retail strategy. And I think given the times that we're living in, where we want to have as little physical contact as possible, I expected to accelerate even more. So by taking down that execution work, making room for ideal work, they end up creating the space for people, executives, important executives in their retail organization to try something new. And this is sort of a little bit of the DNA behind Amazon that allows them to be so inventive”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I have many different methods that I've used. Let's see. So I've tried to grab a product pretty quickly. I've tried to go in and out the store as fast as I can. I've been out in like 16 seconds. That hasn't worked. I've picked up two cliff bars at the same time and thought that maybe I'd obscure the packaging. That hasn't worked. So it's pretty do that.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Microsoft Bill Gates Absolutely. Yeah. So the technical advisor thing to me is not the most interesting thing. And the most interesting thing is when he finished it, he got to go pick something new. And pricing promotions were pretty much all but automated. So he and a few people from the retail organization said, let's try something new. And they said, all right, well, we're going to look at physical shopping and find the most annoying part of it and try to use technology to solve it. And they came up with this idea for a big vending machine that you could just sort of go punch your order in and it would deliver it to you, but realized that that would kind of still be annoying to people and not really solve anything. So they use computer vision and sensors to try to build a store where you just sign in and then you go and pick whatever you want off the shelves and you can walk out. And that's what turned into Amazon Go. And when you leave it, you really feel like you're shoplifting from that store. But it works very well. I've tried to trick it many, many times. I haven't been successful. And if you read through Jeff Bezos'”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Amazon realized that they were able to take the data that they had and basically put that on autopilot. So they were able to free up a lot of these vendor managers inside the company. Basically, they gave out their tasks to computers. And they said, why don't you now go and start something else? And so many of these people moved into product manager jobs. And one example that I think is fascinating is that the guy who used to run pricing and promotions inside Amazon, this guy Dilip Kumar, he moved from that job, spent a couple of years studying under Bezos as his technical advisor, shadowing him across every meeting that he did. And typically when you finish this, you get to do something interesting inside Amazon. So the first person did it.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So inside Amazon, for instance, I mean, we can go deep into this. It's actually so fascinating. Even before I sold the book, I took a flight out to Seattle and agreed to cat sit for a summer and said, all right, if I get the deal, I'm going to start reporting like crazy on Amazon. And if I don't, I'll spend a summer with Lady the Cat. And thank goodness I ended up getting the deal and was able to go report on them. And one of the things I was so interested in is, you know, how they automate work. And so I think the main example that a lot of people see is that there's they automate work in their fulfillment centers, but they also do it in the headquarters as well. And there's been a program going on for the last decade called Hands Off the Wheel that's helped Amazon automate all these different functions in its retail organization. So typically if you're a vendor manager inside Amazon, which is the name of the job, you're on the phone with Tide all day long. We need this many units in this fulfillment center at this price at this time.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up from their employees that they find their way to a decision maker in a way that eliminates the walls and the barriers that exist in traditional companies. And that's why you can't.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So I think they're not afraid to challenge their flagship businesses. That's why I call always day one. It's because for them it really is the first day. And this is not just a strategy thing. It's the culture that underpins this, that actually is what makes the difference. So I really think that we need to start thinking about work in two different ways, right? I think we have idea work, which is anything that's involved with creating something new, an execution work, which is everything that involves is involved in supporting that thing. And I think right now we're in the knowledge economy, quote unquote, but we spend all of our, almost all of our time on execution work. People are sitting in these in jobs and they're moving numbers around spreadsheets and they're putting the same order and they've put in every single week. And so we're filled with execution work. So I think what the tech giants have done well is they've used technology to minimize execution work, to make room for ideal work. And they've built systems internally to make sure that when their ideas, there are ideas coming.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, well, to start talking about some of the things that are good about them, what are the things that they do, you know, and you can speak individually because all these companies are different in their own ways, although they have quite a lot of similarities.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think the fundamentals are the same. To me, the main point of this book is that the way that we work and the way that we lead companies is going to change. And I believe that the tech giants have a head start in figuring that out, which is a big part of why they've been able to lap the economy. And so this book looks at the systems that are in place inside these companies and lays them out so they're not just the secret of the tech giants, so that everybody, you know, whether they're competing with the tech giants or working in different fields can put them into use and we can have a more even economy and hopefully more productive public sector as well.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you do because a lot of people feel like the change, for example, Facebook just paid off its tiny FTC fine that people feel like it's not going to be a lot of price for what and they will escape what was happening, which was antitrust action and all kinds of stuff like that. But we'll get into that part later. So talk a little bit about how you conceived this book, because again, it's changed since you wrote it, presumably, but talk about sort of the idea you were trying to get at.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, how is it acceptable that essential workers can be treated this way? And their life put at risk. So to me, I think that right now, again, it's a crisis moment. The key thing right now is for us to just survive this thing. But there's going to be political change on the other side of it.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I have a background in industrial and labor relations. That's what I studied in college, which is how I came to this book. And maybe we can talk about that a little in the next section. But here's what I think. Right now, we're all holding our breath, just trying to get through this. When the dust settles, I think that I have a hesitancy to say things will never be the same. But one thing that I think might really change is we might have a labor movement in this country the way that we haven't had in a long time that says, hey, from a worker standpoint, hey, if you are calling us essential, how is it acceptable that the federal minimum wage $7?”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Delivery people, people who provide food delivery, warehouse stuff like that. And they are now being called, of course, essential workers, except that she called them sacrificial workers, this idea that nobody really cares. And in this, and they get paid maybe slightly more money. But for the most part, even with Uber struggling, and we can talk about that, they just announced possible massive layoffs, essentially, because they're driving us down, what, 70%? Most of these businesses in this gig economy have been built off the labor of other people. So talk a little bit about.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is going to have a big bearing on where they end up in the future. Well, when you think about the pandemic, I want to get into each company that you write about specifically. I want to hear your thoughts on what their challenges are facing in the next sections and everything. But I want to focus on coronavirus right now because I think there are two pandemics going on at the same time. There's the pandemic for people who can afford delivery and who are able to stay home and can work from home and still have jobs and can order. And so it's not to say that the coronavirus is a mild inconvenience, but in comparison to a lot of people, it is staying home is not in a comfortable home is irritating, perhaps, but not devastating necessarily. But there are workers, and I think I had a really interesting interview recently with Nicole Hannah Jones, which I thought was a very important one from my perspective, which was she was calling, you know, these are called essential workers. It's not just healthcare workers or police and fire and city workers and things like that.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Change there haven't been any lives directly lost because of what they've done. But the other hand is customers, right? Again, Scott has talked about how we're consumer driven economy. And, you know, it's interesting. Amazon has this leadership principle, customer obsession. And for a very long time, that spent, how can we deliver packages to people in 24 hours or less or, you know, two days at most? What they're a prime subscriber? And for a long time, consumers have let them off the hook saying that this is what customer obsession means completely. And I do think that there might be a broadening of what customers want from Amazon. You know, is it going to be, are we going to live in a world where customers are comfortable, you know, getting that convenience at the cost of people's lives? And to me, the question is out. So I think you're right. I think it's likely going to be a make moment for these companies, but I don't think it's necessarily so. And I think the way they act in this situation.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Doesn't work as well. It doesn't work as quickly. It doesn't work as efficiently. And they were already having issues around workers. Same thing with Google and Facebook. They were already having massive issues around, especially Google's YouTube and Facebook itself were having massive issues around their content moderation and what they were doing and trying to sort of push away responsibility. Now, Facebook's been trying to do this content oversight board. Google's been promising at YouTube to clean things up. And to me, the lowest bar is health information. And so that they're doing better. I don't know what's going to, this was behaviors that were happening before this happened. That's right. But the stakes are higher right now. And I think that the change can come from two different directions. So I know on this podcast and on Pivot, there's been a lot of discussion of how the government can come in. And that's certainly one entry point. I mean, we really have a very weak regulatory body and they haven't done much against these companies. But if people start dying because of them, that might.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, it's a great opportunity for Microsoft. If it can execute, it can gain share against some of the competitors that it struggled to beat. And then, of course, Apple is now going to be a pretty key company in terms of our contact tracing, or I think they're calling it exposure notification, which is something that people are more interested in. I didn't hear that one. So yeah, it's high time for the tech giants, right? Now I don't think they've ever been more important than they are right now, which again is just amazing to think about. Well, what you were talking about, it's make or break. I don't think it's make or break at all. I think it's just make. It seems like that they don't, I mean, Scott Galloway on recent pivot was talking about the idea that Amazon might become the first $2 trillion company. Obviously, I just ordered $60 worth of stuff on Amazon. I couldn't get it at my store. I couldn't easily get it. I've been ordering a lot of Amazon stuff. And I try to get it elsewhere.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Workers while continuing to deliver packages to people, it could be in some serious, like it can make the tech lash actually, I think, look like a walk in the park compared to what would happen to it now if it doesn't protect its workers. So there's great opportunity and great challenges. And I think that exists throughout all the tech giants. Facebook and Google are now key conduits of information to people in a way that they were beforehand, but now that it's even more critical. But they have a greater responsibility to protect us from misinformation. You know, we don't want people taking bad medical advice and going out and killing themselves. And these companies are sort of a last stand for people and protecting them from that type of stuff. Microsoft has an amazing opportunity, right? Satya Nadella has been investing in collaboration and cloud technology since he became the CEO. And so they've grown Azure, of course, and they've grown teams. And now we're all living on the internet. And we're collaborating at home and teams usage is just through the roof.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the times about this idea that tech will now not lose any of their advantage is because the pandemic. So let's talk a little bit about your, look at the landscape right now for big tech and especially in light of some of the news from Uber and some others, but at the same time from Amazon, from Congress who are nervous, Elizabeth Warren, Josh Hawley, and others, give a broader sense of the landscape of where these top tech companies are. Well, During the pandemic, they all stand to become even more powerful, which to me is unbelievable. You know, when I started writing this book, I was like, can these companies actually get more powerful than they are? It turns out the answer is yes. I think it's a make or break moment for a lot of them. I mean, take Amazon, for instance, right? Amazon is now the entryway of retail into a lot of people's homes. But on the other hand, it now has many people's lives, hundreds of thousands of people's lives in its hands. And if it doesn't find a way to protect it.”
2020-05-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alex Kantrowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT