Daniel Ziffer

Part of the rationale seems to be that artificial intelligence is being deployed within these technology companies, not just the Magnificent Seven, but other companies, including Australia's own Atlassian, and that they're kind of rejigging their workforces to utilize the tools that AI allows for to make their workforces more efficient, but also moving

their workforces into different areas that they think are more profitable or places that they think will help their company more in the future.

But this is a very turbulent time for technology.

Now, we know tech loves to talk about move quickly, fail quickly, move on, but it obviously is huge amounts of dislocation.

Microsoft was, I thought, a particularly fascinating announcement because it's the first time they've offered early retirement to its workforce.

I mean, Microsoft is a

geriatric when it comes to technology companies.

More than 50 years old.

Yeah, exactly.

And the offer was basically, if the years of service plus your age hit 70, then you're able to take early retirement.

It was about 7% of their workforce in the United States was eligible for this.

And again, it was a way, I think, of them trying to reshape their workforce to give themselves some more flexibility, while perhaps not being as cruel as some of the kind of

harsh cuts that we were seeing at other companies.

And a particularly hard thing to justify these quite severe cuts at times when companies' share prices are going up and up and up.

You would think that it's a harder argument to make than when a company's kind of struggling.

But there is, on one hand, huge investment going on

in these companies into artificial intelligence.

But yes, they are cutting in other parts.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, that is it for today's episode of ABC Business Daily.