'Richcession' hits Google parent company Alphabet as 12,000 workers are axed globally - joining Microsoft and Amazon on the techhie scrapheap

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11657655/Google-parent-company-Alphabet-lay-12-000-workers-workforce-richcession-continues.html

• Mass layoffs will hit Google's recruiting teams and corporate functions

• Redundancies will affect offices worldwide and will start immediately in the US

• Comes amid mass white collar job cuts after Amazon and Microsoft layoffs

Google's parent company Alphabet is axing 12,000 jobs in the latest savage round of white collar layoffs sweeping across the tech sector.

Sundar Pichai, Alphabet's CEO, said the losses affect teams across the company including recruiting and some corporate functions, as well as some engineering and products teams.

The mass redundancy comes just days after rival Microsoft Corp said it would lay off 10,000 workers, and Amazon started to fire its 18,000 workers as the 'richsession' rips through the world's biggest firms.

The news comes during a period of economic uncertainty as well as technological promise, in which Google and Microsoft have been investing in a fledgling area of software known as generative artificial intelligence.

Pichai said in the note, 'I am confident about the huge opportunity in front of us thanks to the strength of our mission, the value of our products and services, and our early investments in AI.'

The layoffs, which are global and will take effect in the US immediately, are the latest in a series of cost cutting moves which have been mirrored across the tech industry.

The most in-demand workers right now are blue collar employees, while white-collar workers have seen major job losses in the last year.

The phenomenon has been dubbed 'richcession' by those in the field.

On Wednesday morning, thousands of Amazon workers woke up to a brutal email from their employer informing them their role had 'been eliminated' effective immediately.

Around 18,000 staff were let go in the latest round of job cuts first announced by CEO Andy Jassy in November.

(continues to cover other tech company layoffs)

'Who knew cannibalism was so popular?' Dakota Johnson shocks audience as she jokes about Armie Hammer's scandal at Sundance

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11656925/Dakota-Johnson-SHOCKS-Sundance-audience-Armie-Hammer-cannibalism-joke.html

Dakota Johnson made a joke about the Armie Hammer cannibalism scandal as she spoke at a dinner to kick off the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

The 33-year-old actress, speaking at the A Taste of Sundance dinner at The Basin Recreation Fieldhouse, was presenting the Luca Guadagnino Sundance Institute International Icon Award, after working with him on films such as A Bigger Splash and Suspiria.

Johnson - who has gained viral notoriety for an awkward 2019 exchange with Ellen DeGeneres - joked that the acclaimed director had attempted to cast her as the peach in the acclaimed film Call Me by Your Name.

She continued: 'The vision and the style of it is Call Me By Your Name. Sadly, I wasn't in that one. It was unfortunate.

'Luca had asked me to play the role of the peach, but our schedules conflicted - thank God, because then I would have been another woman that Armie Hammer tried to eat!'

The punchline drew mixed reactions from the audience ranging from groans to cheers.

The daughter of Melanie Griffith, 65, and Don Johnson, 73, alluded to Guadagnino's 2022 film Bones and All, in which cannibalism was part of the storyline.

'It's been five years since that film premiered here and Luca hasn't stopped taking us to exciting places - who knew cannibalism was so popular?' she said.

Hammer received the most critical acclaim of his career for the 2017 movie Call Me By Your Name - as he was nominated for a Golden Globe and Film Independent Spirit Award, amid other honors - for his part as Oliver in the film opposite Timothée Chalamet.

The actor, who has also been in movies such as The Social Network, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Lone Ranger, fell into controversy in early 2021 amid multiple accusations of sex abuse and a stated penchant for cannibalism.

He was subsequently dropped from his agency WME and lost a number of roles he had on tap, including the Jennifer Lopez film Shotgun Wedding and the Paramount Plus series The Offer.

Hammer has denied all accusations, and his lawyer has maintained all interactions 'have been completely consensual, discussed and agreed upon in advance, and mutually participatory.'