workers

“Workers should be paid as much as possible”

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Jensen Huang, in addition to being one of the Most charismatic CEOs of the AI ​​industry, always sheathed in his black leather jacketit is also a great strategist in terms of human resources, applying that phrase attributed to Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin: “Take care of your employees and they will take care of your business.” According to collected Bloombergduring his recent visit to the Computex fair in Taipei, Huang assured that “workers should be paid as much as possible. I pay my employees as much as I can.” The NVIDIA CEO’s statement comes in a context in which large semiconductor manufacturers, even those that make NVIDIA chips, are under enormous union pressure to distribute the benefits that the AI ​​boom is bringing them. Samsung and the threat of unemployment that changed everything. The spark that ignited the debate was ignited in Samsung’s memory division in South Korea. More than 40,000 workers gathered in front of its Pyeongtaek factory and threatened to stop Samsung’s memory production if the company did not improve their salaries and added a bonus linked to the division’s profits. Samsung manufactures part of the HBM memory that powers AI servers around the world, so a stoppage in production would put the already critical situation of the memory market in serious trouble. The agreement arrived at the last minute and the company will distribute a bonus worth an average of 513 million won (about $340,000) among the 78,000 employees of its chip division. The pressure came from the competition. Although union conflicts They are not something new for Samsungit is no coincidence that the manufacturer has just now given in to the workers’ demands. Its direct rival in the manufacturing of memory semiconductors, SK Hynix, has been setting the salary pace in the sector for some time. Last September, SK Hynix agreed with its employees to allocate 10% of annual operating profit to bonus for employees. With a record profit of 47.2 trillion won in 2025, the result was an average bonus of 2,964% of the monthly base salary. For an employee with a salary of 100 million won a year, that means collecting a bonus of more than 148 million extra won at a time. The reaction was immediate, more than 200 Samsung engineers left to SK Hynix within four months. Turning the making of memories into a fight to retain your best talent. TSMC is also moving. The battle for talent on memory chip production lines did not stop in Korea. The contagion reached Taiwan, where TSMC, which manufactures practically all the advanced chips on the planethas not stayed still either. As and how I collected Bloombergas soon as rumors began to circulate in internal forums about the possible reduction of bonuses, the CEO of TSMC called a meeting in which he announced that his profit bonuses were going to increase by more than 30% this year. The semiconductor industry is at a time of such high demand for AI chips that companies that depend on scarce skilled talent cannot afford to lose them. TSMC already assigned about 103 billion Taiwan dollars to its incentive program in 2025, 46.6% more than the previous year. This year he has no choice but to dig deep into his pocket again to pay his employees’ bonuses. if you want to keep them. NVIDIA employees are already millionaires. Of course, if there is anyone in the AI ​​industry who can make such statements about employee compensation, it is Huang. Nvidia has been doing what its CEO preaches for years. After the collapse of 80% of NVIDIA shares in 2008, Huang launched a stock purchase plan for employees with a 15% discount. Who participated when the stock was low and held it, now he is simply a millionaire. Nearly 50% of NVIDIA employees today have a higher net worth at 25 million dollars. “I review the compensation of all employees to this day. I review the 42,000 and 100% of the time I increase the expense,” Huang said. in a All-In Podcast. “If you take care of people, the rest takes care of itself.” In Xataka | NVIDIA was founded by three engineers, but only Jensen Huang remains CEO: “I wish I had kept some shares” Image | NVIDIA

open 24/7 with 180 workers

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While Europe seeks technological sovereigntyindependence from foreign technology and How to accommodate your data centers in a system in which the electrical grid is saturatedAmerican Big Tech is establishing itself on the ground. Amazon is one of the most aggressive with its expansion of data centers and Spain, which has been showing its energetic plumageha conquered these companies with one name standing out above the others: Aragón. In short. The community has become one of Europe’s renewable batteries. For years, its energy power has allowed gigawatts to be diverted towards Catalan and Basque industrial centers, but things are changing and, now, they need the energy for themselves. For the data centers that are arriving, rather. Because both Aragón and Amazon have been making promises for months about how these data centers will impact the region and, finally, we can see how many jobs six of the data centers located in Villanueva de Gállego will generate. The round number? 180 direct workers who demonstrate that from words to actions… there is a distance. The promised numbers. Amazon, through AWS, is going to fill Aragon with data centers. In the PIGA (the General Interest Plan of Aragon) it is already details that the idea is for AWS to build 30 data centers and a dozen electrical substations in the region. Villanueva de Gállego and Huesca will take part of the pie, but others are already being developed in Walqa, San Mateo de Gállego and La Puebla de Híjar. During this year’s MWC, Amazon advertisement that they were going to go from less than 20,000 million euros in investment to around 33,700 million to expand their data center infrastructure in Aragon between 2026 and 2035. The plans are ambitious and they themselves estimated that their actions would contribute 31,700 million euros to the GDP of Spain and 18,500 million to the GDP of Aragon. Regarding employment, Amazon itself spoke of 29,900 full-time employees in total, 13,400 in Aragon alone. There was a nuance: these calculations included those of local companies, direct, indirect and induced. Exaggerating, telling the baker who made bread for the sandwiches of the workers who build the infrastructure. Villanueva de Gállego. Although the figure is striking, from the beginning has been reported that they are not going to be new long-term jobs, but rather very dependent on that first phase of expansion and that the reality would be very different. How far? Well, if we look at what was published in The Aragon Newspapersix of those 30 data centers will generate 180 jobs when operational. This is the figure that Amazon itself has provided and that has been published in the Official Gazette of Aragon. In the BOA they refer to the report of the Aragonese Institute of Environmental Management, which is necessary for the American giant to begin the works and, in fact, it is detailed that they have four years to put these data centers into operation before the environmental impact report has to be reviewed. 180 employees across six data centers with three shifts a day to operate 24/365 It doesn’t close here. And, as we say, when they come into operation there will be 180 people between the six buildings. They will be distributed in three shifts and will operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A data center cannot stop and continuous monitoring is needed. Is 180 employees across six data centers a lot? The truth is that the figure does not seem too large because even the largest data centers on the planet do not have that many workers. xAI’s Colossus is one of the largest in the world and there is details even how many plugs there are in the bathrooms, but not a round number of direct jobs. HE speaks of close to 3,000 jobs in the region, but we are in the same situation: it is in Memphis counting direct and indirect jobs, not a round number of direct jobs in Colossus. Bedrock. If you are wondering why so much computing power from Amazon in Aragon, the answer is Bedrock. The intention of the company is that these data centers are the basis of your service which gives access to models from both Amazon and third parties (Anthropic or Mistral, for example) through a unified API. You can call multiple models from the same interface and Amazon takes care of everything else. The idea is that, being in Spain and closer to end customers, those who need to work with very low latency can do so more easily. The energy problem. Aside from jobs, there is the underlying issue of energy. Because Aragón is a ‘green battery’, but renewables are not the best source of energy for data centers. During peak computing phases, data centers need a lot of energy immediately, something that is driving the use of private nuclear, gas and even coal. It is estimated that the expansion of AWS plans will add more than 10,800 GWh per year, more than all current electricity consumption of the community, but the technology company has a backup plan planned to power its facilities. On its water reservoirs, AWS will build a photovoltaic plant with a power of 9,500 kW that will incorporate a system of double batteries and backup generators in case there are problems with the grid supply. leaving environmental criticism aside And returning to the question of jobs, the estimate is that permanent and direct jobs will be around 1,800 during the period of activity of these data centers, which gives us an average of 60 per installation. At the moment, we already see that six of them are far from that average and allow us to get an idea of ​​how “the technological project largest in southern Europe“impacts the job numbers. In Xataka | The great paradox of Madrid: the region with the largest energy deficit in Spain is losing the data centers

Ibiza has evicted 200 people who lived in campers and caravans. Their big problem is that they are key workers for the island

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If you enter Idealista and you are looking for a home For rent in Ibiza the cheapest option right now, a 32 m2 studio in Sant Joan de Labritja with the kitchen almost at the foot of the bed, is 799 euros. And that, the ad warns, is only the price of “the winter season.” Looking ahead to spring and summer, things change. The next option, a 35 m2 studio, already costs 1,000 euros. From there up. Especially if you are looking for near Eivissa. With similar prices to many workers who keep the island’s hospitality and construction industry afloat they have no other choice than staying in cabins, shanties, vans or (hopefully) caravans. The problem is that they are often installed in unauthorized settlements that end up dismantled by court order. What has happened? That Ibiza has just expanded its (increasingly large) list of evicted settlements. He April 21 About twenty police officers went to the Sa Joveria site, near the Ibiza fairgrounds, to clear what was probably the largest settlement of substandard housing on the entire island. When the agents arrived there were barely any tenants left (the date of the operation was announced days before), but it is estimated that in Sa Joveria they have come to live (badly) more than 130 people who spent their daily lives in caravans, shacks, tents or vans camperized. Just a few days later, the April 29another judicial delegation moved to Can Misses to dismantle another settlement made up of caravans, tents and shacks. The photo was similar: when the agents arrived at the lot there were hardly any people left, but not so long ago more than fifty people lived there (it is estimated that between 70 and 80), part of them bounced from a previous eviction in Can Rova. The eviction left no incidentsbut it is a new reminder of the housing challenge that Ibiza faces. Are these the first evictions? Not at all. a few days ago Ibiza Diary took stock and counted at least half a dozen similar operations since 2024, including the last two in Sa Joveria and Can Misses. The list starts with what was probably the most dramatic episode of all: the eviction of Can Rova in the summer of 2024, when agents from the Santa Eulària police and the Civil Guard dismantled a settlement in which they lived hundreds of peopleincluding children. The episode ended with detained. In March 2025, a similar (more peaceful) operation was carried out in Can Raspalls and in July of that same year the scene was repeated in the es Gorg and Can Rova industrial estate (again). Now the authorities have returned to act in Sa Joveria and Can Misses, among other reasons due to the fire and pest risk what the settlement entailed. “Ibiza city has a major housing problem, but the administration cannot tolerate this becoming a habit of life,” argues the mayor, Rafael Triguero. Why is it a problem? Ibiza is not the only territory in Spain (or Europe) that deals with illegal shanty settlements. The problem is that there is a peculiarity on the island that is explained by its residential market: a good part of those who are forced to survive aboard motorhomes or vans parked in lots like Can Misses or Sa Joveria are not people at risk of ‘social exclusion’, without jobs or fixed income. It comes with reading the local press and the interviews with evicted people to understand that construction, hospitality and tourism workers also live in the towns. People with stable jobs and payrolls that exceed 1,000 euros per month. The problem is simply that their salaries are not enough to find housing. Or what they find (rooms in shared apartments in exchange for exorbitant rents) is less attractive than the prospect of living alone in caravans or vans. Are there testimonies? Yes. Recently The Country chatted for example with Ahmed, a 35-year-old immigrant from Western Sahara who works in a five-star hotel on the island. At least until a few weeks ago, before the eviction of Sa Joveria, at the end of his shift he returned to the cabin built with wood and cardboard that served as his home. The newspaper claims that 80% Of those who lived on the plot were Sahrawis who worked as seasonal workers in the construction and tourism sectors. Another similar case was that of Mohamed, 38 years old, installed in a tent. Also interesting is the experience of Yamile Elisabeth, a Venezuelan who has resided in Spain since 2019. Until her eviction, explains to elDiariolived in a van in Can Misses for which he paid 550 euros a month. “When you look for a rental, they easily ask for 1,000 euros and three or four months’ deposit to share a small space with five other people,” the woman clarifieswho claims that he works several hours a day cleaning a bank branch, although in reality he has training as a physiotherapist and last summer he earned 1,600 euros by working six days. Is housing that expensive? Not only is housing becoming more expensive in Ibiza, but there are a number of factors that have put special strain on its market. The first is its status as an island, with limited space. The second, its enormous demand for tourist accommodation, which even leads some homeowners to abandon them in summer (they temporarily move into caravans) to rent to visitors. The result is prohibitive income for many workers, including civil servants. Three years ago, in fact, the case of a firefighter at Ibiza airport who was forced to settle in a caravan was reported. “The only solution to save some money”, recognized the man, of Andalusian origin, in an interview with laSexta. Is there more? Yes. The problem, as remember our colleagues Motorpassionthe thing is that living in a caravan on the island is not that simple either… or economical. Laws like the 5/2024 vehicle control or that of the Rustic Land of … Read more

There were four workers in a van and they ended up crashed

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The new Madrid Formula 1 circuit He has already had his first accident, and he has not even raced a single-seater on its asphalt yet. A van with four occupants he sneaked into the construction siteand at high speed ended up going off the track. Although they had a good scare, it seems that there have been no serious injuries. What happened. A person who was walking through the Valdebebas area, next to the IFEMA exhibition center where the MadRing is being built, heard a loud noise coming from inside the circuit. When he looked out he saw a van driving along the already paved part of the route at a very fast speed, especially for a construction site. He took out his cell phone, recorded, and He sent the video to the ‘MadriZonaNorte’ account in X. In the images you can see how the vehicle ends up overshooting a curve and crashing, triggering the airbag. The four occupants, according to El Motor, were workers working on the construction of the circuit, and they all left on their own. rolling. The MadRing is still far from finished. The asphalting process should be completed by May 31and that includes three layers: base, intermediate and tread. Right now there is only a first layer on a good part of the route. Filming at high speed inside such an enclosure, with the work underway, has been irresponsible that, in this case, ended without serious consequences due to pure luck. A project against the clock. To understand the magnitude of the nonsense, it is worth taking into account the pace at which the work progresses. The Director of Operations of IFEMA Madrid, Carlos Jiménez, counted to Motorsport media that the works are even going a week and a half or two weeks ahead of what was planned for the track. The construction companies ACCIONA and Eiffage Construction are working non-stop to meet a deadline that does not allow for delays, since after the delivery of the circuit, the FIA ​​homologations will come, with two official visits planned during the works, and all of this must be ready before September arrives. Taking into account that the bun oven is not there, any carelessness within the premises is an unnecessary risk that could further complicate a work that has already caused quite a few headaches. What’s to come. When completed, the MadRing will have 22 curves and 5.4 km in length, the estimated lap time is 1 minute and 32 seconds, and on the 589-meter finish line, drivers will be able to reach up to 340 km/h. The jewel in the crown is La Monumentala 550 meter long curve with an extreme bank of 24%, the highest on the calendar, in which the drivers will have to face an inclination of up to 10 meters high for six seconds. A particularity that does not exist in any other circuit in the world in the competition. The when. The Madrid Grand Prix is ​​scheduled for the weekend of September 11-13 this year. More than 80,000 tickets have already been soldwhich is equivalent to 72% of the total capacity. A few weeks ago, A Red Bull car traveled the tracks of the Madrid Metro as part of an advertising campaign for the event. Now the route has made headlines again, although for very different reasons. a test. Before the debut in F1, IFEMA is working on organizing an internal race, probably without an audience and in a lower category, to verify the state of the circuit. The real cars will arrive in September, so the fewer vans there are testing the Stranjis layout, the better. Cover image | MadriZonaNorte, MadRing In Xataka | It turns out that the “good, pretty and cheap” electric car does exist and is manufactured in China. So Citroën has stepped up

I spent 8 hours a day watching porn to train the AI. Today he leads the workers union that fights against that

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Spend a workday tagging porn there’s nothing fun about it. Content moderators They have been denouncing terrible working conditions for years and now The same thing is happening with data labeling to train AI. In 404media They tell the story of Michael Geoffrey, a Kenyan who spent months working for two AI companies, until they completely destroyed his mental health. The jobs. Michael stayed in front of his computer for eight hours watching porn, describing what was happening in the images in great detail. It was no affiliation, but rather he worked for a data labeling company that then used all those descriptions to train AI models. When the day was over, his second job awaited him at a sexual AI chatbot company. In this job, Michael had to maintain sexual conversations with users, adopting whatever role was necessary each time; I had to pretend to be a man, a woman, straight, homosexual… and of course adapt to the context in each conversation. Behind the AI. Although they have the last name IA, in reality These sexbots have a lot of human work behind them. That is, when someone talks to their girlfriend or boyfriend AIyou may be talking to a real person. Michael wrote his testimony and said that he had to fake intimate connections with anonymous users. Their interactions were then used to train the AI. In the case of data labeling, workers are exposed to all types of content, some extremely violent. For example, for AI to be able to detect content of sexual abuse and violence, these workers must see thousands of images of abuse and extreme violence, and all for ridiculous salaries. In a Time reportthey said that one of these companies paid between 1.3 and 2 dollars net per hour. The consequences. After several months on the job, Michael suffered from insomnia, stress and began to have problems having sexual relations. He tells 404media that “there came a point where my body no longer responded. When I saw someone naked, I didn’t even feel anything.” Endless hours, exposure to very unpleasant content and very low salaries. Some claim that it is like a form of modern slavery. The companies behind. One of them is Sama, a San Francisco-based company that defines itself as “the perfect example of ethical AI.” It’s the company that paid 2 dollars an hour. Another company that has also been at the center of the controversy is Remotasks, a Scale AI subsidiaryone of the largest labeling companies. It was founded by Alexandr Wang, current head of AI at Meta. By Remotasks it is said that he pays late and often not the amount that was originally promised. These and other similar companies They are outsourced by OpenAIGoogle, Meta and more to train your AI models. The workers organize. Currently, Michael is the secretary of the Data Labelers Association of Kenyaan organization that wants to give voice and make visible the work of these underpaid and invisible workers. Other organizations have also been created such as African Content Moderators and Tech Workers who demand better working conditions and resources to care for the mental health of workers. In Xataka | People Blaming ChatGPT for Causing Delusions and Suicides: What’s Really Happening with AI and Mental Health Image | Data Labelers Association

The ERE of 750 workers confirms the profitability crisis of delivery in Spain

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Glovo has opened the consultation period for an Employment Regulation File that will affect a maximum of 750 delivery workers in more than 60 locations throughout Spain: The official reason is that the distribution model with employees is not profitable in a large part of the territory. However, unions like CCOO had months denouncing that the company was already carrying out a “covert ERE” through a continuous trickle of disciplinary dismissals under questionable justifications. Why is it important. This decision comes just eight months after Glovo will complete its adaptation to the Rider Lawregularizing the delivery drivers who until then worked as self-employed. This adjustment shows the platform’s difficulties in sustaining a profitable logistics model once forced to abandon the self-employed scheme and assume the labor costs of the Workers’ Statute. The background. Glovo was the last major platform to comply with the Rider Law, which was approved in 2021, but its effective application was in fits and starts, between fines and institutional pressure. In July 2025, The company regularized its delivery drivers (more than 13,000 throughout Spain) in the face of the imminent threat of criminal proceedings, which opened the door to prison sentences for its leadership for widespread fraud. What Glovo had to give up then is cutting now. Between the lines. The company does not directly blame the Rider Law. It points out that its direct logistics management model, the so-called Gen2, “has proven to be inefficient” in small and medium-sized municipalities, and that it is necessary to move to the Gen1 model, in which Glovo does not assume the delivery operation. Translated: where the volume of orders is not sufficient to cover the costs of having permanent employees, the platform transitions to a model of marketplace (Gen1). That is, Glovo continues to operate the application and collect commissions, but the logistics of delivery are now assumed by the restaurants themselves or subcontracted companies. In figures: 750 delivery workers affected by the ERE. More than 60 locations where service will be reduced or eliminated. And more than 800 cities where Glovo operations continue normally. The big question. Now the underlying debate is not whether Glovo complies with the law or not (now, without a doubt, it complies with it), but whether the delivery whose model he proposes can be sustainable with a workforce of employees in markets where orders do not have the volume that exists in large cities. In addition, COVID triggered home delivery consumption to levels that have since normalized, and platforms have been searching for years for the balance point that allows them to make money without resorting to questionable working conditions. In many corners of Spain, that point has not yet appeared. Yes, but. Yolanda Díaz has responded to the announcement by rejecting any “blackmail” and promising that the Labor Inspection will ensure compliance with the law. You are right that the law must be followed. But the ERE that Glovo has announced does not breach it: reducing activity where there is no business is a legitimate decision. The underlying problem lies in the structural change of the sector: the delivery was born and based its profitability on a model of self-employed workers, a formula that Glovo defended to the end, arguing for the flexibility of the service. Now, the real challenge is to demonstrate whether the business remains economically viable when platforms must assume the structural costs of a salaried workforce, as required by current legislation. Featured image | Nursultan Abakirov In Xataka | The death of cooking at home: inviting to “dinner” is increasingly becoming inviting to order by Glovo

Spain has broken employment records. It has also broken a record of workers who need two payrolls

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The Spanish labor market closed 2025 with a record that no one would want to celebrate: never before have so many people needed to juggle two jobs at the same time. While the data highlighted in bold reveals record in memberships and a unemployment downthere is a figure that tells another equally revealing story about how the reality of employment in Spain is changing. Low salaries and the imposition of part-time work hours are the main triggers for the need to have several jobs to make ends meet. The data collected by a study of Randstad reveals that the number of employed people with more than one job In Spain they have already exceeded 630,000, which is a historic figure. The highest number ever recorded. At the end of 2025, a total of 632,800 employed people in Spain had a secondary job (or several), which is 50,000 more people than last year. In it last data Collected by the INE in 2022, the number of multi-employed people stood at 520,500 people. That of 2025 is the highest figure and represents an increase of 8.6% in just twelve months. The phenomenon continues to be a minority in relative terms since it affects around 2.8% of the total number of employed people, but its growth reveals that something is happening in the labor market. However, this growth is also included in the logic of growth of the labor market: there are more employees with jobs, so the probability that these employees have more than one job also increases. Precariousness is one of the keys. One of the keys to understanding this increase is not so much to look at the number of people with more than one job, but rather at the number of people with part-time work. According to EPA data From the last quarter of 2024, full-time employment decreased by 115,600 people, while part-time employment increased by 191,800. This information is relevant because a worker who wants to work full-time will look for a way to combine two (or more) part-time jobs to complete (or exceed) the time and salary that he or she would obtain with a full-time job. More women, but just barely. Although the difference is small, women slightly outnumber men in moonlighting. According to INE data corresponding to the end of 2025, a total of 317,200 women had more than one job, which is equivalent to 3% of the total number of employed women, compared to 315,400 men, which represented 2.6% of the total number of men. Once again, we find ourselves in a scenario in which, due to the need to reconcile childcare and precariousness, women are more likely to occupy positions with part-time hours. According to official dataIn 2025, part-time contracts for women increased by 62,311. A few hours in hospitality. The sector where the majority of those who chain two jobs are concentrated is the services sector, which brings together 87.5% of all multi-employed workers in the country. As and how I collected Investedof the more than 632,000 workers with double occupation, some 553,300 carried out their activity in this hospitality sector and services. The industrial and productive sectors reduce the presence of multi-employment workers due to the high demand for full-time labor that is registered in them. Thus, Industry recognizes 40,700 employees with more than one job, Construction 21,600 multiple employees and Agriculture 17,000. ​What’s coming in 2026. Randstad Research’s forecasts for this year indicate that Spain will reach an annual average employed population of 22.64 million people, which would represent a growth of 1.9% compared to 2025. The unemployment rate, according to these estimates, will continue to decline and will reach an annual average of 9.8%. However, 2026 presents a complicated economic scenario in which inflation can reduce purchasing power of families, which will predictably contribute to multiple employment in Spain continuing to rise, setting new records. In Xataka | A 22-year-old engineer combined two full-time jobs. His secret: do the minimum so that they don’t give him more work Image | Unsplash (Valentine)

Companies are not just letting go of their youngest workers. They are making them CEO

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The business fabric in the US is experiencing one of its most turbulent periods. Not only because of the coming to power of Donald Trump and his upstart tariff policiesbut because of the challenge in management and governance models that poses to AI. OK to what was published by The Wall Street Journalthe US is experiencing a generational change at the head of the main listed companies. In 2025 alone, one in nine CEOs at the 1,500 largest companies in the S&P 1500 will be replaced, the highest rate since records began in 2010. The demands of AI they are retiring the CEOs more experienced. Relay record at the top. According to data revealed by a study from the consulting firm Spencer Stuart, 168 people debuted as CEO in large listed companies. In more than 80% of these appointments, the new managers lacked previous experience leading companies of that category, although 60% of those appointments were promotions. Furthermore, two-thirds of these incorporations had also not served on boards of directors before. That is to say, its greatest value It was not his experience, but his youth. The trend continues strongly during the first two months of 2026. Top-tier companies such as Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Lululemon, Disney, PayPal and HP have made changes in his highest executive position. This pace marks a great experiment in leadership by large companies in the face of unstable markets, where the pressure to obtain immediate results accelerates the departures of veterans. Younger and younger leaders. The average age of new CEOs dropped to 54 years in 2025, which is almost two years less than the record in 2024, thus confirming that this is a trend that has been occurring for some years. Although only 3% of managers in large companies are under 40 years old, 64% are between 50 and 59 years old, and only 12% are over 60 years old. Some examples are found in recent replacements like disneyin which Josh D’Amaro, 55, took the replacement of Bob Iger 75 years old. This replacement reflects a commitment to fresh talent, but with a deep knowledge of the companies they are going to lead, but without experience in decision-making. The life cycle of a CEO. Spencer Stuart analysts found that CEOs of large companies have “a useful lifespan” at the helm. During the first year in office, the new CEO begins the “honeymoon effect” and his companies outperform the S&P 500 by 10% on average. However, in the second year of office, 73% experience a drop in returns of an average of 21%. Between the third and fifth years at the helm, a reinvention of leadership occurs, which precedes a stagnation between the sixth and ninth years. Beginning in the tenth year, stable leadership is established. The majority cannot taste that stability since, after the third year, 25% have already left the position. 50% do not reach the sixth year as CEO. The average duration of active CEOs is 7.1 years, and 86% of departures are voluntary and agreed upon with the board of directors. Only 9% of CEO changes in the S&P 500 group of companies have been forced removals. It should be noted that only 16% of new appointments to senior management positions they have been womenwhich represents a bittersweet historical record. In Xataka | The average salary of Ibex 35 managers has grown by 172% in two decades: the purchasing power of its employees, not so much Image | Unsplash (Bruce Mars)

Companies are replacing junior workers with AI. Now it’s time to pay the consequences

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When artificial intelligence appeared on the horizon, the first thing we thought was that it was going to retire us. Later, he was going to retire the most senior profiles and now we know that it is just the opposite: is stopping job access to junior profiles. In the past, companies competed fiercely to attract young talent, but now Gen Z has found its great rival in AI. Beginners? No, thanks. This Revelio Labs job report reveals that entry-level hiring has fallen by 35% in the United States since 2023. And it is one of many studies: this other of job offers estimates the drop in junior offers between 11 and 20% in the last year. The phenomenon is not exclusive to the United States: in Spain these data from El Confidencial They report that the Big Four are going to reduce the hiring of people under 30 years of age by between 10 and 20%. In the UK, more of the same. AI boosts productivity… if you’re the boss. The business premise is that artificial intelligence can carry out these tasks of those people with a junior profile such as documentation, testing or writing basic code. It is not that these tasks have disappeared within the workflow, it is that they have been absorbed by higher levels in a twist of efficiency and productivity: senior profiles supervise what the AI ​​does. And if, AI screws up. To the question of how many hours of work per week does AI save you? from the consulting company Section collection in The Wall Street Journal There is a clear divergence between managers and staff: 40% of workers think that they are not saving anything because even if there is a quick response, there are errors and hallucinations. When you take into account the time spent going through everything, checking and redoing, the beads are not so round anymore: this Asana studio shows that employees spend 4.5 hours per week correcting AI work. The boomerang effect. That youth encounter yet another obstacle to having a full adult life is a real drama in terms of unemployment, but this paradigm shift in hiring is also a total threat to the stability of the technological infrastructure as we know it: The illusion of efficiency. AI chops code faster than anyone else, but that raw data is misleading because it doesn’t consider side effects like validation. Operational risk. If the AI ​​does not have human supervision at each step, it can make critical errors, serve as an example when half the internet went down for the total automation of Amazon servers. Of costs and responsibilities. If the AI ​​makes a mistake and it reaches the final chain of the process, that is, delivery to the customer, it is paid. Let them tell Deloitte, they had to reimburse the cost of a report prepared for the Australian Department of Employment and Industrial Relations because it contained hallucinations. A demographic bomb. All of the above is a toll that many companies seem willing to pay for the sake of that efficiency, but there is a devastating effect on a large scale in the medium and long term: the knowledge gap. When these senior profiles retire, there will be no one who can replace them simply because you have eliminated the training ground that is experience. The figures have spoken: between 2024 and 2032, 18.4 million professionals in the United States will retire according to this study from Georgetown University. However, only 13.8 million new workers will gain access. About to explode. Part of the work of senior profiles includes mentoring and all its intrinsic benefits: there are studies that confirm that increases motivation, promotes psychological well-being and even reduces exhaustion. In short: saturation of tasks, inability to delegate and the loss of that added bonus of teaching: there are many ingredients for the recipe for burnout. In Xataka | If AI is going to leave us without jobs, in the United Kingdom they are already seriously discussing the solution: a universal basic income In Xataka | We believed that the AI ​​talent war is about engineers and developers. Actually, it’s about plumbers and electricians.

is that in two years it has fired 30% of its workers

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On Friday, January 30, the shares of the main video game companies They collapsed on Wall Street hours after Google will launch Project Genie. The story was simple: investors believed that artificial intelligence would replace traditional developers. However, that same day a data was published that went practically unnoticed among the stock market noise: a third of American workers in the sector (33%) have been laid off in the last two years. Genie appeared to be a threat, but the video game industry has been bleeding silently for two years, and artificial intelligence is not the cause of that hemorrhage, but rather the instrument that some executives see as the perfect scapegoat. The data. The magnitude of the layoffs exceeds any recent precedent. Between 2022 and July 2025, approximately 45,000 jobs were lost. The aforementioned GDC report estimates that the percentage of workers who lost their jobs in the last two years is 28% globally and 33% in the United States. Half of the professionals consulted declared that their company had made cuts in the last year. The impact was especially devastating at AAA studios: two-thirds of developers working on big-budget productions confirmed layoffs at their companies, compared to just one-third in the independent sector. Specific cases. Some examples illustrate the magnitude of the crisis. Microsoft eliminated more than 9,000 jobs despite boasting a “record year” in revenue and operating profits. Embracer Group reduced its workforce from 15,701 to 7,873 employees, a net loss of 8,000 workers that represented half of its workforce. Unity Technologies carried out six rounds of layoffs between June 2022 and February 2025. Sony closed Firewalk Studios and Neon Koi, eliminating 210 positions after the failure of ‘Concord’. And 2026 has not started better: Ubisoft announced in January the closure of its studios in Halifax and Stockholm, as well as restructurings in Abu Dhabi, RedLynx and Massive Entertainment. When the crisis started. The origin dates back to the confinements of 2020. The world’s population confined to their homes sought entertainment in video games, generating growth figures that the industry interpreted as the beginning of a new era. Steam reached 23 million concurrent users in March 2020, surpassing all previous records. Microsoft reported that Xbox Game Pass had surpassed 10 million subscribers. Console and software sales skyrocketed. The irresponsible expansion. Companies responded with aggressive workforce expansions. Electronic Arts increased its workforce by 12%, going from 9,800 to 11,000 employees between 2020 and 2021. Ubisoft added 2,000 new developers in the same period. But when health restrictions ended, revenue didn’t just stop growing: analyst Matthew Ball documents that video games became one of the few entertainment sectors whose consumption contracted (because, for example, streaming of movies and audio has not stopped growing). Ball notes that major consulting firms and investors had overestimated projected revenue for 2025 by 25% to 30%. The market is ossified. Warnings to the entire entertainment industry about the risk of over-reliance on recycled products were especially pertinent in the video game. Development costs skyrocketed as studios focused resources on sequels and remasters rather than taking risks with new intellectual properties. Furthermore, the omnipotent mobile market, traditionally considered resistant to recessions, was showing signs of ossification: according to Ball, the three main titles in each genre concentrate approximately 40% of the segment’s revenue, and 82% of the turnover corresponds to games that are more than two years old. Ubisoft and AI as an excuse. On January 21, 2026, Ubisoft announced what it called an “organizational, operational and portfolio reset.” The company’s shares They plummeted 33%. The restructuring involved the cancellation of six projects in development. But while carrying out mass layoffs and closing studios, Ubisoft announced “accelerated investments” in player-oriented generative artificial intelligence, not limited to internal tools but integrated directly into games. self-fulfilling prophecy. What Genie offers is an alibi. When a CEO contemplates “accelerated investments in player-oriented generative AI” while closing studios and canceling projects, the technology functions as a justification for financial decisions already made. The GDC survey reveals that 74% of video game development students are concerned about their future job prospects: the industry eliminates positions while its leaders invest in systems to automate work. Header | Vitaly Gariev / Shuichi Aizawa In Xataka | The Spanish video game industry has broken its turnover record. The problem is that they keep laying off workers.

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