Data Scientist for Social Good

finding patterns in data that generalize 💻🚀
@carnegiemellon

[jack @jack]

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company.

####

today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone.

first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay.

we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.

i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures.

a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers.

we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold.

to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward.

to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow.

jack

[Ilya Sutskever @ilyasut]

I am starting a new company:

[NEJM AI @NEJM_AI]

Dr. Nigam Shah (@drnigam) is Professor of Medicine @Stanford, and Chief Data Scientist for @StanfordHealth. His research group analyzes multiple types of health data to answer clinical questions, generate insights, and build predictive models for the learning health system.

[Manolis Kellis @manoliskellis]

Excited to speak at #CMU #CS #CompBio at 1pm today (in person and on #zoom).
#AI for #GenomicMedicine: #SingleCell Dissection and Manipulation of #DiseaseCircuitry
1pm at GatesHillman GHC 6115
Zoom link: https://t.co/i3tXek0H0O
Info: https://t.co/yMN1ezZk7e
Hosts: @jmuiuc and #RussellSchwartz
Stop by to say hi!

[Data Scientist for Social Good @growingrocket]

@manoliskellis @jmuiuc @SCSatCMU @CMUCompBio @CarnegieMellon @mldcmu @NeuroatPitt @CMU_ECE @SEI_CMU_AI @apfenning @MIT_CSAIL Awesome! Would there be recordings?

[Manolis Kellis @manoliskellis]

Really excited to speak and participate in the @MIT_ILP panel on #AI-driven #DrugDiscovery with @MarinkaZitnik and @PenteluteLab.
Please join us tomorrow at 11am-1pm
Info: https://t.co/TQgiQYzzf1
Register: https://t.co/sEmOOexKc3
Brad news: https://t.co/Q7NfRJviUq
Marinka news: https://t.co/eOu7ecqkHw
Manolis news: https://t.co/oLDuBBb45S
@MIT @HarvardMed #Therapeutics #Alzheimers #Cancer #Cardiac #Chemistry #Genomics
https://t.co/KJDutSdgbD

[MIT Mathematics @MITMath]

Prof. Gil Strang's last lecture is ... Monday! Watch it via live stream: https://t.co/crToqS9gKq

[Greg Brockman @gdb]

Interesting results on productivity increases from working with a conversational AI assistant tool. Study by @erikbryn @Danielle__Li @LindseyRRaymond: https://t.co/d2LewgRK4j

[Fei-Fei Li @drfeifei]

Our annual #AIIndex2023 just got released! Check it out! 👇😍 @StanfordHAI

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

The theme of our era is uncashed checks suddenly popping up. Absurd pretensions, wistful fantasies, and pretty/ugly lies called by reality.

[PyTorch @PyTorch]

Today, Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of the #PyTorchFoundation under the @LinuxFoundation & a board of @Meta @AMD @awscloud @googlecloud @Azure & @NVIDIAAI.

With these leaders, learn how we're giving the AI community tools to accelerate innovation. https://t.co/UcKrXaQlxZ

[CyLab @CyLab]

Carnegie Mellon’s hacking team, @PlaidCTF, joined forces with @UBC’s @maplebaconctf and researchers from @theori_io to win this year’s @defcon Capture the Flag competition, an event widely regarded as the “Olympics of hacking.”
https://t.co/uKRzh35gOL

[ISS Above @ISSAboveYou]

Well hello there people of @Pittsburgh PA. This is you at 10:35am this morning captured live from the @Space_Station.
@NWSPittsburgh
@WTAE @KDKA @WPXI @fox53wpgh
Aug 12, 2022

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

I’ve done a lot of interviews over the years, but I can’t remember one as enthralling as this one with ⁦@demishassabis⁩ on #AI, #alphafold, foundation models and the future of biomedicine ⁦@DeepMind⁩ w/transcript https://t.co/vqUEkGqvzy

[BigScience Research Workshop @BigscienceW]

BLOOM is here. The largest open-access multilingual language model ever. Read more about it or get it at
https://t.co/mE013I62In
https://t.co/KrBRVklXLf

[MIT Technology Review @techreview]

A group of over 1,000 AI researchers has created a multilingual large language model bigger than GPT-3—and they’re giving it out for free. https://t.co/DoMULkPNvG

[Carnegie Mellon University @CarnegieMellon]

On Dec. 28, 1934, Albert Einstein explained his theory to a packed theater on our campus.

That visit produced the only known photograph of the famous physicist in front of a blackboard with a variant of his famous equation.

[San Francisco Chronicle @sfchronicle]

One woman's severe depression disappeared.

Here's how UCSF scientists ended it:
https://t.co/U9cCZ0GVR6

[Mike Schroepfer @schrep]

*Sincere* apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook powered services right now. We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible

[Secretary Antony Blinken @SecBlinken]

Great meeting with Pittsburgh Mayor @billpeduto, #TTC hosts @AlleghenyConf, and the wonderful people of Pittsburgh. This city and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are transforming into an exciting hub of high-tech innovation.