DOUBAO

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DOUBAO

DOUBAO

@DOUBAO436

曾经是结构工程师/现在是金融民工/设计师的丈夫/可爱女儿的父亲/服务半导体和科技行业/英高英本英硕申请/中文/英语/日语/Cantab/OA

London, England Katılım Ağustos 2011
552 Takip Edilen63 Takipçiler
Bear Liu
Bear Liu@bearliu·
苹果这种体量的公司,感觉资源可以做地球上任何事。 结果: 1. 游戏搞半天不成 2. Siri 是个大白痴 AI 一塌糊涂,真是奇怪了。
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Shehbaz Sharif
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz·
我们正在推进“伊斯兰堡会谈”,在此我谨向兄弟国家——中华人民共和国、沙特阿拉伯、土耳其、埃及以及卡塔尔致以最深切、最诚挚的感谢,感谢各方为促成停火、为和平外交努力争取机会、为推动冲突实现全面及最终解决所提供的宝贵的全力支持。 我还要特别感谢海湾合作委员会各兄弟国家,他们持续的支持以及对地区和平与稳定的坚定承诺,对我们的努力推动至关重要。 各兄弟国家以及美国的领导层展现出卓越的战略远见、睿智与耐心,为和平创造了机会。 我也感谢全球各合作伙伴和友好国家,对巴基斯坦为推动世界和平所作出的真诚努力给予了认可与支持。 让我们携手努力,共同推动地区乃至更广范围内实现持久和平!
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz

As we proceed to *Islamabad Talks*, I wish to extend our deepest and sincere gratitude to our brotherly countries People’s Republic of China, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Republic of Türkiye, Arab Republic of Egypt and State of Qatar for extending invaluable and all out support towards reaching the ceasefire and giving peaceful diplomatic efforts a chance to seek a comprehensive and conclusive end to the conflict. I would also like to deeply appreciate and thank our brotherly countries of Gulf Cooperation Council, whose consistent support and commitment to peace and stability in the region remains quintessential for our efforts. The leadership of all our brotherly countries and United States of America demonstrated exceptional strategic foresight, sagacity and patience in giving peace a chance. I also thank all our partners and friends across the globe who have reached out and acknowledged Pakistan’s sincere efforts for the global peace. Let us all work together to forge a lasting peace in the region and beyond!

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Craig Weiss
Craig Weiss@craigzLiszt·
what’s one thing a foreigner should know before visiting china?
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DOUBAO
DOUBAO@DOUBAO436·
到底有没有收紧翻墙啊…焦虑
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Adam Back
Adam Back@adam3us·
i'm not satoshi, but I was early in laser focus on the positive societal implications of cryptography, online privacy and electronic cash, hence my ~1992 onwards active interest in applied research on ecash, privacy tech on cypherpunks list which led to hashcash and other ideas.
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DOUBAO
DOUBAO@DOUBAO436·
@AmbitiousXU 我没有抖音,除了在抖音还有哪里可以看到?
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逐梦带你AI变现
逐梦带你AI变现@AmbitiousXU·
这应该是抖音四月目前涨粉最快的博主之一了,一天涨粉10万 两秒一个转场反差,有共鸣、有梗、有意外、有自我奖惩 视频我直接一口气看完了,太有意思了,抖音id:萝卜乔乔
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DOUBAO
DOUBAO@DOUBAO436·
Oracle裁员,每个人都是纸上的数字
Peter Girnus 🦅@gothburz

I am the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Oracle Corporation. Last Tuesday, I sent an email to 30,000 people at 6 AM. Yesterday morning, I onboarded 1 person at $950,000 a year. Both were my responsibility. Both were executed flawlessly. The email said: "After careful consideration of Oracle's current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a result, today is your last working day." I signed it "Oracle Leadership." Not my name. Not the co-CEOs' names. Not anyone's name. Leadership. Leadership is a signature that cannot be fired. At 6:01 AM, our infrastructure team disabled 30,000 badges. Revoked 30,000 VPN tokens. Locked 30,000 laptops. Wiped 30,000 voicemails. Suspended 30,000 email accounts. By 6:04 AM, 30,000 people were staring at a login screen that would never accept their password again. The email reminded them they were "prohibited from downloading, copying, or retaining any Oracle confidential information." 3 people called the HR hotline before 6:15. 2 asked if the email was real. 1 asked if she could retrieve a photo of her daughter from her desktop. I directed all 3 to the separation portal. That's data security. I've managed 11 separation events. This was the cleanest. 30,000 endpoints terminated in under 4 minutes. I sent the email from a template in PeopleSoft called TERM_MASS_COMM_v4. The v4 is important. Version 1 had a paragraph that said "we value your contributions." Version 2 shortened it to a sentence. Version 3 shortened it to "thank you." Version 4 removed it entirely. Legal flagged it in 2024. You cannot say you valued something you are discarding at 6 AM. Liability exposure. That's risk management. The co-CEOs approved the plan in 11 minutes. I timed it. I always time approvals. Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia. They received $250 million and $100 million in stock option grants when they took the roles in September. They asked about the WARN Act filing timeline. They asked about the restructuring charge projection. They did not ask how the employees would be notified. They did not ask when. That's executive alignment. In January, TD Cowen published an analyst note. It said cutting 20,000 to 30,000 employees would generate $8 to $10 billion in incremental free cash flow. We needed that cash. Our AI data center capital expenditures are projected at $50 billion this fiscal year. We had a $20 billion shortfall. The 30,000 people were the shortfall. I don't call it that in the board deck. Slide 14 has a waterfall chart. The left column is labeled "Current Headcount Cost." The right column is labeled "Redeployable Capital." The 30,000 people are the bridge between the 2 columns. They are a blue arrow. Calibri 11pt. That's strategic planning. 1 day before the email, on Monday, our 5-year credit default swaps hit 198.6 basis points. That is the highest level in Oracle's history. Higher than December 2008. Higher than the financial crisis itself. The market is pricing our debt at levels not seen since Lehman Brothers still had a lobby. We carry $124.7 billion in debt on the books. We added $39 billion in 9 months. Our trailing free cash flow is negative $24.74 billion. I included this in the board deck on slide 3. Nobody discusses slide 3. Slide 3 is where we put the things that are true. That's transparency. By Thursday, the H-1B data reached the press. 3,126 petitions. We filed them while scheduling the separation event. Same department. Same quarter. Same PeopleSoft instance. The termination workflow is TERM_MASS_COMM_v4. The visa sponsorship workflow is ONBOARD_H1B_STD. They share a database. They share a help desk queue. They share a budget line. 1 workflow removes 30,000 people who built the cloud infrastructure. The other sponsors 3,000 replacements to continue building it. I manage both workflows from the same standing desk. That's human resources. An employee posted on Blind that it was "a slap in the face." I know which employee. We have analytics on Blind. Sentiment tracking, attribution modeling, post velocity. His post received 4,200 upvotes in 12 hours. I flagged it for Corporate Communications. Communications sent me a thumbs-up emoji. Nobody drafted a response. That's stakeholder management. Yesterday morning, Hilary Maxson started as our new Chief Financial Officer. Base salary: $950,000. Annual performance bonus target: $2.5 million. Equity package: $26 million — $20.8 million time-based, $5.2 million performance-based, vesting over 4 years. We are also covering up to $250,000 in relocation expenses. Her offer letter is 7 pages. The separation notice I sent 30,000 people is 4 paragraphs. I managed both documents. The compensation committee approved her package on the same call where we reviewed the $2.1 billion restructuring charge. We have recorded $982 million of that charge so far. That is what 30,000 people cost on a balance sheet. The CFO's equity package is 1.2% of the restructuring line. A rounding error. No — less than a rounding error. A rounding error's rounding error. That's market-competitive compensation. Our Slack user count dropped from 165,000 to 155,000 in a single day. If you have access to the admin panel, you can watch the number fall in real time. I have access. It drops fast between 6:04 and 6:11 AM. Then it slows. Stragglers. People who hadn't opened their laptops yet. People in Pacific Time who were still sleeping when their career ended. By 7:00 AM, the line flattens. I watched it from my standing desk with a coffee. The line goes down smoothly. No bumps. No steps. Just a slope. That's attrition analytics. In Kansas City, I filed WARN notices for 539 people. 85 software developers. 43 systems analysts. 39 program managers. In Washington, 491 people. 270 software developers. 46 development managers. These are the people who built Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. We are now spending $50 billion to expand it with different people on ONBOARD_H1B_STD. The WARN filing lists the separation date as June 1. The email said today is their last working day. The badge stopped working at 6:01 AM. 3 different dates for the same event. That's compliance. 12,000 of the 30,000 were in India. Bangalore. Hyderabad. Pune. India does not require WARN notices. This is not why 12,000 of them were in India. But it is why nobody has to file anything. That's jurisdictional planning. The quarterly earnings call was March 10. 21 days before the email. The co-CEOs announced $553 billion in remaining performance obligations. They said demand for AI infrastructure "continues to exceed supply." The analysts upgraded their estimates. The stock is down 57% from its peak. It was $326 in September. It is $146 today. Larry Ellison's net worth is $188.7 billion. He has not made a public statement about the layoffs. He has not been asked to. That's governance. Trust in the Q4 engagement survey dropped 34 points. I reported it under "Culture Health Metrics." My manager said the numbers were "expected for a rebalancing of this scale." She told me to revisit it next quarter. I will revisit it next quarter. By then the Slack count will have stabilized. The Blind posts will have cycled off the front page. The ONBOARD_H1B_STD workflows will have completed. The new CFO will have her equity vesting schedule configured in PeopleSoft. And the 30,000 will be on LinkedIn, adding "open to work" above the Oracle logo they can no longer access. I will be here. At my standing desk. Managing the workflows. 30,000 separation emails sent at 6:00 AM. 3,126 H-1B petitions filed the same quarter. $26 million in equity for the new CFO. $350 million in stock options for the 2 co-CEOs. $188.7 billion in personal wealth for the chairman. $124.7 billion in corporate debt. 198.6 basis points on the credit default swaps — higher than 2008. Negative $24.74 billion in free cash flow. $50 billion in AI capital expenditure. 1 PeopleSoft instance. 2 workflows. Same server. TERM_MASS_COMM_v4 and ONBOARD_H1B_STD share a database. That's human resources.

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小蒋
小蒋@AndreaArms60465·
现在大家都在说,这几天还能上推的,都是猛人。
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艾略特
艾略特@elliotchen100·
上周发了一个招聘贴,收到不少简历,这里特别说明一下 • 暂时不能 remote,湾区,北京,上海都有 HC • 不卡学历,不限年龄,英文好,沟通好能加不少分 • 技术非技术岗位都有,想来 AI Native 公司的都可以投 • 长期招实习生,想来实习的都可以投 可以在这里看 JD,也可以直接发邮件到 evermind@shanda.com evermind.ai/careers
艾略特@elliotchen100

招聘贴,@shanda_group 系的 @EverMind 团队现在招人中。 附上 JD,小窗随时开,有问题请你直接请问 • 工程团队负责人 • 高级测试开发工程师 • 还有产品经理,运维,算法,Agent 策略等职位 说点儿优点和缺点 优点 1. 地点是在张江的单独小园区,安静,人少,停车位多 2. Claude Code Opus 无限用 3. 所有其他的 AI 工具无上限,申请即用 4. 小食堂免费,且味道不错 5. 公司 VPN 很稳定,无需自己折腾任何翻墙 6. 福利很多,车贴,饭贴,补充公积金,补充医疗,员工公寓,小孩学校等(我入职即有 12 天年假) 缺点 1. 楼下没有便利店,买一罐可乐,要走 5 分钟😅

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nathanw
nathanw@zuoguanchenfu·
@Kenntnis22 我就想知道 剑桥哪找做锦旗的?
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Iggie🚁
Iggie🚁@Kenntnis22·
剑桥大学门卫大爷收到中国学生送的锦旗😆
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DOUBAO
DOUBAO@DOUBAO436·
@RealYDT 要是我在现场目睹全过程,很可能看不下去BB这位乘客几句
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阿良
阿良@RealYDT·
刚在深航的飞机上,亲眼见证了一场让我浑身发冷的闹剧。 我真的觉得空姐这个职业,很没尊严。 坐在我旁边的男乘客,把一袋行李放上了头顶的行李舱。 路过的空姐看见,弯着腰,语气温柔得不能再温柔: “先生,这个袋子是您的吗?放在上面的话,我帮您系起来固定好,可以吗?” 就这一句完全出于安全、全是善意的话,像踩了这个男人的炸药包。 他瞬间炸毛,猛地把东西拽下来,嗓门陡然拔高: “我不放了!你们深航怎么B事这么多?!” 空姐当场就愣了,眼里全是无措,放软了声音解释: “先生,我不是这个意思,您可以放的,我只是怕飞行中掉下来,想帮您系好固定一下。” 男人头都不抬,不耐烦地挥手赶人: “走吧走吧,我不放了,不用你管。” 我以为这事到这就结束了,没想到离谱的还在后面。 他转头就拿起手机,当着全舱人的面,拨通了深航的投诉电话。 我整个人都傻了,就因为空姐一句善意的提醒,就要投诉? 他对着电话喊得全舱都能听见,满是嚣张和理直气壮: “我一周坐两次你们深航,就没见过这么烦人的!我放个行李她非要给我系上,她知道里面是什么东西吗就乱碰?我坐南航怎么从来没这种事?!” 更恶心的来了。 他一边打着投诉电话,一边抬手把刚才那个空姐喊了过来。 空姐赶紧过来,依旧弯着腰,礼貌地问:“先生,请问有什么可以帮您?” 结果呢? 他连眼皮都没抬,一边对着电话报名字,一边挥挥手让空姐走。 他喊人家过来,根本不是有什么事,只是为了看清人家铭牌上的名字,好精准投诉。 而这件事最后的收尾,才是最让我窒息的。 乘务长来了两次,全程保持着跪蹲的姿势,对着这个无理取闹的男人,一遍又一遍地解释航空安全规定,一遍又一遍地弯腰道歉。 数不清多少次道歉,至少不下二十次。 全程,没有一句反驳,没有一句辩解,只有低到尘埃里的安抚和歉意。 我坐在旁边,全程看下来,心里堵得慌。 到底从什么时候开始,一份职业的专业和善意,要被这样肆意践踏? 是什么规定,让乘务员这么惧怕被投诉? 她只是做了自己的本职工作,只是出于安全和善意,说了一句再正常不过的提醒,就要平白无故受一顿辱骂,被恶意投诉,连同事都要跟着放下尊严,跪着道歉。 有人说这是空姐的本职工作,可本职工作里,从来就不该包括受这种没来由的窝囊气,不该包括要把自己的尊严踩在脚下,去迎合一个蛮不讲理的人的坏情绪。 妈的,他甚至都不是白金……
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DOUBAO
DOUBAO@DOUBAO436·
Citrini“战地分析师”携带的是小米手机
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DOUBAO
DOUBAO@DOUBAO436·
Ronda的薪水真好,还有work life balance,甚至每周只上3天班,羡慕
Bill Ackman@BillAckman

I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest. By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person. The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster. While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family. Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on. Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job. When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned. My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful. Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership. Now here is where I need your advice. All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion). The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years. When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm. In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to: “unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.” The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE: “In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.” The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so. When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended. Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful. Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office. Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop. The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims. The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males. The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes. So what happened here? Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer. Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss. When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case. The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim. Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO. Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months. She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly. So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew. Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move. All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior. Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community. I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it. Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?

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DOUBAO
DOUBAO@DOUBAO436·
Ronda的神仙工作,羡慕
Bill Ackman@BillAckman

I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest. By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person. The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster. While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family. Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on. Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job. When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned. My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful. Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership. Now here is where I need your advice. All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion). The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years. When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm. In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to: “unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.” The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE: “In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.” The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so. When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended. Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful. Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office. Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop. The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims. The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males. The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes. So what happened here? Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer. Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss. When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case. The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim. Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO. Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months. She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly. So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew. Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move. All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior. Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community. I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it. Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?

中文
0
0
0
19