EBay to eliminate about 1,000 jobs, or 9% of full-time workforce Jamie Iannone, eBay’s CEO, told employees in a letter published on a corporate blog, that the company will also “scale back the number of contracts we have within our alternate workforce over the coming months.” Iannone said the job cuts are necessary because eBay’s “overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business.” “To address this, we’re implementing organizational changes that align and consolidate certain teams to improve the end-to-end experience, and better meet the needs of our customers around the world,” Iannone said. “Shortly, we will begin notifying those employees whose roles have been eliminated and entering into a consultation process in areas where required.” Translation: I regret to inform you that some of you will soon be joining the ranks of the jobless peasants. Why? Because we got greedy and hired way too many of you. Oopsie! As you know, running a successful business like eBay requires making very difficult decisions, like cutting costs instead of my eight-figure salary. Therefore, we have decided to axe a bunch of jobs to boost our profits. It's nothing personal, we just value shareholders more than employees. We will be handing out pink slips shortly. Please form an orderly line so security can swiftly escort you out. On your way, be sure to drop off your badge and parking pass. We wish you the best of luck in this economic hellscape we've created! For those of you still clinging to your jobs, work harder! We need to wring every last drop of blood, sweat and tears out of you to make up for those we fired. If you don't like it, you can go join the dirty jobless masses. Please direct any complaints to our automated customer service line, which never picks up. Have a very eBay day!

Steve Baxter, one of Australia's most prominent investors and a judge on Shark Tank, is on record as saying that I am a man pretending to be a woman. It's an old, outdated, obsolete and uninteresting transphobic trope. In itself, it's almost not worth mentioning. But Steve's ability to drop discriminatory comments like it's nothing while the Australian tech ecosystem shrugs, blushes, or looks the other way is a telling sign of the deep rot that has set in. The reaction – or lack thereof – to Baxter's comments is as concerning as the comments themselves. It reveals a culture of complicity, where such remarks are not actively condemned but are met with awkward silence or passive acceptance. This tacit tolerance sends a clear message: even from influential figures, discriminatory attitudes are not deal-breakers in the business world. Baxter's statement is not an isolated incident. It's part of a larger pattern of behaviour that goes unchecked in many corners of the tech industry. Baxter's views, comments, and ideas have been surfaced, condemned, and quickly forgiven for years. Other choice words from the investor and reality TV star include, "Its [sic] seems you women need positive discrimination to get a look in. I imagine people getting roles under those circumstances must feel super about it." And yet, time and time again, the Australian tech ecosystem waits for the brouhaha to brew over and accepts the man back into their ranks. The Australian startup community is an ecosystem that allows abhorrent views on gender and women to be aired without consequence. This points to a systemic failure to uphold basic standards of respect and inclusion. But what are we to expect in an industry that has a long track record of failing the women it spends every International Women's Day claiming to love and protect? According to Deloitte, in 2022, 22% of startups were founded by women, but just 0.7% of funding secured by startups went to solely women-founded companies. When released in 2023, the Startup Muster report couldn't (at least until the backlash started) find a single woman to highlight as a startup mentor. Last year, we saw women in venture capital and tech harassed and explicitly sexually bullied by a founder on Linkedin. For six months, I've received death threats from a Queensland-based blockchain founder for daring to be a woman, having the audacity to be trans, and not shutting my mouth. This situation became even more disheartening after news broke just last week about the ongoing funding and enablement of Kiki Club (or Girls Who NYC?). The decision to fund an all-male team through failure and through their pivot to create a "club for women" - pitched to target "corporate girlies" no less - further underscores the gender biases entrenched in the industry. This pattern of behaviour and decision-making shows a troubling disconnect from the realities and needs of diverse groups - aka, people who aren't white men. This goes far beyond one middle-aged man's tired, out-of-touch commentary on gender or sexual orientation; it speaks to an overall lack of diversity in thought, experience, and leadership within the tech community, stifling innovation and hindering the industry's ability to serve a diverse user base effectively. It's time for the Australian tech ecosystem to take a long, hard look at itself. The first step in addressing these issues is acknowledgement – recognising that there is a problem. This must be followed by actionable steps. But implementing "comprehensive diversity and inclusion training", setting up policies against discrimination (that are never enforced), and promoting diversity in leadership and decision-making roles (by participating in a single diversity panel) are not fucking enough. They're the same PR drivel and lick o' paint that everyone in tech roles out every time enough people get sick of the merry-go-round. And they won't cut it. The tech industry prides itself on being a leader in innovation and progress. It's high time this innovation and progress extended beyond technology and into social responsibility and ethical leadership. Only then can we begin to root out the deep-seated biases and discrimination that are repeatedly and openly tarnishing the Australian tech ecosystem.

CoinTelegraph: A Colorado-based online pastor who has been charged with fraud for selling a “worthless” cryptocurrency says he only did it because “the Lord” told him to give his followers a “10X.” In a strange 9-minute video — posted to INDXcoin’s official website — INDXcoin founder and pastor Eli Regalado told users of the INDXcoin community that the charges being leveled against him and his partner were true. “The charges are that Kaitlin and I pocketed $1.3 million dollars, and I just want to come out and say those charges are true.” On Jan. 18, Eligio Regalado and his partner Kaitlin Regalado were charged with fraud for their role in issuing and marketing a sham token called “INDXcoin” to their followers, according to a statement from the Colorado Securities Commission. 780,000 words in the Bible, and there are still no words for this.

The old saying goes that anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps - if they work hard enough. There's this pervasive and poisonous idea that success or failure rests solely on the individual and their effort. And if you don't make it, if you don't lift yourself out of poverty, if you can’t provide for your family (in the middle of a fucking recession, no less), it's your own damn fault, and yours alone. Reality check: not everyone starts off on equal footing in our society. Factors like race, gender, socioeconomic status, family background, access to education, networks, and more contribute to differences in opportunities and resources available to people…

Capital Brief: Blackbird-backed Kiki outlined plan to target 'corporate girlies' in December investor memo Blackbird-backed subletting startup Kiki wrote to investors on Christmas Eve to tell them that it was struggling and would pivot to target the “super niche persona of ‘corporate girlies’" aged between 25 and 28. The news that Kiki was pivoting from a subletting platform to a NY based “girls club” has been widely ridiculed in the startup ecosystem this week, and has also caused outrage among women given it has a founding team of five men. Kiki Club's testosterone-fueled founding team believing they could define women's needs would be laughable on its own if it weren't so infuriating. Capital Brief's scoop that the startup was happily categorising women as "corporate girlies" makes it so much worse. And it promotes the same tired, diminishing stereotypes that should be fossils by now. I'm all for good-faith efforts to serve underrepresented groups. But this ain't it. Kiki's terminology sets inclusion back to the Mad Men era. The brewing brouhaha spotlights the diversity wasteland that is startup leadership. Homogenous teams breed blindspots and build hubristic and superficial products, failing the very users they aim to serve. Tech still struggles to dismantle barriers to diversity, clinging to the status quo like a security blanket. And the next time, the so-called leaders throw up their hands, asking, "What more could we have done?" I'll point to bullshit like this - where inclusion takes a backseat, and even the fucking girls' club is run by the boys' club. To Blackbird, let me just say this: the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. When you read this investor memo, were you proud of where your money is going?