Being the CEO of a major tech company like Microsoft isn’t easy to start with. I’m sure current CEO Satya Nadella is finding that out. He found that out even more so in the past 24 hours.
There was a conference in Arizona called Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Mr. Nadella took the stage and attempted to address the issue of? pay inequality between men and women. He said women should have faith in the system to give them a raise, and “It’s good karma. It will come back.” Whoops. The audience wasn’t happy with that response, and he quickly tried to clean up the mess he made. Within hours of his controversial comment, Satya Nadella wrote a letter. The letter said he was honored to talk to women in the technology field and he answered the question wrong when it came to pay raises. Mr. Nadella further stated his belief that both genders should be paid and treated equally and if you think if you’re deserving of a raise, you should ask. He credits the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing for teaching him a valuable lesson. I think he’s learned it.
When we speak at conferences like this, we have to pick and choose our spots. This was a conference celebrating women in computer technology. Also, keep in mind women are often paid less than men for doing the same job. So to tell women to have faith in this system at a conference empowering women was a bad move on Mr. Nadella’s part. But I am impressed with the way he handled it afterward. He saw his mistake, owned up to it, is doing his best to make amends, and is now trying to move on. So though pay inequality (and wealth inequality in general) are topics that need to be addressed, I say give Satya Nadella a break. What do you say?
Today, Fortune Magazine released the top 40 most powerful and influential people around the world under 40. Those in technology virtually owned this list.
More than half the men and women on Fortune’s Top 40 list are in the technical field. Of the top ten, seven are involved in technology. Of the top twenty, thirteen of them were tech leaders. But the rankings were a bit surprising. I was expecting Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey to take the top spot. But there was a tie for #1: Uber’s Travis Kalanick and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky. It’s been explained these men top this list because of the revolutionary and controversial effect Uber and Airbnb are having on the world. With Uber, you can flag a taxi cab on your smartphone and a lot of cabbies don’t like that. With Airbnb, you can book house guest rooms and weekly hotels as well as some mainsteam hotels, changing the way many people vacation. Mark Zuckerberg placed second on the list. Surprisingly, Jack Dorsey only placed eleven. Almost everyone uses Twitter these days, so I’m a little shocked at that one. Whats App co-founder Jan Koum made number 5. Instagram’s Kevin Systrom’s made #8 and porfolio manager Jesse Cohn rounded out the top ten.
Women made their presence known. Thirteen made the top 40 list. The highest ranked is Yahoo’s Marissa Meyer. Despite the challenges and turbulence still surrounding Yahoo, Fortune Magazine ranked her the sixth most influential person under age 40. Snapchat COO Emily White is ranked 14 and Twitter General Counselor Vijaya Gadde placed number 28. Though almost half the Fortune under 40 list was made up of non-whites, not all the news of diversity was good news. Only two were African-American, Urban Compass founder Robert Reffkin (#29) and Walker and Co. founder Tristan Walker (#35). Unfortunately, I found no Latinos on this list. Diversity is an issue the technology community have been wrestling with for a while now, and it seems they have a ways to go. What do you think of the Fortune Magazine top 40 under 40?
Facebook doesn’t seem like the place one would choose to remain anonymous. Now they’re working on an app where you can still be you…well…kinda.
This social media site is working on a mobile-app where users can get on, through their page, but not have to use their own names, thus remaining anonymous. In fact, secrecy is being taken so seriously on this app that the people revealing this app insists on remaining anonymous. The app should be released in the weeks to come, or at least we should hear more about it by then. The ironic thing is this is virtually the opposite of what Facebook has built itself up to be. It’s always prided itself on the real you reuniting with real family, friends and people from yesteryear. Facebook product manager Josh Miller leads this anonymous app creation. If this app is successful, it will let users to use aliases to talk about subjects they may not be comfortable with online, or in real life. Planning is very much in it’s early stages. Will this app allow anonymous photo sharing? And how will this work with friend interaction? Recently, Facebook has seen the importance and increasing popularity of anonymity. Like earlier this year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said app makers can use anonymous tools to log in.
But will the anonymous app work? Like anything else, this app can be used for good or evil. This app can be used to protect users from cyber bullying, extortion or exploitation. But an anonymous user can also use this app for criminal and down right wicked purposes. In an era where privacy may as well be on the endangered species list, I can see the concern and why many would want to remain anonymous. Some of my Facebook friends use nicknames as their Facebook headings. If you were to use a Facebook anonymous app, how and why would you use it?
The historic and international telecommunications company AT&T has announced a security breach. And this was an inside job. An employee allegedly comprised approximately 1,600 customers’ social security and driver license numbers.
A letter was sent to the Vermont attorney general. According to that letter, the breach happened in August 2014. The letter further states this employee violated strict rules and regulations by accessing account information without management’s knowledge or approval. The letter states the employee/hacker could see social security and driver license information and Customer Propriety Network Information (CPNI). What CPNI means is data collected by AT&T, or whoever the phone company may be, about customer’s telephone calls. This CPNI includes the time, date, phone number, even the customers’ phone subscription. It even knows the duration of each call on your phone bill. The kind of CPNI this letter talked about dealt with services customers buy from the company. This letter was composed by Mr. Micheal A. Chairmonte, AT&T’s director of finance and billing. The suspected employee no longer works for AT&T. They’re offering customers directly hit by the breach free credit monitoring and recommending customers change their passwords before anyone else gets hit.
Well, this is a good start, big emphasis on the word start. Now that we know 1,600 customers are being notified, they won’t release the name of the culprit.? We need to know who this hacker was. That’s a start. And it’s not enough that this anonymous person can be fired, which I’m glad he/she was. This hacker needs to be prosecuted and brought to justice. Maybe this is already happening. But until it does, this hacker will go to another company, or in his/her own privacy, and continue to compromise innocent people’s information. We’re just learning how many people may have been breached. The number could be even larger than 1,600. I have an idea: Shouldn’t the customers directly affected by this breach be entitled to a month of free service?
Hewlett-Packard, one of the biggest computer makers ever, is splitting up. The newer company will aim at building computer storage, data service equipment, software services and other business technical services. The other company will continue to build computers and printers.
Both companies will still be traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The new business technology oriented company is called Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. This split up will be official around October 2015, when their 2015 fiscal year ends. The split will take place under the leadership of Meg Whitman, HP’s chief executive. She didn’t like the split at first, but after watching her competitors on all sides thrive, she saw it was necessary, believing this will give the company a much needed competitive edge. They’re not the first and only ones to do this. Other mega tech conglomerates from IBM to Microsoft have either split up their company or gone totally private (which means they don’t have public shareholders to answer to).
Hewlett-Packard has been struggling for years now. In fact, this split up is part of the company’s five year program to turn things around. It goes to show you how critical business and cloud technology has become. These days, millions of systems can become one entity, thanks to the cloud. This cuts the server out and computers can interact with each other better than ever before. As more businesses realize this and change their storage and data habits, Hewlett-Packard couldn’t have picked a better time to take advantage of this trend. But this company has been through so much in recent years. This divide will split over $112 billion worth of revenue. Stocks are up 5% thanks to this move, but this move will also cost 5,000 jobs.? Can HP use this split to turn the company around? Will HP Enterprise succeed by serving businesses with these critical services? Or will it be too little too late?
