2025 June Retrospective

The first month of summer is all said and done. Lots of complaints about the heat as per usual; all of which I find quite amusing to be perfectly honest. I don’t know about you, but back in the day, when I was all young and shit, it used to be so hot that one’s feet would leave an imprint in the asphalt covering the sidewalk, not to mention that the grass was all burn out and yellow. We were just built different back then, to use an expression that the Gen-Z will be all too familiar with.

Alien: Earth

I don’t want to get my hopes too high for this one just yet, as it could turn out to be one of those shows that is canceled after only one season, but the anticipation is quite palpable; I think we can all agree on that, without getting into any egregious polemics.

Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition

You’ll have to bear with me yapping about the definitive edition for a little while longer as it should ship sometime in July.

Conjuring: Final Rites

I was so razzle-dazzled by the latest entry in the Final Destination franchise that I forgot to even mention the final entry in the Conjuring series in my May retrospective.

Talent Poaching

Whenever the ugly specter of poaching talent raises its ugly head, the following famous or rather infamous e-mail exchange between the late Steve Jobs and his counterpart at Adobe is sure to make a timely appearance.

From: Steve Jobs

Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2005 9:36 AM

To: Bruce Chizen

Subject: Recruiting

Bruce,

Adobe is recruiting from Apple. They have hired one person already and are calling lots more. I have a standing policy with our recruiters that we don’t recruit from Adobe. It seems you have a different policy. One of us must change our policy. Please let me know who.

Steve

On May 26, 2005, at 4:15 PM, Bruce Chizen wrote:

I thought we agreed not to recruit any senior level employees (at Adobe this is Sr. Director/VP and represents about 2% of the population). I am pretty sure your recruiters have approached ,more junior ones.

I would propose we keep it this way. Open to discuss. It would be good to agree.

From: Steve Jobs

Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2005 6:27 PM

To: Bruce Chizen

Cc: Steve Jobs

Subject: Re: Recruiting

OK, I’ll tell our recruiters that they are free to approach any Adobe employee who is not a Sr. Director or VP. Am I understanding your position correctly?

Steve

Subject: RE: Recruiting

Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 20:53:36 -0700

From: Bruce Chizen

To: Steve Jobs

I’d rather agree NOT to actively solicit any employee from either company. If employee proactively approaches then it’s acceptable.

If you are in agreement I will let my folks know.

Look, I am not here to lecture anyone on the ethics or morals of actively recruiting from your so called competition; there are plenty of self-proclaimed guru types out there who have done that already, but I’ll say this, if someone can be convinced to jump ship simply on the basis of higher pay, then it’s also fair to assume that the person’s heart wasn’t in the right place to begin with.

That is not to say that generous compensation doesn’t matter, but it most definitely loses it’s so called potency above a certain threshold, or one would like to think that it does.

And by the by, there were no 100-million-sign-on-bonuses after all as it turns out. In fact not even close! This is why I always said that rumor control matters way more, than any form of marketing out there.

Layoffs

The layoffs continue in full force with around 72,808 people losing their jobs in 2025 according to Layoffs.fyi, and considering the fact that we are only half-way through the year, this number will very likely rise to as high as 100,000 by new years’.

I said this before, and I’ll say it again, the so called recension hasn’t even begun yet in earnest. But, when it does, it will make 2008-2009 seem like child’s play, and might become the heir apparent to the “Great Depression” of the 1930s.

Monday Dad Joke

As I intend to continue with the new tradition established in May, I decided to up the level of cringe a tiny bit this time around.

Q: Why did the smartphone go to the beach on a summer Monday?

A: It wanted to catch some “cell-fies” in the sun!

Enjoy!