Latest news with #techbro
Telegraph
7 hours ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Tech CEO scraps unlimited holiday: ‘Bad employees take too much off'
A Silicon Valley 'tech bro' has scrapped offering staff unlimited paid holiday after complaining 'B-performers' were abusing the perk. Ryan Breslow, 31, co-founder and chairman of one-click payment company Bolt, spearheaded the initiative as part of his scheme to overhaul traditional working patterns. But, writing on LinkedIn, Mr Breslow, said: 'It sounds progressive, but it's totally broken. When time off is undefined, the good ones don't take [it]. The bad ones take too much. 'This leads to A-performer burnout. B-performer luxuries. And feelings of unfairness across the board. 'So we're flipping the script: no more confusion. Every Bolter now gets four weeks of paid vacation (yes, the traditional corporate standard), with the opportunity to accrue more with tenure. 'Not optional,' Mr Breslow added. 'We mandate everyone take all four weeks off.' Mr Breslow's rise in high-tech has been meteoric after founding the company in 2014. By May 2022, Bolt had 8,000 staff, was valued at $11 billion (£8 billion), and Mr Breslow had become one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires. He also saw himself as a visionary, developing the 'Conscious Culture Playbook', which ripped up the traditional staff handbook. Mr Breslow is not the only US employer to offer unlimited paid leave, with the perk having grown in popularity over the last two decades. By 2023, it was offered by eight per cent of US companies, while workers in other American companies often found that holiday entitlements were far less generous than their counterparts in Europe. Research has shown that those offered the perk take two to three more days off a year than workers with companies with fixed holiday entitlement. But there is also evidence that workers can also be reluctant to take advantage of the scheme, fearing that being marked out as a loafer can put their job at risk when companies need to shed staff. Robert Sweeney, chief executive of technology company Facet, was among the sceptics. 'Unlimited vacation is a scam,' he wrote in a 2019 blog post after his company reverted back to the traditional model. 'Vacation is not really unlimited. If you take too much time off, you will get fired.'
Daily Mail
25-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Elon Musk's protege with vulgar nickname resigns from federal government
A teenage tech operative once dubbed a rising star in Elon Musk 's controversial federal overhaul effort has abruptly resigned - just weeks after his infamous boss's own exit. Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old former Neuralink employee who styled himself online as 'Big Balls,' is no longer working for the US government, the White House confirmed on Tuesday. His name vanished from internal contact lists, and his government email account was deactivated, signaling the end of one of the most bizarre and incendiary appointments in recent federal history. Coristine's resignation comes just weeks after the departure of Elon Musk and his top lieutenant Steve Davis from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Musk-led initiative launched by Donald Trump earlier this year to radically streamline, digitize, and disrupt the federal bureaucracy. Coristine was one of the first hires and quickly became a symbol of DOGE's tech-bro bravado and brazen disregard for Washington norms. Coristine, a high school graduate with a resume that includes Neuralink and a short stint at a hacker-linked company, was given remarkable access across government. According to Wired, he bounced between agencies including the GSA, Department of Education, USAID, Small Business Administration, and even Office of Personnel Management, helping implement Musk's sweeping vision to centralize data and digitize operations - sometimes through back channels and with little oversight. He also attended high-level meetings at the Commerce, Treasury, and Defense Departments, records show, discussing DOGE integration and controversial programs such as Trump's 'golden visa' plan. But Coristine's tenure was riddled with controversy. He allegedly appeared in hacker chatrooms, was once fired over a suspected data leak, and according to Reuters, was tied to a cybercrime group that trafficked stolen data and bragged about harassing an FBI agent. In March, he was reportedly offering tech support to a cybercrime gang that had bragged about trafficking in stolen data and harassing an FBI agent. His online persona, 'Big Balls,' became a meme within both tech and political circles - a crude moniker that came to represent DOGE's irreverent, combative style. Despite that, Coristine maintained full-time federal status as recently as late May, and was reportedly granted multiple government-issued laptops, according to former DOGE operative Sahil Lavingia. Coristine's exit follows a wave of resignations that began with Musk's own departure from DOGE in April. His abrupt retreat from the federal stage threw the department into disarray and triggered a domino effect, as key loyalists were either pushed out or walked away. Steve Davis, president of The Boring Company, left shortly after Musk. Although the White House insists DOGE will continue, the once high-flying program now appears rudderless. Insiders say the vacuum left by Musk and Davis has led to internal paralysis, with once-dominant DOGE operatives quietly reassigned or purged from federal systems. Coristine's past has long shadowed his federal tenure. In addition to his Neuralink stint, he once founded a company called LLC, which registered Russian-based domains and developed an AI Discord bot. According to Wired, he briefly worked for a company founded by reformed blackhat hackers, and his Telegram handle was reportedly involved in questionable online solicitations. Coristine, who was raised in a wealthy town in Westchester County outside New York City as the son of a popcorn baron, also spoke about how he got his X-rated nickname. He was a junior at a $50,000-per-year Rye Country Day School, where his bored math classmates were passing a note around. When it got to him, Coristine 'drew a phallic object and wrote BIG BALLS on it,' a current student who heard the story told New York Magazine. 'Then a math teacher took it out of his hands and read it out loud to the class. Then I guess he embraced it because he changed his LinkedIn name to that.' Coristine said he 'just set it as my LinkedIn username. 'People on LinkedIn take themselves like super seriously and are pretty averse to risk, and I was like "I want to be neither of those things."' 'Honestly, I didn't think anyone would know,' he said. Despite the baggage, he was trusted with sensitive digital infrastructure and participated in federal meetings involving payment systems and surveillance integration - raising serious questions about DOGE's vetting standards and the oversight of its hires. Federal agencies have remained tight-lipped on what exactly led to his exit.
Daily Mail
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Inside 'wild west' state where Americans are flocking for new anti-aging drugs so powerful they're banned everywhere else
Farbood Nivi has lots of plans. Dying isn't one of them. 'If there's a chance I can live indefinitely, I'll do what it takes to make that happen,' says the 48-year-old tech bro in Los Angeles.
Vogue
03-06-2025
- Business
- Vogue
Just How Accurate a Portrait of the Tech-Bro World is ‘Mountainhead'?
It can be a lot of fun to see a world you know well get lampooned, which is maybe why I felt ever-so-slightly out-of-the-loop while watching Mountainhead. Jesse Armstrong's feature directorial debut stars Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Ramy Youssef, and Cory Michael Smith as the world's most powerful and annoying tech-bro clique convening for a weekend retreat in the midst of roiling, worldwide chaos that one of them may or may not be responsible for (and that more than a few of them feel uniquely capable of quelling). I've never worked in tech—except for a few months temping at a search-engine giant that shall remain nameless, from which I stole a ton of pens before unceremoniously quitting—so it was hard for me to tell whether the rapidly paced, Succession-esque dialogue of Mountainhead bore any relationship to the real thing (especially since nobody who was permanently employed at said company spoke to me at my temp job). So, I turned to some anonymous current and former big-tech employees for their thoughts on how the film reflected their industry. Below, find analyses of Mountainhead from some of the people who would know best: Anonymous tech-world veteran and startup founder: 'Mountainhead felt like somebody had listened to a LOT of All-In podcasts in the creation process. I think it over-rotated on the bro-ness of the guys. Tech moguls may do bro-y stuff, but they don't have bro-y personalities. They're still more nerdy than they are bro-y. The 'sure, we can run the world' casual confidence is more common amongst venture capitalists than people who actually operate companies.' Cory Michael Smith (as Venis), Steve Carell (as Randall), Ramy Youssef (as Jeff), and Jason Schwartzman (as Hugo Van Yalk, aka Souper) in Mountainhead. Photo: Courtesy of HBO Anonymous journalist who has covered tech: 'This whole 'We can marry a Facebook-like company to AI and it will become superhuman overnight' thing is ridiculous. Naturally, so is killing the head of the AI company. Tech has too much power, but AI is going to be at least as good as it is bad (for a while, at least). Everyone in the movie is either a doomer or a tech boomer; it's silly.' Anonymous big-tech alum: 'Was Jason Schwartzman gay? He should have been. Visibility matters! Ramy's look was the best because it was the most schlubby. That hit. But someone should have looked absurdly bad, if you asked me, i.e. Sam Altman's Henleys or Mark Zuckerberg's current Eastern Bloc-drug-dealer phase. The chat was so slick from the beginning and, in my experience, these guys have a lot more awkward pauses. I would have had more security, both in person (Elon has more security than Trump!) and on their phones. The venue was right, in that rich techies love an expansive breakfast bar that no one eats, so I was happy to see that. The decor was also right; modern-ish and quiet luxury-ish, but not, like, mid-century-modern chic. I also liked that the chief of staff was a woman old enough to be Cory's mom (that's the Sheryl Sandberg nod).'
Times
15-05-2025
- Business
- Times
‘Tech bros' sued by female who slept in sauna after drunken night
A female executive who was sacked for allegedly becoming so drunk at a work event she slept in a sauna is now suing the company — claiming that male colleagues who were 'far more intoxicated' were not punished. Shannon Burns is suing the software company Gitpod amid claims that a rampant 'tech bro' culture existed at the 'male-dominated' business. An employment tribunal has been told that Burns was headhunted for a senior role at Gitpod, which came with a £220,000 salary and an equity package potentially worth more than £30 million. Burns has claimed that soon after taking up the position she became aware of problems with the company's working culture. The American executive — who the tribunal was told suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity
