When Musk-Twitter Deal Will Close, Google's Pixel 7

and a watch, even teasing a new tablet. How does it all stack up to Apple? Will take you to the Maid by Google event? And a car that drives itself was supposed to be the future, but the reality for self driving cars seems to be getting further away. Will they even exist in our lifetime? Is this industry a one billion dollar bust? We'll discuss. Let's get into this. Musque Twitter and the latest back and forth. The deal could potentially close at the end of the month, but

Twitter saying not necessarily so fast. Bloomer Zone. Uh, Kurt Wagner has been going back and forth now for months, Kurt, you know what's the hold up now? Why can't they just say let's do it. Yeah, well, there's a huge

distrust factor, Emily. You have to keep that in mind as we're talking about this, right, because a few days ago, Ellen said hey, let's do the original deal at the original price, and Twitter didn't jump on that immediately, which kind of tells you something, right, because it seemed like the two were kind of meeting where they had originally thought they were going to in April, and today we learned that, you know, there's been a hang up around some of the language in uh, you know, what Elan

ultimately said was that there would be a debt contingency right that that that wasn't in the original agreement. And now he's saying, hey, um, you know I have the debt. It's there, and Twitter is basically saying, prove it, show us, because we're not going to sign anything until we have,

you know, a legal document here. And so in the last hour or so, the Musque team has said, hey, we want to stay this trial, we want to we want to pause this thing, and the Twitter team just responded not all that long ago, maybe ten fifteen minutes ago, to say, um, we don't want to do that. And now it's up to the judge as to whether or not they're gonna, you know, put this thing on pause or or continue. What's the likelihood the debt contingency would

actually become an issue. That's a great question. And as far as we can tell, a lot of the commitments that Elon got with, you know, these debt commitments from the banks back in April, and may you know those are as far as we know, still still good. And so Ellen has been saying, well, hey, you know, Twitter is essentially dragging their feet, like there there's no reason

that this debt isn't going to come through. Um, but you know, again, if your Twitter, all you've seen is this guy kind of play games with you and change his mind and flip flop. And so that's where I think this trust thing comes in, right, is even if it there is a high likelihood the debt is indeed there, Um, clearly Twitter is very nervous or uncomfortable with accepting that and moving forward. Now, it also came out that Must tried to negotiate a lower price for the deal, and

this was, as I understand it, weeks ago. Twitter said no, not surprisingly, but he actually did come back to them earlier than we saw and said, Hey, maybe I I actually want to do this. Yeah, they're his lawyer. Um actually issued a public statement today that said that Um, you know, the two sides had talked about lowering that that deal price, which again is fifty four and twenty cents per share, and that Twitter had actually offered a

slightly lower deal. He said that that cut billions of dollars off the price, and that Ellen ultimately said no because there were other kind of requirements or stipulations with with that price reduction. Now we're kind of at that stage, Emily, both sides and both lawyers are really kind of throwing everything they can at one another in public here and and so it's a little bit, uh, you know, we're still trying to figure out exactly how that negotiation may

have played out. But again on the record from meon must employer basically saying Twitter tried to lower this by billions. Must have said no because he didn't like whatever stipulations were included with that. All right, Well, it seems to be an hour by hour, letter by letter, tweet by tweet situation. Ulris Kurt Wagner, thank you for continuing to follow it all for us For the fourth time this year,

Peloton is laying off a significant number of employees. CEO Barry McCarthy told staff today it's part of the effort to save the struggling fitness maker. Roughly five hundred Peloton workers being let go now. This is about twelve of the workforce. In the span of a year, met as a market cap has plunged from over a trillion dollar is to just a few hundred million shares of the social media giant, collapsing some sixty percent over the last

year meeting. The Facebook parent now accounts for less than one percent of the SMP five dred the lowest sin. What is its signal about the company's future? Let's ask our next guest, Chris Kelly. He is Facebook's former chief privacy officer, it's first general counsel and head of global public Policy. Chris, thank you so much for joining us. So, of course, market cap isn't everything, but it's astounding to

look at those numbers. Do you think we're seeing a changing of the guard happened before our very eyes, whereby Meta's influence and power will be significantly diminished relative I think there's obviously a lot of market concern about the direction um that the company's going that the move to the meta versus a focus, the name change, all of these different things that have gone into you know, what the what the streets assessment of the business prospects of

the company are are in the long term, and so that has obviously weighed on the stock quite extensively. Um in the long run that companies will position and I think in general, but needs to to figure out what it's going to emphasize in terms of how they're going to continue to make, you know, great profits and how to you know, lead this transition into the metaverse, which is one of the things that they've articulated as the as the you know, the main goal of the company

by changing the name. Um. You know, in the meantime, they have a whole bunch of these different businesses that operate extraordinarily well, and they're gonna need to make the case um more to the street about about how those have growth prospects and and ultimately that should result in a recovering the market cap over time. But you know, this is the way that the marks major companies these days. It's always it's always a challenge. Meantime, you've got the

Supreme Court taking a look at Section to thirty. How big a blow could that be for META if the power of that law is eroded or erased. Yeah, I Section two thirty has has had a great deal of power, I think in protecting UM the reasonable business decisions of all companies in the space, not just you know, Facebook Meta UM. And and the threats to that are very real right now. UM. The upholding of the Texas law by the Fifth Circuit, the upholding of the Florida law

in the in the eleven circuits so far. UM, there's just a whole bunch of kind of wacky stuff from traditional first amateurs prudence going on right now in the courts because of the way that they've been packed UM. And from there, you know, the companies have to be

very focused on this. UM. I think that there's been a lot of good commentary that says that that the companies might end up engaging in kind of more UM takedowns of of improper behavior, even more takedowns of improper behavior if there were to be some sort of repeal of Section to thirty or or or limitation of it by the interpretation of these statutes, which pretty clearly both conflict with Section two thirty UM and and the first Amendment in a lot of these cases is too So

I think that that's a it's an ongoing work for the companies that they're watching it very closely. But you know, Facebook and Facebook, Meta Google in their you know, in their YouTube division, UM, all sorts of the different companies that are offering media UM and and also content um you know, user generated content have been adapting their policies to to get to some sort of stasis, which is I think okay right now, UM. But they might have

to change it pretty radically if their protections are repeated. Meantime, you've got federal regulation you know that could potentially come with this clobusch Are Grassley law. But there's this market cap provision as I understand it, and Facebook wouldn't even qualify because you know, in terms of its market size

it's too small. You've got leader culture the ftc UM scrutinizing Facebook from another direction, and you know, some of the you know, let's say Facebook uh defenders would say Facebook is getting an undue amount of scrutiny for the size UM at least if you look at the market size of the company today. What do you think about that.

The idea that Facebook is a you know, is a monopolist exercising you know, unjust unallowable monopoly power to either maintain a monopoly or to gain a monopoly has always been a pretty far fetched vision. A whole bunch of people who just didn't like some decisions that the company

was making. Um, you know, the antitrust law is supposed to to protect competition, not competitors, and Facebook has had some competitors who are who are complaining over time, and some smaller companies who would like to get into the field.

But the the idea that that that they're exercising the sort of bottleneck control that's the historic worry of antitrust law has just always been incredibly difficult, which is why Judge Bosberg you know, dismissed the suit in the first instance that the FDCs you know, you know, pleadings were sort of conclusory on that front. He came back and he let the lawsuit pursue with the regard to the federal gover the states, you know, lawsuit was dismissed and

its entirety they're on appeal right now. But I don't think that appeal will be successful, um ultimately, and so it's it's a it's a and if you look at the things that they wanted to go after Facebook for the acquisition of Instagram, the acquisition of WhatsApp, UM, there's a real read of those is more defensive against other big players in the industry like Apple and Google who

controlled the mobile operating systems UM at the time. And so it's it's one of those things where from a traditional antitrust law perspective, it was always a pretty far fetched case and um, you know, it's proceeding now, but after you know, some significant um, you know, kind of hand slapping by a fairly good and you know, principle of traditional antitrust judge in in d C. That said,

Facebook still has a massive cultural and societal impact. We were just speaking with Francis Hogan, the you know now famous uh Facebook with whistleblower, and she expressed her concern that, you know, especially with Cheryl Sandberg leaving that Mark zucker still only really has Mark Zuckerberg to hold him accountable. Take a listen to what she had to say. You know, Marcus surrounded himself with people who tell him the same kinds of stories over and over again. You know, Facebook,

it's just a mirror. It doesn't have responsibility. All these things that we're complaining about have always been present. We're just showing them to people who don't. We don't play any role in this. We have no power. What do you think? I mean? I do think that there's a degree to which, um, you know, Facebook as a gatherer of um of of cultural expression is merely reflecting what

what is going on in reality. But the idea that it shapes it instead is something that the company has has embraced in its research internally, as as a lot of the documents that Francis Haggan put out showed that that, you know, I do think that the company should be more transparent about that research and that they should be engaged in a dialogue saying, look, we understand that that there are challenges um to the change that social media presents,

UH to the way that people traditionally experienced media, and and we're trying to lead them and and and now you know, moving into the metaverse. We want to make sure that that safety and you know, and and sort of mental health as people experience these platforms is part of the mission UM and doing that in a good

way is part of the mission. You know, I think I've seen some pretty good action on that front from the company in the essay as the metaverse pivot has continued to happen UM on that front, and I think that that, you know, the fact that a lot of these documents have come out and have revealed internal research um UH in the company has been mostly a cleansing opportunity for the company to to talk about these things

more openly. That Francis point seems to be that the company shouldn't be hiding these and I think that that's mostly right. I kind of ask your thoughts about Elon Musk and Twitter. I'm curious what you think the risks are. Does Twitter and Twitter under Elon Musk attract or Facebook like problems because it's run by a soul and very

public billionaire. You know his commentary about how simple this could be, and you just, you know, reinstate some of these figures you just allow, you know, we we want to go to the limits to free speech in in law and America where we're gonna try to step back seem a lot more like what you know, people like Francis Huggan or accusing Mark Zuckerberg of than what has actually happened at Facebook and Meta and there's a real danger.

And Ellen's commentary on this has been simplistic and um and and and ill informed in most cases, um, almost as zill informed as some of the stuff that he put out recently about you know, it was effectively Russian propaganda about Ukraine. A lot of these commentary there are areas where he just doesn't have a lot of expertise. And look, I I drive a Tesla, I was an investor in space accent. I mostly believe in Eila Musk

and in his ability in certain areas. But the way that he is you know, roundly dismissed, you know, years of research and thoughtfulness in Twitter's content policies and in terms of ways to approach these difficult matters, Um doesn't bode well for Nilon must brunch Twitter, and so I mean if it if it ends up descending into four chan, Um, it's not something that's ever going to be as valuable as he needs it to be. All Right, Well, that's

quite a you know put comparison there. Uh, certainly much remains to be seeing Chris Kelly, Facebook former chief privacy officer, are gonna have you back here on the show, Chris, uh and hearing away and thank you all right. Coming up the myth of the driverless car, we're gonna talk about why a future where you can relax behind the wheel is still pretty far out. That's our big take.

Next this is Bloomberg Investors have been a hundred billion dollars on the self driving car industry, but how close are we really to truly seeing them? On the oade Well, driverless car engineer and Pronto CEO Anthony Lewandowski says this future is years, if not decades away work. Max Chafkin spoke to him and joins us now for more details on what that means exactly and if that name sounds

familiar Max, of course. Anthony Lewandowski, I feel like we have to say at the start was indicted for charges of theft and stealing trade secrets from Google. Uh. He served a few months in prison. Um, what's he up to now? So yeah, Lewandowski is a very well known figure in this field and as he said, extremely controversial. So he is kind of the guy who kicked the whole thing off. He created the prototype that became Google's

driverless car. Then, as he said, when he went to Uber, he uh was in the middle of this very messy two billion dollar lawsuit that ended, um, you know, with money being paid and also this this indictment, and then he was pardoned by foreign President Trump. Uh, he's back and he has kind of turned critic, which is very interesting because he was probably you know, one of the most outspoken boosters in the industry, particularly one of the

people you know, pushing towards commercialization of these robotaxis. And what are you saying now, basically is that when you look at the progress that the industry has made, when you look at what Weymo and Crews and some of these smaller companies that have raised huge amounts of money have done, you know, it isn't a whole lot. It's

a handful of cars and a handful of cities. They're still extremely restricted, and you're still getting you know, all of these sort of videos on YouTube and else where on social media of driverless cars behaving badly or weird or whatever. And and so there are a lot of reasons, uh to to have skepticism about the industry, and it's and and yet another one is you know this pioneer, this booster, turning critic. So the headline of your story is self driving cars are starting to look like a

hundred billion dollar bust. You talk about weymo car is getting confused by things as simple as traffic cones. What's the real outlook? When are they When are they going to be hitting the roads or or are they ever? Well, you know what we've heard from the kind of industry, Waymo, Cruise and so on, it is basically it's been two years out uh for like the last ten years. I mean, you know, even going all the way back to like twenty when Google at the time was unveiling these cars.

They were saying, oh, we can handle any road. And then we saw Chris Urmson, who was running the program for a while, say that his child was eleven, was gonna have um, you know, his drivers was never gonna have a driver's license. And we're kind of still in that place where where it's this kind of near term

uh thing, but it's all very vague. And what what would Lewandowski is saying, and what what you hear if you talk to people who are outside of the of the sort of core of this industry is that we're talking decades, We're not talking years. Now. This isn't to say that there aren't advances, There are an important technology happening that some of this stuff won't in fact change

the world. It's just that the full blown you know, level four, level five autonomy, this is the idea that you get in a car with out of steering wheel that is looking increasingly shaky. And I think one of the reasons you see, really the only two companies who are who are putting huge amounts of money into this, Weymo and Cruise both have you know, big corporate backing Weymo in the case of Google Alphabet and Cruise of

course is GM quickly Max. Our kids are still going to get driver's licenses, right, yeah, I think unfortunately that's the case. Um. Now again, there are huge improvements, and I think on the kind of advanced driver assistance technology, our kids will maybe driving much safer cars. Um we're seeing that, you know, Tesla's autopilot, even though they market that as self driving, but but it's really a really great driver assistance technology as well as GM, Super Cruise

and others. So cars are definitely getting safer. There are technological advances, but this kind of crazy steering wheel free future um looks increasingly shaky. All right, take note parents everywhere. Max Chafkin excellent story by You can check it out in Bloomberg Business Seek Thanks back, Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology and Emily Chang in San Francisco. We're gonna get back to September payrolls coming out Friday. But jobs news has been moving markets for months as the FED works

to cut inflation. Thursday, no exception. Tech again in the headlines. Are at bood Log back with the top tech stories, and yeah, believe it not. There was news in the last twenty four hours that had nothing to do with Elon Musk, and it was very focused on jobs. As you say, you see Amazon softed by half of the cent. They're adding a hundred and fifty thousand workers for the holiday period, same as they added one temporary workers to handle that demand. But what's interesting is it to assign

the demands there. Bloomberg scoop General Electric cutting hundreds of jobs, according to sources, in its manufacturing unit that's responsible for making wind turbines for wind energy because the demand has gone and of course Peloton we've been speaking about during the show. I find Amazon really interesting. Right We're all braced for payrolls data on Friday. There's mixed signals about what the jobs market is like right now in the

United States. But it's a big vote of confidence in consumer demand that Amazon is bringing in the same reinforcement for this holiday shopping period that it did in one, even at a time where sellers and merchants and the Amazon dot Com platform are worried they're bracing for a slowdown in consumer spending due to inflation and perhaps and pulled forward if that spending to earlier in the year. You see the details of what Amazon's doing behind me.

But you know, remember between March and June of this year, largely through attrition, they reduced headcount by around a hundred thousand to undo the investment of the pandemic era. Then this Peloton. Another five hundred jobs to be cut from Peloton, and make that around forty six hundred so far this year. Is this the final step in Baron McCarthy's plan to turn around Peloton's fortunes. Of course, we've all gone back to the gym, some of us, some of us back

to the office using our pelotons less. But they've had to reduce head count in a period where growth has gone and they're pivoting to a more asset light model. So really interesting to see what text doing in this climate, particularly when it comes to the jobs front. All right, I'd love to thank you. Meantime, Google announced a suite of new products at the annual Made by Google event. Along with the Pixel seven and Pixel Watch, Google teased an upcoming Pixel tablet to take on Apple's iPad and

Amazon's Echo devices. Let's bring in Rick Osterlowe, Google Senior vice president of Devices and Services. Rit great to have you back with us. So new phones and features, uh and you know, well, we're in a very difficult economic time where consumers are under pressure paying more for everything from gas to groceries. What's your argument to customers about why they should upgrade their smartphones now? Well, first of all, thanks for having the Emily, and secondly, we're really excited

about our announcements today. UM for a variety of reasons, but we we believe that personal computing technology like phones, watches, UH and earphones UM and tablets are just absolutely essential computing capabilities. So well, I know that right now a lot of people might be concerned with all the economic uncertainty. I think it's really critical that that these products are

in marketing in the hands of users. UM were are also offering uh some new phone capabilities with our Pixel seven and seven Pro that I think people find just a terrific value. We have our Pixel seven products we introduced today at five, nine, and nine and a Pixel seven Pro with some awesome capabilities for eight ninety nine, which is significantly less than other options in the market. So we wanted to make sure that people had some

great options to choose from in today's economic uncertainty. So let's talk about some of the new tech you brought back face unlock after you actually removed it a few years back. Why is that, UM, Well, you know, we have a variety of ways to unlock your phone. We wanted to make sure that we had a really convenient way for people to unlock their phone. The primary way is through a fingerprint sensor, which is right on the display,

makes it really easy to unlock your phone. But also for convenience, we've added the ability just using the front facing camera and a lot of our AI technology to be able to unlock the phone using your face as well, So that added element makes it much easier to do something that you probably do a hundred times a day. Let's talk that about your projections. There's this report from nik that you're hoping to double Pixel sales compared Is that the goal and given these economic times, what makes

you think that's realistic? Well, I mean, I think our products just keep getting better and better, and so our aim is certainly to continue to grow our business. Here you know, we have a comment on exact projections, but certainly we have been growing and our intention is to continue to do so, and we're doing that through innovations in AI, making sure that our products are more and more helpful for our users using our underlying AI technology,

and then also by expanning our portfolio. We now have three terrific phone products with six A, seven and seven Pro hitting the market, and then we introduced the pixel Watch for the first time UM and we also have Pixel Buds Pro earphones, and this combination of technology we think is what people are looking for right now. So hang on, Rick, we're getting some breaking news out of the Elon Musk Twitter saga. The judge in Delaware has said the deal must close by five pm on October

has paused the court case until October. Remember we were expecting to go to trial on October sev the judge saying if a deal isn't closed by October, they will set a trial date of November. We're gonna get a little more context in a moment, Rick, Let's talk a little bit about what you see as the long term viability of the hardware business. How much runway do you think you have given you know, all this company I mentioned, I mentioned Apple, I mentioned Amazon, given all this competition

out there. Oh well, I mean this is a very long term investment for the company, and the market we're pursuing is absolutely enormous UM. But probably most importantly, this space of delivering personal technology to our users is absolutely critical for end users UM and we see it as a great way for people to experience the very best

technology that Google has to offer. We literally take our latest AI research and machine learning models and bring that right to our users with Pixel and so this we see, this is absolutely essential alright, Google Senior vice president of Devices and Services, Rick Australo with all the news from the Made by Google event, thank you Rick for joining us. I want to get back to that Twitter news. Uh. The judge halting the court case until October twenty saying

the deal must close by five pm. So ed, if you're going to Delaware, it's not going to be until October twenty eight. Uh, potentially at least talk to us about the latest headlines. What are we hearing? Yes, so the deal has until five pm October two close, as you say. If the deal does not close by that period,

Kathleene st Je the call make. The chancery judge in Delaware overseeing this m and A case this dispute says that she will go to trial in November, so you know, the door is still open to kind of any outcome here. You see Twitter shares rising in after hours, were up about one point two percent right now, we were as higher as as high as three percent. And remember with that share pushing higher, it's kind of an indication from Wall Street that they see the chances of this deal

now happening. Twitter indicating their court filing earlier on Thursday that they wanted this to happen much sooner. They said that MUSK could close as soon as next week. By the tent date was the one that was originally put out by the Musque team in their court filing where they requested that the stay of proceedings happened that this trial be paused. Remember, Twitter opposed that in a court filing later in the day. Thursday has said we do

not want to pause these proceedings. But Kafine and St Jude McCormick, the Chance re judge, appears to have sided with Team Musk at this time, the judge saying, so set a date for November for a trial. If the deal doesn't close by October, there's still this contingency of the debt financing. Are we to understand by this that um, that's not going to be an issue or do we

believe that's basically the main issue that remains. Yes. So, in the first court filing Thursday, Musk's team said that Twitter, you know, wouldn't say yes to the deal, that they were hung up on this idea of the debt not being there, which Musk team kind of indicated was not

a problem. In the filing that Twitter's team gave us later, they said that Musk could not even discuss closing the deal with the banks, you know, The concern is that Musk has this twelve point five billion dollars of debt split between a six point five billion dollar loan, three billion of un secured, three billion of secured bonds. There's also revolving credit line in there as well. Times have changed since that deal and that package was agreed in April um and so I guess the concern in the

background is is the viability of that debt. You know, here at Bloomberg, our expert analysts are are beat reporters have dug into this issue, and it's kind of unthinkable that the banks would walk away from giving Musk a Musk team the money or the proceeds from that debt. You know, it would be a big hit to their credibility for one, but the banks do then need to go to Wall Street and sell the debt to institutional investors.

So clearly, Twitter, if they don't have concerns about the debt, I think they still have concerns about what Musk's true intentions are. That much we can gather from the court filings Thursday. So what's your hunch are you going to do? You're asking me if we're going to Delaware that's the question. I mean, look, we're not going to Delaware on October seventeen.

Certainly Twitter employees I've spoken to this week, many of them outlined early they thought this was a play for time by Musks to go back to the original offer. We don't know. We don't know what the psychology around this is from Elon must but Kathleen st Judy McCormick has made a very fast decision. I don't think anyone expected her to take both court filings one us to stay one didn't, and then decide this quick. That's where we stand. We do not know, except that it's still

not a done deal. Okay, thank you for the play by play. As always, what we do know about the executive who withdrew millions before Celsius's bankruptcy. Another scandal unfolding. That's next. This is Bloomberg time now for our crypto report, and remember Celsius. Well, we're now learning the former CEO of the bankrupt crypto lender withdrew millions just before stopping customer withdrawals. Bloom Worth Katie Greifeld here to explain, Katie,

what do we know? Well, just to reach out the timeline a little bit like you said we had the former CEO withdrawal about ten million dollars in May. He wasn't allow. You also had co founder Dan Leon and chief technology officer Nuke Goldstein also withdraw millions. That was in May, and if we remember, in June, Celsius halted customer withdrawals and then ultimately filed for bankruptcy in July. So the timing here obviously a bit of a question mark as we work through this bankruptcy and we'll see

how this shakes out. And just to remind the audience, Celsius was one of the highest flying lenders, obviously promising returns, trying to take on actual traditional banks by saying you can investor coins, received interest on them. Obviously that came crashing down in a pretty spectacular way. And this slow drip of news has been just fascinating to watch as we get closer and deeper into this bankruptcy. So it's hard to believe anything could be more exciting or volatile

in terms of news than crypt show markets. But elon Musk and Twitter, I've given us just that. That said, there is still action in crypto markets. I know you've been watching bitcoin and how uh it's been related to the market rally or not. What trends are you pulling out? It is pretty amusing that crypto is sort of the ho hull market right now. But a trend that I have noticed is that actually it's the crypto equities that

have been outperforming this week. You have Bitcoin holding up relatively well amid all the volatility that we've seen in the stock market. Bitcoin is about four percent higher over the past four days or so. But if you look at micro Strategy micro Strategy coin based Marathon, they're all up by double digits, which is pretty amazing to me. Part of the reason could just be that they fell

much more dramatically than Bitcoin itself. For example, if you look at bitcoin, it's down about fifty seven percent year to date. If you look at coin based that number is seventy one percent. So it could be a function of the fact that they fell further they have more room to rise. But it's definitely a trend to keep an eye on amid this mild resilience, I would almost call it in the crypto market. So what are you gonna be watching in the in the US overnight? Can

I shamelessly plug something? Of course, that I'm gonna go ahead and do that. So Crypto I RA all. It's show that I host with Tim Stanovic. It's gonna be on Quick Take at eight thirty pm Eastern tonight a

thirty pm Eastern on Friday night. We're gonna dig into after this amazing draw down that we've seen Bitcoin down fifty seven percent this year alone, who's going to lead the rebuild, who's going to be the winner, who's going to be the loser, and whether that's going to be sort of the crypto native companies or whether we're going to see traditional finance come in here. All right, So my bad is that's not going to be home at all. Excited to see it. Katie Greifeld Crypto I r L

take a watch. Thank you, Katie. There's another sign that labor demand in the US may be starting to moderate. Unemployment applications rose more than expected last week by twenty nine thousand. This after the Labor Department said that the number of available jobs in August decreased by a million. This as the return to the office is waning or ebbing, let's say nationwide. Last week was the second straight week or office occupancy barely budged after shooting up right after

Labor Day. For more on the labor market in the future of work, I want to bring in Fran Katsua, Cisco Executive Vice president in chief, People Policy and Purpose Officer. Fran, it's great to have you back with us. So it's been called the Great Resignation. Now we're hearing the great realignment. We're hearing about quiet quitting, what in your view is actually happening within the workforce. Thank you, Emily, I'm so

glad to be with you. I think what we're talking about is an amazing opportunity to to really think about work. I think sometimes when we talk about this phase, we're so focused on whether people are working from home or from the office that we don't look at this opportunity

from a future of work perspective. As you know, at Cisco, we have worked hybrid actually before the pandemic, we've had a lot of flexibility, and what we see at this moment is that one of the most critical elements about work is inclusion and flexibility and really understanding there isn't a one size fits all to the amazing work that we have to do, and if we're able to intersect flexibility with the work and innovation and connection that we're building,

it can be an amazing opportunity and not something to dread. So give me some specifics about how Cisco is changing its strategy now. Um, you know we're you know, we're coming out of of the pandemic, but it's hard to know where new normal is really going to be. Yeah, So the first thing that I would say is, I think all companies are still learning and evolving, and the way that we're handling this at Cisco is in a

very decentralized way. We've asked every leader at Cisco to really work with their team to figure out against the backdrop of the work and how people are at their best to make arrangements. And for some people Emily, that means that maybe they're coming in once or twice a week. Sometimes it's a little bit more. But because from a Cisco perspective, we have been doing this for for so long,

what we can see is there's amazing opportunities. We see that career trajectory for people, regardless of where they're working, can be equal. And we also see another opportunity from a Cisco perspective, which is really all about the tech. What we see from our customers is they want to have an experience for their people that is similar whether

they're sitting in the office or sitting at home. And I think the other interesting thing right now is that we're seeing inclusion really intersect technology in a very different way, where the tech is working harder to make sure that every person is pulled into a meeting, innovation, a brainstorming session on a white board, and I think that's going to be critical for all companies moving forward. Well, that's

certainly an opportunity for Cisco's WebEx. I'm curious for your take on San Francisco's downtown, which still hasn't recovered from the pandemic and it seems to be coming back much more slowly than other US cities. Do you think it ever will be the same and what does that mean for for tech culture. I don't think it will be the same, and I think that's part of the problem.

I think that a lot of companies are stepping into this wanting to go back, and what we're realizing at Cisco is that we have to invite our people back into the office. Right now, Emily, we're talking about our leaders as having a new role, which is these event managers that are really thinking about that connection. I think the amazing things that all companies want the connection. They

want to have the culture. But asking people to come in and sit on their own while they do their video calls or their emails just doesn't make sense to our people. And so I think it's going to be really the focus on, uh, the anniversary celebration, the brainstorming session, maybe the community give back that will bring our people to the office in a different way. And I think we just have to lean into that trend and try

new things until we find what works. So as the Silicon Valley kind of standard of you know, office gyms and catered food and on site laundry is not era over, Oh goodness, that's a really tough question. I will tell you that at the moment, I don't think those perks are as valuable as they once were. What we're hearing from our people is they want to work in an environment where they can contribute, where they can have impact, where they can decide on a week to week basis

whether or not they're coming in. And so I do think there's going to be a new set of benefits and perks that are more meaningful to our people. It's interesting, Emily, because when I talk to my peers a US industries and for those companies that are mandating that their people come back, they're sharing that their people are still not coming back. And so it's it's not these perks that will bring them back. I think it's going to be one another. It's going to be teams and really having

a career that fits your goals. All right, Francot Suit, us executive vice president of Cisco fran good to have you back with us. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the changing lay of the land that does it. For this edition of Bloomberg Technology, We've got a great show coming up Friday. Sarah couldn't of Cleo. We'll be joining us to talk about tech sentiment in response to the US jobs report. And don't forget to check out our podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Changing,

San Francisco. This is Bloomberg