How do you think VC firms work? There is no "own money". Their entire business is getting rich people, institutional investors, governments, pension funds, endowments etc. to give them money and investing that money in startups, keeping a cut for themselves.

Do you know how the Japanese think of and/or talk about "Japanese Cyberpunk"; e.g. Tetsuo: The Iron Man? It's interesting to me that there is "Japanese cyberpunk" and then there is regular cyberpunk made by Japanese artists (e.g. Ghost in the Shell). Do the Japanese consider these completely separate genres? Variants of the same genre? Are most fans even aware that Westerners make the distinction?

I don’t remember when it became normalized for profitable companies to casually execute major layoffs. It used to be a “shameful” last resort that CEOs turned to as a last ditch effort to save a company facing bankruptcy.

I suspect it’s related to the stock buyback safe harbor rule (Rule 10b-18.) Layoff announcements used to be a sign of a company in crisis, now the stock price often immediately rises, perhaps because shareholders are anticipating a short-term windfall.

I haven't heard of anyone being laid off in my circle, no newspaper talking about that. Sure there must have been some Microsoft or Google employee laid off, but they do not represent big numbers here, so it's totally different. There are also almost no startups here.

The layoffs affected mostly the US market. In EU, there never has been an excess of salaries or hiring, so it's almost just bad as usual. You don't see much "funding" and "VC"s here. If you wanna stay on the market, you better have positive cash flow. In Italy, salaries are about 1/4 of what's overseas, it is very hard to job hop, those who do are seen as opportunistic people. So, you feel this slightly less.

All this AI marketing thing is another thing that is specific about Silicon Valley and investments, and "growth". In EU, you don't have much growth, and that's all.

I guess the US tech market has been drugged on free cash for too long, to even have an idea of what the real world is.

This could not be less true and I really wish people would stop spreading this idea, because it's costing other people lots of money. In fact, the Venn diagram mapping "software celebrities" like Patrick and expert negotiators has not much overlap at all. You've never heard of some of the best-compensated developers I know (and they don't work on "celebrity" projects, either); meanwhile, I can think of multiple "celebrities" who have gotten extremely raw deals --- one, for instance, was brought in to lead engineering & R&D at a security company working against organized crime, and didn't even get any equity.

Patrick is right: compensation is much more about negotiating skill than it is about reputation or (especially) notoriety, holding everything else equal.