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On Tuesday, Microsoft said it is cutting less than 3% of its global workforce, including LinkedIn. The company which an estimated 228,000 employees as of last June, meaning the layoffs will affect approximately 6,000 employees. The tech giant, which makes popular software products Windows and Word, will make cuts across various locations, teams, and roles. We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace, a Microsoft spokesperson told Fast Company. The news comes less than two weeks after the Redmond, Washington-based company beat first quarter earnings expectations, driven by its Azure cloud business. It also issued strong guidance going forward, despite President’s Trump’s tariffs and overall economic uncertainty. Microsoft also said it invested heavily in AI infrastructure during the first quarter of 2025. Microsoft said that it regularly adjusts its workforce to meet the strategic demands of the business, and that by reducing layers with fewer managers, the company hopes to increase agility and enhance efficiency by minimizing redundancy and streamlining processes, procedures, and roles. It also said the cuts will let employees spend more time leveraging new technologies and capabilities. On Tuesday, a number of LinkedIn employees posted about the reported layoffs on LinkedIn. The layoffs would be the largest at the company since 2023, when Microsoft eliminated 10,000 jobs, and follows a small round of performance-based layoffs at the beginning of 2025. However, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC the upcoming layoffs are not performance based. CEO Satya Nadella previously said Microsoft planned to spend $80 billion on data centers for artificial intelligence workloads in 2025, which could be even more costly with tariffs. Microsoft isn’t the only tech company to make cuts since the beginning of this year. A number of high-profile technology giants have been trimming their ranks, including Amazon, Meta, and Salesforce. Facebook parent company Meta Platforms cut about 5% of its workforceroughly 3,600 employeesin February, and Amazon announced it was laying off dozens at the end of January.
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E-Commerce
Eleven years after Google first announced its grand unifying theory of designMaterial Designits introducing its third major revision to the system.Called Material 3 Expressive, the company will tell you that it is its most researched update ever, promising to help people find what theyre looking for on the screen faster than before. But its also the companys most maximalist design system to date. Still enabling quieter minimalist designs, sure, but embracing bolder colors, more playful animations, and all around more overt approaches to interface. Theres a new roundness to almost every component, right down to the tips of Googles new default typeface, Google Sans Flex Rounded, which replaces the hard-edged terminals on letterforms with smooth tips.[Image: Google]But mostly, Google is using more of everything to accentuate contrast, like between headers and bodies. Button shapes can now be anything from giant pills to stars. Perkier animations rekindle techs old favorite words, joy and delight, with a bit more springiness in them across the board. And UI elements on your screen often react to othersdial a phone number, and each digit you press bounces the others out of the way like cartoony bubble tape.Its kind of like the next evolution, says Vanessa Cho, VP of Google Design. Its design with the soul. What I mean by that is its [still] driven with deep purpose but it also connects with you on the emotional level.[Image: Google]The history of Material DesignMaterial Design was born over a decade ago, as Google designers developed a grounding metaphor to codify its otherwise fragmented approach to design. Inspired by light and paper, Material Design was like a stretchy piece of wonder paper that could reshape to do anything, and it brought a sense of tactile physics to search, Android, and other Google services.In the years since, Material Design veered from its ambitious roots. It imagined eventually breaking out of screens and becoming the interface for our liveswhat would be a better interface for an internet of things than literal matter that would reshape itself in front of you? Material Design was built for a path toward that smart infrastructure that seemed so inevitable in the 2010s. But a decade later, and the world didnt play out that way. Instead, most things stayed dumb as we got sucked deeper and deeper into our phones. The stoic minimalism that Material Design version 1 celebrated got washed out by the pixel onslaughts of TikTok and other social media platforms. The emoji of 2014 seem quaint in comparison to just about everything on Instagram, where even AI characters are attempting to be my BFF.So in 2021, Material Design pivoted. It became more about personalizationallowing your phone to have a color palette and typefaces more reflective of you. And now? Material Design is trending more maximal, with an overt approach to design thats willing to call attention to itself as a moment of celebration, rather than disappear into the background.[Image: Google]Were in an era of expression thinking about TikTok and whatever youre on, says Mindy Brooks, VP of Product & UX for Android Platform. So this design system allows us to, even as developers and creators of it, to express what we want to in the product.Testing and manifestingAcross Googles products, these new design standards play out in different ways. On Android, it means we see apps presented in a greater array of typefaces (pushing expressiveness and information hierarchy at the same time), while apps like Photos trend toward the Canva create-a-card vibes we get on iOS today. On Wear OS, the colors from your phone can be mirrored on your wrist, and buttons now wrap all the way into the curves of the display through a lovely marriage of device and UI.[Image: Google]But what Googles design team most wants to highlight is that Material 3 Expressive isnt style over substance. Validated by 46 studies that tested hundreds of designs across more than 18,000 participants, they found that the expressive end of the Material Design system was preferred across all age groups, though especially by Gen Z, which preferred the more maximalist screens 87% of the time.[Image: Google]The team also found that Material 3 Expressive was faster to navigate. Certain actions were spotted up to four times faster than before. And while older adults are typically slower at finding certain buttons on the screen, the larger buttons inside Material 3 Expressive proved faster to find for everyonewhile eliminating the age gap. Google claims older adults can use this design system with the same rapidity of youth. (And who woulda thunk that a big red send button would be easier to spot than that old little paper airplane in the corner?)As a design solution, its hard to argue with Googles own validating data or the joy of bringing in more color and motion into the mix. But Im more interested in Material 3 Expression for what it reveals about this era of design. For the last decade and a half minimalism has taken over everything from blanded branding to interface (the world of interior design notwithstanding, which has been waffling on the idea for some time). But celebratory expression used to be in! Animations like Apples genie effectwhich shrunk apps into your task bar like a genie into the lampembodied playfulness before minimalism conquered tech. They were invented way back in 2004 during a more optimistic time in tech, right beside Bondi blue iMacs with handles on them. This was the hope of a world that didnt end after Y2K. Now, screen time debates have been decimated by the For You Page and AI everything, while your Grazas and Manischewitzes of the world prioritize a bit of funk over subdued Swissness. Were back in expressive times again.
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E-Commerce
Minnesota farmer Dan Glessing isnt ready to get too upset over President Donald Trumps trade wars. Farm country voted heavily for Trump last November. Now Glessing and many other farmers are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the Republican president’s disputes with China and other international markets. China normally would buy about one row out of every four of the Minnesota soybean crop and took in nearly $13 billion worth of soybeans from the U.S. as a whole last year. More than half of U.S. soybeans are exported internationally, with roughly half of those going to China, so it’s a critical market. Trump last month raised U.S. tariffs on products from China to 145%, and China retaliated with 125%. But Monday’s announcement of a 90-day truce between the two countries backed up the reluctance of many farmers to hit the panic button. More good news came in an updated forecast from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday that projected higher corn exports and only slightly lower corn prices. The report also predicted somewhat lower soybean exports but higher domestic consumption, resulting in higher prices. Soybean futures surged. After he finished planting his soybean crop on Monday, Glessing said he was excited by the news and hopes to see more progress. But he said he wasn’t really surprised. Tariffs, weather, and other uncertainty On a bright, sunny day last week, as he began planting soybeans, Glessing said tariffs were only one of the things he’s worried aboutand not necessarily the biggest. Farming, after all, is an enterprise built on loose soil, the whims of weather, and other uncontrollable factors. Am I concerned about tariffs? Yeah. I mean, theres uncertainty that comes with that,” Glessing said. “Is that the number one driving factor in these poor commodity prices the last two years? No. As he steered his 25-year-old Case IH tractor over a gently rolling field near the town of Waverly, he towed a planter that inserted his seeds through the stubble of last years corn crop. As he laid down the long rows, he rumbled past a pond where wild swans paddled about. Riding shotgun was Georgie the corgi, who alternated between roaming around his cab and half-dozing at his feet. Perhaps more skeptical than Glessing is Matt Griggs, one of many soybean farmers in Tennessee paying close attention to the trade war. On Monday, he said the ripple effects on farmers might still be coming. Were only on a 90-day pause, Griggs said. Who knows what is going to come after that? Joe Janzen, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois, said the commodity markets have largely shaken off the initial shock of the trade war, including Trumps declaration of April 2 as Liberation Day, when he announced stiff worldwide tariffs. Our markets have largely rebounded and are back where we were around April 2, Janzen said. Tariffs have not had a major impact on prices yet. Even something that might seem like good newsideal planting conditions across much of the Midwesthas its downside. The potential for bigger crops sent prices downward, Glessing noted. High interest rates, and seed and fertilizer costs pose additional challenges. Theres so many other factors besides just tariffs and my market price, Glessing said. Looking for signs of progress But Glessing said he was encouraged by that mornings news of a trade deal with the United Kingdom, and said he hopes the current uncertainty in talks with China and other countries ultimately leads to better trade deals going forward. Glessing had finished planting his corn the day before on the other half of a field that he rents from his fathers cousin, split between 45 acres of corn and 45 acres of beans. It’s at the farm where his grandfather grew up, and it’s part of the approximately 700 acres he plants on average. He locked in those planting decisions months earlier as he made deals for seeds, fertilizer, and other supplies. Back on his home farm closer to Waverlywhere his late grandfathers house, made of local brick, still stands and a cacophony of house sparrow songs filled the airGlessing was pleased to spot the first signs of corn he had planted there about 10 days earlier poking above the soil. Waverly is about an hour west of Minneapolis. Its most famous resident was Democratic former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Its in the congressional district represented by Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer. Glessings post as president of the Minnesota Farm Bureau puts him in close touch with other influential politicians, too. He and his wife, Seena, were Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchars guests at the Capitol for Trumps inauguration in January. Glessing declined to say who he voted for. The Glessings have three kids, milk about 75 dairy cows, and grow corn, soybeans, and alfalfa on a combination of parcels they own or rent. He uses the alfalfa and corn primarily to feed his cows. He sells his soybeans to a processing plant in Mankato, where some of them become soybean meal he adds to his animal feed. The milk from his cows goes to a co-op cheese plant in Litchfield that sells internationally. Because Glessing has local buyers locked in and doesnt directly export his crops, he’s partially cushioned from the volatility of world markets. But hes quick to point out that everything in the agricultural economy is interconnected. Lessons learned during Trump’s first trade war On his farm near Humboldt, Tennessee, roughly midway between Memphis and Nashville, Griggs weathered the 2018 trade war during Trumps first term and said he feels more prepared this time around. Back in 2018, prices were about the same as what they are now, and due to the trade war with China, prices dropped around 15%, he said. They dropped significantly lower, and they dropped in a hurry, and due to that, we lost a lot of demand from China. p>Griggs said exports to China never fully rebounded. But he doesn’t think the impact of the current dispute will be nearly as drastic. Griggswho raises approximately 1,600 acres of cotton, corn, soybeans, and wheatsaid tariffs were just one consideration as he planned out this years crops. Growing a variety of crops helps him minimize the risk that comes with weather, volatile prices, and now the prospect of a trade war. Griggs said hes going to be watching for opportunities to sell when market volatility causes upticks in prices. The main thing I learned in 2018 was that if you do have a price period where prices have risen some, go ahead and take advantage of it instead of waiting for it to go higher, he said. Because when it comes to the tariffs and everything, the markets can be very unpredictable. So my lesson learned was, Dont hold out for a home run, be satisfied with a double. Griggs said a temporary subsidy called the Market Facilitation Program that helped soybean farmers withstand some of the losses last time could help if something similar is revived this year. But he said no farmer wants to make a living off government subsidies. We just want fair access to markets, Griggs said. And a fair price for the products we produce. Steve Karnowski and Kristin M. Hall, Associated Press AP videographer Mark Vancleave also contributed to this report.
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E-Commerce
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