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Elon Musk and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Will Advise Trump On Business Issues (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick have joined President-elect Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum, which will regularly meet with the soon-president to advise on business issues, the Trump transition team said in a statement. From a report on The Verge: The now 19-member council, established earlier this month, also includes Disney CEO Bob Iger and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. Members will "share their specific experience and knowledge as the President implements his economic agenda," according to the transition statement. PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi also joins today. The announcement suggests a new link between the president-elect and Silicon Valley, which has been generally wary of the Trump presidency, with the notable exception of Facebook board member and Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who supported Trump despite controversy and has been working as an adviser for the transition team.

6 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Oh fuck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They're going to advise him they need even more H-1Bs.

    They might say that, but that's not the same as Trump will do as they say. Trump said he will talk to companies and figure out why they aren't hiring American workers and then try to solve the problems. During his campaign, he already discovered one reason: regulations. It's much cheaper, faster and easier to just build a plant in Mexico than to go through regulations set by Washington. For all we know he is investigating which specific regulations, which works to push out companies.

    Just assuming he will do as the CEOs request and assume what the CEOs will request is like assuming Trump will pick Romney. (which he didn't despite the press presenting it as a safe bet)

  2. Re:Slashdot is killing itself by Rei · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The NYT showed a 96% drop in quarterly profits [dailycaller.com] over the election season, very probably because of continuous partisan trash talking.

    From your article:

    The company also reported that total revenue dropped one percent to $363.6 million from $367.4 million.

    Wow, one percent reduction in revenue - people were clearly quite ticked off....

    (Given that newspapers are a declining industry to begin with, I wouldn't be surprised if that beats the industry average)

    --
    Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
  3. Re:Slashdot is killing itself by bryanbrunton · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've given up on Slashdot because the lowering of the quality of the posts (the level of detail, precision and insight) is directly correlated to number of conservative dipsticks here on Slashdot. The constant denial of global warming. The defending of the pussy grabber in Chief. Pizzagate level bullshit is fairly common on slashdot.

    There's really little difference between slashdot and r/the_donald.

  4. Re:Slashdot is killing itself by Minupla · · Score: 3, Interesting

    trash talk or support Trump you're alienating fully half the readership.

    I suspect your stats are actually wrong here - you're assuming 100% of the readership is American. I can speak for my small piece of the rest of the world when I say that pretty much unanimously the response in Toronto is "Umm, we tried electing someone like that as our mayor... did you not follow the late night comedy jokes about him? It didn't go so well."

    Min

    --
    On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
  5. Visa Fraud by number6x · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What the rule should be for H1B visas is that one cannot displace existing workers in the organization in order to bring in contractors on H1B status. Don't allow an abstraction layer between the job to be performed and the original company in the form of the middle-man contractor company to allow this kind of BS.

    Excellent Idea, and good catch on the 'abstraction layer' BS!

    H1B visas are only supposed to be used when an American worker with the same skills cannot be found, yet we keep hearing about cases where American workers train their H1B visa worker replacements before the Americans are fired. This should be a big red flag. The job should not be H1B eligible because there is an American worker available to do the job, the person currently doing the job.

    How do employers get away with this obvious visa fraud with no penalties whatsoever? They use the job description equivalent of 'creative accounting'.

    1. 1) First, define your current employee with a label of some kind. Say they are a 'Program Universal Design Specialist II (PUDS II)' or some other made up label. Then, define the task that the employee currently does as being a task for a 'PUDS II'.
    2. 2) A few weeks later. re-define the task as being a task for a 'Program Implementation and Support Specialist(PISS)'. Make sure to note that you have no employees that meet the skill requirements of a PISS. Note, also, that you can find no American candidates that meet the skill requirements of a PISS, but that the Indian vendor you work with happens to have a few really good PISS candidates, with whatever certifications are needed to back up the claim.
    3. 3) Contract with the vendor to bring in the PISS employees on an H1B's. Tell the current American PUDS II's that the company no longer has any tasks for a PUDS to work on, and that their job will be terminated. (If they sign a contract to train the incoming H1B PISS, never [complain|sue|talk about the company disparagingly|steal the office supplies] they can work the next 6 months, get severance pay and will not be denied when they apply for unemployment.)
    4. 4) Profit!

    With a few simple re-definitions of employee roles and employee tasks you can avoid fines and still engage in blatant visa fraud.

  6. Re:Slashdot is killing itself by bfpierce · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My point would be, in a large sense, that the choice of what to post as news (this is actually news, it is stuff that matters) is not the problem.

    It's not fucking bait, it's an actual story that actually happened that we should (regardless of what color armband you wear) be interested in. These are the people who are going to be drivers for tech related economic policy for the next 4+ years.

    If we can't discuss that without diving into partisan bullshit we're the problem, not the editors. What this guy is basically asking for is to turn /. into a fucking safe space from anything to do with government because we're all emotional about it. That's fucking stupid.