On Longevity, Quarterly Results, and Tech Layoffs

This post will not be a stream-of-conscious trek through the jagged canyons of my mind, but I reserve the authorial prerogative to slam dance from topic to topic.

I don’t indulge in doom scrolling, but like anybody caught in the digital spiderweb of our times, I sometimes become ensnared by social media. The other day, while reviewing LinkedIn observations of former colleagues, professional acquaintances, and people I don’t know at all, I came across a post by a guy who said he’s taped a grid map to a wall in his home. Apparently the grid depicts the weeks or months in a life (I can’t recall whether it was weeks or months) that extends through 90 years, which he defines arbitrarily as the terminus. When each week or month passes, he blacks it out, leaving unmarked the time that presumably remains in his life for his future accomplishments and experiences.

Did you notice my use of presumably? When I saw his post, I marveled at its presumption. 90 years? He must hail from robust genetic stock. In my family, males are fortunate to make it as far as 65. Granted, my family tree has some gnarled branches, featuring self-destructive types with inveterate proclivities that are not conducive to healthy living. The same blood courses through my veins, but I’ve done my best to quash, mitigate, or contain such impulses.

My questionable genetic profile aside, the vast majority of us, even in this era of comparatively advanced medical science, will not live as long as 90. Just look at any insurance company’s actuarial tables. Those companies extract money from knowing about life and death. Their business depends on it.

According to Claude the AI dude, from the land of Anthropic, a bot presumably was not under the hallucinogenic influence of psilocybin, here’s a view of global longevity indices:

The average global life expectancy is approximately 73 years as of 2023, but this varies significantly by country and region.

Here are some notable life expectancy figures for different countries:
Japan: ~85 years (among the highest globally)
Switzerland: ~84 years
Australia: ~83 years
Canada: ~82 years
United Kingdom: ~81 years
United States: ~77 years
China: ~77 years
Russia: ~72 years
India: ~70 years
Nigeria: ~55 years
Central African Republic: ~53 years (among the lowest globally)
These differences are influenced by factors like:
Healthcare quality and access
Economic development
Public health infrastructure
Diet and lifestyle
Environmental conditions
Political stability
Education levels

Life expectancy has generally increased worldwide over the past century due to advances in medicine, better nutrition, improved sanitation, and declining infant mortality rates, though progress varies substantially by region.

Time and Its Uses

None of the inhabitants of the above nations, you might have noticed, achieves a ripe average age of 90, though five countries are topping (pardon the pun) 80. I think that guy on LInkedIn might wish to scale back his expectations. There’s a popular song, written in 1949, but covered many times since then, that advises sagely that it’s later than you think.

The fact is, none of us knows when the end will come. You might think it’s morbid even to discuss such matters in polite company — I am assuming urbanity on your part, a not unreasonable expectation — but I think there’s a social taboo around death in the western world that is partly attributable to our economic systems and work culture. We strenuously eschew thoughts of death, pushing it from our minds at every opportunity. It’s that attitude of denial that frames our conception of time as a theoretically boundless renewable resource. If you view time as something that is abundant and practically limitless, you don’t mind spending it on things and in areas that you might otherwise consider extravagant or self-indulgent. Hence, we spend more time on the narcissistic pursuits of the digital age — selfies on social media, relentless self-promotion — than in considering our lives and shared experiences beyond the confines of solipsism.

Conversely, if you see the grim reaper gaining on you in your side mirror, his clammy hand reaching out to grab you by the throat, you might be galvanized by an acute sense of mortal urgency. Time becomes tangible, even palpable, not something to be squandered. You feel time as you accelerate through it, and you know that you’ll come to the end of time — a literal dead end.

I don’t intend these words to be dramatic, or to induce feelings of fear and loathing. I’m simply trying to state facts. Some people will live to 90 or 100, but not that many. Most of us, in this world, will reach gravestones before we hit those milestones. We should be realistic, if only to make the best use of the indeterminate time allocated to us. The best use? That’s up to you. The terms shouldn’t be defined and foisted on you by somebody else, according to their needs and priorities. Apply your own standards, and live according to your ethos, whatever that might be.

Cisco Stays the Course

Speaking of standards, and going from the would-be sublime to the quotidian, I feel moved by the sprit of the market to pass brief judgment on the latest quarterly results from networking mainstay Cisco Systems. (Was that shift in tone and substance too abrupt? Was it bathetic?) Cisco’s fiscal third-quarter results were good, more than passable, and the company’s provided guidance that was encouraging, if not thrilling. The after-hours market, assimilating the results, responded accordingly: Cisco shares got a little boost.

One thing Cisco has done well in recent quarters has involved leveraging its venerable reputation and installed base to initiate and strengthen strategic partnerships, including those with other technology behemoths, including Nvidia. That partnership has already generated benefits on the AI front, and Cisco will be looking for further gains through alliances with Nvidia and others for as long as AI sustains market momentum.

Even so, Cisco investors shouldn’t get complacent. Things change, as we should know all too well in this period marked by the executive fiat and the capricious tariff. Nothing is guaranteed, and nothing can be taken for granted. The price of prudent investment is eternal vigilance.

Cisco resides on solid foundations. Even though its core networking business has taken some hits since the company’s halcyon days of the fin de siècle technology boom, (I refer, of course, to the end of the 20th century rather than that of the 19th century), Cisco is less exposed to seismic devastation than are companies that are less diversified in their product portfolios and customer bases. The risks involved in investing in Cisco, for example, are not as great as putting your money down on, let’s say, a publicly listed quantum-computing startup. (That quantum companies are publicly listed is rich fodder for another post.)

Nonetheless, Cisco’s valuation might get ahead of its ability to deliver the quarterly goods. It’s an occupational hazard of publicly traded companies, though economists inform us that market pricing is invariably efficient. Maybe so, but market efficiency must keep pace with market dynamism, which means the price you see today is not necessarily the one you’ll see tomorrow, or even from hour to hour. Market prices are subject to the swirling currents of supply and demand, which are influenced by all sorts of factors, some less predictable than others.

Anyway, Cisco’s results and guidance were good — not spectacular, but good. I might cavil that Cisco has gilded the lily a bit with its frothy talk of shimmering AI opportunity, but why pick on one vendor when every major technology-infrastrucutre supplier is cavorting on the same bandwagon?

We live in a time when there’s a blurry line between enthusiastic optimism and willful deception (including self-deception). Cisco hasn’t crossed that line, which can be difficult for vendors to detect, but others have pushed the envelope perilously close to the end of the table, putting pressures on other vendors, such as Cisco, to reciprocate. Dishonesty, like misery, loves company. Ethical relativism is on the rise, but it paradoxically leads to a slippery slope and an ignominious fall.

Cisco should adhere to its modus operandi: remaining attuned to customer needs, addressing those needs through organic and inorganic means, meeting (or slightly surpassing) financial expectations from quarter to quarter, and providing accurate guidance on expectations. We’re on the cusp — I think, I hope — of a renascent appreciation of competence, honestly, predictability, and dependability, all of which build trust. When that salubrious pivot finally occurs, as I believe it will, organizations and their executive leadership will want to be on the right side of history.

The New Layoffs

Finally, as I bring this missive to a rousing close, we learn that Microsoft is giving thousands of employees the bum’s rush. Layers of management are apparently attracting the scythe, but other employees are getting cut, too. There’s also some talk of AI being used to thin the ranks of employees at Microsoft, which wouldn’t be the first technology company to go that route.

At Shopify, CEO Tobias Lütke issued a memo decreeing that, before asking for future human-resource requisitions, “teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI.” . We’ll see similar edicts handed down and applied throughout the industry. Perhaps it is already happening.

Welcome to the future, which is just the present advancing through time.