Beyond the Box

Elon Musk does it again. On Monday, Elon Musk received approval from the Chinese Communist Party to deploy its most advanced self-driving technology called supervised Full Self-Driving into cars in China. Frankly, I am in awe. I can’t help but feel like this was planned. It was all planned and this has been his plan for years. From laying off thousands of workers to buying Twitter to other events I will cover in this post, it was all connected. First, let’s discuss why this Chinese approval is such a big deal. China is Tesla’s second biggest market opportunity already possessing 1.7 million Tesla drivers, leading the way for substantial revenue growth if this initial campaign is successful. Second, Tesla was able to surmount a massive hurdle in actually acquiring the necessary high-resolution maps from one of China’s largest tech companies, a company called Baidu, Inc. Baidu is only one of approximately 20 Chinese companies that have the necessary credentials to even obtain access to such data. With this background info, let me now explain how genius this is by Elon Musk. It seems most applicable to begin this story in 2020 where Elon Musk revealed the first Chinese-made Teslas in Shanghai. For a few years before that, Tesla had began the production and completion of a factory in Shanghai that would eventually go on to account for over half of Tesla’s global deliveries and a major percentage of profits. Building on this momentum, China now houses the company’s largest assembly plant per NY Times. This was made possible by Elon’s collaboration with a Chinese official named Li Qiang who is now the Chinese premier and China’s No.2 official only second to Xi Jinping himself. The recent layoffs made in America were not necessarily a “huge shift in priorities”, but rather a “huge shift in labor location.” Musk has looked towards the China labor market as a cheaper alternative, a move that has already generated hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. Next, let’s talk about why China is a far more favorable market for Tesla’s self-driving car tech compared to the United States. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that between Jan 18’ and Aug 23’, Tesla’s Autopilot and FSD accounted for atleast 29 fatal accidents. Long story short, Tesla won the case and most of the world forgot it even happened. While deaths have occurred due to self-driving cars in China as well, China holds control over something very important: the media. Car crashes caused by human drivers are frequently the subject of viral videos in China, creating the narrative that self-driving cars may be safer and the government has the ability to keep social perception that way. Even if Tesla’s FSD kills people, it won’t hurt business. If you would like to continue reading....please check out my blog article on this piece. Feel free to dm me or comment! Blog: https://lnkd.in/eiwCM-uM

Last week, The Federal Trade Commission signed a ban on non-compete agreements, a move that would change Wall Street forever if it goes into effect in August. For some background if you are not sure why this is such a monumental move, non-competes are either contracts or contract clauses which restrict an employee’s ability to work for a competitor for a certain period of time after working with their current employer. Many are signed to protect a business’ confidential or proprietary information as well as trade secrets from being revealed to competitors. In an industry such as financial services or consulting where banks, funds, and consultants solve the same problems for customers, how they solve those problems is the differentiator. This ban has the potential to ruin the individuality of banks. One may ask: well Dylan, if non-competes are built off of people leaving the company, then what is the problem as long as employees stay and enjoy their careers? Well my good friend, Wall Street is known for having high employee turnover largely due to the harsh working conditions, company culture, and other negative factors. People constantly jump from competitor to competitor, from shop to shop, bringing the experience they learned along the way to their new jobs. Wall Street has tried to combat this by imposing gardening leave and withholding bonuses when an employee leaves for a competitor. Per the Financial Times, the FTC clause seems to outline the basic structure of gardening leave, leaving companies unable to protect their proprietary information or IP in this manner anymore. The ruling does allow for non-competes to remain at the senior executive level: workers earning more than $151,164 annually who also are in a “policy-making position” per CNN. My belief is that banks and other companies will do their best to define the “policy-making position” for as many people as possible within their firm from vice presidents to maybe even associates, using the $151,164 as a benchmark salary for most employees. This is also likely to change the salary structure of employees because many investment banking analysts in their first years make atleast this amount, but that typically is possible via their bonus. Regardless, the most important change will be company culture and employee happiness. Companies are most likely going to have to pay their employees more and make their working environments way more friendly. Some IB analysts out of college can make $200K in their first year. If you think that is a lot of money, you will be surprised what that number might look like in a few years. If nothing else, this is a wake up call to ACTUALLY READ the contract you sign with an employer, because people are going to find all types of ways to get around this non-compete ban and protect their own IP and trade secrets.  Let me know what you think. Feel free to dm or comment below. 

Will TikTok really be banned by the United States?? Probably not, but it is possible. Yesterday, President Biden signed a bill, passed by the Senate, to send $95.3 billion dollars to provide aid to Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel, however what was also included in this bill was an order by the U.S government for ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to sell their company to an American firm or face an American ban. If you are not yet caught up to date on why a social media platform such as TikTok would even face a ban in the United States, well here is both a practical and historical summary. TikTok is a leading social media app in the world where users consume short video content made by creators. The app’s capability to neverendingly scroll through interesting content combined with its trailblazing algorithm to curate what content is shown to the user based on personal interests, previous history, and predictions on what the user would find interesting has made it an incredible success. Every social media app today must contain some aspect of this algorithm and scrollability to be interesting and scalable. The issue is that Tiktok is owned by a Chinese company headquartered in Beijing, China. With over 1.1 billion users worldwide, over 3 billion downloads since its launch in 2016, and over 220 million downloads (the U.S. population is ~ 341 million) in the United States alone, the government has deemed it a security emergency for years, believing that the Chinese Communist Party is utilizing TikTok’s data to spy and gain insights on the American population. Seeing as a ban will probably not actually go into effect before the second half of 2026, I want to focus this post on a question I can’t seem to find an answer for: what does divest or ban actually mean? Well what a ban means is obvious, but what a satisfactory divestment means from the government’s perspective could be many things. To put this in perspective, here is a very small list of prominent U.S. investment firms that hold stakes in ByteDance: Sequoia Capital, The Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Tiger Global Management. ByteDance’s founder, Zhang Yiming, claims that 60% of the company is owned by global investors such as the ones listed above and three of the five board members are American. Do you now see why this is a bit more complicated? One very clear outcome is the acquisition of TikTok via a major investment firm or tech giant, however Isaac Boltansky claims that the regulators and politicians are not particularly interested in major companies expanding their influence. This way of thinking is very evident in the regulatory handling of certain acquisitions of recent memory, two immediately coming to mind being Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard and JetBlue’s giving up on an acquisition of Spirit....... (please continue reading at my medium! Link: https://lnkd.in/gM-4E5wp

Microsoft announced an investment of $1.5 billion into G42, a leading global AI startup based in Abu Dhabi, UAE while also securing a board seat on G42’s board of directors for Brad Smith. This is not just another big investment into a burgeoning AI startup by Microsoft. Many factors were considered into this deal and even more factors were at stake. This investment comes during a time where China was eagerly pushing for the inclusion of G42 into their Entity List which is just a term to describe a list of companies and organizations that a government can impose specific licensing to restrict and control exports, imports, trade, and other commercial activities. In other words, China’s inclusion of G42 on this list would subject them to the Chinese Communist Party’s restrictions, meaning that G42 would be unable to access any U.S. sensitive information, and trade freely with the U.S., among other new restrictions. This was a geopolitical move. A governmental move, headlined by the fact that the United States Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo partly brokered this deal. We also must remember that just last week, Microsoft also announced that it will invest $2.9 billion into Japan’s cloud computing and AI infrastructure. Microsoft plans to deepen cybersecurity collaboration with the Japanese government, open their first Microsoft Research Asia Lab in Japan, as well as provide AI skilling to more than 3 million people. In less than two weeks, Microsoft and the U.S. have made two huge moves to establish geopolitical and commercial significance within both the UAE and Japan, further establishing themselves as a global tech titan and also establishing more American power around the world. Was China’s growth and influence a major factor in these decisions? Is America taking the threat of China from a warfare and technological perspective seriously? Incredibly so. Time will tell what other moves Microsoft makes, but this seems to be a major step. 

Tesla cut over 10% of its workforce but these layoffs feel very different than all of the other ones. Tesla recently laid off 10% of its employees allegedly because of cost reductions and increased productivity per Elon Musk’s memo, but the actual reason seems to be because of a poor financial and product performance described in their 2024 Q1 report where the company delivered substantially less vehicles than last quarter and their sales growth rate has slowed. What is surprising about these layoffs are the specific types of personnel that were cut. Most of the previous layoffs by major companies were the result of needing to cut employees because of a greater expected sales projection than what was reasonable, due to technological automation and the power of AI, or similar administrative decisions. In none of these cases do we see the same layoffs done by Tesla. Not only were over 14,000 employees cut, but departments were gutted by 10%, even 20% in some cases and many high performers were cut as well. Per TechCrunch, many of the employees cut were high performers which seems very counterintuitive. How can we make sense of this? The answer comes from the simple fact that Elon’s future plans for Tesla are not focused in the departments that he cut en masse. After dropping plans to create a lower-cost EV that would hit retail at around $25,000, Musk opted for a heightened focus on the building of a robotaxi project he hopes to debut this year. Next, we have the departure of CFO Zach Kirkhorn a few months ago and the departure of Tesla’s SVP of Powertrain and Energy: Drew Baglino as well as their VP of Public Policy and Business Development: Rohan Patel. This also comes with a recent tweet in January from Musk, claiming that he is “uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI & robotics without having ~25% voting control”. Yes, this is a direct quote. This screams a power struggle with Musk prevailing and his declaration to the world that Tesla is a toy for him to do as he pleases which is not something new. What is contradictory to previous understanding is the tumultuous financial situation and the extreme layoffs of high performers and key executives. Through it all, Musk has always been someone who could galvanize and assemble people to help build his missions and dreams, but are we now living in a world where his presumed lack of emotional intelligence might be his downfall? Is Musk living proof that not having emotional intelligence only gets you so far or is he the exception? Time will tell for Elon Musk and how the history books remember him. For now, all we can say is that we are still very much living in his world.

Calling all tech employers and business owners, especially those in Seattle: a UI/UX designer who recently finished his internship at Beyond The Box is looking for part-time, contract or full-time work. Matthew Dayao is an up and coming UI/UX designer from California who impressed us so much that he became the first UI/UX intern we brought on. He has a great attitude, he is eager to learn, and goes above and beyond to communicate. If you or anyone else is looking for UI/UX design, I would recommend taking a look. I have attached his resume and portfolio below for your convenience: Portfolio: https://lnkd.in/eAxwzH3W

Beyond the Box is hiring undergrad, masters, or phD students for our Human Resources and Social Media Marketing positions. We have a diverse team of high achievers from many prestigious universities and some of them are listed below. Please share this opportunity and apply on Handshake if you are interested, apply to the HR position via linkedIn or send me a DM with your resume. If you are not interested in either one of these roles but want to work with us, please let me know. We're building something great!!

As 2024 Q2 begins, there were many huge responses and predictions for the future power of AI that occurred in the last three months. Here are some of the biggest that are the most important since the announcement of OpenAI’s Sora: 📽 Tyler Perry halted his planned $800M Studio Expansion over the concerns of how AI can disrupt video production 👨💻 Elon Musk sued Sam Altman and OpenAI over a presumed breach of contract, claiming OpenAI’s new focus is to use AI to maximize profits and not for the good of humanity 🏦 Goldman Sachs predicts 300 million jobs will be destroyed, lost, or degraded by artificial intelligence 💻 NVIDIA CEO predicts that coding will soon become a dead language. I believe he is saying this because Sora has shown the ability to convert english into high quality coded finished products. 💼 Biden and The White House have ordered federal agencies to appoint Chief AI Officers In less than two months, this has all occurred with the launch of Sora being the spark for fear of the future. AI will destroy markets and automate industries in waves, but it is incredibly important to begin incorporating AI into your own life and planning for a future where your greatest asset is your intangible skills and intelligence compared to certain technical skills that AI could automate or replace.

We're #hiring a new Sales Analyst in United States. Apply today or share this post with your network.

Beyond The Box is looking to fill these part-time roles soon, all paid positions!! Please share with anyone you know who might be interested: Sales Analyst: No professional experience needed. Needs to atleast be an undergraduate. Social media marketer: 1 years of professional experience needed. Needs to be atleast an undergraduate. Business Development Analyst: No professional experience needed. Needs to be atleast an undergraduate. Senior SWE: 5 years of professional experience