Episode 56: 3,800 GitHub Repos, 8,000 Meta Cuts, and a $67B Power Play
· 4:12
Show Notes
- GitHub detects and contains a compromise of an employee device via a poisoned VS Code extension; reporting puts internal repos accessed at ~3,800 with no evidence of customer data impact
- Meta's Zuckerberg tells staff no more company-wide layoffs expected this year after a 10% cut and ~7,000 internal reassignments to AI workflows
- Modal Labs raises $355M Series C at a $4.65B valuation; annualised revenue jumps from $60M to $300M, expanding from 5 to 13 cloud providers
- OpenAI to open its first applied AI lab outside the US, in Singapore
- NextEra announces a $66.8B deal to acquire Dominion, explicitly framed around surging AI-driven data center electricity demand
- Mercury raises $200M at a $5.2B valuation; Exa raises $250M Series C at a $2.2B valuation
- AI Tool Spotlight: CodeSignal Proctoring and Fraud Detection for remote technical assessments
Key Takeaways
- Supply-chain security is now table stakes — AppSec, detection engineering, IR and DevEx platform engineering stay premium
- Meta's 'no more layoffs' message is two-way — more experienced talent available, while funded roles skew to AI productisation and infra
- AI coding demand is becoming compute demand — Modal's run-rate fuels hiring in platform, multi-cloud reliability and FinOps
- Applied AI is going global — OpenAI's Singapore lab points to forward-deployed engineering and enterprise governance roles
- Power is the new bottleneck — capacity planning, energy procurement and large-buildout program management become hiring priorities
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the GitHub breach mean for hiring plans?
Modern attacks target developer tooling, not just servers. Prioritise AppSec, software supply-chain security, detection engineering and incident response, plus DevEx/internal platform engineers who own extension allowlists, dependency scanning and secrets hygiene.
Is Meta still hiring after the 'no more layoffs' memo?
Yes, but the mix has shifted. Generalist product and ops-heavy roles are more available externally; the roles that stay funded skew toward AI productisation, infra reliability, security and high-leverage product engineers who can operate agent-driven workflows.
Why does the NextEra–Dominion deal matter for tech hiring?
AI scaling is increasingly gated by power, permitting and grid capacity. Expect growth in capacity planning, energy procurement, data center infra and networking, site reliability and program management for large buildouts across hyperscalers and AI infra suppliers.