It. Is. Monday. And the Hacker Noon team (okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration. It's just me. It's always been me.) is still hungover from the slew of announcements that came out of yesterday's Xbox & Bethesda Game Showcase. Now look; I personally don't care whether you're Team Playstation™ or Team Xbox™ but I'm always up for gaming news, especially when it concerns ports coming to the King™ of all gaming: the PC.
Ya heard me, console peasants. As The Witcher and Superman star Henry Cavill once said, "You either live long enough to afford a glorious PC build or die with your teeny weeny maybe-maybe not upgradable console." (Editor's note: Henry Cavill DEFINITELY did NOT say that!)
Anyyyyyway. What i'm trying to say is: WHY THE F*CK ISN'T MICROSOFT #1 THIS WEEK!?!? 😠
*We now interrupt this rant with our regularly scheduled programming*
Coinbase is #1 this week! 👑 I said it. There, I said it. It's the cryptocurrency company headed by the Lex Luthor lookalike Brian Armstrong. Last week, I compared him with Luthor in appearance. This week, I am pleased to report that the similarities go beyond just appearance.
ICYMI: Coinbase paused hiring earlier this month and rescinded a number of accepted offers. The move solicited a public backlash on social media sites, culminating in an online petition (purportedly by Coinbase employees) asking for the removal of top execs at the cryptocurrency exchange for taking decisions that "led to questionable results and negative value" for the company, its shareholders, and its employees.
Armstrong wasn't having any of it though. Not only did he call the petition "dumb," he reminded employees that if they were found to be the ones who started the petition, they could be fired. He also suggested that if employees didn't trust the senior leadership, they should just "quit and find a company" they believed in. Here's the entire twitter thread if you want to read it.
Now perhaps, Armstrong is inspired by Elon Musk (may the lord always keep Musk in his good graces); perhaps he's offended that Coinbase employees didn't name him in the petition; perhaps he was having a bad day. Whatever the case, the internet just couldn't stop talking about it, and all that chatter propelled Coinbase up by 14.1% in trending interest for the coveted #1 spot on Hacker Noon's Tech Company Overview.
This week's beta (lol get it? beta?) was Apple Inc. at the #2 spot. 🍎 The company's flagship Worldwide Developers Conference event just recently ended and interest in the company's announcements already seem to be waning. Trending interest in the iPhone manufacturer was down 7.2%, perhaps because nothing, and I mean, nothing, from the conference blew anyone's mind away — unless you consider powering your car's dashboard as mindblowing.
Taking up the third spot this week was Amazon. 📦
The eCommerce giant, which took the lead in last week's Tech Company Overview, seems to be in the news in India. The company bowed out of a bidding war on Friday for media rights to the Indian Premier League, or IPL — the super lucrative way for businesses to grow in the cricket-crazy nation of nearly 1.4 billion. With Amazon out, Disney, Sony, and India's Reliance will fight it out to see who gets the rights to broadcast the world’s richest T20 league in foreign territories.
Amazon was also the subject of the most recent Last Week Tonight with John Oliver episode on Tech Monopolies.
Anywho, Intel was back in the Top 5 as the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer debuted the details of its 'Intel 4' process node. 🖥️ This is ironic because the company was also on the #4 spot this week. I'm not going to bore you with the details, but 'Intel 4' is supposed to be better than what the company currently produces.
Elsewhere, Tesla rounded off this week's ratings after securing the #5 spot. 🚗 There are conflicting reports on hiring at the electric vehicle manufacturer (which also sometimes doubles down as one of the most valuable car company in the world).
CEO Elon Musk (may the lord always watch over him) is said to have fired the company's country manager in Singapore and has sounded the alarm on the company's quarterly performance.
But a German regional economy minister said Tesla is hiring 500 to 600 people a month at its Gruenheide plant, and wants to hire workers that no longer work at other German carmakers. Cool, I guess.
And that's a wrap, folks! This was Hacker Noon's Tech Company overview. We'll be back next week to see how these rankings change. If you'd like to follow these rankings realtime, follow the list here.
PEACE!☮️
