Xero's culture clash; Albo's war on big tech

Xero's aggressive AI pivot has sent morale inside the accounting software company into freefall, with engineers fearing they're building their own replacements. Meanwhile, the Albanese government's battle against big tech has a new target: the algorithms, with a digital duty of care proposal that would let users opt out of algorithmic feeds. We discuss: Sinking morale at Xero and the forced-ranking performance measurement behind it. Why engineers fear they're training their own replacement. The culture clash between Xero's US-based executive team and its Australian and New Zealand staff. Shareholder anger over Xero CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy's $25 million pay packet. An influencer ad and an automated email mishap that has turned off a core segment of Xero’s user base, accountants. Why Atlassian and Salesforce have bounced back from the SaaSpocalypse and Xero hasn’t. What's  in the digital duty of care, and the "My Feed, My Way" campaign. The Coalition and One Nation’s opposition to the proposal. Albanese's algorithm theory of One Nation's rise and whether this policy is the answer to it. The needle Labor has to thread: regulating big tech while courting billions in AI data centre investment On The Call is a weekly live conversation with the Capital Brief newsroom on the stories driving the agenda in Australia's centres of power. Host Harshdeep Kaur sits down with Capital Brief's best journalists to dissect what we're watching and why it matters, and answer questions from our subscribers live. Subscribe to join our weekly live discussion on Thursdays at 12pm AEST: https://www.capitalbrief.com/on-the-call/ Sign up to our free weekly newsletter, The Edition: https://www.capitalbrief.com/newsletters/the-edition/