Our guest this week, Ashley Stewart, is a Seattle-based senior tech correspondent for the news site Insider who reports on Microsoft and Amazon.

She and her colleagues reported on Amazon’s executive exodus and its internal deliberations about compensation in advance of the increase in maximum base pay announced by the company this week. After the announcement, they reported on internal documents indicating the types of pay increases employees can expect.

We also discuss her reporting on turmoil inside Microsoft's HoloLens business, and where recent changes leave the company in the race to create the Metaverse.

And in our final segment, we compare notes on what it's like to cover these two companies, and what the differences say about their corporate cultures.

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