• At 50, I retired from my job as a pharmacist in the US and moved to Ajijic, Mexico.
• To make this work, I did a lot of strategic planning and adjusting before and after the move.
• It has already paid off: I'm doing well, and I've planned for a sustainable early retirement abroad.

After turning 50, I retired from my job as a pharmacist and moved from San Francisco to Ajijic, Mexico.

On paper, I had done everything right: I did a ton of research, picked a beautiful lakeside town, and ran the numbers. I was confident I could make this new life work.

However, building a sustainable, enjoyable early retirement abroad takes more than just moving to a place with a lower cost of living.

After three years here, I believe I've finally done it.

First, I had to figure out what 'sustainable' actually means in practice

For me, a sustainable early retirement abroad means feeling at ease and living comfortably while staying prepared for the unexpected.

Since I chose to retire at 50, I wanted to make sure I could support myself for at least another 17 years, which is when I'll be eligible to receive full Social Security benefits.

When building a sustainable financial system, I kept in mind my desired lifestyle, second-career goals, fixed-income investments, and long-term legacy.

For example, I wanted to be able to visit my family back in San Francisco regularly and finally pursue writing as a career — something I'd wanted since grade school — without an immediate need for income.

So, I prioritized growing my high-yield savings accounts and investing in CDs, short-term bond funds, and money market funds to cover living expenses.

I also hired a financial advisor to diversify the rest of my portfolio for growth and stability, so I could focus on creative work rather than market swings after I moved.

I knew I needed to create a budget to help keep my yearly spending steady, so I began tracking how much I would need for essentials while still having extra money for travel, enrichment, and emergencies.

The first year of my move consisted of a lot of preparing, testing, and exploring

After the initial culture shock, I spent my first year in Ajijic learning my way around the town, getting accustomed to Mexican culture, and gradually falling into step with the local rhythm.

I explored different ways to manage cash flow between my US and Mexican bank accounts and learned I liked using the service Wise for low-fee currency conversions.

Through online searches and conversations with locals and expats, I curated a "money‑smart" list of the best-priced grocery stores, reliable handymen, and trusted doctors, so future surprise expenses could be less likely to blow up my budget.

I tracked all my spending in a spreadsheet, breaking it down by category so I knew exactly where my money was going. This helped me plan for the next year.

After a few months of renting, I also bought a house that's become both a comfortable home and a long‑term investment. Owning a home helped anchor me in the community and turn my housing expenses into an asset.

In my second and third years abroad, I did more strategic planning and refining

In year two, I worked closely with my financial advisor to better reshape my portfolio around my early retirement needs and set up an accessible emergency fund.

I got in the habit of using Wise to track the dollar-to-peso exchange rate and batch-converting money whenever it was favorable.

Plus, I took a closer look at my healthcare plans. Because of my good health, I chose to pay out of pocket for doctor's visits rather than buy health insurance in Mexico. This lowered my expenses and also made it easy to put off routine checkups.

Even though I felt fine, I knew I needed to stay on top of preventive care to protect my long-term health, so I also scheduled an annual lab panel, vision exam, and routine teeth cleaning. They all cost me less than what I'd spend on similar services in the US. I made plans to repeat this annually so small problems wouldn't snowball.

In year three, I set up many unsexy but critical documents, including wills, beneficiary designations, and a cross-border estate plan.

I also created an emergency plan in case of a health crisis, which included which hospital I'd like to use, how I would pay, and who to call if something went wrong.

And, after two years of collecting my Ajijic spending data, I finally had the experience and confidence to lock in my budget and begin living by it.

All in all, I've found that sustainability is a gateway to opportunities

I feel I've made the right choice by retiring early in Mexico and giving myself the chance to lead a new life on my own terms.

In three years, though, all my planning, saving, investing, and strategizing have begun to pay off: I've had more mental space for writing and other creative work that energizes me.

My writing career is already taking shape. I recently won ThrillerFest's 2026 Undiscovered New Voices scholarship and will soon pitch my latest psychological thriller to industry professionals.

Sure, this is a simplified overview — building a retirement abroad also involves navigating visas and so many other logistics.

It takes time to build a system that can hold up for decades, but I already feel confident I can maintain my current lifestyle for many years to come.

• This post originally appeared in the BI Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.

A bummer for benefits

It's no secret that the era of generous employee perks is fading. Free food, on-site laundry, and gym subsidies are all becoming less common. Even full-time remote work is becoming increasingly rare.

Amid all the cutting, I really thought certain benefits like paid time off and parental leave would be untouchable.

I was wrong.

Earlier this month, my colleague Polly Thompson reported a bombshell scoop that Deloitte plans to pare back or cut several core benefits for some of its employees. Internal documents and a meeting recording revealed the consulting firm is planning cuts to parental leave, PTO, pensions, and IVF funding for workers in internal support roles such as admin, IT support, and finance.

And it's not just Deloitte.

Zoom is also scaling back its parental leave. Birthing parents now get 18 weeks of paid parental leave, down from 22—24. Non-birthing parents get 10 weeks, down from 16.

Here's the thing: Once a few big companies put the most prized benefits on the chopping block, others may follow suit.

These moves aren't happening in a vacuum. Companies are prioritizing measurable output over loyalty. They are raising performance expectations and tracking AI usage, all with eyes on improving the bottom line.

To be sure, some employees might prefer having their benefits cut rather than losing their jobs altogether.

Just this past week, Meta said it plans to cut 10% of its staff next month and eliminate 6,000 open roles in an effort to "run the company more efficiently."

Employees didn't hold back in their reactions. "Welcome to 28 days of hell," one Meta employee posted on an internal forum, referring to May 20 (the date the cuts are expected to happen).

Also on Thursday, Microsoft said it was offering one-time buyouts to long-serving US employees. The package is aimed at workers who want to retire.

With companies squarely in efficiency mode, they are sending a clear message: Job cuts are en vogue, loyalty is dead, and no benefit is off-limits anymore.

• Tokenmaxxing is all the rage in Big Tech. For startups, the trend is opening up debate.
• Some founders told Business Insider that they spent big on tokens; others used capped subscription plans.
• One founder called tokenmaxxing "extremely stupid." Another said: "You've got to spend money to make money."

Kavitta Ghai wants her startup's engineers to spend more tokens.

The 29-year-old cofounder of Nectir started setting minimum quotas for Claude Code use. First it was at least $100 in tokens a week, then $200. Now, the expectation is that her engineers each spend a couple thousand in AI tokens a month.

The strategy has been successful, Ghai said. Some of Nectir's senior engineers were previously skeptical of AI coding tools; now, they call it their "army of coders," she said.

But she doesn't think Nectir is "tokenmaxxing," the buzzword du jour for techies racing to spend as much as they can. "We don't really play into the Silicon Valley trends," Ghai said. "We live in our own world, and we're competing against ourselves."

Across Big Tech, engineers are racing to spend as many tokens as possible. A token is a measure of AI compute. The more tokens burned, the more the engineer employs AI tools. Employees at Meta reportedly competed on a token leaderboard before it was taken down.

What of the little guy? Startups are an edge case: relatively tiny teams that want to be on the cutting edge of tech but might not have the same money to spend. Some startup leaders told Business Insider that big token bills helped them succeed. Others scoffed at the idea, preferring to stick to the lower-cost subscriptions.

The startups spending big on tokens

Aron Solberg doesn't want the competition of a token leaderboard — but he does want the mindset behind it.

The 44-year-old cofounder of Risotto sees token spending as a "force multiplier" for a small team. The company uses OpenAI and Anthropic's models, and said it spends $4,000-5,000 per month on tokens. Six months ago, Risotto says he spent one-tenth of that sum.

"It's trending up a lot," Solberg said.

"There's an old adage that rings true," he said, whether it was for hiring new employees or spending liberally on tokens: "You've got to spend money to make money."

Quang Hoang is similarly spending big. He wrote in an email that his startup, Vybe, has an "unlimited credit policy" and was thinking about minimum quotas.

Investors are also incentivizing spending — and might foot the bill.

Hoang tells founders he invests in to allocate "at least their salary amount to tokens." (Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made headlines last month for saying he would be "deeply alarmed" if one of his $500,000 engineers did not consume at least $250,000 of tokens.)

Accelerators like Y Combinator offer free token credits to their participants. "At YC, we let our engineers let it rip," CEO Garry Tan wrote on X. Those credits help some founders to spend big. These founders aren't tokenmaxxers, but do believe that there are productivity benefits.

Traverse cofounder Lance Yan believed in Tan's message: "We usually just let it rip." The 19-year-old said he uses the best models with the maximum effort, not worrying about the costs. Between his Claude Max subscription and the credits that offered by YC, he can spend big without hitting a limit.

He's not a fan of rationing tokens. "That's stupid," he said. "You're just harming your own startup."

26-year-old Boris Skurikhin said that the YC credits helped his startup Docket get off the ground. He's mostly run through them now, except for the models he uses less frequently.

Skurikhin said he noticed a 10x increase in productivity in his own work when he used the tools. "It is expensive to build with tokens," he said, but "not as expensive as having another engineer."

Many of these startups are in the AI game, after all. Nectir's Ghai said that token spending instilled "AI literacy" — something that's especially important, given their product.

"The team itself needs to be the best versed at it first, before we try to go sell it to anyone else," she said.

The startups saying no to tokenmaxxing

Rishabh Sambare wishes he could spend more on tokens.

The 23-year-old cofounder of Gale prefers to build with Zed, an AI IDE similar to Cursor, but can't stomach the company's usage-based pricing. The subscription deals from OpenAI and Anthropic are so deeply subsidized that he uses them instead.

"It sucks, because I hate their products," he said, calling Zed "more polished and less buggy between releases."

Sambare is Gale's only engineer, though the company often has 2-3 interns. He hasn't hit a rate limit, but one of his interns has. They got him a second subscription, he said; it was still far cheaper.

These subscriptions — sending $100 to $200 to Anthropic for its "Max" tiers or $100 to OpenAI for its "Pro" plan in exchange for a stable of discounted tokens — were popular among the founders I spoke to. Hassan Ismail, the 24-year-old founder of Argos Research, said the Claude Max subscription was a "no-brainer," and that all five team members have a $200 a month subscription.

Others were more philosophically opposed to the trend. Weave's Brennan Lupyrypa didn't mince his words: "It's extremely stupid for any company to be tokenmaxxing."

Weave is still spending big on tokens because it doesn't want to "kneecap" its engineers, its 25-year-old founding engineer said. The company set up a notification for when an engineer hit $500 in token spending a month; Lupyrypa said most hit it within two weeks.

But Weave doesn't incentivize the spending itself, which Lupyrypa said was the wrong proxy. He predicted the downfall of tokenmaxxing within the next three months. "CFOs won't be happy," he said.

Still, some tokenmaxxers hold strong. I asked Risotto's Solberg about these token-hesitant founders. He said that they likely hadn't found their product-market fit yet.

"It makes complete sense to spend a lot of money on tokens, because you know that the growth is coming soon after," Solberg said. "If you're a venture-backed business, that's what you signed up for."

"H

ow long have you been living in Singapore?"

It's a question taxi drivers have been asking me since I arrived from New York nearly 20 years ago.

In the beginning, the answer was small, just a year, then two.

My husband and I had come with a two-year plan. Freshly married, we told ourselves it was an exciting chapter in our new life together. We left boxes in the basement of my sister's Brooklyn apartment, assuming we'd be back for them soon.

But as the number crept past that deadline — five years, then 10 — those boxes slowly made their way over.

These days, it's not just taxi drivers asking how long we plan to stay.

My mom comments on how far away we live, now that it includes her two grandchildren. My in-laws gently remind us of the advantages of being closer. Everyone seems to assume there's a logical next stop, a final destination that will eventually make sense of everything.

But somewhere along the way, Singapore stopped feeling like a chapter and started feeling like muscle memory. I've lost my tolerance for cold weather after years in the tropics. Back in New York, walking into someone's apartment without taking off my shoes feels strange.

Still, there are reminders that my life is split across borders. As an American, I file US taxes every year — the US is one of the few countries that require it of citizens abroad — a constant reminder that I'm living between places.

My two kids look genuinely confused when someone asks them, "Where are you from?"

As more families build lives abroad, we're not the only ones being asked that question.

In 2024, about 3.3 million Americans were living overseas — a 15% increase since 2010 — according to a Federal Voting Assistance Program estimate that pieces together tax records, Social Security data, and foreign census figures. Because Americans don't have to register when they move abroad, there's no official count.

In this series, you'll hear from others who have made homes overseas, at different ages, for different reasons, and at different stages of staying, all answering the same question in their own way: Where is home, really?

• I've been searching for my first full-time role since I graduated last May to no luck.
• I've had to rely on my parents to stay in New York City, which has made me feel guilty.
• Despite the countless rejections, I'm not letting it stop me from enjoying life.

Last May, I graduated with my bachelor's degree from The New School, a relatively large private institution in New York City.

I knew competition postgrad would be competitive, but I did not anticipate a grim job market and AI takeovers.

As a Dean's List student with a 3.9 GPA and multiple extracurriculars under my belt, I figured I'd be a top candidate for my first entry-level job.

Boy, was I wrong.

Moving to New York City was my dream for as long as I can remember

I figured graduating would mean freedom from the confines of a classroom. But when I followed my dream to New York City, that freedom was paralyzing. I quickly learned that I still had a ways to go before I could start living my life.

I found myself stuck behind a counter working my part-time job as a barista and questioning everything from why I went to college to why I feel so passionate about staying in one of the most expensive places on earth. Additionally, I felt guilty for relying on my parents to pay my rent and help keep me here away from my home state of North Carolina.

I felt like an idiot for leaving my family, even though I always knew I was meant for more than what my hometown could offer, and yet the city remains financially challenging for someone like me with student loans and only a part-time job. Thankfully, I have a cushion should I need it, but I expected to be financially independent by now.

Navigating a competitive market

Since graduation, I have applied to roughly 200 positions, ranging from internships to entry-level to contract and temp roles. And while that number doesn't seem like much compared to the other grads who've sent out 500+ applications, I like to think I'm playing the market strategically by applying to roles where I'm a decent fit. I'm also attempting to set up informational interviews.

However, regardless of my strategy, I keep getting ghosted and rejected by automated no-reply emails months after applying.

When I discovered that I wasn't the only one struggling, it began to make sense. However, after dealing with COVID interruptions in high school, worker strikes in college, and mental health struggles surrounding personal issues, I was burned out.

As a result, I had forgotten why I went to school in the first place. As I began applying, I found myself flexible to take just about anything and started to lose myself in the process.

Seven months into underemployment, I got laid off from the café, but thankfully found another part-time job with a friend's help.

A month later, in January, I got my first interview for a job in my field. Followed up three weeks later, only to be told they were still in the first round and haven't heard back since.

A month after that, I hired a career coach to help me navigate the market. She rewrote my résumé, reviewed my LinkedIn profile and portfolio, provided industry insights, and redefined my career path.

I then got another interview, this time for an internship. I haven't heard back from that either.

What frustrates me the most is the silence. Anxiously waiting to know whether or not I got the job, or at least an interview, is soul-sucking. It makes me doubt myself and my skills. It makes me feel like a failure.

Learning to overcome what you can't control

New York is already an incredibly lonely place, and lately it's been a lot lonelier when I've been confined to a room applying to jobs away from home.

At only 23, I feel like I failed despite working my ass off in high school and in college, only to get "Unfortunately, we have decided not to proceed with your candidacy at this time, but we appreciate the time and effort you dedicated to the application process."

I have no idea what's next for me or when I'll get a full-time job, but one thing I've learned about being underemployed is you've got to make the most out of it because life is unpredictable, and you shouldn't let it slip away because things are uncertain or stagnant.

And if you need help from your parents, whether it's a roof over your head or an allowance, there's no shame in that. This is an extremely unprecedented and scary time for everyone. Even if you're not job hunting, we could all use a little support.

• This post originally appeared in the BI Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.

What I learned from Take Your Kids to Work Day

The fourth Thursday of April means two things: You'll see a lot more kids during your work commute, and the office may be a bit more chaotic with the sound of young laughter, and yes, even some cries.

Take Your Kid to Work Day was an eventful one at Business Insider. Dozens of our colleagues' children descended into our newsroom's auditorium for bingo, a scavenger hunt, an animation demonstration to see how cartoons are made — courtesy of our amazing video team — and of course, pizza.

As a first-time mom of two boys (smile), it also taught me three lessons:

1. My workday is optimized for efficiency, but on TYKTWD, it was replaced with a slower pace that children naturally bring. It allowed me to be more present and engaged with my coworkers.
2. It also reminded me of the value of flexibility. My daily caramel macchiato run turned into grabbing hot chocolate for my boys. After one promptly spilled (a small tragedy indeed), the day was still amazing. It's proof that drinks can spill, meetings can get canceled, but nothing broke.
3. The day also made me grateful, again, for the work I get to do — telling meaningful stories for our readers. My boys marveled at FiDi's skyscrapers, a dinosaur-shaped building, and even my office's elevators that I typically ignore.

In the end, presence did what productivity couldn't.

• Last year, Goldman named Kunal Shah co-CEO of its international business and global co-head of FICC.
• Shah made partner at just 31, having climbed to the top after about a decade with the bank.
• He spoke with Business Insider about the EMEA tech scene, global volatility, and the bank's future.

Not many people can say they've made partner at Goldman Sachs. Even fewer can say they did it at the age of 31.

Kunal Shah can say both.

Shah joined Goldman Sachs as an analyst in the firm's trading business in 2004 and rose to partner in about a decade. Last January, he was promoted to two new roles: co-CEO of Goldman Sachs International and global co-head of fixed income, currencies, and commodities. Based in London, he also holds a seat on the bank's overarching management committee.

As part of a new series of Q&As we're kicking off with some of Goldman Sachs' top executives, Business Insider had the chance to sit down with Shah to discuss Europe's tech sector, Goldman's presence in the Middle East, and what the financial industry's embrace of AI means for newcomers' careers.

Here's our conversation with Shah, edited for length and clarity.

What do you recall from those early years, and how did senior bankers mentor you during your ascent?

After graduation, what struck me when I hit the trading floor as a full-time analyst was that I had access to the then-partners, even when I was just a new kid on the trading desk. When I became a partner, I found the interconnectedness — your ability to make a call to any partner anywhere in the world, offering a clear baseline of trust — amazing.

I would call out Ashok Varadhan, who I have worked with since day one, and who is now the firm's co-head of global banking and markets. I first met him when he agreed to meet for a coffee when I was a fresh analyst and visited New York for my training in 2004. He was already a partner, but he took the time to connect, and we stayed in touch when I hit the trading floor in London. He would listen to my views and he welcomed debates around risks or initiatives.

From him, I learned to have a laser focus on risk management, but also a willingness to take and scale risk where there is opportunity in the business.

As new analysts hit the desk this summer, how do you see AI affecting the long-term outlook for bankers and traders?

Junior talent are inherently tech-savvy, and they don't have the legacy of why we do things in a certain way. They can see how to disrupt us.

Even when I was an intern, people were telling me, "Don't rotate into fixed income trading desks — it's all going to get automated." A lot of the administrative tasks that junior people used to do were no longer needed because we were able to leverage technology and tools to achieve scale.

For me, AI is just another natural extension of that. More of the mundane work — whether that's making presentations, building Excel models, or booking trades — doesn't need to be done in the same way.

The bottom-up experimentation I see across the whole organization is powered by the tools we've released. Once you equip your people with these tools, they can experiment and find things that could be game-changing.

If young people come in with the mindset of actually helping us to disrupt things, and to embrace the change, I think the experience they can have in this industry can be phenomenal.

You're at the helm of Goldman Sachs International as co-CEO of GSI and global co-head of FICC. What's the most interesting facet of being in those seats right now?

The common thread across both roles — and the thing I love most about them — is that no day is the same.

Working in FICC means you're right at the intersection of politics, macroeconomics, geopolitics, and how each of these interact at the micro level with different sectors and markets. Part of the job is balancing long-term strategic views with the constant flow of markets. Even now, if you look at this moment in time, there is uncertainty around commodity markets and you need to watch how that feeds into the monetary policy decisions of central banks, asset allocation shifts and more. There is almost consistency in the uncertainty, and that is inherently exciting to work amidst.

As co-CEO of Goldman Sachs International, I have been exposed to a much broader range of clients across the firm. Across the region, we've got around 29 offices — which means we have people, we have clients, and we have interactions with key policymakers, regulators, finance officials, and central bankers.

The US appears to be leading in AI investment and infrastructure. What's your outlook for the EMEA tech landscape, and how is that changing?

Over the last decade, the number of unicorns in the broader European context has tripled. The tech space in EMEA is much broader than people realize.

In terms of capital markets being US-centric — there is definitely an element there when you're talking about the hyperscalers, and this huge amount of AI-related debt issuance we're seeing. Many of those large tech platforms are quite US-centric. But I wouldn't say exclusively.

You can remember companies like DeepMind and others very much coming out of the tech ecosystem in Europe.

We are witnessing what is arguably the largest investment cycle in history, with our research teams estimating that hyperscaler capex could reach between $700 billion and $725 billion in 2026 alone.

While the US and China lead the LLM race, we also see a distinct competitive edge for the EMEA region at the AI application layer. European entrepreneurs are taking core models and building specialized, high-value software to solve industry-specific problems in robotics, autonomous drones, and smart factories.

As the conflict in Iran continues, how do you view the potential impacts of the Middle East conflict for Goldman's international businesses?

We have five offices in the region — in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha, Riyadh, and Kuwait — and over 100 people. In the past 12 months alone, we announced our office opening in Kuwait, a new office in Riyadh, and the onshoring of our private wealth business there. We are active across advisory, financing, markets and as an asset manager and investor.

The countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council have managed the situation very well so far, both from maintaining a safe environment but also ensuring that the countries continue to operate with a good sense of as much normality as possible given the situation.

Once we move beyond the current conflict, the renewed focus on infrastructure and resilience will bring other opportunities for us to help our clients, and our presence there enables our ability to do so.

• AI has become a hiring buzzword, and four employees explained how they added it to their job titles.
• An AI engineer said showcasing side projects was pivotal to transitioning from software engineering.
• Two non-technical Microsoft employees said having a humanities background was a strength.

AI is the buzziest word on the job market — and many workers want to know how to pivot into it.

As many technical workers upskill to stay on the cutting edge, others are moving into AI-focused roles from entirely different industries.

Many companies are pouring an eye-watering amount of money into AI, cutting some roles while adding new positions tied to the technology.

Against that backdrop, moving into AI could be a way for workers to future-proof their careers as the employment market reshuffles. AI engineers, consultants, strategists, and researchers rank among the top five fastest-growing roles in the US, according to LinkedIn's Jobs On the Rise 2026 report.

There's no single path into AI, and Business Insider spoke with four workers who took very different ones. Read on to learn how they pivoted their careers.

Natasha Crampton, Microsoft chief responsible AI officer

Natasha Crampton got her start as an attorney and is now Microsoft's first chief responsible AI officer.

Her job includes working side-by-side with engineering, sales, and research teams to ensure they uphold principles as they build AI systems. It also includes external work, such as helping establish new laws and standards in the space,

Crampton studied information systems in addition to law, and said she always had an interest in the intersection of technology, law, and society. During the strictly legal phase of her career, she said she always worked on technological issues, such as helping Microsoft draft contracts.

She said people looking to move into tech from other fields should start by using the technology themselves. She added that many technical skills are learnable, so coming from a different background shouldn't limit someone's ability to help shape it. She said, "a huge amount of the value" lies at the intersection of technical knowledge and insights from the social sciences.

Georgian Tutuianu, Hubspot AI engineer

Georgian Tutuianu has had several transitions in engineering, from structural to traditional to software to AI at HubSpot.

Tutuianu said that his ability to get technically in the weeds was an asset during the interview process, and showed he had experience with AI.

He also highlighted that his résumé has a section dedicated to personal projects. Tutuianu said he included one AI project, but it was enough. He said it came up naturally in the interview because he was asked about a time he used or built an AI agent.

"It was a juicy project where I could talk about it, and that was good enough," Tutuianu said.

Tutuianu said he also had to do a take-home coding assignment and review it with the hiring manager afterward, but there was no algorithmic component to the interview.

"Instead of the typical software engineering way that these interviews go, which is 'go solve this algorithm in front of me,'" Tutuianu said. "It's more of 'can you build the things that we care about? Show me."

Jai Raj Choudhary, StackAI engineer

Jai Raj Choudhary transitioned from a data-focused role to an AI engineer at AI agent startup StackAI.

The 24-year-old said he got his job by reaching out to StackAI's cofounder multiple times on LinkedIn. Choudhary said he had used the company's platform as a student, so he messaged the cofounder and started posting about StackAI, offering advice to the company.

He said he thinks he got offers from StackAI was because he understood data quality, the edge cases for the clients, the matrix, and the failure modes of the AI model or any LLM systems that were being used.

He said moving to San Francisco, where 9-9-6 culture existed, helped open his opportunities in the space.

"It's not like a 9-to-5 cushy job," Choudhary said. "We work 9-to-9, six days a week. You wake up, you think about the problem that a client had, and you sleep thinking about what is not fixed yet."

Also, taking a job at a startup that helped him grow and devoting himself to continuous learning made a big difference. Choudhary said he spent hours studying every day.

Brit Morenus, Microsoft senior AI gamification program manager

Brit Morenus, a 37-year-old senior AI gamification program manager, studied English, communications, and marketing in college. She started at Microsoft about 13 years ago as an executive assistant, and for the first five and a half years at the company, she was a contract worker.

She later moved into a role focused on gamification — using game mechanics to teach and market Microsoft's products.

She spent about a year getting certifications that taught her about game mechanics, and in that position, she became a full-time employee. Six years later, she had the opportunity to start gamifying learning about AI, and spent three months learning about it.

Her advice to others who want to transition is to resist letting fear keep you from stepping outside your comfort zone. She also said that with AI roles, you need to learn how it works, not just use it. Morenus added that she doesn't regret her English degree because it's now more important than ever to understand how to apply the English language to AI.

"A lot of it is more English language than it even is AI," Morenus said.

Did you pivot into an AI role? We want to hear from you. Contact the reporter via email at aaltchek@insider.com, or via secure-messaging platform Signal at aalt.19.

• Courtney Clapper started applying for jobs in 2025 after graduating from Cornell Tech.
• She tried video cover letters, portfolios, and more to stand out, but had no luck.
• A hack on Reddit helped her get in contact with hiring managers and land her strategy lead job.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Courtney Clapper, a 32-year-old strategy lead for a major retailer in New York. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I started my job hunt in the fall of 2025, a few months after graduating with my MBA from Cornell Tech. I was applying for a mix of roles, such as product manager or digital strategist, and I knew the competition would be fierce in this tough job market.

From portfolios to video cover letters, I tried all sorts of creative methods to stand out and show off my personality, but they didn't work. A simple, free AI tool that locates hiring managers' emails landed me multiple interviews — and a job.

Video cover letters were a great start for me

My first thought process when entering the job market was to imagine myself as a recruiter, getting slammed with thousands of résumés filled with data and numbers.

I figured it would be in my best interest to give them a sense of what makes me stand out: my personality. So, I recorded myself reading my AI-written cover letters, throwing in a joke or two, and attached the video via a private YouTube link.

The video tells the recruiters I can speak and present well, and it gives them a sense of who I am. This approach helped me land an interview at Microsoft. They specifically called out the video, saying it made them feel like they already knew me, which I thought was pretty good feedback.

I still wanted to try several different creative ideas.

Next, I decided to make something more visual — a portfolio

My portfolio was in the form of a timeline. It included pictures of all professional endeavors I thought could help me land a job, from products I've built and my time at Cornell to pictures of me pitching. My goal was to showcase my skill set and personality while also creating something more visually interesting.

I'd also heard of people getting jobs by putting together a slideshow on how they'd improve the company, so I gave it a shot, and it didn't really get me anywhere. Neither of these strategies was worth the time commitment they required.

Referrals also got me nowhere. I have a solid network, and that wasn't making a difference. Interestingly, I applied for a bunch of roles at Microsoft, and the only one I got an interview for was the one I didn't have a referral for.

I came across a job-finding hack on Reddit

I was reading comments on Reddit from people complaining about their job-hunting struggles, and I saw a few people saying they found success by reaching out to hiring managers directly.

Some people said they cold-called, which made me think, "Okay, that's a little bit too far," but the emphasis was just to reach out. The idea of emailing them seemed low-risk, so I decided to give it a shot.

I started by researching on LinkedIn, trying to guess who the hiring manager or recruiter might be. Sometimes it was listed, but it wasn't the best method. Then I came across a Reddit comment about Apollo AI, a free tool that can locate hiring manager emails. I found it to be pretty accurate, so I started reaching out with my résumé and cover letter. It was a game changer.

The CEO of Sweetgreen responded to my email

My messages showed initiative and, honestly, probably just made things easier for the hiring manager. I reached out to three people directly and got interviewed for two jobs.

I even emailed the CEO of Sweetgreen directly, and he responded by putting me in touch with the hiring manager to schedule an interview.

One of my email reachouts turned into my current job, a strategy lead role for a major retailer. This strategy made things more efficient because I already had a direct line of contact, so it was easy to follow up if there was a delay.

I didn't get any negative feedback about it and would do it again

I was wondering if anyone might be weirded out about me finding their emails, but no one said anything. They could find it creepy, but they could also find it resourceful.

If I were back in the job market, I'd start with the email strategy. The exercise of thinking through creative approaches like portfolios and video cover letters was fun and got me thinking about how to present my personality most effectively, but ultimately, getting in direct contact was the best way to be competitive.

Do you have a story to share about a unique job-finding hack? If so, please reach out to the reporter at tmartinelli@businessinsider.com.

• Target is calling about 150 remote workers back to its Minneapolis headquarters.
• The relocation mandate impacts workers within its merchandising division.
• The retailer, which brought on a new CEO earlier this year, has been working to turn the business around.

Target is calling more remote workers back to its headquarters.

The retailer is requiring about 150 remote workers within two teams in its merchandising group to relocate to Minneapolis, a spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider. Bloomberg earlier reported the news.

The company is offering relocation assistance to those who decide to move and severance to those who choose not to.

A company spokesperson said in a statement that "increased in-person collaboration across a core part of our merchandising team will help us reinforce our merchandising authority, unlocking greater creativity and enabling us to move faster to deliver on our strategy."

The retailer, which brought on a new CEO earlier this year, is in the midst of a turnaround strategy to revive growth, and improving its merchandise is a pillar of that effort.

The relocation mandate comes as more companies, such as Amazon and AT&T, have been calling workers back into the office in recent years. Target last year ramped up in-office days for employees already based in Minneapolis.

Target does not have a companywide mandate and has left in-office requirements to team leaders.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at dreuter@businessinsider.com or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Harry and Susan Jones own Bridge Avenue Berries, a blueberry farm in Allenwood, Pennsylvania.
• The farm became USDA organic certified in 2021, boosting customer traffic and interest.
• If they had bought the farm 30 years ago, they would have likely grown a more diverse set of crops.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Harry Jones, 63, who owns and runs Bridge Avenue Berries with his wife, Susan, in Allenwood, Pennsylvania. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Since I was a kid, I'd always wanted to run my own business, but it never quite came together. I tried starting a small tree nursery business, but we couldn't compete with the big nurseries and had to close it.

Then, a blueberry farm that my wife and I had been picking berries at for years went up for sale. When I first mentioned buying it, she said, "Absolutely not."

A few months later, we were there picking blueberries, and the farm still hadn't sold. We started talking with the owner and purchased it in March 2018.

We didn't have much time to figure it out. Blueberry season starts in early July, and we had about four months to get ready.

That first summer, it felt like we were drinking from a fire hose. We were learning everything at once — pests, soil, customers — mostly the hard way.

I wasn't starting from scratch, but owning a farm still surprised me

My background is in horticulture. I have an associate degree in nursery management, and I spent years designing landscapes. So, I've been around plants most of my life.

Still, running a blueberry farm is a different kind of challenge.

We have about 7 acres of blueberries — roughly 3,800 plants — and we harvest around 18,000 pounds a year.

The catch is that it all happens in about a 30-day window in July. That month is intense, but the work doesn't end with the season. The rest of the year is spent on preparing for the next one.

I've kept my full-time job in the lumber industry through all of this. We tend to call the farm my self-supporting hobby, but the truth is, even a small farm like ours struggles to make a dollar.

By the time you pay for inputs, repairs, improvements, and all the other costs that come with a small business, there's not much left.

If I were younger, I'd do it differently

At this stage of life, I think differently about what the farm should be. If I were 25 or 30 years younger, I wouldn't run it the way I do now.

Right now, we're heavily focused on one crop. If I were starting earlier, I'd cut the number of blueberry bushes down — maybe from 3,800 to about 2,000 — and use the rest of the land for other crops. Strawberries, raspberries, pumpkins — something to stretch income across more of the year.

That's the biggest challenge with what we do. When you rely on a single crop and a short season, it's hard to build a stable living.

We've found ways to spread out the income a bit. We freeze blueberries — about 1,900 pounds a year — and sell them through the winter at local markets and to restaurants.

Becoming USDA-certified organic was a game changer

We started farming organically from day one in 2018, but it took time to make it official. To become USDA certified organic, we had to go through a required three-year transition period — documenting everything we did, from fertilizers to pest control, and proving we were following the standards.

We finally got certified in spring 2021, and once we could call our berries "USDA organic," we saw more customers, more traffic, and even people driving an hour or more to pick our fruit.

But over time, the downsides started to add up. The certification cost us about $1,400 a year — a big expense for a small farm — and required inspections and paperwork during our busiest season. More importantly, I grew frustrated with what I saw as inconsistencies in the system.

In early 2024, we gave up our USDA certification and switched to Certified Naturally Grown, a smaller, farmer-led program. It costs about $350 a year and still holds us accountable to the National Organic Program Standards, but in a way that is more transparent and aligned with how we actually farm.

We know we won't do this forever

Realistically, we'll probably run the farm for another three to five years and then look to sell it, so that we can have more freedom to travel and visit our three kids and nine grandchildren.

I think about what a younger person could do with this place. It's a productive farm with a lot of potential. Someone with more time and energy could take it further than we have.

Even knowing what I know now, I'd still buy the farm.

We're happy with what we've built. It gave me a chance to finally run my own business and to work with something I've always loved — plants. And it's been meaningful to us to see people come here, enjoy the farm, and tell us how much they like it.

• Meta told staff on Thursday that it planned to eliminate 10% of its workforce.
• Inside the company, employees are bracing for weeks of limbo as they wait to find out who will be cut.
• Meta employees responded internally with a mixture of questions, concerns, and jokes.

Welcome to "28 days of hell."

That's how one Meta employee characterized the tech giant's announcement that thousands of jobs will be cut on May 20. Employees flooded internal forums with similar posts, many of which were filled with anxiety, dark humor, and questions as they wait to learn who will be out of a job.

"How are you motivating yourself to work for the next 1 month with layoffs confirmed?" one person posted on the anonymous workplace app Blind, in a section just for Meta employees.

Someone else replied, "I'm motivating myself to do stuff that I can put on my resume for my next job lol."

In a memo sent to staff on Thursday, Meta said it shared some layoff details earlier than usual because the news had already leaked. The company plans to cut around 10% of employees next month and close 6,000 open roles.

"I know this leaves everyone with nearly a month of ambiguity, which is incredibly unsettling," wrote Meta's chief people officer Janelle Gale.

For some Meta employees, the fact that company leadership acknowledged layoffs brought some relief. The layoffs had been so widely discussed internally that the announcement helped ease some uncertainty, according to one employee who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

One of the top comments under Gale's internal Meta post was a picture of an elephant, a reference to leadership addressing the elephant in the room. Reuters first reported Meta was planning sweeping layoffs in March, and employees have been speculating on the extent of the cuts in the weeks since.

"elephant addressed!" commented another employee. Another posted a picture of an envelope that read: "Addressed to: "ELEPHANT."

Others said that having to wait almost a month to find out who would be affected created anxiety. One person posted that this was their first week at the company. "It might be goodbye for me," they wrote.

Another employee told Business Insider that the announcement added pressure for them to deliver results over the next month because it's unknown which teams will be affected by the cuts.

"I'm a little stressed about making impact in the next month," they said.

Despite a sense of added pressure, it's not the employee's first go-around with cuts at the company. The worker said they're going to continue working as usual, assuming the worst while trying to make the most of the next month as they wait for further updates.

"I assume I'm always two months away from being laid off, no matter what leadership says, so I'm going to continue to operate as usual," the employee said.

Employees also commented on Gale's internal post with questions.

One person asked if Meta staff would receive their August 15 stock payouts, which are part of some employees' compensation packages. Gale said that impacted employees would have a termination date prior to the August vest and would therefore not receive it.

"Because of the timing of the notifications, we will have just had the May 15 vest. There are some instances, based on work location, where people will remain employed through the August 15 vest," Gale wrote. Another employee thanked Gale for the clarification.

Another employee asked if travel would be restricted the week of May 20. "We are not restricting travel company-wide. VPs will share team-specific guidance," Gale responded.

'I feel more anxious about surviving'

On the Meta employee section of Blind, some users asked why Meta couldn't offer voluntary buyouts. Microsoft on Thursday offered one-time early retirement buyouts to thousands of its long-time employees, and Google has extended the same offers to staff across some orgs.

Many posts were from users asking others for information about which groups might be affected.

In a longer post, one user said the downside might be surviving the cuts.

"I feel more anxious about surviving this layoff," they wrote, recalling several rounds of layoffs at the company since 2022.

"Because we all know it's just gonna get worse for those of us who are left behind and have to absorb even more work, amongst other declining factors in this sad fearful company," they wrote.

• Greg Smith started tutoring the LSAT in law school.
• He automated a course and out-earned his lawyer salary selling it.
• He grew and scaled a learning platform that now generates $75 million in annual revenue.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Greg Smith, CEO of Thinkific. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I became interested in corporate law because of the role lawyers play in pivotal business decisions. As a CEO, I might navigate a merger or IPO only once or twice, but as a corporate lawyer, I'd be dealing with them constantly. It seemed to me there were more exciting corporate transactions in a few years of corporate law than there were in two lifetimes of being a CEO.

That pushed me to go to law school. While there, I started tutoring for the LSAT to help pay my bills, including student loan payments. I realized that a lot of my tutoring was repetitive, but I was limited by how many students I could fit into a room. I wanted to reach more people, have more impact, and generate more revenue.

So, in 2005, I launched an automated course. The course started generating thousands of dollars a month, without me investing much time or money. Once, when I had a month of my law job, I really focused on promoting the course, and it generated $10,000 in a month — more than I was making in my corporate role. That was a real signal that I should go deeper with this.

Soon, others asked me to help build their course platforms

I had always been drawn to entrepreneurship — probably because my parents were always thinking about their big ideas, but never able to follow through because of their day jobs. One time, on a plane ride, I had an aha moment: I needed to build a business.

I didn't immediately think about my course. Instead, I left my lawyer job for another startup opportunity, but that didn't pan out.

As I considered my options, I realized that other people and companies were already approaching me about helping them create a platform to support their own educational courses. I had inbound leads, and the solution they were looking for, so I decided to give it a try. In 2012, I founded Thinkific.

My brother was a cofounder, but we often butted heads

My brother Matt, who is eight years younger, saw me struggling to write code. He stepped in to help and became a cofounder. In the early days, there was a fair amount of healthy and unhealthy conflict between us in the office. We were driven and wanted to reach the same place, but we had different ideas about how to get there.

We both wanted to be the CEO — the one making major decisions. But in reality, there weren't that many decisions to be made. After three years of working together, Matt left to pursue another idea. Although we'd had disagreements at work, we always got along well on the weekends.

As Thinkific continued to grow and scale, Matt became one of my most trusted advisors. He briefly rejoined the company as Chief Strategy Officer, and our dynamic was very different. The company was growing so fast that we had tons of decisions to make, and I was grateful for anything he could take off my plate. Today, he's an advisor to the board. He's also the guy I can call when I'm struggling, just to talk.

I teach my kids to be proud of their failures

My kids are 7 and 10, and I talk to them a lot about failure. When my daughter was about 3, she asked what failure was. I told her that when something doesn't go the way you want, it's a huge opportunity.

Now, I'll regularly ask the kids about the things they failed at, to show them they should be proud of their failures. They love talking about it so much that they'll tell other kids, "You failed!" like it's the most exciting thing. Sometimes other parents give me the side eye about that, but I'm glad that their approach to failure is healthy — that will help them when they're trying new things.

• On Tuesday, Meta advised some employees to work from home. The next day, the company began layoffs.
• Getting laid off remotely offers privacy, but can feel isolating — for affected employees and survivors alike.
• Would you rather find out about layoffs in an office or while working remotely? Take our survey.

Getting laid off sucks, yet how it happens matters, too.

On Tuesday, Meta told some employees to work from home the next day, ahead of the company's latest round of layoffs. The move touches on an anxiety familiar to many: not only whether you'll get cut, but how — and where — you'll find out.

Six years on from the start of the pandemic, many desk workers remain in hybrid roles. That's shifted the mechanics of layoffs. What was once typically handled in a conference room or the boss's office might now unfold on a screen or by email.

As more companies trim their workforces, the question is carrying greater weight. It may not have an easy answer.

"You can have poor execution in person. You can have poor execution remotely," said Sarah Rodehorst, cofounder and CEO of Onwards HR, which helps companies manage severance and offboarding.

At home vs. IRL

Being at home can allow people to process the news on their own terms — without the risk of crying in front of colleagues. It can also pose fewer security concerns for companies worried about employees lashing out on their way out the actual door.

Making cuts from afar can also make it easier on managers, who don't have to directly face the person they're letting go, said Ben Hardy, a clinical professor of organizational behavior at London Business School.

"It's a bit like divorcing someone through text message," he said of cutting jobs where one person delivers bad news to many others. It's too impersonal, Hardy told Business Insider, for an intimate topic. One-on-one communication is better, he said.

Getting laid off in-person might mean trying to hold it together in front of colleagues, yet it can also give people a chance to say goodbye to coworkers and make plans to keep in touch — or gather afterward to commiserate.

Ultimately, what matters most is handling layoffs with empathy and preserving the human element, said Rodehorst.

Calling someone into an office only to lay them off might not always be the best decision, she told Business Insider.

"Remote can actually preserve some privacy," Rodehorst said.

Of course, layoffs generally feel awful in any case. Some workers have pushed back at cuts via video, saying that it feels impersonal.

What do you think?

How do you feel about where layoffs should take place? Take our poll.

• Jatee Kearsley's bakery, Je T'aime Patisserie, gained fame after a viral feature on Righteous Eats.
• Going viral changed the trajectory of her business but took a toll on her mental health.
• Kearsley says she wouldn't want to go viral again, even though that may sound ungrateful.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jatee Kearsley, the owner and pastry chef of Je T'aime Patisserie, which offers a "Black girl twist" on French pastries in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. It has been edited for length and clarity.

In April 2024, I sat in my bakery with my Bible study group and told them I had $2,000 in my bank account and no idea how I was going to pay my employees the next day.

When I opened my bakery a year prior, I knew it would be hard. I had taken out loans. I had put in my own savings. I understood that small businesses require money for everything: rent, ingredients, payroll, insurance, and taxes.

Still, nothing prepares you for sitting in your own store and realizing you might not be able to cover payroll. Then, the day after meeting with my Bible study group, everything changed.

We were featured on Righteous Eats, a social media feed run by Jaeki Cho and Brian Lee that features New York City restaurants. The video went viral, and by the following weekend, my bank account looked completely different.

Going viral was a blessing. I will never pretend it wasn't. It changed the trajectory of my business. However, I don't think people talk enough about what going viral does to your mental health.

For me mentally, I don't want to go viral again. That might sound ungrateful, but it's honest.

Going viral didn't make the work easier

On a normal day before going viral, my team and I of about four, were making, on average, 200 croissants a week. After we went viral, demand shot up to about 200 croissants every other day.

I specifically remember selling four chocolate croissants the day before going viral and then 30 the day of. We make all types of croissants from scratch: chocolate, almond, ham and cheese, blueberry cheesecake, and more.

We laminate the dough, hand-roll each one, proof them, bake them, and fill them. Going viral didn't make our team any bigger, and I had to loop in friends, family, and volunteers to help fill orders and deliveries.

There were weekends when it was just me and one other person in the bakery at 6 a.m., trying to keep up.

Other days, I was filling 160 mini croissants for catering orders on top of regular production. I've even hand-rolled croissants on my day off because there was no one else to do it.

Going viral brought more customers, but it also brought higher expectations

People would leave reviews saying they waited hours, only to find we were sold out. I didn't want to disappoint anyone. So I slept on a bench in the bakery for a week straight after going viral to make sure I was keeping up with the demand that was needed during that time.

There's also the emotional weight that comes with virality. When we went viral the first time, it was exciting. It also meant strangers had opinions about everything: my prices, my neighborhood, the fact that I accept Electronic Benefits Transfer.

I accept EBT because I know what underserved, overlooked communities of people are dealing with. And I never wanted there to be a moment where someone walked into Je T'aime Patisserie and wasn't able to afford it.

I specifically wanted Je T'aime Patisserie to be in a neighborhood where people don't have things. Historically, Bed-Stuy is an underserved, overlooked food desert.

So, it was super important for me to make sure that my food impacts the neighborhood by providing high-quality, fresh pastries. People thought that accepting EBT was going to ruin my business, but it actually helped.

Everything I have achieved with my shop is because I accept all types of people in my store, including EBT and SNAP holders.

It's not about the money or going viral

I know this is Business Insider, and we're supposed to talk about numbers. But if I'm being honest, this has never been about the money for me.

If this were just about money, I would make different decisions. I would raise my prices more aggressively. I would stop worrying about whether a single mom can afford a croissant. I would probably choose a different neighborhood.

But I opened in Bed-Stuy on purpose. People told me my bakery "belonged" in Manhattan. I disagreed. I wanted someone who has never tried a fresh croissant or a quiche to walk into my shop and feel like they deserve it.

Financially, EBT makes up a small percentage of my revenue. But the support and gratitude from those customers mean more to me than the dollar amount ever could.

If I could run this business without making money, I would. Unfortunately, that's not realistic in New York City. You need money to survive. But my passion has always been about helping people and impacting my community.

• Epic Games announced it would cut over 1,000 employees, or about 20% of its workforce.
• CEO Tim Sweeney says the layoffs aren't AI-driven and that the company still needs software developers.
• He cited a 'downturn in Fortnite engagement' and said rising costs forced cuts.

Epic Games announced that it was laying off more than 1,000 employees, but the "Fortnite" maker's CEO says it's not because of AI.

Tim Sweeney said in a memo to employees shared online Tuesday that the cuts, affecting about 20% of its workforce, reflect industry-wide challenges, including slower growth, weaker spending, and tougher cost dynamics.

"Since it's a thing now, I should note that the layoffs aren't related to AI," he wrote. "To the extent it improves productivity, we want to have as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can."

A growing number of employers have recently cited AI as a reason for making deep cuts to their head counts. Recent examples include Block and Atlassian.

Tuesday's cuts, which come two years after Epic struck a $1.5 billion licensing deal with Disney, are significant, said Joost van Dreunen, CEO of the game-analytics firm Aldora Intelligence and a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business.

"It's an acknowledgement of the change in the industry that's taking place, particularly among American publishers, when one of the most popular game makers is finding itself having to let go of 1,000 people," he said. "It suggests that we're witnessing the decline of American cultural dominance in the video games industry."

Though the global games industry grew revenue — roughly 4.5% last year, according to Aldora — most of that growth came from outside the US, said Van Dreunen. "The consumer gravity point is moving eastward," he said.

The game industry's workforce has been contracting in recent years following a pandemic-era boom. An estimated 5,300 jobs were cut last year, and 14,600 were axed in 2024, according to an online tally of termination announcements and news reports by Farhan Noor, a technical artist in California.

Epic last had layoffs in 2023, affecting 16% of its workforce. Those layoffs were a first for the company, which was founded in the 1990s. In his memo, Sweeney indicated that the latest cuts are a painful necessity.

"The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we're spending significantly more than we're making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded," he wrote. "This layoff, together with over $500 million of identified cost savings in contracting, marketing, and closing some open roles puts us in a more stable place."

• I booked a trip to an important work conference to network and meet with potential clients.
• When I got to the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, I saw the long TSA lines and waited hours.
• I missed my flight and the conference, which cost me business opportunities.

This wasn't just a missed flight. It was my path to a room full of investors at the Transform conference in Las Vegas. It was the kind of access that matters when you're building a new coaching business, and every connection could change your trajectory.

The night before, there was a moment that now feels like eerie foreshadowing. My husband asked what time to set the alarm for so he could take me to the airport. He thought my flight was at 7:35 a.m., not 7:35 p.m. We laughed it off.

In retrospect, we probably should have gone with his plan. If I had gotten there 12 hours early, I might've made that flight. Instead, I did what most of us do. I planned carefully.

Before leaving, I asked my 17-year-old to check TSA wait times. He said it was 45 minutes. I smiled, thinking that sounded too good to be true. From experience, a posted 45-minute wait usually means closer to two hours. I accounted for that.

What I didn't account for was five.

The TSA line wrapped around baggage carousels

By the time I reached Hartsfield-Jackson Airport on Sunday afternoon, the line was too long to be just 45 minutes. It wrapped around baggage carousels and thickened into a dense, slow maze past carousel nine.

I tried to be patient, but none of us was going anywhere. I kept checking the time on my Fitbit, then on my phone, as if one might offer a different reality. I was trying to make sense of what I couldn't control.

That's when something shifted. I couldn't move the line, but I could choose how I met the moment — whether I spiraled into frustration or grounded myself in what I could still impact.

While still in line, I pulled up the Delta app to rebook. Every flight to Las Vegas on Sunday night was sold out. At the same time, I started texting with Delta customer service. They advised me to go to the baggage help area and request that my luggage be removed from the plane.

They submitted the request. I waited, hoping there was still time. Then the status on my FlyDelta app changed to "On board."

I never made it to the gate, but my bag did. While I was returning home, my bag was in Vegas, living its best life without me.

This wasn't just any trip; it was a room I needed to be in

For someone building a new coaching business, the kind of access I would have gotten at the conference is essential.

Transform is a conference focused on the future of work. This year's theme, centered on the Human + AI equation, brings together founders, investors, and leaders to explore how organizations are evolving in real time.

Through curated meetings, hands-on sessions, and structured networking like FastPass, conference attendees are matched with the right people rather than the casual introductions many conferences offer. That was the part I was most excited about.

I had four pre-planned meetings scheduled. Those were conversations that could have turned into partnerships, clients, or long-term collaborations.

I also invested time and resources into being there. While my conference ticket was covered through a volunteer role and I now have a flight credit with Delta, I am still working through hotel charges and other trip expenses I never completed. I rescheduled existing clients to make space for the trip, which means a delay in guaranteed revenue.

More than that, I can't stop thinking about the potential revenue and relationships that could've come from simply being in the room. As an entrepreneur, those moments matter. They are often where momentum begins.

These TSA delays are affecting all of us in different ways

What I experienced isn't unique. Long security delays are causing people to miss flights and opportunities that may never come back. Those impacts show up in the quiet ways our lives are rerouted: a room we never enter, a conversation that doesn't happen, or a deal that doesn't get made.

We call delays inconveniences, but sometimes they cost access. And in business, access is everything.

Behind every long line is a real cost: time lost, plans disrupted, or opportunities missed. We don't always see those costs. But we feel them.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hady Kfoury, the founder and CEO of Naya, a Middle Eastern-inspired food chain. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I created Naya to share the authentic Middle Eastern flavors I grew up with, in a modern and fast-casual way. Today, we have 43 locations. We're adding 12 more this year, and 25 next year. Our goal is to reach 200 locations by 2030.

It takes a lot of work and it's a competitive environment.

I'm very proud that I'm a CEO and still so hands-on. I work a lot — and I'm not saying this is a healthy lifestyle.

I wake up around 6 a.m.

I try to have a peaceful hour before the rest of my family wakes up. Recently, I've been exercising in the morning because I find it difficult to do it after work, especially if I get home late. So I try to work out between 6:20 and 6:50.

I call my mom at 6:50 a.m. every morning

I call my mom usually every day at 6:50 a.m. We speak for about five to 10 minutes.

My mom is an unbelievable cook and she hosted a lot growing up. She would have 20 to 100 people over for dinner and cook everything from scratch, with flower arrangements and everything. She's a great resource when it comes to understanding the food trends in Lebanon.

I don't eat breakfast during the week

Monday through Friday, I drink tons of coffee but no breakfast. On weekends I eat a heavy breakfast. I don't know why, but that's how my body works.

I wake up my kids and my wife prepares breakfast for them. Then we leave home by 7:50 a.m. and walk to school. My children go to a French International school. Lebanon was a French colony for many years and it was my first language. So I wanted to pass that down to my kids.

I refuse to have an assistant

Our office is next to Grand Central and I head there after dropping my kids off around 8:15 a.m.

I refuse to have an assistant and I schedule everything myself. I'm very into routines and habit. I don't want to have to talk to someone right after I finish a call. I'd rather take a half-hour break and tackle my emails first. It would be very hard to have someone schedule my day and not know what I really need between meetings.

I go to Naya every day

We're surrounded by roughly eight or nine restaurants within a few minutes walking distance. So I go to one every day.

I switch up a lot, but my go-to order is a chicken kebab with a lot of tahini. 70% of our sales go to chicken shawarma. So I try to have that as well, to confirm consistency.

I try and be as incognito as possible. If I go during a lunch rush, I avoid talking to the team and just evaluate the experience. The quality of the food is extremely important.

Sometimes on my way to work, I'll go into a restaurant before opening. I try to make it feel like I'm a partner — not the boss — and everything is business as usual. I ask workers if anything is bothering them, how things are moving, and then I do some spot checks on food quality and cleanliness.

I have a lot of calls to import ingredients

I don't want to turn Naya into an import-export business but I'd love to get 20 to 30% of our products to come straight from Lebanon. We need to be authentic and true to our toots.

It takes a lot of coordination because there's a seven-hour timezone difference. Lebanon also operates differently and that's another challenge. Samples can take time, especially when it's a refrigerted product, so it's a lot of communication.

The tariffs add another layer of complications. I've been trying to negotiate and split the difference between us and our manufacturers. It hasn't been so bad for Lebanon so far, but the uncertainty stresses us.

I have dinner with my aunt once a week

Similar to my mom, my aunt is an unbelievable cook. We have dinner together once a week at her place and she cooks a little bit of everything, but with a big focus on Lebanese food. It's very hard to take her recipes and scale it commercially, but she's an unbelievable person to go for new ideas.

I work 14- to 16-hour days

I try to get home by 7:30 p.m. It's important for me to have dinner with the kids. I try to limit myself to two to three business dinners or events per week. When I have those, I go straight from the office to dinner and then I'm back home by around 10 p.m.

I'm constantly working. I check my emails on the subway and while I'm walking on the streets of New York. Even when I watch TV, I try to shift to something industry-related, either from an entrepreneurial perspective or cooking.

Right now, we're emerging and there's so much going on, that I think my presence is very important. So it's an easy 14- to 16-hours a day.

I used to get copies of every review

I can't sleep well knowing that I have so many unread emails. For almost 17 years, I would get a copy of every customer review from Yelp, Google, or customer support.

About three months ago, I handed it over to someone that I trust who has a great grip on the customer experience. Now she sends me weekly reports on how things are going and I reduced my email intake by at least 150 emails per day.

Sometimes I would get emails with a complaint and even if it was 11 p.m., I would email the general manager and ask what went wrong. I learned I should not do that because it stresses out the team and it's not healthy.

I spend my summer weekends in Connecticut

I try to disconnect as much as possible on the weekends, but I still have to spend four or five hours catching up. I love to work a bit on Sunday just to get ready for Monday before it gets crazy.

I spend my summer weekends in a town called Litchfield, Connecticut. We're part of a community that has tennis courts. I play four or five hours on Sunday. It's a lot of socializing and fun.

I play chess before bed

I was told to stop playing chess before bed and give myself an hour break. I'm hooked on Chess.com, where you can play with real people. It's a great way to end my day.

I try to read half an hour before bed and completely disconnect. I love reading, but I don't do more than five to 10 pages a night.

I go to bed around 11:30 p.m. My sleep score varies, but it never goes above 80. I'm trying to get better at that. I try to avoid wine at night. When I don't drink and I disconnect from screens an hour or two before bed, I sleep much better.

• BNY's CEO, Robin Vince, is all in on AI's role in steering the bank's future.
• Now, some managers oversee the bank's 140 digital employees, a form of agentic AI.
• We spoke to Vince and a BNY managing director about the program.

Despite its 240-year pedigree, BNY isn't showing its age.

Under CEO Robin Vince, who took the reins in 2022, the firm — founded by Alexander Hamilton — is aggressively embracing AI. Recently, it has begun entrusting some managers with oversight of a contingent of new workers who don't even require a chair: the digital employee.

"All digital employees report to a human manager," Vince said in an interview with Business Insider this month in Palm Beach.

These digital employees create a layered effect with the company's agentic products, in which a single entity coordinates the activities of multiple individual agents. The digital workforce is more than 140 agents strong, each one with roughly two dozen skills, give or take, comprising their suite of abilities.

And, just like humans, they're held accountable for their work — with performance reviews.

After executing a variety of tasks humans might find tedious, the digital employee presents it to "the human who's responsible for the process — 'I've just done three quarters of the work for you. And by the way, I did it in 10 minutes instead of what would have otherwise been two weeks," the CEO explained.

About 100 managers across the firm oversee digital employees, including Rachel Lewis, a managing director and a two-decade BNY veteran who now serves as head of AI enablement for operations. Appointed to the role this year, Lewis is now helping teams across the bank build and deploy digital employees within their day-to-day workflows.

"We're kind of transferring the mundane to the machines," she said, describing how the tools are taking over routine processes and shifting how work gets done.

Lewis told Business Insider she works closely with teams across BNY to help them develop their own digital employees — often starting with ideas that come directly from the people doing the work and turning them into tools over time.

"The person that came up with that idea actually gets the opportunity to build that digital employee," she said. As teams begin to incorporate them into their workflows, she added, the technology starts to feel less like software and more like part of the team. "It's just almost having a virtual teammate as part of your group."

170,000 hours of training

To prepare for the AI age, BNY implemented a massive 170,000-hour AI training program for its 48,000 staffers. "Everyone in the company has done two to three hours," he said. The goal was to turn employees into a new class of supervisors who managed, rather than competed with, the machine. "We're investing in our people, because I want them to be the unlockers and users of AI," Vince added.

Last week, he sent a memo to several thousand of the firm's senior leaders pointing to some of the firm's past efforts in AI and encouraging them to be proactive in continuing to incorporate it. "We have an obligation to our company to capture this opportunity," Vince wrote in the email, whose subject line was "Reimagining BNY."

"This is a fundamental leadership shift, not simply a capability shift," he added. "It will require each of us to lean in and role-model how to engage with AI and how to harness it to solve problems."

Speaking to Business Insider, Vince described his first personal deep dive into AI as a "summer project" that kicked off in 2023 and never ended.

It was sparked by a YouTube video he saw that broke down the functionality of Tesla's Autopilot 12. He watched as the car observed human behavior and applied what it saw to navigating a stop sign, rather than adhering to a few rigid lines of code. "It was very clear to me that the future of AI was going to be learning to make decisions," Vince said. He wanted to bring that same adaptive intelligence to the bank. "It was highly applicable to our businesses," he added, "and it would be able to be a very fundamental input to how we actually ran the company."

Expanding the digital workforce

While some of the earliest digital employees have applications focused on straightforward fixes like data repair and data capture, Lewis said the tools that have stood out most are those that make it easier for employees to build and refine their own digital employees.

Building a digital employee starts with observing how work is actually done. Teams record themselves completing tasks step by step, allowing the system to analyze different approaches and identify the most efficient way to perform the work. That output is then used to generate the instructions that guide a digital employee, which are refined over time as teams train the system on new variations of the task.

Lewis said that as digital employees become embedded in workflows, teams are also treating them more like members of the workforce. "There is a performance review," she said.

Managers evaluate how the systems perform by reviewing outputs, identifying where they skip tasks or "didn't perform as expected," and feeding that work back into the system to be retrained on new variations and edge cases.

"We're continuously monitoring them," she added. "Every week it gets a little bit better."

Even as it expands its digital workforce, Vince said there are no plans to cut back on human capital; these tools, he said, are meant to supercharge their workflow, but not take responsibilities out of their hands. "I speak to CEOs who say, 'We're going to downsize, massively, our campus program.'" Vince's reply? "Why would you do that?"

"We've got the opportunity to have young people who are pre-trained in AI, enthusiastic, and be able to add to our business in different ways," he said.

• Marie Pabelonio, a Google editorial lead, graduated from college with an English degree in 2009.
• She highlights the value of her English degree in adapting to AI's impact in the tech industry.
• AI helps her meet deadlines and focus on the bigger picture, but a human touch is still essential.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Marie Pabelonio, a 38-year-old editorial lead at Google, based in the Bay Area. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I've been at Google since 2019, and as a writer, I knew AI would affect my role.

Looking back on my career trajectory, it feels like nothing short of a miracle that I ended up where I am. I graduated with an English degree in 2009, right after the financial crisis, and I'm now an editorial lead in people operations at Google, where I co-lead a small team that drafts and editorializes about 4,500-plus pages of HR policies. I've used AI to automate processes, refine drafts, templatize, and meet deadlines that would be impossible otherwise.

At this point, anyone, regardless of whether they're a writer or not, has felt it: Is AI going to automate me? Is it going to eventually just replace my job? I don't think I work more or less because of AI; I just work very differently.

I was a humanities major and fell into Big Tech

The job market felt very volatile when I entered it, which I think a lot of young people entering the workforce today feel.

I didn't have a career plan. I was an English major because I loved reading and writing, and if I found a job where I could do that and build a specific skill set on top of it, I would be OK.

My first job was as a fact-checker for the publishing arm of an industrial supply company, and then I became a copywriter in the advertising and marketing space. In 2016, I moved from Chicago to the Bay Area and became an editor at Amazon's subsidiary, Goodreads. I stayed in the Bay Area and made my way to Google by 2019.

I wasn't surprised that AI changed my job right away

We've heard the word "unprecedented" so much in the last six years or so that nothing surprises me anymore, including AI.

My team works with stakeholders and policy designers to interpret and draft policies, whether they're return-to-office, hybrid work, or immigration policies. There are areas where AI is useful in our work, and the tool has helped us regain more strategic time by automating tactical parts of our process.

This includes training the AI on standard article structure, to include four sections like background, key details, process, and related resources, formatting consistencies, including where headlines, a bulleted list, or a table would be used, and five to seven non-negotiable details the user needs to know from the policy.

I think there's still a lot of room for that human touch in that process. Once I have the output, I spend my time on the more strategic pieces, like verifying tone and voice, determining whether the article actually achieves the user goal, and how it fits with the broader content strategy of other articles.

In our writing, the goal is to inject humanity and warmth as much as possible, especially when explaining human resources topics like an employee's health insurance, compensation, performance reviews, and career growth. AI can't do that by itself.

AI saved me when I had a tight deadline

Around the time we started using AI, I had a big project to update existing policies, and I was on a tight deadline. I spent a lot of time upfront strategizing about how I could use AI to accelerate my work and meet my goals.

To address the overwhelming number of first drafts, I used AI to template a structure for readability, created a checklist for tone, style, and quality, and because of that was able to focus more on streamlining stakeholder reviews to check for accuracy. I met my deadline with a few days to spare. This was when it clicked for me that AI was changing things in a huge way, when this deadline looked really impossible, and then it wasn't.

Still, there were many times I had to validate and tweak the outputs. I never felt I could use AI as my secretary and leave it alone to do whatever it wanted.

Studying the humanities gave me a particular edge in the AI job market

I think there will be more of a premium on how we think, not what we know.

When it comes to writing, it's about being able to articulate the reasons behind your choices. Why this phrase and not that? Why put this insight here and not there? There's a rationale behind your judgment.

In job interviews, the question of how you use AI at work will inevitably come up now, and your AI output is only as good as your input. Good writers can get better, but bad writers can get worse, and just because you're writing fluently doesn't mean you're writing well. Studying literature so closely helped me reflect more on questions instead of answers.

This is the time to brag about how you develop your own sound judgment and how you use that judgment in your AI inputs. As good as it is to develop hard skills, it's just as important, now more than ever, to focus on soft skills too.

Do you have a story to share about your writing job in tech or AI? Contact this reporter, Agnes Applegate, at aapplegate@businessinsider.com.

• Taylor M. LaSane built a career coaching side hustle while working at Google.
• Last year, she accepted a voluntary buyout to focus on her business full-time.
• She shared why she made the leap — and her advice for others weighing major career moves.

Last June, Taylor M. LaSane faced a decision she'd been weighing for years: whether to walk away from her six-figure salary at Google to go all in on the career coaching business she started three years earlier.

Google had just offered voluntary buyouts to some US-based employees, including those in the finance organization where she worked, positioning the program as an option for workers who didn't feel "all in" on the company's direction.

LaSane said her buyout offer included just under six months of severance pay. While the payout would help ease her transition to entrepreneurship, the risk was still significant. She said her income from the business was roughly 10% of what she earned at Google — and she had to weigh the financial implications for her husband and their twin toddlers.

Around this time, LaSane learned about the unexpected death of her uncle at the age of 62. She said he had recently retired and been looking forward to having time to "relax and actually live." His death, coupled with the buyout offer, made her question how long she was willing to wait to pursue her own plans.

"It was a reminder that life is too short to wait for permission," said LaSane, who is 32 and lives in Atlanta.

She ultimately decided to apply for the buyout and, after being accepted, took the offer — with her employment formally ending in October.

Over the past year, I've interviewed more than a dozen workers like LaSane, many of them from Big Tech companies, who chose to quit their jobs without having another role lined up. Some eventually landed at another large company. Others stepped away from the corporate world entirely — joining smaller firms, launching their own ventures, pursuing career pivots, or focusing on personal priorities, such as parenting.

These people have become outliers in an economy where workers are quitting at one of the lowest rates in the past decade — a trend fueled by a hiring slowdown across tech and other sectors that has left many holding tightly to their jobs with few appealing alternatives.

Those who walked away told me they did so for a range of reasons: concerns about job security, changes in workplace culture, entrepreneurial ambitions, or a desire for more meaningful work. The common theme: they were seeking greater long-term control over their careers.

TikTok visibility and motherhood slowed the business

In addition to LaSane's main role at Google, she volunteered as a career coach through an internal program for Google employees. She said she enjoyed the work and led as many as eight 40-minute coaching sessions in a given week.

In 2022, after seven years with Google, her growing interest in coaching — among other factors — began laying the foundation for her eventual exit.

That February, she began making career-focused TikTok videos. Around the same time, she began questioning whether her role was the right fit for her after she worked hard for a promotion, earned it, and still felt an "empty feeling."

"I was taking meetings at 2 o'clock in the morning, my hair was falling out, it was not a great time," she said. "And then I got the promotion, and I felt worse than I did before."

After reassessing her priorities, she took another step toward career coaching. In May 2022, she formally launched SHYNE, a coaching company focused on helping corporate professionals navigate career transitions. Later that year, in October, she earned a certification in leadership and performance coaching from Brown University.

From there, LaSane began taking on clients in her spare time and generating a modest income. But two factors held her back from pursuing the business more aggressively: the time constraints of juggling a full-time job and her growing concerns about the visibility of her growing TikTok presence.

LaSane said a few Google colleagues mentioned seeing her videos, and while she was never discouraged from posting, she worried about the potential career implications of being so visible online. So she decided to scale back her posting.

"I think I was trying to balance having a business on the side, but also managing the internal corporate brand," she said.

In 2023, another development pulled her away from her side business: she became pregnant with twins. In May of that year, LaSane took a break from the business that lasted until around September 2024 — spanning her pregnancy and about 10 months away from work, including eight months of company-provided maternity leave and two months of vacation and medical leave. When she returned to Google in the fall, she also refocused on growing her business.

Going all in on entrepreneurship

LaSane decided to trade TikTok for LinkedIn as her primary platform — and leaned more into group coaching and live events. Then in early 2025, she began questioning more seriously whether her position at Google was still the right fit, as organizational changes — including a growing emphasis on AI — left her increasingly uncertain about her responsibilities and long-term path.

At the same time, she believed in her business's potential — and felt the eight to 20 hours a week she could devote to it outside work and family obligations were limiting its growth. She also weighed her job security at Google, which she felt wasn't guaranteed.

"Big Tech layoffs are happening everywhere, so it wasn't like staying there was necessarily any more stable than leaving," she said.

So when she learned about Google's buyout option and mulled it over, she decided to apply and was approved. After assessing her family's financial situation — which included her husband's income and her business earnings — she accepted the offer.

LaSane said that, on the whole, Google was a "great company to work for," adding that the community she built there is what she'll remember most fondly.

In recent months, LaSane said her business has evolved from a focus on one-on-one coaching into a "career studio" with workshops and group coaching programs. She's not currently taking a personal salary from the business, but said individual events and programs have generated revenue. She said last year's Dream Day event — a live coaching workshop — brought in about $3,000 in revenue.

LaSane said she wants to give herself at least a year to pursue the business full-time before considering a pivot back to the corporate world.

"I thought about the story I wanted to tell my kids," she said. "That she took this kind of risk and was willing to bet on herself in this way — that's the story I want them to know. So I think bailing out too soon wouldn't fit the narrative."

Among her top pieces of advice for people navigating their careers: Chase the purpose and future you want — not the one you think you're supposed to have.

"If you get clear about that, everything else will fall in place," she said. "That's what happened for me."

• IBM's consulting arm monitors the work of AI agents using a real-time dashboard.
• IBM says AI agents have sped up security investigations, cutting task time from 45 to a few minutes.
• IBM Consulting's revenue reached $21 billion in 2025, driven by demand for AI solutions.

At IBM's consulting arm, the future isn't a slide deck or a strategy memo — it's a live dashboard where humans monitor the work of AI agents in real time.

Earlier this month, Mohamad Ali, senior vice president of IBM Consulting, walked Business Insider through the dashboard that the company both uses internally and recently released to clients.

"Every hour I can see what's going on with all the humans associated with digital workers," and vice versa, he said. "That is the new consulting model going forward."

The dashboard is known internally as "Consulting Advantage." The company unveiled it in 2024 to help its own consultants build and manage teams of AI agents. This January, it unveiled "Enterprise Advantage," a similar version of the platform for clients that allows them to build and manage AI agents at scale.

In recent years, the firm has made itself the testing ground for building and deploying digital workers as it prepares clients for a future defined by AI. Ali said the firm has digital staff working side by side with humans on more than 150 client engagements.

Take the example of a typical security operations center, he said. When an alert comes in, a human investigator would normally spend about 45 minutes combing through logs to figure out what went wrong and what to do next. At IBM, he said, that process is increasingly handled by AI.

Digital workers first "generate an investigation plan." Then they execute it in real time. Multiple agents tackle different parts of the problem simultaneously, passing tasks back and forth, he said. Then they run a risk analysis and produce a report. The process now takes just a couple of minutes. The findings are then passed back to a human — with key actions highlighted — and the human verifies it.

In January alone, IBM used this approach to complete 52,000 investigations, Ali said.

IBM has evolved dramatically from its early days as a maker of mainframe computers into a key player in the AI boom. The company said its generative AI department was valued at $12.5 billion during its fourth-quarter earnings call.

Its consulting department, especially, has seen an uptick due to demand for generative AI and services that help clients implement it. Consulting revenue for 2025 came in at over $21 billion, up from about $20.7 billion in 2024.

IBM Consulting has been around for decades. The company acquired PwC's consulting arm in 2002. PwC would later rebuild its consulting business after a five-year noncompete clause expired.

IBM Consulting now employs about 150,000 employees and says its work overlaps with the Big Four and more technology-focused firms like Accenture.

"We don't do, like, what markets you should be in," Ali said. "We do strategy around 'how do you take your corporate strategy and implement it?'"

And right now, he said, there's a big question in corporate strategy: How do you prepare for a world where humans work alongside AI agents?

• Some of the most common career advice doesn't always hold up.
• You don't necessarily need to find your passion or ascend the corporate ladder to like what you do.
• Because finding a job can be tough, it's important to think about which pieces of advice to follow.

Your boss might prefer a version of you that isn't entirely authentic.

One of the many pieces of career advice that emerged years ago — when the market was far friendlier — is the idea that we should bring our whole selves to work.

That doesn't always work, and it's starting to look a bit threadbare with age, especially because in many industries, employers are being more selective in their hiring.

"If you love wearing tight little leather outfits that are strapped on, I don't want to see that," said Margie Warrell, a leadership consultant and author of the book "The Courage Gap."

"That's not appropriate," she told Business Insider.

The whole-self idea is just one example of bumper-sticker wisdom meant to guide us through our careers, but that often doesn't hold up.

Here are six bits of trite work advice — and what to think about instead:

Find your passion

The impulse to align your work with what you love makes sense. Yet, feeling like you have to "find your passion" can also set you up to fail.

"That's probably as vague as it gets," said Jochen Menges, a professor of human resource management and leadership at the University of Zurich. "It's not an actionable goal."

He told Business Insider that a better approach would be to set goals centered on the emotion you want to feel in your work, such as pride, even though you might not experience it every day.

"If I align my emotional needs more with what I do — with my career prospects — then I'm a lot better off," he said. That, in turn, will accelerate your career, Menges said.

Make it a numbers game

When you're looking for a job, it can be tempting to click apply as many times as possible to increase your chances.

It's an understandable impulse. It feels good to do something tangible when so much of the search process is out of your control.

In a recent survey by the hiring software maker Greenhouse, 53% of recruiters said they review fewer than half of the applications they receive. The survey involved more than 600 recruiters and hiring managers.

While the spray-and-pray approach is tempting, it's generally not the best move. Networking to make connections inside an employer can often be more effective, recruiters say.

If you have a list of places you're targeting, you should network before the job gets posted, career coach Laura Labovich told Business Insider. That's because once a job listing is live, recruiters and hiring managers aren't likely to do more than point you to it.

Climb the ladder

The idea of ascending a corporate hierarchy has become outdated for some workers, said Christian Tröster, an Academy of Management scholar and a professor of leadership and organizational behavior at Germany's Kühne Logistics University.

Instead, he said, people might want to consider what he called a "protean" career — one that changes shape over time.

Tröster said that rather than ascending a ladder, a better aim for many workers would be to become "psychologically successful."

"The ultimate goal of your career is feeling proud and accomplished," he said.

One reason you might not want to scale the ladder is that a push by some leaders for "flatter" organizational structures — and the elimination of middle management — can mean there aren't as many rungs for ambitious workers to grab hold of.

"Careers today are no longer linear," Warrell said. Instead, workers might opt for a lateral move, a side gig, or a so-called portfolio career, where you take on multiple jobs to earn a living while maintaining flexibility.

Warrell said that workers who chart their own paths are often more fulfilled than those who try to grind their way up an org chart.

Don't jump around

Career advice once often included the suggestion that workers avoid changing jobs for at least a year to avoid appearing uncommitted to an organization.

While a string of frequent job changes can raise concerns among prospective employers, Warrell said prohibitions on job-hopping have often softened.

She said "smart" job changes — even in relatively quick succession — that indicate you're taking on extra responsibility and developing new skills can add polish, not tarnish, to a résumé.

"It can be seen as a sign of ambition, adaptability — not instability," Warrell said.

Focus on hard skills

Technical mastery — especially in hot areas like artificial intelligence — can take you far and leave you with your pick of jobs. Yet it's not the only route to career success.

AI is already taking on some of what software engineers do, for example. In surveys, employers often say they're after so-called soft skills, like communication and teamwork.

Menges said one reason soft skills are important is that humans will still be needed to evaluate what AI produces.

To help do that, he said, workers will need to rely in part on emotion for guidance. Menges said that in the 20th century, workers were often told to suppress their feelings at work.

"Now, you've got to bring those emotions back, because whatever AI does needs evaluation, and that evaluation comes down to how we feel about what appears on our screens," he said.

Bring your whole self to your job

While it might have been well-intentioned, critics have long found the idea of showing up at work as the unvarnished version of yourself to be problematic.

Ella F. Washington, a professor of practice at Georgetown University, previously told Business Insider that a better way to think about the idea is to bring your whole professional self to work.

That might mean working with people you might not like. Or, Warrell said, it could mean pushing through a bad mood.

"If one part of your whole self is that you're short-tempered and grumpy in the morning, don't bring that self to work," she said.

An earlier version of this story appeared on March 3, 2025.

After having her first child, Lindsay Thomas went back to her full-time, in-office job. When a second kid came in 2024, Thomas says she knew she didn't want to juggle everything again, so she negotiated a part-time, remote version of her communications role in medical research — working anywhere from 2 to 40 hours a month — and started picking up freelance work on the side.

Now, when a kid gets sick and Thomas is up all night — something that would have made her "spiral," when she worked in the office —she knows she'll be at home with flexibility to schedule her day. If Thomas hadn't had the option to freelance, she says, she would have chosen to stay home with the second kid — even though she hadn't envisioned herself as a stay-at-home mom. "There are costs to everything," she says of leaving her full-time gig. "The cost to our family, the cost to the stress levels, to mental health, to going back to doing that and knowing what it was gonna feel like for all of us, especially with an older child involved," she tells me, "that was just a cost we didn't want to absorb."

After making employment gains during the height of the pandemic, women have begun a downhill slide out of the workforce. The number of working mothers of young children between 25 to 44 fell nearly 3% from January and June of last year, hitting its lowest rate in more than three years, according to a Washington Post report. In December, 91,000 women older than 20 dropped out of the workforce. The number of men over 20 employed jumped by 10,000 that month, according to an analysis of federal jobs data from the National Women's Law Center.

AI is also affecting America's gender imbalance in the workforce. A March report from Anthropic found that those who work in roles with a high exposure to AI automation are 16% more likely to be female, putting women more at risk for layoffs.

An uptick in return to office mandates is also disproportionately pushing women to choose whether they'll be able to stay in a job that requires a commute as they also balance after school pickup and domestic responsibilities. And a wave of mass layoffs has upended employment security, workplace loyalty, and the job hunt.

Women make 85% of what men make at work on average and take on twice as much of the domestic labor and caregiving tasks at home. "The real friction is we just haven't built systems that allow people to integrate their work and their lives and and their desires and what do they want their life to look like," says Brea Starmer, CEO of staffing firm Lions and Tigers, which focuses on fractional workers. "For anyone that doesn't fit this very specific narrow look and feel and mold, there is just not a lot of options." In a bleak job market, freelancing is one way working parents can claw back power. And as AI adoption transforms company needs and could shift the number of workers and hours needed to work, employers are starting to see more value in hiring part-time and contract workers.

There's autonomy in ditching the full-time gig; but it often means making a choice between several imperfect paths.

The pandemic showed that flexible, remote work benefitted parents, particularly women. As of 2023, 74% of mothers worked, up from 72% in 2019, according to the Institute for Women's Policy Research. But many CEOs who are calling workers back to the office have metaphorically shrugged at the costs to women. A survey from the freelance platform Upwork found that more than half of executives reported losing a disproportionate number of women after implementing RTO policies. Turnover among female employees at these companies is 82%, higher than those that allow for remote work. Nearly a third of women freelancers said RTO was a direct factor in leaving their full-time jobs. Forty-two percent of women who voluntarily left the workforce in 2025 cited caregiving and childcare costs as the main reason their choice, and these women were more likely than those who stayed employed to work at companies that did not offer flexible schedules, according to a survey from Catalyst, a nonprofit focused on women's progress.

But as many employers don't adapt to the needs of families, they're seeing the benefits in hiring freelance workers. Another survey of about 350 business leaders conducted by Upwork last fall found that 77% said AI was increasing the need for them to hire fractional, freelance workers with specialized skills. "What we historically saw was that business leaders were maybe a little more hesitant to embrace these kinds of non-traditional work models," says Gabby Burlacu, senior manager at the Upwork Research Institute. Now, "business leaders are far more open to working with the most skilled talent that they can, especially the most AI-enabled talent, because they're all trying to figure out: How are we going to unlock the value of this technology?"

It's hard to say how many people, and particularly women, are working in freelance roles. Upwork doesn't track gender of the freelancers on its platform, but tells me that in a recent report, 44% of knowledge freelancer workers were women, compared to 41% of people working similar jobs in full-time roles, among those they surveyed. Freelance marketplace Fiverr tells me there's been growth in areas like voiceover, user-generated content creation, and spokesperson or modeling projects specifically seeking female talent. In 2022, 9.8 million people were self-employed, according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. Other analyses of the freelance workforce estimate that as many as 75 million people participate in some capacity.

Working freelance has given women more flexible schedules and eased childcare costs, but that can also mean taking on even more unpaid household and caregiving labor.

Jaime Hollander previously commuted three to four hours a day roundtrip into Manhattan. She freelanced on the side, and split the care of two kids with her husband equally. Her mindset shifted after her father died in 2019. "You have those moments of reckoning where you're like, this can't be all that there is,'" she tells me. So, she cut back on work and shortly after quit her job. She focused on freelance marketing and copyrighting. The challenge with being a full-time freelancer, she tells me, is that the shift threw her into becoming "the default parent," on call for all of her kids' needs throughout the day. "If something has to get done between 7 and 7, I will do it," she tells me. "Sometimes, it's really challenging."

Paid parental leave has become more common, but just 40% of companies in the US offered it as of 2023, according to a survey from Society for Human Resources Management. A short period of leave tied only to the birth of a child doesn't answer for the flexibility working parents need as their kids age — there are sick days, potential disability diagnoses, and more hands-on needs at schools. "It's not just about retaining women in those early years," Neha Ruch, author of "The Power Pause: How to Plan a Career Break After Kids — and Come Back Stronger Than Ever." She says "there is recalibration happening" in the workforce, where more women may take fractional work, part-time roles, or freelance gigs. For companies, retaining women workers requires "thinking about parenting through the longitudinal experience of early parenthood," Ruch says, "going all the way up to college admissions and how and the demands that are made within the system on parents' time, and how we can make those work in the ecosystem of the professional space as well."

Many of the working parents I spoke to for this story chose the freelance or part-time route not upon having a kid, but as they grew up and demands of their families changed. When Erin Bartholomew's son was born, her husband stayed home to care for him. A few years later, she took her turn, wanting to have that hands-on time while her son was still young. She re-entered the workforce after a year into a remote job, logging on at 6 a.m. in Oregon to work in marketing for an East Coast company. But Bartholomew was laid off last year in 2024. Instead of searching for a similar role, she started her own marketing consultancy "It's so night and day," Bartholomew tells me. "It's allowed that balance that my husband and I really wanted."

As some women find flexibility in freelancing, others will be left out. Those who work in offices with 9-to-5 in-person mandates, or in education, retail, and healthcare roles, can't always make their own schedule. Parents who are the sole provider of income and health insurance for families often can't make ends meet working part-time. Others are pushed to stay at home with kids because the costs of childcare outpace their salaries. Leaving a full-time job can also disrupt a career trajectory toward leadership, and mean lost contributions to retirement accounts like 401(k)s. If companies don't adapt their schedules and remote work policies or future-proof roles for AI, many women will be forced to change how they think about their careers and priorities. They might not see going part-time or leaving a job as a choice they want to make, but something they have no choice in.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

• Mark Cuban said AI agents will reduce workdays by an hour.
• He said smart companies would reward employees using AI with more time daily.
• Other executives, like Bill Gates and Jamie Dimon, have talked about AI helping shrink workweeks.

Mark Cuban said AI agents will slash an hour of work from typical workdays.

In an X post on Sunday, the billionaire investor wrote that "smart, bigger companies" will let their employees create and use AI agents to improve their productivity.

But he said that more importantly, "they will reduce their work day by an hour to start."

He said that the employees will work one less hour per day while earning the same pay, adding that companies should "reward people doing the daily with more time."

AI agents work as virtual assistants that can complete tasks from start to finish autonomously, without needing user prompts.

Cuban's comments came from one of his several posts on AI on Sunday. In an earlier post, he said he was not an AI "doomer" and did not think the rise of AI would lead to mass unemployment.

"Over time the same shit is available to everyone. The early adopters, that iterated and executed the best, were the winners," he wrote.

Cuban's comments on shorter work days fall in line with those from other tech executives.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in 2024 said that AI avatars would be able to handle everyday tasks like attending meetings, helping to shorten workweeks to three or four days. Microsoft founder Bill Gates and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon both said in 2023 that AI will lead society to a three or 3.5-day workweek.

Cuban, a former "Shark Tank" investor, has been AI-forward in his recent posts on X. In an interview that aired in February, he said AI has ushered in an era where "some kid in a basement" with a good idea could transform the industry.

Cuban has also talked about AI agents, saying in December that new graduates should go for small to medium businesses and help them adopt AI agents, a task that big companies don't need them to do.

While AI agents have been the latest productivity buzzword, research has found that they still require plenty of human intervention. A Workday survey in January showed that nearly 40% of AI's value is lost to rework and misalignment, due to workers having to check for errors and hallucinations.

Another survey, published in the Harvard Business Review earlier this month, found that some employees are experiencing "AI brain fry," mental fog from using too many AI tools at once.

• My oldest got her first job, and I quickly realized I needed to teach her about managing money.
• She's learning how to budget, save, and splurge from time to time.
• She now pays for her own drinks at coffee shops and I charge her for rides to and from work.

I was absolutely thrilled when my oldest child got her first retail job. Within a few weeks of starting, she was sometimes working 20 or more hours a week, bringing home a solid paycheck at just 17.

However, I quickly realized how little I'd taught her about money management. Judging by the number of Amazon packages arriving on our porch, addressed to my daughter, I knew we still have a lot of work to do, but I wanted to be careful in the way I guided her.

We tried to talk about money early

When our four kids were young, we used a jar system for their allowances. They would divide their singles and fives among the jars, which included one for savings. Then, they would place their spending money in their wallets. This system was simple and it worked for a time. When they received money for their birthdays or Christmas, we would deposit those funds into their savings accounts to instill the idea of saving for future expenses or for a rainy day.

I guess time got away from me. In the blink of an eye, my sweet elementary school girl who spent her days creating art and dancing is now approaching high school graduation. With her sudden and bountiful-for-her-age income, it was time for a crash course in budgeting.

We had to decide how we would handle her new income

My husband and I suddenly had so many decisions to make. What should our daughter's financial responsibilities be at this age? Which essentials and wants should we continue to pay for? How much should she place in her savings account versus how much of her check should she be able to freely spend?

I decided that I wanted my daughter to learn through trial and error, with support.

There were times I cringed when I saw another Amazon order arrive on our doorstep, the package addressed to my daughter, or I knew she'd decided to get Starbucks for herself and treat her friend who wasn't working. But, isn't it ok to enjoy the fruits of her labor? I felt as if I were in one of those old school cartoons, an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. As a parent, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be teaching her.

She's learning that money flow is dynamic

She's been at her job for almost six months now. Her hours wane and increase based on the store's busy and slow seasons. She's had large paychecks, as well as paychecks for only a few hours of work. Learning to adjust with every pay cycle has been challenging. As a parent, I know my job isn't to fix my child's feelings that naturally come with every challenge. Rather, my job is to hold space for frustration and encourage her to process and problem-solve.

What I've found is that there is no end-all, be-all guidebook to teaching our kids about money. Every family dynamic and financial situation is different and ever-changing. I personally value having healthy food at home over eating out, I like buying quality clothing at a deep discount, and I am not one to do much extra for myself, like get my nails done. My values, however, don't have to be my child's — not now or even in the future.

Instead, I want her to have basic financial competency and confidence. I also want her to understand the value of a dollar, which is why she now has to pay some of her own expenses, such as any eating out at coffee shop, as well as her favorite press-on nails, or (yet another) stainless steel water bottle that she just has to have. We also charge her $10 (much less than an Uber would cost) for a roundtrip ride to and from work, preparing her for putting gas in her own vehicle in the near future.

She has opted to save around 75% of each paycheck, no matter how many hours she worked that week. That was her choice, and her father and I are pleased with it. She is slowly learning to spend wisely, to pause and ask herself, "Do I really want this beyond just this moment?" She is truly living and learning — and so are we.

• Michael Greene reflects on his journey running Matthews Cafeteria in Tucker, Georgia.
• Despite not enjoying the work as a kid, Greene now finds joy in operating the family cafeteria.
• Greene's focus is on his kids' freedom, not pressuring them into the family business.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Michael Greene, 53, third-generation owner and operator of the 70-year-old Matthews Cafeteria in Tucker, Georgia. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My family has run Matthews Cafeteria for three generations. A fourth would be rare and special, but I don't expect it.

I have four kids, ages 12, 10, 8, and 4. They're all boys, and people often assume that at least one of them will take over one day, but I'm not going to push them into this business if they don't want it.

I was one of four, and my parents didn't pressure my siblings or me to run the family business. They gave us the chance to be anything we wanted. So when I think about my sons, I want them to have that same freedom.

I don't expect they'll want this type of work. I was the only one in my generation who wanted anything to do with the business, and it's a tough job. It's also extremely rewarding.

I didn't enjoy the cafeteria when I was growing up

At age 12, my parents required me to start working in the cafeteria during the summer. I started out washing dishes. I only spent about three hours a day at the job, but it felt like 12.

Meanwhile, my friends, who didn't have jobs, were at the pool. So, the cafeteria was by no means my favorite place to be as a kid because it felt like I was missing out.

That said, I plan for each of my sons to work the same job I did as a kid. My eldest will start this summer.

I don't expect him to like it, but it's important to see what his Dad does, to see where the money comes from, and what it takes to make a dollar.

I eventually found my way back to the family business

I can't remember exactly when I decided to go into the family business. Looking back, I think it was my destiny to end up here because cooking is my passion.

As a kid, I would watch chefs like Nathalie Dupree and Julia Childs on TV and try to recreate what they made. When I went to college, I majored in communications, but never found it rewarding.

Nothing else turned me on the way cooking did. Cooking was my only passion back then, and I'm lucky to say it still is today. Sometimes, when you have to make a living out of what you love, it takes the fun out of it. I'm grateful that the bottom line hasn't spoiled my joy.

I run the production side of things at Matthews, watching the food transform from raw products into what you see on your plate. That'll never get old.

The work is harder than it looks, though. You're on your feet all day — lifting, moving, cooking, solving problems. It's not a desk job.

Up until recently, I was here at 5 a.m. to open and stayed until about 3:30 in the afternoon. Now we open at 6 a.m., and I don't work quite as much as I used to because life is busy with four kids. I also have an incredible staff who, along with my wife, are really what keep this place running smoothly.

During COVID, my wife took on the business side — handling payroll, taxes, catering, everything — after our managers quit.

So, we really don't get to turn off ever — there's always something that needs to be done. That's why I don't take it lightly when people assume my kids will step into this business.

This business has given me a good life

If one of my boys wants to do this and has a passion for it, then I'll support that. But I don't want them to have it as a crutch. Instead, I want them to study hard, get an education, and forge their own path.

This business has given me a good life. It's supported my family and about 30 employees. It's where I met my wife. We got engaged at the same table where I first laid eyes on her. It means a lot to me now in a way it didn't when I was younger.

If one or more of my kids choose the same path, it will be because they want it — the same way I did.

• I wanted to be a writer, but my parents told me I should be a professor or lawyer.
• I resented them for not supporting me, but now my kid is in college studying film.
• I'm worried about my kid's future, especially in the world of AI.

I used to hold a quiet grudge against my parents for the way they handled my creative dreams.

It wasn't the kind of loud, dramatic grudge that shows up at therapy and needs a name. It was more like a low hum in the background of my ambitions. It was a recurring thought that quietly whispered: They didn't believe in me.

They knew of my love of writing. They saw the journals I filled, the essays that came back marked with glowing commentary from my teachers, and the stories that I'd start and never quite finish. Their response was essentially: that's cute, but what's your real plan?

"Go get a master's in early childhood education," they advised. "So you can teach. Or better yet, law school so you can be well-paid and respectable."

My creative writing talent wasn't something they could see me turning into a career, so they looked away from it. I resented that for a long time — until I became a parent.

When my kid went to college, my feelings got complicated

Decades later, I sent my firstborn off to an expensive liberal arts college to major in film studies, and that grudge got a bit more complicated.

I have spent nearly two decades pouring intentionally into my child's development. There were the Mandarin immersion programs, piano lessons, and summer workbooks, a grade level ahead, all carefully cultivating their unique sense of self. I wanted them to know that their interests mattered. I wanted them to feel they were allowed and encouraged to follow what lit them up. I said it explicitly, and I meant every word.

But now I'm sitting with the liberal arts tuition bills next to the economic reports of millions of jobs disappearing, and the daily AI takeover alerts.

I finally understand what my parents were thinking when I went off to college back in 1999.

My parents had done the math

They weren't dream killers, but time travelers. They were standing in my present, looking ahead to my future, and doing the math that I was too young and hopeful to do myself. Now here I am doing the same math except the numbers are scarier, and the variables have multiplied in ways none of us saw coming.

It's not just the job market I'm watching. It's the wholesale dismantling of creative industries by artificial intelligence. I think about my child studying film while screenwriting rooms go dark, entry-level editing jobs evaporate, and graphic designers, photographers, and copywriters quietly lose relevance to tools that work for free and never sleep.

The very field my child is pouring their passion into is being restructured in real time, faster than any syllabus can keep up with. I find myself wondering: Are the professors teaching the industry that exists, or the one that existed? Are film classes in 2026 preparing my kid for the future or elegantly preserving the past?

My father graduated from college before his profession was invented

I think about my father, who got his electrical engineering degree in 1971. The computer systems he would eventually spend his career managing did not exist yet when he was sitting in those lectures. He was studying for a future he couldn't fully see.

I studied English and History, majors that seemed, on paper, equally impractical, right up until social media rewrote the rules, and handed a girl with the gift for language a whole new kind of career. Neither of us could have studied our way directly into what we became.

I don't have a clean answer. What I'm learning in real time is that good parenting in an era of radical uncertainty might just be the refusal to let your fears become hand-me-downs you pass on to your child. That lesson is costing me bandwidth I don't have. It is one more weight on the already heavy bar of midlife, where caregiving, career, and reinvention all compete for the same depleted reserves.

And so I meditate, do my breathwork, enjoy my sound baths, and pray. I pray my child will forge something I can't picture yet, the way my father built systems that didn't exist in his textbooks, and the way I built a business on platforms that launched after my graduation.

I pray the instinct to bet on yourself and answer the deep inner call that tugs at your heart turns out to be the one thing no algorithm can replicate.

• Kanav Bhatnagar's job title, forward deployed engineer, has been described as the "hottest role in AI."
• He said his job is to be a customer-facing engineer who tailors products for clients.
• Context-switching and communication are important skills for FDEs, he said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kanav Bhatnagar, 24, a forward-deployed engineer at Rippling, an HR tech company, who lives and works in New York City. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I got into software development because I wanted to build cool stuff.

Amazon hired me as a software engineer out of college, and it was a big learning opportunity, teaching me the fundamentals of engineering.

But it was a behemoth of a company, and I eventually wanted to work in a smaller environment where I could take more personal ownership over product decisions and learn more on the job.

After 2 ½ years at Amazon, I interviewed at a sales startup called Actively AI, where I landed a role in forward-deployed engineering.

The "FDE" role was popularized by Palantir, and it has been described as the "hottest role in AI." I liked that it combined software engineering with understanding business.

I spent roughly six months at Actively AI before I joined the AI-forward HR tech company Rippling as a senior FDE, in October 2025.

I've now been an FDE for roughly a year. Put simply, I'm a customer-facing engineer who tailors our product to each client. They describe their challenges and needs, and I build solutions and customizations.

Here's what my day-to-day is like, and the skills you need to break into this role.

My primary job is listening to customers. The results are very rewarding.

Software engineers can feel far removed from customers, because they often can't see their impact. In this job, I'm closer to the front lines.

A core software engineer can build something that serves the majority of use cases, but AI tools usually need more customization to work properly than regular software features. That's when an FDE steps in.

For example, a restaurant chain might have a labor-intensive process for tracking their payroll data that involves spreadsheets and manual data entry, which I'd help them to eliminate within Rippling's platform by using custom code and AI.

My primary job is listening to customers and understanding their problems, which was a learning curve for me, coming from a software engineering background. On a day-to-day basis, I'm in a lot of customer meetings, including visiting businesses who use our product to talk with employees about their experience with it. I probably spend an equal amount of time coding solutions and interacting with our core product teams.

Context-switching is an important skill to master in this job, where you could go from talking to a customer to debugging something to jumping onto another customer call shortly after.

I don't rely on an engineer to code something for me. I make a lot of decisions about the shape of the product and how to execute on it, which I really enjoy. It's very rewarding when a customer looks at what I've built after multiple iterations and says, "This is exactly what I wanted."

Technical and communication skills are equally important as an FDE

I think it would be pretty hard, although not impossible, to become an FDE without a technical background. With the dawn of vibe coding, it might become easier, though.

In my experience, FDE interviews feature technical rounds that test your coding skills, like in traditional software engineering interviews. You also have to show you can talk with any customer, including non-technical people, by asking the right questions to understand a customer's problem, and talk through how you'd design the solution.

To prepare for interviews, I have used consulting industry interview questions, which require you to explain how you'd meet client requests. I think both fields overlap, requiring rapid diagnosis, clarifying questions, and a clear plan of action.

There's probably more breadth than depth of technical knowledge required. In today's age of rapidly evolving technology, I try to spend time outside of work understanding what's new in the AI world and what new AI tools I can be using in my workflow by talking to colleagues and researching online.

I think my job is preparing me to be a founder one day

I'm interested in founding my own company one day, and I've previously heard someone describing the FDE role as a founder bootcamp. It provides a good foundational layer for entrepreneurship, helping you understand how a business functions from the sales process to how to build things.

The FDE role is evolving and no one really knows what direction it's heading in. Even if AI turns out to be unprofitable, I think FDEs will still have a place because of the demand for customer software. Products are becoming easier to build, and people in this role will be needed to handle large contracts with clients.

Palantir is an example of a company that's had FDEs since the 2010s, even before AI was mainstream.

• Companies are spending big on AI, but research shows most haven't seen measurable ROI.
• To offset those costs, employers can do layoffs — or trim line items like bonuses and stock awards.
• Workers can still make a case for a pay bump by emphasizing their value and AI chops.

AI may be putting more than just jobs on the line.

Companies are investing heavily in the technology and top-tier AI talent, and layoffs aren't the only option for offsetting those costs. At least one survey of US business leaders suggests that some are planning to cut workers' compensation.

"They have to pay for AI somehow," said Rocki-Lee DeWitt, a management professor at the University of Vermont's Grossman School of Business. "It ain't cheap."

Research firm IDC says companies with more than 1,000 employees are expected to spend an average of $13.7 million on AI hardware, cloud infrastructure, software, and services this year, a 78% increase from 2025, based on a global analysis.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on a recent episode of the "All-In Podcast" that he would be "deeply alarmed" if one of the chip giant's top engineers spent too little on AI tokens. In another episode of the same program, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya expressed concern about ballooning AI bills at his startup.

Yet despite all that outlay, 95% of organizations reported no measurable ROI from AI in the first half of 2025, according to an MIT study based on reviews of publicly disclosed AI initiatives and executive interviews.

Until companies see tangible gains from their AI investments, they may need to rein in other expenses, especially as tariffs, high inflation, and other factors also strain budgets.

Cost-cutting options

Several companies have announced layoffs tied to AI in recent months — including Block and Atlassian — and others may be tempted to follow suit, Business Insider previously reported. In November, HP said in an earnings report that it planned to cut between 4,000 and 6,000 jobs by the end of 2028, saving the company roughly $1 billion.

Cuts to employee compensation may be next.

More than half of 866 executives and senior managers polled earlier this month by ResumeBuilder.com, 58%, said they plan to reduce employee compensation by the end of this year to help fund their AI investments. Bonuses and stock awards will be affected the most, followed by raises, benefits, and base salaries, the findings show.

Though such cuts could hurt morale, "employees don't have any leverage" due to the tight job market, said Jessica Kriegel, chief strategy officer at workplace consulting firm Culture Partners in Sacramento, California. "They will push back less, and they will accept smaller raises to avoid risk that feels real."

ResumeBuilder didn't cite the size of the companies where the respondents work, though small businesses are the most likely to take a hammer to employee pay or perks in lieu of making job cuts, said Kriegel.

"You can't just lay off 10% of your organization when you have, say 20 people, and everyone has got their hands in a million different pots," she said.

Another option for companies grappling with AI and other costs can be to hold compensation steady. The Conference Board, a nonprofit provider of data and insights for business leaders, expects average salary increases to stay at 3.4% this year, the same as in 2025.

Getting a raise anyway

Workers can still make a case for a pay bump amid the AI boom, said Kris Erickson, cofounder of consulting firm Workforce Science Associates in Lincoln, Nebraska.

"When budgets are tight, and the economy is uncertain, you have to get into sales mode" to successfully secure a raise, she said. "You have to make yourself invaluable."

Given how much money companies are spending on AI in search of productivity gains, highlight any you've realized from using it. Merely saying you know how to use AI is not enough, said David Gaspin, an HR professional and executive coach in New York.

"Asking for a raise because you're proficient in AI is not the strategy," he said. "That proficiency is table stakes at this point."

It's also important to show why AI can't fill your shoes.

"The key differentiator today is becoming: What can you do that can't be replaced with technology? Where is your experience, your judgment, your unique point of view adding tangible, quantifiable value to the business?" said Gaspin. "Because that's where companies are going to see risk in you leaving."

• I returned from maternity leave; my performance review went from "exceptional" to "successful."
• That same year, I struggled to be both a good mom and a good employee.
• It took time for my body to heal after giving birth, and I wish I had better support at work.

I opened up my annual performance review and gasped. For the first time, I was seeing the words "Successful Contributor" instead of the "Exceptional Contributor" I'd earned the previous two years.

So what changed? I became a mom.

It wasn't just about the words. It was also that future promotions were tied to them, and my annual review was now stored away in an HR file as a reference point for any raise opportunities.

As our family's primary earner, my salary covered our health insurance, mortgage, and new life as a family of three. I couldn't afford to let this slide.

It was a difficult year for me

The year I went from "exceptional" to "successful" was also the year I hemorrhaged two liters of blood during delivery. I spent my first hours of motherhood watching a nurse stick a tube down my baby's throat because he needed help breathing. I visited him in a wheelchair in the NICU in between iron infusions and pumping sessions since I couldn't breastfeed him with his tubes.

Because of my blood loss, I returned home anemic. But when night came, rather than sleeping, I'd panic that my baby would stop breathing. When I wasn't panicking, I was nursing.

Despite it all, I returned to work part-time at 10 weeks. When my baby was 4 months old, I went back to full-time work. I was timing calls around pumping sessions. Some days, I'd have so many calls in a row that by the time I made it to the pump, I was breathing through the discomfort, as my breasts exploded with milk, leaking through my shirt.

I was working 8 hours a day on 4 hours of sleep, pretending it wasn't destroying me. I was doing the best I could; I just didn't do it exceptionally.

I kept pushing forward without changing anything

After having a baby, I felt caught between being a great mom and a great employee. I was overwhelmed, trying to be everything for everyone, and I started questioning if I was doing anything well.

But I dove back in — analyzing, optimizing, producing — expending all of my energy in my 9-to-5 to prove myself. I smiled outwardly, as though nothing had changed, but everything had changed.

Time went by, and I settled into my new normal. I constantly felt like I was failing, desperately trying to claw my way back to that exceptional status. I didn't know how to verbalize my struggles.

One day, during a work call with a partner from Canada, I mentioned that I had a 9-month-old baby. "Wait, what are you doing working?" she asked, shocked. Then she remembered, "Oh, that's right. You're in the United States."

My organization gave me 12 weeks of paid parental leave, very generous compared to most in the US. It felt like I was supposed to be grateful for the time I was given off with my baby. But the truth was, I didn't feel fully physically recovered until seven months postpartum. Even then, I was still figuring out my postpartum body and how to care for it.

I was working hard for a system that wasn't working for me

A 2024 survey conducted by Parentaly found that only 20% of expecting mothers in the US receive career support from their manager throughout the parental leave experience.

Even with my "generous" leave time, there wasn't a structured transition plan in place for me before I left and when I returned. When writing annual goals for a new mom, don't assume a 12-month work schedule if you're only going to be there for nine.

The things my annual report didn't take into account: I grew and fed a human with my body, I made my way out of my postpartum anxiety and sleep-deprived fog, all while making work calls on time, meeting deadlines, managing another employee, and finding my new rhythm as a working mom.

I'd call that pretty exceptional.

• Tejal Rives hoped adopting AI at work would help keep her safe from tech layoffs.
• However, she lost her job at Amazon during layoffs in October 2025.
• Rives was disheartened but was glad the experience taught her about AI.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tejal Rives, 35, who lives in Arizona. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

In October 2025, I read a news article that Amazon was planning to cut jobs. I'd survived other layoffs, but this time my gut told me I'd be affected. Sure enough, not long after, I received an email that my position as a product marketer was being eliminated.

I was one of 14,000 people impacted, and even though I understood the decision wasn't personal, it was very disheartening. I thought up-skilling in AI would make me safer from layoffs, but even though it didn't, I still think professionals should focus on learning this one important AI skill: prompt engineering.

I thought working on AI could safeguard my job

At the time of the October layoffs, there was debate around whether AI was the reason.

The company was encouraging us to use AI at the time, but I don't think it took my job. I wrote descriptions for internal products at Amazon, and when I used AI to help, I'd need to ask it to rewrite its output without fluff words. It didn't sound like how people talk. Despite my ethical qualms, I used AI, but, in my opinion, it was nowhere close to replacing my role.

Before I was laid off, I helped build an internal site for Amazon using AI. I hadn't really coded before, but with a colleague's help, I learned how to vibe code with a lot of trial and error.

I thought using AI for this project and showcasing different skills would make me more valuable to the company, but in the end, it didn't keep me from being laid off.

Initially, I felt like I'd wasted time by learning something I likely wouldn't use again, but overall, I don't think my efforts were wasted. The most important thing the experience taught me was prompt engineering, the practice of asking AI the right questions. I want to be minimal with my use of AI for ethical reasons, including around the water resources needed to power data centers. Efficient prompt engineering helps me ask AI my question once, without needing to clarify three or more times.

I'd highly recommend that other professionals learn prompt engineering to up-skill themselves in the age of AI.

The workforce has shifted, and you're likely going to need to learn AI and use it at your job, regardless of your moral qualms. We need to up-skill to survive.

I have my own business, and use AI very rarely

My husband and I already agreed that if I were laid off, I'd focus on being the primary parent to our child as well as on my career coaching business, called Do My Resume LLC, which I was running on the side of my Amazon job. Before being laid off, I planned to eventually quit my job and focus on it full-time.

I didn't realize how burnt out I was after four years at Amazon, though, and it took me a while to pivot into working on my business. For roughly three weeks, I didn't touch my computer. I took up sewing and house-cleaning projects because I needed separation from my screen.

Now, my life is slower than it was at Amazon. I spend roughly four hours a day, six days a week, on the business, and spend the rest of my time taking care of the house and my family.

The business provides career coaching and résumé-writing services, but we don't use AI to write résumés, because it's humans who read them. Recently, I used AI to give me advice about starting a YouTube series for my business, so I will use this technology to help me flesh out ideas, but very rarely. I haven't vibe-coded since the project at Amazon.

My husband is the breadwinner, and we can survive on his income, but the business is bringing in some fun money for me.

I think people should prepare for layoffs in the age of AI

Being laid off helped me remember that, at the end of the day, your job and company shouldn't be your entire life. It shouldn't come before your well-being.

I wish I hadn't sacrificed time with my child to get projects done towards the end of my time at Amazon. I'm glad I'm no longer sacrificing that time.

I think there will be more layoffs that will be attributed to AI's efficiency, and professionals should always be prepared. Reskilling in the age of AI won't necessarily stop a company from laying you off, but it might help you land a role faster.

Amazon did not provide a statement in response to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Do you have a story to share about being laid off in 2026? Contact this reporter at ccheong@businessinsider.com

• A Cognizant study suggests 93% of jobs across the workforce are impacted by AI in some way.
• While AI could replace some jobs entirely, it will likely change the work that makes up many other roles.
• What tasks would you like to pass off to AI? What tasks do you enjoy? Take our survey below.

AI is coming for your job — or at least part of it.

A January study from IT services company Cognizant, which analyzed 18,000 workplace tasks, found that 93% of jobs are affected by AI to some degree. In the US, that could result in roughly $4.5 trillion of human labor shifting to AI — and it's happening at a faster rate than expected.

Cognizant projected in 2023 that 90% of jobs would be impacted by 2032. Now, a slightly elevated level of disruption is arriving about six years ahead of schedule. The pace of exposure has surged, too. Instead of rising 2% annually, it's now accelerating at closer to 9%, the report found, with AI's potential impact across occupations coming in 30% higher than earlier estimates.

While there are plenty of concerning predictions about AI replacing jobs entirely, there's also the possibility that the technology will allow many workers to spend more time on certain tasks and offload others to AI.

Given the assumption that AI is going to take at least some part of your job — if it hasn't already — we want to know what you would be happy to pass off, and what tasks you want to keep.

Take our survey below:

• Valerie Lockhart has struggled to find work since being laid off by Morgan Stanley in March 2025.
• Despite applying to more than 500 jobs and landing some interviews, she's still waiting for an offer.
• She said the search has taken a financial toll on her family, and she had to start a GoFundMe campaign.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Valerie Lockhart, a job seeker in her 40s based in Georgia. She was previously a vice president at Morgan Stanley until she was laid off last year. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

One day last March, I was working from the office when I was asked to have a meeting with my manager's boss.

It didn't feel out of the ordinary at first because I'd met with them before, and our last meeting had been canceled, so I assumed we were just making it up. But when I walked into the conference room and saw an HR representative sitting there, I realized something was wrong.

I learned I was being laid off, and later found out many others were, too — including several people I knew personally.

This set me on an ongoing search for a stable, full-time role — one that has been deeply discouraging and has significantly strained my finances.

I took some time to process the layoff before searching for jobs

The layoff came as a complete surprise, and I don't know exactly why I was selected. However, I think being based in Georgia may have worked against me. My manager at Morgan Stanley was in New York, along with many of my colleagues and the company's leadership, so there weren't many people who saw my contributions in person. I think the distance may have also created some communication challenges.

While I was laid off in March, I appreciated that I was kept on the payroll through May, which meant I still had healthcare coverage. I also received one month of severance. It wasn't much since it was based on my tenure with the company, and I had only started there in late 2023.

The extra months gave me a little time to process everything instead of immediately diving into a job search. By mid-April, though, I was actively looking for work — and I've been searching ever since.

I applied to over 500 jobs, but still struggled to land one

Before I started submitting applications, I updated my LinkedIn and analyzed my résumé to make sure the ATS systems that screen résumés these days would actually read it.

Then I started applying to roles online and reaching out to my network about opportunities, with a focus on governance, risk, and compliance roles at larger companies.

I consider myself fairly organized, so I created a spreadsheet to track every job I've applied to. By November, I had applied to more than 550 jobs. The hundreds of roles I applied for weren't random applications. They were positions I carefully selected.

Out of those, I heard back — beyond a basic "no thank you" email — from about 25 of them.

I made it to the final round multiple times, but none of those interviews led to an offer. At the last stage, something always seems to flip, and it doesn't work out.

My search has taken a financial toll

My job search has had a significant impact on my finances, as I'm the primary earner for my family — my spouse, my son, and me. We've relied on general savings, retirement accounts, and unemployment benefits. It's affected every aspect of our financial life.

Paying our mortgage has been the biggest challenge. We've tried to cut back wherever we can, including canceling some entertainment services. Every bit of savings helps, but it doesn't change the reality that housing is expensive.

Unexpected expenses have only made things harder. One day last September, we came home to find the right side of our garage — where we stored some valuable items — flooded. There were thousands of dollars' worth of damaged property.

We later learned that a pipe leak under the house was to blame. While our home insurance would help cover some of the damage, we were responsible for thousands of dollars in plumbing repairs. Paying that bill would've meant using money we needed to stay afloat and put food on the table.

So we delayed the repair, knowing that until it was fixed, we wouldn't have hot water. It felt like our own "Little House on the Prairie" moment.

To try to raise money for the repair, we started a GoFundMe campaign that, after some hesitation, I shared on LinkedIn. We raised a few hundred dollars, but it wasn't enough to cover the full cost.

Some companies seem to be looking for unicorn candidates

Eventually, I had a bit of luck. In January 2026 — about seven months after I began looking for work — I started a temporary, full-time contract role. I was finally able to save enough money to repair the hot water.

Because the position is temporary, I haven't stopped looking for work.

While my connections have helped me land some interviews, I've had to broaden my search beyond the companies where I have strong ties. At times, it feels like I'm either underqualified or overqualified for the roles I apply to. Some companies seem to be looking for unicorn candidates and would rather leave positions empty than hire someone.

I'm still applying and hoping something works out. At this point, I just need one opportunity.

Do you have a story to share about struggling to find work? Fill out this form, or contact this reporter via email at jzinkula@businessinsider.com, or via Signal at jzinkula.29.

• Career growth depends on building a network rather than relying solely on your manager's support.
• Career coach Andrea Wasserman encourages forming cross-functional relationships to enhance visibility.
• Office "influencers" shape outcomes without formal authority, making them key allies for career progress.

Many corporate professionals believe their career trajectory hinges on one person: their boss. They think: If my manager advocates for me, I'll get promoted. If not, I'm stuck.

That's a misconception because promotions rarely come from a single champion — they come from a web of relationships. These include people who shape the perception of others, pressure-test your thinking, influence decision-makers, and speak about you when you're not in the room.

If you want your career trajectory to soar this year, you should be refining your relationship strategy, starting with these five categories of people.

1. The cross-functional partner who depends on you

High performers often invest in building deep credibility within their own team and spend significant time thinking about how to impress senior leaders, but neglect peers in adjacent functional areas. This limits visibility.

I once worked with a retail marketing director who consistently exceeded her revenue targets. She assumed that would be enough for promotion, but when senior executives evaluated her readiness for a broader role, they asked, "How does she lead cross-functionally?" Her merchandising partner on another team described her as territorial and protective. This stalled her progression.

She rebuilt the relationship by scheduling monthly alignment meetings with merchandising and supply chain, asking about their margin pressures, and proactively adjusting campaign timing to reduce markdown risk. Within two quarters, her boss told her those partners started advocating for her "one company" mindset.

Cross-functional relationships create leverage because they expand who experiences your leadership. Your reputation can't grow within your silo.

2. The culture carrier

Every organization has culture carriers who are respected insiders without an HR title or the formal authority to lead culture, who set an example of acceptable norms and embody how decisions actually get made. They may not have the biggest titles, but they have credibility and context.

When a newly promoted vice president entered a financial services firm, I saw him struggle in executive meetings. His ideas were strong, but they didn't land. He later realized he was presenting a detailed analysis in a culture that valued decisive framing.

He built a relationship with a longtime chief of staff who was widely respected but rarely in the spotlight. She helped him understand the company's "operating language," which is how leaders structure arguments, how disagreement is expressed, and what signals executive readiness.

Within months, his presence shifted. He wasn't more competent than before, but he was better prepared to show up appropriately. It's critical to understand the unwritten rules so you can move inside them with greater ease.

3. The influencer without formal authority

There's often someone who shapes outcomes without owning the final vote. It may be a product manager, a program lead who briefs the executive team, or a person who controls the data that frames strategic decisions. These influencers control how far your work goes and what people think of it.

A senior operations leader once told me she was invisible in the prep work for big meetings, even though she felt she had valuable contributions to make. Instead of chasing her boss and pleading for airtime, she focused on the strategy lead, who oversaw the synthesis of updates and recommendations from various functional areas. She began sending structured summaries — three risks, three opportunities, and one recommendation — to that person ahead of key meetings. Within weeks, her language began appearing verbatim in board decks.

Rather than demanding visibility, she became indispensable to someone who already had a seat at the table. While it's tempting to chase senior leaders, don't overlook the people who shape what those leaders see.

4. The truth-teller

Feedback can be hard to get. Your boss may soften it, peers may avoid it, and direct reports may filter it, but without it, your growth will stall. You need one person who will tell you the hard truths before they cost you credibility.

A high-potential director once asked a peer she trusted, "What's one thing I do that might be hurting how I'm perceived?" The answer she got made her uncomfortable: "You over-explain when you're presenting, and it makes you sound defensive." In executive settings, brevity signals confidence, but her error never came up in a performance review.

She began practicing tighter framing. Within months, leaders described her as more decisive and executive. The issue wasn't competence — she was simply unaware of a change she needed to make.

5. The sponsor — but built through exposure, not "pick your brain" requests

Senior sponsorship doesn't start with a formal ask for mentorship or coffee dates. It happens through consistent exposure to your work and your thinking behind it.

One client assumed his boss's boss would naturally champion him, having heard through the grapevine about his analytical rigor. He delivered strong results but only showed the output, not the problem-solving process. I coached him to shift his approach and, instead of presenting only one conclusion, bring structured options: "Here are three paths, here's the tradeoff, and here's my recommendation."

The goal is to have someone who references your strategic ability in executive meetings, so you become known as "already operating at the next level."

Next steps

If you're new to your organization, introverted, or stretched thin, prioritizing several relationships may feel overwhelming. It doesn't have to be.

Start with two relationships this quarter. Replace one transactional update with a strategic conversation. Ask one person for candid feedback. Offer one cross-functional assist that wasn't required. In a hybrid work environment, it's ideal to schedule these conversations for in-person days, but it's better to make them happen remotely than not at all.

If you focus only on impressing your boss, you narrow your sphere of influence. By building these five relationships, you expand your reach. This road map will ensure that enough of the right people experience your capabilities.

• Nancy Hagans is an intensive care unit nurse in NYC and union president.
• She told Business Insider about how health tech has changed during her 39-year career.
• Each shift is intense, but Hagans said nursing is the most rewarding job she's ever done.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nancy Hagans, a nurse in the intensive care unit at New York City's Maimonides Medical Center and president of the New York State Nurses Association. The union ended a 41-day strike in February, securing raises and layoff protections for staff. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I wake up 5:30 a.m. each morning, say my daily prayer, have a cup of coffee, and arrive at work at least half an hour early.

I've been a registered nurse for the past 39 years, and most of my work is in the surgical intensive care unit. I start my shift by greeting the night nurses and checking on my patients, but there's rarely a routine day at the ICU — it could be quiet one minute and the next minute, everything is happening. My hospital is a trauma center, so I could walk into an emergency before I even put my coat down.

I decided to become a nurse because I'm from Haiti, and my Haitian patients were discriminated against. Going to the hospital was very hard, and I wanted to be in a situation where I could make a difference for immigrant communities.

The profession is extremely rewarding. The nurse is the first person patients see when they walk in, and the last person they see when they leave. In stressful situations, the patient depends on their nurse. I may have to walk away, wipe my eyes, and take a deep breath, but then I go back to their room and think: What is it that I could do to make this person better? How can I alleviate their anxiety?

If you're nervous, odds are the patient is nervous, and the family is nervous. I have to be the advocate for my patients. It's my job to make sure they are receiving the proper medications and are seen quickly by the doctors. Every patient is a VIP, and I treat them with the highest quality of care — regardless of their religion, background, and immigration status.

Technology has changed throughout my career, and I welcome the help. When I first became a nurse, I had to do everything myself. I calculated medication doses and hand-wrote patient reports. Computers are much faster at organizing these treatment notes, doing math, and protecting sensitive information. It's not a replacement for the human touch, but it helps us document our care more effectively and spend more time with patients.

When it comes to care, we are not going to cut corners. We're not going to stop fighting for our patients, our colleagues, our pay, and safe staffing ratios at our workplaces — because more nurses means better care. I need people to know that nurses are the front line, they're the backbone of every hospital. The medical field can't operate without us. We keep our patients alive.

I would encourage students to think about nursing as a profession. About a year-and-a-half ago, I ran into a former patient in a supermarket. Standing in the aisle, this former patient told me, "You don't remember me, but I could never forget you."

It's the most rewarding job I've ever done.

• Packsize founder Hanko Kiessner became a proponent of electric vehicles after developing asthma.
• He installed chargers in his company's parking lot several years ago to help reduce air pollution.
• Kiessner says they're a low-cost perk that can help attract and retain talent, especially when gas prices soar.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hanko Kiessner, founder and vice chairman of Packsize, a Salt Lake City-based packaging company. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

We just had a spike in gas prices, and everyone is complaining. I see an affordable solution for employers — one that could also grow worker loyalty: adding EV charging stations to their parking lots.

This is something I discovered after moving in 2002 from Germany, where I grew up, to Salt Lake City and starting Packsize. I didn't know about the air pollution problem here, and after a few years. I developed asthma.

I'd never had this problem before. I'm very active. I run marathons. So I did research to find out what was causing my asthma and concluded that air pollution was to blame. I also learned that air pollution largely comes from vehicles and can cause inflammation in the lungs, which can lead to cancer.

Around this time, electric cars were becoming popular. I learned so much about this disruptive technology that I started a nonprofit called Leaders for Clean Air with several other local entrepreneurs. Our mission is to raise money to buy EV charging stations and have them installed in as many places as possible. We see this as a business matter. We need to attract talent from other markets to grow, and air pollution hinders that.

I also wanted to motivate more people than just me to drive an electric car, so I asked my employees: What prevents you from buying one? And the answer was that charging stations are not ubiquitous. One of the biggest fears for people with EVs is driving to work and not finding a plug. That is scary because now you might not be able to make it home.

We initially set up just three charging stations at our Utah headquarters, where we have about 100 employees. Then all of a sudden, people got EVs, so we added more. Today, we have 53 stations and are close to a 30% EV adoption rate among staff, which means there are some extra plugs for visitors and employees at neighboring businesses. We learned that the infrastructure has to come first. Most employees switched after the charging stations were installed.

These stations are probably one of the cheapest benefits an employer can offer their staff. The cost of electricity at a corporate rate is low — for us, it's about $3 a day per charging station. In today's post-COVID world, it's also a way to get people back to the office.

Here's the really cool thing: I'm now attracting employees who drive EVs, and they're very desirable. They typically care about the environment and understand that EV driving is cheaper than gasoline driving. They also tend to be tech-savvy.

Now that gas prices are so high, more people may consider buying EVs. Oil supply chains are fragile, and we have an abundance of cheap electricity. For employers, helping workers make that switch can be as simple as putting charging stations in their parking lots.

• Tom Blake, 29, turned his college side-hustle experiments into a full-time content business.
• He now makes a six-figure living by testing and reviewing side hustles on YouTube and Substack.
• Paid market research is one of Blake's top side hustle recommendations, offering low-stress income.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tom Blake, a 29-year-old YouTuber and blogger, about his experiments with side hustles. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I started experimenting with side hustles in 2014 while I was in college for a simple reason: I needed to pay the bills. Since then, I've tried over 100 of them — everything from AI website generation to crypto reward programs to paid shopping.

I read a lot about side hustles on Reddit, and many just didn't work as advertised. In 2018, this frustration led me to start a blog documenting my side hustle tests.

I studied psychology, minored in marketing, and interned at a digital marketing agency, which became my first job after graduating. I kept side hustling because the job had a pretty low starting salary, and I wanted to build wealth faster.

I then realized I could make more money on my own outside my job if I worked hard.

My content business is now my full-time job

Over time, the blog grew steadily, and my content business — including my main YouTube channel, a smaller YouTube channel, some blogs, and an email newsletter — became my full-time job.

From ad revenue and affiliate links, it made about $1,700 in its first year, then about $7,000 the next, and $20,000 the year after. Over its lifetime, it generated more than $1 million in revenue before I sold it at the end of 2023.

Since then, I've become a digital nomad earning six figures by testing side hustles and online gigs on YouTube and my Substack. I make about $2,500 a month from side hustles, including gig apps, money-making websites, investing, consulting, and freelance gigs.

These are five of the most lucrative and realistic side hustles I've found, especially for beginners.

1. Paid market research

This is one of the simplest ways I've ever made money, and I still do it today.

Companies need feedback from real people. Sometimes they're looking for niche groups like accountants or grocery store workers, but you can join platforms to find open focus groups or market research calls.

Typically, you apply for studies through platforms like User Interviews or Respondent. If you're selected, you join a Zoom call with a researcher, answer questions for 30 to 60 minutes, and get paid.

The pay varies widely, but it's common to earn $50 to $80 for a half-hour session, or $75 to $100 for an hour. A few months ago, I did a 45-minute conversation about AI and earned $200.

The downside is that you won't qualify for most studies you apply to, and you have to apply to each one. Still, I can usually land one every month or two, and the work is easy and low-stress.

2. Niche gig economy apps

Most people think of the gig economy as Uber or DoorDash, but there's a whole world of lesser-known apps that can be pretty lucrative.

One example is Sharetown. It partners with mattress and furniture brands to handle oversize returns — things like sofas and mattresses that retailers don't want back in their warehouses.

As a Sharetown rep, you pick up returned items from customers, resell them on Facebook Marketplace, and split the proceeds with the company. Sharetown tells you what to pick up and what price to list it for.

I've spoken with reps who make a few thousand dollars a month, especially in busy areas. You need a vehicle that can haul large items, but for the right person, it's a clever way to start a flipping business with almost no upfront risk.

There are also apps like Dolly and Lugg, which pay people to help with moving jobs. You can sign up as a driver if you have a vehicle, or just as a helper if you don't.

3. Rewards and discovery apps

Rewards apps have improved a lot in recent years. They're apps that pay users for downloading apps, playing mobile games, and trying products and services.

I use Scrambly. I've earned more than $1,000 using it in testing over the last few months. One offer I received paid me $250 to open a bank account.

I don't recommend this as a primary source of income. Most of the time, you're earning around $4-$5 per hour, but if you're already playing mobile games or planning to switch bank accounts, it's worth checking them out.

4. AI training and data annotation

One new side hustle I've been testing is AI training.

Many companies hire human testers to review AI-generated outputs from different models and rate them, helping improve them over time. It's essentially quality assurance for artificial intelligence.

I recently started testing this space and was accepted into a platform called Micro1. After a 20-minute screening process, I was able to apply for paid projects.

Pay rates vary dramatically. Some roles pay only a few dollars an hour, while more specialized projects, such as those that require a Ph.D. in a specific field, can pay $25 to $50 or more. The work is fairly steady, and some even offer 30 to 40 hours a week.

5. Website and app testing

This is another side hustle I did frequently in college and still recommend for beginners through sites such as PlaytestCloud, Userlytics, and Trymata.

Companies pay users to test websites and apps under development. You follow the instructions or navigate the product yourself, then share honest feedback. Most tests pay $10 to $20 and take about 15 to 20 minutes. Longer tests of up to an hour can pay $50 to $100.

The downside is that you have to sign up and claim the tests while they're available, on a first come first serve basis.

Lessons I've learned

Side hustles can be exciting, and I think people should experiment with them, but if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Before trying anything, I always recommend reading reviews and checking forums as part of basic due diligence. If someone online is promising massive hourly earnings with no downside, that's a red flag.

• Bushra Amiwala quit her job at Google last year to run for Congress full-time.
• She applied for a leave of absence, but said the request was not approved.
• She explains what pushed her to take the leap — and her advice for young professionals.

Last summer, Bushra Amiwala faced a career-defining choice: stay at Google or quit to run for Congress.

In May, Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who represents Illinois 9th District, announced she would not seek reelection. With the seat open, Amiwala said she began weighing a run, speaking with more than 100 district residents in and around Skokie, where she lives.

As she weighed the decision, Amiwala, 28, said she applied for a six-month unpaid leave of absence from Google. When her request was denied, she said she was left with two options.

"Do I run for this seat and quit my job, or do I stay at Google and never try?" she said. In June, Amiwala announced her candidacy, and on August 30, she resigned from Google to run her campaign full-time.

Over the past year, I've interviewed more than a dozen people — many from Big Tech companies — who quit their jobs without having another role lined up. They've become outliers in an economy where people are quitting at near-decade lows — a trend fueled by a hiring slowdown across tech and other sectors that has left many holding tightly to their jobs.

After leaving their jobs, some took relatively safe paths, eventually joining other companies in similar roles. Others made riskier bets, launching startups or pursuing entirely new careers. Amiwala took a different kind of leap: leaving Google to run for Congress, part of a small but growing wave of younger Americans entering politics.

"The idea of solving problems for people to make their lives easier has always inspired me," Amiwala said.

She asked herself 2 questions before quitting Google

This isn't Amiwala's first time running for office. In 2018, she lost a bid for Cook County commissioner. But a year later, while enrolled at DePaul University, she ran for the Skokie Board of Education and won. At 21, she became one of the first members of Gen Z elected to public office in the US. She balanced this part-time role with a sales associate job at Google based in Chicago, which she started after graduating in 2020.

The financial implications of leaving Google were a "huge consideration" for Amiwala. She said one reason she didn't pursue public service full-time sooner was that she wanted to provide financial support for her immigrant parents — and saw tech as a more stable path.

Despite these concerns, Amiwala said two questions helped her get comfortable with leaving Google. The first was, "Are you all talk and no action?"

"I was always talking about how I'd love to be able to make an impact in Congress," she said. "So it's like, are you all talk? Are you actually going to do it?"

The second question was whether, five or 10 years from now, she would regret the decision.

"For me, it was a no-brainer," she said. "I knew I'd regret not doing it, and that matrix of decision-making made it really easy for me."

Since resigning, she said she's taken some comfort from the savings and equity she'd accumulated over the years. She decided not to pay herself a salary from her campaign funds but has occasionally received small speaking stipends, which have helped cover some expenses. To cut costs, she said she's "deflated" her lifestyle, cutting back on dinners with friends and personal training appointments.

"I think there was a lot of lifestyle inflation that happens when working at a tech role that just isn't as necessary," she said.

Advice for young professionals — and aspiring politicians

Fifteen Democrats, including Amiwala, and four Republicans are running for the congressional seat in the March 17 primary. Recent polling points to three leading Democratic candidates: Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, Internet content creator Kat Abughazaleh, and Illinois state Sen. Laura Fine.

Amiwala said she's focused on her campaign and hasn't yet thought seriously about what would come next if she loses the election. But she's navigated challenges before in her career.

The summer after her junior year at DePaul, where she studied management information systems, she interned at a large consulting firm — but did not receive a return offer. That fall, during her senior year, she applied for a role at Google without a referral and, after a few interviews, received an offer.

Amiwala's advice for young professionals: It's unrealistic to expect your career to fulfill the financial, emotional, and spiritual aspects of your life that matter most. So you might have to look outside your job for these things.

For anyone considering leaving their jobs to run for office, she recommends speaking with community leaders who can provide insight into the issues constituents care about. She said that running for office isn't the only way to get involved politically, but that if you're considering it, it could be a sign you're well-suited for it.

"It's a very specific type of person who thinks about running for office," she said. "The average person does not think like that. So if that is something that interests you and you feel uniquely equipped to do it successfully, you absolutely should."

• Companies like HP and IBM have signaled they're replacing jobs with AI.
• In February, CEO Jack Dorsey announced that Block was eliminating approximately 40% of staff.
• Klarna's workforce has halved in the last four years, and its CEO says it will shrink more.

Worries about AI one day replacing human workers have intensified in recent years — and as it turns out, that future has already arrived.

MIT released a study last year that found that AI can already replace 11.7% of the US labor market. The study utilized a labor simulation tool called the Iceberg Index, which models 151 million US workers and measures how AI overlaps with skills in each occupation.

As AI starts to replace human workers and companies invest heavily in the tech, companies have been increasingly open about the role AI adoption is playing in recent layoffs. However, while some companies have directly cited AI as a reason for workforce reductions, others have vacillated with their messaging, leaving ambiguity around the exact reasoning and whether AI is directly replacing workers.

Even as some companies replace human workers with AI, they might end up hiring more people in other roles because of it. A World Economic Forum survey found that 41% of companies globally are expected to reduce their workforces over the next five years because of AI. Meanwhile, tech jobs in big data, fintech, and AI are expected to double by 2030, the WEF said.

Here's a list of companies that are replacing — or signaling they may replace — humans with AI.

Amazon

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said that AI-driven efficiency gains would shrink the retail giant's workforce in the coming years — but in the company's two recent mass layoffs, Jassy said the cuts were about culture, not AI.

"Our ambition is to be the world's largest startup," Amazon executives wrote in two memos viewed by Business Insider in January. "That means doubling down on a culture of ownership, speed, and experimentation — which requires us to continue evolving how we're structured."

An Amazon spokesperson also previously reiterated to Business Insider that the cuts last October were not driven by AI.

When the October layoffs were announced, Amazon's senior vice president of people experience and technology wrote in a blog post that the move reflected a continued effort to run the company "like the world's largest startup." The SVP, Beth Galetti, also referenced a need to be leaner in the age of AI.

"This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we've seen since the internet, and it's enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before," Galetti wrote in the post.

Atlassian

Atlassian announced cuts of 1,600 jobs in March, totaling about 10% of its global workforce. The move comes as the Australian-American software company says it is restructuring to focus on AI and enterprise growth.

In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said the reduction was part of a broader effort to reposition the business for what CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes described as the "AI era."

"It would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn't change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does," Cannon-Brookes wrote in a message to employees.

On the "20VC" podcast in October last year, prior to the cuts, Cannon-Brookes said he planned to have more engineers at the company in five years.

"They will be more efficient, but technology creation is not output-bound," Cannon-Brookes said.

Block

In a post on X last month, billionaire and Block CEO Jack Dorsey said he was slashing nearly half of Block's workforce, cutting its over 10,000-person staff to under 6,000. The move came as he said business was strong and profits were growing, but a new way of working was emerging.

"We're already seeing that the intelligence tools we're creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company," Dorsey said in his memo on X.

In the company's earnings call that followed the memo, Dorsey said that more companies will follow suit in using AI to drive efficiency gains. Block is already ahead of the trend that "all companies will eventually" adopt, the CEO said.

Fiverr

Micha Kaufman, the CEO and founder of Fiverr, said last September that the company was slashing roughly 30% of its workforce. The cut would affect about 250 team members, and the freelancing platform had 762 full-time employees as of 2024, according to an SEC filing.

The CEO said that the cuts were needed to help turn Fiverr into a leaner and faster "AI-first company."

Kaufman said in a staff memo last April that AI was "coming for your jobs," and in May, he told Business Insider that Fiverr would only hire people who know how to use AI.

"If you don't ensure that you sharpen your knives, you're going to be left behind. It's that simple," Kaufman said.

HP

HP said it's reducing the size of its corporate workforce as a result of AI initiatives. In an earnings report last November, the company said it plans to cut between 4,000 and 6,000 jobs by the end of 2028, estimating the changes would save around $1 billion.

HP's earnings presentation at the time said part of its strategy was to cut costs through "workforce reductions, platform simplification, programs consolidation, and productivity measures" and to increase customer satisfaction, innovation, and productivity with "artificial intelligence adoption and enablement."

IBM

Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM, told The Wall Street Journal last year that it had replaced hundreds of human resources employees with AI.

More recently, the company announced last November that it would cut thousands of workers in the fourth quarter of 2025, affecting a "single-digit percentage of its global workforce." Its CEO, Arvind Krishna, said the company is shifting priorities to hire more people around AI and quantum. He also said the company plans to increase hiring among recent college graduates over the next year.

Krishna has also said AI adoption has led to the company hiring more employees in programming and sales.

In 2023, Krishna told Bloomberg that IBM had halted or slowed hiring for back-office roles, like in human resources, that could be replaced by AI.

"I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period," he told the outlet at the time.

Klarna

Klarna's CEO says its workforce has halved over the last four years and will shrink further in the coming years.

In an interview with Harry Stebbings on the "20 VC" podcast on Monday, Sebastian Siemiatkowski said there are about 3,000 employees at Klarna, and he expects the company's workforce to drop below 2,000 by 2030. The company had 7,000 employees in 2022, he said.

The CEO said the reduction is a result of layoffs and "natural attrition," which is when the company doesn't replace workers who leave.

Siemiatkowski said on Monday that "human connection" will be vital for the company, and jobs involved in that will not be replaced by AI.

"Those jobs will remain, but for the rest it's going to be definitely smaller," he said.

Klarna declined to comment further when contacted by Business Insider. A spokesperson previously said that its AI assistant handles the equivalent workload of 853 full-time agents, up from 700 at launch. The spokesperson said it was saving the company an estimated $58 million annually.

Salesforce

Salesforce cut fewer than 1,000 workers in February, including employees from marketing, product management, data analytics, and its Agentforce AI product.

In an episode of "The Logan Bartlett Show" released last August, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said the company was using AI agents in its customer support division to replace humans and help the company work through more sales leads.

"I was able to rebalance my head count on my support," he said in the interview. "I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads."

A Salesforce spokesperson told Business Insider previously that Benioff was referencing an organizational transformation that took place over several months to reshape its customer support function.

After deploying Agentforce, the company no longer needed to "actively backfill support engineer roles," the spokesperson said, adding that it successfully redeployed hundreds of employees into other areas of the company, like professional services, sales, and customer success.

Wisetech

Zubin Appoo, the CEO of Wisetech, said the logistics software maker is cutting 2,000 jobs, or 30% of its staff, because of AI-led efficiency.

In a conference call on February 25, Appoo said that AI enables greater productivity in less time and with fewer employees. The Sydney-based company employed about 7,000 people, according to an annual report released in October.

"I am prepared to say this clearly: the era of manually writing code as the core act of engineering is over," Appoo said. The technology is "unlocking levels of efficiency gains across WiseTech that were previously out of reach."

In some parts of the workforce, such as customer service, one in two workers will disappear, he added.

Correction: December 1, 2025 — The bullet points of this article have been updated to clarify Amazon's statements about how AI may affect its workforce.

• Jay Zigmont has been married for 17 years and has no kids.
• He rents his home because he and his wife move frequently.
• He's unlikely to retire fully, but likes a more fluid approach to work.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jay Zigmont, founder of Childfree Wealth and Childfree Trust. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I wear a shirt when I want to start conversations. It says, "Proudly childfree and wealthy."

At financial conferences, it stops people in their tracks and gives me an opportunity to talk about my work helping childfree people make estate plans that match their lives.

My wife, Vicki, and I have been married for nearly 17 years. Because of a health condition she has, we always knew we wouldn't have kids. It's shaped everything about how we approach life, including our ideas about our careers, finances, retirement, and even home ownership.

Vicki is Catholic, and wanted to get married in the Catholic Church, but they wouldn't marry us if we didn't plan to have children. We asked three different churches, and all had the same answer. We got married at my Methodist church, and that was the first time we realized how much being childfree would impact all areas of our lives.

I'd like to die with very little money, not acquire more wealth

I'm 48, but in my late 30s, I had achieved my career and financial goals. I had $1 million in the bank and no debt, but I didn't know where to go from there.

As a childfree person, there's a point when you can have too much wealth. I'm not trying to build generational wealth — in fact, I'd like to die with very little money. That means my career isn't driven by financial gain. I focus on purpose, not profit.

Whatever Vicki and I have when we die will be left to our nephews, but I hope it's not much. Instead of leaving them a large sum later in life, we're supporting them when they need it most. We contribute to their college funds, and I would be happy to consider investing in their businesses or helping them buy a house. We also give generously to charities — my personal favorite is a charity that buys and forgives medical debt.

I likely won't ever retire fully

I plan to always work in some way. Instead of focusing on early retirement, I follow a FILE approach: "financial independence, live early." I want to work on projects I enjoy, but do so on my own time, from anywhere.

When you don't have kids, you have to reimagine the typical idea of success and what life can look like. That can take months, because you're untangling a lifetime of messaging, to figure out what you truly want.

I encourage people to think about this by writing their obituary. Mine would say something like "loving husband, world traveler, author, and innovator." Those are the things I want to focus on — not building wealth for wealth's sake. A few years ago, I tried my hand at maple syrup farming just because it sounded enjoyable.

My legacy will be helping other childfree people

Vicki and I rent our home, and although we've owned in the past, I don't think we ever will again. We move often, every two to three years, since we're not tied to a specific school system or living near family to help watch the kids. Renting saves us money, and I think it's usually the right move for most childfree people.

Recently, Tennessee, where I live, passed a bill requiring students to learn about the "success sequence": graduating, getting a job, getting married, and having kids. We're taught so much about that one path to success, but there are more options.

My legacy won't be children, but rather helping other childfree people find the success sequence that's right for them.

• Monica Nassif, founder of Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day, retired at 53.
• Nassif said scaling struggles pushed her to sell her brands to SC Johnson in 2008.
• "It deserves to be in the hands of people who can scale this much better than we can," Nassif said.

For some founders, selling their company to an internationally recognized corporation like SC Johnson is a cause for unbridled celebration. For Monica Nassif, it was more complicated.

"It's really bittersweet," Nassif, founder of Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day, told Business Insider. "I had to sell my mother."

Nassif's 93-year-old mother is the inspiration behind the household cleaning products. Thelma Meyers, an avid gardener, raised Nassif and her eight siblings as a homemaker in Iowa. The items she grew in the family's backyard — basil, lavender, lemon — were the basis for the Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day product scents.

"At one time, we had this trailer that was designed like her kitchen," Nassif said, referring to Thelma. "We used to take it to music events or places like the Embarcadero in San Francisco. People stood in line for that. They'd get samples, and she'd sign their bottles."

Nassif launched Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day and an upscale version, Caldrea, in 1999. By the mid-2000s, Nassif's brands were becoming part of people's daily lives. Caldrea, a premium essential oil-infused household cleaning brand, was sold at upscale grocery and specialty gift stores. Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day gained a foothold in mass-market retailers like Whole Foods, pushing the company to new heights.

So, when SC Johnson acquired the brands for an undisclosed amount in 2008, Nassif said the decision didn't come lightly. However, a phone call she had avoided for weeks changed everything.

Going international

In the early days, Nassif would often market her products at trade shows, where investors could be found searching for their next moneymaker. Among the curious crowd was SC Johnson, which owns popular brands like Windex, Drano, Ziploc, Scrubbing Bubbles, and Fantastik.

"A whole team from SC Johnson shows up during one of our first trade shows with Caldrea. We're probably maybe a year old, and our booth is so tiny," Nassif said. "I was trying to sell my product and needed to open wholesale accounts, so I asked them politely to leave, but I knew why they were interested. I'm sure we were very fascinating to them."

Nassif said she ignored "countless private equity and venture capital guys" for years as her brands grew.

"I always asked all these potential investors one question: "What can you do for us that we can't do for ourselves?" Nassif said. "We were great at marketing, and pretty good at sales."

Other areas, though, were less successful.

"Distribution and scaling rapidly, not so great," Nassif said. Still, Nassif kept her head down and pushed forward until she got a call from SC Johnson.

"I refused that call for weeks. I didn't even know who it was," Nassif said. "But it gets to a point where you go, 'I want this to be bigger. This is a great brand. It deserves to be in the hands of people who can scale this much better than we can.'"

She added: "We neither had that skillset nor the capital to figure it out."

Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day is now sold in major retailers across the United States, Canada, and Singapore. Both brands have products available through online retailers like Amazon.

Failed retirement

Nassif retired from the company in 2010. She was 53. Her days out of the office didn't stick, though.

"I failed retirement," Nassif said. "I liked working. I liked creative projects. I liked being involved in startups. They have incredible energy, and it really keeps you alert and aware of what's happening."

Most recently, Nassif wrote a part-memoir, part-business guide titled "I Bottled My Mother," which hits shelves on March 24.

"I speak to entrepreneurs and the questions are always the same," Nassif said. "'How do you do it? Where do you get your ideas? What should I do first?' I thought it'd be fun to do a startup manual. Hey, if you're thinking about starting a business, here's how to go about it."

She also wanted to honor her mother.

"It's really a childhood memoir about how the Mrs. Meyer's brand came into being," she said.

• Camillia Nwokedi left her tech career to become a content creator in 2025.
• She started with $6,000 in savings and experimented with posting for 60 days before leaving tech.
• Nwokedi said the journey is lonely, but it's the best decision she has ever made.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Camillia Nwokedi, a 28-year-old content creator based in Pittsburgh. It's been edited for length and clarity.

When the crypto startup I was working for was sold in July 2025, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to go all in on myself as a content creator. I had about $6,000 in savings and less than 40,000 followers on TikTok, but I believed I was worth the investment.

In less than a year, I've gained brand deals, consulting and coaching clients, and I'm launching my second cohort soon. I'm taking the lessons I learned from the startup to build myself from the ground up.

It's been a difficult emotional journey, but investing in myself is the best decision I've ever made.

I worked at Accenture before getting into crypto

I worked at Accenture from late 2019 to 2021. Bitcoin was popping off at the time, and I started getting the itch to get into crypto, so I started listening to podcasts and building connections in that space.

In 2022, I connected with the CEO of a bitcoin rewards platform, and we hit it off right away. He offered me a job as a special ops agent, and I took it.

The team was really amazing, and I had a lot of senior responsibility, which I loved. At the same time, I was building a social media presence on TikTok and Instagram, where I posted about optimization, self-belief, competence, and more.

In mid-2025, the company was preparing to be sold, and I saw it as an opportunity to give myself a shot. I had been posting consistently, and it really gave me confidence to start looking at myself as an entity and not just a cog in the system.

I had helped scale and sell for other people, but now it was time to give myself that opportunity.

I did a 60-day trial run before going all in on content creation

In the 60 days prior to leaving the startup, I did a series on TikTok called SIM 60, where I posted a video each day pretending to act like a video game Sim. It was all an attempt to get me out of my head, put myself out there, and make content creation more fun. What it did was unblock me as a creative and force me to stop taking myself so seriously.

My audience significantly grew in that period, which gave me confidence that I'd be able to make life as a content creator work.

There are two necessary components for creating a startup: finances and self-belief. And sometimes, if you don't have the financial component, your self-belief can make up for that gap. Getting my self-belief up helped me feel as though I could go all in.

I started with $6,000 in savings and created a research and development budget

A lot of the initial planning was trying to get my working capital in place so that I could make this leap. I had about $6,000 in liquid savings and a retirement account with about $30,000 in it, which I didn't want to touch.

It wasn't a lot to go off of, but because I had been putting myself out there on social media consistently and even had a few user-generated content (UGC) and brand deals coming in, I had a lot of self-belief.

I even gave myself a research and development budget, so I had a little money set aside if I wanted to invest in coaching or consulting to help me with my branding. Thankfully, I haven't touched my retirement account.

I set quarterly goals and have days dedicated to things like CEO and CFO responsibilities

I looked at all the roles that I would have to maintain as a one-person business and decided to split my week into days dedicated to each role.

I have CEO day, COO day, CMO day, and more. It makes it so that every part of me can show up at the table, but I'm not necessarily asking myself to do it all at once.

Tuesdays are typically consulting and operations days for me. This is when I get things in order and execute things for my clients. As much as I've left the 9-to-5, I try to work within that realm for the structure. It helps me manage my time well without overwhelm.

I also give myself quarterly goals or KPIs, which has been comforting. It adds familiarity and structure to a space that is entirely new territory for me.

It's been an emotional and lonely journey

The most challenging and the most worthwhile part of switching from tech to content creation has been the emotional journey.

One morning, I cried because I was so stressed. There's a lot of discomfort that comes along with pursuing my goals. It can feel lonely to be building something entirely on my own.

I have to gentle-parent myself and my nervous system to keep going, and to keep believing that it's going to pay off.

It's hard to communicate to people how many internal conversations I have with myself on a daily basis to reframe old narratives and rewire limiting self-beliefs.

At the end of every week, I can't believe I made it

If you're considering leaving your job or making a big leap, don't ignore that feeling or settle.

I think people often stay as close to their dreams as possible without actually going after them directly.

As someone with not much savings who is still pursuing her dream, and it's working out, I could not recommend it more. It's the best decision I've ever made, and I hope others can have the experience of pursuing what they want as directly as possible.

Do you have a story about leaving tech and pursuing a different career you want to share? Email the editor, Manseen Logan, at mlogan@businessinsider.com.

• Business Insider gathered chief people officers and senior leaders for an on-the-record dinner in New York City.
• The event, Futureproofing Your Workforce in the Age of AI, highlighted the relentless change HR executives are navigating.
• Below are excerpts from the discussion, edited for clarity.

"Are we working for AI at this point or is AI working for us?" Maxine Carrington, the Chief People Officer of Northwell Health asked a group of HR and people executives who were gathered for dinner on a rainy night in New York City recently.

"How we can use those tools as enablers to help us achieve our goals, that's the mindset I need us to have, not chasing the tools."

Heads around the table nodded in agreement. The group, convened by Business Insider, spent ninety minutes in a conversation titled "Futureproofing Your Workforce in the Age of AI," presented by Indeed.

"I do think it's an organizational, transformational challenge and not a technological one," Gareth Lewis of Lewis People & Culture Advisory said at one point. "But right now the conversation's all around tools, efficiencies, headcount reductions, and not so much about how we actually are going to redesign our roles."

Redesigning roles is exactly what Agnes Garaba, Chief People Officer at UiPath, is striving to do, but it's not easy.

"So we basically asked every single one of the functional leaders to think about what the future would look like," she said. "If I could go out today and blow up my entire HR team and reimagine it from scratch, what would that look like? And it's a hard exercise. Often I find our imagination is the biggest barrier, so to say, to get there."

The tension between AI driving total transformation versus a focus on integrating AI tools was top-of-mind for the executives gathered together. But in the wide-ranging conversation, plenty of other topics were discussed too. Below are some highlights.

How to help employees become AI "power users"

Katie Burke, COO, Harvey: Part of what you have to start asking yourself is, is your organization experimenting and dipping your toe in the water or are you driving actual impact and transformation? And not surprisingly, there are patterns across every industry on what makes the difference between those.

Number one is senior leaders actually being in on the work. So not saying, "Here's the example that I can share." It's actually building the agents themselves, for example, or attending those hackathons.

And you cannot drive transformation, in my opinion, just with a stick. There has to be some level of carrot and reward and excitement, and I think people operate at their best when they are not operating out of fear.

Make partners prove the value of AI tools they're providing

Roz Harris, VP, Talent, Zillow: Put the pressure on your product partners, the vendors that you're using, to justify their roadmaps and why they're getting your dollar. Because your shareholders, your leaders are (asking), 'What's the big revolutionary bang that's going to unlock our teams? That's going to unlock the business, going to move things forward?'

I can promise you many of us aren't companies that are going to build that thing ourselves. But we do have product partners who should be enabling us to do those things. But are we articulating our needs to them? Are we articulating those well?

Company-wide hackathons allow employees to shine

Maggie Hulce, Chief Revenue Officer, Indeed: So we have a monthly contest that any employee can be a part of and they submit their ideas of agents or use cases. The sales teams are absolutely running away with it. And people don't think of the sales teams as the ones who are going to build the agents first. So this particular person who we thought of as a salesperson, maybe thought of as one-dimensional, now I see them as having five functional hats.

HR leaders play a key role in pushing companies to adopt AI

Dickie Steele, Partner, McKinsey & Company: How do we build a culture where we go after dramatic productivity improvement on the numerator? Somebody doing a thousand clinical trials, not one clinical trial? I feel as an HR community, we should be a lighthouse in terms of the deployment of (AI) agents. We should be pushing the business to start with a much more compelling value creation thesis than "Can we cook something up that makes our employees marginally more productive?"

Beware the hype around AI dramatically improving your bottom line

Liz Dente, Chief People Officer, Priceline: Dickie, just to push back a little bit is, you know, you're looking for this amazing thousand-times return. The notion of incremental, relentless forward progress every day is just fine with us. You know, it'd be great to be selling a thousand times more plane tickets, but I just don't think that's realistic. And I think there's a lot of hype in the marketplace that you're going to get these massive returns. I just don't think it's true.

• A version of this story originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter.
• Sign up for the weekly BI Tech Memo newsletter here.

A few Fridays ago, I was feeling smug. I'd just sent another Tech Memo edition telling subscribers to stop worrying about AI eating tech jobs because Anthropic, the leading AI company pushing this narrative, is hiring so many engineers.

So clever! Until I got an email from a reader, Kiran Maya Sheikh. She has a computer science degree from the University of California, Irvine. It's a great school, and she graduated with an impressive GPA. And yet, she's struggling to land that all-important first full-time software engineering job.

"It's bad advice to 'not worry,'" she wrote. "AI is causing disruption in this job market. Employers are prioritizing hiring experienced workers, but not new graduates."

This week, I interviewed Kiran for Tech Memo. It was an eye-opening view into the realities of the new AI economy. Here are the highlights from our chat, edited for clarity and length.

Alistair: What did you think you were signing up for when you first chose computer science as a degree?

Kiran: After getting into UC Irvine in 2020, I took my first coding class and I really enjoyed it. The prospects at this time were that people were going into this major to get great jobs and it was very rewarding and I ended up liking the work.

What did you believe a career in computer science would give you financially, socially, and emotionally?

The dream at the time was definitely everyone was saying, "Let's go work for Google and the FAANG companies and get a six-figure salary." My motivation was just getting a stable job, getting enough money to take care of my family — what everyone wants. I expected that computer science would put me in a position to grow as a software engineer, first and foremost, and then maybe take me to more of the strategic side, the management side. The main thing that I did figure out was that I wanted financial stability and maybe financial independence as well.

Fast forward to late 2022, when ChatGPT launched. Did you see that as a tool at the time or a threat?

I was a hater at the beginning. Then, friends of mine started using ChatGPT and they're like, "Oh, you can just use it like Google. You can just text it and it'll give you the answer." And honestly, my first thought was like, "That's a bit lazy. You can get more learning out of doing the work yourself." But the more time went on, the more that people were using it, and they started using it for class. Suddenly, I was ahead in class. I was doing the assignments well and understanding more.

Was there a moment when you thought generative AI might reduce the need for junior engineers, or do you even believe that?

We all know the current job market. It's not too hot and a lot of companies are citing AI as part of the reason for layoffs — but maybe that they were going to cut those jobs anyway. At the time though, while I was in school and using ChatGPT, I honestly didn't think it would get this far. I expected AI would be integrated into software engineers' work and companies would start integrating it, but I didn't realize there would be potential for it to take over jobs that I was looking for.

I don't think I was very attentive to the job market situation at the time, and I wasn't really thinking that far ahead. More of my worries at the time were just getting that first entry-level position. And I just thought it would be simple: I just get my degree and I would find a company that's hiring. Looking back, it was my mistake to not really research the current job market and maybe what some people were predicting about AI.

I didn't see it coming either. Few people did. Anyway, describe the moment when you realized the job market had changed?

I was already graduating, so this was after June 2025. I was getting into the reality of having to find my first job, and that's when I definitely started noticing something was wrong. A lot of my classmates, I haven't really heard of them getting any opportunities. Everyone's submitting so many resumes and there's a race to use AI to enhance resumes and send them out as fast as you can. And it seemed a lot more intense than I was prepared for.

A lot of my classmates and even students I know who are still in school are not even landing internships right now. It's not looking great. It's a very tough battle right now. So many people are quitting or getting fired or pivoting and there's new grads. Everyone is bracing, and it's a bloodbath right now.

Do you feel like you're competing against AI or laid-off senior engineers or both, or something else?

My fight is definitely with AI and all the competition with entry-level graduates — especially because AI is known to take over more junior roles. So it's important that we stay more relevant and offer something that AI can't. Scrolling through LinkedIn and on my job portals, I see more offers for mid-level positions, but I don't see as many for entry-level roles. So it's like I'm fighting AI and all these other graduates for roles that don't exist yet.

This job search so far, what has it done to your confidence?

I try to be optimistic. I am lucky to have a better situation than some other people do. I'm living at home with family, so I don't have to worry as much about expenses. Still, if I weren't doing anything about my situation, I would feel pretty bummed. I'd feel kind of trapped.

But I've been trying to work on building my network, finding people I know and learning from other people, just finding communities to be involved with. That's really helped my confidence because I find professionals that are trying to help — they are aware of the job market and they know how hard it is to get that first job. The one saving grace in this tough situation is definitely the community I've found and the people I know who are helping me through it.

Did you ever question your decision to study computer science?

Yes, I did question it. But I remember that I do like computer science and I did like what I learned. I really enjoyed my classes and programming. And instead of turning to a new discipline, I think I prefer to just specialize and find out new information and stay ahead of the news. And like I said, offer something that AI can't.

Do you feel like you were trained for a version of the tech industry that no longer exists?

I am a little salty, about this, if that's the right word. During my time at school, a lot of what the degree was about was learning the basics of software engineering. You learn programming languages and you learn how to set up your development and deployment. But right now there are so many more tools and I think that's the constant thing with the software engineering and the tech industry. There's always new technology and there's a lot of learning you have to keep up with.

But with AI in particular, I felt like I graduated a bit too early. Because now AI will probably be more integrated into learning. I had so many professors that were more welcoming towards AI. I remember a really cool professor who shared a website that would let you make your own LLM. And it's really useful stuff, but it wasn't part of the curriculum. It will be now, but I won't be there to see that change.

What I'm doing to help with that, and make the amends, is volunteering and doing more work on the side that involves newer technologies to just stay fresh and relevant and use all these new AI tools and see how I can leverage it.

If a high school senior asked you today whether they should major in computer science, what would you tell them?

It depends on what interests them about computer science. If it's absolutely something they're interested, they love learning about the technology and they want to code, I would still say go for it, but I would recommend how to position yourself for after college.

You need to start much earlier now, networking and knowing how to speak with people and how to apply, how to write a resume. And those all are also much more important now at the start of college, especially getting internships, if at all possible.

So, I would definitely recommend studying computer science, but being realistic about the opportunities available and keeping up with the news and the job market.

What would you say to potential employers out there?

The focus should still be in hiring entry-level talent if possible. I know it's tough with the current market and the economy and what's going on in the world right now. But entry-level talent is still important because you need to build this generation of professionals so that the future will have people to rely on. AI is still uncertain right now. People are still figuring out how it is impactful and it doesn't help to just force it upon your company.

Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.