• Founders and workplace experts said that post-pandemic AI startups have a different work dynamic.
• AI startup employees often voluntarily come to the office and work longer hours without an RTO.
• Founders said that in-person work fosters a high-trust environment that spurs innovation.

"What is an RTO?"

That was Together AI CEO Vipul Ved Prakash's response when asked by Business Insider whether he had ever had to send a return-to-work (RTO) memo to push employees back to the office of the cloud compute startup.

"People generally like to come in," said Prakash. "We've never enforced it."

Prakash's response illustrates a stark cultural difference between AI startups formed after the COVID lockdowns and long-established corporations, with people voluntarily coming to the office, sometimes on weekends.

Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University, told Business Insider that the age demographics and personal stake many startup employees have in their companies created a work mode that is "almost entirely in-person" and "100% work focused."

"For a single 23-year-old with equity worth $20 million, it makes sense to work in the office for 100 hours a week," said Bloom. "They don't work from home, they home from work."

The tight-knit culture of AI startups

Arvind Jain, founder and CEO of Glean, an enterprise AI for productivity, said he "was not eager" to bring his team members back to the office because finding an office is a hassle, but everyone wanted to be in person and return to their original mode of working when the company first started right before the pandemic in 2019.

"We just simply didn't know how to work from home because everybody was in this one small room," said Jain of the early days of the pandemic lockdown. "We used to be sitting next to each other, brainstorming what to build, and so we found that very, very hard."

Over time, said Jain, he learned to enjoy remote work and got to spend time with his family, but the team genuinely wanted to be together again.

"That's the difference — there's this startup spirit, and it's only 10, 15 people, and we want to be with each other," said Jain. "They love each other, they bond with each other, we used to play games together, and we have very fond pre-pandemic memories as a close-knit group."

Jain said that as Glean grew more rapidly in recent years, it has since moved into a larger office space and dedicated Thursday as its work-from-home day.

Spiros Xanthos, founder and CEO of Resolve AI, an enterprise technology startup that builds multi-agent AI systems, said the company has a "very strong culture" of in-person work and has never had to ask anyone to be in the office.

"We have a fairly big office now, and we have breakfast, lunch, and dinner," said Xanthos. "Most people have lunch in the office together with their colleagues, and many people stay to have dinner in the office."

Xanthos said that since founding the company in early 2024, "cohesion and culture and friendship" among employees has been critical for the company, and that he often brings colleagues based in New York to the Bay Area for offsite retreats so the team could get to know each other better.

"People will actively avoid working remotely at this point," Xanthos added. "Especially for some of the younger folks who didn't have many years of experience, but maybe worked remotely before this, many of them tell me it's day and night — the fact that they have so many friends at work now that they can trust."

AI's innovative nature demands in-person interactions

Richard Florida, an urban studies theorist and professor at the University of Toronto, said the AI wave has unique characteristics compared to other startup booms, which may generate greater in-person demand.

"Innovators have to be close to end users because end users are a part of the innovation system," said Florida, of why it's easier to work in person in the AI industry.

"If you're an AI company, the technology itself is interesting, and you can invent it, but what you really learn is by interaction with the end user, by interacting with your customers and clients," Florida added.

Xanthos said the demand for in-person attendance ultimately boils down to the nature of an innovative industry.

"As a company, we're solving very, very hard problems, and to solve these problems, you operate at the frontier," said Xanthos. "And this means that you need to experiment a lot, try a lot of things that might fail."

"That in turn requires a very high trust in an environment of psychological safety where people feel that they have the ability to innovate bottom up," Xanthos added, "Where they don't need to be told what to do, where there is communication velocity and bandwidth."

So the next time you speak to an AI startup founder, don't ask how their RTO is going — they're probably too busy trying to squeeze everyone into the office.

• Classic Ferraris have always been my passion. Now they're my retirement fund.
• The backlash to Ferrari's new EV, the Luce, shows how passionate its fans are.
• It has driven up the value of my classic Ferrari collection.

I love the Ferrari Luce. Not because I'm a Ferrari fan or want to buy one, but because it's made me richer.

Since the Luce was unveiled earlier this week, a storm has raged across the internet. It's clear there's no brand in the world that's as much a religion, and no product that's worshipped as passionately, as a Ferrari. Even, and especially, by people who'll never be able to afford one.

Why does that make me richer? Because classic Ferraris have become even more attractive and valuable. Classic Ferraris have always been my passion. Now they're becoming my retirement fund.

A love for the classics

I've been driving Ferraris for 25 years. As a child from a modest background, I bought my first Ferrari with my first severance pay. It was a fiery red Ferrari 328 GTB, and although the car was pretty mediocre, the whole thing seemed like an incredible adventure to me — the kid from a rough neighborhood — in a car with that prancing horse on the steering wheel.

Twenty-five years later, there are four black Ferraris in my garage, and there is hardly anything in my life — aside from my sons — that brings me such joy as these useless but magnificent sports cars. In their restless irrationality, they shake every cell of my otherwise rational and rigorous life.

Enzo Ferrari once said that with Ferrari, you're really just buying the engine — and getting the rest of the car for free. That has always been the brand's Archimedean point. And perhaps that is precisely what explains the confusion surrounding the new electric Ferrari Luce.

A dislike of the new

An electric car has, at first glance, nothing to do with the heroism of the old Lampredi or Colombo engines. It no longer possesses fascinating mechanics, no vibrating heart of metal. It rather resembles a digital device on wheels. The moral significance of modern mobility simply looks like the Luce. The heroization of mobility, on the other hand, looks like a Challenge Stradale, an F40, or a 250 GTO.

How much Ferrari is a brand close to people's hearts is evident in the fierce reactions of those who may never own one yet still feel a deep emotional connection to it. For them, it is not reality that is crumbling, but a myth. There are few brands worldwide that evoke such quasi-religious reactions.

Ferrari's concept has always been to translate the brutal and the raw into the most elegant and sophisticated aesthetics imaginable and bring them into the present. The Luce, on the other hand, employs a form of mimicry that borders on the childish.

In places, the car is reminiscent of a Flintstones car or those Playmobil vehicles with which children embark on their first imaginary highway rides through the sandbox. Of course, both CEO Benedetto Vigna and Chairman of the Supervisory Board John Elkann were likely aware of the potential for sacrilege inherent in such a design.

With Marc Newson and Jony Ive, Ferrari brought in two designers from the digital world. They didn't want to hide the electric innards behind nostalgic forms. On the contrary, they built, in a sense, an anti-Ferrari. The logo is no longer proudly displayed, but almost demonstratively embossed. A clever, almost philosophical punchline.

The Luce seems almost deliberately alien in places, almost like an object without geographical origin, without cultural memory. While older Ferraris looked as if they belonged on country roads around Lake Como or among the curves of southern French coastal roads, the Luce seems to come from the abstract space of the digital present — from a world that is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

That "everywhere and nowhere" nature of digital space is coolly acknowledged and consistently implemented in this car. While the old entrepreneurs were still heroes of an analog industrial age — men who, even after work, would take breakneck drives in their Ferraris (and I still very much enjoy doing so) — today's digital founders and multimillionaires often define their worldview precisely in contrast to this old-school entrepreneurship. It is a car for emotionally detached intellectuals with no need for compensatory status symbols.

The memes about the Luce ultimately show one thing above all: How emotionally charged this brand remains to this day. Everyone loves Ferrari. The Luce seems to violate the realm of dreams and desires.

The value of the classics

Perhaps the Luce will go down in Ferrari history as its boldest gamble. Or perhaps as a spectacular dead end. The only certainty is this: Ferrari has decided to attempt this transformation not cautiously, but radically. And in that alone lies a remnant of that old Ferrari megalomania that has always made this brand so fascinating.

The Luce is, at the same time, a car of radical anti-distinction. Precisely because it looks like a Nissan, it makes itself small, almost inconspicuous — even though highly valuable technology is hidden beneath its exterior: a powertrain concept with over 1,000 horsepower, designed to accelerate the Luce to up to 310 km/h on the highway.

Who cares, though? Somebody recently called and offered me a lot of money for my black Testarossa. He saw the video of my triumphant ride the day after the Luce presentation.

"I don't sell," I replied. I never will. I'm the guardian angel of Enzo Ferrari's spirit.

Ulf Poschardt is the publisher of WELT, POLITICO Germany, and Business Insider Germany.

This story is courtesy of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which harnesses the resources of the company's newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms.

• 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.

• 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.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang urged all workers, from farmers to electricians, to embrace AI.
• He told podcaster Lex Fridman that the technology could elevate blue-collar jobs, such as carpentry.
• Blue-collar has generally been viewed as less likely to be affected by AI disruption than white-collar jobs.

Artificial intelligence isn't only coming for office jobs — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says blue-collar workers should be paying attention, too.

Huang leads one of the biggest chipmakers fueling the AI revolution. He joined Lex Fridman's podcast in an episode published Monday to discuss everything from AI in space to work.

While blue-collar jobs have been considered relatively safe from AI disruption compared to tech roles like engineering, Huang said workers in every profession, including farming and electrical work, should use artificial intelligence to help future-proof their jobs.

"If I were a farmer, I would absolutely use AI. If I were a pharmacist, I would use AI," Huang said. "I want to see what it could do to elevate my job so that I could be the innovator to revolutionize this industry myself."

For example, he said coding represents a big opportunity for carpenters, and he would go "completely berserk" using AI if he were in that line of work.

"A carpenter with AI is also an architect," he said. "They've just increased the value that they could deliver to the customer. Their artistry just elevated tremendously."

Huang has said before that he is "certain 100% of everybody's jobs will be changed" by artificial intelligence, and that while he expects some jobs to be lost, many will also be created.

Many tasks, for example, will be automated, and those jobs will be highly disrupted, he said on Fridman's podcast.

But, he said, "If your job's purpose includes you … then it's vital that you go learn how to use AI to automate those tasks."

Anxiety grows alongside AI

As AI advances, so has anxiety around job security. The fears aren't unfounded. Companies have slashed thousands of jobs in the name of prioritizing new technology and automation.

Huang's solution: Become an expert in AI, no matter what your job function is.

It could be the difference between landing a job and ending up unemployed. In almost every case, Huang said he'd rather hire the candidate who's an AI expert over one who isn't.

"Every college student should graduate and be an expert in AI," Huang said.

It could help them stay ahead of the curve as AI quickly advances.

The next phase of AI is already here

Artificial general intelligence is a form of AI that elicits anxiety or excitement among the field's most advanced minds. It's the idea that AI will one day meet or surpass human intelligence. Huang said that the age of AGI is already here.

Fridman asked if AI could do Huang's job of starting, growing, and running a successful tech company worth more than $1 billion.

It's possible, Huang said.

He also said, "It's not out of the question" that chatbots like Anthropic's Claude could design an app that billions of people would use for $0.50 apiece, and then go out of business shortly after, similar to websites that went bust in the dot-com era.

Even his job running one of the most successful tech companies today isn't immune to the effects of AI, he said, encouraging everyone to jump on the technology before they're left behind.

"Go see what it can do to transform your current job, elevate yourself," Huang said.

Know a lawyer whose style is as sharp as their mind? We want to hear from you.

Business Insider is searching for the best-dressed lawyers in New York City for a new editorial feature spotlighting standout style. We're looking for attorneys who bring personality to the profession — the ones who serve looks as well as they practice law.

Our editorial judging panel will consider nominees of all titles, from associate to managing partner, at major law firms in New York City. Firms may also nominate multiple employees.

To strengthen your submission, please include a headshot and two photos that showcase the nominee's personal style.

Selected honorees will be featured in a Business Insider photo shoot in early May (exact dates and location to follow).

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.

• 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.

• Pay for gig work varies significantly across apps, a new Gridwise report found.
• The report estimated hourly pay rates for ride-hailing, delivery, and other types of gig work.
• Taskrabbit, Walmart's Spark, and Uber ranked among the highest-paying apps, Gridwise found.

The gig economy has grown to include apps from Uber to Instacart. They don't all pay the same.

Average hourly pay on the apps varied in 2025, according to data analytics company Gridwise, which analyzed about 1 billion tasks across ride-hailing, delivery, and other gig work apps.

Workers for Taskrabbit, a platform where users hire independent contractors for yard work, home repair, and other physical tasks, earned the highest hourly pay rate at $38.

Spark, Walmart's delivery service, took second place at $23 an hour, with Uber just behind at $22.

DoorDash's hourly pay was $11, the lowest of the apps Gridwise analyzed.

Some companies say their workers earn higher hourly rates than Gridwise's estimates suggest. A Taskrabbit spokesperson said that its gig workers earn $49 an hour on average, although earnings vary by location. Uber said last year that the company's drivers earn $32 per hour while actively working on the app.

Gridwise compiled the estimates for its annual gig mobility report, released last week. The hourly pay data includes base pay, bonuses, and tips that workers received.

The data show that the best-known gig services don't always offer the best pay for workers, Ryan Green, CEO of Gridwise, told Business Insider.

Walmart launched its Spark delivery service as a test in 2018, years after competitors such as DoorDash and Uber Eats. Spark drivers pick up or shop orders at Walmart stores, helping the retailer grow its delivery business quickly.

"They just snuck up on the market and have rapidly grown into this space," he said.

Ride-hailing fares have risen faster than driver pay

Some gig workers have told Business Insider that it's harder to make money on apps like Uber and DoorDash than it was several years ago, due to higher competition and lower pay rates.

Most gig workers are responsible for their own costs, such as car maintenance. As a result, some gig workers have decided to accept only the trips that pay them the most for their time.

The price of gas, which has shot up in the past two weeks after the US started a war with Iran, is the latest cost pressure on ride-hailing drivers.

Uber and Lyft increased prices last year — and passed on a fraction of that hike to the drivers who make their businesses possible.

From December 2024 to December 2025, average customer ride prices on Uber and Lyft rose 9.6%, according to Gridwise. Over the same period, driver gross pay per trip increased 3.6%, and gross pay per hour rose 4.1%.

"We saw a modest increase on the driver side, and a much more substantial increase on the pricing side," Green said.

Last year, Gridwise found that weekly pay on most ride-hailing and delivery apps fell in 2024.

Delivery workers for services like DoorDash also saw an increase in per-hour pay last year — 3.2% — though their working hours on the platform rose about 17%, according to Gridwise.

Were you a gig worker in 2025? Business Insider is gathering information on gig worker earnings for a coming story.

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