• Stephen and Joanna Vargha moved to Ecuador from North Carolina after retiring early.
• The moved to Cuenca for its lower cost of living, vibrant culture, and welcoming expat community.
• They recommend retiring abroad but said anyone thinking about it should do a lot of research.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Stephen and Joanna Vargha, a married couple who moved from North Carolina to Cuenca, Ecuador, in 2020 after retiring early. Cuenca is located in the Andes mountains and has a population of about 600,000 people. Their interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Stephen: I heard about Cuenca, Ecuador, as a place to retire way back in 2010. I checked it out for a week in 2011 and visited some people I knew there. But I was only 53. So I put it in the back of my head.

In early 2019, my work was taking a toll on me physically and mentally. I had worked at a television station in North Carolina for over 37 years. We already had a retirement house in a small mountain town in North Carolina, so we decided to move there. The plan was to leave my job and look for a one at half the pay because we could afford it. But after several months I couldn't get a job.

We also realized the Affordable Care Act coverage was going to cost around $1,900 a month for the two of us and we were too young for Medicare. I didn't work my butt off for four decades to give my hard-earned money to the insurance companies.

Then Joanna goes, "Let's move to Cuenca." This is a woman who had never been there, doesn't like big cities, grew up in a town of maybe 75,000 people when she left. I was like, "Are you sure?" But that's what we did. So I decided to retire at 61 when we moved to Ecuador.

Joanna: I retired around the same time at 56, and before that worked for an auto insurance website.

We started talking about moving to Cuenca in May of 2019. We visited in September and looked at places. We moved in January 2020 and just barely missed the pandemic lockdown.

Cuenca is a great city with a lot of expats

Stephen: You make friends so easily here. I've visited 29 countries, and I can emphatically say that the people in Cuenca are the friendliest people I have ever met.

Joanna: We have made so many dear friends here that we would never have back home. We would've had to stay working and been too busy. Now we do three-hour lunches here just catching up and having fun.

There are so many things to do here, including art events and going to restaurants. There are lots of musical events. We have a free symphony and it's fabulous.

Stephen: Cuenca is becoming more of an international city. It's considered the arts capital of Ecuador and is called the "Athens of Ecuador" because of its culture and education.

We speak a little Spanish, so we try to respect their culture and speak Spanish when we can, but some people here also speak English.

Stephen: There are an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 foreigners living in Cuenca, mostly from the US and Canada, with Europe at a distant number three. Facebook groups are a great way to meet people and the expat community is very helpful.

Joanna: You rely on each other.

The cost of living is so much lower

Stephen: It's a fraction of the cost of living compared to a good portion of the US, like with housing and food. Our electric and water bills are much lower. Healthcare here is very affordable and good.

Joanna: There are some health things that you can't get done here. You have to go to Quito, about one hour away, or back to the states. But there's a lot of things here that you can get.

A pallet of 30 farm-fresh eggs is like $4.25 here. Fresh produce at the market is also affordable. To ride a bus is 31 cents. A taxi across the city could cost you $6 including tip.

A lot of expats don't even own cars because it's very walkable. We walk everywhere. It's the healthiest we've ever been.

Stephen: We average 35 miles a week. It didn't take long for me to lose my American weight, as I call it. I went from 192 to 168 — just by the fresher food, better food, and walking all around.

There is also a great respect for older folks, and it's not just a cultural thing, it's part of the country's laws. There are discounts for older people, including on taxes, and even separate lines at the bank.

Stephen: One drawback about Cuenca is there's not an international airport. We usually have to fly to Quito.

Communication can be terrible with vendors and government entities. Finding real estate listings is a little more difficult here, but we went to a real estate agent and she found our place for us.

There are certain things you just can't buy here.

Joanna: When we go back to the US to visit we load up our suitcases with stuff to bring back with us. But that's changing literally every day. They're offering more stuff here.

We recommend retiring abroad but do your research

Stephen: For people thinking about moving abroad, research is the most important thing. Facebook, blogs, get more than one source and make sure they're reliable. Definitely visit here.

Joanna: Try to make some local contacts who you can talk to because they'll help you ease into local life.

And we would never suggest doing the visa process on your own. You need a visa lawyer or a facilitator to help you because the rules can change quickly. It wasn't hard to do with the help. We used a group in Ecuador called Visa Angels.

Joanna: We don't plan to leave Ecuador soon, but we are researching end-of-life continuous care right now.

Stephen: We may eventually have to move back to the US despite the high healthcare costs because they just don't have the same assisted living facility options here. But right now, we're very happy here.

Joanna: In the five years we've been here, we've had a pandemic, national protests, and one of the worst droughts in Ecuador's history.

There's good and there's bad in any place that you live, but I like to say that when we knew we had to leave our home, we didn't make lemonade out of lemons. We made Limoncello and lemon pound cake.

It's been such a wonderful adventure. I would've never dreamed that we would be able to do this.

Have a news tip or a story to share? Are you an American who has moved abroad? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Executives are increasingly fielding analyst questions about the business impact of DeepSeek.
• In spite of the market disruption, the early outlook is generally optimistic about the tech.
• Business Insider will keep this story updated as more companies report earnings.

Stock market surprises have a way of echoing through subsequent earnings calls, and the impact of DeepSeek is reverberating on Wall Street.

On analyst calls this week, executives have increasingly been fielding questions about the Chinese AI and what it means for their businesses.

The name DeepSeek was mentioned in at least nine earnings calls this week, according to an AlphaSense search, with only a single mention before Monday's bombshell announcement.

But in spite of the market disruption that saw wild swings in Big Tech share prices, the early outlook is generally optimistic about the tech.

On Monday, AT&T CEO John Stankey said the newer, lower-cost AI "is going to open up and facilitate new applications and business models."

Here's what business leaders are telling analysts:

AT&T

"This is a seminal technology cycle," CEO John Stankey said Monday of generative AI. "It's going to be every bit as big as the founding of the Internet when it's all said and done."

Stankey added that new breakthroughs like DeepSeek that use less processing capacity, consume less power, work more effectively in particular domains, or can be run on local devices instead of in the cloud will ultimately lead to new applications and business models.

"We're all going to have to stay on our game to make sure we use it effectively so none of us are in a disadvantaged position relative to our competitors on cost-structure effectiveness," he said.

Flex

Revathi Advaithi, CEO of mid-cap datacenter company Flex, acknowledged "a lot of noise this week," but said DeepSeek itself doesn't represent anything new in terms of demand for AI infrastructure.

"At the end of the day, compute density is still a big deal," she said. "We think lower cost in applications like DeepSeek is a good thing for the industry as a whole because it's going to drive a stronger growth in terms of the market itself."

In addition, Advaithi said lower barriers to entry could spur more widespread innovation in AI, driving additional demand for infrastructure providers like Flex.

"We haven't seen enough growth from non-Mag Seven companies and we'll start to see a lot more of that," she said. "It actually accelerates the move towards AI."

Corning

Wendell Weeks, CEO of glassmaker Corning, which produces fiber optics that are increasingly critical in high-speed networking, said the technical community has been watching DeepSeek for the last few months.

"What's super important to understand is that we need dramatic improvement in training and inference cost to make GenAI into a highly sustainable business model, and more importantly, the productivity driver that we all hope it will be," he said.

"All of us in the space are counting on many more innovations to come," he continued, adding that AI models of the future will continue to need improvements in computation and communication technologies.

Microsoft

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella mentioned DeepSeek twice in his prepared remarks during an earnings call on Wednesday.

He said that the Copilot+ PC laptops, which Microsoft has called the "fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built," would soon be able to run DeepSeek's R1 distilled models locally.

When asked about DeepSeek by an investor, he said, "I think DeepSeek has had some real innovations. And that is some of the things that even OpenAI found in o1."

Meta

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged DeepSeek as a "new competitor" during an earnings call on Wednesday. An investor asked him about the competitive dynamic in the open-source field.

"In light of some of the recent news, you know, the new competitor, DeepSeek from China, I think it's also one of the things that we're talking about, is there's going to be an open-source standard globally, and I think for our own national advantage, it's important that it's an American standard," Zuckerberg said to investors.

He added that the emergence of DeepSeek has "only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing for us to be focused on."

Later in the call, he said that DeepSeek did "a number of novel things" to train its model fast and cheaply, which Meta was "still digesting." He added that DeepSeek has made advances that Meta hopes to implement in its systems.

IBM

IBM's CEO Arvind Krishna fielded a DeepSeek question during an earnings call on Wednesday.

When asked about what implications DeepSeek could have for IBM or the industry at large, Krishna said, "Look, DeepSeek, I think, was a point of validation."

"We have been very vocal for about a year that smaller models and more reasonable training times are going to be essential for enterprise deployment of large language models," he said.

The tech giant's chief added that IBM has been going "down that journey" itself "for more than a year" and that it has seen "as much as 30 times reduction in inference costs" with those approaches.

"As other people begin to follow that route, we think that this is incredibly good for our enterprise clients," Krishna said.

Apple

An analyst asked Apple CEO Tim Cook for his perspective on the "DeepSeek situation" during the company's quarterly earnings call on Thursday.

"In general, I think innovation that drives efficiency is a good thing," Cook said. "That's what you see in that model."

The CEO said he thought the company's "tight integration of silicon and software" would continue to serve them well.

"From a CapEx point of view, we've always taken a very prudent, deliberative approach to our expenditure, and we continue to leverage a hybrid model, which I think continues to serve as well," Cook said, referring to Apple's AI strategy.

• Mark Zuckerberg says it's too soon to gauge DeepSeek's impact on Meta's AI spending.
• DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, says it can build powerful models at a fraction of US costs.
• Zuckerberg calls for an open-source AI standard that is "American."

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, says it's too soon to tell what kind of impact DeepSeek will have on the company's AI spending.

During Meta's earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg was asked by an analyst how DeepSeek — the Chinese AI startup that sent Silicon Valley into a tailspin by building powerful models at a reported fraction of the cost — will impact Meta's own investments in AI.

"They have advances that we will hope to implement in our systems, and that's part of the nature of how this works, whether it's a Chinese competitor or not," Zuckerberg said, adding DeepSeek had done "a number of novel things" that Meta is "still digesting."

But he said that probably won't change how Meta is investing in AI, at least for now.

"It's probably too early to really have a strong opinion on what this means for the trajectory around infrastructure and capex and things like that," Zuckerberg said.

Zuck says major AI infrastructure will still be needed

Meta and other US tech companies have recently faced questions on when their heavy investments on AI would start paying off. That scrutiny hit new levels this month when DeepSeek said it trained its AI models for a fraction of the cost that its US rivals spent, causing some tech stocks to tumble.

Last week, Zuckerberg said Meta planned to spend between $60 billion to $65 billion in capital investments in 2025.

During the earnings call on Wednesday, he defended those investments, saying that while the use of Meta's AI computing infrastructure could change, the need for it will not disappear.

"If anything, some of the recent news has only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing for us to be focused on," he said, adding: "At this point, I would bet that the ability to build out that kind of infrastructure is going to be a major advantage for both the quality of the service and being able to serve the scale that we want to."

Open source, but American

On the earnings call, Zuckerberg also reaffirmed his commitment to open-source AI with a notable caveat: It should follow American standards.

"There's going to be an open-source standard globally, and I think for our own national advantage, it's important that it's an American standard," Zuckerberg said. "We take that seriously, and we want to build the AI system that people around the world are using."

Earlier in the call, he highlighted a shift in the relationship between Big Tech and Washington, pointing to a more supportive US administration that backs American companies in the global AI race.

"We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad," he said. "I am optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unlock."

Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, previously said that the lesson to take away from DeepSeek's success wasn't that China's AI is "surpassing the US," but rather that "open source models are surpassing proprietary ones."

• Trump settled his lawsuit against Meta for about $25 million, his lawyer confirmed.
• The lawsuit followed Trump's 2021 Facebook suspension after the January 6 riot.
• Most of the settlement funds will support Trump's presidential library, his lawyer said.

President Donald Trump has signed an agreement in which Meta would pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit he brought against the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg after being suspended from Facebook in 2021 following the January 6 riot.

Trump signed the settlement papers Wednesday in the Oval Office, his attorney John Coale confirmed to Business Insider. He said much of the $25 million settlement paid by Meta would go toward Trump's presidential library.

A Meta spokesperson also confirmed the settlement to BI.

The settlement agreement was first reported by The Wall Street Journal just as Meta was due to report their quarterly earnings. Meta leaders were uncharacteristically late to the call.

Zuckerberg did not address the settlement, but said during the earnings call that this would be a "big year for redefining our relationship with governments."

"We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad," Zuckerberg said. "And I am optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unlock."

It's the latest in a string of efforts by the company and its CEO to stay in Trump's good graces. Trump had previously threatened to throw Zuckerberg in jail.

Following Trump's election win, Meta donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. Zuckerberg and his wife also attended Trump's inauguration, sitting up front alongside other tech moguls.

Meta isn't alone in its donations to the future Trump library. ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump. Court documents said the money would go toward the president's library.

In addition to Meta, Trump also sued other tech companies in 2021, accusing them of censorship. Meta banned Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts following January 6, citing policy violations, including posting false claims about the 2020 election.

Trump also sued Twitter, now called X, and YouTube as well as their leaders, for suspending his accounts. A federal judge dismissed Trump's lawsuit against Twitter in 2022. The suit against YouTube appeared to have been "administratively closed" in 2023, according to court records.

• The Trump administration is offering buyouts to members of the federal workforce.
• Employees who resign from in-office work will have full pay and benefits through September, officials said.
• Some exclusions apply to military, postal, immigration, and national security roles.

President Donald Trump is offering buyouts to federal workers who don't want to stick around under the new administration, according to a letter sent to government employees on Tuesday.

The letter, which was shared by the US Office of Personnel Management, said federals employees had from January 28 to February 6 to decide if they would like to resign under this program.

Those who resign will receive full pay and benefits regardless of their daily workload and are exempted from "all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025," the memo says.

The webpage listed a deferred resignation letter that specifies that employees would complete "reasonable and customary tasks and processes to facilitate" their departure.

The resignation offer was available to all full-time federal employees except for military personnel, US Postal Service employees, those in immigration enforcement and national security roles, and other positions that were specifically excluded by an agency.

The letter said a recent order issued by Trump meant there would be significant reform in the federal workforce, which it said would be "built around four pillars." Those pillars were: Return to Office, Performance culture, More streamlined and flexible workforce, and Enhanced standards of conduct.

The memo also said that for those who choose to stay, the administration could not guarantee that their role or agency will not be eliminated.

Read the OPM’s full memo.

The White House did not respond to BI's request for comment.

After taking office on January 20, Trump signed several executive orders impacting the federal workforce as his administration, including the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, seeks to cut government waste.

Trump has ordered federal employees to return to the office, and moved to end diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at government agencies, ordering DEI-focused staff be placed on leave.

In an op-ed about DOGE published in The Wall Street Journal in November, Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who temporarily co-led the effort with him, wrote that requiring federal employees to return to the office full-time would lead to "a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome."

"If federal employees don't want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn't pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home," they wrote.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, said Tuesday evening that the president did not have the authority to offer the deferred resignation to federal workers and warned them not to take the offer.

"There's no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work," he said, speaking from the Senate floor.

• The US tried to limit China's AI advancements through export limits on semiconductors.
• The limitations may have inadvertently fueled the innovation behind DeepSeek instead.
• China's DeepSeek disrupted the AI industry with more efficient computing at scale.

The US government has for years actively tried to curb China's access to semiconductor chips, a key component in generative AI models. Instead, those export limits may have fueled the innovation that led to DeepSeek's R1 — a large language model that's disrupting the domestic AI industry and the booming economy built around it.

Brian Colello, a tech analyst for Morningstar, said the quote "constraints lead to creativity" came to mind.

"These Chinese models were processor-constrained, so it led to some creative techniques in training, and the DeepSeek model has come out with better-than-expected performance given the processors that it's been trained on," he told Business Insider.

DeepSeek disruption

DeepSeek, a China-based AI startup, dropped the app version of its R1 model last week. The model appeared to rival those from major US tech companies, like Meta, OpenAI, and Google — but at a much lower cost.

DeepSeek said it spent nearly $6 million in computing power to train its new system, a fraction of what US tech companies have spent on their models.

DeepSeek said its models were trained with fewer and less powerful semiconductor chips than their competitors typically use.

Since 2022, US sanctions have made it illegal for manufacturing leader Nvidia to sell some of its chips to China, including its most advanced chips. The sanctions aimed to limit China's advancements in AI and military technology.

"Sanctions forced DeepSeek to use H800s, which were less powerful than H100s," Patrick Moorhead, the CEO of Moor Insights and Strategy, told BI of the Nvidia chips DeepSeek has used.

"In a roundabout way, sanctions initiated in the Biden administration motivated DeepSeek to be more creative in how it trained and ran models," he added. "No one should be surprised, as 'necessity is the mother of invention.'"

Murky training and computing costs

Some experts and analysts who spoke to BI expressed skepticism over DeepSeek's claims about the cost of the models and the number and type of chips they were built on. However, it remains unclear exactly what semiconductors were used to train and deploy DeepSeek.

Still, some analysts said the startup showed that it's possible to do more with less when it comes to AI.

Deutsche Bank analysts Adrian Cox and Galina Pozdnyakova wrote of DeepSeek in a research note published Monday: "They've had to squeeze more value out of their software and methods such as chain-of-thought reasoning and using several models at once, instead of just throwing more computing power at the problem."

Chris Miller, author of the 2022 book "Chip War," told BI the DeepSeek models are impressive but that costs in AI have come down dramatically since 2023, so he did not find the company's latest paper especially surprising.

He also said the idea that DeepSeek was working on a "shoestring budget" was not true, saying the company used a "very narrow definition of training costs." Miller said it's "pretty clear that the training cost is an order of magnitude higher" than DeepSeek suggested.

Ineffective chip restrictions

Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, said during a January 23 CNBC interview that DeepSeek had 50,000 H800s, which Miller said would be a "substantial number. " While that number is still much less than what US firms have, Miller said, it's likely a lot more than US export officials would've wanted a single Chinese firm to accumulate.

Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told BI that the developments at DeepSeek suggest AI development in China "seems to be at least on par with the US."

However, she said, "we're still at the beginning of the race" for AI dominance.

"It certainly serves as a good reminder for American policymakers that technology restriction may not work, depending upon what the end goal is," Liu said.

Several experts said they thought the latest developments with DeepSeek could lead to even more semiconductor sanctions on China but would not necessarily stop further innovation.

"The US could put sanctions on China all day long," Colello said, "but there's always the threat: What if China comes up with some breakthrough anyway?"

• President Donald Trump addressed the rise of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI app, on Monday night.
• He said the ability to train AI cheaply, which DeepSeek said it has done, is a good thing.
• Experts told BI that DeepSeek challenges the idea of US tech dominance, but that may be positive for AI.

President Donald Trump said the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's ability to train AI more cheaply is a "positive" development and should be a "wake-up call" for tech industries.

Trump's comments followed DeepSeek's ascension to the top of Apple's free downloads chart, which sent shockwaves through the US tech market on Monday morning.

"So you won't be spending as much, and you'll get the same result hopefully," Trump said Monday evening in a House Republican members conference meeting. "The release of DeepSeek, AI from a Chinese company, should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win."

China has been heavily investing in its tech sector, with state-backed initiatives to boost domestic chip production and AI capabilities, aiming to reduce reliance on US technology.

Meanwhile, the US has expanded the existing export controls on advanced semiconductor technology to China, adding dozens more types of chips and 140 entities to the restriction list.

Last Tuesday, Trump announced the launch of the Stargate Project, a joint artificial intelligence venture with OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and investment firm MGX. The initiative plans to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the United States by 2029, with the first data center already under construction in Texas.

Last week, Trump called the project a "monumental undertaking" in a press conference with Larry Ellison and Sam Altman, and touted that it will create 100,000 jobs.

Experts told Business Insider that DeepSeek challenges the idea of US tech dominance, but that may be positive for the future of AI.

Chris Tang, a UCLA professor and global supply chain scholar, called this moment a "trigger" that may motivate OpenAI or Gemini to open up their source code to allow more people to participate in AI development.

"It's still very much early in the game," said Zongyuan Zoe Liu, senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, "but it certainly serves as a good reminder for American policymakers that technology restriction may not work."

Gadjo Sevilla, a senior tech analyst for AI and tech briefings with BI's sister site EMARKETER, wrote that there is potential for "a race to the bottom for AI pricing and adoption in the coming months," which "runs counter to US Big Tech initiatives where we have Microsoft ($80 billion) and Meta (65 billion) looking to spend on hardware, data centers, and sustainable energy for AI."

"China is not going to slow down. They will do as much as they can with what they can," said Brian Colello, an equity strategist for Morningstar. "It's just such a fast-changing space. Nobody has a clear, sustainable lead, so there will be more breakthroughs and they could come from anywhere. It could come from the US, it could come from China."

• Consultant starting salaries have remained flat since 2023, a new report found.
• Management Consulted found salaries were largely stagnant at boutique, MBB, and Big Four firms.
• The industry has been impacted recently by slowing demand and AI-fueled productivity increases.

Starting salaries for consultants at both top firms and boutique consultancies largely remained flat for the second year in a row, according to a new report from Management Consulted, a company that provides online resources and career coaching to professionals trying to land jobs in consulting.

The report found that starting pay has remained stagnant since 2023 as the consulting industry reels from a slowdown in demand for services, despite some recent signs of improvement. Previously, annual increases of 5 to 10% were standard for the industry, according to Management Consulted.

The company's 2025 Consulting Salaries Report included over 100 firms and was based on submissions and offer letters shared by its readers and clients who work in consulting. Management Consulted said it does not include salary information that it is unable to verify.

The report found that starting total compensation at the Big Four professional services firms — Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, and EY — has not increased since 2023. This was true for new hires coming out of undergraduate programs as well as the higher paid ones coming out of MBAs or PhDs.

The same was largely true for new hires at MBB firms — McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, and Boston Consulting Group — which are widely considered the most prestigious strategy consulting firms and are known for their competitive pay packages.

Do you work in consulting and have insights to share about the industry? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at kelseyv.21.

The report said that Management Consulted expected salaries to remain flat despite some increases in demand for consulting services in 2024, which came after a couple years of a downturn that saw major firms conducting layoffs or delaying start dates for new hires.

The plateau is notable given that consulting compensation surged in 2022 and 2023, according to Management Consulted's 2023 salary trends video. The last major increase before that was in 2019.

In 2023 post-MBA hires earned a base salary of $192,000, a performance bonus of up to $60,000, and a signing bonus of $35,000 at the top tiers. Pre-MBA hires earned a base salary of $112,000, a performance bonus of up to $30,000, and a signing bonus of around $5,000.

However, salaries and performance bonuses rose across the industry in 2023, with several firms enhancing benefits like profit-sharing, paid leave, and retirement contributions. Boston Consulting Group even overhauled its compensation structure in a bid to attract new talent and retain existing talent.

One reason salaries remained the same in 2024, according to the report, is productivity advancements sparked by generative AI and remote work. The report also said fewer consultants were leaving the industry due to limited opportunities elsewhere, meaning the stagnant salaries could be another potential side effect of the so-called white-collar recession.

"AI enablement is enabling consulting firms to accomplish more with fewer hires. Productivity gains, combined with slower attrition, reduce the need for new hires and stall salary growth," Namaan Mian, chief operating officer of Management Consulted, said in comments shared with Business Insider.

Mian also said the perception of the value of hiring MBAs, who typically make a higher starting salary than consultants coming out of undergrad, varies widely.

"Firms historically pay MBAs twice as much, but don't get twice the value from them. This doesn't fly in an efficiency oriented environment," Mian said. "This is why we're seeing less hiring from MBA programs and more from undergraduate ones."

Some firms also used changes in their variable compensation — in which pay is partially determined by performance via bonuses — to make their pay packages look more attractive, the report said, adding that only 5 to 10% of consultants typically earn the maximum amount of their bonus.

Management Consulted said it expects an increase in hiring as demand for consulting services and attrition are expected to increase in the coming years. However, it said salaries for new hires could remain stagnant.

Do you work in consulting and have insights to share about the industry? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at lvaranasi.70.

• Some federal websites and webpages went dark after President Donald Trump took office.
• Among them were La Casa Blanca, the Spanish-language White House site, and some federal DEI sites.
• The government website for reproductive rights also returned error messages.

Several federal government webpages and entire websites went down this week after President Donald Trump took office.

Some of the sites were related to political flashpoints, including reproductive rights and diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI.

The White House has addressed some of the changes and said that several pages were temporarily down as part of the transition to the new administration's website, but would be restored.

Here are the sites that went dark this week and what the White House has said about them. Press representatives from the White House did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

La Casa Blanca

The Spanish-language White House website, La Casa Blanca, was returning a 404 page after Trump took office. The 404 page initially included a button that said "Go Home," but it was updated to read "Go To Home Page."

A White House spokesperson told The Associated Press the administration was "committed to bringing back online the Spanish translation section of the website."

NBC reported that the Spanish-language version of the White House website took months to relaunch at the start of President Barack Obama's term and Trump's first term.

Reproductiverights.gov

Reproductiverights.gov was returning an error message as of Friday. The public awareness website was launched in 2022 by the Department of Health and Human Services during the Biden administration.

A version of the website still visible on internet archives showed it included information on birth control, abortion, and preventative health services, like breast and cervical cancer screenings.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on why the site was down.

Federal agencies' DEI webpages

The DEI pages on several federal agencies' websites disappeared this week. Trump on Tuesday ordered all federal DEI employees to be placed on leave as the agencies work on dismantling their DEI efforts.

Trump's memo also instructed agencies to remove any public-facing webpages on DEI to be removed by Wednesday evening. Some agencies removed their DEI pages even before the memo was issued.

During a speech delivered Thursday to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said, "My administration has taken action to abolish all discriminatory diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense. And these are policies that were absolute nonsense throughout the government and the private sector."

White House pages on the Constitution and Presidential biographies

Several former pages on the White House website were returning 404 messages, including pages on the Constitution and on presidential biographies. In a statement to USA Today, a White House spokesperson said the removals were not intentional and were temporary.

"It's day two. We are in the process of developing, editing and tweaking the White House website. As part of this ongoing work, some of the archived content on the website went dormant. We are committed to reloading that content in a short timeline," Harrison Fields, principal White House deputy press secretary, told the outlet.

Page for White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention

The page for the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention was also returning a 404 message this week, the gun-violence prevention organization Brady said, raising questions about whether the office was being shut entirely.

Some members of Congress expressed concern over the webpage being shuttered, including New York Rep. Tim Kennedy and Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost. The NRA posted on X in favor of the move and called the office "misleading" in an X post.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from BI about the site.

• Donald Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE lost a second key staffer, William McGinley, this week.
• McGinley, a Republican lawyer, was DOGE's legal counsel and served in Trump's first term.
• Vivek Ramaswamy, who was set to lead the agency with Musk, is also leaving.

President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, lost a second high-profile staffer during his first week back in the White House.

William McGinley, a Republican lawyer who Trump appointed to be DOGE's legal counsel in December, told The Wall Street Journal he was leaving the agency and looking for opportunities in the private sector.

"I support President Trump, Vice President Vance, and the great teams in the White House and across the administration 100%," he told the outlet.

McGinley and the White House did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

McGinley served in the first Trump administration as White House cabinet secretary. He also previously served as counsel to the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

McGinley's departure comes as DOGE faces lawsuits that started pouring in moments after Trump was sworn in. Three lawsuits alleged DOGE, which is led by Elon Musk, violates transparency requirements of a 1972 law.

It also comes after the highly hyped agency lost one of its co-leaders earlier this week. Vivek Ramaswamy, who was set to lead DOGE alongside Musk, said he was stepping down just over two months after the department was announced.

"It was my honor to help support the creation of DOGE," Ramaswamy said on X on Monday. "I'm confident that Elon & team will succeed in streamlining government."

Ramaswamy also reiterated his support for Trump in his departure announcement. Several media reports have said Ramaswamy is expected to announce a run for governor of Ohio.

• President Donald Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 people involved in the January 6 Capitol riot.
• The pardons were issued shortly after Trump was sworn in on Monday.
• "They were very minor incidents, and it was time," Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity.

President Donald Trump defended the pardons he issued to January 6 participants in his first interview since returning to the presidency.

"They were very minor incidents, and it was time," Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview held at the Oval Office.

Shortly after being sworn in on Monday, Trump signed an executive order that pardoned roughly 1,500 people who were involved in the January 6 Capitol riot. The order also commuted the sentences of 14 other individuals, which included members of two far-right extremist groups, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.

"They were treated like the worst criminals in history. And you know what they were there for? They were protesting the vote, because they knew the election was rigged and they were protesting the vote," Trump told Hannity.

The January 6 Capitol riots left five dead, including a Capitol Police officer. Some of the pro-Trump rioters were armed with wooden sticks and metal pipes when they descended on the Capitol. Trump has maintained his claim that the 2020 presidential election was "rigged" although no evidence has been found to justify it.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

During the pre-taped interview that aired Wednesday evening, Trump repeated many of the talking points he shared in his inaugural address and throughout his campaign, criticizing former President Joe Biden for his handling of the southern border, crime, and the war in Ukraine.

"They are all solvable. With time, effort, money, unfortunately. But they are all solvable," Trump said. "Probably we can get our country back, but if we didn't win this race, I really believe our country would have been lost forever."

When asked about the preemptive pardons issued by President Joe Biden, including for some Biden family members, Trump said it set an "amazing" precedent.

"This guy went around giving everybody pardons. And you know, the funny thing, maybe the sad thing is he didn't give himself a pardon," Trump said of Biden.

Trump also said in the interview that he planned to visit North Carolina, which was hit by Hurricane Helene last year, on Friday and then California, which was hit by several wildfires earlier this month. He also criticized California's response to the fires as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"FEMA is going to be a whole big discussion very shortly because I'd rather see the states take care of their own problems," Trump said.

More of the interview is set to air on Fox News on Thursday evening.

• The Hughes fire erupted Wednesday, the latest in a string of large wildfires in Southern California.
• As of Thursday evening, the fire covered over 10,300 acres and was 36% contained.
• Another small fire broke out overnight along a major freeway, but its forward progress was stopped.

Los Angeles County was bracing itself yet again Thursday after a new fire broke out and spread to more than 10,000 acres.

The Hughes Fire started at about 10:50 a.m. local time Wednesday near Castaic, north of Los Angeles. It was first reported at about 50 acres — but soon mushroomed to more than 10,000 acres by midnight, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.

As of Thursday evening, the fire had burned 10,396 acres and was 36% contained. Firefighters were able to stop significant spread of the flames on Thursday despite continued high wind conditions.

The new fire hit as the Southern California region was still reeling from a series of fires, including the Palisades Fire and Eaton Fire, that burned through more than 37,000 acres earlier this month.

Cal Fire said a second, small blaze also broke out early Thursday just east of a major freeway, the I-405, near Sepulveda Pass.

Air support and "other aggressive actions" were deployed to fight it, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said.

Named the Sepulveda Fire, burned through 45 acres and was 60% contained as of Thursday evening, Cal Fire said. Its forward progress was stopped within the first few hours, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

An evacuation warning for the area — which contained a $30 million property owned by Rupert Murdoch, per the Los Angeles Times — has since been lifted.

Another small fire, the Laguna Fire, broke out in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, on Thursday morning. The fire spread to 50 acres but forward progress was quickly stopped, the Ventura County Fire Department said.

The causes of the three fires remain unknown.

For areas near the Hughes Fire, evacuation orders were issued for more than 31,000 people and evacuation warnings were issued for another 23,000 people, officials said at a press conference Wednesday.

The fire threatens more than 14,000 structures, but so far, none have been confirmed damaged or destroyed, the LA County Coordinated Joint Information Center said.

The vital I-5 freeway was also temporarily closed as a result of the Hughes Fire, and some off-ramps in the area remained closed Wednesday evening.

Earlier this month, the Palisades and Eaton Fires tore through the Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and neighboring areas, killing at least 27 people, destroying thousands of homes and other structures, and causing what could amount to $275 billion in damages by AccuWeather's estimate.

Malibu began its repopulation efforts on Wednesday, allowing residents in select evacuation zones to begin returning to their homes with assistance from the fire department, sheriff's department, community response teams, and others.

The region remains at risk as the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for parts of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, with dangerous fire weather conditions expected through Friday.

But, the agency is also forecasting rain over the weekend, which would bring relief to any fires still burning.

This story is developing. Check back for updates.

• REI announced Wednesday the company's president and CEO, Eric Artz, will step down in March.
• Mary Beth Laughton, a former leader at Nike, Athleta, and Sephora, will take over as CEO.
• REI reported a decline in sales in 2023 and has recently had several rounds of layoffs.

REI Co-op, the outdoor retailer headquartered near Seattle, announced Wednesday that its President and CEO, Eric Artz, is stepping down in March and will be replaced by Mary Beth Laughton, a former executive at Nike and Athleta.

"Eric has led and stabilized REI through some of the most challenging years the retail sector and our co-op ever faced," Chris Carr, chair of the REI board of directors, said in a statement. "REI is in a strong position today because he always kept our purpose, values, and people as his north star."

"Mary Beth has the ideal experience to build on this foundation and to lead REI forward into our next chapter," Carr added. "The world needs a strong REI, and we are confident Mary Beth will hit the ground running." 

Artz has served as president and CEO of REI since 2019 and has been at the company for 12 years. Prior to joining REI, he was the CFO of Urban Outfitters.

Laughton previously worked at Nike as the head of Nike Global Direct to Consumer. She also served as the president and CEO of Athleta from 2019 to 2023 and led Sephora's US stores and digital operations. She previously served as an REI board member from 2017 to 2019.

"No other company balances purpose and performance quite like REI, and we must ensure it thrives for generations to come," Laughton said in a statement.

Laughton joins REI as the company faces financial struggles and has undergone several rounds of layoffs in the past couple of years.

REI reported $3.76 billion in revenue in 2023, marking a 2.4% decrease from 2022. Its 2024 financials have not yet been reported, but Artz previously said the company expected a decline in revenue compared to 2023. The company also reported net losses in both 2022 and 2023.

In October 2023, REI laid off around 275 employees, while another 357 were laid off in January 2024. This month REI announced it was shutting down its experiences business and laying off more than 400 employees.

The company has attributed its challenges to industry-wide declines in outdoor specialty retail as well as its commitment to paying its hourly employees well, among other factors.

Still, REI continues to expand, with six store openings planned for 2025 and at least two in 2026.

REI didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Are you a current or former REI employee or customer with insights to share? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at kelseyv.21.

• Trump signed an executive order requiring federal government employees to return to the office.
• Union leaders opposed the mandate and said it was based on misconceptions about federal workers.
• They also said telework was crucial for recruiting talent and emergency preparedness.

Leaders of unions representing federal government employees say President Donald Trump's return-to-office mandate won't make the government more efficient — and could have some unintended consequences.

Randy Erwin, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, or NFFE, and Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE, said the RTO mandate would make the government less effective.

"They're trying to score political points by insinuating that people on telework aren't coming to work when nothing could be further from the truth," Erwin told Business Insider in an interview.

If not for telework and other family-friendly work methods, the federal government "would not be able to recruit and retain the talent that it needs," Erwin said. The NFFE is the oldest union in the US and represents more than 110,000 federal workers.

"When you can't make anywhere near what you could be making in the private sector, some family, flexible work policies become a very, very important thing," he said, adding that some current federal workers may also choose to leave.

Kelley, who leads AFGE, the largest federal employee union representing 800,000 members, also said telework was important to attracting and retaining top talent within the federal government.

"Providing eligible employees with the opportunity to work hybrid schedules is a key tool for recruiting and retaining workers in both the public and private sectors," Kelley said in a statement.

Erwin told BI the mandate suggested a lack of understanding about how the federal government works and that "there's this myth that federal workers aren't coming to work."

An August report from the Office of Management and Budget found that about 10% of civilian workers across two dozen agencies worked remotely without expectations that they would regularly work in the office.

Erwin said comments from the Trump administration, including Elon Musk, who is leading the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have misrepresented the federal workforce.

"I don't think he knows the first thing about the federal workforce, who they are, where they are, and the valuable services that they provide," he said of Musk, adding, "They're making everybody sound like some innovation-blocking bureaucrat."

Erwin said most federal employees are not based in Washington, DC, and are nationwide. Less than a fifth of the federal workforce in the Office of Personnel Management database lives in DC or the nearby states of Maryland and Virginia, a recent Pew analysis found.

Kelley also said lawmakers and Trump's transition team "spent months exaggerating the number of federal employees who telework and accusing those who do of failing to perform the duties of their jobs."

"The truth is that less than half of all federal jobs are eligible for telework, and the workers who are eligible to telework still spend most of their work hours at their regular duty stations," he added.

Both Erwin and Kelley said telework was also essential to ensuring the federal government's continued smooth operation in a state of emergency.

Erwin said that after September 11, the ability to telework was considered essential for the federal government, adding, "It is only very recently that telework has been frowned upon in the federal government." He said the COVID-19 pandemic showed how the ability to telework enabled the government to continue operating relatively smoothly.

Kelley said remote work has been "a critical tool for federal agencies to maintain continuity of operations in emergencies, increase disaster preparedness, and improve efficiency."

He also said hybrid work has been so successful that many agencies have consolidated or sold off office space that's expensive to maintain, "meaning there may no longer be enough office space to accommodate an influx of on-site workers."

Some federal employees who are union members have collective bargaining agreements that explicitly allow for remote or hybrid work. Erwin said an executive order would not override those agreements, at least for as long as they are active.

Erwin said the return-to-office mandate showed the "problem with governing by completely political, manufactured talking points."

"They're going to force people back into the office, and it's not going to make people more productive for the American taxpayer," he said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Josh Nichols commutes from Michigan to Chicago weekly for his analyst job at United Airlines.
• Nichols benefits from United's flight privileges, allowing standby travel for his commute.
• Supercommuting enhances Nichols' work-life balance, enabling him to live in Michigan.

This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Josh Nichols, a 25-year-old from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who regularly commutes to Chicago for his job as a senior analyst at United Airlines. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I live in Michigan and my office is in Chicago. I work on customer strategy and innovation as a senior analyst for United Airlines, and our department is hybrid. For the most part, we are in office Tuesday and Wednesday, and sometimes on Thursday, every single week. It's really nice to have that bit of flexibility.

When I first started the job I lived in Chicago for two years. But I hate Chicago with a passion. There's so much traffic, it was expensive, it was noisy.

I had heard several colleagues were doing supercommuting. Just thinking about the quality of life that I have back home in Michigan versus the quality of life that I had in Chicago, the decision was pretty clear.

After talking with my management and coming to a mutual understanding that they would give me the green light to leave the city but that I would still need to come into the office, it was a no-brainer.

I'm very thankful that our team is flexible in that regard. My leadership team is very understanding and very accommodating. But I also think that it might be a different story if I weren't a hard worker or if they had to keep close track of what I'm doing.

Flying from Detroit to Chicago

I normally take a 6 a.m. flight from Detroit that lands at Chicago O'Hare also around 6 a.m. due to the time difference. After boarding, I usually fall right to sleep and wake up in Chicago.

I have a United Club card, so on arrival, I will go there and have some breakfast, and then take the subway into downtown to our office at Willis Tower.

I'll work in the office all day Tuesday, spend the night in Chicago, and work all day in the office on Wednesday. Then I usually take the 7 p.m. flight from Chicago back to Michigan. Sometimes I'll stay another day and catch the same evening flight on Thursday.

As for where I stay, it's a good balance between friends and just getting hotel rooms. I have some very, very generous friends that I am very thankful for who allow me to be their local couch potato. Often I'll buy them dinner or we'll just hang out. If I stay in a hotel I usually get one by the airport because it's cheaper and then I'll commute back and forth on the train.

I use my flight privileges as a United employee

Because I am choosing to live outside of Chicago, I can't use our company-provided flights to commute in, and the company does not pay for my hotel stays or transportation to and from the airport.

Instead I fly standby with our flight privileges, which is where employees can fly for free if there's a seat available and you're senior enough to get it. On Monday night I have a general idea of how the flights look for the next morning.

If they don't look great, I might decide to take the train in or do the four-hour drive, and potentially leave Monday evening. Thankfully, my track record for getting on the Tuesday morning flight is pretty good.

When I show up in the morning, I have to wait to see if I get cleared and receive a seat assignment. If I don't make the 6 a.m. flight, there's a 7:30 a.m. flight as well.

I can also buy a ticket as a normal passenger. I try to avoid buying tickets as much as possible, but I certainly have purchased a ticket to get to the office, especially around the holidays. That's just what I have to do to be responsible and hold up my end of the bargain.

I don't think I would be willing to do this commute if I had to self-fund my flights or drive or take the train every single week.

Better work-life balance

I've been doing this for almost two years now. Sometimes it's a challenge because it's not a guarantee I'll be able to catch my flight or which return flight I'll be able to get on. But I would rather deal with those small challenges than live in Chicago.

Getting to live in Michigan, where I'm originally from, is so worth it.

I get to see my parents and my grandparents on a regular basis. I'm able to see so many more of my friends. It's really helped me maintain a healthy social life.

Supercommuting allows me to maintain a healthy work-life balance. I still maintain very strong relationships at work. I maintain the quality of work that I put out and I'm not missing my in-office days.

For others interested in supercommuting, I think taking stock of what you want out of your life is really important and knowing if you're willing to make certain sacrifices for the quality of life that makes you happiest.

I think the most important thing is, you cannot slack. You can't take virtual work as an opportunity to be mediocre. And if you know yourself, if you're someone that likes to not work as hard when you're not being managed, maybe it's best not to do it.

• TikTok said it would "go dark" for American users on January 19 unless Biden intervened.
• A White House spokesperson called TikTok's statement a "stunt."
• The Supreme Court upheld a law requiring TikTok's US operations to be sold by Sunday or face a ban.

TikTok said Friday it would be forced to go dark on Sunday, the day a ban on the platform is set to take effect, unless the Biden administration intervenes.

On Saturday, the Biden administration called TikTok's statement a "stunt."

"It is a stunt, and we see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump Administration takes office on Monday," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told Reuters. "We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration. So TikTok and other companies should take up concerns with them."

TikTok said on Friday that it would be forced to turn off its app unless the Biden administration assured service providers it wouldn't enforce the ban.

"Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19," the statement continued.

The law, which was passed by Congress and signed by Biden last spring, requires ByteDance, its China-based parent company, to sell the app's US operations by January 19 or be banned.

The law specifically bans US app stores, like Apple's and Google's, from carrying or updating the app. Companies that violate the law could face fines of up to $5,000 per user who accesses TikTok.

The Biden administration said this week it does not plan to enforce the ban since it is set to take effect one day before President Joe Biden leaves office and President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in.

"President Biden's position on TikTok has been clear for months, including since Congress sent a bill in overwhelming, bipartisan fashion to the President's desk: TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law," Jean-Pierre said.

The Justice Department, meanwhile, issued a statement on Friday supporting the Supreme Court's decision, adding: "The next phase of this effort — implementing and ensuring compliance with the law after it goes into effect on January 19 — will be a process that plays out over time."

Trump has said he does not support banning TikTok and will work on finding a solution.

During a phone interview with NBC News' Kristen Welker on Saturday, Trump said he would "most likely" give TikTok a 90-day extension after Monday. However, he told Welker he hasn't made a final decision on the potential ban yet.

"I think that would be, certainly, an option that we look at. The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it's appropriate. You know, it's appropriate. We have to look at it carefully. It's a very big situation," Trump said.

"If I decide to do that, I'll probably announce it on Monday," he told Welker.

In a video on Friday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew thanked Trump for his commitment to saving the app.

On Truth Social, Trump said he had spoken with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the phone and said the call was a "very good one" and that they discussed "balancing Trade, Fentanyl, TikTok, and many other subjects."

It's unclear what TikTok will look like on users' phones come Sunday if the app goes "dark" and whether the video platform's fate in the US will be permanent.

Some workarounds could bring the app back to life, including brokering a deal to sell it to a US buyer.

Figures from Kevin O'Leary of Shark Tank to YouTuber MrBeast have expressed interest in buying the app.

BI's Peter Kafka reported that Bytedance hasn't publicly shown interest in selling TikTok or indicated any progress in a deal with a non-Chinese buyer so far.

There's also the possibility that the Trump administration could issue an executive order reversing the ban under the argument that the move is related to foreign affairs and national security interests.

A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

• The Biden administration will leave it to Trump to enforce the TikTok ban.
• Congress ruled last year that Chinese firm ByteDance should sell TikTok or see it banned.
• Trump takes office on January 20, the day after the deadline for ByteDance to sell.

President Joe Biden's administration is not planning to implement the TikTok ban set to take effect on Sunday.

That would leave it to President-elect Donald Trump and his officials to act after they take office on January 20.

The law, which was passed by Congress and signed by Biden in April of last year, requires TikTok to be banned unless ByteDance, its China-based parent company, sells the app's US operations by January 19.

"Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

"President Biden's position on TikTok has been clear for months, including since Congress sent a bill in overwhelming, bipartisan fashion to the President's desk: TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law," she added.

The bill that would ban TikTok from US app stores also gave Biden the ability to grant ByteDance a 90-day extension if several conditions were met, including if there was "evidence of significant progress" made toward selling TikTok's US operations.

Trump has defended the app, which was banned amid concerns user data could be accessed by the Chinese government.

Mike Waltz, Trump's incoming national security advisor, told Fox News on Wednesday that Trump would seek to preserve the app, used by around 170 million Americans.

"We're going to find a way to preserve it but protect people's data. And that's the deal that will be in front of us," Waltz said.

He suggested an executive order could be used to protect it, but offered few details on how this might work in practice.

Last month, Trump called on the US Supreme Court to pause the ban. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the ban on Friday.

Following the ruling, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew posted a video to TikTok thanking Trump for his commitment to working with TikTok to keep the app running in the US. 

There have been several potential TikTok buyers, but it's unclear if or to what extent ByteDance has sought to divest. ByteDance and TikTok have not publicly shown any interest in a sale.

Democratic former Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday that more time was needed to find a US buyer.

"It's clear that more time is needed to find an American buyer and not disrupt the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans, of so many influencers who have built up a good network of followers," Schumer said.

It's also unclear what will happen to the app on Sunday if Biden, Trump, or the Supreme Court do not step in before then to save it.

The legislation passed last year requires platforms in the US such as Apple or Google to stop offering the app or updating it when the sale deadline passes, meaning it'd effectively "go dark" or be unavailable.

• Mark Zuckerberg praised Sheryl Sandberg in a Threads post on Friday.
• He also denied a report that said he blamed Sandberg for an inclusivity program at Facebook.
• Meta recently said it was rolling back its DEI initiatives.

Mark Zuckerberg praised former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg on Friday and denied reporting that said he had blamed her for an inclusivity program at the company.

"Sheryl did amazing work at Meta and will forever be a legend in the industry. She built one of the greatest businesses of all time and taught me much of what I know," Zuckerberg said in a post on Threads.

The post was sent in response to another user who shared a Business Insider article from last year with the headline, "Mark Zuckerberg jokes that Sheryl Sandberg raised him 'like a parent.'" The user said it "didn't age well."

Sandberg responded in a Threads post: "Thank you, @zuck. I will always be grateful for the many years we spent building a great business together — and for your friendship that got me through some of the hardest times of my life and continues to this day."

Representatives for Sandberg declined to comment when reached by BI. Neither Meta nor Zuckerberg responded to Business Insider's request for comment.

In a Threads post sent a few hours later, Zuckerberg wrote: "I answered a question about where the phrase 'bring your whole self to work' came from, and now there's a whole bogus narrative saying I blamed Sheryl for a bunch of stuff that I never did and never will."

The quote "bring your whole self to work" has previously been attributed to Sandberg, who has pushed for women's empowerment in the workplace and wrote the book "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead."

Zuckerberg appeared to be referencing a New York Times report published Thursday that described a meeting between the Meta CEO and Stephen Miller, an advisor to President-elect Donald Trump, at Mar-a-Lago late last year.

The Times said Miller told Zuckerberg Trump would target DEI culture, including at companies like Meta. Zuckerberg assured Miller he would not stand in Trump's way, the Times reported, citing three unnamed sources.

The outlet also reported that one source said Zuckerberg blamed Sandberg for an inclusivity initiative at Facebook during the same meeting.

The reporting was met with some backlash online and support for Sandberg, who was sometimes referred to as the "adult in the room" at Facebook while she was there.

Zuckerberg appears to be reshaping Meta ahead of the incoming Trump administration. Meta told employees last week it was rolling back its DEI programs in addition to ending the use of third-party fact-checkers in favor of a community notes system.

During an appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast last week, Zuckerberg said "masculine energy" was needed in the workplace.

"Masculine energy, I think, is good, and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think that corporate culture was really trying to get away from it," he said in an interview on the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast. "It's like you want feminine energy; you want masculine energy."

January 17, 2025: This story has been updated to include a post from Mark Zuckerberg denying reporting that he blamed  Sheryl Sandberg.

• Biden delivered his farewell address to the nation on Wednesday, days before he leaves office.
• Biden warned of an oligarchy taking shape in the US and a "tech industrial complex."
• He also said AI posed opportunities and risks and that the US must lead the way over China.

President Joe Biden delivered stark warnings for the American people during his farewell address to the nation Wednesday night, capping a 50-year career in politics less than a week before his one-term presidency comes to an end.

Biden highlighted some accomplishments of his term, including the passage of major climate legislation and a gun-safety law. But he also said he wanted to warn the country about "the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked."

"Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead," he said, adding that the wealthy needed to "pay their fair share of taxes" and play by the same rules as everyone else.

Biden also said he was concerned about "the potential rise of a tech industrial complex" that could pose real dangers for the US, citing a "concentration of technology, power, and wealth."

"Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling, editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact checking," Biden said, seemingly a reference to Meta moving away from third-party fact checkers. "The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit."

Biden said artificial intelligence posed both opportunities and risks for American society, security, and the economy.

"But unless safeguards are in place, AI could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life, to our privacy, how we work and how we protect our nation. We must make sure AI is safe and trustworthy and good for all humankind," he said, adding, "And as the land of liberty, America, not China, must lead the world of the development of AI."

Biden's remarks on AI came a day after he signed an executive order to speed up AI infrastructure projects in the US. On Monday he also announced new chip rules aimed at advancing AI development in US-allied countries in an effort to counter China.

At the start of the address, Biden briefly addressed the Gaza cease-fire agreement that the White House had announced earlier on Wednesday after more than a year of conflict in the area.

Biden said the plan was developed and negotiated by his team and would largely be implemented by President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration. "That's why I told my team to keep the incoming administration fully informed, because that's how it should be — working together as Americans," he said.

A senior administration official said in a call Wednesday evening the Biden administration worked for several months on the terms of the negotiation with officials from Egypt and Qatar, but in its final days, members of Trump's administration joined the discussions to help finalize the agreement. The official also said the transition from one president to the next helped to create a deadline for the negotiations.

In his message on Wednesday, Biden also emphasized his belief in and the importance of safeguarding American institutions and democracy.

Trump is set to be sworn into office on January 20, kicking off his second term in the White House.

Biden's presidency is ending after he dropped out of the presidential race last year to serve a second term amid concerns about his age and mental acuity.

• Vail Resorts was in the hot seat this month when a Park City ski patrol strike disrupted holidays.
• For years, Vail's rapid acquisitions and high costs have sparked criticism from skiers and locals.
• Here's how the company grew to be the biggest in skiing — and the enemy of some ski bums.

If you want to know just how loathed Vail Resorts is, just look at the lyrics of Grammy-nominated artist Noah Kahan's "Paul Revere."

"This place had a heartbeat in its day," the native Vermonter sings. "Vail bought the mountains, and nothing was the same."

Or look around the parking lots at the ski behemoth's various properties, which include Park City, Beaver Creek, and Stowe, where cars are frequently adorned with "Vail Sucks" stickers.

Gripes that the company has made skiing less accessible and more corporate were amplified this month after a ski patrol strike shut down much of Park City, causing chaos for vacationers over the holidays.

The company's stock dropped 6% amid news of the strike. But while the work stoppage has ended, the company's challenges are far from over. Since reaching a peak in 2021, Vail's share price is now down more than 50%.

After two decades of acquisitions and partnerships, Vail Resorts owns or operates 42 ski resorts around the world. The company is now facing decreased margins after a 2021 reduction in the price of its Epic Pass, which provides access to Vail's network of mountains, and the lack of cheap acquisitions available, Chris Woronka, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, told Business Insider.

"The stock had gotten ahead of itself valuation-wise," Woronka said. "The days of easily created growth are kind of behind the company."

Meanwhile, it's earned a reputation among passionate skiers as a place where crowds clutter the trails and lift lines and where grabbing a burger on the mountain could cost you $25.

A spokesperson for Vail Resorts told BI the company continuously invests in its properties to improve the guest experience and make skiing more accessible.

"Vail Resorts has transformed the industry through unprecedented investments in employees and guests, made the sport more accessible to more people, and created stability for our resorts, employees and communities in the face of climate change," the spokesperson said.

A skiing behemoth

Vail Resorts is the largest ski company in the world, granting its pass-holders unlimited access to dozens of resorts worldwide, including its upscale flagship, Vail, located in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. During its 2024 fiscal year, which ended in July, 17.6 million skiers visited its mountains.

Those visitors pay big bucks for the privilege of skiing at some of the most popular destinations: The Epic Pass had a starting price of $982 for the 2024-2025 season. A lift ticket at Park City alone can get up to about $300 per day.

A spokesperson for Vail Resorts said the company now has over 2 million pass-holders.

Luke, a former Vail Resorts employee who asked to go by his first name to avoid professional repercussions, told BI there were two main reasons Vail Resorts gets so much hate. First, it's buying up resorts at an "alarming" rate. Second, as a result of that strategy, many skiers do not believe the company invests enough in the quality and operations of each individual resort, instead relying on their "cash cow" properties.

"It feels like the end game is not necessarily to make any one area successful, but to eventually own the ski world," Luke said. "So then it's like if you're skiing anywhere, you're skiing Vail" properties.

Jaimie Nichols, a 35-year-old accountant from Florida who now lives in Denver, has been skiing with her family in Crested Butte, Colorado, since the early 2000s, when the resort was family-owned. She remembered lift tickets for kids cost as much as their age — $8 for an 8-year-old — and a large base lodge where families could find affordable food options or use a microwave to heat up packed lunches. Crested Butte itself is lovingly called "Colorado's Last Great Ski Town" due to its authentic mountain town vibe.

But Nichols said since Vail Resorts acquired Crested Butte Ski Resort in 2018, it just hasn't been the same.

The resort's "persona changed," she said. "It's a completely different place."

The Mueller family, which owned Crested Butte, previously said selling to Vail was a difficult decision.

"When you start to look 10, 20, 30 years down the road and what that means for a small ski company like us, and not being as heavily financed like Vail, it's only getting tougher," Erica Mueller told Powder magazine in 2018.

When Vail takes over

Now, most of Vail Resorts' properties are in the US, spanning from California, Utah, and Colorado, through Midwest states like Wisconsin and Michigan, and all the way to the Northeast in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Its many acquisitions have turned the company, which was taken public by Apollo in the 1990s after the private equity shop bought it out of bankruptcy, into a financial behemoth in the hospitality space. It has a market cap of $6.7 billion and generated $2.9 billion in revenue and $230 million in profit in its 2024 fiscal year. Investors were rewarded with $8.56 in dividends per share.

A common complaint from skiers and snowboarders when Vail takes over a resort is a more crowded mountain and long lift lines. The problem, Nichols said, is that when a resort gets added to Vail's Epic Pass, it becomes a destination. Epic pass-holders who previously wouldn't have driven four-plus hours from Denver to Crested Butte now make the trip, as do pass-holders from other states who make a vacation out of it.

As a result, Nichols said the locals of the area have fewer opportunities to ski on their home mountain, and, for families who aren't season pass-holders but would like to ski once or twice a season, day passes get too expensive and out of reach.

Some of these problems are compounded by factors that are affecting many towns in the West that don't even have a ski resort: an increase in short-term rentals and transplants from cities moving to small towns in the age of remote work, both of which have contributed to higher home prices and costs of living.

Vail has said it is committed to reinvesting in the resorts it acquires, estimating its capital investments in the 2024 fiscal year to be between $189 million to $194 million. For instance, at Whistler Blackcomb, the company said it was replacing a four-person lift with a six-person high-speed lift. At Park City, the company said it was replacing a lift with a 10-person gondola. It also said it planned to invest in snowmaking capabilities at Park City and Hunter Mountain.

A spokesperson for Vail Resorts said the Epic Pass has also added stability to an industry that was previously "ruled by weather."

"That means in a good snow year, the industry would prosper, but in a year with low snow, skiers and snowboarders would opt not to visit, and ski resorts would suffer, along with the employees who worked there and the surrounding communities," the spokesperson said. "This meant that resorts couldn't predict their business — thus were not investing in infrastructure or their employees."

When Vail introduced the Epic Pass in 2008, it was cheaper than many season passes offered at individual resorts.

The spokesperson also said the company's Epic Day Passes, which offer more flexibility than traditional lift tickets, are significantly discounted if they are purchased before the season begins.

"By incentivizing guests to buy their skiing and riding ahead of the season, we lock in revenue before the snow falls, which has allowed us to continually invest back into our resorts, our employees, and our communities, and the environment, no matter the weather," the spokesperson said.

Many Vail critics still buy Epic Passes

The company's biggest competitor is Alterra Mountain Company, which owns mountains like Steamboat and Deer Valley and is owned by private equity shop KSL and investment firm Henry Crown. Alterra runs the Ikon Pass, which is even more expensive than the Epic Pass, starting at $1,249.

The Epic and Ikon passes' value depends on how much one uses them. It can be a good deal for folks who ski frequently and would like to visit different mountains — which is part of the argument the companies use when they increase the pricing on nearly everything else, including day passes, ski school, rentals, and on-mountain dining and amenities.

In addition to offering a good deal with the Epic Pass, Woronka, the Deutsche Bank analyst, said Vail also still has a strong brand name going for it and great assets.

"These are really terrific mountains. It's some of the best terrain out there," he said. "They have this big, nice, wide portfolio across the country."

The problem is, "trying to cater to everyone and do it profitably can be a difficult proposition," Woronka said.

With the luxury experience that Vail is selling, the increase in crowds on the mountain can make the guests feel a little less special, he said.

Still, Vail's dominance means that many who complain about the company still buy Epic Passes. It often makes the most financial sense for those who plan to ski most weekends, and if all their friends are doing the Epic Pass, they don't want to miss out.

Luke, the former Vail employee, said running a ski operation is costly and complicated. And, he added, there's no denying that some of the resorts bought up by Vail may not have survived otherwise. But he said part of the reason for that is the relatively low cost of the Epic Pass has drawn many away from their local mountains.

"These mountains wouldn't have survived," Luke said.

But he also said he thinks having to compete with a large company like Vail is part of the reason some family-run resorts were struggling in the first place.