• Goutam Nair is a software engineer at Google working on AI applications.
• He credits networking and a focused résumé with landing him the job.
• He shared with BI the résumé he submitted and the message template he used for cold reachouts to recruiters.

Landing a job, as the saying goes, can often come down to not just what you know, but also who you know.

Software engineer Goutam Nair told Business Insider that submitting a good résumé and having a solid networking connection were both key to landing his current job at Google.

He shared with BI the exact résumé he submitted in his job application and the networking template he used in LinkedIn cold reach-outs to recruiters and other software engineers already working where he wanted to be.

Here are Nair's pointers.

Getting the résumé right

Highlight relevant publications or projects

If you don't have much professional or research experience yet, it helps to emphasize your contributions to the field via any open source projects on Github, for example, Nair said.

As with any other job, the basic guidance still applies: Show employers what you've done that's applicable to the role you're applying for.

"I mostly just outlined the engineering projects that I'd done and then explained that in a concise way," Nair said.

Convey your impact in results and numbers

Nair says he wishes he'd more clearly done this in his Google résumé and has since made adjustments to better quantify the impact of his work.

"Highlighting any impact in your previous projects, especially in a result-driven way, is effective," he said. "It's even better if these results can be quantified into a number."

Instead of writing "Worked on building a novel recommendation model for page feeds," try instead: "Developed a novel recommendation model for page feeds that increased user engagement by 5%."

Impact can be quantified in a number of ways, including business you've generated for the company, resources you've saved, features you've built, or how your work has improved customer engagement or satisfaction, for example.

Stay brief

For many job applicants, it's good practice to keep a résumé to one page, with a bulleted listing of skills and experience tailored to the target role.

Nair was also careful to focus on action verbs in his resume, starting bullets with words like "developed," "built," and "designed."

Draw attention to your skills, but don't go overboard

Nair listed some programming languages and frameworks with which he has experience. He cautions against throwing in extra skills just for the sake of it, especially if you're not confident in them.

"Adding a lot of skills in this section, especially ones that you are not very proficient in, could backfire since you could also be judged on your knowledge of them in the technical interviews," he said.

Networking

A recruiter reached out to Nair for his current role at Google, but he'd laid the groundwork by previously reaching out to the recruiter in his prior job search.

When Nair was searching for his prior roles, he blasted cold reach-outs to hiring managers, recruiters, software engineers, and others at his target companies to get a sense of who might be hiring for their teams or who might be able to refer him for a position.

"I was reaching out cold to everyone who had a title in their LinkedIn which said that they're hiring for the teams or that they're a manager for a team," he said. "You just have to send out as many cold emails as you can, and you might just get lucky."

In his initial messages, Nair gave a quick overview of his experience and attached his résumé, but largely focused on keeping his requests "brief and to the point."

He used this template for his asks:

"Hi <name>,

I'm a <role> working on <brief description of what you're working on>. I'm interested in <target role> at <company> and would love to connect to learn more about opportunities.

I have also attached my résumé here. Let me know if we can chat!

Thanks,

<your name>"

It was very much a numbers game, but it worked for Nair in the end.

"A lot of people might not respond, but that's basically the worst that can happen," he said. "You just need one person to respond, and that's kind of what happened to me."

Preparing for the interviews

Nair's interview process for his current role included several rounds of technical interviews focused on coding and problem-solving skills, he said, as well as a team match.

He prepared for the interviews by scouring online forums to see what he could expect based on other candidates' previous experiences, brushing up on his technical skills, enlisting his friends for mock interview run-throughs, and learning from other interviews he was doing with different companies.

"Compared to the other companies that I did interview with, Google is a lot more focused on if you do understand the problem and are able to solve it from first principles as opposed to just needing to give a perfect solution," he said. "They care if you can solve the problem, if you're able to think through it, rather than having just memorized something that you've seen before."

• Many people associate Costco with bulk deals to save money.
• But the warehouse store chain also sells pricier items you might not expect to find there.
• As its chairman told Chief Executive magazine, "Affluent people love a good deal."

Gold bars. Rolex watches. 10-karat diamonds. Porsches.

These luxury items aren't what you'd typically associate with Costco, but Chairman Hamilton "Tony" James says pricier items like these are an integral part of Costco's strategy just the same.

James, who has sat on Costco's board since 1988, explained the company's approach to appealing to wealthier members in an interview with Chief Executive magazine published Thursday.

"Most members are average-income earners nationally, but we also have affluent members with two times the average income. That gives us the ability to do remarkable things," he said. "Since the beginning, we've always known we could move anything in volume if the quality was good and the price was great — Rolex watches, Dom Perignon, 10-karat diamonds. A Porsche dealer in Seattle put their cars on the floor of a Costco, and they sold out in a week."

In other words, "Affluent people love a good deal," he said.

Data from consumer analytics firm Numerator on the typical Costco customer say the membership warehouse chain was more popular with higher-income millennial and Gen X households than many of its peers in the year through June 2024.

Costco's pricier offerings over the years have included products like a $400,000 diamond ring, a Bugatti electric scooter, a freestanding wine cellar, and a 6-person indoor sauna.

The company also sells gold bars and silver coins.

James is unsure, though, "if affluent people are buying them or just people suspicious of the economy."

Analysts have estimated Costco sells roughly $200 million of gold and silver a month, and former CFO Richard Galanti has said its supply usually sells out within hours.

"We're not interested in selling just anything at a low price," James said. "If someone wants to buy a $500 TV for $250 at Costco, we want to sell them a $1,000 TV for $500 instead. We're always trying to find better items to sell to members, giving them a great deal. We're by no means a dollar store. At the same time, we're always trying new things like gas stations, large products like appliances, pharmacies."

And if in doubt, there's always the famous $1.50 hot dog combo.

• What's it like being neighbors with Silicon Valley's elite?
• The Pro Football Hall of Famer Steve Young has some fond memories from his time living in Palo Alto.
• He recently talked about being neighbors with Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison.

Steve Young made a big name for himself in pro football, but on his old block in Silicon Valley, his neighbors were the talk of the town — especially on Halloween.

When he lived in Palo Alto, California, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback counted Apple's cofounder Steve Jobs, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Oracle's cofounder Larry Ellison as neighbors.

"Everywhere you went, you were around people that were transforming the world," Young said on an episode of the "In Depth With Graham Bensinger" podcast released earlier this month. "And so as a player, as an athlete, you always feel like you're a little bit of an impostor in that world because I don't have a product. I don't have this great idea. I just go play a game."

Surrounded by a who's who of Silicon Valley, Young said he felt a sense of "appreciation and kind of honor for the amazing things that are happening around me and seeing if I could play a small role in catching up and learning about it."

Young recalled an interaction when he ran into Ellison and Jobs in the neighborhood.

Ellison remembered Young from their time playing pickup basketball together, but Young didn't immediately recognize Ellison, he said. And Jobs didn't remember Young, though they'd met five or six times before, Young said.

"I just thought it was a funny interaction where nobody knew each other. We're all neighbors, and that's the insanity of Silicon Valley in 1995 and 1998 and 2000," he said. "It was a crazy, crazy time. The whole world now spins off of what happens here in many ways in technology."

Young talked about walking around the neighborhood and seeing Jobs at work in his home office.

"He'd just be working, doing his thing, and that's what I mean — that's the neighborhood," he said.

As for Zuckerberg, he "lives in a normal little house," Young said.

Years ago, Zuckerberg spent over $30 million to buy four homes near his Palo Alto house for privacy. He's also snapped up property at Lake Tahoe and has a massive compound in Hawaii.

Young remembered Zuckerberg showing him up on Halloween.

"He used to give out huge, giant Nestlé Crunch bars," he said. "You're like, 'Bro, why are you making me look bad? Quit trying to shame me.' This is, like, neighbor shame."

Throughout the neighborhood, "Halloween night here is happening," Young said.

"This whole block shuts down," he said. "It's a block party, and thousands of people come from all over the peninsula, and really all over Northern California, to be in these four, five blocks."

Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson's stepdaughter are among Silicon Valley's wealthy residents who have hosted Halloween parties for the public. Jobs also hosted parties in the area.

After Jobs' death in 2011, his widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, carried on their tradition of putting on a Halloween show for trick-or-treaters.

Young no longer lives in the same house but looks back on his time there as a pivotal period for tech.

"In Palo Alto, if you play football, pretty much nobody knows," he said. "A number of times, people have knocked on my door and say, 'Hey, does Mark Zuckerberg live nearby?' And I'm like, 'Yeah, yeah, just keep going that way.'"

• Twitter and Block cofounder Jack Dorsey balanced running both companies with a rigorous routine.
• Dorsey's routine included meditating, doing 7-minute workouts, and making to-do (and not-to-do) lists.
• Dorsey stepped down as Twitter CEO in 2021, but continues to run Block.

What did it take to run two companies at once?

Twitter and Block cofounder Jack Dorsey once balanced the responsibilities of running both companies with an early morning wake-up and a lot of meditation.

Dorsey said in a Product Hunt Live Chat in 2015 that he typically had 18-hour days — waking up around 5 a.m. and ending the day at 11 p.m.

"I look to build a lot of consistent routine," Dorsey said in 2015. "Same thing every day."

During his time as CEO of Twitter and Square, Dorsey started his day with meditation and would follow it up with a series of seven-minute workouts, he said in the 2015 live chat.

Dorsey tweeted out a workout routine from The New York Times in 2013, the training circuit only requires a chair and a wall and includes anything from jumping jacks to planks and wall sits.

In 2019, Dorsey said in a podcast interview with Ben Greenfield that he meditated for about an hour each morning and had started waking up at 6:15 a.m. instead.

Dorsey said in a February 2025 episode of the "In Good Company" podcast that before the pandemic, he used to go on a 10-day silent meditation retreat every year during a five-year period.

During these retreats, participants didn't speak or use their phones, but would solely meditate instead from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. for 10 days, he said.

"I'll say that my routine today is completely different than my routine three years ago, but I feel like I have a lot of it dialed in based on what I'm currently experiencing in terms of stress and just what I have to do every day," he told Greenfield.

After a morning cup of coffee, Dorsey would make the five-mile trek to Twitter's office in San Francisco — by foot, according to Bloomberg reporter Kurt Wagner's book on Twitter, "Battle for the Bird."

"He'd strap on a pair of running sandals, grab his phone, and make the five-mile walk through the streets of San Francisco to Twitter's downtown headquarters — rain or shine," Wagner wrote in his book, adding that the tech executive would listen to podcasts or audiobooks during the more than hour-long walk.

Dorsey was also known for his "wake me up" cocktail of lemon juice and Himalayan salt, according to Wagner. Some Twitter staff even tried the drink out during the company's retreat in 2018, according to the book.

Typically, Dorsey would split his day between the two companies, spending his mornings at Twitter and his afternoons and nights working at Square, his fintech company, according to Wagner. Square was renamed Block in late 2021.

In 2012, Dorsey told Fast Company he'd divide his weeks into themes in order to manage running both companies.

It went something like this:

Monday — Management

Tuesday — Product, engineering, and design

Wednesday — Marketing, growth, and communications

Thursday — Partnership and developers

Friday — Company and culture

Saturday — Day off

Sunday — Strategy

"It works in 24-hour blocks. On days beginning with 'T,' I start at Twitter in the morning, then go to Square in the afternoon," he told Fast Company.

Dorsey also incorporates fasting into his schedule. In the 2019 podcast, the billionaire said he only eats one meal per day and had fasted all weekend, adding that the first time he tried the practice he felt as if he was hallucinating.

"It was a weird state to be in. But as I did it the next two times, it just became so apparent to me how much of our days are centered around meals and how — the experience I had was when I was fasting for much longer, how time really slowed down," he said.

He later told Wired in 2020 that he eats seven meals a week, but he only eats dinner, which he consumes around 6:30 p.m.

Dorsey also told the publication he opts for a sauna and ice bath every day.

Dorsey was Twitter's CEO from 2007 to 2008 and again from 2015 to 2021. He cofounded Square, now Block, in 2009 and continues to run the company.

And while it's not unheard-of to make to-do lists of what you'd like to accomplish for the day, Dorsey also makes lists of what he doesn't want to do that day.

"We often focus on what you do want to do, and we focus on these very large goals, and if I've learned anything, it's to make the goal very, very small and repeat it and iterate it as quickly as possible so you see momentum," he said in the 2025 interview.

"It's really important to write down the small goals that you have for the day and then, more importantly, what you don't want to do because we never focus on like, 'I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to get distracted by politics or like TV or whatever,'" he said.

Some elements of Dorsey's current daily to-do list include an hour each on studying quantum physics, learning the Italian language, and keeping his programming skills up to par.

He said he does these in the morning "when I want to do the hard stuff so that the rest of the day feels like a win."

A spokesperson for Block did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.

• Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey has some thoughts on the migration of users from X to BlueSky.
• He said people are "running away from X, rather than running to something on Bluesky."
• Bluesky saw a boost following the election and amid some users' broader dissatisfaction with Elon Musk's changes to X.

Jack Dorsey weighed in on people leaving one platform he founded (X, formerly Twitter) to join another he helped create (BlueSky).

"I think people are running away from X, rather than running to something on Bluesky," the Twitter cofounder said in a recent episode of the "In Good Company" podcast when asked why Bluesky is growing so fast.

"That's not a great way to build a product, unfortunately. We want people that are running to us for a particular thing that they couldn't do before," he added.

Bluesky was originally formed in 2019 as an internal project at Twitter, where Dorsey was still CEO, but launched as a stand-alone public benefit corporation in 2021.

Dorsey stepped down as Twitter's CEO in 2021, and his tenure on its board of directors ended the following year.

"Bluesky has built something that I wanted it to build and I'm excited about, which is this algorithm store, being able to choose your own algorithms," Dorsey said.

"That is a reason why people will run to it eventually, and I think why people run to these services eventually because they get more agency and more control — but it's not something that people care about right now," he added. "What they care about right now is not being in X for whatever personal reason."

Elon Musk famously bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 and has since made a number of changes. He renamed it X, ousted several executives and laid off around 80% of its staff, brought back previously banned users, and started selling blue-check verification.

Bluesky saw a surge in user signups in November amid droves of users leaving X following the election of President Trump, whom Musk financially backed.

BlueSky officially launched in February 2024 with around 3 million users and grew to 25.9 million users by the end of the year, the company said.

Dorsey resigned from Bluesky's board of directors last year and criticized the company for "literally repeating all the mistakes" that Twitter made.

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber told CNBC in November that the platform is "billionaire-proof."

"What happened to Twitter couldn't happen to us in the same ways, because you would always have the option to immediately move without having to start over," she said. "We're building an open-source social network that anyone can take into their own hands and build on, and it's something that is radically different from anything that's been done in social media before."

Graber also told CNBC that Bluesky won't let advertisers show users algorithmically recommended ads.

The company published a blog post in May outlining its product road map that mentioned it was working on improving its custom feeds with ideas like in-app feed creation and the ability for users to submit posts to feeds, curate submissions, and manually moderate what they see.

• Convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes gave her first interview from prison to PEOPLE Magazine.
• Her life behind bars includes clerking for 31 cents an hour and teaching French, according to the magazine.
• Holmes was found guilty in 2022 of fraud in connection with her blood-testing startup.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has given her first interview from behind bars.

More than 20 months since reporting to prison, her days are far different than the Silicon Valley boardroom and investor meetings she once knew, a new interview with PEOPLE Magazine reveals.

Her new routine includes waking up a little after 5 a.m. and having fruit for breakfast before exercising for 40 minutes, according to the magazine.

"I truly did not think I would ever be convicted or found guilty," she told PEOPLE. "I refused to plead guilty to crimes I did not commit. Theranos failed. But failure is not fraud."

An inmate handbook for the federal minimum-security women's prison in Bryan, Texas, where she is incarcerated, says all medically cleared inmates are required to have a regular job for at least 90 days. Holmes has several jobs in the prison, including one as a reentry clerk, for which she makes 31 cents an hour helping prisoners expected to be released soon, PEOPLE reported. She's also a law clerk and teaches French classes, the magazine said.

Holmes was vegan for years before entering prison and says she mostly sticks to that today, although PEOPLE reports she started eating salmon and tuna after she became anemic her first year behind bars.

Holmes told the magazine she spends some time reading; she recently finished the "Harry Potter" series and Rick Rubin's "The Creative Act: A Way of Being," among other titles. She also tends to talk to her family twice a day by phone. Holmes shares a young son and daughter with her partner, Billy Evans.

In January 2022, Holmes was convicted on one count of conspiracy to commit fraud on investors and three counts of committing fraud on individual investors in connection with her blood-testing startup, Theranos.

She was acquitted of all four fraud and conspiracy counts related to patients, and the jury couldn't reach a unanimous verdict on the three remaining counts of fraud on individual investors.

Holmes had said Theranos would revolutionize healthcare by testing for hundreds of diseases using only a few drops of blood.

At its peak, Theranos was valued at $9 billion and Holmes at one point became the world's youngest self-made female billionaire, with a net worth of $4.5 billion. The company's public downfall began in 2015, when then-Wall Street Journal journalist John Carreyrou reported Theranos was using third-party blood-testing machines because its own couldn't provide accurate results.

Federal agencies began investigating Theranos, the SEC brought charges against Holmes and the company in 2018, and the company shut down that year.

In May 2023, Holmes reported to Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, about 100 miles from Houston, where she grew up, to begin serving her sentence.

Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months in prison, though her sentence has since been shortened. Her expected release date is now April 3, 2032, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons records.

Holmes has therapy for PTSD once a week and counsels other prisoners who are rape survivors, PEOPLE reported. She testified during her trial that she was raped while a college student at Stanford University and that Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, Theranos' former president and COO who once dated Holmes, emotionally and sexually abused her. Balwani has denied the allegations.

In his trial, separate from Holmes', Balwani was convicted on 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison and three years of probation.

In addition to their prison sentences, Holmes and Balwani were ordered to pay $452 million in restitution.

• Another wave of layoffs is sweeping across tech.
• Many are continuing to hire amid the cuts, sometimes even growing head count overall in the coming year.
• BI rounded up some recent examples, including those with plans to grow staffing in AI, infrastructure, or the cloud.

Just because you've read about a tech company doing layoffs doesn't mean the company isn't continuing to hire.

The first two months of the year have already seen many tech firms conduct or announce layoffs. While some may be looking to operate more efficiently, many have hundreds or thousands of open job listings.

Backfilling the roles of laid-off employees or hiring more staff in divisions deemed a higher priority could build back head count levels in the coming year.

In some cases, companies plan to grow their head count in the coming year, and one red-hot area many companies are bolstering hiring is AI, for example, and related divisions such as infrastructure and cloud computing.

Here's a look at some tech companies that are still adding staff to their payroll amid layoffs.

Workday

The workplace management platform is laying off 1,750 employees, or 8.5% of its workforce.

CEO Carl Eschenbach told staffers in a memo he published that the company would "continue to hire in key strategic areas and locations" throughout fiscal year 2026. Workday is "prioritizing innovation investments like AI and platform development, and rigorously evaluating the ROI of others across the board," he wrote.

Workday has 348 job openings on its website as of this writing.

Meta

Meta is cutting 5% of its workforce, targeting employees it says are low performers, with plans to backfill those roles later this year. The company is planning to hire "in the priority areas of infrastructure, monetization, Reality Labs, generative artificial intelligence (AI), as well as regulation and compliance," it said in its Q4 earnings last month.

Meta appears to be accelerating hiring for machine learning engineers amid its layoffs, according to an internal memo viewed by BI.

Meta has 1,750 job openings on its website as of this writing.

Stripe

Stripe has laid off 300 workers, primarily in product, engineering, and operations roles. The cuts represent roughly 3.5% of the payment platform's workforce.

However, the company's chief people officer, Rob McIntosh, said in a memo to staff that Stripe is "not slowing down hiring." Stripe plans to boost its head count to roughly 10,000 employees by the end of 2025, which would be a 17% increase year-over-year, he wrote.

Stripe has several hundred job openings on its website as of this writing.

Salesforce

Salesforce is reportedly laying off 1,000 people, who will be able to apply for other positions internally, Bloomberg reported this month. The company has not publicly commented on the matter and did not immediately respond to BI's request for comment.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in December that the company plans to hire 2,000 salespeople focused on selling its AI products.

Salesforce has 995 job openings on its website as of this writing.

Microsoft

Microsoft began performance-based layoffs at the end of January.

Separate from the performance-based layoffs, the tech giant also made cuts across organizations including security, experiences and devices, sales, and gaming, BI previously reported.

Microsoft has 2,128 job openings on its website as of this writing.

Other companies could hop on the layoffs train

Layoffs can result in a domino effect in the tech industry — look no further than Mark Zuckerberg's famous "year of efficiency" or the CEOs inspired by Elon Musk's deep cuts when taking over Twitter.

If that's also the case this time around, we could see other Big Tech companies carry out their own layoffs.

At Amazon, for one, CEO Andy Jassy said last year that he wanted to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of the first quarter of 2025.

Google recently offered voluntary exit packages to US staff in its Platforms and Devices unit. Anat Ashkenazi, the CFO of Google parent company Alphabet, said in October that the company would be looking for "additional opportunities" for cost cuts. Google simultaneously expects "some head count growth in 2025 in key investment areas such as AI and cloud."

And while Amazon and Google haven't laid out more explicit plans to ramp up hiring in AI, you can bet they're going to duke it out with their Big Tech peers in the heated AI talent wars.

Big Tech firms have also made no secret of their ambitious spending plans when it comes to AI. Recent earnings from Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google indicate their combined capital expenditures are set to exceed $320 billion this year, driven largely by AI investments.

• Google and Apple have updated the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America for US users.
• President Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating the change to "honor American greatness."
• Users will see their local name when it varies between countries; everyone else sees both names.

Apple Maps has followed Google Maps in updating the Gulf of Mexico's name for US-based users following an executive order issued by President Donald Trump last month.

As of Monday night, when users in the US search for "Gulf of Mexico" in Google Maps, they are presented with a result for "Gulf of America." As of Tuesday evening, the same change occurred in Apple Maps.

For people outside the US, the results populate as "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)."

The president signed an executive order on his first day in office to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and to change the name of the highest mountain peak in North America from Denali to Mount McKinley. As of press time, the name "Denali" had not yet been changed on Google Maps or Apple Maps.

The change in Google Maps was expected. Google said last month that it had "a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources."

The company said it would update Maps in the US after the Geographic Names Information System made the changes. The GNIS, a database of more than 2 million physical and cultural features throughout the US and its territories, standardizes geographic names for federal use.

Trump's executive order gave the secretary of the interior 30 days to implement the name changes and update the GNIS to reflect them.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama changed the name of the mountain peak from Mount McKinley to Denali in honor of local Native groups' names for the Alaskan mountain.

Trump's order said that the surrounding national park area would keep the name Denali National Park and Preserve and that the secretary of the interior "shall work with Alaska Native entities and state and local organizations to adopt names for landmarks to honor the history and culture of the Alaskan people."

The renaming at the federal level has been a complex undertaking for government agencies and offices.

Historically, the Board on Geographic Names and the US Geological Survey would act immediately to update the GNIS. The Department of State would update the Geographic Names Server, which defines names of geographic features outside the US. But it's up to each agency and office to update their own websites accordingly.

Outside the US, other countries may not recognize the name changes.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said last month that "for us and for the whole world, it is still the Gulf of Mexico."

Google previously said that when official names vary between countries, Maps users will see the official name used in their country, while the rest of the world will see both names. The company said this was consistent with long-standing policy.

Google and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• It's never pleasant, but it happens sometimes: You find yourself in conflict with someone at work.
• How do you best address it?
• Experts shared with BI their tips for tactfully handling disagreements with coworkers.

It's an uncomfortable situation: having a conflict at work.

How do you handle it?

There's not always an easy solution, but there are steps you can take to try to defuse difficult situations.

When emotions are running high, remember to "take a deep breath and pause for a moment," says Lisa Richey of The American Academy of Etiquette.

"So many of us are so quick to react," she told BI. "Take time to understand why the other person may be bringing up a particular issue. The only thing that we can control is the way we react to it in the moment. You have to be fully responsible for yourself."

It can also be a good idea to keep your discussions out of earshot or view of people not involved in the situation.

"Address it later, one-on-one with the person," Richey said. "Do not get into these heated conversations and battles within the conference room as a group."

Arden Clise of Clise Etiquette also emphasized having a "calm, respectful conversation."

Consider sticking with "I" statements, which express your perspective or feelings about something, versus "you" statements, which can carry an accusatory or combative intonation — and if you're at fault for something, apologize.

John Eliot, organizational psychology professor at Texas A&M University, writes in his forthcoming book "How to Get Along With Anyone" that many people fall into one of five personality styles regarding how they behave in conflicts.

"If you take a few minutes to really understand yourself, then you're equipped to know what types of office conflict you'll naturally be good at and what you'll struggle at, and that's half the battle," he said. "The other half of the battle is take some time to figure out the style of the people you're working with."

In a conflict, Eliot suggests considering the other person's conflict style and what it is they're looking for.

"We don't have to agree, we don't have to solve the problem, we don't even have to have the same opinions on things," he said. "But if I know one or two things they're looking for, I can brainstorm a way to give them one of those things so that we can diffuse emotion. Once the emotion is diffused, then you can get back to having a more rational conversation with one another."

Practicing active listening in a disagreement can help "bring people together even if we disagree," says Eliot.

"We all have a need to feel heard and feel understood," he said. "Make sure you're understanding what they're saying and then feed some of that back a little bit. That's an active way to let them know, 'This person really is listening to me.'"

If an argument is getting heated, try setting a calmer tone yourself, and the other person may follow, Eliot said.

Simply slowing down the pace of your discussion can also help defuse tensions.

"Just taking a second to slow down in the way you talk, that will slow down an interaction," says Eliot. "In basketball, we take a 30-second timeout with our kids, and it brings emotions down. If what you are going to say would normally take you two seconds, and you take 15 seconds instead of two, then you're infusing the spirit of a timeout into a conversation."

And sometimes, there's no satisfactory win-win or compromise to a conflict at work. In those cases, sometimes you just have to pick your battles. Because at the end of the day, they'll still be your coworkers tomorrow.

So if being the bigger person means you have to lose the battle (but hopefully win the war of working together harmoniously longterm), "just remember that we are working together," says Clise.

"We need to maintain good relationships with the people we are working with."

• Elon Musk is calling himself "White House Tech Support" in his bio on X, formerly Twitter.
• Through DOGE, he has access to systems containing sensitive information on many Americans.
• It's not the first time Musk has experimented with his bio on X, which he owns.

What does Elon Musk's work at DOGE entail? If we're to believe his new bio on X, he's "White House Tech Support."

Musk recently changed his bio on the platform formerly known as Twitter — which he owns — to reflect his position at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which he leads.

The change comes amid concern from lawmakers and watchdog organizations about Musk's access through DOGE to systems containing sensitive information on millions of Americans.

The Treasury Department on Wednesday night agreed not to directly share the financial data of millions of Americans with DOGE, and said Musk's DOGE team has "read-only" access to the Treasury's federal payment system. Democratic lawmakers have voiced concerns that access could allow DOGE to restrict the disbursement of federal funds, such as tax refunds and Social Security and Medicare benefits.

On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order establishing DOGE with the purpose of "modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity." Musk, who was a vocal supporter of Trump's presidential campaign and contributed more than $200 million toward getting Trump and other Republican candidates elected, leads DOGE.

Its responsibilities include carrying out a "Software Modernization Initiative to improve the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network infrastructure, and information technology (IT) systems," according to the executive order.

The order further states that DOGE should have "full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems." It adds that DOGE "shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards."

Musk has had fun experimenting with different nicknames on X in the past. He's nicknamed himself "Technoking" after calling himself "Technoking of Tesla" in a regulatory filing.

Another time, he adopted the name "Mr. Tweet" after a lawyer accidentally called him that in court during a case brought by Tesla shareholders alleging he committed securities fraud with his 2018 tweet saying he had "funding secured" to take the carmaker private.

Around the time he purchased Twitter in 2022, he changed his bio to "Chief Twit."

• The Hunt family is one of the wealthiest families in America, thanks to early investments in oil.
• They're widely known as the owners of the Kansas City Chiefs.
• Lamar Hunt founded the team in 1959; his son, Clark Hunt, is now its chairman and CEO.

The Kansas City Chiefs are used to making headlines. From their star quarterback Patrick Mahomes and controversial kicker Harrison Butker to their connections to Taylor Swift and, of course, their upcoming fifth Super Bowl appearance in the last seven seasons, it's hard to imagine a time when people weren't talking about the Chiefs.

That's good news for the Hunt family, who've owned the team since the beginning.

The Chiefs were founded by Lamar Hunt Sr. in 1959 as the Dallas Texans, but the team has been in Kansas City since 1963. Now, team ownership is divided between his children, Clark Hunt, Sharron Hunt Munson, Daniel Hunt, and Lamar Hunt Jr. with principal decision making falling to Clark, who's been the team's CEO since 2010.

Ahead of Sunday's big game, Clark Hunt told "The Rich Eisen Show" that his father, who died in 2006, "would be absolutely thrilled" about the prospect of a Chiefs Super Bowl three-peat, adding, "He would be beyond words."

But the Hunt family's dynasty extends much further than football. Their real story actually begins with American oil tycoon H.L. Hunt.

Here's everything you need to know about the Clark family, who Forbes estimated in 2024 were worth $24.8 billion.

Haroldson Lafayette Hunt made his fortune in the oil industry.

In 1964, The New York Times reported that almost 30 years after H.L. Hunt founded the Hunt Oil Company, his family had an estimated fortune of $700 million (around $7 billion in today's money).

At the time of the report, the company was producing oil and natural gas in 12 states, including Texas, Louisiana, and North Dakota.

With his great success in the oil business, H.L. Hunt reportedly invested profits in other industries, such as publishing, cosmetics, and even pecan farming.

Hunt funded Facts Forum News, his foundation for producing conservative, anti-Communist radio and television programs, from 1951 to 1963, per the University of Houston.

Hunt died in 1974 with an estimated net worth between $2 billion and $3 billion.

His fortune was put into trusts for each of his 15 children, whom he had with three different women.

One of his sons, Ray Lee Hunt, is the wealthiest of all 15 siblings.

Forbes reported that Ray Lee Hunt has a net worth of $6.9 billion, as of February 2025. He is chairman emeritus of Hunt Consolidated, Inc., which includes Hunt Oil Company, Hunt Energy, and Hunt Realty Investments.

Ray's sister, Caroline Rose Hunt, founded Rosewood Hotels & Resorts in 1979 after her father left her The Rosewood Corporation.

Rosewood Hotels & Resorts was sold to New World Hospitality (now known as Rosewood Hotel Group) in 2011 for $229.5 million, per AP News and PR Newswire.

Caroline Rose Hunt died in 2018 at age 95.

Their brother, William Herbert Hunt, led their oil and gas company Petro-Hunt.

Before his death in April 2024, William Herbert Hunt served as an advisor to management at Petro-Hunt. Per the company website, his family continues to own and operate Petro-Hunt, which, in addition to its focus on oil and gas, also purchases minerals and royalties, invests in real estate, and also partially owns an oil refinery.

Another brother, Lamar Hunt, cofounded the American Football League.

Lamar Hunt founded the American Football League (AFL) in 1959 to rival the National Football League (NFL) after being refused access to buying a franchise. Since the AFL and NFL officially merged in 1970, the Lamar Hunt Trophy has been awarded to the winner of the AFC Championship.

Lamar also founded the Kansas City Chiefs (originally known as the Dallas Texans), which the family still owns today, and is credited with coining the term "Super Bowl."

Lamar's four children and his wife, Norma Hunt, inherited the Kansas City Chiefs after he died in 2006.

Norma Hunt died in 2023 at the age of 85, leaving siblings Clark Hunt, Sharron Hunt Munson, Lamar Hunt Jr., and Daniel Hunt, as co-owners of the team.

Clark Hunt, 59, is the chairman and CEO of the Chiefs organization.

Hunt took over as CEO in 2010 and hired Andy Reid as head coach in 2013. Since then, the Chiefs have created a winning dynasty with three Super Bowl wins in five seasons.

In an interview with "The Rich Eisen Show," Hunt said a Super Bowl three-peat "would really be a credit to Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes, his teammates for the work they put in, not only over the last three years, but really the entire time they've been with our organization."

In addition to the Chiefs, the Lamar Hunt family owns the MLS team FC Dallas and a minority stake in the Chicago Bulls.

In addition to being chairman and CEO of the Chiefs, Clark Hunt is also chairman and CEO of FC Dallas, while his brother, Daniel Hunt, is the club's president.

The family's involvement with the team was actually decades in the making, as Lamar Hunt founded the Dallas Tornado and the North American Soccer League in 1967 before becoming a charter investor in Major League Soccer (MLS) in 1996.

In 1999, Lamar Hunt funded the first stadium dedicated solely to soccer in the US, Columbus Crew Stadium. That same year, he was awarded the National Soccer Hall of Fame Medal of Honor, and the US Open Cup Tournament was renamed for him.

The family took over the MLS club Dallas Burn in 2003, which was relaunched as FC Dallas two years later.

The Lamar Hunt family also has a large real-estate portfolio built under Hunt Midwest, based in Kansas City.

According to the company's website, Hunt Midwest is a "privately held real estate development company" with "more than $2.5 billion of developed projects" including senior living communities and residential, multifamily, and industry-focused locations like SubTropolis.

Clark Hunt is married to Tavia Shackles Hunt.

The couple married in 1993 and have three children together: Gracie, Ava, and Knobel.

Shackles Hunt is from Kansas City, Missouri, and was involved in beauty pageants, winning Miss Missouri Teen USA, Miss Kansas USA, and finishing second runner-up at the Miss USA pageant, People reported.

She has also worked as director of the Chiefs Women's Organization.

"I love being a leader of it and organizing events to familiarize our extended football family with Kansas City and plug them into serving the community," she told Her Life Magazine in 2018.

"It bonds us together on the field and off the field to gather to serve the community and enjoy fellowship together," she added.

Their daughter, Gracie Hunt, was crowned Miss Kansas USA in 2021 and works in public relations for the Chiefs.

Gracie Hunt, 25, grew up playing soccer but was forced to stop after suffering four concussions. She then pivoted to beauty pageants, winning Miss Texas Teen International in 2016, Miss Texas International in 2018, and Miss Kansas in 2021.

Now, Hunt works in public relations for the Chiefs while also taking on projects of her own, including a capsule collection with Wear by Erin Andrews, which she's shared online with her 660,000 Instagram followers.

Hunt told People in January, "Coming out with a capsule collection with Erin was a way for me to create something that is my own."

She is also a philanthropist, having founded Breaking Barriers Through Sports in 2016. According to her website, the organization "aims to give people a positive identity and confidence through athletics and living a healthy lifestyle."

She has been in a confirmed relationship with licensed real-estate broker and former college football player Cody Keith since September 2024.

 

Tavia and Gracie Hunt shared their views on family values following Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker's controversial commencement speech in May 2024.

In May 2024, Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker delivered a commencement speech at Benedictine College, a small Catholic school in Atchison, Kansas.

In his address, Butker told women in the audience they'd been told "the most diabolical lies" about the value in pursuing a career. He also told men to be "unapologetic" in their masculinity and fight "the cultural emasculation of men."

His words drew backlash, including from the sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, nuns affiliated with the college. They wrote in a statement on their website that his words "seem to have fostered division."

However, both Tavia and Gracie appeared to support Butker in respective social media posts and TV appearances.

Nearly a week after Butker's address, Tavia Hunt shared photos of her and her daughters on Instagram as well as a diagram documenting the pros and cons of stay-at-home parenting and a screenshot of an article on the happiness of married couples. In the lengthy caption, Shackles Hunt wrote that she's always encouraged her daughters to be educated and "chase their dreams," but noted that she also wants them to know that finding a spouse and raising a family "is one of the greatest blessings this world has to offer."

"Affirming motherhood and praising your wife, as well as highlighting the sacrifice and dedication it takes to be a mother, is not bigoted," she added. "Someone disagreeing with you doesn't make them hateful; it simply means they have a different opinion."

Given the post's themes of motherhood and faith, fans were quick to connect Shackles Hunt's words to those of Harrison Butker, who, in his commencement address, spoke about his wife, Isabelle, and how she embraced "one of the most important titles of all: homemaker."

Meanwhile, Gracie Hunt was asked about Butker's speech on a May 2024 episode of "Fox & Friends."

"I really respect Harrison and his Christian faith and what he's accomplished on and off the field," she said. Hunt also praised her mother's ability to stay home with her and her siblings while they were growing up, but added that "there are many women out there who can't make that decision."

Today, the Hunt family has a combined net worth of $24.8 billion.

Per Forbes, the Hunts are the 12th richest family in the US behind other familial dynasties like the Walton family, Mars family, and Cathy family.

• Bill Gates confirmed he's dating philanthropist Paula Hurd following his divorce from Melinda French Gates in 2021.
• Hurd, the widow of late Oracle CEO Mark Hurd, has worked in sales and service leadership roles in her career.
• The Microsoft cofounder also mentioned Paula Hurd in the acknowledgments section of his new book, "Source Code."

Bill Gates has confirmed he's seeing someone after his divorce four years ago.

The Microsoft cofounder, who was previously married to Melinda French Gates for 27 years until 2021, said on "The Today Show" on Tuesday that he's "lucky to have a serious girlfriend named Paula."

"We're having fun, going to the Olympics and lots of great things," he added.

Gates' girlfriend, Paula Hurd, was formerly married to the late Mark Hurd, whose career included tenures as the CEO of Oracle and Hewlett-Packard. They share two children and were married for nearly 30 years until Mark's death in 2019.

Hurd got her bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Texas at Austin in 1984. During her career, she held various sales and services leadership roles at NCR Corporation and, in her final position at the company, was its vice president of services, heading up a team managing global strategic partnerships, according to her bio from Baylor University.

Hurd and her late husband, a Baylor alum, made several notable donations to the university, including leading the funding of its new welcome center, which was named the Mark and Paula Hurd Welcome Center.

"Our family is absolutely thrilled with the Hurd Welcome Center," Paula Hurd said in a 2023 ribbon-cutting ceremony. "When we made this gift, Mark had a vision for how a welcome experience could transform this corner of campus, and the outcome has by far exceeded our expectations and dreams. I know he would be proud of not only what has been built but the way in which others in the Baylor Family rallied around the Give Light Campaign to generate more than $1.39 billion in gifts to support the University he loved."

Hurd, who is a member of Baylor's Board of Regents, is also chairperson of the Universal Tennis Foundation, for which she sponsors annual awards for college players transitioning to professional tennis.

Hurd and Gates share a love of tennis. Gates has played with tennis pros, including Rafael Nadal and Andre Agassi, in charity games and previously told Business Insider that his pandemic routine included socially distanced tennis.

Gates and Hurd were publicly spotted together as early as 2022, when they attended the Laver Cup tennis tournament together. They also watched a tennis match at the Australian Open in January 2023. Also that year, Gates accompanied Hurd to a ceremony at Baylor officially opening the university's new welcome center.

Gates and Hurd made their red carpet debut in April at the 2024 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony. As Gates mentioned in his "Today Show" interview, they attended the 2024 Paris Olympics together as well. Representatives for Gates and Hurd did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Gates also included Hurd in the acknowledgments of his new memoir, "Source Code," which came out this month.

"Early readers of the manuscript included Paula Hurd, Marc St. John, and Sheila Gulati. The close read from dear and trusted friends provided much-needed thoughtful and insightful feedback at critical stages in the writing," he wrote.

• Wall Street may have been caught off guard by DeepSeek's AI launch, but Meta's CTO says he wasn't.
• Andrew Bosworth said he wrote an email anticipating such a development six months ago.
• He described DeepSeek as "both a big deal and also not as big as it's made out to be."

The whole DeepSeek kerfuffle that rattled Silicon Valley? Meta's chief technology officer says he called such an AI development about six months ago.

Asked by one of his Instagram followers on Monday about the buzzy Chinese AI lab's latest launch, Andrew Bosworth said it was "a funny one to watch unfold."

"I actually had an email of me predicting it, that it would come from somewhere, didn't know it'd be DeepSeek, like six months ago," Bosworth said in an Instagram story. "So I think for those of us in the space, it was not as surprising as those out of it."

DeepSeek recently released its flagship open-source AI model, R1, which rivals OpenAI's o1 model but is said to have cost much less to develop.

"We were tracking DeepSeek when it launched like a month before it then became this major news item," Bosworth said. "I think it is both a big deal and also not as big as it's made out to be."

Meta has also taken the open-source approach to its Llama AI models — it allows qualifying researchers to access its individual model weights, the numerical parameters an AI model learns during training.

DeepSeek's launch is "a big deal because it's a great open-source innovation," Bosworth said, adding: "They've done some really truly great and novel work in memory architectures for model building. They've certainly advanced the state of the art for reasoning models. They've probably done a lot of distilling against existing models."

Bosworth said DeepSeek news was "a great thing, but it's not a world-changing thing."

Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

On the company's recent earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said DeepSeek had done "a number of novel things" that Meta was "still digesting."

"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.

While DeepSeek's cost efficiencies have raised questions on Wall Street about Big Tech's massive investments in AI infrastructure and top-of-the-line Nvidia chips, Zuckerberg said Meta most likely wouldn't change how it's investing in AI as a result. The Meta CEO said he anticipated Meta would spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure in the long term.

"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.

Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, recently said on Threads that DeepSeek's launch was a sign that "open source models are surpassing proprietary ones."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, when asked about DeepSeek and the open-source practice of releasing AI model weights and publishing research, said he was considering making some changes.

"Yes, we are discussing," Altman said. "I personally think we have been on the wrong side of history here and need to figure out a different open-source strategy; not everyone at OpenAI shares this view, and it's also not our current highest priority."

Do you work at Meta? Reach out to the reporter from a nonwork email and device at [email protected].

• Mark Zuckerberg has largely said goodbye to his signature hoodies, but one bidder can say hello to them.
• A hoodie worn by the Meta CEO has hit the auction block, with a handwritten note from him.
• Zuckerberg wore it several times in 2010, including in one sweaty interview where he was pressed on privacy concerns.

Mark Zuckerberg has shed his iconic hoodies and flip-flops for trendier clothes today. But as the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

And so it is that a relic from Zuckerberg's early Facebook days has hit the auction block — and it's none other than one of his famous hoodies.

Julien's Auctions on Monday launched an auction called "Spotlight: History and Technology" that features a black hoodie worn by Zuckerberg and a note handwritten by the Meta CEO on Facebook stationery.

The note reads, "One of my favorite old-school Facebook hoodies. I wore this all the time in the early days. It even has our original mission statement on the inside lining. Enjoy!"

The logo reads "Making the world open and connected" and the inside lining separately has three arrows running through a circle that read "Graph," "Platform," and "Stream" with the year 2010 at the center.

Zuckerberg wore the hoodie multiple times in 2010, the item listing says, the same year that the biographical film "The Social Network" came out and that Zuckerberg was named TIME's Person of the Year.

Notably, it appears to be the same style of hoodie Zuckerberg wore in a 2010 interview where he appeared sweaty and nervous when grilled about privacy issues. Asked by tech journalist Kara Swisher, who was interviewing him on stage, if he wanted to take off his hoodie, Zuckerberg did — leading her to notice its lining and ask him about the "weird symbol."

It's also the same hoodie that Zuckerberg gave to a fan last February, the auction house confirmed to BI.

The fan, Matt Thompson, told BI he saw Zuckerberg had posted the hoodie on Facebook Marketplace at the time in honor of Facebook's 20th anniversary; people were able to bid for free, which Thompson did. He "didn't give it a second thought" until months later, though, when Meta's communications team reached out to say he'd won.

He recalled seeing the package on his doorstep: "I just looked at it and go, 'No freaking way. It's real.'"

Thompson said it was "an exciting situation to be in to have this small town get a piece of memorabilia like that from someone who's so high up in that tech world."

Whether or not it's the exact hoodie Zuckerberg wore in his infamous sweaty interview remains unclear, though Thompson said it smelled "just like clean laundry."

"There's no sweat stains, thank God," he added.

Thompson is the IT director at Huckabay ISD, a small school district outside of Stephenville, Texas, where he also teaches classes and sponsors the e-sports team. He told BI he's auctioning the hoodie to raise funds for extracurriculars like that program.

"These extracurricular activities boost our attendance," he said. "They boost these students working to better their lives and better their grades, so the more money we can pour into these programs to help them succeed, the better."

The hoodie is expected to fetch $1,000 to $2,000, according to the item listing, and already had one bid for $1,000 as of Monday afternoon. The auction closes on February 27th at 12 p.m. PT.

"It is a really cool thing that happened, but the kids need these extracurricular activities to keep going more than they need that hoodie hanging up on the wall," Thompson said.

The hoodie isn't the only sartorial symbol of Zuckerberg's to go to auction recently. He donated one of his newfound fashion favorites, a gold-plated chain, to a charity auction organized by his sister last year, and the winning bid was a whopping $40,500.

Besides Zuckerberg's hoodie, Julien's Auctions is also listing a striped bow tie that late Apple founder Steve Jobs wore in photo shoots for the debut of the Macintosh computer in 1984. There's also memorabilia from the Titanic, as well as clothes, photos, and unpublished speeches from former US Presidents John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

• Many companies are requiring workers to return to the office.
• Employees who've been more isolated during remote work might need time to acclimate to the office again.
• Etiquette experts shared tips with BI to help smooth the transition back to in-person work.

You've been called back to the office and someone walks over who you've only ever talked with on Slack or Zoom.

What do you do?

Or maybe you recently traded the privacy of your living room office for a hot desk in an open-floor plan and your friend FaceTimes you.

Should you answer at your desk?

It's etiquette questions like these that workers who became used to remote work might need to brush up on as more companies mandate a return to the office. And for some Gen Zers who graduated during the pandemic, remote work may be all they have ever known in their careers.

While there may not be a one-size-fits-all approach to how to behave at the office, BI talked to etiquette experts to get their advice on smoothing the transition back.

Arden Clise of Clise Etiquette says the biggest complaint she's heard from clients is that workers need to brush up on their social skills and remember "the niceties that we can get into a habit of doing when we're spending more time with people, but have gotten forgotten when we're isolated in our homes."

So whether you're re-entering the corporate office world after a few years of being remote or starting your first in-person job, here's a refresher on post-pandemic office etiquette.

Business attire: A little self awareness goes a long way

Many white-collar workers are dressing more casually when they return to the office today compared to pre-pandemic.

"As I'm working with HR and companies, I see every one of them dusting off an old dress code policy," said Lisa Richey of The American Academy of Etiquette.

Daniel Post Senning of The Emily Post Institute said it can be helpful to "think about what the floor of your formality is for a professional environment or interaction."

"That's going to be different for different people in different industries, different jobs, different work cultures," he said. "But making an effort to think about how you want to present professionally and setting some baseline standards for yourself, and then adhering to them, is a really good place to start."

Take note of what your peers are wearing and consult your official dress code policy if your organization has one. In lieu of company guidance, you can ask what might be appropriate if you don't know, the experts advised.

Besides your clothing, grooming and hygiene are also integral to how you present yourself at work.

"How you choose to dress and present isn't just about personal expression, it's also about showing respect for the people and environments that you're operating in," said Senning.

Don't get too personal when meeting a colleague in person

The return to office means you might see a coworker in person for the first time after knowing them as a virtual head-and-shoulders for the past few years — or you might see a colleague again for the first time in a while.

It's perfectly appropriate to shake hands in either case, but be careful not to make insensitive comments about how someone might look different than you expected, or how a coworker's appearance might have changed since you last saw them in person, the experts said.

Saying a simple hello and goodbye when you come and go are easy "'gimme' social interactions," as Senning calls them.

"They cost you nothing, and done well, and repeatedly, they really forge important social bonds," he said. "They build a sense of connection and trust that is going to carry you through tense meetings, critical feedback, miscommunications, things like that later on."

Shared spaces are exactly that

The pandemic made hot-desking, where multiple workers share the same desk at different times, more common.

If you're hot-desking, make sure you clean up before you leave and remove any of your personal items from the desk for the next person.

As for conference rooms, check in with your company's reservation system to make sure you're not using a room someone else has reserved.

"Conflict can arise around a shared resource if people aren't taking a certain level of care," said Senning.

Being on time is particularly important for in-person meetings as opposed to virtual ones because of the extra effort your colleagues made to get to the office, he added.

And, unlike in virtual meetings, where you might secretly give your attention to other browser windows or IRL happenings at the same time, you should put your phone away in an in-person meeting and give your fellow attendees your undivided attention. (If you don't, they'll certainly notice.)

The age-old wisdom on avoiding fish at the office stands, says Clise. Remember to clean out anything you stored in the communal fridge periodically. And if you're taking the last cup of coffee, make a new pot of it.

Take lunch in the breakroom or cafeteria versus at your desk to "have more opportunities to chat with others," Clise suggested.

Depending on your office setup, you should also be careful to approach phone calls a certain way.

"It's been true for years that one of the biggest complaints about coworkers' behavior in open office environments is people talking too loudly on phones," said Senning.

When returning to the office, step away from your desk to take personal calls. Don't use speakerphone in a cubicle or open-plan office; you can if you have your own office, but close the door.

"Being able to project your voice at home versus working at an open space in an office is very different," said Clise.

At social gatherings, you're still at work

Happy hours, learning lunches, and other team outings may pick up as employees work from the office more frequently.

"You're still accountable at business social events," said Senning. "These are still your colleagues and your coworkers, and you want to be aware that those relationships will still exist the next day in those work and professional environments."

Don't feel pressured to drink or to need to explain your reason for teetotaling. For those who are drinking, it can be a good idea to stick with the one-drink rule.

"Enjoy the conversation, interact with your coworkers, and know when it's time to go home," said Richey.

'Every interaction counts'

Some etiquette guidance far predates the pandemic and may hold up just as long after: Avoid sensitive topics like religion or overly personal matters, as well as swearing.

It's also in your best interest to steer clear of gossip, Clise says.

"Typically when someone gossips with us, they gossip about us," she said. "That can create an environment where you don't feel safe because you're not sure who you can trust and people are talking about other people beyond their backs."

A good rule of thumb is to remember that "every interaction counts, whether it's a virtual meeting, an email, or an in-person interaction," said Richey.

For Clise, it's about "being really self-aware and realizing that work is not just us, it's a team."

"We need to be sure we're being helpful and encouraging others to share their thoughts, to feel that they belong, that they're included," she said. "We're not coming in thinking, 'Oh, it's just me and I'm just doing my job.' It's all a team effort."

And while it's true many employees "could use a little polishing" on their soft skills coming out of a long period of remote work and social isolation, says Senning, "it's really comforting to know that while these skills can deteriorate, they also come back."

• Meta kicked off 2025 with big changes following a big year for the company.
• In the first weeks of January, it overhauled its content moderation system, nixed DEI programs, and announced layoffs.
• The "rather frenzied start" to the new year sets up an apparent "year of intensity," one analyst told BI.

Coming off of a banner year in 2024, Meta is hitting the ground running in 2025.

With a new president in the White House and the AI arms race in full swing amid DeepSeek mania, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has kept busy.

Referring to Meta's January as "a rather frenzied start," Forrester VP and research director Mike Proulx said that the company's past "year of efficiency" was being "trumped in 2025 with an apparent year of 'intensity.'"

The company made several big announcements in the first week of the new year ahead of Trump's inauguration, and in audio from Meta's all-hands meeting this week obtained by Business Insider, Zuckerberg told employees to "buckle up."

"Everyone always says that every year is a big year, right?" Zuckerberg said.

"When I look at the kind of long-term trajectory for the stuff that we're doing this year, I think by the end of this year we're going to have a much clearer sense of the trajectory of a lot of the long-term things that we're doing, whether that's AI or glasses, or a number of areas around the future of social media, a number of key partnerships that we're working on," the Meta CEO said.

"This year feels a little more like a sprint to me," he added.

New year, new policies that will impact your News Feed

If 2025 represents a sprint for Meta, the first leg of the race saw some of its biggest changes in years.

The most impactful for Meta's billions of users was announced on January 7, when Zuckerberg messaged that Meta's content moderation policy would be overhauled.

In a controversial decision, Meta said that it would sunset its third-party fact-checking in favor of community notes, similar to that of Elon Musk's X, formerly known as Twitter.

Zuckerberg said Wednesday he thinks a community notes model "is just going to be more effective."

The company also loosened its hate speech policies and announced that it would return to promoting political discussions in its apps.

The policy changes may not move the needle much on the ad dollars spent on Meta's platforms as its size alone makes it a "must-have" for advertisers, Truist Securities analyst Youssef Squali told BI.

"Large advertisers will tell you that. Small advertisers will tell you that," the analyst said. "So there's scarcity value for advertisers and their ability to access some of these platforms that actually work for them."

Meta CFO Susan Li said in Wednesday's earnings call that the company hasn't observed a noticeable difference in ad spending since the announcement a few weeks ago. When reached for comment, Meta referred BI to Zuckerberg's video and its blog post on the content moderation changes.

Collectively, Meta's policy overhaul means big changes are coming to your Instagram, Threads, and Facebook news feeds.

Meta maneuvers closer to Trump

The content moderation policy overhaul is one of a slew of recent changes at Meta widely viewed as a way to appease President Trump, who frequently criticized and even threatened the company and its chief executive in the past.

Trump told reporters the content moderation changes were "probably" in response to threats he's made to Meta.

Following a dinner with the president at Mar-a-Lago and Meta's $1 million donation to his inauguration fund, Zuckerberg was one of a handful of tech execs seated close to Trump during his swearing-in ceremony on January 20.

"Having Trump coming back into office — and we all know Trump's position with regards to Meta and Zuck, in particular — I feel there was a lot of pressure for him to revisit his stance," Truist Securities' Squali told BI of the content moderation changes.

Meta's chief marketing officer, Alex Schultz, previously told BI that Trump's election win, coupled with shifting "vibes in America," were factors in the content moderation overhaul.

Other big changes include the company rolling back its programs for DEI. Diversity programs have been a frequent target for Trump and other conservative activist groups.

In Wednesday's earnings call, Zuckerberg said 2025 would be "a big year for redefining our relationship with governments." He added that he's "optimistic" about the Trump administration, saying it "prioritizes American technology winning" and "will defend our values and interests abroad."

Meta also made some personnel changes that could help it better navigate the next four years.

Ahead of the administration change, Meta named Joel Kaplan its new chief global affairs officer. Kaplan, a former adviser to George W. Bush and a longtime Republican lobbyist for Meta, replaced Nick Clegg, former leader of the UK's Liberal Democrats, in the position.

Meta also added several new names to its board of directors, specifically tech investor Charlie Songhurst, Exor CEO John Elkann, and UFC chief Dana White. Zuckerberg, an MMA hobbyist, has been photographed with White, a longtime friend of Trump, multiple times in recent years.

And in a recent move to end a legal battle involving Trump, Meta also agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit the president brought against it and Zuckerberg after Facebook suspended his account in 2021 following the January 6 Capitol riots.

Plans for layoffs and doubling down on AI

Meta's work to reshape its workforce, which began in late 2022, shows no signs of slowing down as it races to keep up with AI pioneer OpenAI and newcomers like Chinese AI startup DeepSeek.

In a memo obtained earlier this month by BI, Meta announced layoffs coming in February for 5% of its workforce, targeting its "lowest performers."

However, discussing its quarterly earnings on Wednesday, Meta said it plans to hire in "the priority areas of infrastructure, monetization, Reality Labs, generative artificial intelligence (AI), as well as regulation and compliance."

The company expects to spend $60 to $65 billion in capital expenditures this year as it barrels full-steam ahead on AI, a significant increase from $39.23 billion in 2024, which already raised eyebrows among investors and analysts.

Zuckerberg said Wednesday he thinks 2025 will be the year an AI assistant hits 1 billion users, and naturally he wants that of Meta AI. He also teased upcoming news about its Llama 4 AI model and hinted at getting back to "some OG Facebook" this year.

Responding to Wall Street analysts' questions about DeepSeek, Zuckerberg said it was important for a US firm to set the standard on open-source AI "for our own national advantage."

"I think that, if anything, some of the recent news has only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing for us to be focused on," Zuckerberg said.

In audio from Meta's all-hands meeting on Thursday, Meta CFO Susan Li said the company is "excited for the roadmap" this year and for AI initiatives "driving further momentum" that would "fuel 2025 growth."

Do you work at Meta? Contact the reporters from a non-work email and device at [email protected] and [email protected].

• President Trump signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
• The federal government and military are already embracing the order, and Google Maps indicated it would also reflect the change.
• However, changing maps and charts isn't a simple process.

President Donald Trump's executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America is already resulting in changes across the federal government and military. Google Maps has indicated it would follow suit.

However, the federal process isn't as simple as crossing out the old name and writing in a new one. It's a complicated switch across the bureaucracy, involving a top-down effort to update official documents, communications, maps, and charts.

On his first day back in office as president, Trump issued an executive order on "restoring names that honor American greatness," directing the Secretary of the Interior to implement a change to the area of the US continental shelf "extending to Mexico and Cuba" and remove all mentions of the Gulf of Mexico across "all federal references."

The executive order also included the reversal of former President Barack Obama's naming of Denali, North America's highest mountain peak located in Alaska, to Mount McKinley in honor of former President William McKinley.

The name "Gulf of America" has long been debated and satirized. However, Trump's executive order is the first time the US has directly acted to change it.

While many Republicans, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green have embraced and lauded the move, it's also been met with backlash and confusion from some internationally. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said last week that "for us and for the whole world, it is still the Gulf of Mexico." Reporting from The Telegraph indicated that the United Kingdom won't recognize the name change.

Earlier this month, Mexico's Sheinbaum joked that because a world map from 1607 — 169 years before the US was founded — labeled North America as Mexican America, perhaps the continent should be named as such.

Across the federal government and military, the change to "Gulf of America" has been quickly implemented. Sources familiar with the matter told Business Insider that internal documentation and public-facing communications are already updated or in the process of being updated, with map and chart changes to come.

On Friday, the Department of the Interior announced efforts were underway to make the changes.

Inside the Interior Department, the Board on Geographic Names has purview over names for federal use, but that's only binding to federal departments and agencies.

In the past, the board and the US Geological Survey would act immediately to update the Geographical Names Information System, a database of more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the US and its territories. The Department of State would update the Geographic Names Server, which defines geographic feature names outside of the US. But it's up to each agency and office to update their websites and information accordingly.

A US Navy spokesperson said once the internal systems the Navy gets its information from are updated, its maps and charts will be updated.

Google said on Monday that Google Maps would reflect the ordered name changes to the Gulf of America and Mount McKinley once the Geographic Names Information System is updated, in accordance with "a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources."

It also said that Google Maps users see the official local name in their region when nomenclature varies between countries, and the rest of the world sees both names.

The changing of some other maps and charts may involve a longer process. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, is engaging with the Board on Geographic Names for further guidance on the implementation, Scott Smullen, the deputy director of NOAA Communications, said.

The process from there, specifically how quickly maps will be updated across the federal government and military, appears fairly complex, requiring updating every reference.

According to Trump's executive order, the Secretary of the Interior has 30 days to implement the name change and ensure "all federal references to the Gulf of America, including on agency maps, contracts, and other documents and communications shall reflect its renaming."

The US Coast Guard's District 8, which oversees the Gulf of Mexico area, said it was "acting in compliance" with Trump's executive order. Just a day after Trump's executive order, the Coast Guard began using the term when announcing deployed assets to the maritime border between Texas and Mexico.

At this time, Apple Maps hasn't renamed the body of water. The Associated Press said last week that it would still use the name Gulf of Mexico while also acknowledging the Gulf of America in its style guide. It said that "as a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences."

BI's style is consistent, using the name "Gulf of Mexico."

As Trump's executive order is only effective domestically, other nations and international organizations could continue to refer to the region as the Gulf of Mexico, and similar variations exist elsewhere in the world. The Persian Gulf located south of Iran, for example, has long been the site of controversy, with some nearby Arab countries like Saudi Arabia calling it the Arabian Gulf.

• If you follow AI news, you've probably heard of DeepSeek.
• The Chinese AI startup made a big splash with its flagship model R1, which it says rivals OpenAI's o1 at a fraction of the cost.
• Who's leading the AI company that has Silicon Valley on edge? Here's a look at founder Liang Wenfeng.

While ChatGPT's launch made OpenAI CEO Sam Altman a household name in the AI community, DeepSeek's founder is still much lesser-known stateside.

The Chinese AI startup has taken the AI community by storm with the buzzy launch of its open-source AI model R1, which DeepSeek says rivals OpenAI's o1 model in performance "across math, code, and reasoning tasks," while using a fraction of the computing power.

So who's leading the company that sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley and the AI industry at large?

Here's a quick look at DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng's background and career rise.

Upbringing and education

Wenfeng grew up in the 1980s in "a fifth-tier city" in Guangdong, China, he said in a translated July 2024 interview that was published this month. His father was a primary school teacher.

He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Zhejiang University, one of China's oldest and best-ranked universities.

Chinese e-commerce founder and former Pinduoduo CEO Colin Huang also studied at the school.

His career began in finance

In 2015, Wenfeng and two of his classmates from Zhejiang University created a quantitative hedge fund, High-Flyer, whose website says it "relies on mathematics and AI for quantitative investment."

High-Flyer had at least $10 billion in assets under management by 2019, according to its site.

In 2021, Wenfeng began scooping up thousands of GPUs from Nvidia while running High-Flyer, Financial Times reported, with one of his business partners describing him to the publication as a "very nerdy guy with a terrible hairstyle talking about building a 10,000-chip cluster to train his own models."

Wenfeng launched DeepSeek in May 2023 as an offshoot of the High-Flyer, which funds the AI lab.

The startup made waves with its V3 model late last year.

In a paper released in late December, DeepSeek researchers estimated they built and trained the model using 2,000 Nvidia H800 chips at a cost of under $6 million, significantly less than many of its AI competitors.

X owner Elon Musk, for example, has said his platform's AI chatbot Grok 3 is training on 100,000 of Nvidia's H100 GPUs. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last January that the company would purchase 350,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs by the end of 2024.

DeepSeek then stunned Silicon Valley again with the launch of its R1 model on January 20, 2025.

Wenfeng' approach to running DeepSeek

Wenfeng said in the 2024 interview that his main focus for DeepSeek is researching large models and achieving artificial general intelligence.

"Our principle is neither to sell at a loss nor to seek excessive profits. The current pricing allows for a modest profit margin above our costs," he said in the translated interview.

He's also said the company "won't go closed-source," adding, "We believe that establishing a robust technology ecosystem matters more."

Wenfeng says China's AI industry has been playing catch-up with the US, and he wants DeepSeek to change that.

"We believe that China's AI cannot remain a follower forever. Often, we say there's a one- or two-year gap between Chinese and American AI, but the real gap is between originality and imitation," he said in the translated interview. "If this doesn't change, China will always be a follower."

• President Trump on Tuesday rolled back a 60-year-old antidiscrimination executive order.
• The move, one of several anti-DEI changes he's made so far, has consequences for the private sector.
• Here's what Trump's Equal Employment Opportunity decision means and how it affects businesses and workers.

President Trump this week revoked a civil rights-era Equal Employment Opportunity executive order, one of several sweeping changes he's made since taking office to hamper DEI and reshape the federal workforce.

The move guts federal contract workers' protections from discrimination on the basis of characteristics like race, religion, and sex.

Here's what his decision means for businesses and workers:

What is Equal Employment Opportunity?

Executive Order 11246, issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, prohibited federal contractors from discriminating in employment and required them to take affirmative action to ensure equal opportunity.

The 60-year-old act has been amended and strengthened over the years to protect federal contract workers from discrimination on the basis of characteristics like race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and national origin.

The Department of Labor's website calls it "a key landmark in a series of federal actions aimed at ending racial, religious and ethnic discrimination" and notes that workers employed by federal contractors represent roughly 20% of the US workforce.

What does Trump's executive order change?

Trump's decision requires the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs to stop promoting diversity and to stop holding federal contractors and subcontractors responsible for taking affirmative action.

It also directs the office to stop "allowing or encouraging Federal contractors and subcontractors to engage in workforce balancing based on race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion, or national origin."

Employees of federal contractors and subcontractors still have some protections under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and may have additional protections under state or local laws, Stefanie Camfield, associate general counsel of Engage PEO, told Business Insider.

Why did Trump make this decision?

Conservatives have increasingly taken aim at efforts related to DEI and social and environmental issues, and Trump has made no secret of his disdain for them.

On his first day in office, he signed an executive order to terminate DEI mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities — which he called "radical and wasteful" — in the federal government. Federal agencies were told to put employees in DEI roles on paid leave in the meantime.

How are people responding?

While many anti-DEI conservatives are celebrating Trump's decision, labor advocates and leaders of marginalized people's groups have been critical of the executive order reversal.

Judy Conti, government affairs director of the National Employment Law Project, said in a statement that Trump had "gutted key tools to prevent discrimination and root it out at its core."

"This is not a return to so-called 'meritocracy,'" she said. "Rather, it's an attempted return to the days when people of color, women, and other marginalized people lacked the tools to ensure that they were evaluated on their merits."

NAACP President Derrick Johnson in a statement called Trump's decision "outrageous."

"His appalling executive order will only worsen America's racial hierarchy and benefit the oligarch class," Johnson said.

What does this mean for businesses and workers?

Federal contractors can continue following Executive Order 11246 for 90 days from Tuesday of this week, Trump's order states.

His decision is likely to have spillover effects even into private sector businesses that aren't directly implicated.

"I would consider this order a shot over the bow for private businesses that President Trump will be using his executive power to end DEI programs in the private sector as well," said Camfield.

Trump's order directs the Attorney General to submit a report within 120 days "containing recommendations for enforcing Federal civil-rights laws and taking other appropriate measures to encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI."

Businesses should examine their DEI policies and programs to make sure they're compliant with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and "consider working with a knowledgeable employment attorney to either amend or even end the program to ensure that they're compliant" with Trump's revocation, Camfield says.

Workers should be aware of their rights under that act and any additional protections they may have under state and local laws.

What's next?

Trump's decision may spark an increase in "reverse racism" cases being filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Camfield notes.

Andrea R. Lucas, acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said, "I intend to dispel the notion that only the 'right sort of' charging party is welcome through our doors and to reinforce instead the fundamental belief enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and our civil rights laws—that all people are 'created equal.'"

Some companies had already begun pulling back on their DEI programs and initiatives before Trump's executive order, including Walmart, McDonald's, and Meta.

Others are standing their ground on DEI.

On Thursday, Costco shareholders overwhelmingly voted against a proposal from a conservative think tank to report on potential risks of the company's DEI efforts.

On CNBC this week, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank is "going to continue to reach out to the Black community, the Hispanic community, the LGBT community, the veterans community."

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said in another CNBC interview that the bank is listening to clients, who are thinking "about their businesses, how they find talent, the diversity of the talent they find all over the world."

"We continue to stay focused on talking to our clients and doing the things we've always done," he said.

• Jamie Dimon and Elon Musk are continuing to make amends.
• The JPMorgan Chase CEO told CNBC they've "hugged it out."
• Dimon wished Musk the best with DOGE and said he'd "love to be helpful" with the government efficiency effort.

Jamie Dimon and Elon Musk are patching up their relationship after a yearslong feud.

Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" in an interview that aired Wednesday that the two of them have "hugged it out."

"He came to one of our conferences, he and I had a nice long chat, we've settled some of our differences," he said in the interview.

Musk attended a JPMorgan tech summit in March, where he and Dimon spoke for an hour onstage, and Musk also visited Dimon's suite at the resort, The Wall Street Journal reported in June, citing people familiar with the matter.

In his CNBC interview, Dimon went on to call Musk "our Einstein."

He also expressed support for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that Musk is leading. President Trump signed an executive order Monday to create DOGE and make it officially part of the White House. Its stated mandate now is to update the federal government's software and IT systems, a marked change from Musk's desire to use DOGE to slash regulations and federal spending.

"We deserve good government," Dimon said. "I don't think anyone thinks that sending another trillion dollars to Washington, D.C., will lend to good government so government needs to be more accountable. It needs to be more efficient, it should be outcomes-based."

Dimon said DOGE would have its work cut out for it, but he supports Musk's efforts.

"I wish him the best. It's going to be complicated, the federal government's complicated, you've read about all the people in it," Dimon said. "If we can be helpful to them, I'd love to be helpful to them."

Musk had floated the idea for DOGE in August during a live-streamed conversation with Donald Trump on X, formerly Twitter. Musk said he'd "be happy to help out" on a government efficiency commission — which Trump said he'd "love" — if Trump won the election. Musk spent upwards of $200 million in efforts to get Trump and other Republicans elected.

Dimon said last year that he does "actually like" the idea of "having an efficiency commission."

"I think governments have to become more efficient, more competent," Dimon said in an interview with CNBC in September. "And look at, when they take money, what do they get for it. I actually think it's a very good idea."

It now looks like Musk will lead DOGE alone after Ramaswamy dropped out earlier this week ahead of a possible gubernatorial bid in Ohio.

Dimon and Musk started reconciling last year after several spats and lawsuits over the years.

Their feud dates back at least to 2016, when JPMorgan walked away from underwriting leases for Tesla vehicles.

In 2021, JPMorgan sued Tesla and Musk for $162 million, saying Musk's carmaker "flagrantly" breached a 2014 contract pertaining to warrants sold to the bank. JPMorgan adjusted the value of warrants after Musk tweeted in 2018 about taking Tesla private, which he walked back shortly after. Tesla countersued, saying the bank was angry at being left out of Musk's business and that senior JPMorgan executives had "animus" toward Musk.

The SEC later charged Musk with securities fraud, and Tesla and Musk each agreed to pay $20 million to settle the suit.

The companies dropped their suits against each other in November and agreed for the case to be voluntarily dismissed with prejudice, meaning the claims can't be refiled.