Noel joined the company in 2007 and was most recently the head of its Medicare and retirement unit, per a Thursday announcement.
UnitedHealthcare is the largest health insurer in the US and provides services to over 50 million Americans, the company said. The Medicare and retirement arm contributed nearly half of the company's $74.1 billion in revenue for the three months ending in December.
Noel "brings unparalleled experience to this role with a proven track record and strong commitment to improving how health care works for consumers, physicians, employers, governments and our other partners," the company said in a statement on Thursday.
A spokesperson declined further comment.
The company's shares rose nearly 2% on Thursday.
Noel replaces Thompson, who was shot and killed outside a hotel in central Manhattan on December 4. A five-day manhunt led to the arrest of 26-year-old Luigi Mangione in a McDonald's restaurant in Pennsylvania after a worker called police.
Mangione pleaded not guilty to New York state murder and terrorism charges and to federal stalking and murder charges.
Prosecutors said two shell casings for the bullets that killed Thompson had the words "DENY" and "DEPOSE" written on them. The word "DELAY" was written on a bullet found at the crime scene.
The killing ignited a national debate about the state of the US healthcare and health insurance system and led to a flood of pro-Mangione content on social media platforms.
Since the shooting, healthcare companies including UnitedHealthcare have taken down web pages that share details about their leadership. Two days after the shooting, UnitedHealthcare's "Our leadership" page was no longer accessible.
Noel's LinkedIn and Facebook pages also appear to have been taken down.
Jamie Dimon reaffirmed JPMorgan's DEI commitments after pressure from an activist shareholder.
One group wants JPMorgan to revisit how compensation is tied to the company's racial equity goal.
Trump's executive order on Monday ended DEI programs in the federal government.
Jamie Dimon is doubling down on JPMorgan's diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments amid pressure from an activist shareholder.
In an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the JPMorgan CEO said the bank continues to push ahead with its work in DEI work and environmental, social, and governance policies.
"Bring them on," Dimon said aboutactivist efforts."We are going to continue to reach out to the Black community, the Hispanic community, the LGBT community, the veterans community."
Dimon is known for working on both sides of the political aisle. In 2020, JPMorgan announced a $30 billion program aimed at working onracial equity in personal finance, a move that came as other financial institutions made significant commitments to similar causes. JPMorgan's program included mortgage refinancing and working with Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Dimon's comments at Davos come as the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit, proposed this month that JPMorgan revisit how executive compensation is tied to the company's racial equity goal.
JPMorgan started an "accountability framework" in 2020 to assess executives' progress toward DEI goals, which affects compensation. The firm doesn't publicly break out what proportion of executive pay, including for Dimon, is tied to DEI work.
JPMorgan and the NLPC did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
The NLPC has sent shareholder proposals focused on climate, China, and other issues to major companies in recent years.
In a different interview with CNBC on Wednesday, David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, said he had seen news of shareholder proposals, but that he has not yet looked at any of them.
"We're advising our clients to think about these things," Solomon said. "They think about decarbonization, they think about climate transition. They think about their businesses, how they find talent, the diversity of the talent they find all over the world."
Goldman Sachs did not immediately respond to BI's request for comment.
Shareholder proposals β about any subject β do not always end up on companies' ballots. Proposals against ESG, including those against DEI, that came to a vote garnered little support in the last four years, per a review by shareholder advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services.
"These politicized campaigns have failed to make the case for the economic impact related to the requests," wrote Subodh Mishra, ISS's head of communications, in November.
Employees shouldn't be afraid of AI, says the global chairman of PwC, Mohamed Kande.
Instead, employees should think of AI as a digital colleague, he said.
Kande's comments echo other business leaders' comments about embracing AI in the workplace.
Don't be afraid of AI in the workplace β think of it as your digital colleague.
That's what the global chairman of PwC, Mohamed Kande, said about AI augmentation during a panel at the World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday.
"People fear what they don't understand, so exposing them to the technology, putting in their hands makes a big difference," Kande said about AI. Doing so allows employees to view AI as a "digital colleague" they can work with, said Kande.
"You don't fear your colleagues, you partner with them," Kande said. "So we are actually asking people to partner with the technology."
The PwC head also said AI in the workplace should not come from the top down.
"There is this fallacy of believing that the benefits of augmentation have to come from management," Kande said. "It has to come from the people."
The Big Four leader's comments echo those made by several top executives about viewing AI as an extension of the workforce.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff have both touted the mass deployment of AI agents. AI agents break down a task into multiple smaller steps, each tackling a specific task to achieve a broader objective.
On Salesforce's third-quarter earnings call, Benioff said the company is the "largest supplier of digital labor" because of its product Agentforce, which lets clients build their own AI agents. He said the rise of digital labor means that "productivity is no longer tied to workforce growth, but to this intelligent technology that can be scaled without limits."
In October, PwC said it has started using Agentforce and is guiding clients "through the process of activating AI agents to build on your success."
Employees' confidence in AI is growing β but so is their anxiety that the tech could replace them. A 2024 survey of over 13,000 employees published by Boston Consulting Group found that employees who regularly use generative AI tools are more likely to worry about job loss than those who don't use the tool.
Of the regular generative AI users surveyed, 49% said they believe their job may disappear in the next ten years, while 24% of employees who do not use GenAI said the same.
President Trump took aim at federal DEI policies in his inaugural address on Monday.
He pledged to reverse executive orders from Biden, in favor of a "merit-based" society.
On Tuesday, the White House issued a presidential action ending DEI-based hiring in the FAA.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government.
Federal agencies and departments have 60 days from the signing of the order to end DEI-related practices.
The executive order will be carried out by the US Office of Personnel Management and theAttorney General, who will review all existing federal employment practices, union contracts, and training policies to ensure compliance with the DEI termination order.
"Federal employment practices, including Federal employee performance reviews, shall reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and shall not under any circumstances consider DEI or DEIA factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements," the order read.
A separate order for the FAA
On Tuesday, Trump issued a separate presidential action ending DEI-based hiring in the Federal Aviation Agency.
All DEI initiatives in the FAA, the order said, will be replaced with practices of "hiring, promoting, and otherwise treating employees on the basis of individual capability, competence, achievement, and dedication."
As of Tuesday night, the contents of at least two web pages detailing DEI initiatives and DEI hiring at the FAA have been taken down.
The FAA and its overseeing body, the Department of Transportation, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Targeting DEI
Trump also used his inaugural address Monday to target DEI initiatives in the federal government.
"This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life," he said Monday. "We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based."
He said it will be official US policy that "there are only two genders: male and female."
The remarks echoed his statements during a rally a day earlier when he pledged to end DEI mandates in government and the private sector.
Like many orders Trump signed on his first day, the move aims to undo several orders issued by Joe Biden during his presidency.
In one executive action from June 2021, Biden said the federal government is the largest employer in the nation and, thus, "must be a model for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, where all employees are treated with dignity and respect."
In response, the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Talent Sourcing for America initiative was launched in September of 2022.
A 2022 report from the Office of Personnel Management said the government-wide DEIA initiative included a plan to prioritize equity for LGBTQI+ employees by "expanding the usage of gender markers and pronouns that respect transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary employees; and working to create a more inclusive workplace."
The report showed minimal changes in the federal workforce's demographics between fiscal years 2017 and 2021, which encompassed most of Trump's first term. This included "minor" changes in the shares of the federal workforce by race and gender.
A 2024 report from OPM found minor increases in federal staffing diversity under the Biden administration after the DEIA objectives were announced, but indicated the office's targets for diversity and equity initiatives were not met.
Though there had been only slight workforce demographic changes under the Biden administration, the Trump administration's first official statement released Monday reiterated his plans to "freeze bureaucrat hiring except in essential areas to end the onslaught of useless and overpaid DEI activists buried into the federal workforce," and "establish male and female as biological reality and protect women from radical gender ideology."
Meanwhile, several companies β including the nation's largest private employer, Walmart β have been reversing course on DEI initiatives in the weeks following Trump's election in November.
Lee Greenwood and Carrie Underwood sang during the ceremony.
President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance were sworn in on Monday, marking the end of former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris' time in the White House.
The inauguration was held inside the Capitol Rotunda due to winter weather. Former presidents, Trump family members, tech billionaires, and members of Congress attended the packed ceremony.
Photos show the biggest moments from the event.
Ahead of the swearing-in ceremony, the Bidens greeted the Trumps on the North Portico of the White House.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff also greeted Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance.
Attendees took their seats in the Capitol Rotunda, where the inauguration was held due to freezing temperatures.
Tech billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and Elon Musk, were seated on the inaugural platform.
Former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama took their seats in the Rotunda.
Vice President JD Vance was the first to be sworn in.
President Donald Trump took the oath of office at noon, per tradition.
Melania Trump's hat intercepted a kiss from her husband.
"The golden age of America begins right now," Trump said in his inaugural address, which included numerous policy proposals.
After Trump's address, Carrie Underwood sang "America the Beautiful."
The Bidens departed the Capitol on Marine One, completing the peaceful transfer of power.
Elon Musk addressed a crowd of Trump supporters during an inauguration event at Capital One Arena.
Trump signed a series of executive orders on Monday evening using his signature Sharpie marker.
While answering questions and signing executive orders in the Oval Office, Trump held up a letter left for him by Biden.
At the Commander in Chief Ball on Monday evening, Trump and Vance cut a large cake with sabers.
Trump and the first lady arrive at the Liberty Ball.
Before Trump arrived at the Liberty Ball, Billy Ray Cyrus entertained the crowd.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump also made an appearance at the Liberty Ball.
Trump and members of his family danced on stage at the ball.
The family also danced at the Starlight Ball, the final event of Monday's inauguration.
Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance also took to the dancefloor.
Pooja Asuri is a recent graduate and OPT visa holder in the US.
The uncertainty of being on a visa under President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration has affected her attitude at work and at home.
Asuri said she has started to question her decision to move to the US.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Pooja Asuri, a recent college graduate and an Optional Practical Training visa holder who works at a research laboratory in Maine. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified her visa and employment history.
I graduated from San Jose State University with a bachelor's in science in December 2023. I was born and raised in Singapore but hold Indian citizenship, and I moved to the US for college in 2019.
After graduation, I landed a job as a lab technologist at The Jackson Laboratory, a nonprofit research organization. As an international student who only had 90 days to find work, I applied to hundreds of jobs and felt extremely lucky to land this role.
It meant moving from California to a remote town in Maine where I didn't know anyone, but I was grateful. My parents had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars so I could study in the US, and part of me felt embarrassed if I could not find a job here after graduation. It would also make me question if my degree was worth it.
Missing out on family
Last year, I started planning a trip to India in January to meet my parents, who had recently moved there from Singapore, and my extended family.
As a Science-Technology-Engineering-Math graduate, I am allowed a two-year extension on my Optional Practical Training visa, which is seen as a pathway to securing an H-1B β a visa for highly skilled foreign workers.
Recent debates in the US about stricter immigration rules spooked me and the company's legal team. Late last year, I was advised to apply for my two-year extension as soon as possible. My legal advisor was worried that President-elect Donald Trump's administration might suspend the OPT pathway, as they threatened to do in 2020.
I was stressed, and earlier this month, I paid almost $1,700 for a fast-tracked version of the application. My application was approved last week, days before Trump's inauguration.
I also canceled all my international travel plans until the summer.
It was heartbreaking β I have been desperate to visit India because there are family members there, including my aging grandparents, who I have not met in six years.
Constant uncertainty
I've spent every Thursday for the past five to six weeks meeting the legal team at my company.
The uncertainty of being on a visa has also affected my attitude at work, especially with the constant threat of layoffs. I don't speak up strongly even when we're asked for opinions because I don't want to upset anyone. I've become quieter and more compliant.
Outside of work, I'm worried about the smallest mistakes, like getting a parking ticket. I'm anxious that it'll go on my permanent record and hold me back down the line.
I never imagined facing any of these challenges when I first applied to universities in the US. Before university,I had only been exposed to Asia, and I was excited to live in a Western country and see the American Dream for myself.
Looking back, I'm not sure if moving here was worth it. Every week, I question whether I should be here, if I should change my job, and if I even want to apply for an H-1B and eventually pursue citizenship.
My dad has spent his adult life in Singapore, one of the world's most developed countries. He still talks to me as if I'm in the best place on the planet. I think there has been a huge shift in sentiment towards migration since his generation, which moved out of India in the early 2000s for better career opportunities.
I've come to realize that I crave stability and family more than anything. If I can find a job in India, where I'm a citizen, I would not mind relocating even though I've never lived there. I'd be relieved knowing that nobody can deport me, I can move jobs, and I can be close to family.
Editors note: The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider for this story.
Instagram announced a new video-editing app called Edits as TikTok and CapCut face US restrictions.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the tool, which will be released on March 13, on Sunday.
Edits will offer video editing tools and analytics, Mosseri said.
Instagram announced a new video-editing app called "Edits" on Sunday, a day after rival ByteDance apps TikTok and CapCutwent dark in the US.
The app is slated to be released on March 13, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, announced in a video posted on the platform. Meta owns Instagram.
Mosseri said the app will include a higher-quality camera, video editing tools, a feature to share drafts with others, and Instagram analytics on how those videos perform. The app can be used to make videos for platforms besides Instagram as well, he said.
"There's a lot going on right now, but no matter what happens, it's our job to provide the best possible tools for creators," Mosseri said.
Meta also ran sponsored ads for Instagram on the iOS App Store for a few hours on Sunday, in another sign the tech giant is capitalizing on the lack of clarity regarding TikTok's future. Users who typed "TikTok" saw an ad for Instagram, Bloomberg reported. The ads had stopped appearing as of late Sunday evening.
Meta did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider about the sponsored App Store ads. In addition to Instagram, Meta owns Facebook, Threads, and WhatsApp.
Edits is available for preorder on the iOS App Store, but it won't be available to download until next month, Mosseri said.
The app stands to compete with existing video-editing platforms such as Adobe's Premiere Rush and ByteDance's CapCut, the latter of which is blocked and no longer available in US app stores. TikTok has restored its services in the US but is no longer available in app stores.
Last year, a bill to ban TikTok received bipartisan support in the House and Senate due to national security concerns with ByteDance's Chinese ownership. Biden signed the TikTok ban bill into law in April 2024.
The company spent months challenging the law that required it to be divested or banned from the US before January 19. On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled to uphold the ban.
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump said he plans to issue an executive order following his inauguration on Monday to extend the time before the TikTok ban is enforced. He did not mention if other ByteDance apps, such as CapCut and Lemon8, will return under this executive order.
A Stanford law professor dropped Meta as a client in the wake of Mark Zuckerberg's recent changes.
Mark Lemley represented Meta in a 2023 AI copyright case involving comedian Sarah Silverman and others.
Zuckerberg's recent changes at Meta more closely align with Elon Musk's opinions and strategies.
Mark Lemley, a Stanford law professor and lawyer who represented Meta in a 2023 AI copyright case,said he has dropped the company as a client because of what he described as CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness."
"I have fired Meta as a client. While I think they are on the right side in the generative AI copyright dispute in which I represented them, and I hope they win, I cannot in good conscience serve as their lawyer any longer," Lemley, a partner at the law firm Lex Lumina, wrote in a LinkedIn post on Monday.
Lemley and Lex Lumina represented Meta when comedian Sarah Silverman and other authors sued the Facebook owner in 2023, saying it violated copyright by training the Llama AI model on books they had written.
At the time, Meta's lawyers argued the claims should fail because the authors could not prove Llama generated text that closely resembled their books.The case is ongoing.
In the LinkedIn post, Lemley also said he was changing how he used some Meta products.
He has deactivated his Threads account because he did not want to "support a Twitter-like site run by a Musk wannabe."
The lawyer also said he will no longer buy anything from ads he encounters on Facebook or Instagram.
"While I have thought about quitting Facebook, I find great value in the connections and friends I have here," Lemley wrote.
Lemley is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. At Lex Lumina, he works with clients on cases pertaining to intellectual property, antitrust, and internet law.
A representative for Lex Lumina told Business Insider via email: "Money can't buy everyone. We're proud to be a firm that doesn't sell out our values. Sadly, it seems this is becoming a rarer and rarer quality in America today."
Lemley, Meta and Sarah Silverman did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Changes at Meta
Since the start of the year, Zuckerberg has made sweeping changes to Meta, includingeliminating third-party fact-checking on the platform in the US in favor of community notes.
"Masculine energy, I think, is good, and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think that corporate culture was really trying to get away from it," he said on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast.
Zuckerberg's changes at Meta resemble those made by Elon Musk on the social media platform X.
Musk has spoken out against DEI and content moderation. Politically, Musk has thrown his support behind right-leaning political parties and figures in Europe and the US.
Zuckerberg has also started to mirror Musk in terms of politics and relationship-building with Trump. Meta donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund, and Zuckerberg declined to endorse any candidate during the 2024 election campaign.
These moves mark a distinct change in how Zuckerberg approached Trump in the past.
In 2020, after Facebook was criticized over the then-president's violent remarks on the platform, Zuckerberg said he was "deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump's divisive and incendiary rhetoric."
Trump was barred from Facebook and Instagram in 2021 for what Meta called praising "people engaged in violence at the Capitol on January 6."Meta reversed the decision two years later.
President Joe Biden has proposed new AI-chip export curbs to limit access for China and Russia.
The restrictions aim to concentrate advanced AI development in US-allied countries.
About 15% of Nvidia's revenue last quarter came from China and Hong Kong.
President Joe Biden has proposed one more round of export restrictions on AI chips, set to affect those made by Nvidia and AMD, with the goal of limiting China's and Russia's access to chips for training artificial-intelligence models and powering data centers.
A White House announcement on Monday said chip sales to 18 US allies would be free of restrictions and controls would not apply to chip orders below certain computation thresholds.
The proposed rules, which also aim to help businesses around the world align with American standards, are set to take effect 120 days from publication.
Under the restrictions, entities outside close US allies would still be able to purchase up to the equivalent of 50,000 advanced graphics processing units per country.
In a blog post published Monday, Nvidia criticized the plan. Ned Finkle, the company's vice president of government affairs, called the rules "unprecedented and misguided" and said they "threaten to derail innovation and economic growth worldwide."
"While cloaked in the guise of an 'anti-China' measure, these rules would do nothing to enhance US security," Finkle said. "The new rules would control technology worldwide, including technology that is already widely available in mainstream gaming PCs and consumer hardware."
Revenue from China and Hong Kong made up 15% of the company's sales, or $5.4 billion, in the three months ending October 27. Nvidia generated the bulk of its business β 42% β in the US that quarter.
The framework would add to a list of US curbs already in place to prevent adversary countries from using advanced AI to modernize their militaries. In November 2023, the US Department of Commerce implemented the Advanced Computing Chips Rule, which allows Nvidia and others to sell only a less-powerful version of its chip in China.
But that has not stopped access completely.
In August, a New York Times investigation found that a network of companies had found ways around the ban. The group is selling Nvidia's most advanced chips to state-affiliated groups in China, the Times said.
The Biden administration has boosted the industry domestically with tax breaks and subsidies.
It has provided American chipmakers with close to $30 billion in subsidies as part of the 2022 CHIPS Act, a $280 billion package to support semiconductor innovation in the US. Intel, Micron, AMD, and Microchip Technology are among the direct beneficiaries.
The Dutch pension fund ABP sold its Tesla stake over Elon Musk's pay and the company's working conditions, a report says.
ABP disagreed with Musk's compensation package and voted against it in June.
ABP didn't respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
A Dutch civil-service pension fund has sold its entire stake in Tesla over disapproval of CEO Elon Musk's pay package and working conditions at the company, a report says.
Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP, one of Europe's largest pension funds, sold 2.8 million shares in the electric-vehicle maker in September because it disagreed with Musk's pay package, the Dutch outlet Het Financieele Dagblad reported Friday. The report didn't detail the fund's specific concerns about labor conditions at the company.
A spokesperson for ABP, which manages $552 billion overall, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.Bloomberg reported that ABP's Tesla stake was valued at about $585 million.
In a statement to the NL Times, ABP said that "we cannot and do not need to invest in everything" and that the divestment wasn't politically motivated. Musk has been a prominent supporter of President-elect Donald Trump and is co-leading a commission called the Department of Government Efficiency.
In 2018, Tesla's board and shareholders voted in favor of a performance-based compensation plan. The same year, a shareholder sued Tesla and Musk, arguing that Musk influenced the board's decision through his personal relationships with board members, including his brother. In January 2024, a Delaware judge ruled to strike down Musk's compensation package, siding with a shareholder. The stock option-based package could be worth tens of billions of dollars.
In June, the EV maker held a second vote, which led to shareholder approval of Musk's pay. ABP voted against the pay package and called it "controversial and exceptionally high."
Last month, the judge, Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick, once again ruled against the compensation package, saying that Tesla's June shareholder vote wasn't enough to pass the package.
Tesla's Model Y was the best-selling car in the Netherlands in 2024, but the carmaker's sales havebeen declining in Europe. New Tesla car registrations from January to November 2024 fell more than 15% compared with the same period in 2023, according to European Automobile Manufacturers' Association data.
Tesla is worth about $1.27 trillion, and its stock has risen about 74% in the past year.
The company didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.
Shruti Dhumak navigated maternity leave amid Google's AI industry shift and layoffs.
She split her leave to maintain visibility and manage family support from India.
Dhumak focused on self-improvement and open communication to regain her work efficiency.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shruti Dhumak, a cloud customer engineer in Google's Boston office who gave birth in February 2023. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified her employment history.
Before I had my son, I always doubted how I was going to manage being this overly ambitious person with motherhood.
I've been with Google for about four years. I had my first child in February 2022 and split up my maternity leave in three phases to make the most of temporary support I had when my family visited.
Between Google's policy of six months of maternity leave, one month of prepartum leave, and one month of paid time off, I had a total of eight months of time away from work. I knew I was fortunate to have this time off because it is rare in the US, but going on leave and the anxiety of being replaced while I was away was one of the hardest things I have dealt with.
I'm a customer engineer, and a large part of my role revolves around managing relationships with our cloud clients. If someone takes over for me, the customers end up being closer to that representative and I risk losing my accounts to someone else.
I was also paranoid that my absence or my performance below my peak, once I returned, would make me more susceptible to a layoff. Two weeks before my delivery, Google announced its biggest, 12,000-people layoff. As someone on an H1-B visa, a layoff would mean I would have to find another job in a matter of weeks or risk having to move back to India with a newborn.
When I came back to work, I was not a hundred percent myself β not as a person and not as an employee. I was not a hundred percent efficient. I've had my moments where I broke down and lost my train of thought during a call.
Despite my efforts, some other senior people were preferred by the business partners for some responsibilities. To add to it, Google was entering the artificial intelligence industry. Being away monthsfelt like I was behind by many years.
But I was able to turn my performance around. In 2024, I got awards for my performance, and it's just the opposite of how last year went.
There were four things I did to make the transition easier on myself:
1. Split up my leave
Google offers employees the flexibility to take their maternity leave for up to a year after the baby is born. I broke up my leave into three stages, which allowed me to come back to work periodically to ensure I was visible and my work was not forgotten.
I took my first break a month before the baby was born. I returned in my third month after the delivery and went back on leave in the months of September, November, December and January. It was designed based on who was there to help me with the child throughout the year β first my parents and then my in-laws.
2. Highlight my work
Nobody is going to talk about me until I do, which is something I have struggled with in my previous companies.
I made sure to speak up when things weren't going right and made sure to collect evidence of my efforts and achievements.
I took advantage of the help I had and spent evenings and weekends taking exams and completing certifications to upskill myself and show others that I was coming up to speed.
3. Have open, honest conversations
What helped me through the year was my manager. She saw what was happening when I missed things because I've been a good performer all these years.
I shared everything with her openly during one-on-ones, which helped because she understood my challenges. She also helped me maintain visibility with upper management, because Google is strict with grades and the ratings you get.
It made a world of a difference to have a female manager and a work culture where men could empathize, too. My job involves a lot of talking and explaining, and I suffered from shortness of breath during my third trimester. My male counterparts recognized this and asked me to take breaks and go off-camera, which helped me work until the day I left for leave.
I also built my network and spoke to women who are managers in other teams in the company. Women who have been outperformers shared their experiences crying secretly after they became parents, and nobody said they had it all sorted out. Now, I share my journey with others.
4. Taking it one day at a time
During the wave of tech layoffs in 2022, I had at least three close friends who were laid off from Google, Microsoft, and Meta, which lingered on my mind and made me paranoid about my own situation.
The stress and postpartum depression is not behind me, but I decided to take it one day at a time.
I decided to be laser-focused and do things as they come up. There have been times I feel like delaying a reply but do it anyway, because I know it could lead to more tasks that I can add to my annual review.
Do you work in Big Tech and have a tip or story to share? Please reach out at shubhangigoel@businessinsider.com.
Blackstone encourages junior staff to speak at deal meetings, fostering open dialogue.
It can be "scary," said Jon Gray, the firm's president, on a recent podcast.
A former intern told BI last year that a senior leader said to him "rank doesn't matter here."
Blackstone's president said that senior executives often ask themost juniorpeople in the room to speak at the private equity firm's deal meetings.
"We'll go around in many of these committees and ask the most junior people in the room, 'hey what do you think?' We want them to articulate why they have conviction," Jon Gray said on a recent podcast hosted by Norges Bank Investment Management. Norway's sovereign wealth fund has invested hundreds of millions of dollars with Blackstone.
The 54-year-old, who started his career at the firm, said that it can be "scary" for a young person, and that the committee is "not the most patient group of people."
Gray added that meetings get into questions immediately, with people"drilling" the presenters about the companies in question.
"What we try to do is make sure a lot of please and thank you's and be appreciative to the group, but there's really sort of a truth-telling exercise," Gray said.
Blackstone is the world's largest alternative asset manager, with more than $1 trillion in assets under management. The firm has 12,700 real estate assets and 240 portfolio companies as of June, according to the company's website.
Last year, an associate who interned twiceat the firm told Business Insider that juniors were encouraged to make their presence known.
"Senior leaders were constantly coming out to the bullpen and asking the most junior person on the team what they thought about the deals that we were currently in process with, what they thought about up-and-coming trends," said Marshall Plumlee, who was a US Army infantry officer before his Harvard MBA. He's now working at Blackstone full time.
Plumlee said that one senior leader explained it to him this way: "Rank doesn't matter here; your thoughts are just as valuable as the next guy."
Blackstone had 4,735 employees as of December 2023.
Talent development initiatives
The private equity firm has made other commitments to developing talent, too.
In 2020, it launched Career Pathways, a program to help portfolio companies solve talent problems by creating internal trainings. Last year, it started a data program to find and train people to fill specialized technical positions. In September, the company said the portfolio companies that took part in the program have hired over 10,500 people from underrepresented groups.
"We put it inside of our portfolio operations side of the business," Gray said at the time. "It's not a charitable effort. It's designed to drive talent to companies."'
The executive is also known for being in charge of the iconic Blackstone holiday videos, which started in 2018 when the firm had grown too large to hostcompany-wideChristmas parties. Business Insider previously reported that Gray is usually the first person to come up with the idea for the holiday video β a comical sketch sometimes filmed in the style of the television show "The Office" or with other pop-culture bents.
The Los Angeles wildfires could cause up to $57 billion in damage, Accuweather estimates.
The fires are destroying expensive real estate in Santa Monica, Malibu, and other neighborhoods.
Insurance providers like State Farm pulled new coverage before the fire due to catastrophe risks.
The Los Angeles wildfires could cost between $52 billion and $57 billion in damages and economic losses, according to a preliminary estimate from weather forecasting service Accuweather.
The wildfires tearing through Santa Monica and Malibu, among other areas, are destroying some of the country's most expensive real estate, where median home values exceed $2 million, Accuweather said in a release on Wednesday. Wildfires in the Los Angeles Pacific Palisades neighborhood have destroyed the homes of celebrities including Paris Hilton and have evacuated actors Mark Hamill and James Woods.
The cost estimates include damages to homes and businesses, as well as negative impacts on tourism and health from smoke inhalation, Accuweather said. Property that has not been destroyed by the fire may also have smoke or water damage.
The company said that the estimate is early and may change as some areas have not reported damages and injuries.
"This is likely to end up being one of the most expensive wildfires in modern California history and it will also be one of the most damaging in terms of the numbers of structures that have been destroyed,"Jonathan Porter, AccuWeather's chief meteorologist, said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the company declined further comment.
The last major disaster was the Camp Fire, which destroyed Paradise, Califronia in 2018. German insurance company Munich Re estimated it caused overall losses of $16.5 billion.
"These fires will likely be the costliest in history, not the deadliest, and that is the only silver lining right now," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA told LAList.
Five people have been reported dead and 100,000 were told to evacuate.
Health costs could stem from the inhalation of hazardous air from the burning of homes, vehicles, chemicals, and fuels.
Property insurance providers, such as State Farm, pulled new California homeowners' insurance services in 2023, citing risks from catastrophes. Last year, the company said it would end coverage for 72,000 homes and apartments in the state for the same reason.
Five separate fires hit the city and its region in recent days. High winds have hampered emergency services' responses.
Layoffs and other workforce reductions are continuing in 2025, following two years of significant job cuts across tech, media, finance, manufacturing, retail, and energy.
While the reasons for slimming staff vary, the cost-cutting measures are coming amid a backdrop of technological change. In a recent World Economic Forum survey, some 41% of companies worldwide said they expected to reduce their workforces over the next five years because of the rise of artificial intelligence.
Companies such as CNN, Dropbox, and IBM have previously announced job cuts related to AI. Tech jobs in big data, fintech, and AI are meanwhile expected to double by 2030, according to the WEF.
Here are the companies with job cuts planned or already underway in 2025 so far.
CNN plans to cut 200 jobs.
Cable news giant CNN is cutting about 200 television-focused roles as part of a digital pivot. The cuts will amount to about 6% of the company's workforce.
In a memo sent to staff on Thursday, CNN's CEO Mark Thompson said he aimed to "shift CNN's gravity towards the platforms and products where the audience themselves are shifting and, by doing that, to secure CNN's future as one of the world's greatest news organizations."
Starbucks is planning layoffs in March.
Global coffee chain Starbucks announced it is planning layoffs in March.
In a memo to staff on January 21, Brian Nicoll, the company's chairman and CEO, said: "We need to meaningfully change how our support teams are organized and how we work," and as part of that, "we will have job eliminations and smaller support teams moving forward."
Nicoll said the changes would be communicated to staff by early March.
Stripe is laying off 300 employees.
Payments platform Stripe is cutting 300 employees, primarily in product, engineering, and operations, according to a January 20 memo obtained by BI.
Chief People Officer Rob McIntosh said in the memo that the company still planned on growing its head count to about 10,000 employees by the end of the year.
BP slashing 7,700 staff and contractor positions worldwide.
BP told Business Insider it plans to cut 4,700 staff and 3,000 contractors, amounting to about 5% of its global workforce.
The cuts are part of a program to "simplify and focus" BP that began last year.
"We are strengthening our competitiveness and building in resilience as we lower our costs, drive performance improvement and play to our distinctive capabilities," the company said.
Meta is cutting 5% of its workforce.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told staff he "decided to raise the bar on performance management" and will act quickly to "move out low-performers," according to an internal memo seen by BI.
In a post on the company's internal communications platform, he said Meta will make "more extensive performance-based cuts" in this year's performance review cycle. Impacted US employees will be notified on February 10, he wrote.
The company has laid off more than 21,000 workers since 2022.
BlackRock is cutting 1% of its workforce.
BlackRock told employees it was planning to cut about 200 people of its 21,000-strong workforce, according to Bloomberg.
The reductions are more than offset by some 3,750 workers who were added last year and another 2,000 expected to be added in 2025.
BlackRock's president, Rob Kapito, and its chief operating officer, Rob Goldstein, said the cuts would help realign the firm's resources with its strategy, Bloomberg reported.
Bridgewater has cut about 90 staff.
Bridgewater Associates cut 7% of its staff in January in an effort to stay lean, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider.
The layoffs at the world's largest hedge fund bring its head count back to where it was in 2023, the person said.
The company's founder, Ray Dalio, said in a 2019 interview that about 30% of new employees were leaving the firm within 18 months.
The Washington Post is cutting 4% of its non-newsroom workforce.
The Washington Post is eliminating less than 100 employees in an effort to cut costs, Reuters reported in January.
A spokesperson told the wire service that the changes would occur across multiple areas of the business and indicated that the cuts wouldn't affect the newsroom.
"The Washington Post is continuing its transformation to meet the needs of the industry, build a more sustainable future and reach audiences where they are," the spokesperson said, according to Reuters.
Microsoft is planning an unspecified number of cuts.
Microsoft is planning job cuts soon, and the company is taking a harder look at underperforming employees as part of the reductions, according to two people familiar with the plans.
A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed cuts but declined to share details on the number of employees being let go.
"At Microsoft we focus on high performance talent," the spokesperson said. "We are always working on helping people learn and grow. When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action."
Ally is cutting less than 5% of workers.
The digital-financial-services company Ally is laying off roughly 500 of its 11,000 employees, a spokesperson confirmed to BI.
"As we continue to right-size our company, we made the difficult decision to selectively reduce our workforce in some areas, while continuing to hire in our other areas of our business," the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also said the company was offering severance, out-placement support, and the opportunity to apply for openings at Ally.
Ally made a similar level of cuts in October 2023, the Charlotte Observer reported.
Adidas plans to cut up to 500 jobs in Germany.
Adidas intends to reduce the size of its workforce at its headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany, impacting up to 500 jobs, CNBC reported.
If fully executed, it amounts to a reduction of nearly 9% at the company headquarters, which employs about 5,800 employees, according to the Adidas website.
The news comes shortly after the company announced it had outperformed its profit expectations at the end of 2024, touting "better-than-expected" results in the fourth quarter.
"Strong growth across all regions and divisions proves the good job our teams are doing across regions and functions," CEO BjΓΈrn Gulden said in a press release. "So although we are not yet where we want to be long term, I am very happy with this development which was much better than we had expected."
Adidas did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the impending layoffs.
Is your company conducting layoffs? Got a tip?
If you're an employee with a tip about coming job cuts, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out.
The merger aims to save $200 million and boost revenue in three years.
The new company will face competition from AI image-generation tools like Adobe's Firefly and DALLΒ·E 3.
Getty Images and Shutterstock are merging in a deal that could help the company better prepare for artificial intelligence.
On Tuesday, Getty's stock jumped 24%, while shares of Shutterstock rose 14%, a sign that investors welcome the merger.
The combined company, which will be called Getty Images, will be worth $3.7 billion, Getty said in a release on Tuesday. It expects the deal to generate up to $200 million in cost savings overthree years and come withmore revenue opportunities.
On a call to announce the merger, Craig Peters, Getty's CEO, who will head the new company, and Paul Hennessy, Shutterstock's CEO, gave little weight to AI risks, saying AI is an opportunity for the companies.
"Our businesses have not seen any impact as a result of GenAI," Peters said. He said the companies would benefit from combining their products with AI.
"We see increased usage in our stock content from our AI customers, and we're seeing new customers coming into the franchise for our AI products," Hennessy said. "There's a one plus one equals to three on that front."
The companies are two of the largest in the visual content business. They provide editorial photographs and stock images used for content creation.
Getty is offering to pay about $28.85 in cash, or about 14 shares of Getty Images shares, for each Shutterstock share.
Details on the timeline of the combination were not announced.
The combined Getty and Shutterstock business will have stronger finances and plans to invest in content creation, event coverage, and generative AI, the release said.
Companies across industries are being proactive about AI-proofing their core businesses.
Getty and Shutterstock's stock image businesses face competition from AI image-generation tools such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, OpenAI's DALLΒ·E 3, and Adobe's Firefly.
Getty also offers an image-generation service, trained on Nvidia's Picasso. In October, Shutterstock-owned GIPHY, a GIFs and stickers library, announced a partnership with TikTok to provide AI-powered GIF recommendations on the platform.
In June, Hennessy said Shutterstock earned $104 million in annual revenue from AI licensing agreements in 2023. He also projected that this revenue could reach up to $250 million annually by 2027.
Wedbush analysts led by Michael Pachter called the deal "Bigger is better," while reiterating their outperform rating on Getty.
"The two companies are highly complementary, with each stock photo service serving a different niche in terms of customer size, geography, asset type, and platform type," they wrote in a note on Tuesday.
The analysts added that they expect the deal to pass antitrust scrutiny because the industry is so competitive.
Bridgewater Associates cut 7% of staff, or about 90 people.
The hedge fund, which manages $172 billion, is known for its radical transparency and high turnover.
The company last laid off people in 2023 to cut costs and free up resources
Bridgewater Associates cut 7% of its staff on Monday in an effort to stay lean, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider.
The layoffs bring headcount back to where it was in 2023 for the world's largest hedge fund, the person said. It's unclear which divisions were impacted by the cuts.
Bloomberg first reported the layoffs, including that 90 people were affected. Four of the firm's funds posted double-digit returns last year, Bloomberg said.
The Connecticut-based company last laid off people in 2023 to cut costs and free up resources.At the time, it eliminated about 100 jobs in a workforce of roughly 1,300 employees.
Last year, Bridgewater's high-profile hires included macro traders Jerome Saragoussi and Ben Melkman, and Ziad Hindo, a veteran investor with Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.
The company is still hiring β the firm lists three open jobs for its Shanghai office.
Ray Dalio founded the firm in 1975 and relinquished his voting rights in 2022. Nir Bar Dea, who started as a management associate in 2015, is now CEO.
The hedge fund had about $172 billion under management as of November, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Dalio instituted a real-time rating system in which employees used iPads to score each other. One former intern told BI last year that she loved the process.
Dalio said in a 2019 interview that about 30% of new employees leave the firm within 18 months.
Sam Altman says his researchers still push back in meetings β a positive for him.
Altman previously wrote that he is against bureaucracy and supports fostering open communication.
Experts emphasize the importance of polite disagreement to maintain a team's trust and efficiency.
Sam Altman said thatbeing a well-known CEO has created distance with some of his friends and colleagues β with one key exception.
"I spend most of my time with the researchers, and man, I promise you, come with me to the research meeting right after this, and you will see nothing but disrespect. Which is great," Altman said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek published on Sunday.
His comments echo how the startup's CEO has previously talked about his leadership style.
In a 2023 blog post, he wrote: "Fight bullshit and bureaucracy every time you see it and get other people to fight it too." He added,"do not let the org chart get in the way of people working productively together."
In a 2019 post on his blog, months before he became OpenAI's CEO, Altman wrote: "One of the best ways to build a network is to develop a reputation for really taking care of the people who work with you." He said leaders should push employees to "accomplish more than they thought they could" without burning out.
In the far-ranging Bloomberg interview, Altman also talked about government bureaucracy hindering AI development, returning after he was briefly fired by the board in 2023, and his work schedule.
He said his executive team meets for three hours on Mondays. During the week he spoke with Bloomberg, he said he also had six one-on-ones with engineers over two days, a research meeting, and several meetings to discuss "building up compute" and to brainstorm products.
He said he communicated far more internally than with people outside the company.
"I'm not a big inspirational email writer, but lots of one-on-one, small-group meetings and then a lot of stuff over Slack," Altman said.
Power of polite disagreements
Workplace experts say polite disagreement with peers β and even top bossesβ is essential to keep teams running smoothly.
CEOs across tech, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, have all highlighted the importance of fostering a culture of disagreement from the top.
In his 2016 letter to shareholders, Bezos wrote about how employees should embrace his "disagree and commit" strategy, which is a way to say: "Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?"
"This isn't one way," Bezos added. "If you're the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time."
Joseph Grenny, a corporate trainer and the coauthor of the workplace strategy book "Crucial Conversations," said staying silent can carry its own pitfalls.
In a 2016 interview with the Harvard Business Review, he suggested considering "the risks of not speaking up" β which could be the project falling apart or losing the team's trust β and weighing those against the consequences of saying something.
One way to do it is to ask your manager for permission to disagree, Grenny said, by saying something like, "I know we seem to be moving toward a first-quarter commitment here. I have reasons to think that won't work. I'd like to lay out my reasoning. Would that be OK?"
Sabina Nawaz, a CEO coach who was a senior director of human resources at Microsoft for 15 years, wrote in a 2023 LinkedIn post that avoiding disagreement is more damaging to relationships than speaking up. She recommended finding allies for meetings and asking what others think.
"When co-workers realize you let them proceed with a faulty plan, or waited until the last minute to raise objections, they're likely to lose trust in you," Nawaz wrote.
Vinay Hiremath, a co-founder of Loom, just wrote about finding purpose after selling the company.
Software company Atlassian acquired Loom for $975 million in fall 2023.
The 32-year-old has climbed mountains and joined DOGE. Now, he's in Hawaii.
Vinay Hiremath is grappling with one of success's unexpected downsides.
The 32-year-old cofounded Loom, a video communication company that was acquired by Australian software company Atlassian in October 2023 for about $975 million.
In a recent blog on his website, the former chief technology officer of Loom wrote about giving up $60 million in pay when he decided not to work for Atlassian. Instead, he said he briefly evaluated building a robotics company and climbed two Himalayan peaks. Hiremath also worked for Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's Department of Government Efficiency for a month.
"I started to realize that, although the mission of DOGE is extremely important, it wasn't the most important thing I needed to focus on with urgency for myself," he wrote. "I needed to get back to ambiguity, focus on my insecurities, and be ok with that for a while. DOGE wasn't going to fix that."
Hiremath, who broke up with his long-term girlfriend, also wrote about the challenges of tying his identity to his startup.
"When we went through our first round of layoffs, this company my ego was hitched to had suffered a massive blow, so I lost myself. This whole chapter of Loom has created a complex web of internalized insecurities I must now work hard to disentangle and free myself from."
His co-founder, Joe Thomas, remains CEO.
A Wednesday X post in which Hiremath shared a link to his blog has been viewed nearly 540,000 times. The post garnered over 500 comments, many from other tech enthusiasts and startup founders thanking Hiremath for opening up.
Hiremath wrote he is in Hawaii, learning physics and aiming to start another company "that manufactures real-world things" β even if he doesn't find as much success as he did at Loom.
And he's wrestling with philosophical questions about his identity and how he relates to others.
Hiremath did not respond to a request for further comment.
Purpose beyond the job
Hiremath is part of a wider community of suddenly wealthy people or early retirees who struggle to find purpose after decades of working. Experts in personal finance say the feeling is common.
"When we have more money than we could ever spend, most people quit their job β but the job provides many of us with structure, a sense of purpose, and a great deal of our social interaction. Remove this, and it leaves a big void," Robert Pagliarini, a financial advisor who wrote a book about sudden wealth, previously told Business Insider.
Clayton Christensen, an academic and business consultant best known for his theory of "disruptive innovation" and his views on purpose, long said that focusing on a purpose is essential for personal and professional success.
The Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Business School alumnus, who died in 2020, wrote that he had to "think long and hard" about his purpose.
"Over the years I've watched the fates of my HBS classmates from 1979 unfold; I've seen more and more of them come to reunions unhappy, divorced, and alienated from their children," Christensen wrote in a 2010 Harvard Business Review article. "They didn't keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy."
In a statement on its website on Wednesday, Turo confirmed the vehicles involved in both incidents were rented through its service.
"Our trust and safety team is actively partnering with law enforcement authorities to share any information that could be helpful in their investigations," the statement read. "We do not believe that either renter had a criminal background that would have identified them as a security threat, and we are not currently aware of any information that indicates the two incidents are related."
Shamsud-Din Jabbar has been identified as the suspect in the deadly New Orleans attack.Jabbar's criminal record, obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety and viewed by Business Insider, shows two prior arrests in 2002 and 2005.
The first was for theft, while the other was for driving with an invalid license. Both were classified as misdemeanors.
Celebrity-backed company
Turo lets private car owners rent out their vehicles. It's similar to Airbnb or Vrbo but for vehicles instead of homes.
The San Francisco-based company offers a wide range of cars, including Toyotas, Porsches, and Teslas, and is active in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, and France.
Investors include the venture arms of American Express, BMW, and Liberty Mutual and top venture-capital firms such as Kleiner Perkins and Google Ventures. Celebrities such as the rapper 2 Chainz and NBA and NFL players have also invested.
Turo has close to 1,000 employees and was valued at $1.5 billion in 2020, per PitchBook. The company, which was founded in 2009, registered for an initial public offering in 2021 but hasn't yet gone public.
The company had 360,000 cars listed on its platform at the end of 2023, and about 3.7 million people booked cars that year, according to a March 2024 filing. In that filing, Turo said customers' actions that result in criminal activity could affect the company's reputation and create legal liabilities β a standard line in these documents.
The company wrote that it had no control over β or the ability to predict β the actions of car renters, who it calls guests.
"We cannot conclusively verify the identity of all guests, nor do we verify or screen third parties who may be present during a trip using a vehicle booked through our platform," the March filing said. "Our trust and safety processes focus primarily on guests to reduce the risk of vehicle theft and motor vehicle accidents."
The company reported nearly $880 million in revenue in 2023, an 18% year-over-year growth. It posted $14.7 million in profits, a sharp fall from $154.7 million in 2022. Losses and high costs are common for growing tech companies, especially those that aren't yet public.
Authorities are investigating possible connections between attacks
In a press conference Wednesday, President Joe Biden said authorities were investigating whether there was any connection between the Las Vegas explosion and the New Orleans attack.
Kevin McMahill, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department sheriff, said at a press conference that the driver of the Tesla Cybertruck was killed and that seven others were injured after the vehicle exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.
"We're very well aware of what has happened in New Orleans with the event that occurred there, and the number of victims there and the additional IEDs," McMahill said, referring to the attack in New Orleans that killed 15 on Wednesday morning. "So, as you can imagine, with an explosion here on iconic Las Vegas Boulevard, we are taking all of the precautions that we need to take to keep our community safe."
Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on X that the explosion was "caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb" in the bed of the Cybertruck.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates.
"When you get to the interview, people always get nervous β it doesn't matter who you are," Lin said. "The only thing you can control is just trying to practice and get yourself a little bit more familiar with the interview process."
He and two other tech employees from Meta and Google shared their top tips to prepare before heading into an important Big Tech interview:
Mock interviews
Lin said that one of his top strategies is to do mock interviews with peers.
He uses career-building platforms such asIGotAnOffer, where people role-play interviews with people working or applying to the same companies.
"I scheduled four different mock interviews with other candidates also trying to apply for jobs at Google," Lin said.
To have a good discussion, and to be able to ask informed questions at the end of his interviews, Lin said he sets up Google Search alerts for the company at which he is interviewing.
"Before the interview, I would take a look at whatever happening in the past week and if there is any significant or big change, I ask interviewers or ask recruiters what does that mean for the company or for the industry," he said.
That shows you are interested in both the company and trends in the domain, Lin added.
Plan a list of questions
Sarra Bonouh, a product manager at Meta who has worked at Accenture, Microsoft, and Snap, said that she prepares a list of questions to ask at the end of the interview.
Her questions change based on whether the interviewer is in a leadership position or a hiring manager.
For a leader:
What is the strategy of the team and the company? How do this team's objectives and key results fit into the overall mission and strategy of the company?
What do you have in mind for the team in the next six months and the next 12 months?
What would make the person in the role that you're hiring for stand out?
For a hiring manager:
Who are the people someone in this role will be working closely with?
What does success mean for this role?
Tell me about a project the team worked on recently and the impact it had?
"I like this question a lot because it helps me evaluate the scope of work that the team has," she said about the last question. "This one I ask actually to all of the hiring managers."
Prepare a portfolio
Anthony D. Mays, who worked at Google for eight years before becoming a tech career consultant in 2022, said that it's key to preparea portfolio that stands out.
He said there's abig influx of talent coming from coding boot camps, where everyone is given an identical project template. "I can see that you didn't actually put in the effort to make something of your own."
He suggests creating a portfolio of coding projects on Github or other platforms that emulate what the role entails in real life and talking about them in interviews.
"Pretend that you're working for a real company with a team of other engineers," he said. "Nowadays, I encourage my clients to build portfolio projects in pairs or with a team of other people, and to think about how you build within a team, because that is the thing that hiring managers and recruiters are looking for."