• A British billionaire emphasized the importance of an applicant's personality to work at his hedge fund.
• Chris Hohn values employees motivated by more than money.
• The hedge fund's small team prioritizes trust and teamwork, seeking open-minded candidates.

British billionaire Chris Hohn said there's one thing that really matters in job interviews.

The founder of London-based hedge fund The Children's Investment Fund, which manages about $58 billion, told Norges Bank Investment Management CEO Nicolai Tangen in his most recent podcast episode that his top-performing employees are not just motivated by a paycheck.

Hohn said they think a lot about someone's personality when they want to work at the company.

"There's a human aspect to work," he said. The best people don't simply come to work for money, Hohn explained, they also come because they enjoy the environment.

"It's really important how we treat people, how everyone treats each other," he said. "I'll never hire someone without the blessing of my senior team because we could destroy the culture."

The Children's Investment Fund has a small investment team of only seven or eight people, with an overall head count of about 200.

"We've known each other a long time, and there's something we've built which is intangible trust," Hohn said.

He shared some insight into how to get a coveted spot at the hedge fund.

Hohn said one of the questions they ask applicants is: "What makes a good business?"

"We ask for a case study or two, and it becomes immediately obvious whether you know what you're doing," he said. "It's not enough just to be a good investor; you have to want to work in a team — not everyone wants that."

Hohn also said you need to be able to get along with people, in a way that you should be open-minded to being wrong.

"You can't be too dogmatic," he said. "The personality does matter a lot."

• Chikara Kennedy was a senior HR manager at Meta and helped guide the company through layoffs.
• She was devastated to learn in 2023 that her role had also been affected and took a solo Bali trip.
• She became a coach and now leads retreats for women who are transforming their lives and careers.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Chikara Kennedy, the 42-year-old CEO of Chikara Power Coaching, who splits her time between Mexico and Washington, DC. Business Insider has verified Kennedy's employment with documentation and edited her words for length and clarity.

I'd been working in HR for nearly 15 years when I was hired by Facebook, now known as Meta, in 2018 as a senior HR manager.

I was working out of the Chicago office and then became a remote employee in 2020 during COVID. I moved to DC in 2022, still as a remote worker, to be closer to family while going through a divorce.

At Meta, I worked closely with leaders on things like coaching, performance management, recognition programs, morale-boosting, restructuring, and organizational development.

When the company began implementing layoffs in 2023, part of my role was helping guide the company through the process. I felt passionate about doing layoffs the right way — a way that was respectful to people.

In the end, I was shocked and devastated to learn that this very Meta layoff would impact my role, too.

Despite being a high performer, I was laid off

Growing up, we're taught that if you go to school, get good grades, and do a good job, things will turn out the way they're supposed to. As a society, we make work a big part of our identities.

I'd worked for Meta for nearly five years and was a high performer. I had received great ratings, had good relationships, and was acknowledged for exceeding expectations.

But in 2023, the company laid off 10,000 employees and withdrew 5,000 open roles it had yet to fill. I was part of a team that was very severely impacted.

Despite my intimate knowledge of the process, the experience was more challenging than I anticipated. I went through all the stages of grief. I was mad, sad, embarrassed, and in disbelief. Following my divorce, I was anxious about finances, and with so many tech companies doing layoffs, I was worried about not finding another job.

I remember there was a moment when those of us impacted were all messaging each other online and saying things like: "Who has the connections? What are the next jobs that are hiring? Let me connect you."

It was encouraging, and I was happy to be among a group of star players who were helping each other. But I had to ask myself if jumping right back into a new job was really what was best for me.

Ultimately, I decided to take a step back

I'd always been empathetic toward people experiencing layoffs, but living through one in such a tough economy helped me understand the transactional nature of employment. Things can change at any time, anywhere, and so much isn't in our control.

Although it was devastating, I also began to tune into my own voice. I wanted to honor myself and not be influenced by other people, so I decided to take a solo retreat.

I booked a trip alone to Bali from DC and went with no itinerary — just the intention to enjoy myself, enjoy the sights, and look inward to figure out what I truly wanted moving forward.

The trip felt like I was on a Black woman's version of "Eat, Pray, Love." I turned off my phone and computer, connected with strangers, and did things like breath work and meditation, just trying to get my mind and thoughts together.

These practices helped quiet the noise and fear of being laid off. It shifted the way I viewed myself and the possibilities I could see for myself.

It was like I became the main character of my own life. Before the layoff, I would often ask, "What can I do to make this organization better?" But now I began to ask: "What are my goals, my strengths? What would I love to be doing on a day-to-day basis? If I'm not reacting out of hurt, embarrassment, or the need to prove I'm good enough to land another job right away, what do I truly want to do?"

For me, the answer was founding my company, Power Coaching and Consulting.

I'm now a coach, and I plan to run retreats in the next year

Since my Meta layoff, I'm currently living between Washington, DC, and Playa del Carmen in Mexico.

I've taken on leadership roles at retreats in Croatia and South Africa and am hosting my own power retreat for the first time in January at a private retreat center in Mexico.

The retreats involve women from all professions and walks of life and include activities and sessions like guided meditation, temazcal and cacao ceremonies, astrological and tarot readings, and wellness workshops. In a beautiful setting with like-minded women, I help clients explore their goals and overcome obstacles to achieve meaningful transformation in their careers and lives.

My advice for those going through a layoff

It's normal to have feelings of grief, but it's also important to remember you're not alone. A layoff isn't a reflection of you, your performance, or your value as a person; it doesn't have to define you.

If you're going through a layoff, use it as an opportunity to figure out who you are and what you want next. The biggest challenges in our lives can lead to the biggest breakthroughs if we're willing to do the work.

Do you have a story to share about dealing with a layoff? Contact this editor, Jane Zhang, at [email protected].

• Microsoft is among the latest to cut middle management jobs.
• Tech giants like Intel, Amazon, and Google are also flattening structures for efficiency.
• Experts warn that while flattening can speed decisions, it is possible to take it too far.

Companies are shedding bloated layers of management in an attempt to reduce bureaucracy. Some employees are applauding the move, known as flattening the middle, in the hopes of getting faster and boosting efficiency.

Microsoft said Tuesday it's slashing around 6,000 employees. While the days since have made it clear many of those cut were individual contributor-level engineers, executives previously told BI one motivation behind the recent cuts was to increase managers' "span of control," or the number of reports per manager.

Intel announced a great flattening last month, emphasizing more time in the office, less admin, and leaner teams.

"The best leaders get the most done with the fewest people," said the chip giant's new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, in a memo to staff.

Amazon has also increased the ratio of individual contributors to managers. They call it a "builder ratio." Google CEO Sundar Pichai told staff late last year that the company cut vice president and manager roles by 10% as part of an efficiency push. Meta has been at it for years, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg writing in a 2023 memo, "flatter is faster."

The risk is that these companies cut too many managers, leaving the remaining folks with too many direct reports.

But for now, it appears to be a risk companies are willing to take.

Agility and expertise

The logic of cutting from the middle to speed up is sound, management experts say.

"You can't go faster and be more connected to a larger ecosystem if you're having to go up and down a hierarchy for every decision," Deborah Ancona, a professor of management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Business Insider.

While some companies have been trying for decades to zap management layers, there's a new urgency to do so. Businesses exist in "an exponentially changing world," Ancona said.

Dell executives explained this to employees earlier this month, when they began reorganizing managers to have more direct reports. The company, whose head count has dropped by 25,000 in two years, also pointed to the influx of artificial intelligence as a reason it needed to move faster.

Ideally, companies would remove layers and spread decision-making throughout the organization so that those closest to customers or technology, for example, could generate ideas and make decisions, Ancona said.

"You're kind of flipping the organization," she said. "Rather than all the ideas coming from on high, you have entrepreneurial leaders who are lower down in the organization coming up with new ideas."

Bayer CEO Bill Anderson is leery of having to run everything up the chain. After taking over the German biotech company in 2023, he began implementing what he calls a "dynamic shared ownership" setup that has cut thousands of managers. Staffers come together in "mini networks" for 90-day stretches to work on projects.

"We hire highly educated, trained people, and then we put them in these environments with rules and procedures and eight layers of hierarchy," Anderson previously told BI. "Then we wonder why big companies are so lame most of the time."

Fewer managers, more reporting, more meetings?

When middle managers are cut and layers condensed, inevitably, more workers report to fewer managers. The logistics of that vary, and the success in terms of morale has a lot to do with the starting point.

Amazon started flattening last year. In September, CEO Andy Jassy ordered a 15% increase in the ratio of individual contributors to managers by March. BI reported that senior Amazon Web Services managers received a memo in January instructing them to restrict high-level hiring and increase their number of direct reports.

An Amazon spokesperson told BI at the time that the memo may have been intended for one team, but does not apply to the company at large. The Amazon spokesperson also referenced a September memo from Jassy on the importance of reducing management layers.

An AWS manager told BI this month that the flatter structure has since put more burden on employees on her team to report on what they're doing day-to-day, in addition to their actual work, since managers have less time to inspect individuals' work.

Plus, this manager said they are spending more time in meetings as they took on a more diverse group of direct reports. The Amazon spokesperson also emphasized that the individual employee's anecdote does not represent the company as a whole.

Yvonne Lee-Hawkins was assigned 21 direct reports when she worked for Amazon's human resources. She told BI that she had to quickly learn new skills to handle the load, like asynchronous work strategies, but her teams' performance suffered as her number of reports grew from 11 to 21 employees.

Weekly one-on-ones — the subject of much debate among tech titans — became impossible, and she had to cut them in half.

At Microsoft, a half-dozen employees who spoke to BI about the manager flattening trend generally regarded it as a positive step to eliminate inefficient and unnecessary levels of managers. Some managers have as few as one or two reports.

Microsoft ended up with many management layers, the people said, because it often tried to reward good engineers by promoting them to become managers. Often, those engineers-turned-managers still spent most of their time in the codebase and weren't very effective as managers.

Meanwhile, larger groups of direct reports often work better for senior employees, who need less one-on-one time and can do more things in a group setting.

A Microsoft spokesperson did not comment when asked about these factors.

Gary Hamel, a visiting professor at London Business School who lives in Silicon Valley, told BI that pushing managers to take on more direct reports can reduce micromanaging, a common bane of corporate existence.

When managers have a lot of people to oversee, it pushes them to hire people they trust, mentor rather than manage, and give up a "pretty big dose" of their authority.

"Those are all hugely positive things," he said, even if they require "a fairly dramatic change" in how managers see their role.

How many direct reports is too many?

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang famously has 60 direct reports. Managers at Dell have been told they should have 15 to 20. An AWS document viewed by BI in January mandated no fewer than eight per manager, up from six. An Amazon spokesperson told BI there are no such requirements companywide.

Gallup research indicates that the quality of a manager matters more than the number of direct reports in terms of how well teams perform. That's because more engaged managers tend to lead to more engaged teams. And small teams — those with fewer than 10 people — show both the highest and lowest levels of engagement because managers can have an outsize effect, for better or worse.

That may explain why some companies seem to thrive with dozens of direct reports per manager and others fail.

The nature of the work matters, too. When work is more complex, it can be harder for managers to oversee too many people.

Managing dozens of people gets harder when "life intersects with work," Ravin Jesuthasan, the global leader for transformation services at the consulting firm Mercer, told BI.

When employees have an issue, they often need someone to talk to about it.

"As a manager, you are the first port of call," he said.

That's one reason, Jesuthasan said, that having something like 20 direct reports would likely be "really hard." For most managers, the couple of dozen direct reports that many tech companies are aiming for is probably the limit, he said.

Strong managers can powerfully boost a company's ability to develop talent and its bottom line. A 2023 analysis from McKinsey & Company, for example, found that organizations with "top-performing" managers led to significantly better total shareholder returns over five years compared with those entities that had only average or subpar managers.

While flattening schemes may be successful at reducing bulk in the middle and speeding up decision-making, they can hinder future growth if they're not well-managed.

Jane Edison Stevenson, global vice chair for board and CEO services at the organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry, told BI that removing layers from a management pyramid can help elevate those high performers. But flatter companies may fail to develop leaders who can pull together the disparate parts of an organization.

At some point, she said, "You've got to start to make a bet on the leaders that are going to have a chance to build muscle across, not just vertically."

Two years ago, Zechariah Osburn sat down to fill out the Common Application for college. He dreaded going to school and sitting at a desk all day, but he'd always done well, so an undergraduate degree seemed like a no-brainer. His parents had pushed it, too. But staring down the application at midnight one night during his senior year, Osburn decided to scrap the plan. "I felt like a fraud," he tells me.

He didn't know what kind of career he wanted, and didn't have the money for college. Instead of taking out student loans and spending a few semesters partying and soul-searching, he decided to focus on growing his landscaping side hustle into a full-time business. Now, at 20, he's the owner of Z's Exterior Services, which does lawn care, mulching, power washing, and other landscaping services in northern Virginia. He's hired a handful of full- and part-time employees and has plans to continue expanding. And, he says, he still gets a taste of the college experience when he visits his girlfriend.

It's not that Osburn is passionate about mulching, but he does love running the business, and it's rewarding to make customers happy. "How much work you put in is how much return you're going to get," he says. Studying for hours and pouring tens of thousands of dollars into a degree doesn't always yield the same results, he says, as he hears about people taking on lots of debt and then struggling to find work.

Many Gen Zers are eyeing the ever-rising cost of college tuition, along with roiling uncertainty in many white-collar career fields, and are choosing an alternate path.

Americans are losing faith in the ROI of a college degree. In a 2023 Gallup poll, only 36% of respondents had a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the higher education system, dropping from 57% in 2015. A Pew Research study in 2024 found that just 22% of US adults thought that college was worth it if a student had to take out loans to attend. Zoomers are also most likely to feel that getting a degree is a waste of time and money, a 2025 survey from Indeed found. Per Experian, the average Gen Zer has about $23,000 in student debt. That load is starting to feel heavier now that the perks Gen Zers most want — including work-life balance, financial stability, and a path to becoming their own boss — are disappearing from white-collar jobs. Managers are calling workers back to the office and dismantling the career ladder by assigning entry-level tasks to generative AI bots and agents.

A survey from the early career site Handshake found that 62% of college seniors who were familiar with AI tools said they were at least somewhat concerned that rising automation via AI would affect their career prospects, up from 44% in 2023. Once-stable jobs in tech, consulting, recruiting, and law are all at risk of seeing the entry-level tasks increasingly given away to gen AI. Roles for recent college grads "deteriorated noticeably" in early 2025, with their unemployment rate jumping to 5.8%, up from 4.6% a year ago, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. President Donald Trump's tariffs are creating uncertainty in the market and discouraging employers from hiring new workers, and white-collar workers are feeling stuck in their roles.

Meanwhile, blue-collar jobs — some of which pay a stable six figures — are starting to look more like an oasis.

The proportion of students at two-year colleges focusing on vocational studies compared to other associate degrees grew from about 15% in 2019 to nearly 20% in 2024, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The fastest-growing jobs in the country, per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, are wind turbine technicians and solar panel installers, followed by roles in healthcare and some in tech, like data analysts or information security analysts. Jobs in construction, plumbing, electrical work, and transportation are all projected to grow faster than the average job-growth rate of 4% from 2023 to 2033.

The need for workers in renewable energy, commercial and home construction, and public infrastructure is expected to rise, thanks to projects like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and a global investment in new energy sources. Home prices are soaring in part thanks to construction worker shortages, and wages for those workers are up.

And just as demand is increasing, a swath of skilled, baby boomer laborers are getting ready to pack it up and retire. That will open up more gigs for people who want to work in these in-demand, automation-proof roles such as HVAC servicing, plumbing, and construction — and it's unlikely you'll hire a robot to come fiddle with your home's electrical wiring anytime soon. In fact, many analysts predict these fields could experience labor shortages, which is good news for Gen Z.

And where generative AI is stagnating growth in industries like tech or consulting, it's accelerating growth for young people who want to start their own businesses. ChatGPT and its ilk have become always-on assistants that help young entrepreneurs automate work like appointment scheduling and generating emails to customers — and they don't have to be put on payroll. And as the digital-first generation, Gen Z doesn't need school to train them on the kind of tech that can make these businesses more efficient.

"They're very used to working with technology; it's part of their daily life," says Gary Specter, the CEO of Simpro, which makes job and project management software for field service and trade contracting industries."You're seeing a coming together of technology and these hands-on jobs."

For some, a blue-collar pivot would mean abandoning the college dreams laid out by parents, siblings, and countless coming-of-age movies. As America's middle class grew, so did the drive for higher education. In 1970, just 11% of US adults had a bachelor's degree. By 2021, that number had swelled to 38%, according to US Census data. Sending kids to a university became less a privilege and more a given for many middle-class families. But that push ignored other viable career paths and gave rise to a stigma around blue-collar work that persists today, even as rising tuition costs have dampened the appeal of the college dream.

Ryan Daniels, 22, left behind college at the University of Florida after his freshman year in 2022 to pursue his pressure-washing business full time. "It was really shocking to people that I was going to let that opportunity go," he tells me. But he's not alone in that shift. The rate of young people enrolled in college dropped from 41% in 2012 to 39% in 2022, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Enrollment in college peaked in 2010, but has since declined from 18 million students to about 15.4 million in 2021.

Getting young people into the trades will still take a mindset shift. In a 2023 survey of US high schoolers by Jobber, a software for home professionals, 74% said they thought there was a stigma around choosing vocational school instead of a four-year college, and 79% said their parents wanted them to go to college, while only 5% said their parents encouraged vocational school. A Gallup survey found that around 70% of high school students had heard a lot about college, while less than a quarter had heard frequently about apprenticeships and vocational schools. And it may be blue-collar influencers, rather than a vocational school rep at an assembly, who pull more young people into these fields.

"Gen Z really is facing a new set of challenges," says Jennifer Herrity, who follows career trends at Indeed. "Social media has really introduced Gen Z to what working in new fields can be like."

Day-in-the-life videos have flooded YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, giving people a peek into careers that many may not have known about unless a family member worked in them. There are some that show consultants or tech workers shuttling from an early morning at Equinox to their offices and then from meeting to meeting, $9 matcha latte in hand, but the more visually interesting videos come from people doing hands-on work in their fields. There are electricians, plumbers, landscapers, and more who show themselves out in the wild getting their complicated jobs done. Osburn tells me he watched videos on social media about starting his landscape business. Now, he has 45,000 followers watching him on Instagram as he drives his trucks around Virginia . Lexi Abreu, an electrician with 200,000 followers on YouTube, walks viewers through tricky wiring jobs and makes tongue-in-cheek visual gags about working as a woman in a male-dominated profession.

While college kids pinch pennies, those who go into trades can start earning immediately. Average entry-level construction jobs start at around $19 an hour, and rise to $45 at the top level, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Maintenance and repair jobs start around $14 an hour but can go as high as $44 an hour. The average electrician and plumber make about $29 an hour, according to Indeed. Instead of surviving on cup noodles for four years, Daniels has built a business, RHI Pressure Washing, and can pay not just his own bills, but those of three employees. Already, people are increasingly seeing the value of working in the trades. In 2024, 66% of adults said they believed there were well-paid, stable jobs available to those with only high school diplomas or GEDs, up from 50% in 2018, a survey of about 1,500 people conducted by the think tank New America found.

The blue-collar perks don't mean college degrees are dying anytime soon. The median pay for a Gen Z college graduate in 2024 was $60,000, based on data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, compared to $40,000 for a high school graduate. That gap widens as college-educated workers age and advance through their fields. And some of these stable fields are hiring for college grads, too: The fastest-growing industry for new college grads is in construction, LinkedIn says, and entry-level workers are also rising in number in the utility sector and oil, gas, and mining industries.

Daniels would have graduated from college this month, but in that time, he has instead spun out his high school side hustle of pressure washing into a full business. He spends most of his day running the business side. That means using ChatGPT almost daily, whether it's to draft responses to customers or mass emails, Daniels says. Gen AI might "take away from white-collar jobs, and it really helps us out here."

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

• Last year, Kelly Benthall, now 54, and her husband quit their jobs and retired early to travel the world.
• She found the idea of starting over again in new places terrifying.
• Learning how to manage fear made it doable.

Last year, at 53, my husband and I quit our jobs in oil and gas and retired early to travel the world. Many friends assumed we were fearless — that anyone who leaves behind home, routines, and everything familiar must be chasing adventure

The truth? I'm not fearless. I'm a total scaredy-cat.

I didn't grow up traveling. We didn't hop on planes or dream about faraway places. Our family vacations were road trips to Ohio to visit relatives — reliable, predictable, safe. Most of my family still doesn't have a passport.

If you'd asked me in my 20s whether I'd ever sell everything and move from country to country, I would've shaken my head no, probably while breaking out in a cold sweat. It sounded terrifying.

Turns out, it is terrifying sometimes. And I do it anyway.

Managing retirement risk

For years, I built my life around managing risk. Raising kids, climbing the corporate ladder, and running my own consulting business all required careful planning and staying one step ahead.

But nothing prepared me for the emotional risk of walking away from that life.

The moment my husband, Nigel, and I got serious about early retirement, the what-ifs flooded in: What if we ran out of money? What if something happened to our kids or grandkids while we're gone? What if we hated it?

I've spent my life tuned in to everyone else: clients, kids, even my husband. Somewhere along the way, my empathy turned into a constant state of alert. I was always scanning for what might go wrong.

The idea of giving up control, dropping into unfamiliar places, and starting over again felt like a nightmare wrapped in an Instagram filter.

Learning that I didn't have to be fearless and just needed a plan for the fear changed everything.

Putting the tool to work

I discovered fear-setting in 2022, and it's the single most useful tool I've carried into this chapter of life. Instead of setting goals, you define the nightmare. Then you ask three questions:

1. How could I prevent it?
2. What would I do if it happened?
3. What's the cost of doing nothing?

That last one stopped me cold: What would it cost us to stay stuck, too scared to try?

It turns out I'd been using versions of fear-setting long before I even knew what to call them. I used them to calm my son after watching Hurricane Katrina coverage, walking him through every worst-case scenario. Later, I relied on them to manage my own spirals over work deadlines, breaking fear into manageable pieces.

Fear-setting works at any age — and for almost anything.

It's simpler than it sounds. You don't need a course or a coach. You just need a pen, a few quiet minutes, and the willingness to name what's scaring you out loud.

I start by writing the absolute worst-case scenario at the top of the page, even if it feels dramatic. Then, I answer the three questions honestly. I learned that getting honest about the worst case doesn't make it more likely, it makes it less terrifying.

Even now, after a year of traveling, every time we step off a plane into a new place, I still get anxious: Will I find my way back? Will I belong here?

It's rarely the big things. It's the tiny moments of unfamiliarity. It's the ones no amount of planning or money can solve. Where's the grocery store? Did we pick the wrong Airbnb? Will I meet anyone here, or will I feel completely alone?

Never feeling ready

I'm not fearless. I'm not naturally adventurous. I'm just someone who finally got tired of letting fear drive every decision.

Fear-setting gave me a way to name the scary stuff, stare it down, and ask: Is this really going to stop me?

If there's one thing I wish people understood, it's this: You're not supposed to feel ready. You don't need to wait until the fear goes away.

You just need to know that fear is part of the deal — and that you're capable of walking through it.

It has been through managing fear — instead of waiting for it to disappear — that I've changed everything.

And that's the real adventure.

• Krishna Ganeriwal, a Meta software engineer, shared four strategies that helped grow his career.
• Meta's 'year of efficiency' led to structural changes and 10,000 employees being laid off in 2023.
• Aligning with company priorities and tackling overlooked tasks can help career advancement, he said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Krishna Ganeriwal, a senior engineer at Meta in California.

Meta dubbed 2023 its "year of efficiency" and made several changes to the company's structure, including flattening management layers and laying off about 10,000 employees. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified Ganeriwal's employment history and compensation.

I moved to the US in 2021 for my master's, after working for four years as a software engineer at Texas Instruments in India.

In the summer before I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I had the opportunity to intern with Meta. I loved the scale of the projects the company worked on, and I returned to the company full time as a software engineer in 2023 — Meta's "year of efficiency."

Here are four strategies I used to get promoted and grow my salary from $200,000 to about $500,000 in the 18 months since I joined full time.

1. Swim with the tide

When company management is working toward a theme, which was efficiency in the case of Meta, I see it as a direct hint for what my priorities need to be. I tried to align myself with the same idea of efficiency over scaling and growth at all costs, which was the mindset many tech companies had previously.

That meant taking note of my knowledge gaps and upskilling so that I can help build more cost-aware infrastructure. Reorganizations and layoffs are times of major cost cutting, and it would be swimming against the tide to insist on working on time-consuming or expensive projects.

I've found it helpful to have an open ear to what company leaders are talking about at quarterly meetings and constantly ensure that I am in the middle of —or at least the periphery of — those priorities.

2. Get ready to reprioritize

Just because you've been fortunate to survive a round of layoffs, it doesn't mean there's nothing for you to change.

I tell myself that a layoff means I have to be ready to be thrown into ambiguous areas and solve problems, despite constraints such as fewer colleagues and fewer resources.

It also means I have to be open to pivoting and reprioritizing — dropping what I'm working on at the moment and switching priorities, even if it's temporarily.

3. Don't put your growth in the backseat

I've found it helpful to separate conversations about layoffs and the company's performance from those about my career growth.

Despite multiple rounds of layoffs at the company, I kept having conversations with my manager about setting new goals for myself and working toward them. I also took steps to overcommunicate and remain visible to my manager and others in my team because it plays an important role during performance reviews.

4. Be open to 'underdog' problems

One underrated strategy that helped me land promotions was looking out for problems and tasks no one was willing to work on, because they were likely busy chasing a piece of a big, exciting project.

In the past year, I've been open to being loaned out to other teams or working alone on some projects. I've found that these underdog projects pay back in the long run because they gave me expertise that very few people have.

For example, when everyone at the company was working on efficiency and AI models, I focused on neglected engineering problems that leveraged both these areas.

• I didn't expect finding a job after graduating from college to be this hard.
• Since I now have so much time on my hands, I help my grandparents from time to time.
• While I'm happy to help, I still want a full-time job.

I think Indeed may be trying to break me.

I recently found a job listing on the site. I sent in my application, but, because I have been through this before, I called the company after a day just to make sure that I didn't waste another hour. I spoke to a real person over the phone and asked if they received my résumé.

"No, sir. We don't have any openings here."

This isn't the first time I've applied to a ghost listing. It's been my new normal ever since I graduated from college less than a year ago.

I've been forced to move home and live with my parents as I continue looking for a job, which has its pros and cons. Although the job search is grueling, I'm glad I get to use this time to help out my loved ones.

This isn't how I expected my postgrad life to turn out

I was nervous once my academic career ended. I was so focused on my studies that I didn't really focus on lining up a full-time job. I knew I had a place to stay at my parents' house and that I had a pretty good résumé. I thought finding a job would be quick and easy, but it didn't work out like that.

Out of the hundred jobs I have applied to, most of the companies haven't responded. When I do get responses, they're all rejections. There's no feedback and no interviews.

To make some money, I worked as a poll worker, briefly returned to my hometown job, worked in retail during the holidays, and am doing some odd jobs for cash.

However, the long period of time without consistency has not been great mentally. I now have a lot of time on my hands as I figure out my next steps.

Thankfully, I'm using this time to help my grandparents

There are still some positives to this run of bad luck. While being back home, I have been able to help my parents, grandparents, and friends. I pick up prescriptions, make deliveries, pick up the occasional grocery order, shuttle people around, keep our house clean, and take care of yard work. It feels good to be helpful and to be putting my extra time to use.

One of the biggest ways I've been able to contribute during this unplanned unemployment is helping my paternal grandparents, who recently moved into an assisted living facility 15 minutes away.

I visit with them more and keep them company. When my 91-year-old grandfather had a fall and needed to go to the ER, I was able to help my 90-year-old grandmother, who recently had a stroke and was dealing with mobility limitations. The same grandfather has had a recent set of surgeries and appointments, and I was able to help by driving him to some of these.

I'm not giving up

While I've been able to find the positives of this experience, the feeling of frustration is overwhelming. I feel so angry for not being able to even come close to my potential after all the work I put in. It's incredibly disheartening

I'm glad I get to spend this time with the people I love and to help them out, but this is not what I wanted my postgrad life to look like.

Thankfully, I recently landed a part-time job at Target, but I'm still looking for full-time work.

While my future is still unclear, I'm not giving up. The job I want is out there, and I'm excited to land it.

• Mark Quinn lost his job to AI, but says smart thinking can help people adapt to new ways of working.
• Experts don't always agree on the impact AI will have on jobs, though many expect big changes.
• AI will likely reshape many tasks, so workers need to build their skills to stay ahead.

Mark Quinn said he lost his previous job to AI, though he doesn't think it was a sign of a coming employment purge at the hands of bots.

Quinn was working for a generative artificial intelligence startup running a team he set up to oversee the answers the bots kicked out — the proverbial human in the loop.

Eventually, as the AI improved, the company found it could manage with a smaller, more efficient set of workers, the longtime tech exec said.

"My skill and the job I was hired to do was truly no longer needed," Quinn told Business Insider.

Because there wasn't another role that was a good fit for him, he left.

The idea of losing your job to a bot is scary, and some workplace thinkers have warned about it. Yet others hold a sunnier view: Whip-smart bots will take over so much that we'll be able to add a whole lot more to our to-do lists.

The absence of a solid consensus among the tech and labor cognoscenti about AI's impact speaks to how many questions remain and how often the answer might start with "it depends."

"Part of it is, we honestly don't know," Gary Hamel, a visiting professor at London Business School who lives in Silicon Valley, told BI about the effect AI will have on jobs.

He said there are varying opinions in the AI community about whether we're already bumping up against the limits of what large language models and GenAI can do or whether there are blockbuster sequels to come.

Hamel said we've often overestimated the impact of new technology on employment.

"As far as I know, over the last 50 years, only one job category in the United States has disappeared," he said. "That is elevator operator."

The list could grow. In 2023, Goldman Sachs said that some 300 million full-time jobs globally could be at risk of being automated. More recently, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that his company might not hire software engineers this year because of how much AI agents have helped boost some coders' productivity.

"I can't think of any roles that won't be impacted," Scott Russell, CEO of the tech company NICE, previously told BI about how AI will reshape work.

'An Iron Man suit'

Adam Brotman, cofounder and co-CEO of Forum3, a boutique consulting firm that advises companies on AI adoption, told BI that he expects AI will take some jobs, change others, and lead some companies to forgo posting some roles they might once have.

"It's this weird, ambiguous, conflicting thing," Brotman said.

What is clear, he said, is that AI will make many workers far more productive.

"It's going to be an Iron Man suit," said Brotman, who once ran digital operations at Starbucks and is the former co-CEO of J. Crew.

He said the business leaders his firm talks to and who understand what AI is capable of, are asking how they can make their businesses more productive and whether they can get by without hiring as many people as a result.

Brotman expects it will take another 12 months or so of AI being on the scene for businesses to have a clearer understanding of what the technology will mean for jobs. Ultimately, he predicts there will be a fallout, yet one that's not evenly distributed.

For a job like software development, Brotman said, AI can do a lot of the programming and quality assurance work, yet someone working with AI to generate code can also do a lot more.

He said it's become harder to answer the question of what AI will mean for employment because, as the technology improves, many of the gains will come not just from making organizations more efficient but from helping companies innovate and create new products and lines of business.

"It's not just about productivity. It's about this abundance," he said.

Ravin Jesuthasan, the global leader for transformation services at the consulting firm Mercer, expects there to be a "ton of dislocation" within companies and across industries that might not result in massive job losses across the US economy, but that will remake a lot of roles.

He told BI that employees will be able to get more done, but that AI will also create a lot of work.

This includes the need for people to ensure that the tech is functioning, that it's calibrated correctly, and that the output is used in an "intelligent, ethical, responsible way," Jesuthasan said.

Think about tasks, not jobs

Quinn, who lost his previous job to AI's prowess, is now the senior director of AI operations for Pearl, an AI search platform for professional services that pairs GenAI with human experts to verify responses are accurate.

He said the best way to think about how AI will affect work isn't necessarily about which jobs or industries are most at risk of being upended, but rather about the tasks and type of work that will change. Quinn, who's held roles at Waymo, LinkedIn, Apple, and Amazon, said AI will take on many formulaic and rote tasks.

He said that, as with any tech innovation, there will be some amount of upheaval, but that people can also learn to work with AI. The focus should be on what workers can do with the extra time they'll have.

Quinn advises companies to help build workers' skills and embrace different ways of getting things done. Otherwise, he said, employees could get left behind.

"The longer that people sit on the sidelines wondering if this wave is coming, the more at risk they are of getting caught off guard by the undertow," Quinn said.

• Abigayle Peterson secured multiple job and internship offers by strategically networking.
• Peterson's experiences as an adoptee and challenges in school shaped her career approach.
• She emphasizes cold outreach, attending specialized events, and being a 'go-giver.'

Being an adoptee from China didn't just impact my passion for building inclusive communities — it ignited it. My dream was battle-tested as I grew up, switching schools multiple times, dealing with bullying, and ultimately leaving college early to finish online due to my living situation.

Instead of extinguishing my spirit, these experiences crystallized into a unique superpower: I now understood how to use my voice as an agent for positive change.

I've persuaded tech executives to crown the mental health nonprofit I founded with an award, encouraged others to speak up in class, and ultimately landed multiple internships and jobs.

I'm now 23, and I've secured three internship offers at Bank of America, received offers from multiple startups, and became the first product manager at SeekOut through networking alone. I've landed eight roles in total, both temporary and permanent.

Here are my top three tips to channel your voice to maximize your networking.

1. Master cold outreach

I didn't attend a top school for computer science. Knowing I probably couldn't rely on my environment for an abundance of career opportunities, I created my own.

My first goal was to get a summer internship. I joined free online career communities, such as Rewriting the Code, to meet other ambitious students. I also emailed my favorite professors to inquire about research internships and consistently posted on LinkedIn. This extremely simple concept of asking for what you want and expressing who you are accelerated my career growth.

If you don't know where to start, first identify your top career goal and then write a message to someone who can potentially help. Crafting the ideal message requires three simple steps that I honed for years:

1. Introduce yourself as who you want to be
2. Concise is key — no busy person has time to read multiple paragraphs
3. Include a call-to-action as a question that creates a win-win situation

Many say cold outreach is a numbers game and you just get lucky. While it is a numbers game, solidifying the right approach matters, too. If you follow the three steps and reach out to people on LinkedIn, via email, and other platforms, you'll get closer and closer to your dream career opportunity.

2. Skip school career fairs and attend specialized events instead

My hot take is that most school career fairs won't truly level up your career. If you have ambitious goals, I recommend meeting actual hiring decision-makers at in-person tech events. San Francisco and NYC offer panels, fireside chats, hackathons, and mixers. You can find these events on apps like Luma or Meetup, and by following LinkedIn Top Voices.

Founders at tech companies can make invaluable introductions, invite you to join their teams as an intern, invest in your ideas, or even mentor you. I attended the free Harvard Women in Entrepreneurship fireside chat with the nonprofit Foundess and connected with multiple clients seeking career coaching.

I teach this approach because many driven students and job seekers don't try it, which means competition can be nearly nonexistent. Always try to meet the speakers, introduce yourself, and casually mention that you're looking for your next career move. I've seen multiple people succeed with this strategy and eventually land great opportunities.

3. Be a 'go-giver'

Being a go-giver is a highly underrated hack. If you want to meet decision-makers who can unlock your next career opportunity, ask to interview your role models for your newsletter, podcast, blog, or community.

By giving first, you build genuine connections, strengthen your personal brand, and gain real experience for your résumé. This strategy costs nothing but can dramatically expand both your network and your net worth.

I'm currently a founding team member at Start Your Fashion Business Academy, where we help driven women leave their 9-5s and start fashion empires. These three tips collectively advanced my career in ways I never would've imagined.

Abigayle Peterson is a former product manager and founder. Find her on LinkedIn and at [email protected].

• As a restaurant reviewer, I get frequent opportunities to eat at amazing restaurants.
• I started easing my toddler into trying different things at home and having her review them.
• I make early reservations and bring no mess, no noise activities for the table.

I began writing about food almost a decade ago, and as a restaurant reviewer, I frequently get to eat at incredible restaurants. Food is a passion of mine, but after becoming a solo parent, it didn't make sense to spend so many evenings away from my young daughter, Via.

I wondered — would it be possible to bring her into that world?

When Via was a baby, I struggled to eat out with her, even at casual, family-friendly restaurants. It was hard for me to focus on anything other than her and the effects of any noise or mess she made. But as she got older — and I became more confident as a parent — it began to feel more manageable.

We started practicing at home

Standard parenting advice on eating out with kids focuses more on "surviving" the meal than enjoying the process, but I wondered if there was a different way.

Toddlers often have a reputation for being "food critics," so what would happen if I leaned into that role? I started at home, initiating "smorgasbord nights," where we would make several new dishes, and my daughter was in charge of tasting each and determining which ones we should make again. She loved having that power and bravely began trying a variety of foods that most two-year-olds wouldn't even touch.

Then, to help my naturally curious daughter understand restaurants, I started to explain to her what was happening around us when we went out to eat. Before meals, I used a toddler prep book that explained some basics (the job of a host and a server and how ordering works). Then, at the restaurant, I would point out and describe more of what we were encountering. After we ordered, I made sure we kept out of the way while walking her around the restaurant. She'd watch, mesmerized, as the bartender mixed drinks in a cocktail shaker, peer into open kitchens as chefs barked orders, and giggle at the whimsical design elements that filled the restaurant.

She discovered new foods

Sometimes, of course, it was not quite so enchanting. If I noticed that she was feeling upset or overwhelmed, I would take her outside to try to find somewhere quiet to give her space to let her feelings — or her wiggles — out. It didn't always go well. But, once the food arrived, we could usually get back on track.

Via loved playing the food critic, and I encouraged her to share all of her opinions (quietly) on how the food looked, smelled, and tasted. "Yucky" wasn't an acceptable review, but I'd ask her why she didn't like a dish — was it too bitter? Too spicy? Or just new and unfamiliar?

With this approach, my daughter discovered countless new foods that she liked. I would try to hide the surprise on my face as she decided she loved mushrooms, radishes, or spinach (which, to be fair, she had mistaken for basil). But that didn't mean it was easy. I am constantly aware of the tables around us to make sure we aren't disrupting anyone's dinner or the people working in the restaurant.

I bring stuff to keep her entertained, just in case

Even when a 2-year-old is a well-mannered foodie, they are still unpredictable. However, I've found we have the best luck when I make the reservation for a 5 p.m. early dinner before Via gets too tired — and while the restaurant ambiance is slightly more casual.

I feed her a snack before we leave for the restaurant, but I don't bring any with me to ensure she's hungry enough to try the food when it arrives. Since many of these restaurants have beautiful table settings, I play it safe by bringing a small suction placemat/plate for my daughter and a plastic bag to bring it home once it's used. I also keep an emergency stash of no-mess, no-noise activities in my purse, like a small drawing pad or sticker book. Plus, of course, wipes for clean up and extra cash for tips.

No technique will guarantee you a flawless night at a fine dining restaurant with a toddler, but since food is my passion, it's something we keep trying. Like families who love to ski and get their children in the snow early, I try to share what I love doing with my daughter.

At two and a half years old, Via can pronounce "sommelier" and has proudly tried (and liked!) oysters.

I've begun to realize that at home, I'm often distracted during meals: cooking, cleaning, and doing dishes. Going to nice restaurants with my little one used to be stressful, but now it's time I cherish her.

• Ryan Frankel and his wife, Evelyn, launched Thrift Vintage Fashion in 2020.
• The business supplies secondhand clothing nationwide.
• Thrift Vintage Fashion saw a 41% revenue increase after tariffs were announced.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ryan Frankel, a 36-year-old business owner in Miami. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My primary business is Thrift Vintage Fashion, which I launched in 2020 with my wife, Evelyn. We supply secondhand clothing — mostly men's wear, such as T-shirts, sweatshirts, and denim — to stores nationwide. When Trump took office in January, our sales took a steep decline.

Once he came into office, there was a lot of uncertainty. However, we noticed a significant incline once tariffs were announced in February. From February to March, we saw an unprecedented 41% increase in revenue (gross sales). Then we had our best March and April since we started the business.

I can't attribute our growth to anything other than the tariffs.

My family has been in this business for three generations

My grandfather began selling men's secondhand clothing after World War II. In the 90s, my father primarily sold denim and Levi's. When I started working with my father in 2010, we brought the business online and got our name out there.

After I launched Thrift Vintage Fashion, which is primarily a wholesale B2B business, it popped off right away. We did over $1 million in revenue in our first year working out of our garage during peak COVID in 2020. This was mainly due to my experience working with my father over the previous decade and improving the model and ordering efficiency through the TVF website.

Once Trump raised the tariffs, many of our clients reached out to us

Many clients — primarily secondhand clothing stores (big and small), vintage clothing stores, and online resellers — reached out to ask if the tariffs had affected our business. There was a lot of uncertainty, but we were able to confidently say, "No, we're not affected, and we're not going to raise our prices." Since then, we've just seen a slew of new orders come in, in addition to existing clients ordering a lot more.

Consumers preparing for prices to go up is another factor that has increased our secondhand sales. Everyone's talking about how fashion prices are going up, but since secondhand circulates within the US, no tariffs are affecting it at all.

It seems more people are interested in entering the reselling business

People are potentially looking into reselling more, which is positively affecting my wholesale business. We've seen steady growth across the US.

The US has been our primary market for the last three years, and we see increasing interest from new and existing resale clients. Our numbers are growing, our existing customers are doubling down on their business, and there's increasing demand in the secondhand market. I'm biased, as this is my career, but it's an excellent opportunity for shoppers and business owners to consider selling and buying secondhand goods.

There's so much of it out there: eBay, estate sales, garage sales, or storage units. A lot of secondhand merchandise is way better quality than most things produced today, and there's a growing demand for all of it. We're buying more goods and building our supply chain, prepping for growth in both wholesale and retail sectors.

The main challenges are the high costs of collecting, processing, and reselling these garments

Believe it or not, many used clothing articles cost more than many new clothing items made today. So, our company is always up against the perception of selling something used for the same price or more than new clothing. However, this perception is shifting daily, with people recognizing the value of secondhand versus cheap new fashion.

Every day, we're shedding the old stigma of secondhand shops being viewed as "less than." The fact is that the items we sell are in excellent condition. While many brands produce cheap, throwaway fast fashion, older clothes were often made more durably. Whether the clothes were made five or 15 years ago, many desirable styles have become rare by nature and hard to find, thus increasing their value.

The desire for secondhand items will probably continue

If you're already selling secondhand items, that's great; stick with it. You're probably seeing increases already, and I think it will continue. If you're not selling secondhand, especially if you're worried about tariffs, I would consider trying to implement it into your existing business.

There are so many significant factors in buying secondhand that the average American consumer slowly recognizes more each day. There are also opportunities to grow a brand reselling the billions of secondhand garments in circulation. I believe we're past the days of "thrifting" carrying a negative connotation. We're scratching the surface of what's possible with secondhand.

If you're a small-business owner with a unique story that you would like to share, please email the editor, Manseen Logan, at [email protected].

• I was surprised when my parents gave me $5,000 for my wedding, bringing our budget to $10,000.
• On a tight budget, I got creative with the planning, but then I was laid off.
• Although I don't know what the future holds, I'm still getting married on an even tighter budget.

I wasn't born into money. I live paycheck to paycheck on a $70,000 salary while paying off credit cards and college loans from 16 years ago. But still, I'm planning my dream wedding.

I was incredibly surprised when my parents offered $5,000 for the wedding. My dad has an 8th-grade education, and my mom is an immigrant from Austria. They've worked hard to build themselves up and have done well for themselves, but they still pinch their pennies and avoid overspending.

I've also never asked them for money. I've been working, in some capacity, since I was 14 and have always relied on myself to pay for everything.

Thanks to my parents' $5,000, my fiancé and I have pushed our budget to $10,000, knowing we would foot some of the bill ourselves and might possibly get additional family gifts.

Of course, that's a wedding on a budget, but I didn't know how much worse it would get.

I've been a bride on a tight budget

Along with my $70,000 salary, my partner is a freelance journalist, meaning his income is unpredictable. We also live in Chicago, where the average price of a wedding is around $56,000. The majority of wedding venues here cost $20,000 just to rent the space. Food or drinks aren't included.

In a sea of wealthy brides from Lincoln Park, I'm a Southside bride just trying to fib my way into looking fancy.

I designed and made our letterpress invitations ($560), we found a gorgeous wedding venue ($5,500), I scoured Reddit for tips on how to save on flowers ($700 box of real foliage from Costco), and we are having mezze for our rehearsal dinner ($1,000) on a patio at a flower shop ($700).

I splurged on my wedding dress ($2,000), but we are buying our alcohol (TBD) and decided to make our wedding playlist using the app WeddingDJ ($5 a month).

Despite our calculations, the budget increased to $20,000 because we quickly discovered that every little detail adds up.

We were going to be cutting it close, but with my regular paycheck, my fiancé thought we could make it work.

I was laid off, but I wasn't devastated

When I learned the news that I was being laid off, I had just paid for our shuttle service ($788). I worked remotely and saw the Google Meet invitation pop-up for the next day. I had a day to pace around the house and prepare for my 8 a.m. layoff video meeting.

As a journalist for the past 11 years, I've always imagined how I would react if I got laid off. Tears, for sure. Panic, absolutely. But instead, I felt none of those things. I simply laughed.

It's my typical shoddy luck to be having a wedding at 35 years old and lose my income just a few months before the big date.

What could I do? I could sulk. I could lie on the couch. I could freeze up and not do anything. Or I could contact every editor I knew, reach out to all of my contacts, and let them know my situation.

So that's exactly what I did.

As a result, the response has been overwhelming. Friends and former coworkers have been emailing me job listings, sending me a $5 Venmos for coffee, or simply telling me to "hang in there."

My plan for the future and our wedding

If I don't get a full-time job in the next few months — which, let's be real, in this job market I probably won't — I'll be jumping back into freelancing full time after a five-year hiatus.

Is it glamorous? No. Is it what I thought I would be doing at this stage in my career? No. Am I still on severance and not fully realizing how much shit could hit the fan? Yes, so we can circle back on this later. But for now, I feel hopeful.

I'm getting married. Nothing will stop that. There may be some aches and pains when reworking the budget. I might not get to buy as many candles as I wanted. I don't need a hairstylist; I can do it myself. No one needs to know my wedding shoes are $15 from Depop. I can let this news crush me, or I can pull up my bootstraps and carry on.

I was already cutting costs on so many things, and to be honest, it makes planning a wedding more creative, and now that inspiration has intensified. Figuring out alternative fabrics for tablecloths, searching for vintage cakestands, making and printing our programs — all of it becomes more tangible and personal.

And now, lucky for me, I have all the time in the world to plan the party of our lives.

• People are increasingly turning to AI assistants at work to record meetings and take notes.
• But how should you use them around coworkers? Do you give a heads up? Stop if someone is opposed?
• Experts from the Emily Post Institute weighed in for us on the emerging etiquette around AI tools.

More and more business meetings have a nonhuman participant: AI.

People are increasingly enlisting AI assistants to sit in on their calls and meetings at work, relying on the technology to record, take notes, and generate summaries or transcripts after the fact.

And while many of the etiquette rules around work are well-established, the best practices around AI in a meeting setting represent a new and evolving Wild West. Do you tell your coworkers you're using AI? Do you boot your tech assistant from the meeting if an attendee is uncomfortable with it?

We asked Daniel Post Senning and Lizzie Post, etiquette experts with the Emily Post Institute, to weigh in on the topic. Their book, "Emily Post's Business Etiquette," which touches on AI in the workplace, goes on sale May 20.

"Any time you record, you want to let someone know," Daniel Post Senning told BI.

"It's just nice to give people a heads-up when something different, unexpected, or that's going to record them is going to be a part of the equation," said Lizzie Post. "Just to give them a heads-up about what they're going to see, what they're going to interact with."

You can also ask if anyone would like a copy of the AI-generated transcript or summary after the call.

"It makes perfect sense that you might say to somebody why that recording is in place and what benefit they might get from it," Post Senning added. "I've learned that if I describe the benefits, all of a sudden they're excited about it and they get the same benefit out of it."

But you should be prepared to stop the recording or other usage of an AI assistant if greeted with pushback from hesitant coworkers.

"If someone says no, they're not comfortable with it, they don't like it, they don't like the whole idea of it, or they just don't like being recorded, be willing to shut it off," he added. If you're not, be prepared for them not to participate in the meeting.

As more people experiment with ChatGPT and other AI tools in their personal lives and at work, the etiquette surrounding their use at work is still developing.

"AI made it into the book, but it's one where the leaps in it and the ways that people are using it are more ubiquitous and different than they were even six months ago," said Post Senning.

"That's an area that's moving very fast right now, and the core advice wouldn't be any different, but I think the space that it would take up in the book and the ways we would talk about it — that would be a likely difference in another edition that came out even six months later or a year later."

Has your or a friend's use of AI led to tension at work or in your friend group? Contact the reporter at [email protected]

• Eric Schmidt warned that anyone, from artists to doctors, who doesn't embrace AI will be left behind.
• The former Google CEO recently used AI to get up to speed quickly on a rocket company he bought.
• Schmidt warned that the pace of change could catch many off guard.

Eric Schmidt thinks every worker, from CEOs to artists, needs to get to grips with AI — or risk being left behind.

The former Google CEO argued in a recent TED interview that the speed of AI progress was forcing a fundamental shift in every job, from the arts to business to science.

"Each and every one of you has a reason to use this technology," Schmidt said, referring to AI.

"If you're an artist, a teacher, a physician, a businessperson, a technical person, if you're not using this technology, you're not going to be relevant compared to your peer groups and your competitors and the people who want to be successful. Adopt it, and adopt it fast."

Schmidt, who ran Google from 2001 to 2011, says AI tools let anyone get up to speed in almost any field. He pointed to his recent decision to buy a rocket company despite knowing little about aerospace.

"It's an area that I'm not an expert in, and I want to be an expert, so I'm using deep research," Schmidt said, who was named CEO at Relativity Space in March, a California rocket startup vying to compete with SpaceX.

He said this kind of rapid learning was just the beginning. Schmidt pointed to studies that estimate AI could drive a "30% increase in productivity" annually — a jump so dramatic that "economists have no models for what that kind of increase looks like."

While predicting that entire industries could be disrupted as AI simplifies or automates work, some professions will evolve rather than disappear in his view.

"Do you really think that we're going to get rid of lawyers? No, they're just going to have more sophisticated lawsuits," Schmidt said.

'Marathon, not a sprint'

The pace of change may catch many off guard: "As this stuff happens quicker, you will forget what was true two years ago or three years ago. That's the key thing. So my advice to you all is ride the wave, but ride it every day."

When asked if he had any advice for those feeling overwhelmed by the pace of change, Schmidt, who now advises governments and startups on tech strategy, offered some perspective from his own experience.

"One thing to remember is that this is a marathon, not a sprint," he said. "Every day you get up, and you just keep going."

At the AI summit in Paris in February, Schmidt criticised Europe's AI laws as too strict but insisted that regulation was essential. "It's really important that governments understand what we're doing and keep their eye on us," he told BBC News.

He's made similar warnings before, calling in December for "meaningful control" over military AI.

• Sally Ann McCarter, 85, works part-time at a fulfillment company in Pennsylvania.
• She retired at 73 with little savings and quickly returned to work for financial stability.
• Despite minimal savings, McCarter values staying busy and connected in and out of the office.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sally Ann McCarter, 85, who works part-time at a fulfillment company in Pennsylvania. Though she retired at 73 with almost no savings, she quickly returned to work and has been at her company for over a decade with no plans to stop. She said not doing much planning for retirement, though oftentimes stressful, has its benefits. Her words have been edited for length and clarity.

I am perfectly satisfied with my situation. There could have been things that would have been better had I thought about them, but I can't change it.

I started out as a secretary at a teachers' college before moving to a steel company, where I stayed for 43 years in the sales department.

I didn't have savings at all after buying land for my house because I never thought about retirement. For many years, my Social Security didn't cover everything, which I waited until 65 to take.

I was ready to retire at 73. But I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I thought I might do some traveling, but my husband was no longer with me, and it's no fun to travel by yourself. I really missed being busy. Within a month or two, I was ready to unretire. I never thought I would have to get hired at my age, but I got hired right away.

I now get $2,547 monthly. I get retirement money from the steel company, which is around $1,000 a month and helps a great deal. I could make it without work, but I would have to be very careful what I spend it on.

Unretiring and working at 6 a.m.

I went back to work. I missed the people and the company. I've been there for 12 years at a fulfillment company, and now I sit at the front desk and greet clients.

I am the first person to come to the office. I unlock the door every morning and let in clients, finding out who they are and who they want to see. I am a very early riser, and while our company doesn't open until 8:30 a.m., I go in and open it at 6 a.m. I do not charge them for it because it's my decision. I work until 12:30 p.m.

I answer the company phone and forward it to the person who should get the call. I've told them that whenever someone has extra work and no one else to do it, I'm available. I've been doing a lot for our accounting department while one of their members is out sick.

With the house and job, I'm making out all right financially, but I'm not saying I have much extra left over. I wish I did, but it just doesn't work that way.

Navigating loneliness and discovering peace

After my husband passed, I've been by myself, and it's a long day when you're by yourself, regardless of the work you have to do. I had two brothers, who I lost, and just lost my sister-in-law. My other relatives are in the Carolinas. People are important in staying mentally active.

I have a couple of friends, including one in his 90s, whom I visit occasionally. I have friends at work, a husband and wife, whom I meet on Friday nights for dinner. I have a neighbor who is very nice and thoughtful and does a lot for me, such as my taxes.

I take no medications whatsoever. I've only been in the hospital once in my life, and that was for appendicitis. I go to the doctor once every three months for a checkup, and he says, "I don't know what you're doing, but keep doing it."

I still have a mortgage and expenses. I used my savings to buy land, and then put a house on it. It's a log house on four acres, ranch-style with three bedrooms and two baths. It's very comfortable.

My husband wanted this house, and he got to enjoy it for about six years before he passed. I now spend my time taking care of the house. There's always some expense around the home I need money for. I just had several trees taken down, and there's an awful lot of dust I'm going to have to clear out.

Try to put something back from your paycheck each week so that you don't have a hard time. Not everybody is as fortunate as I am to be able to get along. Pre-planning is very important, but you should enjoy life.

I'm going to continue working for as long as I can do it. I'm taking each day as it comes. No one knows how long they have. I don't look too far in the future because you never know. That's just life.

• TikTokers are posting clips of interviews with glitching AI bots.
• These cases are rare and likely staged, professors told Business Insider.
• AI interviews are on the rise, and glitches can erode trust in the hiring process.

TikTok videos of glitchy AI interviews have gone viral in recent weeks, but don't worry if you're due for a job interview soon.

One user, who goes by Freddie, posted a video on May 3 of an AI assistant named "Catherine Appleton" glitching and spewing gibberish during his job interview. As of Thursday, his video had 8.8 million views.

"Should I email them? I was expecting a real human," he wrote in the caption.

Another TikTok user named Ken shared a clip of her interview, in which the AI assistant repeated the phrase "vertical bar pilates" on loop.

Neither responded to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Your next job interview probably won't involve a glitching AI bot

Yes, the viral TikToks are creepy. But they're probably not your future.

"The TikTok videos showcasing glitches or malfunctions are likely either doctored or represent rare, isolated incidents," said Sriram Iyer, an adjunct senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore Business School.

They "should not be considered a common phenomenon," he added.

Tan Hong Ming, the deputy head and senior lecturer in the department of analytics and operations at NUS Business School, said social media "tends to amplify things."

"It can make something appear far more common than it actually is through repetition and viral sharing," he said.

Tan, who also serves as lead advisor to a Singapore-based AI recruitment firm, said the looping audio is "likely dramatized or re-enacted to drive engagement and shares." He said he has not come across this specific glitch in AI interviews, but occasional breakdowns aren't surprising.

Many companies are using AI-powered recruitment tools which are often "wrappers around the same core models or APIs."

Some of them may not use the latest or most stable versions, which could explain why similar glitches show up across platforms, he said.

Unaizah Obaidellah, a senior lecturer specializing in AI at Malaysia's University of Malaya, said insufficient or irrelevant data could also be a culprit. If the bots are not trained with enough relevant examples, their quality suffers.

She added that the incidents portrayed on the videos could reflect the larger race to deploy AI faster than we're ready for, which is "quite worrying."

AI interviews on the rise

Emily DeJeu, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business who specializes in AI communication and etiquette, told BI earlier this week that AI-powered video interviews are likely to become more common as companies seek to streamline and automate early hiring stages.

Any time technology promises to save time and money and make everything faster, "we by default pursue it — there's a kind of inevitability to it," she said.

Despite what the TikToks might suggest, candidates aren't necessarily turned off by bots, said Iyer, who has worked in HR tech for 20 years.

What to do if your interview bot glitches

Glitches during AI interviews aren't just awkward.

"Glitches chip away at trust and can make the hiring process feel impersonal or even unfair," said Tan, especially if companies are not upfront about conducting an AI interview.

"They undermine the candidate's experience," he said, adding that employers need to "build in strong fallback options" and monitor these tools closely in real-world settings.

"Otherwise, what feels like a time-saving solution could quietly become a systemic problem," he added.

For candidates, the key is not to panic.

If an AI bot malfunctions mid-interview, Tan recommends emailing the hiring manager with a screenshot or recording of what happened.

"Most should offer a redo assuming the candidate isn't already put off by the idea of being interviewed by a bot in the first place," he said.

Unaizah, from the University of Malaya, said candidates can also request feedback from the HR team on their interview performance.

If there's clear evidence the interview wasn't properly assessed — or wasn't reviewed by a human — ask for an in-person interview, if possible, she said.

"If all fails or your gut feeling says otherwise, perhaps it's best to look for other companies," said Unaizah. "Target companies that prioritize human-centered hiring."

When Laurie Schive and her husband opened Blue Loon Bakery in a small New England town in 2018, she didn't expect hiring and keeping workers would present much of a challenge.

After all, earlier in her career, Schive darted around dozens of countries as a clandestine service officer for the CIA, focusing on limiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction. She later served as a director of global risk consulting at a Big Four firm.

Nonetheless, finding people to bake the European-style viennoiserie and sourdough breads she'd grown to love living abroad wasn't easy, Schive told Business Insider.

Harder yet was getting them to stay, she said.

Hiring in the restaurant business has rarely been straightforward. Now, to attract and retain staffers, some employers say it's necessary to take a kitchen-sink approach: deploying various benefits, training, technology, and added flexibility in scheduling.

An all-of-the-above strategy is often necessary because labor shortages remain a perennial challenge in the restaurant and food service industry, which is estimated to employ about one in 10 US workers. The National Restaurant Association projects that the industry will add 200,000 jobs in the US in 2025, boosting employment to 15.9 million by year-end.

At so-called quick-service restaurants, many workers don't last a year or even six months, David Henkes, a senior principal at the market research firm Technomic, told BI.

"When you talk to restaurants about what they're doing, a lot of it just involves trying to stem the flow," he said, referring to the succession of hires and quits. That's because people often view restaurant work not as a career but as an "entry-level stepping stone," Henkes said.

For that reason, and because industry profit margins often hover around a scant 3% to 5%, it can be tough to persuade bosses to invest in workers who might not even last an entire burrito season. Yet, Henkes said, restaurants are increasingly putting money into hourly workers by offering "carrots" like partial college tuition, scholarships, and 401(k) plans.

These measures, Henkes said, "show that the restaurant is investing in the person." That, in turn, can pay off by reducing the share of workers who hand in their aprons well before making it a year in the job.

Finding a career, not just a job

The burrito chain Chipotle's turnover among hourly restaurant workers — crew and managers — dropped from 164% in 2022 to 145% in 2023 and then to 131% in 2024, the company told BI. Turnover above 100% means that the business, like many of its peers, has to replace more workers in a year than it employs at one time.

Salaried restaurant managers and field staff have also been leaving the Newport Beach, California-headquartered company at lower rates in recent years.

These are decreases that Lois Alexis-Collins, Chipotle's chief people officer for field operations, attributes in part to the company's efforts to show workers that there are ways to progress in a career rather than just hold down a job.

That growth could mean going from burrito slinger to regional vice president, which involves overseeing as many as 500 locations. Compensation for those management jobs tops $600,000 annually, the company said. Alexis-Collins said part of the messaging to newbies includes being clear about what it takes to get ahead.

"You're not guessing," she said. More than 85% of Chipotle managers started on store crews, Alexis-Collins said.

The company offers quarterly bonuses of a week's pay to crew members whose restaurants do well, up to $5,250 a year for education, and a debt-free degree program.

Still, most of its restaurant workers "come in wanting a job," she said.

Alexis-Collins said Chipotle has tried to make improvements, especially at the general manager level, because they are "the captain of the ship."

One effort involves an artificial intelligence platform that chats with job candidates, collects their information, schedules interviews, and sends offer letters on a manager's behalf. Chipotle thinks the tool, called Ava Cado, could cut the time it takes to hire restaurant workers by as much as 75%. That's a help to management.

"The more stable the restaurant leader is, the better retention for the crew team," Alexis-Collins said.

Chad Moutray, the National Restaurant Association's chief economist, likewise told BI that having the right manager in place matters not only for the bottom line but also for "making sure that your workers are sticking around."

He said a lot of food service workers tend to get jobs at places where they already eat. That creates a level of buy-in from the start, Moutray said. Yet, for employees to stay, they also need to feel appreciated, have colleagues they like working with, and have managers who lay out what's expected, he said.

Getting tech to do some gruntwork

Henkes, from Technomic, said more restaurants are making "a big push" to increase job satisfaction by using technology to take some menial tasks off workers' plates. That can include adding kiosks where customers place orders or introducing automation to the back-of-house areas where food gets prepped.

Henkes said that while a lot of the investments that restaurants are making in technology relate to labor, the goal generally isn't to replace workers. Instead, he said, it's to do things like automate taking inventory to free up workers to interact with customers.

"What it's doing is redeploying them to higher-value activities," Henkes said, referring to technology.

He said software that juggles workers' shift requests can give employees more predictability and flexibility in their schedules. That's important for boosting job satisfaction, but it also helps restaurant workers who hold down more than one job.

"It has become a very scientific approach to making sure that people are scheduled when they want to be and that shifts are covered," Henkes said.

Boosting pay and benefits

Schive, at Blue Loon Bakery, said that while labor is the cost that she has the most control over, corralling employees is the hardest thing about running the business.

"You recruit them, you train them, and then you have to retain them," she said.

Schive uses a calculator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to determine a living wage for full-time workers at her New London, New Hampshire, bakery, which occupies a white clapboard house built in the 1830s and an attached barn.

As the pandemic began to subside and workers in many industries stepped up their job-hopping, Schive and her co-owner and husband, Mike Morgan, decided they needed to boost pay and other benefits, especially for full-time workers.

Blue Loon covers 75% of full-time workers' healthcare premiums and offers a retirement account with a 3% match.

Recently, the bakery added six weeks of paid family medical leave for part-time and full-time workers.

"I don't know that it really contributed a large part to our recruiting effort, but it helps," Schive said.

She and her husband have worked with real estate agents to try to find workers a place to live in a tight housing market. The couple also let an employee use a small cottage on their property while she looked for a home.

Schive, who is the chair of the Bread Bakers Guild of America, said other bakeries and restaurants had taken similar steps to help workers secure housing because a dearth of affordable options can be a barrier to attracting employees.

Blue Loon now has more than two dozen staffers in place for the busy summer tourist season — about double what it has in winter.

The goal now is to keep them. That includes the overnight baker Schive hired after pandemic lockdowns temporarily closed a nearby college where he had been working.

"I'm holding onto him like grim death," she said, "because he's wonderful."

• Alex George, 29, was fired from her TV job while undergoing cancer treatment in 2018.
• Baking was George's outlet. Now, she's making a living off of it.
• George encourages those making a career pivot to take baby steps toward their new vision.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Alex George, a 29-year-old baker and content creator living in Philadelphia, about her career pivot following her Ewing's sarcoma diagnosis. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I truly loved baking from a young age. When I'd watch TV, I'd usually opt for Food Network and loved every single show. That was a big part of wanting to make — and also loving — food.

Now, I have my dream job as an almost full-time professional baker and content creator. I never thought this would be the life I'd be living.

I thought I knew what my life would look like

I went to the University of Michigan and got a degree in public policy. I figured that after a couple of years interning on the Hill, I would end up working in something tangentially political. Then I interned at a news station and thought, "Maybe I find journalism more interesting."

After graduating in 2017, I moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and started my career in journalism at a local Sinclair-owned station. You're working the worst shifts as a reporter, and I didn't bring any baking ingredients or many pans. Occasionally, I'd make myself a batch of cookies, but I wasn't doing it a lot. A part of my life was missing.

Baking brought me joy while I was sick

I got sick while I was in Chattanooga and was misdiagnosed a couple of times down there. I finally got to the right doctor who was able to tell me what was going on — I had Ewing's sarcoma, a rare bone cancer. I flew back home to Philadelphia, went through an egg-freezing process, and started a terrible chemo regimen.

It was a tough time. But when you don't have a lot of energy, baking is a great hobby, especially when you have a family that's willing to help you do the clean-up and all of the mise en place — the preparation.

Baking brought me joy and happiness, so I kept with it. I just baked and baked and brought it into the hospital. The nurses and doctors would eat my food.

I practiced taking photos of the food, which I shared on social media — primarily on Instagram — on an account called Cooking with Cancer. It had very few followers: Most of them were nurses, doctors, family members. I would upload a really crappy picture of a cookie, and my followers would still be very supportive.

'I think they're going to fire you'

A few days after an infusion, Sinclair representatives asked me for a meeting. My dad said, "I think they're going to fire you." I thought, surely they couldn't; I had a contract with them that technically wasn't supposed to end until two years after my initial signing date.

I couldn't fathom how it'd be possible to fire somebody on disability leave. When the HR person told me the news over the phone, I felt tears well up in my eyes, and all I remember saying out loud was, "I'm still in treatment." There was silence on the phone.

(Editor's note: George's former station, WTVC, did not respond to BI's requests for comment. A Sinclair representative did not reply to BI's questions and said the station's leadership from that time is no longer in place.)

My insurance coverage ended immediately, just a few days before I had a chemo treatment. How do you pay out of pocket for a chemotherapy session? I was thinking, "This is a death sentence."

It was devastating, but I fell back on the incredible support of my mom and dad, who helped me get COBRA coverage.

I thought trying to fight this to set some sort of legal precedent might be noble, but I just had to make sure I could live and get through my sickness, so that wasn't something I championed.

I realized baking for social media could really be something

After finishing treatment, it was almost like everything went silent. I was used to constant surveillance from nurses, and then, all of a sudden, I was done. I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted out of life.

I eventually got an offer to freelance with a news station in Philadelphia. I was still baking, and I was selling baked goods, so I changed the name of Cooking with Cancer to the name of a new LLC, Lily P. Crumbs, named after my 20-year-old dog.

I remember telling one of my friends that it would be cool to make videos of my baked goods. I was also frustrated that I didn't have a go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe. I'd made some random TikToks before that, but I remember uploading the first video of my search for the best recipe and seeing it get tens of thousands of views.

After that, I started showing some of my other baked goods and experienced growth along with that. I was finally getting partnership opportunities — and I was having fun. As a risk-averse person, I still freelance in news, but sharing my baking is my priority.

As a cancer survivor, the future is exciting

I'll never say I'm thankful for cancer, but it did open my eyes to how damn short life is and how little time you have to do exactly what you want to be doing. I'd rather be living this life than the life I was probably going to choose before my diagnosis.

The best part about being a cancer survivor is that the future, in general, is so exciting. If someone is questioning their career or their future, I say, do what you want. Create an idea of where you would like your life to be, and just take a baby step toward it.

• Rutger Bregman says top graduates going into finance and consulting are wasting their talents.
• He advocates for morally ambitious career paths to inspire meaningful societal change.
• Bregman says people can break out of the fog by starting their own "cult" of like-minded, ambitious idealists.

"It's an extraordinary waste of talent." That's what Rutger Bregman has to say about smart graduates from top universities going into careers in consulting and finance.

"In a rational society, you would expect that if you go to a jobs fair at these elite institutions where the best and brightest go, you would have one stand about preventing the next pandemic, a stand about curing malaria once and for all, and a stand about abolishing extreme poverty," he told Business Insider.

"But instead, what we have is Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and Kirkland & Ellis. What the fuck is going on here?"

Bregman, a historian from the Netherlands, is the author of "Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference." In the new book, he argues that too many people go into "socially useless" professions and thus feel their chosen careers are pointless.

Many even realize this before making their decision, but don't know what else to do, he said.

"Most of them are very well-meaning and deeply care about the state of the world. They want to do better, but then somehow they get sucked into this Bermuda triangle of talent."

Many grads are spiritually lost

Bregman's previous books, "Humankind" in 2020 and "Utopia for Realists" published three years earlier, were both New York Times best-sellers. His works have sold more than 2 million copies.

Throughout Bregman's career, he has spoken and written about how the most damaging jobs to society — big tobacco, for example — tend to be the best paid. Not all consultants and bankers necessarily fall into this category, he said, but having so many of them is a problem.

"It's not all totally destructive or anything like that," he said. "But compared to what these people could do, if they would take on some of the biggest challenges, the opportunity costs are massive."

Some people are "just a little bit shallow and boring" and "care deeply about owning many cars or owning a big house or having the corner office," Bregman said. "You probably can't help those people."

But for many, money isn't the most important goal of choosing the consulting and finance route. A huge motivation is "preserving your optionality," Bregman said, because "many of these people are just terrified of the future."

"Many of these kids are spiritually a little bit lost," Bregman said. "They don't really know what to do with their lives. McKinsey is very good at tapping into that."

He said big companies offer them a continuation of what they were already doing, which is the "logical next step."

"They were going from the best primary school to the best high school, and then always doing the honors classes at university, getting the best grades," Bregman said. "It's a way of postponing the real decisions, postponing actually becoming an adult, and that's very attractive if you are an insecure overachiever who has no idea what the hell to do with your life."

Champions League for do-gooders

Working in finance can also be intellectually challenging, which attracts people who like solving puzzles. Bregman said there needs to be more options in morally ambitious fields.

"Many of these kids, they just want to play in the Champions League," he said, in reference to the European top-flight soccer competition. "What I think we've got to do is to create the Champions League and the Olympics for do-gooders."

Some options for morally ambitious people include entering large-scale research and innovation fields and focusing on solving some of humanity's biggest problems, like hunger and the climate crisis. Bregman said it's not about following your passion, but figuring out "where your impact can be greatest."

"The right path depends on the challenge you're tackling. Some problems need cutting-edge research and innovation, others demand activism, lobbying, or bold entrepreneurship," he said. "Whether you're working to end hunger, fight climate collapse, reduce factory farming, or stop tax avoidance by the superrich — what matters is that you go where you're needed most."

Bregman hopes to inspire people who feel stuck to break out of going through the motions with the School for Moral Ambition, which he cofounded.

"We want to help as many people as possible devote their careers in their lives to some of the most pressing issues that we face as a species," Bregman said.

"When you study these moral pioneers of the past, it's not that they were good people and then started doing good things," he added. "It's the other way around, really. They started doing good things often because they were asked, and then they became good people, which is a very important difference."

Bregman likens it to Gandalf knocking on Frodo's door in "The Lord of the Rings." Frodo wasn't passionate about going on a long journey and risking his life, Bregman said. But Gandalf's perspective changed him as a person.

"Frodo was really passionate about gardening and having a really relaxed life full of second breakfasts," he said. "But when the old wise wizard explained everything, he was like, yeah, that's probably quite important."

Bregman jokingly advises those who feel like they want to do something more to start their own "cult."

"If you want to be a really ambitious idealist, it's quite hard nowadays because you're often swimming in a sea of cynicism," Bregman said. "What you need then is to surround yourself by other ambitious idealists, because then you'll be like, Hey, I'm not alone."

Ambition, he said, is energy, and what really matters is "how it's used, and how it's channeled."

"Find yourself some wise old wizard, a Gandalf who has a really good idea about what you should do with your life," Bregman said. "Then listen and do it."

• Last year, Sarah Khan, 33, and her husband moved out and became digital nomads.
• So far, they've worked from Bali, Rome, Tuscany, Bangkok, Phuket, and Alicante.
• Bali has been her favorite place to work.

The Mediterranean sparkles to my left as I type from a foldable desk on the terrace of a cozy home in a quiet coastal town in Spain. Rolling green hills stretch to my right, framing the space that will be home for the next three months, until we pack up and move again.

It's been 12 months since my husband and I embarked on a nomadic life. We sold everything, ended our four-year apartment lease in Singapore, and boarded a one-way flight to Bali. Since then, we've worked from Bali, Rome, Tuscany, Bangkok, Phuket, and now the coast of Alicante in Spain.

Friends and fellow travelers often ask, "Where's your favorite place to work?" I'm sometimes hesitant to answer because it's so subjective. Choosing a base as a nomad involves a different set of criteria than picking a vacation spot. For me, factors such as community, longer-stay visas, reliable WiFi, easy access to nature, and a vibrant wellness scene are at the top of the checklist.

Still, if I had to choose, the place that stands out— and one I'd happily return to — is Bali.

I felt at home

Bali was my first port of call as a digital nomad, and I spent a happy four months working and living there.

Despite internet discourse about how "overrun" parts of the island have become, it remains my favourite place to work remotely to this day. Perhaps I'm biased — with my Indonesian roots and years of vacationing there, I feel instantly at home.

My husband and I chose Berawa as our base, a laidback neighbourhood just outside the buzz of Canggu. Located on Bali's southern coast, Canggu has transformed from a sleepy surf village into the island's hippest enclave, packed with trendy cafés and black sand beaches that draw yogis and surfers in equal measure.

This was my first time staying in Berawa, and it turned out to be the ideal spot for an extended stay. You get proximity to the action of Canggu without actually living in the thick of it. My two-bedroom villa, tucked down a quiet lane off a main road, placed me less than 10 minutes from central Canggu.

Bali's cost of living has crept up in recent years, but it still offered value for our longer stay. Our villa rent was $1,800 a month, which included a pool, fast WiFi, and weekly cleaning — less than half of what I'd paid for my apartment in Singapore.

A remote worker's dream setup

Bali was an easy place to get started on my nomad life. The island is exceptionally well-equipped for long stays: The WiFi is generally reliable, there are plenty of supermarkets and pharmacies available for daily necessities, and ride-hailing apps are affordable and convenient.

After a year on the road, I've come to appreciate how rare this combination is.

The island also boasts one of the best remote work ecosystems I've experienced, from coworking spaces such as Outpost and BWork to laptop-friendly cafés. I rotated through a few favourites: the workspace upstairs at Woods, Zin Cafe, and Lighthouse, a coworking café with beautiful rice field views and its own on-site podcast and video studio.

It's also easy to stay active and healthy in Bali. Gyms, yoga studios, and affordable massages are aplenty, especially around Berawa. And food options are great, from warungs serving fragrant local dishes to health-forward cafés and world-class restaurants.

When work felt overwhelming and I needed a break, I could hop on a scooter and be at the beach in minutes. There were also many options for weekend escapes: We managed trips to the pristine Nusa Lembongan and Ceningan islands and a day trip to serene Sidemen, and we explored the east coast's slower-paced beach towns such as Amed and Candidasa.

These experiences showed a quieter, more soulful side of Bali — one I'd missed on past short trips.

The downsides

Of course, no place is perfect. Traffic in Canggu can be chaotic, and the island's infrastructure is still catching up with its tourism growth. There's also a digital nomad community that, at times, can feel like a bubble and disconnected from authentic local life.

But once you find your rhythm and favourite nooks, it's easy to tune out the noise and settle into Bali's slower, softer pace.

I made it a point to skip the touristy spots, stay just outside the main areas, and design my life and routine around the kind of experience I wanted.

A year into nomadic living, I've felt uprooted, disoriented, and occasionally exhausted. But in Bali, I found a version of myself I liked: focused, centered, and rested.