• TJ Patel uses the 'door-in-the-face' technique to negotiate higher salaries in software engineering.
• The strategy involves making a high initial request and then a more reasonable follow-up.
• Patel secured offers $10,000 to $30,000 above initial proposals using this method.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with TJ Patel, a 27-year-old software engineer in Austin who asked that BI not name his employers. Business Insider has verified Patel's income and employment with documentation; the negotiations are based on his recollection of conversations during each hiring process. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I was a college senior when I learned the "door-in-the-face" technique from Robert Cialdini's book, "Influence." I used the strategy when I started applying for jobs, and it's helped me secure higher salaries in each job negotiation throughout my career.

I'm a software engineer, but this strategy could work for any industry. You only need data on typical salaries for a specific industry and an idea of the specific company's salary range.

The technique is simple

"Door in the face" is when someone asks for something big or unreasonable in an initial request and then follows up with what they actually want.

I decided to leverage "door in the face" after reading Cialdini's example about organizers asking for donations, where they start by asking for something quite large, which is almost certain to be turned down — the door slamming in your face.

Then they pivot to the smaller — and truly desired — ask, which suddenly seems more reasonable by comparison.

That's when it clicked for me: I could use this same principle in salary negotiations

The "door-in-the-face" strategy has a real risk: If you ask for too much, an employer might decide to walk away altogether.

I realized if I was willing to accept that possibility — and if I asked respectfully and backed up my request with evidence like competing offers or my past performance — then most reasonable employers would at least counter.

My logic was that if they're already at the point of wanting to hire me, they've invested time and resources into the process, so they might be open to adjusting their offer rather than starting over with a new candidate.

'Door in the face' has been crucial in all of my salary negotiations

Since reading "Influence," in every job offer I've gotten, I anchored the negotiation on a number much higher than the lowest I was willing to accept. Once they declined my high number, my follow-up request seemed more moderate, and employers were more willing to meet me in the middle.

Sometimes, I asked for the lower amount on the same call; other times, I'd wait a day to "think about it" before coming back with a more "reasonable" figure.

Either way, the technique helped me secure offers ranging from $10,000 to $30,000 more in total compensation than the employers' original proposal — and more than I expected based on public salary data.

Here's how the offer negotiation process went at each company I've worked at, including two Big Tech companies.

My first job: Junior developer at a staff augmentation firm

The initial offer: $55,000/year

What I asked for: $70,000/year

What I got: $65,000/year

I went through this interview process in December 2018. I was two weeks from my college graduation, so I interviewed with many companies and got several competing offers.

I told my recruiter about a $62,000 competing offer from a consultancy services company and said I wanted $70,000 from the staff augmentation firm.

The firm said $70,000 wasn't possible, so I asked for $65,000 — still $10,000 above their original offer — and they agreed.

My 2nd job: Software engineer at a health benefits company

The initial offer: $65,000/year

What I asked for: $90,000/year

What I got: $80,000/year

In 2019, the staff augmentation firm assigned me to be part of a major health benefits company project as a third-party contractor. After nine months, the manager at the health benefits company wanted to bring me on as a full-time employee.

The manager initially offered me $65,000 to match my current pay. I aimed high and asked for $90,000, emphasizing that I was already working as a team lead and had been recognized as a top performer.

I had data on the company's salary range for that specific job title, which I got by asking full-time employees of the company. They got that information from internal job portals.

The manager said they couldn't do $90,000, but we eventually agreed on $80,000 in total yearly comp — $15,000 above their initial offer.

My 3rd job: Senior software engineer at a compliance company

The initial offer: $88,000/year

What I asked for: $100,000/year

What I got: $100,000/year

In 2021, I received a job offer from a compliance company in Austin for $88,000 a year and another offer from a different company in Cincinnati for $115,000 a year. I told the hiring manager at the compliance company that I wanted to accept their offer, but it wouldn't make sense to reject a $115,000-a-year offer.

I asked them to bump it to at least $100,000 and shared my other offer letter without being asked to ensure there was no doubt about it and save me any potential back-and-forth negotiations.

They agreed, and I took their offer since I wanted to move to Austin.

My 4th job: Senior software engineer at a Magnificent 7 company

The initial offer: $175,000/year

What I asked for: $240,000/ year

What I got: $204,000/year

When I applied at a Magnificent 7 company after a recruiter found me on LinkedIn, I asked for a compensation package of $240,000 yearly. The recruiter said they couldn't go that high since the software engineer pay band for my level didn't allow that.

I interviewed for a higher-level role to get the compensation I wanted, but the hiring manager placed me at a level below that based on my interview performance.

He wanted to hire me, so I asked for the max pay band for that level and a promotion path, which involved completing a series of projects within my first year. He agreed, and that's how I got $204,000.

My current job: Senior member of technical staff at a Big Tech firm

The initial offer: $190,000/ year

What I asked for: $250,000/year

What I got: $223,000/year

During my first communication with a Big Tech firm recruiter in 2024, I asked for $250,000 in total compensation. A few days later, the recruiter returned and said they couldn't do that, and the max was $190,000.

I said I didn't want to proceed with the interview process, and then, a few days later, the recruiter told me they could do $200,000. I accepted that.

In the meantime, I got a verbal offer from a high-growth startup for $250,000. During the final offer process at the Big Tech firm, I asked them to bump the pay to $250,000 since I had a competing offer. I waited for the recruiter to meet me at $250,000 and reiterated my competing offer.

The recruiter followed up with me every several days to see if I would go lower. I held firm. They offered me $223,000, and I accepted since the Big Tech firm was more stable than the startup.

Once you understand 'door in the face,' you can use it in many ways

I've also used this technique in my work life when being asked about project deadlines.

If management pushes an aggressive deadline, I usually counter with something that's 20% longer than I expect it to be. This makes it easier to meet in the middle and align on a deadline. It sounds pretty simple, but I don't see many people using these strategies in the corporate world.

I expect my current Big Tech company to be my last corporate stop. I plan to stay here until the business I'm building in my free time takes off. I'll use these techniques aggressively if I enter the corporate workforce again.

Henry Kirk, a cofounder of the software development company Studio Init, wants to hire the best engineers. That's why he asked job applicants not to use generative AI in the first technical coding part of their interviews — with the promise that they'd be able to show off their combined engineering and AI skills in a later section. "They still cheated," he tells me.

"It was so obvious," Kirk says. The coding tests took place in tandem with a video call, and some candidates frequently looked off to the side. They gave delayed answers or copied and pasted full blocks of code into the system instead of typing step-by-step. Some refused to share their screens or spouted off-topic answers to verbal questions, leading Kirk to believe they were reading large language model outputs verbatim without even thinking. "It's a waste of our time," he says. But even as AI is making a mess of technical screening tests, Kirk says he still thinks it has value. "I'm a small company. I have 400 applicants. How do I screen the people down to a manageable chunk of folks?"

Many software engineers aren't just allowed but are increasingly expected to use AI on the job. Companies like Google, Meta, and Salesforce increasingly rely on it for engineering tasks in the name of efficiency. But with gen AI now able to code as effectively as a junior engineer, bosses are wondering if the traditional coding tests — which have long been a staple of the hiring process — can still separate the good developers from the sloppy ones.

New tools keep popping up to make cheating on tests even more seamless: A since suspended Columbia University student, Chungin "Roy" Lee, recently created a tool called Interview Coder and used it to cheat on an Amazon coding test and then posted the interview to YouTube. He's selling the tool to other engineers for just $60 a month (he's claimed on X that he received and rejected an internship offer). Amazon has said candidates can be disqualified using gen AI unless explicitly permitted. The company did not comment specifically on Lee's test, but Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokesperson, tells me that the company has job candidates acknowledge they won't use gen AI during the interview process when it's not permitted, but it does have them share their history of working with the tools when relevant. Google is also considering bringing some interviews back to in-person settings, where they can have more control over the environment. A Google spokesperson told me that applicants are informed before interviews that if they use AI during them they will be disqualified.

Recruiters and hiring managers I spoke to for this story said the mainstream adoption of ChatGPT led them to suspect that more job seekers are trying to cheat their way past the code tests. Companies are scrambling to change old evaluation processes for a new era. But as they push engineers to get more efficient with AI on one hand and wag their finger at its use with the other, they're raising new ethical questions about what really counts as cheating: Is an LLM an unfair edge, or just a coding partner?

The traditional coding interview is at a crossroads. But the end of the old interview might be welcome among engineers.

"Timed coding tests were never truly realistic; AI just pulled back the curtain," says Annie Lux, the founder and CEO of the coaching firm Land That Job. The interviews create pressure and penalize people who struggle in test environments, Lux says. And many employers now expect engineers to leverage AI tools at work — tests that ban them put job candidates in a different scenario than the one they would work in. A 2020 study by North Carolina State University and Microsoft found that people were better at solving coding problems when they weren't being watched closely and told to explain their work as they went — confirmation that some engineers performed worse when under the stressful conditions of a traditional technical interview. "These interviews reward test-taking over engineering," Lux says. "They ignore how software engineers actually work."

Andrej Karpathy, an Open AI cofounder, coined the term "vibe coding," a nod to the way AI will help engineers "just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy-paste stuff," and have it "mostly work," as he put it. An engineer's skill for writing code may become less impressive than their capacity to understand it. But the issue hiring managers tangle with now is how to balance the benefits of vibe coding with vetting the best engineers from large pools of applicants in a tight job market where there's a huge incentive to cheat your way into an offer letter. On the job, "hopefully, they are using AI, to do the stuff AI can do," says Don Jernigan, a vice president at Experis Services, an IT staffing firm. "We need to be testing and evaluating them from the areas between what a human can do and what AI can't do."

Kirk says a "perfect storm" bolstered cheaters: The tech job market tightened just as ChatGPT went mainstream. There were more applicants for fewer jobs and more people hoping a perfect score on a coding test would help them stand out. Now, it could hurt them in the long run. Kirk says he and his team have gotten more confident about catching cheaters, and will sometimes call them out and end the interview if they're sure they've found one. One applicant even admitted to it, and others have left the interview without argument, he says. And he is keeping a blacklist of people he suspects cheat in his interviews and plans to never consider them in the future. He already has a list of dozens of people he's sure tried to cheat, with hundreds more who raised suspicion. Now, his studio has applicants follow up their first test by coming on-site for more tests. "We're potentially paying you a lot of money and we need to make sure there's a good fit all around," he says.

ChatGPT didn't invent cheating. In the past, software engineering applicants would sometimes deputize a friend to spit out code in their place (either in a take-home test or, as one recruiter told me, actually sending someone else in their place to the interview round), and job seekers would share coding tests and answers online. If you search Reddit, TikTok, or Blind, you'll find people sharing tips and tricks to con an interviewer. But AI is a knowledgeable friend who's even easier to access. More people are using it to try to land any job by mass applying or sending AI-generated cover letters. Overwhelmed recruiters then use their own AI tools to try to sift through and find the best candidates. It's all creating a massive cog, with two different AIs talking to each other and both job seekers and hiring managers feeling frustrated.

When it came to engineers, recruiters and hiring managers started to notice something was amiss by early 2023. Job applicants completed coding tests with perfect answers, but when they moved on to interviews about the test, some knew little to nothing about the work they'd submitted. "Even with ChatGPT earlier versions, it could solve a lot of coding questions," says Yang Mou, the cofounder and CEO of the AI recruiting company Fonzi. "The thing that's even more insidious now is that the AI is also better at explaining the answers as if it was a human." Fonzi interviewed 1,270 candidates for a software engineering job between January and March, and flagged 23% of them "as likely to be using external tools," Mou says. The AI tool scans answers for awkwardly long pauses and evaluates phrases used to see the likelihood that they've been written by a chatbot, and then humans can listen back to the interview to see if they catch any red flags.

Two years ago, the technical interview company Karat flagged about 2% of interviewees as potential cheaters. Now, that proportion has jumped to 10% of interviewees. "It's happening more frequently," says Jeffrey Spector, the cofounder and president of Karat. "Ultimately, our belief is that interviews have to evolve." Karat is developing a new interview process that it hopes will better evaluate job seekers when they use LLMs, Spector tells me. "The LLM is becoming a core part of how engineers do their job. Preventing them from using the tools on their job seems very unnatural."

As AI becomes a bigger part of the job, Spector says, hiring managers — and humanity at large — have to ask the question: "How do you define cheating?" He says people shouldn't disregard explicit instructions not to use AI, but if most people are using it and you're not, you might be at a disadvantage in the interview process. Many applicants use books and online tips to study for coding interviews, and some use ChatGPT to practice for job interviews. When it comes to using AI in the actual test, Spector says, a tipping point will come where it feels too disadvantageous not to, particularly among young engineers who have learned and grown up in the LLM era — and the ethical questions will get messier.

Hadi Chami, the director of solution engineering at the software company Apryse, says he began to notice ways job candidates were using LLMs as he started to use them more in his own work. So he changed the job application last year. Now, he gives applicants who pass a first "vibe check" interview a take-home assignment, with the expectation they'll use AI. But he tells them they'll have to walk him through their work. That's helpful for now, as he can still see whether they know why something works, not just that it does work. But Chaim expects the problem to get worse: He says that he's concerned about young workers coming into the field. "They may have an overreliance on the tool. They'll be able to ace all their classes," but might struggle in the workplace, he says.

Maybe this isn't the interview apocalypse scenario it seems. "This is a little of a new frontier, which is maybe why there is so much fear and stress on both sides and people are just flailing," says Victoria Gates, the cofounder of the interview training firm Expert Interviews. "If you're investing your time and your money into finding out if candidates are cheating, you're wasting your time. The way interview processes are today, they are very unfair towards candidates. Of course they're going to try to find anything they can." Instead of trying to go full bad cop and employ tech to monitor cheating, Gates says companies should train interviewers to ask incisive follow-up questions and for specific examples that LLMs can't generate. Right now, companies may be focused on catching cheaters, but Ali Ansari, the founder and CEO of the AI interview company Micro1, says that will change. "I think coding in general is already looking extremely different," he says. "That implies even without the cheating, the coding test will have to start looking different." He predicts that there will be a "new norm" for coding interviews within the next year or two.

All this coding mess is evidence of the breakdown in trust between employers and workers. Job seekers are questioning how much free labor they owe someone who may not even extend them a second interview, and more bosses are doubting the integrity and work ethic of the people reporting to them. So much of the tech meant to make job searching easier and more accessible has just added noise to the process. Killing the old coding test and using something more creative in its place may be a small step in repairing that disconnect.

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

• Henry Lee left his corporate accounting career to open a Korean fried chicken franchise.
• Lee bounced between Big Four firms like Deloitte and Ernst & Young, seeking salary increases.
• He now owns six Bonchon fried chicken locations in Colorado and plans to open a large food hall.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Henry Lee, a 46-year-old franchise owner in Aurora, Colorado. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Academics were never my strong suit. My GPA was barely 3.0 while I attended a small school in Tennessee on a football scholarship. I majored in finance and economics.

My goal was to get to the NFL, but when I realized that was not happening, I started looking for a job related to my major.

After working as an accountant for multiple companies, including Big Fours, I left my corporate career to open a fried chicken franchise. I'm so much happier now.

Once I got to my first Big Four, I jumped around

My first job was for PRG-Schultz, a debt recovery company specializing in sales tax recovery. I found the position and applied through a job site.

After that, I worked as a sales tax accountant at International Rectifier. My manager told me I should try to get a job at a Big Four. I didn't have an impressive résumé, but I applied, interviewed, and got hired as a senior tax associate at Deloitte. Working in sales tax is incredibly niche, and I think that helped me get the job.

Working at Deloitte opened up many doors

Everyone majoring in accounting hopes to one day work at a Big Four. Once you have one of these companies on your résumé, it doesn't matter where you attended college.

I didn't consider the work difficult — I rarely get stressed out and don't take things too seriously. You're expected to bill lots of hours and work overtime. There's also a lot of office politics.

Over the next 10 years, I hopped around to work at different companies, staying only about a year each time. Back then, people would leave to work at other companies for salary increases, which is how I ended up at Ernst & Young.

I chased the highest possible salary bumps

A former colleague referred me to EY. We got referral bonuses, so everyone tried to refer as many people as possible. After that, another position opened up with Deloitte in San Diego, and I left for another salary bump.

My salary increased by two to three percent annually, so it was more profitable to move to another company and get a 20% to 25% salary increase plus a signing bonus.

I was laid off from my second role at Deloitte in 2008 during the recession. After working at Burger King as a senior tax specialist, I was referred to Accenture in 2011 as a senior consultant by a former colleague.

My experiences at the Big Four companies were similar

My performance reviews were usually good to average. I didn't consider myself a superstar or a high-performing employee. The working environment was similar in all three of them. Only the people were different.

Deloitte was fun because the people in my department weren't uptight. EY was more strict overall.

PwC, where I started working in 2014, was my favorite company. I formed a relationship there with a former Microsoft employee who referred me to Microsoft in 2013. Microsoft had the best work-life balance of all the companies.

Eventually, I was tired of the internal politics at these companies and the endless Zoom meetings, which were a waste of time. I thought, 'I couldn't just be born to do taxes,' and the work was not groundbreaking, rewarding, or challenging. I was unproductive and uninterested in the job. They call it quiet quitting nowadays.

I was considering what to do next. Growing up, my family owned a Chinese restaurant. I missed Korean fried chicken in Colorado, which was so good in Los Angeles but terrible here.

I decided to open a Korean fried chicken franchise myself

I decided to franchise with Bonchon because I missed it from living in Los Angeles. I invested my life savings into opening the first location and the initial franchise fee by cashing out my 401(k) of around $100,000.

I underwent three weeks of kitchen training, during which I learned how to fry chicken, cook the dishes, and prep the veggies. Training also included front-of-house training.

While opening the restaurant, I still worked at Microsoft but quit eight months in. As a senior tax manager, the salary I left behind was just under $160,000.

After opening the first location in Denver in 2018, the business took off

I bought all the franchise rights in Colorado and now have six locations. I also own a boba tea shop, and my next venture is opening a 15,000-square-foot food hall with seven restaurants.

The most significant difference is that in corporate, you're expected to be in the office for 40-50 hours regardless of if you have work or projects to do. When you own a business, you work when needed.

When I first opened Bonchon, I cooked and ran day-to-day operations in the kitchen. I worked around 60-80 hours a week, seven days a week. It was a grind for the first year because of the steep learning curve.

By the time I opened my third location, I was hands-off on the day-to-day operations and relied on my managers. I'm much happier now.

I have a wife and two kids and can spend much more time with them now.

I would never, ever go back to corporate

Working in corporate is like being stuck in the matrix; after you find your way out, it's like night and day. You can't go back once you experience the freedom to do whatever you want.

When you leave corporate, you realize you're capable of so much, but leaving the security, steady paycheck, and benefits was scary. I have an increased net worth, and getting capital to expand or fund others is much easier. I wish I left much earlier in my career.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, may seem like an unlikely site for a YIMBY revolution.

The historic Boston suburb is home to both Harvard University and a bevy of affluent homeowners opposed to any new development. The city even features prominently in the book "Neighborhood Defenders," a seminal work about anti-building, not-in-my-backyarders. Despite all that, the city recently passed a series of laws that could pave the way for a cascade of new housing construction.

Cambridge could certainly use the new units. Data from Zillow shows the city's average rent is $3,400 a month — slightly higher than San Francisco's estimated average rent of $3,200. Homelessness in Cambridge has also been on the rise, particularly since the pandemic. In an attempt to ease this pressure, pro-housing groups that fall under the YIMBY umbrella (short for "yes in my backyard") — particularly the local group A Better Cambridge and the statewide organization Abundant Housing Massachusetts — have been trying to get more homes built in Cambridge for years.

In recent years, that work has started to bear fruit: The city enacted a 100% affordable housing overlay in 2020, which allows developers of below-market-rate apartment complexes to build more densely than would be permitted under base zoning. Three years later, Cambridge rezoned its Central Square neighborhood, allowing apartment buildings to rise up to 18 stories high.

But the latest measure is perhaps the most radical, and most promising. A measure passed in February will legalize the production of four-story apartment buildings across the entire city, with some larger lots zoned for up to six stories. Sure, these newly possible buildings aren't quite as dramatic as an 18-story tower, but this latest change is by far Cambridge's most ambitious. Unlike the geographically confined Central Square upzoning, the newest pro-housing ordinance has the potential to remake the entire city. The city's planning staff estimate that the new law may increase Cambridge's housing development capacity over the next 15 years from 350 units to 3,590 — a more than tenfold increase.

The likelihood that some neighborhoods will become denser has provoked the usual opposition from local homeowners. But viewed from another angle, this densification could make the city a more vibrant and beautiful place to live. There's a reason the Cambridge city councilmember Burhan Azeem has called the city's new plan "Paris-style zoning." As it turns out, Paris is a good model for midsize American cities to follow. By allowing more European-style construction, places like Cambridge can both lower housing costs and look good doing it.

Alongside the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, one of Paris' most iconic architectural hallmarks may be its most ubiquitous: the Haussmann-style building. Georges-Eugène Haussmann (better known as Baron Haussmann) was the famed urban planner who, under Emperor Napoleon III, redesigned central Paris in the mid-19th century. Paris became a city of wide boulevards and midrise apartment complexes with distinctive limestone facades — the aforementioned Haussmann buildings. Thanks in no small part to the prevalence of these structures, Paris has achieved a density higher than any other major city in Europe or the United States — although the city of lights still struggles to keep up with demand for housing.

While Haussmann buildings are specific to central Paris, plenty of other European cities have equivalent structures: four- to six-story apartment blocks with no buffer area between the front door and the sidewalk. Unlike the boxy, cheap-looking American five-over-one apartment building that has come to dominate much of our development — and which many people regard as an eyesore — Euro-style apartments generally contribute to the beauty and charm of dense, walkable tourist destinations like Stockholm and Rome. Plus, they're more efficient: thanks to European building codes and zoning rules, European-style apartment buildings can be built for less, on smaller lots, and with more family-friendly apartments in the interior.

"Sure," you might say, "but what's good for Paris, Stockholm, and Rome won't work in an American context." That's a common refrain from skeptics — citing cultural differences, the need for abundant parking, or their own gut instincts — when YIMBYs propose allowing more European-style zoning in the United States. But these assumptions are incorrect for two reasons.

First, upzoning cities like Cambridge is not the same thing as requiring them to build up to Parisian density. If you own a single-family home in Cambridge, and your lot has been upzoned to allow for the construction of a four-story building, you remain at liberty to keep your single-family home. If you want to redevelop the property into a multifamily building, that's great; if you decide to sell your home to a developer who will replace it with an apartment complex, that's great, too. But nobody is compelling you to do either of those things if you like your existing home.

Second, Cambridge — like many other older cities in New England and the mid-Atlantic region — already has a fair number of dense apartment buildings and townhomes. Rather than destroying the culture or character of these cities, building more Parisian-style housing would signal a return to the pre-single-family era. Many of Cambridge's mid-rise apartment buildings were constructed before single-family zoning became ubiquitous in the United States in the early 20th century. And the ones that have survived are now highly coveted as luxury homes and architectural treasures; yet, for decades, it has been effectively illegal to build more of them. As Azeem wrote on X, Cambridge's previous, single-family-focused zoning laws meant that "85%+ of the existing housing" in the city would be illegal to build. In other words, Cambridge's upzoning may actually help to preserve the city's architectural heritage and New England character. At the same time, it is a model for how other cities can upzone in a manner that actually eases housing costs.

While the patchwork nature of American land-use policy can slow progress in important ways, it can also be an engine for experimentation and friendly, productive competition. Pro-housing activists in cities across the country — in places like Minneapolis, Austin, and Sacramento — and far beyond, in the case of Auckland, New Zealand, have inspired each another, shared insights and tactics, and provided a push to see who can push through the most ambitious land-use overhauls. These pushes can even get a little cheeky: YIMBY advocates in Montana sold zoning changes by urging conservative lawmakers to move away from "California-style zoning." While it will take some years to assess the full impact of these revisions, the early data from places like Auckland is very promising.

Some changes make a bigger impact than others. One lesson from the past few years of YIMBY experimentation is that smaller tweaks to local zoning codes may yield negligible results; ambition is vastly superior to cautious incrementalism. Take Minneapolis, one of the recent YIMBY success stories. Citywide, the production of more housing has helped to keep rents and home prices in check, but as the housing researcher Zakary Yudhisthu has found, there's more going on underneath the hood. The parts of Minneapolis that moved from single-family to duplex or triplex zoning have seen little housing growth, while the corridors that allow for denser construction have seen more permit applications. In other words, going just a few steps further is how you get real results.

But to truly unlock housing production at the necessary scale, high-cost cities cannot stop at upzoning. They also need to reshape permitting rules and other onerous building requirements, such as off-street parking mandates. True European-style zoning would allow for mid-rise apartment buildings with no off-street parking and a single central staircase. (Five-over-ones exist in part because most American cities require multiple staircases in any apartment building over a certain height.)

So while other expensive cities should take inspiration from Cambridge, they should also see if they can go even further. There's still plenty of room for another jurisdiction to take the lead in the race to be America's YIMBY-est city. Any takers?

Ned Resnikoff is an urban policy consultant and writer. He is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and is currently working on a book about cities with an expected publication date of Fall 2026.

Throughout his college studies, Ryan Kim always had a postgraduation game plan. First it was to become a database manager. Then it was to break into fintech as a business analyst. But during his sophomore and junior years, as the tech industry laid off nearly half a million workers, Kim struggled to secure an internship. So he set his eyes on a new career: public service.

Kim was far from the only Gen Zer making the same pivot. Last year, according to the job site Handshake, the share of applications it received from college seniors for entry-level openings in tech dropped by 19% from 2022, while the share to jobs in government nearly doubled. Even younger kids saw the writing on the wall. In surveys, high school students used to cite tech giants like Google and Apple as the places they most wanted to work. But last year, in a startling shift, both the FBI and NASA ranked higher than any of those tech companies. Silicon Valley was out. Capitol Hill was in.

It took Kim only a single application to land a yearlong paid internship at the Food and Drug Administration. His performance reviews were good, and he planned to stay on at the agency after he earned his degree in May. "You hear so many horror stories of people in tech being laid off with little notice," he tells me. "Government jobs are secure. What drew me into it was the stability."

So much for that plan.

This month, with his graduation fast approaching, Kim abruptly lost his internship amid the government-wide havoc Elon Musk has unleashed at DOGE. With most federal hiring on an indefinite hold, he's been scrambling to find a job — any job. "It's been a huge source of stress," he says. "Most of the private industry has already hired their graduating students."

Kim is one of the roughly 2 million students set to graduate this spring into an exceptionally shaky job market. Things were already looking tough for the class of 2025, given the steep hiring slump in industries like tech, finance, and consulting. But now, as Musk takes a chainsaw to the government, many college seniors are in panic mode. Some have seen their offers at federal agencies rescinded; others have received no word on jobs they applied to months ago.

It's not just government positions that are taking a hit — it's jobs at a whole host of businesses, nonprofits, and universities that rely on federal funding and contracts. And going to graduate school — the traditional backup plan for students during times of economic instability — may not even be an option, if the Department of Education winds up being unable to deliver financial aid in a timely fashion. As the government is slashed to the bone in the name of efficiency, the careers of many Gen Zers could suffer for years to come.

"The impact is broad scale," says Saskia Campbell, the executive director of university career services at George Mason University. "There is this sense of grief, of loss of opportunity. This is the first year I'm actually concerned."

To make matters worse, the outlook is likely to get even more dismal in the months ahead, as President Donald Trump's tariff wars spur companies to hold off on hiring. "Two years ago, the bulk of the uncertainty and fear was in Big Tech," says Briana Randall, the executive director of the career and internship center at the University of Washington. "Now it feels uncertain in a lot of areas."

All of that leaves America's soon-to-be new grads unsure of where to turn. Sarina Parsapasand, a public policy major who's graduating from the University of Southern California this spring, was hoping to land a job in government service. But now, given the chaos in Washington, she's switched to trying to land a job in the private sector. "I have bills to pay," she says. "I can't take the risk of being in a job that doesn't guarantee the stability for me to live my life."

It's a sentiment I hear over and over again from the students I speak with. "The job market just seems super unstable in almost any field," says Katie Schwartz, a sophomore at Tulane. "It's less about finding a job you really love now and more just about finding a job that's going to give you job stability."

I'm impressed by the clear-eyed pragmatism of these students — but I'm also saddened by how old they sound. Isn't job stability what you look for when you're middle-aged, with a mortgage to pay and kids to support? When I graduated from college in 2009 without a full-time job, I was panicked but still idealistic. These kids, in contrast, seem hardened by all the chaos they've endured from a young age. In high school, they watched their parents get laid off in the pandemic. In college, they watched older students struggle to land good jobs during the tech downturn — or worse, had their hard-won offers rescinded at the last minute.

The upheaval and uncertainty have taught today's graduates to prepare for the worst. Over the past year, one college senior tells me, she's been intentionally neglecting her studies so she could focus exclusively on her job search, sending out as many as 15 applications a day. The hustle paid off with three offers, including one she accepted from a government contractor. It's her "dream job," she says, because it would enable her to make a real difference in the world.

But now, given the chaos in Washington, she's leaning toward reneging on the offer and accepting a position at a finance company. (That's why she asked me not to use her name.) "I try to keep an optimistic outlook," she tells me. But when I ask her how she feels about taking her first steps into adulthood, she doesn't sound optimistic at all.

"It makes me pretty nervous," she says. "I think a lot of people in my generation have accepted that we're not going to live the same quality of life our parents provided us."

During hard economic times, we expect to hear stories about people losing their jobs. But the greatest casualties often end up being the young people who don't have jobs to lose in the first place. Hiring freezes hurt them the most, making it impossible for them to even get their foot in the door. And research shows just how long a shadow that can cast on someone's career. Five years after the Great Recession, my generation of millennials was earning 11% less than Gen Xers were at a comparable age. And our net worth fell 40% behind theirs, forcing us to delay many of life's biggest milestones: buying a home, starting a family, saving for retirement.

The effects go far beyond money. Students who graduated into the 1982 recession, for example, wound up with fewer kids and more divorces than those who entered better job markets. Even more shocking, the research shows, they were more likely to die early. Whatever gains in efficiency Trump hopes to achieve from DOGE, its most lasting legacy may end up being the harm it inflicts on the careers — and perhaps even the life spans — of his youngest constituents.

That leaves college seniors like Kim scrambling to find a foothold in a job market that is stacked against them. Many companies have already filled their entry-level positions, if they're hiring new grads at all. And he's now competing not only with his fellow students, but also with the flood of young government workers who have been laid off by DOGE — workers who have more experience than he does. As graduation nears, he's trying not to panic. But it's hard to retain a sense of hope when even lower-paying jobs in public service are no longer an option.

"I'm not sure how my future's going to turn out," Kim tells me. And that, when you think about it, is a future that should worry us all.

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent for Business Insider.

• Black federal workers have historically benefited from stability, good benefits, and less discrimination.
• Trump's job cuts and DEI scrutiny, helmed by Elon Musk's DOGE office, threaten that security.
• Five former and current Black federal workers say the upheaval has hurt their finances and optimism for the future.

When BreAntra Jackson started working at the Internal Revenue Service last October, she was excited to have secured a coveted position in the federal government.

"Working at the IRS was one of the best jobs I've ever had," said the 24-year-old IRS administrator. The full-time, hybrid work schedule allowed the single mother to find stability and afford day care.

She had planned to build a lifelong career in civil service, like her predecessor, who she said had processed requests for IRS agents for three decades before retiring.

Those aspirations were interrupted on February 20 when Jackson became one of roughly 25,000 probationary workers fired by the Trump administration.

While a federal judge in mid-March deemed the firings illegal and ordered the Trump administration to reinstate workers, including Jackson, the financial uncertainty over several weeks took a toll on her savings. While she and thousands of her colleagues have returned on paid administrative leave, it may not last long. The White House's DOGE office has ordered federal agencies to devise plans to reduce staff in the coming months through less legally dubious means.

Federal jobs, with their stability and comparatively good benefits, were once a pathway to the American dream for many workers, especially for Black professionals like Jackson. Black Americans make up nearly 1 in 5 federal workers, compared to their 14% share of the US population.

Now, DOGE's hiring freezes and slashing of government jobs threaten that legacy of security for Black Americans in the federal workforce. Plus, the administration's heightened focus on DEI could make the path forward more difficult for Black workers.

"Protecting the civil rights and expanding opportunities for all Americans is a key priority of the Trump Administration," Harrison Fields, White House principal deputy press secretary, wrote in an email to BI when asked about federal jobs providing a stable path to the middle class for Black Americans, which is why Trump "took decisive actions to terminate unlawful DEI preferences in the federal government."

"I was laid off and just thrown to the wolves," Jackson said. In February, Jackson was living off the money she had set aside for a down payment on a future home. She told BI it was "the first time that I've ever not had a job, not had income coming in to cover my bills," since she was 16 years old.

A pathway to middle-class security is now uncertain

Some former federal workers BI spoke with decided to take matters into their own hands, rather than subject themselves to the career rollercoaster their peers have endured in recent months.

Alphonso McCree Jr., a veteran and former visual information specialist in Veterans Affairs, started working on Capitol Hill last April. In September, he bought a house in Charles County, Maryland, where he lives with his wife and two young children. He left his job in January when he saw the budget cuts on the horizon.

"Nobody can tell what they're going to do next. It's just really unpredictable," McCree said of the Trump administration.

As the main breadwinner, McCree decided it was riskier to stay at his job than to pursue his freelance videographer business full-time.

"I needed to do what I needed to do to separate myself from their decision-making that was affecting me and my life and my family," he said.

McCree grew up in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC. His parents worked for the federal government, and he recalls having his hair cut by a barber in the basement of their government building. He said almost everyone in his family spent their careers in civil service.

"I've never seen Black people really thriving anywhere like we do in Maryland," said the 30-year-old, adding that while "departments are being abolished and blown up, I don't know what's going to happen."

It's too soon to have data on the demographics of this year's federal government attrition; however, the Office of Personnel Management provided data on the ethnic and racial background of federal workers as of last September. This data seems to have been removed from its website in the last month; OPM did not respond to comment when BI inquired.

Joseph Dean, a research specialist who studies race and economics at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said it's clear that historically, federal jobs have played a large role in building Black wealth in the DC area — particularly in McCree's hometown of Prince George's County.

In 1970, white residents made up 84% of Prince George's County, while Black people were only 15%. In three decades, the Black population had grown to 64%. Today, Prince George's County is still known as one of the wealthiest, Black-majority counties in the nation.

"The opportunities from the federal government drew Black people, especially throughout the country, to DC to work," said Dean. Today, nearly 18% of all wages earned in Prince George's County come from federal jobs.

Black employment in the public sector dates back to the Reconstruction Era when the United States Postal Service offered some of the first jobs to formerly enslaved people, said Eric Yellin, a history professor at the University of Richmond.

In his book, "Racism in the Nation's Service," Yellin detailed how Black employment ebbed and flowed under various administrations.

"It's never certain in American society that African Americans or minorities in general will be given a fair shot," said Yellin. "It was a 50-year struggle." The civil rights movement led to the fastest progress in closing the racial wealth gap.

It was in the 1960s, when the federal government got serious about preventing discrimination in the workplace, that Black professionals began to flourish — particularly in the federal government.

Black employees face larger wage gaps in the private sector compared to their peers in the public sector due to standardized pay across identical titles and roles in the federal workforce.

"The federal government is the fairest employer in the country as a whole," said Yellin of the standardized merit tests and safeguards in federal jobs meant to prevent bias.

Ashley Shannon chose a career in public service for that reason. In the fall of 2023, Shannon was accepted into the Attorney General's Honors Program — a prestigious program that admits only a handful of entry-level attorneys each year. When she started her position at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, she felt inspired seeing other Black lawyers in leadership who had successfully matriculated to general counsel and deputy attorneys.

"In private practice, there was not as much mobility, or expectation of mobility for people in our community," said Shannon. "Black women, specifically when you look at private firms or large firms, make up less than 1% of those in partnership." In 2020, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that Black women made up 11.7% of the civilian federal workforce, nearly twice their participation in the general labor market.

Shannon moved to DC with the expectation that she would build a life-long career in civil service. She was even looking to purchase a home in the area by the end of 2025.

But seeing the layoffs for probationary employees like herself around the corner, Shannon decided to hand in a resignation letter.

"I'm going to have to move back in with my parents at 28 years old, almost 29, and that is a very defeating feeling as a very new attorney," said Shannon. "I feel like I just got done building a life out here."

Former federal workers are facing a tough job market and more scrutiny on diverse hiring

Not everyone has a safety net in the event of a job loss, and federal workers who leave their jobs are entering a tough hiring market.

Shaye, a contractor for Veterans Affairs, has spent her entire career working in the federal government from the time she was 19 years old to her early 30s. As a current federal employee fearing retaliation, she asked to only be identified by her middle name.

"Many of my co-workers have said, 'We don't even have a backup plan,'" said Shaye. "A lot of us have always worked for the government, and we don't know anything else."

Andrea Slater, director of UCLA's Center for the Advancement of Racial Equity at Work, said that those who've dedicated a large part of their careers to public service face bigger challenges to finding work again after these layoffs.

"A lot of these jobs are very focused and so if they've been in these jobs for decades, there's a high probability that their skill set might not match up with a lot of positions and needs in the private sector," said Slater.

Then there's the added layer that Black employees and other people of color may have been singled out as part of the scrutiny leveled against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, said Yellin. This moment rings eerily of the past that he's studied.

Entering office, Trump signed an executive order "ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing."

"That was the argument that segregationists made, that when you found someone Black in a position of power or participating as equals, something had gone wrong," Yellin said. He compared the executive order to the actions of President Woodrow Wilson who purged Black workers in the federal government in the early 20th century. "There's something similar in the attacks on DEI."

On Wednesday, a group of federal employees across government agencies, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a class action lawsuit against the White House, claiming they were unlawfully fired for their participation in DEI initiatives and targeted on the basis of their race in violation of their civil rights.

"Every man and woman in this great country should have the opportunity to go as far as their hard work, individual initiative, and competence can take them. In America, grit, excellence, and perseverance are our strengths," the White House's Fields wrote.

All the upheaval has taken a heavy mental toll on Shaye, who loves her work procuring supplies for hospitals that serve veterans. She's frustrated by the insinuation that she was only hired because of her race.

"To be reduced down to that is infuriating and honestly disrespectful to the many hardworking Black federal employees," said Shaye. "I got my job because I showed that I had potential, I showed that I had drive, I showed that I wanted to be there and I was willing to learn."

The stability of Shaye's job in the federal government provided her with the opportunity to pursue the American dream: get married and buy her dream home.

"I have been able to essentially break out of the cycle of struggle," said Shaye, who was raised by a single mother who had to work several jobs to make ends meet.

Now, with the uncertainty around her employment, she feels a cloud of anxiety hanging over her head. She's been trying to alleviate her stress by blasting Lady Gaga while swinging a kettlebell at the gym and journaling about her feelings.

"I am a plan-for-the-worst type of person," said Shaye. She's cut down spending, canceling subscriptions, and is already looking for an exit plan if she is laid off. "I am operating like I am going to lose my job within the next couple of months, if not sooner."

Have a tip or story to share? Contact this reporter via Signal at @jdeng.20 or email at [email protected]. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Movies like Netflix's "The Life List" and Prime Video's "Holland" are new to streaming.
• ABC's "The Conners" returned for its final season, while Grant's of "The Bachelor" had a shocking ending.
• Luca Guadagnino's 2024 movie "Queer" starring Daniel Craig is now streaming on Max.

This weekend, you can watch the conclusion to Grant Ellis' journey to find love on season 29 of "The Bachelor," a queer romance movie directed by Luca Guadagnino, and Nicole Kidman's latest thriller film "Holland."

Two films released in theaters late last year, Guadagnino's "Queer" starring Daniel Craig and the Bob Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown," are now on streamers. This week also marked the return of Netflix's comedy series "Survival of the Thickest" and ABC's hit sitcom "The Conners."

Here's a complete rundown of all the best movies, shows, and documentaries to stream this weekend, broken down by what kind of entertainment you're looking for.

Season 29 of "The Bachelor" came to an end this week.

After eight weeks, "The Bachelor" star Grant Ellis finally had to choose between his final two contestants: Juliana Pasquarosa and Litia Garr. Catch up on the finale on Hulu before reading Business Insider's interview with Grant and his new fiancé.

Streaming on: Hulu

For a more complicated romance, watch "Queer."

In director Luca Guadagnino's "Queer," Daniel Craig stars as William Lee, an American expat who falls in love with a much younger man named Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) in Mexico City in the 1950s. The film is an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' 1985 novella of the same name.

Streaming on: Max

For a heartfelt movie about family, love, and self-discovery, check out "The Life List."

Netflix darling Sofia Carson ("Purple Hearts," "Carry-On") stars in the new movie "The Life List,'" about Alex, a young woman who, after the death of her mom, decides to complete a bucket list she wrote at 13 years old.

Streaming on: Netflix

Chelsea Handler returns to Netflix for her third comedy special, "Chelsea Handler: The Feeling."

In the special, the comedian jokes about her birth and upbringing, shares her adventures in babysitting, and calls out pickleball enthusiasts.

Streaming on: Netflix

The seventh and final season of "The Conners" premiered this week.

"The Conners," a spin-off of "Roseanne," follows Dan (John Goodman), Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), and Darlene (Sara Gilbert) as they navigate family, work, and relationships. The show will conclude with six episodes, the first of which is now available to stream on Hulu after premiering on ABC on Wednesday night.

Streaming on: Hulu

"Survival of the Thickest" is back for season two.

The Netflix romantic dramedy is based on comedian Michelle Buteau's autobiographical book of essays, "Survival of the Thickest." The show revolves around Mavis Beaumont (Buteau), a woman trying to rebuild her life after a breakup.

In season two, Mavis embraces turning 39, visits Rome, continues to preach body positivity, and is faced with a major life decision.

Streaming on: Netflix

Seth Rogen's new comedy series "The Studio" skewers the film industry.

The series stars Seth Rogen as Matt Remick, a cinephile who lands his dream job as the newly appointed head of the fictional film studio Continental Studios.

Once he gets the gig, he learns that his passion for quality films contradicts the realities of the cutthroat business of the movie-making industry.

The first two episodes premiered this week, with eight more to follow, all of which are jam-packed with celebrity cameos.

Streaming on: Apple TV+

Nicole Kidman stars in the new thriller "Holland."

Nicole Kidman plays Nancy Vandergroot, a teacher, wife, and mother whose perfect life in the picturesque, tulip-filled town of Holland, Michigan, gets uprooted by strange happenings.

Streaming on: Prime Video

You can watch Timothée Chalamet's Oscar-nominated performance in "A Complete Unknown" from the comfort of your home.

"A Complete Unknown" follows young Bob Dylan's (Timothée Chalamet) arrival in New York in the 1960s and his road to becoming one of the most revered singer-songwriters.

The biopic, released in December, earned eight nominations at the 2025 Academy Awards, including best picture and best actor for Chalamet.

Streaming on: Hulu

Pierce Brosnan plays the head of an organized crime family in "MobLand."

In "MobLand," the James Bond actor plays Conrad Harrigan, a family man and ruthless mob boss who hires fixer Harry Da Souza (Tom Hardy) as the Harrigans clash with another power-hungry London crime family. The series also stars Helen Mirren as Maeve Harrigan, Conrad's wife and the brains of the operation.

Streaming on: Paramount+

Magician David Blaine has a new National Geographic docuseries, "David Blaine: Do Not Attempt."

In this six-episode docuseries, David Blaine travels the world in search of more people with unique, death-defying skills that he can learn from.

Streaming on: Hulu, Disney+

Marlon Brando was having a little trouble on the set of his movie "The Missouri Breaks." The year was 1975 and the legendary actor asked his costar Jack Nicholson and anyone who could hear him, "Does anybody here know how to play the mandolin?"

A 21-year-old aspiring actor named Dennis Quaid, who was on set that day but wasn't part of the cast, raised his hand. "I know how to play," he said.

Quaid had only been in Hollywood for a couple of months when his brother, Randy, who was cast in "Missouri Breaks," asked him to drive his Audi to the Western-themed set in Montana so he'd have a car to drive around when he wasn't working.

It was the younger Quaid's first time on a movie set. Now he was going to teach Marlon Brando how to play the mandolin for a scene in a movie. There was just one problem.

"I didn't know how to play," Quaid told Business Insider 50 years later with his trademark grin.

"But I played guitar, so I quickly got a book of mandolin chords, and next thing you know, I got to spend an hour with him in the trailer teaching him how to play the mandolin," Quaid continued. "I could barely say anything. I just looked at my shoes the entire time."

Quaid soon became a fixture on set, even sitting in on the dailies, where he watched take after take of Brando and Nicholson. It was an education on the craft of acting that no teacher could ever provide, and Quaid was hooked. He was going to make acting his profession.

And did he ever. Over the next five decades, Quaid has turned in countless memorable performances, often as real-life people like the charismatic musician Jerry Lee Lewis in 1989's "Great Balls of Fire!" the unlikely middle-aged MLB pitcher Jim Morris in 2002's "The Rookie," and the 40th President of the United States Ronald Reagan in the 2024 biopic "Reagan" (he also played Bill Clinton in the 2010 HBO movie "The Special Relationship").

For his latest role in the Paramount+ series "Happy Face," Quaid, 70, is once again embodying a real person, this time Keith Hunter Jesperson, who's better known as the Happy Face Killer and is currently serving a life sentence at Oregon State Penitentiary. While Quaid often prefers to seek out the living people he plays, with Jesperson, he opted out.

"He's in a hole in prison in Portland exactly where he should be, and I don't want to give him any satisfaction or entertainment or feeling like he's a big deal because he's not," Quaid said of Jesperson, who got his nickname from his habit of drawing a happy face on the letters he'd send to media and authorities.

Instead, Quaid leaned on the show's source material, an autobiography written by Jesperson's daughter, Melissa Moore, who realized when she was a teen that her father was the infamous killer.

While getting inside the mind of the man who killed at least eight women in the early 1990s seems like a difficult task, Quaid quickly cracked the code.

"Surprisingly, it's very easy to play, because he doesn't really have emotions, human emotions," Quaid said of Jesperson. "Very shallow emotions. There's no real self-examination with him."

In the latest interview in BI's Role Play series, Quaid spoke about the legendary TV show he passed on early in his career, how cocaine helped him play Jerry Lee Lewis, and regretting turning down a golf movie opposite Kevin Costner.

On almost starring in 'The Dukes of Hazzard' and using cocaine to play Jerry Lee Lewis

Business Insider: The movie that made you a star was the 1979 coming-of-age drama "Breaking Away," but is it true that you had already been considered to star in "The Dukes of Hazzard" when you took a meeting for "Breaking Away"?

Dennis Quaid: I actually got the part of Bo Duke, the John Snyder role. I also had this movie with Lee Majors about construction crews building high rises. So I went into this general audition with Peter Yates, the director of "Breaking Away," and he saw me as Mike and I said, "I'm sorry but I'm already doing this other movie."

He blocked the doorway and said, "Listen to me, young man, you have to do this movie!" And he was right. Peter Yates taught all us guys film acting and I could never thank him enough.

By 1983 you had become a big star and had three movies that came out that year: "Tough Enough," "Jaws 3D," and "The Right Stuff." But it was also your first taste as an actor of experiencing public perception versus reality, right? Because not all those movies did well.

[Laughs.] "Tough Enough" came out and went [points down]. Boom. Then "Jaws 3D" was No. 1 at the box office, but I was a little embarrassed about it — not anymore. And "The Right Stuff," I put all my marbles in that, and it came out, and it bombed. It made $2 million. It has since become a classic. That, along with "Reagan," are my favorite movies that I've ever done, personally. But by the end of that year, it was a disappointment. 

However, it only got better from there. 

Hey, lucky guy. Lucky life. 

It is true that for one year you spent 12 hours a day learning the piano to play Jerry Lee Lewis in "Great Balls of Fire!"? 

Yes. I was 34 when I got that role. I had plenty of time to prepare for it, a year. I had to look like I knew what I was doing. And then there's Jerry's style, the shuffle. The left hand, I had to get that down and then everything else followed.

Plus, I was also on cocaine, so that made it a little simpler to be at the piano 12 hours at a time. But I'm not advocating to take cocaine to learn how to play the piano. You will wind up in a bad place. 

On regretting not starring opposite Kevin Costner in 'Tin Cup' and never wanting to do a 'Parent Trap' sequel

You played Doc Holliday opposite Kevin Costner in the 1994 epic "Wyatt Earp." What was the worst thing about going down to 139 pounds to play the outlaw?

Getting down there and then staying down there for five months. I had a doctor and a nutritionist with me.

Are you still cool with Kevin Costner?

Oh yeah. 

Have you two ever talked about doing a golf movie? I know how much you love golf and he starred in "Tin Cup." 

It's so funny, I was offered "Tin Cup," the Don Johnson role. 

How did you not take that role?

I was already doing another movie that I wanted to do. But, yeah, what was I thinking? It's one of the best golf movies ever made. 

Was there ever talk of making a sequel to "The Parent Trap" before Natasha Richardson's passing in 2009?

There had been some talk, but it would be impossible to do now. 

So you wouldn't even discuss it now?

No, and nobody else does. I don't think we'd have the heart for it. Maybe one day, another version will be made for another generation. We all still miss Natasha. 

On playing real-life presidents and the best football movie ever made

If you're flipping through the channels on the TV and "Any Given Sunday" and "The Rookie" are both on, which are you going to watch?

That's a tough one. I think "Any Given Sunday" is the best football movie ever made. I really do.

Even better than "Rudy"?

Yeah, it's so visceral. It puts you right down on the field. It's so much about the players and what they go through and the business. It was so close that the NFL wouldn't even endorse it. We started out with its endorsement and then we had to change the uniforms right before. [Laughs.] But I still would watch "The Rookie." I just love that movie. 

You have played two US presidents in your career, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, who are two very different men. But were there any similarities in playing them?

No, because they are very different people. I knew Bill Clinton. I played golf with him. I spent a weekend at the White House and we'd talk on the telephone. He would call me out of the blue. He's probably the smartest person that I've ever been around. Very magnetic and charismatic.

Reagan was like everybody. He was like my dad. He was somebody we really needed. Reagan I admire so much for what he accomplished. Reagan stuck to his guns. Clinton was able to change with the times, Reagan stuck to his guns and won the Cold War. 

So what's left for Dennis Quaid to do? We just talked about a slew of characters, each different from the next —

And that's what makes life an adventure, you never know what's going to come along. I have some things that our production company, Bonniedale Films, is working on that I'd like to do, and that's what's exciting about this era of my career, taking something from beginning to end and getting some unwarranted respect to actually get it done.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

New episodes of "Happy Face" air Thursdays on Paramount+.

More from this series

• Patricia Arquette has a message for anyone looking for 'Severance' spoilers
• Billy Bob Thornton ad-libbed his famous 'Friday Night Lights' speech after being betrayed
• Paul Reiser says he still doesn't know if Dr. Owens on 'Stranger Things' is good or bad

Stephen Curry is undeniably one of basketball's best-ever shooters — but even would-be GOATs can't cheat time.

As the 37-year-old four-time NBA champion enters the twilight of his career on the court, he told Business Insider he's still playing at such a high level thanks to his exacting recovery routine.

Sticking to it is key if Curry is to achieve his goal of outplaying the end of his Golden State Warriors contract when the 2026-2027 season wraps.

Cold plunges and compression boots are merely just a part of the Olympic gold medalist's routine. His wife Ayesha's "exceptional" cooking and the time he spends with his four children — who are between the ages of 12 years and 9 months — at their home in Atherton, California is part of Curry's secret sauce.

In the latest installment of Business Insider's "5 to 9" series, Curry — who was promoting the new Plezi Hydration drink that he co-created — shared what he does in his spare time with BI.

When do you wake up?

My wake-up time depends on whether it's a game day or a practice day, but I get up around 7 a.m. on average.

Ayesha and I try to do school drop-offs and morning routines with our kids as much as possible, but it does take a village and we can't do it every day.

I usually get to practice around 9 a.m.

Do you eat breakfast before you go?

Most of the time, I eat breakfast at the facility right before practice.

I'm a creature of habit, so I like to have a yogurt parfait with granola and some mixed berries and some type of egg dish — whether that's an omelet or a scramble — sometimes with some spinach mixed in. I'll have half a waffle for some carbs and sometimes a protein shake on the side. So it's a healthy breakfast.

Sounds like a great breakfast. Is it a chore or a pleasure to eat so much for work?

It's definitely a chore, which is my wife's biggest call-out with me. I really have to force myself to eat and keep my calories up. I do like good food and to eat for fun, but I'm more someone who eats to live rather than lives to eat.

Pretty much every elite athlete I've ever spoken to has said the same. Are you disciplined with your diet?

I'm fairly disciplined. You want to have room for a cheat day once in a while just to be a human being and have a little fun.

It varies throughout the year, though. My birthday is in March, and after that, it's the lock-in period leading up to the playoffs and the stretch run when you're trying to chase championships on the court. So I'm a little more disciplined then.

But other times, like in summer, there are no rules. You just want to make sure you're having everything in moderation and trying to eat as cleanly as possible.

Endless choices for dinner

Do you cook dinner in the evening?

I like cooking but I never cook because I have a beautiful wife who's an exceptional chef.

Lucky you.

I know, for sure. She loves taking care of the family.

Sometimes, she'll say, "What do you want for dinner?" And I can never answer that question because the options are endless. So I get her to give me three options to pick between. But you name it, she can make it — and it's always good. She makes it look so easy.

Are your kids picky eaters?

Our oldest and our 6-year-old are, but once our oldest started to cook for herself a bit, she expanded her palette. Our 9-year-old eats whatever's on her plate. She was eating oysters at 3 years old. She wants to try everything, and eating is the love of her life.

Do you think a lot about nutrition for your family?

Yes. That's why we love working with Plezi. It's a brand that's mindful about what you're putting in your body, giving kids and families an option for nutritious products that also taste great.

Recovery is essential

Obviously, you have an intense training schedule, but what does movement look like outside work?

It's a way of life. When I'm playing golf, I try to walk the courses as much as possible instead of riding the golf cart. I like to go on long walks or ride bikes around the neighborhood with my kids. My son just wants to race everyone.

We, as a family, like to spend our time being active, on the move, and outside, and we've seen how much good that does for our minds and bodies. There's no better thing than getting fresh air and being in nature, too.

Do you have any recovery and longevity essentials?

You think about it more and more as you get older. I'm in my 16th year and just turned 37, and I've realized everything does matter, especially sleep: the amount you get, the consistency, and good sleep habits.

It's important to have a routine. And for me, getting in cold tubs, the sauna, compression sleeves to make sure you got good blood flow in your legs, different supplements — they all give me a little boost.

If I skip one of those, I feel it, and it doesn't give me the maximum recovery that I need, especially at this stage. So, I commit to my recovery and find fun in the process because that's more rewarding than what happens on the basketball court.

It's time-consuming. It's not always glamorous, but it does work. The results are proven, and it all allows me to play at a high level, even at this age.

What does your ideal evening look like?

A good family dinner, for sure. Yes, I have my recovery routine, but I also make sure I've got time to be with the family and watch a movie with the kids. We are very much homebodies and so when you have the entire family at home, it's always great to enjoy that energy and the laughs.

I then either watch a good TV show with my wife or put on a game. I watch basketball all the time, so I'm always doing homework and scouting and all that type of stuff. I try to get to bed at a decent time to be ready for the next day.

Do you have a nighttime wind-down routine?

Yeah, I wear Normatec compression boots when I watch a show in bed, read a book, or talk to my wife.

After that, I put on an audio track, a sleep sound device meant to trigger the brainwaves and help you get deep sleep. So, those two things get me in the mood to go to bed.

I go to sleep between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m., depending on the night. My wife and I try to go to bed at the same time, but it doesn't always work.

I'm a night owl, so I keep her up later than she'd like. For some reason, I'm really productive at night.

Correction: March 27, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated Stephen Curry's role with Plezi Nutrition. He co-created Plezi Hydration, not the wider company.

Elizabeth Olsen may be best known for starring in a billion-dollar franchise, but she still holds her indie roots close.

Three years after her breakthrough in the 2011 indie film "Martha Marcy May Marlene," a Sundance darling that cost less than $1 million to make, Olsen would make her first in a decade's worth of appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch.

She said taking the role was a smart — not to mention lucrative — decision. But while Olsen told Business Insider the storytelling possibilities are "endless" in the MCU, it's important she diversifies her work outside blockbusters.

"Those other choices you make are incredibly important because they say so much about what your passion is," Olsen said.

That led her to her latest role in Fleur Fortuné's new dystopian sci-fi thriller, "The Assessment." Olsen and Himesh Patel star as Mia and Aaryan, a couple who agree to undergo an emotionally grueling seven-day assessment to determine if they're fit to have children.

Olsen was intrigued by the dystopian premise of "The Assessment" and the opportunity to work with Fortuné, whom she described as an incredible visual filmmaker.

"I loved the game and the rules of the game that these characters had to play together," Olsen said. "I loved how contained something that took place in a near future time was. And I really love stories that play by their own rules."

As an independent film, "The Assessment" offered a more intimate atmosphere, one that allowed Fortuné, Olsen, Patel, and their costar Alicia Vikander to become their own indie version of the Avengers: "I really felt like we were our own little troupe."

For the latest interview in Business Insider's Role Play series, Olsen reflects on auditioning for police procedurals, the best advice she ever got, and how starring in Marvel projects has bolstered her indie career.

On auditioning for anything and everything early in her career

Business Insider: You have an affinity for playing characters who are going through a lot emotionally, going as far back as your film debut in "Martha Marcy May Marlene." What draws you to these heavier roles?

Elizabeth Olsen: With "Martha," I mean, I auditioned for everything around that time. I auditioned for "Blue Bloods," I auditioned for "CSI" whatever it was, I auditioned for "Law & Order." I auditioned for all of the things and it just happened to be a job that I got. I would have said yes to any job because I just wanted to be a working actor. I just happened to be very lucky that it was a script that I was totally obsessed with and a character that I was really fighting for.

I don't mean to put myself through any kind of extreme experience, but I do think the extremities of what it means to be a person in the world are more interesting to explore.

The things that I'm really drawn to right now are: What are prototypes or characters that we've seen before, and then how can we subvert them in some way? At least on the job I'm on right now, that's how I feel.

You got to work with Spike Lee on the 2013 "Oldboy" remake. What was it like working with a famed director so early in your career?

You could have told me to do anything with him, and I would have done it. I loved getting to work with him. He is also such a kind filmmaker. He's so kind to his crew. He's kind to his cast. He has such a boyishness to him and to get to work with him was really such a dream.

He has such a canon that it's amazing that I keep watching movies of his that I hadn't seen before. I just watched "School Daze" recently, twice, and I am such a fan of his work, and continue to be. I feel lucky that I got to work with him.

On being 'petrified' on the set of 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' and why Marvel characters are like Greek heroes

It's also been 10 years since you played Wanda in "Avengers: Age of Ultron." With all that time and hindsight, is there anything that you look back on and view differently about that movie or your experience working on it?

Oh, I was petrified. I was so scared. I didn't know how to take up space at all. And I felt good, actually, about that film. I think we established a foundation for her that we kept building off of.

It's really nice to have had 10 years with the character. I have to say, it's something you don't always get to have unless you're doing television. So, if someone asked me to do it again in 50 years, I hope I'm still around to play a very old version of her [Laughs].

Hey, if Hugh Jackman can do it, so can you.

Yeah!

After the events of "Doctor Strange 2," there's a big question mark surrounding your character. Do you feel like there's unfinished business, or more to explore after Wanda's villain arc in that movie?

I don't know if I feel like there's unfinished business, but I always feel like there's room to explore. I think the comic books have been going on for so many decades that there is such endless story that you can always go back to.

How we make it work for the world that we've established, I'm not sure. But I do think you can always keep going back with these characters. They're like iconic Greek heroes, basically. And there's always stories to be had with those types of prototypes.

On finding success outside the MCU and the role that marked a turning point

The MCU is vast, but all those projects can be time consuming. How have you navigated the balance of playing this character that you care about for so long and also getting to explore other material outside of that, like indie movies and TV series like "Sorry for Your Loss," "Ingrid Goes West," and "Wind River"?

Well, it's just scheduling, I guess, at the end of the day. Sometimes things don't always work out, but I think those types of choices become really important, because if you're only doing Marvel projects, the way other producers or directors see you, they might make assumptions that you don't want to work on something super small, or you don't want to work on TV, and so your choices have to reflect what your interests are.

I think sometimes that was hard for me because of what I was being offered, and sometimes I've taken advantage of it in a way that I'm proud of, but it's been a real balance to learn from.

Was it a confidence boost for you to see the positive reactions to those things outside blockbusters? How did those movies and shows affect how you have viewed your career trajectory?

I think you do a job because you want to feel fulfilled by the skill that you're trying to improve upon. "Sorry for Your Loss" for two years was one of the best [examples]. There's so many hours that were put into that, from pitching it with just a pilot to finishing the sound and the color correction on it.

It was something that for two years of my life, I got to learn so much from, and I think that was a big moment that I started to find a different kind of fulfillment out of this job and a different kind of commitment. And I think it's just because of the hours you spend, just like anything else.

So when people write anything positive about your work, of course your ego is grateful because then you think eyes will see it, and then you get a bit more of a boost of the next projects coming in, which is the goal.

On her Marvel star power opening doors to more opportunities and feeling empowered to say no

Speaking more broadly, what's the best business decision that you ever made for your career?

Probably doing Marvel, because if you're thinking about business, you're thinking about how you're able to take care of, I guess, a short-term future and a long-term future.

Marvel has allowed me to bring eyes and potentially money to projects that are very small and maybe wouldn't have been seen in other iterations. So I think that's been very helpful from a business perspective.

There's a piece of advice that you've mentioned that has really guided you: "No" is a full sentence. Can you share a time in your career when you felt empowered to put that advice into practice?

Well, the ones that first come up, I wouldn't want to share those because it is very empowering to say no, and I'm also very private with the things I say no to. But it's an important thing to know that regardless of your own status or power dynamic, you always have that power.

I think the biggest one that I can think of — without saying anything about it — I look back in hindsight, and I think, "How did I have the confidence to say that?" Because I wasn't in a position of power. It was very early in my career and I felt so confident to just speak what my boundaries were. So yeah, I think that's always good advice.

It was probably being green that empowered you to just say that, right?

Yeah, like, "Whatever! This is what it is. You can either take it or leave it." I think I became even better at it later. But yeah, I think it is an important thing for everyone.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

"The Assessment" is now in theaters.

More from this series

• Elisabeth Moss will be bringing her baby to the "Handmaid's Tale" set
• George Clooney's advice taught Shailene Woodley about the business of Hollywood
• Lizzy Caplan didn't work for a year after playing Janis Ian in 'Mean Girls': 'My phone was not ringing off the hook'

Will Champion was 24 and working at a board game café on New York's Upper West Side in 2021 when he and his friends decided to turn their Dungeons & Dragons hobby into something bigger.

Champion was making a meager $15 an hour at the game café as a dungeon master, the storyteller who often leads the games, and felt like he could do better. "Why don't we just do it ourselves?" his friend, Woody Minshew, then 25, suggested.

The group of four 20-somethings, most of whom had performing backgrounds, began streaming a D&D campaign on YouTube and Twitch under the moniker "The Bards of New York." They found they enjoyed playing together for an audience, and people were eager to join their community. So they started a Discord, began to build relationships with their listeners, and scrapped the idea of working as dungeon masters. "We still had to have muggle jobs," says Kyle Knight, one of the group members, referring to non-D&D jobs, "and DMing, when done well, is very time-consuming." They also wanted to make the game as accessible as possible.

Things took off in 2023 after a clip of their stream went viral. The video, which got 3.5 million views, captured two characters who'd shared a slow-burn romance finally confessing their feelings. Comments flooded in from people who shared their favorite D&D moments or wanted to experience a similarly heartwarming game. The Bards gained a new audience and are now the 19th-most-popular D&D streaming channel on Twitch, based on TwitchMetrics. They had tapped into the growing market of tabletop role-players.

Once considered a niche game for fantasy nerds to play in someone's basement, tabletop role-playing games have entered the mainstream. In 1968, Gary Gygax, a game designer and the cocreator of D&D, organized the first-ever tabletop convention, known as "Gen Con," in his basement with a dozen or so people. Last year's Gen Con conference in Indiana set new attendance records, with over 71,000 attendees and 540 exhibiting companies. In 2020, Wizards of the Coast, the owner of D&D, touted a seven-year growth streak, saying that online play grew by 86% that year.

As its popularity has grown, D&D has inspired a film and a hit TV show and attracted over 50 million players worldwide, Wizards of the Coast says. Other tabletop games such as Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, and RuneQuest have seen a similar surge in popularity. Meanwhile, board game cafés owners have seen demand explode over the past few years, with more cafés popping up across the US. For a select few streamers, the boom has been incredibly lucrative. Leaked data from Twitch showed that Critical Role, one of the most popular D&D streaming channels, earned over $9.6 million between 2019 and 2021 from a combination of subscribers, tips, and ad revenue.

The nerds are taking over — and they may have the solution to America's loneliness crisis.

Cherie Wright, a 36-year-old from Virginia, was one of the people who saw the Bards of New York's viral TikTok. She'd never played D&D before but found herself captivated by the storytelling. As she watched the group's streams, she familiarized herself with the game's lingo. " I learned what 'rolling the dice' meant, and what a 'perception check' is, and why everyone gets so excited about a 'natural 20,'" she says.

Wright became an active participant in the group's Discord and Twitch chats, which now have several thousand members. "There's really a love for connecting with other people," she says, describing the community as "enchantingly warm" and "wildly creative."

The community has been a critical support for her, especially when her job as a museum director was busy and she had a hard time getting out of the house. "I didn't realize how close to burnout I actually was," she says.

Since the pandemic lockdowns, lots of people are in a similar boat, with many of us spending more time alone than ever before. In the group chats, fans would talk about the stream, share pet photos, or ask for help if they were having a bad day. " People became regulars and we all learned each other's names," Wright says.

A little over a year after she joined the community, Wright decided to learn more about D&D. In the tabletop role-playing game, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, players design their own characters and set out on a quest. They roll dice to battle enemies, find treasure, and complete challenges in order to reach the end of a campaign that can span anywhere from a single afternoon to a couple of years.

" I walked into my local game store just with the intention of asking about it," she says. There was a one-shot session — a short adventure that can be finished in a single sitting — in progress and she decided to join. She was immediately hooked. "I met some of my now best friends that day," she says.

Playing consistently can be tricky because people's schedules are always changing, but she still manages to make it work.  "At one point, I was playing two or three times a week with different groups and different nights, but right now it's about once a week."

In the past decade, tabletop role-playing games have taken on a new life. The hit TV show "Stranger Things," which first aired in 2016, brought D&D back into the spotlight. "It was such a phenomenon," Knight says. "It broke a lot of stigmas by just placing it into the zeitgeist and making it seem fun and acceptable."

The show's success made Hannah Minshew, one of the Bards, suddenly feel cool. "I was like, 'Oh, I know what a Mind Flayer is. I have this exotic information that you all don't. Let me teach you. I'm the cool guy,'" she laughs.

D&D is far from the only tabletop game that's popular today. Warhammer 40,000, also known as Warhammer 40K, is a turn-based tactical wargame in which players collect, assemble, and battle detailed miniature armies against each other. Based on traffic to its website, the gaming site Goonhammer estimates the game has 2.4 million players each month. In December, Games Workshop, the publisher of Warhammer, announced that it had sold Amazon the film and television rights to the game universe. That same month, Games Workshop made it onto the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 index, a list of the largest UK companies.

Marcus Pascall, a 53-year-old in San Diego, had largely given up role-playing games when "Stranger Things" came out. Pascall's son Ian was 10 years old at the time. "Everyone in school was talking about it, so I dusted off my old books and ran a D&D game for him," he recalls. "It was nice to see role-playing games through the eyes of someone who hadn't played before."

Now in college, Ian continues to play tabletop games with his friends, and Pascall himself has returned to D&D. For the past three years, he's been running a monthly game with his 29-year-old daughter and some of his friends. His daughter, who lives in Los Angeles, drives two hours to make the sessions.

Pascall has noticed a big shift in the culture from when he was playing. "In the '80s, being called a nerd was a massive insult. And you avoided it at all costs, and you felt insulted, you felt almost ashamed," he says. " We're all nerds now. It's all one big group. It's like, 'I don't care if you don't have social skills. Come play with us.'"

For John Edwards, 60, who was active in the role-playing game world for decades, the social experience was always the main draw. " You've got a topic that you can talk about, even if you don't have a lot of other things in common," he says. A large part of the audience is made up of adult men, many of whom, he says, "don't have any good excuses to all sit down together and do something."

Although Edwards has shifted to more traditional board games over the years because of how time-consuming it was to run D&D campaigns, he still values how the games opened up his social circles. " Particularly in a country that is very polarized politically right now, it means you can sit across the table from people that you otherwise maybe wouldn't be comfortable sitting with," he says.

Anna Prosser, a 40-year-old Oregonian who is a streamer on the weekly D&D show "StonesThrow," has found that committing to regular play has had other positive impacts on her mental health.

" A lot of times we grow out of play and out of imagination," she tells me. " It's considered something that's for children." She says that "committing to times of play every week" has helped her to retrain her imagination and improve her creativity, problem-solving skills, and mental health.

Plenty of research backs up the benefits of play for adults, finding that it improves creativity and can help people process stress. In a study published in July, researchers at University College Cork in Ireland found that D&D helped people's mental health by providing escapism, self-exploration, and social support. "The most interesting finding for me and for a lot of people that I've talked to is this exploration of self," Orla Walsh, the study's lead, says. "I can't think of many hobbies where you get to do this."

She says one player who was struggling in a male-dominated work environment created a confident character that helped her practice being confident in real life. Another player, a comedian who lost his grandfather, felt pressure to be the comic relief for his family while struggling with his own grief. As the dungeon master, he created a monster representing his grief, which allowed him to privately process his emotions. " No one else knew that it was happening but he gained so much from it," Walsh says.

Prosser says that using her imagination more brought "a vibrant inner life back into focus" and has helped build her confidence in making decisions. "The stories I've helped write in D&D have helped reassure me that perfection isn't possible and life is good without it," she says.

By acting as different characters with different personality traits and talents, she's also learned a lot about what kind of person she wants to be. " It's really important to have the flexibility of looking at the world and looking at problems through a different perspective in order to either affirm your own or enhance your own," she says. "D&D gives you a really safe place to do that."

Because it's been accepted more broadly in mainstream culture, the game is welcoming to a wider range of people. Prosser says that the expectation of who a D&D player is has changed significantly over the years. While the game is still dominated by men — Wizards of the Coast said in 2023 that "60% of D&D players are male, 39% are female, and 1% identify otherwise" — the demographics seem to be shifting. Prosser used to play in a group that was made up entirely of women players. " People would think it was strange that a group of women performing artists wanted to play D&D. That's not the case anymore," she says. "At least in most of the circles that I run in."

As the internet fosters more avid fan communities, nothing feels as niche as it once did. Being a nerd once meant you were part of a specific subculture of people passionate about comic books or video games. Today, fandom is just the air we breathe. When everyone is a nerd, nothing is really nerdy — that's made it easier to find really special communities in the tabletop game world.

Aimee Pearcy is a freelance journalist who writes about technology and digital culture.

• The "Severance" season two finale aired this week.
• New true crime dramas like "Happy Face" and "Good American Family" also premiered.
• Movies including "Anora" and "Wicked" are streaming too.

TV fans have their pick of the litter this weekend.

Several new shows have premiered, including "Good American Family" and "The Residence." Meanwhile, "Severance" season two aired its highly anticipated finale.

On the movie side, some of 2024's buzziest films are now available to stream, including "Wicked" and the Oscar-sweeping indie "Anora."

Here's a complete rundown of all the best movies, shows, and documentaries to stream this weekend, broken down by what kind of entertainment you're looking for.

For a fictionalized true-crime drama, check out "Good American Family."

The story of Natalia Grace fascinated audiences when it was teased out in an ID docuseries that unfolded over the course of multiple years (with a few unexpected twists and turns during filming). The Ukrainian orphan was famously accused of being an adult posing as a child by her American adoptive parents.

"Good American Family," starring Ellen Pompeo as Natalia's adoptive mom Kristine Barnett, is the first scripted take on the story and uses multiple perspectives to get viewers to question the nature of truth.

Streaming on: Hulu

Or "Happy Face."

For a true crime drama of the decidedly more lethal variety, check out "Happy Face," which premiered its first two episodes this week.

The series focuses on Melissa, a real woman who learned as a teenager that she was the daughter of an infamous murderer after her dad, Keith Jesperson (aka the Happy Face Killer), was arrested. The real Melissa Moore serves as an executive producer on the show, which stars Annaleigh Ashford as a version of Melissa.

Streaming on: Paramount+

If you like movies like "Knives Out," try "The Residence."

As with the Rian Johnson films — which are also on Netflix — "The Residence" is a whodunit that leans into comedy, focusing on a fictional murder mystery in the White House. Uzo Aduba's police consultant character even has a similarly alliterative (and somewhat silly-sounding) name to rival Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc.

Streaming on: Netflix

If you're a fan of musicals, watch "Wicked."

The popular Broadway musical got the film adaptation treatment last year and was a hit at the box office. Now, "Wicked" is available to stream at home, so you can experience Ariana Grande's Glinda and Cynthia Erivo's Elphaba in all their Oscar-nominated glory from the comfort of your couch.

Streaming on: Peacock

"Anora" is also finally streaming.

Sean Baker's "Anora" swept the Oscars, but the indie film was probably one of the lesser-seen nominees. It's finally available to watch at home, so you can see the performance that led Mikey Madison to triumph over best actress frontrunner Demi Moore.

Streaming on: Hulu

So is "Sing Sing."

Another underappreciated 2024 critical darling, "Sing Sing" stars Colman Domingo as an incarcerated man who finds purpose after joining a theater group in prison. Domingo was nominated for an Oscar for his performance and acted alongside real former inmates.

Streaming on: Max

If you like rock operas, "O'Dessa" is delightful.

The plot isn't exactly airtight, but if you take it for what it is, "O'Dessa" is a fun ride with impressive performances. Sadie Sink shines as the title character, a young orphaned musician in a postapocalyptic future. Imbued with the power of music to change the world, she embarks on a quest to save her family heirloom guitar and save her true love.

Streaming on: Hulu

"Severance" season two ended this week.

The megahit workplace thriller/mystery box series completed its second season this week. The ending of "Severance" season two left off on a major cliffhanger, so hopefully fans won't have to wait another three years for "Severance" season three.

Streaming on: Apple TV+

True crime fans should watch "A Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read."

One of the most baffling true crime cases in recent memory, this new ID docuseries looks into the death of John O'Keefe, who was found dead in the front yard of his friend's home. His girlfriend, Karen Read, was subsequently arrested and charged with his murder, but has maintained her innocence. Read participates in the doc.

Streaming on: Max

For a twisty thriller, watch "Tyler Perry's Duplicity."

Kat Graham stars as a lawyer trying to figure out who shot her best friend's husband. The synopsis promises "a treacherous maze of deception and betrayal," so this is probably a good one for the Harlan Coben fans out there.

Streaming on: Prime Video

• Loewe is gaining popularity as a must-have brand among men.
• That's partially because male influencers and celebrities have boosted the brand's desirability.
• Loewe fans also attribute the trend to its high-quality pieces and quiet-luxury aesthetic.

Let's talk about Loewe.

The legacy fashion house has been everywhere in recent years. You probably know a handful of people who carry its Puzzle bag, or maybe you have one yourself.

What you might not have realized, though, is that men have become obsessed with the luxury brand, too.

Loewe totes are this year's ultimate menswear status symbol, and the brand's jackets, beanies, and sunglasses have become part of an unofficial cool-guy uniform.

Three men told Business Insider that's because Loewe is simultaneously a few things that other brands aren't: trendy, luxe, and nonchalant.

Every 'it' guy is wearing Loewe

The company began as a leather goods workshop in Spain around 1846, was branded as Loewe in 1876, and has lived under the LVMH umbrella since 1996.

When Jonathan Anderson became creative director of Loewe in 2013, he transformed it from an aging luxury brand to a modern cult-favorite. Vogue reported that Anderson helped the company increase its revenue from about $251 million in 2014 to about $1.17 billion in 2024.

Anderson announced his departure from the brand on Monday, leaving his successor, who has yet to be named, with big shoes to fill. It's been widely reported that he's likely to move to Dior, though Anderson has not confirmed any future career steps.

Among Anderson's biggest successes at Loewe is the Puzzle bag, which was introduced in 2015 and remains a coveted item. He also expertly tapped celebrities to increase the brand's visibility and allure — a tried-and-true marketing formula.

Kylie Jenner made the brand's $450 tank top a must-have piece after she wore it to Paris Fashion Week in 2022, and Rihanna wore a full Loewe design to perform at Super Bowl LVII. Beyoncé also wore the brand throughout her 2023 Renaissance Tour.

The marketing blitz paid off. Lyst named Loewe the hottest fashion brand for Q2 2023, citing Jenner and Beyoncé as reasons the brand saw a 19% increase in searches compared to the previous quarter. It received the same recognition for Q2 2024.

Loewe was also a sponsor of the 2024 Met Gala and the creative force behind the clothes seen in "Challengers," the tennis-themed film starring Zendaya.

LVMH praised Loewe's "growing brand awareness" and "bold creativity" in 2024 — a bright spot for the parent company, which has struggled in a declining luxury market.

All the while, men were quietly taking note.

The world of Loewe menswear

Trousers, belts, and bucket hats are some of the most recognizable items featured in Loewe's vast menswear catalog. The brand also sells sunglasses, loafers, wallets, keychains, and bracelets, among other products. However, it's the assortment of bags that enthrall male Loewe fans.

Moses Razvi, a 28-year-old student working toward a master's degree in luxury brand management in London, is particularly fond of his brown suede Puzzle bag.

"I wear that bag so much," he told BI, adding that he wears it as an everyday essential and a school tote. "That's why I bought another one in black leather. The summer is coming up, and this suede won't really work."

Puzzle bags like Razvi's typically range between $2,650 and $4,500.

Meanwhile, Sam Bills, a 26-year-old content creator based in the UK, occasionally borrows his sister's monogrammed raffia tote — which can cost between $650 and $1,300 depending on its size and style. Still, he's mostly loyal to his $2,750 oxblood Cubi bag.

"I keep my iPad in there, headphones, even gym stuff," he said. "The bag elevates the outfit a little bit."

"It's why I like Loewe because it's not in your face," Bills added. "It's timeless. I like to buy things that I know I'm going to have in 10 years' time, and it's not going to be out of style."

Ben Taylor Lebowitz, a 36-year-old based in New York City, said he first bought a Loewe $2,400 Puzzle belt bag in khaki green and immediately "fell in love with the craftsmanship and quality."

"I am always thinking about what my next Loewe piece will be," the founder and CEO of the pet portrait company West & Willow said. He noted that he had a Loewe jacket arriving from the men's luxury site Mr. Porter the day he spoke to BI.

Of course, Loewe isn't just for influencers. Celebrities also love the brand. Drew Starkey and Kit Connor have starred in recent Loewe marketing campaigns, Jeff Goldblum wore the brand at the British Academy Film Awards, and Zayn Malik and Andrew Garfield attended its 2024 Fall/Winter runway show.

As a result of those stars — and influencers like the three who spoke with BI — showing off their Loewe pieces, everyday fashion fans have been inspired to incorporate the brand into their own wardrobes.

Lebowitz said that a TikTok he made about packing his Loewe Puzzle messenger bag for his tech job was the first of his to surpass 100,000 views, earning him nearly 30,000 followers in the process.

Razvi and Bills, on the other hand, have noticed everyone from friends to strangers getting in on the trend.

"My male peers are obsessed with Loewe," Razvi said. "They love the brand so much."

If you know, you know

Quiet luxury isn't as popular as just a few years ago, but Loewe keeps the aesthetic relevant.

After all, the three men who spoke with BI said Loewe's biggest draw is the combination of subtle brand logos and artistic designs.

"Loewe is a nice middle ground," Bills said of the luxury brand. "It's high-end and coveted, but it's just not doing too much. It is quiet luxury, but it's not boring."

There's also an exclusive feeling that comes with wearing the brand. Anyone can recognize that your clothes are high quality, but only fashion fans know that the swirls on your jeans mean you're rocking Loewe.

"I'm going to Japan in April, and I wanted a midweight black jacket that is cool and functional, so I got one from Loewe," Lebowitz said. "It's a black wool-twill overshirt with a leather pocket detail that has the anagram logo, which is so cool, so classic, and so Loewe."

"If you know, you know," he added.

It's genuinely amazing how cheap a new TV is these days. A 65-inch LCD television that probably would have cost $1,500 or $2,000, a decade ago is now under $500. And in a world where everything's so expensive — cars, houses, eggs — there's some comfort in knowing you can still indulge in your guilty pleasure show at the end of the day, in high quality, for a pretty low cost. If you can't afford that fancy vacation, at least you can live a little vicariously through "The White Lotus."

That's the deal American consumers have begrudgingly made over the years. A lot of the elements of the supposed American dream are wildly pricey — to the point that for many people they're out of reach. Healthcare is wildly expensive. College tuition is nuts. Navigating the housing market is panic-attack-inducing, whether you're trying to buy or rent.

What's still accessible is the cheap stuff. The cost of consumer goods such as toys, clothes, and electronics has gone down. We tolerate the price tags of the big stuff, in part, because we have no other choice, and in part because at the very least we're entertained, we're connected, and we can fill our homes and closets with stuff. Maybe you can't move up in life, and once available opportunities are shut off, but hey, at least you can get something fun and weird for $5 on Temu.

But now, that grand bargain is changing. Inflation has made the cost of once accessible stuff a little hard to stomach. And tariffs threaten to blot out the last of what's affordable. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently declared that "access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream." Unfortunately, it's the whole shebang, or at least what it's become. And even that might be about to be taken away, too.

It didn't used to be this way. Throughout most of history, consumers weren't inundated with things. Most people had a limited amount of clothes — often made by the women of the house — and furniture and possessions. Their stuff lasted throughout their lifetimes, and when something broke, they fixed it instead of tossing it to buy a replacement. But with the Industrial Revolution and eventual "Mad Men" era of advertising, mass-produced stuff became widely available and attractive to everyone. Along with savvy marketing campaigns came manufacturing tricks like planned obsolescence, where things are built to die, and financial innovations, like consumer credit, that made it easier to pay for all that stuff. And, of course, there's globalization, meaning it's possible to make a bunch of cheap stuff outside the US and ship it in.

Chip Colwell, an anthropologist who is the author of "So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything," told me that it's not just the "capacity" to make all this stuff that made Americans start to accumulate it, but "also really this ideology of abundance." It became possible and desirable to constantly have more, in order to keep up with the Joneses and with our own ideals of consumerism. "The culture of consumption that we have is absolutely predicated on supercheap stuff that we can easily throw away and not have to worry about," he said.

The consumer economy is a driving force in the American economic engine. We spend money to keep the wheels turning. It's become part of our patriotic duty — after the September 11, 2001, attacks, political leaders told Americans to keep spending and not let what happened "in any way throw off their normal level of activity." The ability to spend on what we want when we want is viewed as a pillar of American freedom.

"Now, there's no shame in being materialistic. In fact, materialism is part of our consumer citizenship," said Wendy Woloson, a history professor at Rutgers University who is the author of "Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America."

The churn of stuff cuts across income levels, too. A survey from The New Consumer and Coefficient Capital found that Shein shoppers were likelier to say they cared about sustainability and the environment than the average consumer — eyebrow-raising, given that Shein's clothes and business model are pointedly not good for the planet. A separate March 2024 analysis from the credit card data company Earnest Analytics found that nearly half of sales for Temu, another cheap Chinese retail marketplace, came from people making over $130,000 a year. Given the way wealth has been concentrated at the tippy top of the economy, it tracks: Nearly everyone outside the top 10% of income earners is feeling squeezed by costs of things such as healthcare and higher education, and cheap consumer goods are an outlet to exercise some agency. And in uncertain economic times, everyone's feeling a little price-sensitive.

The Trump administration's recent moves have some important implications for the cheap-stuffification of the American economy. The president is taking a protectionist approach to trade, implementing tariffs that could make the inexpensive things consumers have come to rely on quite a bit more expensive. Retailers such as Best Buy and Target have begun to warn of price increases. The stream of super-low-cost inane items from Shein and Temu could be cut off should President Donald Trump get his way. The prices of clothes, electronics, and toys are likely to go up — the things that up until now have been reliably affordable.

"The whole agenda is let's make it so that it's not the default option to buy just the cheapest, crappiest stuff from overseas when we should be making more of it in America," said Dan Frommer, the founder and editor in chief of The New Consumer.

But shifting the entire supply chain for goods from overseas back into the US is a transition that, if it happens, will be painful for consumers. We're used to a world of more more more — we don't know what it's like to do less less less.

"We don't have that experience of contraction. The system has grown and grown and grown and grown and grown, and the system is based on growing and growing and growing," said Susan Strasser, a historian of American consumer culture. "You want the end of the quarter report to be better than the last end of the quarter report. That's the whole point of it. And so in no sense are people prepared."

I'll go back to the example of TVs — the great American escape. Televisions, like many consumer electronics, have gone down in price even as they've gotten better over the years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, television prices have decreased by 98% since 2000.

"The reason why the prices fall is because of business investment," said Paul Gagnon, a vice president and industry advisor on consumer technology at Circana, a market research firm, adding that companies invest "continuously in new manufacturing facilities that are more efficient and therefore can produce for at least the same amount of money a product that has a lot more performance, or for less money, something that's larger."

Much of this activity, however, is taking place outside the US.

Patrick Horner, a practice leader in TV set research at Omdia, a tech advisory firm, explained that 10 years ago, 49% of assembly for televisions imported into the US was happening in China. But after Trump's first term and the tariffs he put in place on China then, manufacturers moved more of their assembly operations to Mexico. Now, around 60% of American TV imports are made there. You can see the problem: In his second term, Trump has announced 20% additional tariffs on top of existing tariffs on China, and he's also threatening a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico that's (for now) supposed to be implemented in April. Omdia estimates manufacturers with existing factories could shift partial production to tariff-free countries in six months to a year, but building a new factory would take years. And, again, no one knows what Trump's next target could be.

"TV makers are looking into shifting some assembly out of Mexico and relocating it to someplace that doesn't have tariffs," Horner said. "But the thing is, Trump could very much say, 'Hey, Vietnam's on the radar screen, now they're getting the 25% tariff.' I don't think that anybody can accurately predict where the next tariff action is going to take place."

Gagnon said some particular factors kept prices on TVs from going up too much in response to Trump's tariffs in 2018 and 2019. At that time, retailers bought extra inventory to try to get ahead of price increases and it happened at a moment when supply chains to make critical components were expanding and pushing prices down. "Even though the tariffs caused the costs to go up on TVs imported from China, a lot of the components of the TV went down," he said. The context now is different. "It's pretty hard to see how an increase of 25% on the imported cost of a TV from Mexico to the US, given the profit margins for a lot of these TVs, wouldn't result in a price increase," he said.

It's not a bad thing to contemplate the end of the era of cheap stuff. The rate at which we're able to accumulate things without having to think about the trade-offs — environmental, labor-related, or otherwise — is alarming. I don't want to sound like a scold here, but our kids don't need so many toys, our closets don't need to be so full, and that barely old phone doesn't need to be swapped out. Getting a new fun thing may deliver a temporary endorphin hit, but most research shows it doesn't make us happier in the long run. It's not our fault we're like this. Corporations and marketers have turned us into stuffmongers, and even our political leaders encourage us to keep buying.

If and when tariffs start to increase prices and make even the most reachable things unreachable, it's going to feel annoying and unfair. Goods aren't going to become higher quality overnight; tariffs will just make them costlier. That TV isn't made to be fixed when it breaks; it's made to be replaced, whatever the price of said replacement. Fixing something isn't just a physical skill, Strasser said, "but to some extent, it's an emotional skill and a way of framing your relationship to material goods that's just completely different from anything that we've experienced in the last 50, 60, 70 years."

Like it or not, the American dream is a little bit about access to cheap stuff. It's that giant TV that at least lets you watch the football game (assuming you can find it wherever it's streaming, which is increasingly expensive). It's a repeat pair of those sneakers that wore out suspiciously fast. It's even a "Live, Laugh, Love" sign, a seasonal pillow sham, or random holiday decoration. And now, that all might be ripped away, too.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

• The sci-fi movie "The Electric State," starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, is now on Netflix.
• Some films released in 2024, like "Moana 2" and "Kraven the Hunter," are now streaming.
• Prime Video's fantasy series "The Wheel of Time" returned for season three this week.

There are plenty of TV shows and movies available to stream this weekend, whether you're craving a sci-fi adventure or looking for a family-friendly flick.

Among them are "The Electric State," a PG-13 action movie starring Millie Bobby Brown, and "Moana 2," the sequel to the 2016 animated film about a Polynesian princess on a mission to save her people.

Audiences can also check out the first three episodes of season three of the hit fantasy series "The Wheel of Time" on Prime Video, while comic book fans may feel inclined to watch "Kraven the Hunter" on Netflix.

Here's a complete rundown of all the best movies, shows, and documentaries to stream this weekend, broken down by what kind of entertainment you're looking for.

"Moana 2" is an all-ages crowd-pleaser.

"Moana 2" hit theaters in November 2024 and quickly became a box office hit, finishing 2024 as the fourth highest-grossing film of the year. Not too shabby for a film that was originally intended to be a TV series for streaming.

The sequel is set three years after the events of "Moana" and follows the titular heroine, again voiced by Auli'i Cravalho, as she sets out to find a legendary island called Motufetu that will connect her people.

Streaming on: Disney+

"The Wheel of Time" returned for season three this week.

Season three of the show, which is based on Robert Jordan's 15-novel "Wheel of Time" fantasy series, picks up after the events of the season two finale. Rand Al'Thor (Josha Stradowski), grapples with good and evil after learning that he's the Dragon Reborn, a legend from history who's destined to save the world or destroy it.

The first three episodes are now streaming, with new episodes releasing weekly, culminating in the season finale on April 17.

Streaming on: Prime Video

For a dose of nostalgia, watch the '90s-set adventure movie "The Electric State."

The sci-fi movie is directed by brothers Joe and Anthony Russo and is very loosely based on the 2018 illustrated novel of the same name by Simon Stålenhag.

"Stranger Things" star Millie Bobby Brown plays Michelle, a rebellious orphaned teen who embarks on a journey to find her long-lost brother Christopher. Along the way, she befriends a smuggler named Keats (Chris Pratt) and his sidekick, a robot named Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie).

Streaming on: Netflix

After releasing in theaters in December, "Kraven the Hunter" is now on Netflix.

The comic book movie stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Sergei Kravinoff/Kraven the Hunter and chronicles his origin story, beginning with the fateful day he gains animalistic powers while on a hunting trip in Ghana.

The movie also stars "Gladiator II" scene stealer Fred Hechinger and Oscar winners Ariana DeBose and Russell Crowe.

Streaming on: Netflix

For chills and thrills, check out the Hulu original movie "Control Freak."

"Star Wars" franchise actor Kelly Marie Tran plays a successful motivational speaker with an uncontrollable itch on her scalp, leading her to become infected with a parasitic demon.

Streaming on: Hulu

For a comedic take on the horror genre, watch "The Parenting."

The movie centers on Rohan (Nik Dodani) and Josh (Brandon Flynn), a couple who organize a getaway so their parents can meet. But the visit is derailed when personalities clash, and tensions run even higher when they they realize the house is haunted by a 400-year-old poltergeist.

Streaming on: Max

Amanda Seyfried stars in the new limited series "Long Bright River."

The crime show is based on Liz Moore's best-selling novel of the same name stars Amanda Seyfried as Mickey, a Philadelphia-based police officer investigating the deaths of several young women and the disappearance of Kacey, her younger sister who goes missing.

All eight episodes of the thriller are available to stream.

Streaming on: Peacock

Netflix's gripping new limited series "Adolescence" follows a child accused of murder.

"Adolescence" stars Owen Cooper as Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old who's accused of killing his classmate Katie (Emilia Holliday). Although the four-episode series is fictional, it's rooted in the real issue of knife crime in the UK, specifically cases of boys stabbing girls.

Streaming on: Netflix

Oscar, Emmy, and Tony nominee Brian Tyree Henry stars in the new crime thriller "Dope Thief."

The eight-episode series is based on Dennis Tafoya's book of the same name and centers on two longtime friends, Ray (Brian Tyree Henry) and Manny (Wagner Moura), who pose as DEA agents to rob drug dealers in Philadelphia. But when they choose the mark, they become targeted by enemies who are determined to hunt them down and kill the people closest to them.

Streaming on: Apple TV+

For lighter fare, catch up on "Everybody's Live with John Mulaney."

John Mulaney brings his comedic stylings to Netflix's new live celebrity sit-down talk show. In the series premiere, which is the first of 12 live shows for the next 12 weeks, he's joined by Joan Baez, Michael Keaton, Fred Armisen, personal finance columnist Jessica Roy, and musical guest Cypress Hill.

The first episode premiered live on Netflix on Wednesday night, but you can still watch the replay on the streamer.

Streaming on: Netflix

Beatles fans can tune into the two-hour special "Ringo & Friends at the Ryman."

The special celebrates The Beatles drummer Ringo Starr and features the musician performing some of the band's biggest hits, his solo music, and tracks from his upcoming country album, "Look Up." In addition to Starr, the lineup includes Sheryl Crow, Mickey Guyton, Jack White, and more.

Streaming on: Paramount+

Reality TV lovers should check out "Temptation Island."

If you're looking for more drama after a contestant named Montoya went viral on the Spanish version of "Temptation Island," Netflix has you covered. The show, which previously aired on USA before moving to the streamer, is hosted by Mark L. Walberg (not to be confused with Hollywood star Mark Wahlberg.).

The show follows four couples as they put their relationships to the test by living separately with singles of the opposite sex who are ready to mingle on a tropical island. What could go wrong?

Streaming on: Netflix

• TikTok employees say they're experiencing burnout amid reorgs, tough performance goals, and other workplace pressures.
• Current and former TikTok employees told BI it's become common for staffers to go on leave for mental health reasons.
• Some employees said uncertainty around TikTok's US future is also causing stress and demotivation.

In mid-January, ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on TikTok's future in the US, employees at the company were focused on another task: filling out their performance reviews.

These evaluations had become particularly anxiety-inducing for some of the company's 7,000-plus US staffers after it instructed managers last year to grade workers more harshly. A low score on a review could lead to a smaller bonus or a performance-improvement plan, or PIP.

Uncertainty about the company's path forward, combined with fear that they would personally receive negative reviews, made some staffers feel directionless and burned out.

"I see people change from motivated to 'I don't care anymore,'" one current TikTok employee told Business Insider.

TikTok has been placing high demands on its employees as political scrutiny on the company heats up over its owner's ties to China, 10 current and former employees who have worked at the company in the past year told Business Insider. These US staffers spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their jobs and career prospects; their identities are known to BI.

Some of the workplace pressure is particular to TikTok, but it also reflects a broader trend in the tech industry. Companies like Meta, Google, and Microsoft have targeted low performers, cut workplace perks, and cracked down on employee dissent in the pursuit of business efficiency.

The trade-off for workplace pressure is high pay and working at the buzziest companies in tech.

"From a career growth standpoint, you have access to huge budgets and big names," a former staffer said of working at TikTok. "Everyone in the industry wants to talk to you."

Still, burnout can take a real human toll, as well as impact a company's operations and bottom line.

Burned out staffers turn to mental health leave

The TikTok staffers who spoke with BI said they felt that burnout — which is defined by the World Health Organization as workplace stress that has not been successfully managed — had become common.

Some employees are addressing burnout by requesting time off for mental health leave, five of the current and former employees said. These staffers worked on three different teams across several offices and spoke directly to colleagues who had taken mental health leave or had done so themselves.

Business Insider was unable to obtain data on how many TikTok employees have used mental health leave, and the company did not respond to requests for comment. But interviews with current and former staffers made clear that mental health — and taking time off for it — has been a topic of discussion among the workforce over the past year.

"We all talked," another former TikTok employee said. "We all side texted. And we all found out pretty quickly whether people were on leave because of burnout."

The former staffer said there was a period when around 20% of their team was out on mental health leave. While TikTok doesn't broadcast why a worker goes on leave, the staffer was told directly by colleagues that they were taking time off for their mental health. A second current staffer said they had direct knowledge of six employees who had requested mental health leave.

The length of leave depended on the individual and the state where they live, but several of the TikTok insiders said two to three months of paid time off was typical. When a staffer goes on leave, their away status and period of time off are typically displayed in internal communication tools to alert colleagues that they are unreachable, without specifying the reason, three current and former employees told BI.

Some employees chose to go on leave because they were exhausted and needed a break after feeling intense pressure to hit their goals, said three of the TikTok insiders, who had either spoken to team members who took time off or gone on leave themselves.

The first former staffer described a moment last year when their team reorganized under new leadership and saw expectations around performance spike.

"It didn't make sense to me," they said. "If you have ambitious goals, you need more head count, tooling, and software."

As performance targets increased, stress followed, a third former staffer said.

"For me, it was just feeling like a failure, like I couldn't do anything right," said the ex-employee, who went on mental health leave while at the company. BI viewed a confirmation email sent to the employee to verify they had been approved for the leave.

Tech's burnout problem

TikTok isn't the only tech company dealing with burnout, which has become increasingly common across the sector. Mental health leave is also on the rise in the US workforce. In a 2024 survey of US business executives and HR professionals conducted by the law firm Littler Mendelson, 74% of respondents saw an increase in "employee requests for leaves of absence or accommodations for mental health-related issues over the last year."

But TikTok faces unique challenges when compared to other US workplaces. For one, its app could shut down in the US in April if it fails to reach a political resolution with the Trump administration. While TikTok has assured US staffers that they would still have jobs even if its app were kicked out of the country, the company rarely addresses its political challenges internally. That's added to overall anxiety, six of the current and former employees told BI.

"The uncertainty is certainly playing a major role in burnout in the sense that we don't know if we're going to have jobs," the second current employee said.

That said, for some staff, dealing with challenging performance standards and the threat of having the business shut down by the US government is worth it for the opportunity to work at a fast-growing company that is reshaping the tech industry. And not everyone at TikTok faces the same pressure to perform, seven of the current and former staffers said.

"I think depending on the team, there has been a more tense environment, but at the same time, I also know plenty of teams where that is not the case," the first current employee said.

TikTok provides various mental health resources to staff, including therapy sessions, via a platform called Lyra Health.

'Building the plane while flying it'

TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, are known for testing many ideas and then pivoting based on what works or flops. Leaders at TikTok sometimes talk about this approach as "building the plane while flying it," a current employee and two former staffers told BI.

As part of that startup ethos, the company regularly reorganizes or lays off teams, changes employees' performance goals, and adds new policies like mandatory return-to-office for some teams.

Some employees said that frequent changes to how they worked, whether it was abruptly getting a new manager or seeing their goals change, made their jobs feel insecure.

"The joke internally was don't get too comfortable because something was going to change," the second former staffer said.

As part of the reorgs, some new team leaders either worked out of China (where ByteDance is headquartered) and required late calls from US teams, or migrated from abroad to work in US offices, seven of the current and former staffers told BI. Managers like Bob Kang and Qing Lan worked on the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, before taking on e-commerce and SMB advertising leadership roles at TikTok, for example.

Several of the new executives raised the performance targets for their teams or implemented new policies that increased time at work, such as return-to-office requirements, the seven TikTok insiders said. The TikTok Shop team, under Kang's leadership, recently intensified a return-to-office rule that required employees to be in the office five days a week, specifying that they would need to be physically in the office space for eight hours a day, for instance.

"They have been consolidating under Chinese leadership to some extent," the first current staffer said, referring to Chinese staff coming to the US.

In a December court filing, TikTok said that its US platform is controlled by US employees, subsidiaries, and contractors, but that its recommendation algorithm is developed by a global team.

Other former employees, such as Chloe Shih and Pabel Martinez, have previously raised concerns about the intensity of the company's work culture.

The focus on working long hours isn't new to the China tech scene. Tech firms like ByteDance built massive businesses in the country as part of a "996" work culture that asked employees to work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week (a practice that is now illegal in China). Even as ByteDance has pledged to work a "1075" schedule — 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., five days a week — there remains a sense among some US employees that their Chinese colleagues are constantly working.

"There were a lot of leaders that came in from ByteDance or the China-based teams, and they operated so differently," a fourth former employee said. "There was a cultural perspective that the US and outside of China just doesn't work as fast as China."

The pressure to always be available can have an impact on burnout.

"People are not machines, and giving them breaks to recharge, to think differently, helps our employees be more creative," Jaclyn Margolis, an associate professor who researches organizational behavior at Pepperdine University's Graziadio Business School, told BI.

Failure to address burnout can lead to absenteeism and turnover, said Laura Giurge, an assistant professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The economic impact of burnout in the workplace can be sizable. A 2025 study from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine estimated that employee disengagement and burnout cost US companies between $3,999 and $20,683 a year per disengaged staffer, depending on the level of seniority.

TikTok's 'golden handcuffs' and a tough job market

While working at TikTok can be grueling for some US employees, the company also pays its staff competitively — a key perk. A BI analysis of work-visa disclosures from late 2024 found that with a few exceptions, most of the company's base salary offers were in the six figures in the US.

Fear of losing a high salary acts as a form of "golden handcuffs" for TikTok employees, the third former staffer said.

There is also no guarantee that leaving TikTok for a competitor would reduce workplace stress, as other Big Tech firms have also increased pressure on staff as part of an ongoing efficiency push in the industry.

Even if an employee wants to jump ship, it may be tough to land a new gig, as the tech job market is very tight. As of February, US software development job postings were around 36.5% below their pre-pandemic levels, according to data compiled by the jobs site Indeed.

Allison Shrivastava, an economist with the Indeed Hiring Lab, said there's uncertainty in the job market and quit rates are very low.

"The tech scene elsewhere has been really rough," a third current employee said. "Feeling kind of stuck."

And for the thousands of employees working in TikTok's US offices, the issue of job security is particularly heightened as we approach April 5, the deadline for TikTok to make a deal that appeases Washington. A divest-or-ban law, which the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional, has targeted ByteDance's ties to China. Without additional government intervention, TikTok could disappear from app stores and potentially cease operating in less than a month.

"Sometimes people wonder why we are doing this job, because in a few weeks, it may no longer be relevant," the first current staffer said.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at @danwhateley.94. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Ashley Rodriguez contributed reporting.

States have long kept centralized databases to monitor prescriptions for potentially addictive drugs. Now, abortion pills are being monitored in the same way in some parts of the US.

Last May, Louisiana passed a law to monitor misoprostol and mifepristone, the two pills commonly used to induce abortions. The law reclassified the drugs as "controlled substances," a designation typically given to medications that carry the risk of abuse.

Bamboo Health, the company running Louisiana's prescription monitoring database, is ready to track the drugs.

As of March, Louisiana clinicians are required to log every mifepristone and misoprostol prescription they write in Bamboo's database, according to the New Orleans Health Department.

One former Bamboo employee told Business Insider that Bamboo announced its intention to monitor the drugs in an internal Slack channel last year, saying it was the company's legal obligation as Louisiana's prescription-monitoring vendor. The employee asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters.

Texas, Indiana, and Idaho are considering similar measures for tracking these drugs. All three states work with Bamboo.

Bamboo Health CEO Jeff Smith told BI that the company's prescription monitoring platform must comply with state regulations. "They determine how that data is managed and accessed. That's how it gets treated in Louisiana and anywhere else it would occur," he said.

Misoprostol isn't just for abortions. It's also used to treat stomach ulcers, manage miscarriages, and stop excessive bleeding after childbirth, a leading cause of death for women on delivery day. With a controlled-substance designation, misoprostol's routine use faces restrictions and state scrutiny, with potentially negative consequences for patient care, according to multiple physicians and public health officials who spoke with BI.

Louisiana has required some manual reporting of these drugs since October, according to a lawyer with knowledge of the state's guidance. With Bamboo's electronic system rolled out, doctors are concerned about who will be able to access the data and what they'll use it for, said Dr. Jennifer Avegno, the director of the New Orleans Health Department.

Prescription monitoring programs, or PMPs, are routinely used to investigate doctors for wrongdoing. Crackdowns during the opioid crisis reduced prescriptions, but sometimes at the expense of much-needed care as doctors worried about being prosecuted for doing their jobs. Some experts worry reproductive medicine could share the same fate.

Rep. Jolanda Jones of the Texas House of Representatives, who sits on the House's public health committee, said she's concerned clinicians will hold back in prescribing mifepristone and misoprostol where medically necessary — or leave their jobs in the state entirely — if they're afraid of being jailed for providing adequate care.

"If I were a doctor, I'd be thinking, now I've got Big Brother looking into how I'm practicing medicine? Why?" she said. "It's going to have a chilling effect on medical care. We're already seeing it."

The federal government started funding states to set up PMPs in the early 2000s in response to the prescription opioid crisis. Most states now require doctors to check them before writing certain kinds of prescriptions. If a search shows that a patient is getting opioids from a laundry list of emergency rooms, that could be a sign that he's "doctor-shopping," or misleading physicians for pills.

The safeguard came with tradeoffs: If you've had a prescription for a controlled substance in your life, there are a lot of people who can view it in your state database.

Private health information is usually protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. But when controlled substance prescriptions are reported to the state, they lose HIPAA protections. Without those safeguards, third parties can access the data without patient consent.

PMP access can extend to a wide range of groups, including state licensing boards and health departments, parole and probation agencies, and medical examiners and coroners. Under various conditions, law enforcement can also access the prescription data.

The list of drugs that PMPs monitor, as well as the details they collect, has steadily grown.

The earliest PMPs collected limited patient information, and only about prescriptions with the highest risks of misuse, such as oxycodone and fentanyl.

As of 2024, however, 45 states monitor all controlled substances, and 37 track "drugs of concern," prescriptions that are not heavily regulated that the state deems risky for some individuals, according to research by health and law policy expert Jennifer Oliva.

The data collected for each prescription is extensive: the drug's name, strength, quantity, and dispense date; the doctor's and pharmacist's DEA registration numbers; along with the patient's name, address, ZIP code, gender, date of birth, and driver's license.

Managing this growing mountain of sensitive prescription data became a big business for Bamboo Health.

Bamboo was founded as Appriss in 1994 in Louisville, Kentucky. Its first product was a data-aggregation and notification tool that informed victims when their offenders were released from prison.

The tool became a $30 million business serving 48 states. The company's subsequent products helped law enforcement track sex offenders and monitor people who bought high quantities of Sudafed at pharmacies, which cops used to bust meth labs.

When the opioid crisis came to a head, Appriss was well-suited for the job. With its data prowess and close relationships with state governments — plus an early partnership with the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, which advises state PMP decision-makers — the company gobbled up PMP contracts and cemented a dominant position in the market.

Bamboo Health is now an independent company separated from other business lines built long ago under the Appriss name. Smith, the CEO, said Bamboo works with 44 US states and territories to facilitate more than 7 billion prescription queries every year.

Today, PMPs earn money directly from states and, in some cases, hospitals themselves. Bamboo's PMP business makes up roughly half the company's revenue, according to a former employee with direct knowledge of the matter. Altogether, Bamboo Health is bringing in more than $100 million annually, per a February LinkedIn post by its recently departed senior vice president of commercial revenue. Smith declined to comment on the company's financials.

The business has attracted large investors. Private equity firms Insight Partners and Clearlake Capital have backed Bamboo and sit on its board of directors, according to federal filings.

In 2021, Appriss rebranded to Bamboo Health after buying PatientPing, a startup that collects data about patient admissions, discharges, and transfers, for about $500 million. The deal valued the combined company at more than $1.5 billion.

The vision, as Bamboo described it, was to combine the two companies' vast data feeds to equip providers with all the information they need during crucial moments of patient care.

Over the last several years, PMPs have assisted regulators in busting pill-mill networks and curbing severe prescribing patterns. Bamboo even helped the feds hold pharmaceutical distributors accountable for their role in the opioid crisis.

Still, it's not clear that PMPs have reduced patient harm overall. One study showed that tools such as PMPs might increase heroin-related deaths as prescription opioid abusers switch to illicit drugs.

Wired reported in 2021 that a key Bamboo product, which displayed "overdose risk scores" based on a patient's prescription history, was sometimes used to deny patients needed healthcare. Pharmacies, hospitals, and doctor's offices turned patients with high scores away, even when they had good reasons for taking opioids, such as endometriosis, a painful, chronic condition.

Two former employees told BI that after the criticism, Bamboo prioritized updating the design of the scores to add more context and explanation.

"Our point isn't to be the arbiter on who this person is and what they should get," one of the ex-staffers said. "It's just to equip somebody with some information to make a better decision."

Bamboo's newest directive to monitor abortion medications may test this hands-off approach. Some employees worry that tracking these drugs will harm doctors and patients, rather than advancing the company's goal of improving care.

"Providing monitoring of mifepristone and misoprostol, in support of limiting the use of and access to those drugs, is acting in direct contradiction of that mission," said one former employee who was working at Bamboo when the company internally announced plans to monitor the drugs. The person asked not to be identified because they were not authorized by Bamboo to speak to the media.

"It's a dangerous thing when a healthcare company is not making decisions based on the best interest of the patient, but on, perhaps, opportunities for near-term revenue," the former employee said.

When asked how Bamboo has responded to employee pushback about the company monitoring abortion pill prescriptions in Louisiana, Smith said as Bamboo has expanded its focus to patients with high-need conditions in areas like behavioral health, it's sought out new employees with expertise in those areas.

"It's really important that we have the right people on the team to help us execute on that vision and mission," he said. "Not everybody's going to be on the same page, as we look to expand our charter and where we're going."

Some states have aggressively enforced abortion bans, putting new pressure on some doctors. Texas and Louisiana have sued and indicted at least one doctor for prescribing abortion pills to state residents via telehealth services. Idaho and Texas let private citizens sue virtually anyone who performs or assists with an abortion. These so-called bounty-hunter laws award $10,000 or more to successful plaintiffs.

Under the Trump administration, states will be even more emboldened to use all the tools at their disposal to restrict access, Randi Seigel, a lawyer specializing in healthcare at the firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, told BI.

Pregnant individuals in Louisiana are not subject to criminal prosecution for obtaining and using these drugs for self-managed abortions. But the doctors and pharmacists involved are another story. In these cases, somebody who's suspicious about why a patient was given mifepristone could report it to law enforcement and trigger an investigation. Officials could then seek access to PMP data for that investigation, per Seigel.

Abortion regulations are already getting in the way of necessary medical care: Several women have died from preventable complications after they couldn't access timely treatment in states with abortion bans, ProPublica has reported. Although certain legal exceptions are supposed to protect the life of the mother, some doctors may wait too long to intervene out of fear that, if the patient isn't clearly dying, their use of the drugs could be questioned, Seigel explained.

She's concerned that tracking misoprostol and mifepristone prescriptions could have a similar effect on doctors' decisions. If doctors are concerned they may be accused of triggering an abortion while providing legal and medically necessary services, they might delay giving that care, she said.

"One could imagine somebody coming in who's having a miscarriage — and this is appropriate for miscarriage management — and somebody saying, 'Well, wait, we have to wait a little longer to make sure you are really having a miscarriage,'" she said.

In Louisiana, which has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, the new regulations are already causing problems.

Previously, obstetrician-gynecologists often carried misoprostol in their pockets for emergencies. Now, the medicine must be stored in locked cabinets.

Avegno told BI that clinicians across Louisiana have been running "time trials" to test how quickly they can retrieve misoprostol from those locked cabinets, bring it back to the patient, and administer it. In the case of severe postpartum hemorrhaging, mere minutes could be the difference between life and death.

Some outpatient pharmacies have decided to stop stocking the pills altogether, Avegno added. Others are going beyond what's required by the law, including calling doctors to confirm what they've written on the prescriptions, slowing down access for patients.

These pharmacists are often confused about the law and afraid of liability, Avegno said: "If I fill this prescription and somebody uses it to secretly have an abortion, am I going to be held liable?"

The introduction of mifepristone and misoprostol monitoring via Bamboo's database could add to that fear.

"Let's say I'm an OB. I have a busy clinic. I'm putting in IUDs all the time, I'm managing miscarriages, and I'm doing hysteroscopies, all of which might require me to write misoprostol prescriptions. And that's now going to be tracked in the PMP," Avegno said. "So is somebody going to be able to look at my list and say, 'Oh my gosh, Jen Avegno wrote 20 prescriptions last month? That's too many. Let's investigate her.'"

Do you have a tip about Bamboo Health that you want to share? Contact Rebecca Torrence (+1 423-987-0320) using the encrypted app Signal. Here are other tips on how to safely communicate with Business Insider reporters.

Nolan Saumure, a 28-year-old Canadian YouTuber, walked into Afghanistan from Pakistan last summer. He spent a week traveling through the Taliban-controlled country with a local guide and a camera in an attempt to show what he called "the other side of Afghanistan" — the natural beauty, warm hospitality, and rip-roaring good times he says aren't depicted in Western media.

Saumure, whose YouTube channel, Seal on Tour, has 650,000 subscribers, is something of a shock-jock Zoomer Anthony Bourdain: His popular videos include "48 Hours Living in India's Biggest Slum," "Trying the Most Addictive Substance in the Philippines," and "White Boy Becomes Jamaican in Downtown Kingston." For his Afghanistan trip, he played up the unique travel experience of hanging out with exclusively men, titling one 35-minute video "Afghanistan Has Too Much Testosterone." Since 2021, women have been effectively barred from many aspects of public life under the Taliban's modesty laws. All day, it's "all dudes, bro-ing the fuck down," Saumure says to the camera. "It's a complete sausage fest in here," he adds as he spins the camera around to show the crowd of men around him.

At one point he meets some girls playing outside. He narrates that after childhood, "everything is taken away from them," which he says makes him sad. But in the bulk of his YouTube videos, he presents the "sausage fest" as a blast, as he and Afghan men go to parks, ride a pedal boat in a crystal blue lake in Band-e-Amir, eat ice cream, and watch the slaughter of a goat.

Along the way, he bumps into men he and other travel vloggers call the "Talibros," who patrol the streets with rifles strapped over their shoulders. Saumure chats it up with several men he says are Taliban members, showing one of them how to download Duolingo so he can practice his English.

Saumure is one of several travel content creators who have gone to Afghanistan since the United States ended its longest war and evacuated the country. They're mostly men — sometimes traveling in groups on boys' trips. For a certain kind of manosphere influencer eager for an edge in the attention economy, Jalalabad is the new Nashville.

In the summer of 2021, a 21-year-old British student named Miles Routledge visited Afghanistan after seeing it on a list of the world's most dangerous places. (He had previously visited Chernobyl.) Notably, Routledge was stranded during the fall of Kabul that August and had to be evacuated by the British army. When he returned in 2023, he was imprisoned by the Taliban for several months. He claims he was treated well, watching movies and playing Xbox with members. "It was a good setup," he says in a video. "Basically, I was chilling." Routledge didn't respond to a request for comment.

The predominating sentiment in these videos is that Afghanistan is misunderstood, portrayed by the West as hostile and dangerous while it's actually warm and welcoming. "F*@K the Media: I Went to AFGHANISTAN!" one traveler titled his video; another clip is called "Afghanistan is NOT What You Think!" Some show beautiful mountains and mosques and detail warm interactions with locals. There's more shocking fare, such as "I Went Shooting with the Taliban," or videos about exploring decades-old abandoned Russian tanks. A YouTuber called Arab who runs a channel with 1.8 million subscribers calls himself an adventure traveler but says in a disclaimer that he's going for journalistic purposes. His goofy, spirited hourlong videos include "The Young Taliban Train Me For War," where he plays with children dressed in camo and holding toy guns, and "I Spent 7 Days Living with the Taliban." He didn't respond to a request for an interview.

These creators are also wading into a country that many Western governments warn against traveling to, one that has been ravaged by war and is now under an oppressive unelected government. Freedom of expression and religious practices that don't conform to sharia, or Islamic law, are restricted; girls must leave school at 12; and Taliban members have attacked queer people. In 2024, three Spanish tourists and three Afghans were killed in a shooting in a bazaar — the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. In January, two Americans were freed in a prisoner swap for a Taliban member. In late February, the Taliban arrested a British couple in their 70s, though the Taliban described their detention as a "misunderstanding." The US Department of State advises citizens not to travel to Afghanistan, citing "civil unrest, crime, terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, kidnapping, and limited health facilities."

Many of these travelers aren't strangers to some sense of danger. Afghanistan offers the kind of exclusive content certain to lure eyes, especially if the vloggers can interact and bro out with a notorious extremist group.

Saumure tells me that after traveling to several "dangerous" countries, including Iraq and Pakistan, "you kind of start to disengage from all the level-four warnings that your government might say about traveling to these places and just not trust your own government and go based on what other travelers are saying."

But he still witnessed the country's deep-rooted issues. "Even if the west is maybe selling a very sensational narrative, I still saw the oppression firsthand as far as women not being allowed in certain parks and modesty laws," he says. "It's a delicate subject. I just wanted to be like, 'this is how it is here,' instead of driving into my beliefs."

The growing interest to experience places firsthand — or at least watch some other amateur do it — underscores a growing distrust of institutions and authority. In a 2024 survey by the Pew Research Center, about one in five Americans said they got their news from influencers on social media. That figure jumped to 37% for respondents under 30.

As dangerous as Western governments say Afghanistan is, the country wants tourists, particularly those who show a different side of the country than news reports show, and it advertises tourism on its websites. Afghanistan's Ministry of Information and Culture didn't respond to my request for comment. Taliban officials told The New York Times last year that some 14,500 foreigners had visited Afghanistan since 2021, most of them men. Several tourism companies and travel agencies have popped up to help eager travelers navigate the country. The rebrand of Afghanistan has been underway for years — shortly after the fall of Kabul, videos of Taliban fighters became memeified, showing them doing silly activities like riding a carousel. Some researchers worried at the time that the content could help soften the group's image.

Carrie Patsalis, a 48-year-old British travel vlogger, toured Afghanistan with a guide for 10 days in May. "The world has a really funny narrative and a really funny idea about which countries you should shun based on unelected regimes," she says. She argues that staying away hurts the country's economy — UN officials have estimated that about 85% of Afghans live on less than $1 a day — and the Afghan people who may not support the Taliban rule.

She thinks travel vloggers should show both the country's beauty and its oppression. Patsalis tells me she made a point to seek out women on her trip. She tells me that while the women could not be seen on camera, she wanted to let them know that "I see you, I know you're here, and it matters to me how you live."

Ultimately, going to Afghanistan is good business for travel content creators competing for eyes in an online world full of travel recommendations. Harry Jaggard, a British 27-year-old who has been making videos for three years, says his series in Afghanistan in 2023 was his most successful. He tells me he's traveling to North Korea next month. "To be the best, you sometimes have to push the boundaries," he says. "Everyone wants to see it, and not many people go there."

In his series, Jaggard travels with a guide and meets men who he says are members of the Taliban in the street. (He says he learned to tell by looking at their clothing and asking his guide.) He says that while he was apprehensive, he found the Taliban members to be shockingly friendly. "They're outwardly very kind — that's how they gain your trust," he tells me. But he didn't want to highlight too much of the Taliban in his videos; he says he focused on meeting citizens, whom he described as among the most hospitable people he's encountered in the dozens of countries he has traveled to. He says it's a reminder that "a government and its people are two different things."

The videos also fill a gap in traditional travel journalism. "Frommer's would never cover travel to a place that is as dangerous as this one is," says Pauline Frommer, the publisher of Frommer's Guidebooks, the popular guidebook series that has been around since the 1950s. While encouraging other people to travel to places like Afghanistan despite government warnings is dangerous, there are insights to be gleaned from watching travel vloggers have first-hand experiences there, and many people can learn from watching them. "I see nothing wrong with videos about less visited parts of the world," Frommer tells me. "I find value in looking at what daily life is like."

For now, Afghanistan isn't overrun with selfie sticks at landmarks and TikTokers crowding local restaurants. But the need to keep content interesting is pushing these creators to more controversial and dangerous places, as curious viewers want to see more of the worlds they aren't a part of. But then how many eager backpackers will follow in their footsteps to make their own content?

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

• This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.

Happy almost Friday! If you're indulging in a Thirsty Thursday — Do people still call it that? —don't be surprised if happy hour looks a bit gray. While millennials and Gen Zers are cutting back on booze, the number of boomers tipping one (or a few) back is rising.

In today's big story, Microsoft is rethinking how it evaluates employees and handles underperformers.

What's on deck:

Markets: The jobs report is tomorrow, but don't expect a DOGE-sized drop in numbers. Here's why.

Tech: Meta's got a list of ex-employees it won't rehire.

Business: Lulu Cheng Meservey's brash PR tactics annoy some of her peers, but her big-name clients can't get enough of it.

But first, HR is going to join us for this one.

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here.

The big story

Under review

Microsoft's performance review is on a PIP.

The tech giant is rethinking how it evaluates employees, according to Business Insider's Ashley Stewart, who spoke to several people with knowledge of the plans.

The result could be Microsoft taking a tougher stance on employees deemed low performers. Evidence of that came earlier this year when Microsoft made hundreds of performance-based cuts in January and February.

In many ways, it's a blast from the past for Microsoft, which once had a reputation for conducting tough reviews. The arrival of Satya Nadella as CEO more than a decade ago changed that, with the company taking a softer stance. Some even called Microsoft a "country club."

Microsoft's current process for managing out low performers can take months of documentation. One high-level manager told Ashley the average time to exit a low performer after a manager notified HR was about seven months. That process can be further delayed if an employee takes a leave of absence, which can reset the clock.

But with the AI race heating up, Microsoft wants to move faster and more efficiently. Like its peers Meta, Amazon, and Google, that's meant taking a deeper look at its performance review and management process.

Microsoft's potential pivot also shows where AI's had the most impact thus far.

Since ChatGPT's arrival a few years ago, there's been plenty of speculation about all the jobs that were at risk of being automated away by AI.

The reality, though, is the tech isn't advanced enough to replace most roles completely. Efficiencies can be achieved that allow a company to cut some headcount, but AI hasn't completely wiped out jobs in most cases.

In fact, the industry AI is disrupting the most is the one building it: tech.

It's not just a matter of AI automating people's jobs. (Although those are looking dicey for software engineers.) The massive bets tech giants are making on AI are forcing them to recalibrate their entire operations to be as streamlined as possible, and those changes don't come easy.

Perhaps the shift was always coming. The rise of interest rates and the maturation of these companies might have naturally led to a stage of buckling down.

But spending billions on tech that hasn't fully panned out from a business perspective certainly didn't slow things down.

News brief

• Alito says he's 'stunned' the Supreme Court ruled against Trump over USAID's funding.
• Outgoing Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen lost $11 million in bonus and stock payments when he resigned from the grocery chain.
• Trump told Congress that Musk runs DOGE — and the lawyers noticed.
• Instagram says it's 'doubling down' on DMs. This chart shows just how much.
• Add the teachers' union to the list of investors worried about Tesla's sliding stock.
• Media leaders tell BI how they're tackling a crisis that's bigger than Trump.
• Tripledot Studios in a $900 million deal, sources say.

3 things in markets

1. Federal workers' layoff pains will be mostly invisible in Friday's jobs report. DOGE's February firings won't be reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics report because of the cuts' timing. And even though the job losses will appear in a more distant report, they probably won't make a big dent overall.

2. Are we on the verge of a "Trumpcession"? Wall Street exec Jeffrey Solomon is part of a small but growing group of forecasters using the dreaded R-word: recession. In an interview with CNBC, Solomon said a trade war could impact supply chains and prompt business leaders to pump the brakes on dealmaking. Some signs already point to an economic slowdown, and Solomon isn't alone in waving the red flag.

3. Brevan Howard is telling investors the "true risk" is not getting in on crypto. For years, institutions have kept their distance from digital assets. Brevan Howard's CEO told BI the tipping point for institutional investors is on the horizon, thanks to the boost provided by President Trump and crypto czar David Sacks. The firm, whose digital assets unit was up more than 52% in 2024, wants to be the go-to place for crypto-curious institutions.

3 things in tech

1. Meta keeps "block" lists of ex-employees. Hiring managers at Meta sometimes pursue laid-off workers for rehire. They express interest, set up a screening call — and then ghost. That's because some ex-employees are on lists that deem them "ineligible for rehire," even if they have a written track record of exceeding managers' expectations. BI's story elicited a reaction from former Google HR chief Laszlo Bock.

2. Google Search is going AI Mode. The tech giant said it plans to test a new "AI Mode" feature for Search that aims to answer users' queries with "a wider and more diverse" set of AI-powered results. Instead of AI Overviews, which respond to queries with a direct answer at the top of the results page, the new AI Mode takes things a step further by generating an entire page.

3. Big events for big ratings. TV networks have been struggling with maintaining their audiences for years. But BI's Peter Kafka picked up on a pattern to get more eyes: streaming must-watch live sports and awards shows. The most recent Oscars, the Super Bowl, and the Olympics got bumps in viewers, and streaming was part of their equation.

3 things in business

1. Meet the PR pitbull adored by Sam Altman and Bari Weiss. Lulu Cheng Meservey is one of Silicon Valley's most sought-after communications gurus, known for her unusually aggressive "going direct" strategy. Less enchanted are her PR peers, who aren't sold on her style of bucking convention, tweeting madly, and playing offense with the press. Still, Cheng Meservey won the admiration of startup founders by showing them how she thinks.

2. A new DOGE staffer was connected to a fertility clinic and has ties to the pronatalist movement. Miles Collins, whose association with DOGE was first reported by BI, is a startup founder who employees say has been working at the Department of Labor. Collins was connected to a California fertility clinic that's now facing lawsuits accusing it of mistreating employees, although the company has denied wrongdoing. Collins is also the brother of a prominent pronatalist, a movement that Elon Musk has also spoken in favor of.

3. A tariff breather for car companies. President Donald Trump is giving the Big Three automakers — Stellantis, Ford, and General Motors — a one-month pause on his recent tariffs to avoid an "economic disadvantage." But there won't be another break when Trump's second round of trade-related tariffs takes effect on April 2, and additional tariffs on steel and aluminum are coming this month.

In other news

• A once-hot startup got a $1.5 billion loan. More than $500 million went to a high school dropout's 'sham' hedge fund, judge rules.
• Instagram cofounder explains how the work of a software engineer will change in the next three years.
• Are you worth $10 million? $100 million? Chances are you live in the US.
• Elon Musk says the Post Office and Amtrak should be privatized.
• Where you can cash in on Florida's cooling housing market.
• RFK Jr. says vitamin A could help treat measles. Here's what doctors think.
• Millennial moms want more kids — they just can't afford it.
• Where to hide right now as tariffs hit markets.
• While the US and China compete for AI dominance, Russia's leading model lags behind.
• Crypto insiders say Trump's love for bitcoin is more than a fling — even though he may be making an 'unforced error.'

What's happening today

• Macy's, Costco, and Kroger report earnings.

The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in Chicago. Ella Hopkins, associate editor, in London. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York. Elizabeth Casolo, fellow, in Chicago.

• Microsoft cut nearly 2,000 employees deemed low performers this year.
• The cuts come with the company said to be reevaluating its performance review process.
• Microsoft was once known to be tough in reviews, but it took a softer stance under Satya Nadella.

In 2023, a Microsoft employee asked to take on a lighter workload when his wife was found to have terminal cancer.

His managers were supportive, and they appeared happy with his performance during his wife's illness as recently as late 2024, when they told him to expect 120% of his bonus.

Then, on January 22, the employee said, an HR representative unexpectedly joined his weekly manager meeting. The employee was fired without severance and was told his health insurance would expire that night.

The employee's wife had to skip chemotherapy treatments for a month after.

"I'm still shocked," he told Business Insider in a recent interview. "Shocked and angry. I did everything right."

The Microsoft employee asked not to be identified to protect future career prospects. BI has verified his identity and confirmed details of his performance, his termination, and his wife's illness through documentation.

A Microsoft spokesperson, Frank Shaw, said performance-based terminations rarely come as a surprise to employees and people could elect to have COBRA coverage.

This person is one of nearly 2,000 fired by Microsoft in January and February in a culling of those deemed low performers, according to a person familiar with the cuts.

This kind of performance-based mass cut is a shift for the tech giant, which continues to review the approach. Managers spent months evaluating employees all the way up to the executive level as the company considers changes to its performance review and management process, several people with knowledge of the plans said.

"We aspire to have a high-performance culture and want to make sure managers have the ability to drive that and that expectations are clear," Shaw said, adding that the company wasn't trying to design a tougher system, but one that removes ambiguity, provides clarity and flexibility, and allows managers and teams to move with speed.

A new way to evaluate employees

Microsoft's new approach to performance management is shaping up to be one of the biggest changes to the company's management strategy since Satya Nadella became CEO more than a decade ago.

Before he arrived in 2014, Microsoft had a reputation for a cutthroat performance-review system, at least in a tech industry that often mollycoddled talented employees. Nadella softened that considerably.

Microsoft once had a reputation for a "country club" culture, as Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, called it, a place employees would go after they were done working hard in their careers and wanted to coast before retirement.

Now, some leaders worry the company has gotten too soft, making it difficult to shed underperformers, according to the people familiar with Microsoft's plans.

The company is looking to new external leaders, such as the former Google executive Mustafa Suleyman and a former Meta engineering chief, Jay Parikh, along with existing executives like the company's senior leadership team and LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky, to help design a new way to evaluate employees, these people said.

Microsoft has had an incredibly successful decade, becoming a leading cloud provider and AI player. It's worth about $3 trillion, making the software giant the third-largest company by that measure. The stock has stagnated over the past year, however, as questions mount about the company's Copilot technology, and as AI competition intensifies.

The broader tech industry is facing other challenges, and Microsoft is not immune. A decadelong hiring boom has fizzled as companies focus more on profit, and AI coding tools reduce competition for software engineering talent. Meta recently cut about 5% of its workforce to "raise the bar on performance management." Amazon is culling managers. Even Google is trimming jobs.

Microsoft's termination letter

Employees who were let go in Microsoft's recent round of performance cuts got termination letters explaining the abrupt exit.

"The reason(s) for the termination of your employment include your job performance has not met minimum performance standards and expectations for your position," said the letters, which BI viewed. "You are relieved of all job duties effective immediately and your access to Microsoft systems, accounts, and buildings will be removed effective today. You are not to perform any further work on behalf of Microsoft."

The letters mentioned severance but said medical, prescription, and dental benefits ended on the last day of employment. The letters also said Microsoft would consider past performance and termination if the person applied for other jobs at the company in the future.

"At Microsoft we focus on high performance talent," a company spokesperson told BI recently. "We are always working on helping people learn and grow. When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action."

'Right to fire'

Deena Merlen, a partner at Reavis Page Jump LLP, told BI her law firm had received more inquiries about performance-based layoffs as of late.

"Employers generally have the right to fire, just as an employee has the right to quit," she said. "As long as Microsoft's alleged performance-based reasons are not for some other, unlawful reason, Microsoft is within its rights to engage in these layoffs."

The company has no obligation to provide severance, but such agreements often come with a release of legal claims that can protect the company from lawsuits, Merlen added.

Stack ranking

Before 2014, Microsoft used a controversial system to evaluate employee performance. Called stack ranking, it forced managers to put employees on a curve and cut the lowest performers.

At Microsoft, that meant managers had to rank employees from 1 to 5, and someone always had to get a 5, the lowest score, no matter how well they or the team performed. Shaw, the Microsoft spokesperson, said that the system was especially problematic for small teams and that while terminating the lowest rung was not a companywide policy, it happened on some teams.

Stack ranking was unpopular internally and was seen as prioritizing individual work, pitting employees against one another and creating a barrier to collaboration. Developers and even entire organizations had a tendency to reject acceptable solutions to problems if they hadn't developed those solutions themselves, the company's chief people officer, Kathleen Hogan, previously told BI. There's even a famous cartoon depicting Microsoft's org chart as warring factions.

'Model, coach, care'

The company officially abandoned stack ranking just before Nadella took over as CEO in early 2014. He redesigned the company's performance-review system around the "growth mindset" concept. The idea is that skills are developed through hard work and that challenges and failures are opportunities to learn. This is counter to a "fixed mindset," which assumes talent is innate and struggles are a sign of failure.

Nadella and his new leadership team applied this growth mindset to a new framework called "model, coach, care," which called on managers to set a positive example for employees, help staffers adapt and learn, and invest in people's professional growth.

Instead of ranking employees from 1 to 5, Microsoft moved to a performance-review system that gives managers a simple payroll budget they could divide and dole out to employees based on performance.

Kevin Oakes, the CEO of the Institute for Corporate Productivity, has worked with Microsoft on implementing a growth mindset. He told BI this approach was a way to encourage top performers but noted that even companies like Microsoft need to cull their workforces to become leaner and higher performing.

"Any high-performing organization should make sure employees are performing at an acceptable level, and they should be weeding out people who are not performing at an acceptable level," he said. "Over time, you tend to get a little bloated as a big company where you've let hiring go unchecked in some areas and need to get back to a lean, efficient machine."

The ManageRewards slider

Today, employees are evaluated on a scale from 0 to 200 called the "ManageRewards slider." The process begins with frontline managers, who evaluate an employee's impact and recommend where they think they should land on the slider. Then, a higher-level manager considers "differentiation" — i.e., making sure the team is distributed along the slider.

The middle of the range is 100, while 0, 60, and 80 are lower performers and 120, 140, and 200 are higher performers. Those ratings influence how much an employee receives in stock awards and cash bonuses. A score of "Impact 60," for example, generally gives employees 0% of their stock award and 30% of their maximum cash bonuses while the slightly higher rating of "Impact 80" gives them 60% of their normal stock award and 80% of their maximum bonus. Shaw, Microsoft's spokesperson, said 100 would be considered a good score and mean an employee had met all of their objectives.

In general, the company's senior leadership team gives managers a budget that allows for every employee on the team an average score of 109.

"So you want to pay someone impact 140 for doing an outstanding job? Find 3 people you're giving Impact 100 so it's affordable," one executive-level manager explained. "Keep this guy around. He'll be paying for everyone's bonuses."

The manager said they typically had paid top performers by finding a set of people who failed in the previous year and giving them all zero or reduced rewards. This person asked not to be identified discussing sensitive topics. "That's a bad manager," Shaw said. "You certainly can't give everybody high rewards," but you can give one person high rewards and the rest of the people around 100.

How Microsoft handles low performers

While low rewards can indicate a performance issue, Microsoft's actual system for managing out low performers is separate from this employee-rating process.

Generally, managers email an internal system called AskHR@ and request a consultation for performance concerns, and the manager will be matched with an internal consultant. More seasoned consultants are used for higher-level employees, or if the situation is difficult.

These consultants give written formal feedback to employees, saying they delivered "Less Impact than Expected" and start a three-month performance-management process.

Some managers can cut low performers who don't improve within about four months through this process. But sometimes Microsoft's HR department concludes that managers haven't done enough performance coaching, one manager said, meaning they have not generated enough documentation showing employees have been given the opportunity to improve and have repeatedly failed.

It can take two or three more 90-day programs before these employees are ousted. One high-level manager said the average time to exit a low performer was seven months from the time a manager notified HR about the situation, which often comes after sustained low performance.

"It takes too long to performance-manage folks out," one executive said.

These exits can be further delayed by leaves of absence. One of the Microsoft managers who talked to BI said employees sometimes shared tips on how to complicate the company's performance-improvement process.

One common suggestion: If your manager is working to fire you, go to a doctor and say you have certain symptoms, get a supporting letter, and secure health-related time off work. This can pause or reset aspects of the process, this person said.

Short-term paid disability typically covers 60 to 90 days away from work, and Microsoft's HR department can be reluctant to exit these employees for some time after that, the person said.

"For employees gaming the short-term disability policies, you can be talking 12 to 18 months to get to a point where HR is comfortable firing them," they added.

'One Year, One Reward'

In the US, a common refrain for the 0-to-200 performance reviews was, "One Year, One Reward," meaning employees are judged on a single year's performance.

The separation between rewards and the formal performance-management process gave flexibility to managers to "harvest the budget," as one manager said, in other words give lower ratings to relatively adequate performers so big rewards could be doled out to high performers. They could do this without much risk to the employment status of the adequate performers. Shaw, the Microsoft spokesperson, said this was not company policy.

Hogan, Microsoft's chief people officer, in an internal email in 2023 instructed managers to give fewer employees "exceptional rewards," meaning a high performance rating that leads to higher pay and bonuses. "More will need to be at the middle of the range," Hogan said in the email. Shaw, the spokesperson, said the email was specific to that year and that rewards changed annually based on factors like the economy and company performance. Changes to this year's rewards cycle won't be solidified until later in the year, he said.

"Microsoft just summarily terminated hundreds of employees who had year-over-year insufficient performance based on rewards, without a lengthy documentation and feedback process," one executive said, adding that this coming rewards season would be more difficult on managers, who would have to be more careful about doling out low rewards.

Shaw, the Microsoft spokesperson, confirmed that the decisions about whom to cut came from looking at rewards year over year but said the company still believed in "one year, one reward." Just because an employee gets high rewards one year, for example, doesn't mean they've earned it the next.

New leaders, new perspectives

As Microsoft evaluates its performance-review process, people familiar with the plans say the company is looking for perspectives from new leaders such as Suleyman, the former Google executive who is now Microsoft's CEO of AI, and Parikh, the former head of engineering at Meta who runs AI platforms at Microsoft. Shaw said that Suleyman and Parikh were just some of the people providing perspective and that Roslansky, the LinkedIn CEO, had also provided a lot of input.

"The company will have a much stronger point of view, like some of our competitors," one Microsoft executive said.

'Good attrition'

The company is making other changes to prioritize engineering talent and level out organizations, taking a page from Amazon.

Separate from its performance-management processes, Microsoft is starting to weigh how it can become leaner and more engineering-focused. The company measures what it calls "good attrition," which is reviewed at the executive level, the Microsoft executive said. That's reminiscent of Amazon's "unregretted attrition."

Right now there are no targets for this Microsoft metric. But the company is borrowing from Amazon in trying to increase the ratio of engineers working on projects. Amazon has something called the "Builder Ratio," which analyzes the ratio of software engineers to "non-builders," such as program managers and project managers. The goal is to try to keep organizations lean.

Charlie Bell, Microsoft's security boss who came from Amazon's cloud unit, has brought this metric to Microsoft. Microsoft tracks the "PM ratio" which is the ratio of product managers or program managers to engineers, and has increased targets in the current fiscal year. For example, Bell's security organization right now is around 5.5 engineers to one PM, and his goal is to reach 10:1, according to a person familiar with Bell's plans.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at +1-425-344-8242. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.