• After 10 years in elementary education, I decided I no longer wanted to be a teacher.
• I wanted a more flexible job that allowed me to stay at home with my kids.
• When time allows, I'm able to make more money than I did as a teacher and have a better work-life balance.

When I went into education, I did so with the best intentions. Being a male elementary school teacher was sort of like being a unicorn. It is extremely rare for a man to be teaching early elementary. There were plenty of single-mom families in the area where I lived, and I knew many students didn't have a male role model at home to inspire them, so I thought I could fill this void. I took the responsibility seriously.

But after ten years in the field, I had to tap out for a few reasons. None of the reasons really had to do with the students themselves. The pay wasn't great (after 10 years of teaching I was still taking home just around $3,000 a month) and I didn't enjoy the politics of teaching. But, the most important reason was probably that my wife and I were ready to start a family. She often works long hours and I didn't want someone else to raise my children. I thought I could find a way to contribute financially and still be home with the children.

Becoming a freelance writer

Before I went into education, I had been a journalist for a few years. It wasn't something I really enjoyed at the time and I didn't see myself wanting to cover mundane board meetings forever. If you ever suffer from insomnia, just drop in on these meetings occasionally. It's like an instant sleeping pill.

Still, I thought I was a decent writer. I've certainly read worse over the years from people who made their living as professional writers. So while I was still teaching, I joined Upwork, a website that connects freelancers with those looking to hire contract workers. Upwork allows people or companies to search for a specific type of writer they are looking for to complete their project at hand. You are competing against other writers who are also applying, but Upwork is a great tool to use when you are first attempting a freelance career.

To begin, I set my fees low to get my foot in the door. Then it wasn't long before I had clients who were asking me to write for them on either a weekly or monthly basis. As an unexpected bonus, most of the topics I covered genuinely interested me. Health and fitness, education, and even ghostwriting children's books were all things I enjoyed writing — and I was getting paid to do it.

Fast forward four months

As I was wrapping up my last weeks in the classroom before the school year ended, I realized I could go give my notice that I would not be coming back to teach the following August.

I had just made $6,000 in one month from freelancing — and that was while I was still teaching. I would definitely miss my students and all the friends I had made, but being able to set my own schedule, work from home, and raise my kids was something I could not pass up. My wife and I were having children later on in life, and the math showed me I would probably not get the chance to spend as much time with my kids as other fathers, so I switched careers.

My plan is mostly working well

I'll admit, I underestimated how much time I would have to write while taking care of two babies at home. I've really had to narrow down my client list over the last five years, picking the ones that are truly worthwhile. Now I only accept writing assignments I can get excited about.

Though I only have about 15 hours of free time at home a week where I can focus on writing, I have made the most of it. In fact, you can find my two children's books "Ellie and Jack: Third Grade Ghost Hunters," and "Ellie and Jack: Third Grade Vampire Hunters," on Amazon and other sites. I always wanted to write children's books, and after helping thousands of children become better readers over the years, I think I have a pretty good idea on the types of stories they love to read. Weaving my teaching past into my current career has been a joy.

With one child getting ready for kindergarten and the other just a couple of years away, it won't be long before I will have more time to write once again.

AstroPay has been around since 2009. The bootstrapped company currently has 320 employees and is profitable. And yet, it’s not a name that comes up often in startup news. The company originally started its life as a payment service provider focused on Latin America — an alternative payment method that you would find next to the […]

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• Netflix is reportedly reining in some of the generous employee perks it's known for.
• This includes its parental leave policy, salaries, and even merch, the Wall Street Journal reports.
• The changes signal a culture shift at a firm that's grown considerably and faces investor pressure.

The tech industry's war on perks seems to have switched to its newest channel: Netflix.

The media and entertainment giant is reportedly trying to rein in some of its employee perks, including its parental leave policy, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The company is trying to discourage employees from using the unlimited time off it gave parents for a year following the birth or adoption of a child, the Journal reported, citing internal communications and interviews with current and former employees.

"We did not plan for employees to use 1-year as the starting point for evaluating how much time away they needed for bonding and care, nor did we assume that employees would view this as a 1-year-leave," one HR official wrote to managers, according to the Journal, which said that Netflix has been trying to curb usage of the full year of leave since 2018.

Among employees, taking more than 6 months of parental leave is now "widely understood to be an unwise career move," the Journal reported. A Netflix spokesperson told the Journal that over the last four years, US employees at the company averaged 6.3 months of parental leave, and employees outside the country averaged 7.5 months.

A Netflix spokesperson told BI in a statement, "Employees have the freedom, flexibility and responsibility to determine what is best for them and their family. Our parental leave policy has always been to 'take care of your child and yourself.'" Sergio Ezama, Netflix's chief talent officer, said the company has "not pulled back" on its parental leave policy.

The company has also implemented a limit of $300 in company swag such as coffee mugs or sweatshirts per year that each employee can order, the Journal reported.

Meanwhile, the streamer has asked managers to tighten the purse strings on compensation. It previously let them pay above market rates to attract and retain talent; now, managers are asked to ensure salaries stay within 50% to 95% of employees' peers, per the Journal, citing emails.

Netflix updated its well-know culture memo in June, removing the "freedom and responsibility" section and adding one called "People Over Process" which spoke of hiring "unusually responsible people" who thrive on openness and freedom.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said at The Wall Street Journal's Tech Live conference in October that he received pushback for changing the memo.

"We are constantly working on improving the culture," he said. "And so when anyone says, 'Hey, the culture is changing.' Yes, of course it needs to. We definitely change the culture. We wanted to reflect how we work, not dictate how we work."

He said that the company had fewer than 300 employees when he and Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings wrote the memo. While the initial memo was "perfectly suited" for the company's size at the time, the revised version "actually reflects much more today our 14,000 employee business culture," he said.

The changes signal a culture shift at the streamer as it contends with pressure from Wall Street and other challenges. The company has recovered from shedding subscribers for the first time in a decade in 2022, but in recent years has cracked down on password-sharing to boost its subscription numbers.

Netflix isn't the only company reining in perks. As a focus on efficiency sweeps the tech industry, spurring mass layoffs and cost-cutting initiatives, other companies are cracking down. Meta recently fired some employees who misused its $25 Grubhub meal perk. Google told staff last year it was reducing café hours on campus and shifting fitness class offerings and shuttle schedules based on usage.

• Costco's new CEO received a total compensation package worth $12.2 million this year.
• Vachris started his career as a forklift driver over 40 years ago, and became CEO in January.
• Costco has 328,000 worldwide employees, and the median worker earned $47,092.

Costco's CEO appears to have had his best financial year yet.

Since becoming CEO of the wholesale club in January, Ron Vachris received a compensation package worth more than $12.2 million in the 2024 fiscal year, according to the company's latest proxy statement filed Wednesday with the SEC.

The package includes a base salary of nearly $1.1 million, plus stock awards of just over $10.5 million and other perks and compensation (such as a complimentary $120 Executive Membership to Costco).

Meanwhile, of Costco's 328,000 worldwide employees, the median worker earned $47,092, giving Vachris a CEO pay ratio of 262.

His compensation and pay ratio are well below those of his predecessor, Craig Jelinek, who made $16.8 million in his final year as CEO, or 336 times that of the median worker.

Median compensation packages for S&P 500 CEOs rose to $15.5 million in 2023, up 12.4% from the prior year, according to data and analytics firm ISS-Corporate. Among those firms, the CEO pay ratio was 312 times the median employee in 2023.

Among retailers, the ratio tends to be larger, as the industry's workforce includes a relatively larger share of part-time and seasonal workers who are required by SEC rules to be included in the calculation.

For example, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon received $26.9 million in total compensation in the last fiscal year or 976 times the $27,642 compensation that the median Walmart employee earned in the period. Target CEO Brian Cornell's most recent pay disclosure showed he received $19.2 million in 2023, or 719 times the median employee's $26,696 annual earnings.

Vachris started his career as a forklift driver over 40 years ago with Costco's predecessor Price Club, rising through the ranks to become CEO earlier this year.

He is the third CEO in the company's history.

If you are a Costco worker who wants to share your perspective, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out

Paytm has agreed to sell its stake in Japanese payments firm PayPay to SoftBank for $279.2 million, as the Indian firm sheds non-core assets following a bruising regulatory clampdown earlier this year. The sale of Paytm’s stake in PayPay, which it received through acquisition rights six years ago, follows months of restructuring that saw the […]

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Once a startup has raised its seed round, the perennial question becomes how much should the founders pay themselves and their first few employees? Kruze Consulting, a CPA firm that specializes in venture-backed startups, recently analyzed average salary ranges for over 450 seed-stage startups and shared that data with TechCrunch. The following averages are based […]

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Sometimes, the easiest way to find a great idea for a startup is to look beyond the current problem you’re solving for your customers. That’s exactly what worked for the founders of KPay. Davis Chan and his co-founders previously helped small and medium-sized merchants optimize their revenue and traffic in Asia, but they eventually noticed […]

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Coinbase announced an integration with Apple Pay on Monday, allowing app makers to build the ability to buy crypto with Apple Pay directly into their apps. The integration is part of Coinbase Onramp, which gives app makers a way for customers to turn their traditional currencies, such as USD, into cryptocurrencies. That process has historically […]

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Some digital services look like banks and act like banks, but aren’t banks — meaning they can, for instance, close down your account without notice. Or be difficult to contact when you want to dispute fraud. This is about to change: the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has just ruled that all digital services […]

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