• Venture capitalist Rashaun Williams admits he wasn’t able to become a multimillionaire and guest Shark Tank star without an element of manifesting success. Gen Z’s “delulu” trend reflects this: he rooted optimism into career action by being a step ahead in his behavior. “Sneaking into the party—that’s what I’m known for,” he exclusively tells Fortune. “I don’t mind cold calling people. I don’t mind pulling up at conferences.”

If you have dreams of one day sitting on the set of Shark Tank next to the biggest names in investing like Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary, well so did Rashaun Williams—and he made it happen.

The multimillionaire venture capitalist is set to return as a guest shark on the television series this fall. But landing the gig has taken an entire career of hard work, including a tactic he calls “sneaking into the party.”

Growing up on the southside of Chicago, opportunities often seemed slim for Williams. But instead of letting fear of rejection get in his way, Williams did more than just manifest his own success—he went after it headfirst, and it often started with three words: “hear me out.”

For Williams, the phrase wasn’t just a casual introduction; it was his way of opening doors that otherwise wouldn’t exist, using the phrase to start conversations, pitch himself for opportunities, and get his foot in the door when others might hesitate.

“Sneaking into the party—that’s what I’m known for,” he tells Fortune. “I don’t mind cold calling people. I don’t mind pulling up at conferences. I don’t mind acting as if.”

And while some Gen Zers have already started embodying this in their own form of career manifestation, as being “delulu,” Williams says it’s a lesson young people can all learn from: know what you want and go after it by being steps ahead of your career in your behavior.

“I had to become a private equity person before I got that job. I had to become an investment banker before they hired me. I had to become an entrepreneur before I started a business. I had to become a good husband and father before I get married and have kids,” he says

The power of networking as a key to success

Once you’re able to “sneak into the party” or even just simply connect with someone on LinkedIn, there can be a domino effect of networking—and you never know which person will have the perfect job opening now or later in your career.

But Gen Z also needs to not undervalue the power of warm leads and apprenticeships, Williams says.

“I don’t know why people don’t do it anymore, but when I would get warm leads, I would get introduced to someone and they get introduced to someone else, and then to someone else,” he says.

This strategy of building out a wide, genuine network is what in part helped Williams land his first investment banking gig in Goldman Sachs at 21 years old. It also ensured his broader career goals of getting into private equity.

“Guess what I was doing on the evenings and the weekends? I was an apprentice under guys 10 to 20 years older than me, who were working in private equity, who were buying businesses, and I’m doing little LBO (leveraged buyout) models and analysis for them,” he says.

“I was doing that in the evenings when other kids were playing video games and going to the clubs and partying.”

The Sharks agree: don’t let fear shut you down

Williams’ Shark Tank costars agree with him that fighting back against rejections and naysayers is part of the journey to success.

In fact, Kevin O’Leary, known as Mr. Wonderful, recently told Fortune that he actually enjoys the motivation fueled by his haters. 

“I just love it when people tell me, ‘Oh, you can’t do this, you can’t do that,’” O’Leary said. “When someone tells me I can’t do it, I turn around, two years later, kick their ass. That’s a great motivation. It’s not about the money anymore—I just like kicking their ass.”

Daniel Lubetzky, the billionaire KIND bar founder who is the newest permanent investor on Shark Tank said that being a little naive can be a good thing in the long term.

“Most ventures that changed the world are started by young people, not guys like me,” Lubetzky told graduates of UC Berkeley earlier this year.

“When you don’t know any better, you dare to try the impossible. And in doing so, sometimes you prove that the impossible is actually possible,” he added.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Millionaires are packing their bags in droves in hopes of finding more secure places for their money as the global economy is riddled by ongoing armed conflict and trade wars. It’s being dubbed the ‘great wealth migration.’ And countries like Montenegro, UAE, and Malta are seeing significant growth in the number of millionaires within their borders as a result.

A historic shift is underway among the world’s wealthiest. This year, some 142,000 millionaires are planning to relocate—leaving behind familiar luxuries like London penthouses and French estates in favor of greater opportunities and financial stability abroad.

While longstanding favorites like Switzerland, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) continue to attract their share of affluent individuals, one lesser-known eastern European nation has just been crowned the world’s fastest growing millionaire hub.

Nested between the blue-watered Adriatic Sea and the towering Dinaric Alps, Montenegro has experienced a 124% increase in the number of millionaires within its borders over the last decade, according to the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2025. 

And while its surging population of 2,800 millionaires is still dwarfed by many other countries, the Balkan nation attracted a wave of interest thanks in part to its former investment-for-citizenship program (often known as a ‘golden passport’). 

Overall, Montenegro remains especially attractive due to its European proximity and fiscal flexibility, according to Henley & Partners’ group head of private clients Dominic Volek. Plus, the views are unbeatable.

“Montenegro’s low-tax regime, with flat income taxes and no inheritance or gift tax, has made it particularly attractive for wealth preservation,” Volek told Fortune.

“Paired with its Adriatic coastline, luxury real estate offerings, and appealing Mediterranean lifestyle, the country has become a destination of choice for lifestyle-motivated investors.”

A standout time for millionaire migration

Next year is expected to bring an even greater number of millionaires on the move—about 165,000 are anticipated to migrate to greener pastures around the world, according to the report.

Recent geopolitical instability, macroeconomic headwinds, and sociopolitical fragmentation have only accelerated the ultra-rich desire to migrate, Volek said. So much so that some individuals have begun calling it the ‘great wealth migration.’

“As major powers become more directly entangled, global investors are increasingly factoring political risk into domicile and portfolio decisions,” Volek said.

The UAE has succeeded in attracting high-net-worth migrants in particular because the country is politically stable and business-friendly. The nation also has a Golden Visa program, which has helped it stand out as a popular destination for the wealthy. In fact, the country is expected to net about 9,800 millionaires this year—the most of any other country.

Wealth is migrating out of Western Europe

While European nations like Montenegro, Malta, and Poland are experiencing sizable increases in millionaire growth, other parts of the continent are reeling from their wealthy citizens packing up and leaving. In fact, this year marks the first time in a decade that a European country leads the world in millionaire outflows, with the UK topping the list.

Some 16,500 millionaires are expected to leave the British Isles this year, totalling about $91.8 billion worth. This translates to a 9% reduction in the UK’s millionaire population over the last decade, in part thanks to fallout from Brexit, political uncertainty, and non-domicile tax changes.

“Despite this outbound wave, the UK remains a desirable destination for high-net-worth individuals—particularly Americans disenchanted with the current Trump administration,” wrote Henley & Partners CEO Juerg Steffen in conjunction with the report release. “Yet without a viable entry pathway, the country is unable to offset the outflow, leaving a growing imbalance between incoming and outgoing wealth.”

Fellow European powerhouses—including France, Spain, and Germany—also have worrying wealth-migration signs, Volek said. He explained that between 2023 and 2024, there was a 114% increase in enquiries for alternative residence and citizenship options among German millionaires, he said.

“This trend suggests a broader erosion of confidence among Europe’s wealthy elite, with potential long-term consequences for regional financial stability and innovation,” Volek said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Palantir CEO Alex Karp may have three degrees to his name—but he’s fed up with higher education. The billionaire took a shot at elite universities, including Harvard and Yale, during his AI firm’s earnings call on Monday, saying degrees don’t matter once you land at Palantir: “This is by far the best credential in tech. If you come to Palantir, your career is set.”

With Gen Z facing an uphill battle in today’s job market, and many facing mounds of student loan debt, a growing number of young people have conceded that pursuing a degree may have been a worthless endeavor—and some business leaders are agreeing.

In fact, top employers today aren’t “even talking about degrees” anymore, the Great Place to Work CEO Michael Bush, previously told Fortune. “They’re talking about skills.”

Now Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, is the latest exec to publicly question the value of traditional schooling.

“If you did not go to school, or you went to a school that’s not that great, or you went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, once you come to Palantir, you’re a Palantirian—no one cares about the other stuff,” Karp said during Monday’s earnings call.

The 57-year-old added that his company is building a new credential “separate from class or background.”

“This is by far the best credential in tech. If you come to Palantir, your career is set,” he said.

Palantir’s hot streak is thanks to workers who want to ‘bend the arc of history’

Palantir pulled in a record $1 billion in revenue last quarter, or 48% year-over-year. The AI analytics company’s stock is now up nearly 600% over the past year, with its market cap rising $12 billion yesterday alone. As of publication, its market cap was around $430 billion.

And according to Karp, the secret to their rise hasn’t been luring workers with a bougie headquarters or scooping up Ivy League talent—it’s bringing together a workforce that isn’t prideful of their fancy college degree, or lack thereof.

It’s a feeling echoed by Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer who just recently joined the billionaires club thanks to the recent increase in company value.

“We are able to attract and retain and motivate people who actually want to bend the arc of history here, work on the problems that drive outcomes,” Sankar said on the earnings call.

Palantir’s disdain for existing methods of education and talent development goes beyond just talk. Karp and fellow Palantir cofounders Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale have been supporters of the University of Austin, a new four-year school that prides itself on being centered around free speech and being “anti-woke.” 

Fortune reached out to Palantir for comment.

Palantir wants to attract young talent—but also cut its workforce

Palantir is currently hiring for dozens of roles across the company, including in product development and U.S. government roles—alongside multiple positions specifically for interns and new graduates.

This past spring, the company also notably established the Meritocracy Fellowship, a four-month, paid internship for high school graduates who may be having second thoughts about higher education. Program admission is solely based on “merit and academic excellence,” but applicants still need Ivy League-level test scores to qualify. This includes at least a 1460 on the SAT or a 33 on the ACT, which are both above their respective 98th percentiles.

According to Karp, the internship was created in direct response to the “shortcomings of university admissions.”

“Opaque admissions standards at many American universities have displaced meritocracy and excellence,” the Palantir posting said. “As a result, qualified students are being denied an education based on subjective and shallow criteria. Absent meritocracy, campuses have become breeding grounds for extremism and chaos.”

“Everything you learned at your school and college about how the world works is intellectually incorrect,” Karp added to CNBC in February.

Successful interns will be interviewed for full-time roles. “Skip the debt,” the posting read. “Skip the indoctrination. Get the Palantir Degree.”

However, this young talent may be hired just to build programs that will eventually lead to their replacement by AI. Karp admitted this week that he hopes to reduce his workforce by 500 employees.

“We’re planning to grow our revenue … while decreasing our number of people,” Karp told CNBC this week. “This is a crazy, efficient revolution. The goal is to get 10x revenue and have 3,600 people. We have now 4,100.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Palantir’s first billion-dollar quarter is dramatically increasing the wealth of the company’s cofounders and C-suite. Peter Thiel and Alex Karp have each seen their net worth jump by $17 billion collectively—and the company’s chief technology officer is the latest to join the billionaires club. This comes as Palantir admits its goal is to cut jobs—but grow revenue by 10x thanks to AI.

Palantir’s stock has hit turbo mode. In the last month alone, shares surged by some 25%, helping the AI and analytics company reach a market cap north of $411 billion. And over the last year, the stock has skyrocketed by more than 550%.

For Palantir’s investors and cofounders, this surge has translated to wealth racking up by the billions. Cofounder Peter Thiel’s net worth has jumped to over $25 billion—up $9 billion since January—and Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s has surged to more than $15 billion (up $8 billion YTD), according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index. Cofounders Stephen Cohen and Joe Lonsdale are also long-time members of the ultra-rich club.

Now, the financial wins are extending beyond the company’s founders. Chief technology officer Shyam Sankar became its latest exec to cross the billion-dollar mark on Monday, with his net worth climbing past $1.3 billion.

Later that day, the company reported a record-setting $1 billion in revenue for its most recent quarter, up 48% year-over-year. Profit also soared by 33% to $327 million, prompting the company to increase its full-year revenue outlook to at least $4.14 billion.

The company’s successes have been 20 years in the making, Sankar said on Monday’s earnings call.

Fortune reached out to Palantir for comment.

Other companies’ losses are Palantir’s gains

Palantir’s stock growth is likely welcomed news for investors who have been unsatisfied with the performance of other tech companies like Tesla, Apple, and Amazon, which are all in the red this year.

Competitors in the federal contracting space have also struggled, with firms like Accenture, Booz Allen and Deloitte losing key government contracts amid Department of Government Efficiency cuts. However, Palantir has largely gained, with earnings from the U.S. government growing by 53% year-over-year. Just last week, the company landed a $10 billion software and data contract with the Army.

And while Palantir’s partnerships with the federal government have raised eyebrows considering Thiel’s close relationship with the Trump administration, the company is only moving full speed ahead.

“There are almost no parasitic elements to this company,” Karp said in the earnings call on Monday. “We have a small sales force. We have very little BS internally. We have a flat hierarchy. We have the most qualified and interesting people, heterodox in their beliefs.”

A continued embrace of AI is also making it easier for companies like Palantir to do more with less workers.

“We’re planning to grow our revenue … while decreasing our number of people,” Karp told CNBC. “This is a crazy, efficient revolution. The goal is to get 10x revenue and have 3,600 people. We have now 4,100.” 

Like Palantir, Nvidia is a billionaire-producing machine

Like Palantir this year, Nvidia’s stock skyrocketed in 2024—with gains topped 170%. And as each company continues to grow, they’re both on the billionaire-producing track.

On top of CEO Jensen Huang’s own $155 billion, his chief financial officer Colette Kress and EVP Jay Puri joined the billionaire’s club late last month.

“I’ve created more billionaires on my management team than any CEO in the world,” Huang said recently during a panel hosted by venture capitalists running the All-In podcast. “They’re doing just fine.”

Nvidia has about 42,000 and a market cap of about $4.3 trillion, about 10x that of Palantir.

“Don’t feel sad for anybody at my layer,” Huang said. “My layer is doing just fine.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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•  As Gen Z questions the value of higher education, Figma CEO Dylan Field has become the latest tech billionaire to make it big without a college degree, joining the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and Bill Gates. Thanks to his company’s roaring IPO, his net worth has soared to $5 billion. And for the tech founder, the milestone is more than just a financial win—it’s a validation of his decision to drop out of an Ivy League university. 

Figma burst onto the public markets last week, surging in share price by 333% and hitting a market cap of over $70 billion in just the first few days of trading.

For investors bullish on startups, last week was a rejuvenation after a sluggish stretch in the IPO market. But for Figma cofounder and CEO Dylan Field, last week not only helped propel his net worth to about $5 billion—it was also a validation that his decision to abandon an Ivy League education at Brown University was well worth it, a choice made possible by Peter Thiel.

In the early 2010s—with lines on his résumé detailing work at LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Flipboard—Field applied for the Thiel Fellowship, a program funded by the billionaire that gave $100,000 to young people who “want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom” (the prize has since doubled to $200,000). At the time, his parents admitted they were skeptical, with his mom telling CNBC that she feared Field would want a degree to fall back on later in life.

“I’m quite nervous, yeah,” Field’s father, Andy, said. “Most startups do fail. I think he has a good shot, but certainly not a sure thing by any means.”

After being awarded the fellowship, Field felt confident it was the right move—especially since he had once considered dropping out of high school owing to his struggles with structured education. In 2012, the same year Facebook went public (a company also created by a dropout enabled by Thiel), Field left school to build Figma. The rest is billion-dollar history.

Fortune reached out to Field for comment.

Billionaires who made it big after dropping out

Field is far from the first highly successful individual to have carved their own path in business without having walked across the stage to obtain a college diploma. In fact, many of the richest people on earth can call themselves college dropouts.

Mark Zuckerberg

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Perhaps one of the most well-known college dropouts, Zuckerberg ditched his Harvard dorm in 2004 to move to California and dedicate his time to creating Facebook. Zuckerberg received an honorary doctorate from the school in 2017. His current net worth is about $272 billion.

Jack Dorsey

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The cofounder of Twitter and Block, Jack Dorsey is a double dropout. After a brief stint at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, Dorsey called it quits before trying again at New York University. One semester before he would have graduated in 1999, Dorsey ditched school to focus on founding Twitter. After selling the social media platform to Elon Musk in 2022, he came home with a $268 million windfall. His current net worth is about $4.7 billion.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman dropped out of Stanford University in 2005 to work on his first startup: Loopt, a location-sharing app. By 2015, he had helped cofound OpenAI, the leading AI organization behind ChatGPT. His net worth is now about $2 billion.

Larry Ellison

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Larry Ellison, cofounder of Oracle, first attended the University of Illinois thinking he might one day become a doctor. After the death of his adoptive mother, he dropped out, then later attended the University of Chicago. While he never obtained a degree from either institution, his move to California opened doors into the tech industry. After jumping from job to job, he met Bob Miner and Ed Oates, and together they created the company that would later become Oracle. He is currently the second-richest person in the world, with a net worth of just over $300 billion.

Bill Gates

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Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates enrolled at Harvard University in 1973 before leaving two years later to lead the computer company. While he admitted in the early years he wanted to return to school and finish his degree, he’s since become one of the most recognized names in the world. His net worth is about $123 billion.

Why Gen Zers are turning their backs on higher education

Being a college dropout is by no means the secret to becoming a billionaire—after all, many top business leaders have multiple degrees to their name, such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

However, Gen Z is increasingly having doubts about whether the promise of a high-paying, secure job after spending four years on campus will be fulfilled; more than a third of graduates believe their degree was a “waste of money,” according to a recent survey by Indeed.

With millions of young people unable to find jobs in their desired industry, there may be some validity to their concerns. Zuckerberg suggested the disconnect may come from colleges being out of sync with today’s workforce needs.

“I’m not sure that college is preparing people for the jobs that they need to have today. I think that there’s a big issue on that, and all the student debt issues are … really big,” he said on This Past Weekend, a podcast with Theo Von.

“The fact that college is just so expensive for so many people, and then you graduate and you’re in debt.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk has seen his wealth plummet by some $80 billion this year, thanks in part to a 20% decline in his electric-vehicle company’s stock. Now, just $60 billion separates Musk from Oracle’s Larry Ellison—and another Tesla tumble could see Musk dethroned as the world’s richest man.

Elon Musk claims to have slashed billions of dollars worth of wasteful spending during his time as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—but his controversial role may have done more damage to his pocketbook than he anticipated.

This year alone, Musk has lost some $80 billion in his net worth, bringing his current value to about $352 billion—a far cry from his over $450 billion peak late last year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Musk’s wealth declines are largely tied to his 13% stake in struggling Tesla. Even after shareholders practically begged the billionaire to leave DOGE and focus on Tesla full-time, Musk’s return to Austin hasn’t been so glamorous. The electric-vehicle company missed Wall Street expectations and experienced a double-digit percentage revenue decline in the second quarter of 2025. Tesla’s stock price is down nearly 20% this year.

But shareholders are doing the opposite of pulling the plug on Musk; they’ve just awarded him a pay package worth some $29 billion—in what shareholders called a “critical first step toward” keeping “Elon’s energies focused on Tesla,” reports the New York Times.

While Musk remains the No. 1 richest person on the planet, fellow members of the ultrarich like Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg are tapping at the door to replace him at the top of the billionaire list.

Musk’s climb to the top of the world

2024 was a standout year for Tesla. The company’s stock nearly doubled, with the market cap topping $1.4 trillion in December. Due to his sizable stake, the jump boosted Musk’s wealth and seemingly cemented him at the time at the top of the list after years of back and forth among billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.

Musk’s success also comes from his stakes in his other companies, including XAI Holdings (the combined firm of social media X and AI startup xAI), SpaceX, Neuralink, and the Boring Company. 

But like struggles at Tesla, his companies are causing financial headaches for the billionaire. xAI is reportedly burning through $1 billion a month, and the Boring Company’s valuation has decreased to $6.4 billion from $8.6 billion in July 2023, according to Bloomberg.

While he did not take a salary from his role at DOGE, his companies have largely benefited from working with the government over the years. According to the Washington Post, his businesses have received some $38 billion in contracts, loans, subsidies, and more.

Now, Musk has an uphill battle ahead of him in the court of public opinion; just 30% of voters have a favorable view of Musk, according to a Quinnipiac Poll released in June. And after a public feud with President Donald Trump over the federal budget, even support among Republicans has dipped.

How Musk may lose his richest man title

While Musk has lost the most wealth of anyone in 2025 so far, he’s not alone. Jeff Bezos is also in the red, having let go of about $1.7 billion this year, largely thanks to Amazon’s struggling stock performance. Bill Gates has also lost a sizable amount of wealth—some $36 billion—but it’s been because of his ramped-up philanthropy efforts.

On the flip side, Larry Ellison (+$102 billion), Mark Zuckerberg (+$56 billion), and Jensen Huang ($37 billion) have seen sizable wealth increases.

Only $60 billion now separates Musk and Ellison as No. 1 and 2, according to Bloomberg, thanks to the newfound success of Ellison’s tech giant, Oracle. The company’s new focus on AI helped earnings soar and contributed to a stock jump of over 50% this year. Ellison’s wealth has grown by over $100 billion this year, and it’s only likely to continue.

“Oracle’s future is bright in this new era of cloud computing. Oracle will be the number one cloud database company,” Ellison said in the business’s earnings call in June. “Oracle is already prospering in this new era of cloud computing and AI, and it’s just the beginning.”

If the trends continue, and Oracle continues to grow while Tesla flounders, Ellison could replace Musk as the richest person in the world by year’s end.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• As remote work lingers, employees are doubling, even tripling, their paychecks by secretly juggling multiple full-time jobs—and not even having to pull overtime. The overemployed workers Fortune spoke to are working up to five jobs and pulling in more than $725,000 a year, all within a standard 40-hour week. 

If you’ve grown suspicious of your coworker’s away status on Teams or their refusal to turn their camera on during meetings, there’s a chance they might be trying to earn two salaries at once—and fit it all into a normal workweek.

The practice went viral on social media last month when a single software engineer was found to be working at multiple Silicon Valley startups at once, prompting other companies to check whether they had fallen victim to similar deceitfulness. 

However, holding down more than one gig at a time—sometimes even up to five—may be bigger than some companies expect. After all, the continued prevalence of remote work has made it more challenging for employers to know exactly what their workers are up to.

“If you’ve worked in corporate America, it is a lot of fluff and not a lot of substance,” said one worker who spoke anonymously with Fortune. They currently work three gigs, making about $725,000 altogether.

At one point, they were balancing five roles total, something they said has been made possible by AI productivity enhancement, with new tools making it easier than ever to send emails, compile meeting notes, and draft deliverables—and get it all done under relatively normal work hours.

“At this point it kind of became a game to me, how many jobs can I do at once and stay sane?” they recalled.

Maxing out on jobs certainly paid. off. While juggling five at once, they estimated bringing in more than $1 million a year.

“I have zero loyalty to a corporation,” they added.

No regrets about taking work from others

Fortune spoke to a second worker who currently holds two jobs in the healthcare technology industry. And despite being a full-time worker making a combined amount of nearly $250,000, they are able to get all the work completed within 40 hours. They don’t have concerns over taking jobs away from those struggling in today’s rocky job market.

“They’re hiring me for my knowledge and my expertise, not for hours worked,” they told Fortune.

And while holding more than one job may raise eyebrows next time you have to put your work history on a resume, they said they will just write the best full-time role they had at a current period to avoid having to answer for holding two jobs at once. However, the demand for talent in the healthcare tech industry has not made it much of an issue.

“I don’t go look for jobs, jobs come and look for me,” they said. “To be honest, I don’t remember the last time I went to apply for a job. And since 2017, I’ve had four different positions.”

In fact, they said they got so many recruitment offers from firms trying to snatch up talent, the companies practically enabled overemployment behavior. 

Holding more than one job might be legal, but some people like Lewis Maleh, CEO of executive recruitment agency Bentley Lewis, don’t recommend people emulate the behavior.

“If someone is doing a full-time perm job and being paid accordingly, they should not be doing another full-time perm role unless the company is OK with it,” Maleh previously told Fortune. “I don’t think it’s ethical and will cost you down the road if you get found out. If you are doing a few part-time gigs, that’s of course a different story.”

A trend that might continue, but maybe not for long

Though both of the sources Fortune spoke with are fully-remote employees, some users on the overemployment Reddit community have deemed it possible to secretly work at a second job while on site elsewhere. But by and large, working multiple full-time jobs has been enabled by the ability to work from home.

Despite calls for workers to return to the office from large Fortune 500 companies like JPMorgan Chase, remote work is still common.  In fact, 33% of all workers worked from home in 2024, down just slightly from 35% in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s latest American Time Use Survey.

Remote work has stuck around far more than Jerry Jacobs, professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, expected—but now bosses are slowly getting better at gauging workers’ productivity realities.

“The longer (remote work) lasts, the more I think people will get used to this as just being, you know, one way that people work,” Jacobs tells Fortune. “And I think the longer it lasts, the more you know, people are going to get good at managing it.”

And as a result, he doesn’t expect the trend of having multiple full-time jobs to carry on—but rather something people are experimenting with.

“It’s hard to convince people on your first job, that you’re really doing your job, if you’re spending a lot of your time and energy on your second job,” he adds.

Similarly Lonnie Golden, a professor of economics and labor–human relations at Penn State University Abington, believes working more than one full-time job has the potential to grow, but it remains to be seen what that will actually look like.

“The question is, will the ethics, the productivity, the rules and regulations catch up with this?”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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