• Many CEOs and business leaders have shared their thoughts on work-life balance.
• Some support it while others call it a hindrance to success.
• Here's what some of the biggest names in business make of work-life balance.

How do you juggle your personal life with your work?

Just about everyone has an opinion on work-life balance, including CEOs. Some business leaders see it as an important equilibrium to maintain, while some outright hate the idea.

Here are some top business execs' takes on work-life balance.

Mark Cuban says, "There is no balance" for incredibly ambitious people

On a recent episode of "The Playbook," a video series from Sports Illustrated and Entrepreneur, billionaire entrepreneur and former "Shark Tank" star Mark Cuban said, "There is no balance" for the most ambitious people.

"People are like, 'I need a work-life balance,'" he said. "If you want to work 9-to-5, you can have work-life balance. If you want to crush the game, whatever game you're in, there's somebody working 24 hours a day to kick your ass."

Leon Cooperman encourages young workers to "love what you do," but remember there's more to life than work

Billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman said in a recent interview with Business Insider that there's more to life than hustling.

"I've been married 61 years to the same woman," he said, adding that his greatest success in life is that "my kids still come home."

"Love what you do — it's too demanding and difficult not to," the Wall Street veteran said. "Pursue it with a passion," he continued. Cooperman said that while he spent 25 years at Goldman Sachs, it never felt like work because he enjoyed it so much.

Jeff Bezos says work and life should form a circle, not a "balance"

In 2018, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said that workers should aim for work-life harmony, not "balance," at an event hosted by Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer. Bezos also called the concept of work-life balance "debilitating" because it hints that there's a trade-off.

Bezos said that it's not a work-life balance, but "it's actually a circle."

Bezos said that if he feels happy at home, then it energizes him and makes him more productive at work, and vice versa.

Satya Nadella thinks you should focus on "work-life harmony"

Microsoft's CEO also thinks that "work-life balance" isn't the goal. Instead, he says to focus on work-life "harmony." In 2019, he shared his thoughts with the Australian Financial Review, saying he used to think that he needed to balance relaxing and working. But he's since shifted his approach, aligning his "deep interests" with his work.

TIAA's CEO thinks the entire concept is a "lie"

"Work-life balance is a lie," TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett said in a 2023 fireside chat. Brown Duckett has previously said she used to struggle with guilt and balancing her demanding job with being a mother.

Brown Duckett says that she views her life as a "portfolio," and that she takes time to perform different roles like mother, wife, and business executive. Though she may not always physically be with her children, she says she strives to be fully present during the time she is able to spend with them.

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt said work-life balance was why Google was behind in AI — then walked back the comments

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt criticized Google's remote work policy and work-life balance during a lecture at Stanford University in 2024, saying these were contributing factors to the company trailing behind startups like OpenAI on artificial intelligence.

"Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning," the former Google exec said in a recording of the lecture that was posted online in August. "And the reason the startups work is because the people work like hell."

He added that those looking to start successful companies today are "not going to let people work from home and only come in one day a week if you want to compete against the other startups."

After his comments gained attention, Schmidt walked back the comments.

"Eric misspoke about Google and their work hours and regrets his error," a spokesperson for Schmidt previously told Business Insider in an email.

Arianna Huffington says you shouldn't have to choose between work and life

Arianna Huffington, founder of Thrive Global and HuffPost, told Great Place to Work that we shouldn't view productivity and relaxation as two opposing forces. Huffington said that when one area of your life improves, the other does as well.

Huffington said employees should focus more on "work-life integration" since "we bring our entire selves to work."

Still, Huffington believes that your personal life should always come first.

"While work is obviously important and can give us purpose and meaning in our lives, it shouldn't take the place of life," she said. "Work is a part of a thriving life, but life should come first."

Don't expect a work-life balance if you work for Elon Musk

Elon Musk is a known workaholic, and he expects those who work beneath him to be as well.

In 2022, just after Musk took ownership of X, formerly Twitter, he sent out an email to employees telling them to either dedicate their lives to working or leave the company. Musk reportedly made X employees work 84 hours a week. While some people think remote work improved their work-life balance, Musk has often criticized it and called it "morally wrong."

According to Walter Isaacson's biography of him, Musk would stay at the office overnight and shower at the YMCA when he joined the workforce in 1995. Musk has continued the habit while working at Tesla and buying Twitter, often spending the night at work.

In 2018, Musk said that he works 120 hours a week, amounting to 17 hours a day.

Jack Ma has also actively endorsed long work hours

One of China's richest men, Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma in 2019 expressed his support for the controversial "996" work system in many Chinese workplaces, which refers to working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. He's called "996" culture a "huge blessing" for younger workers.

"Many companies and many people don't have the opportunity to work 996," he said in 2019. "If you don't work 996 when you are young, when can you ever work 996?"

"If you find a job you like, the 996 problem does not exist," he added. "If you're not passionate about it, every minute of going to work is a torment."

China's government called the grueling 996 schedule "illegal" in 2021, though it's believed to continue to be an expectation at many Chinese companies.

• After losing a nonprofit job, Jode Blank pursued a six-figure consulting career but burned out.
• The nonprofit role involved travel and cultural exchanges, which pulled her away from home often.
• She now works at a med spa and is building an AI automation business to combine her skillset.

I didn't realize it while I was there, but I lived my dream life when I worked at a nonprofit in the J-1 Visa Work and Travel program.

I placed international students from all over the world into jobs throughout the Midwest. I often had students stay with our family in our home, and it was a unique way for my kids to learn about other cultures.

When I lost this job after 13 years, I took it hard and aimed high for a new six-figure consulting gig so I wouldn't lose out on income. I realized that wasn't the right fit — now I work the front desk at a med spa and work on my own business on the side.

I saw the world like a local at the nonprofit

We traveled and experienced the cultures through our local partnerships in each country we visited. This job afforded me the ability to travel when I wouldn't have been able to otherwise. I didn't make much, about $52,000 in my last year, but I always considered the travel perks a benefit beyond my wages.

We learned the political views of the locals and had real conversations about the relationships between our country and theirs. I often left fascinated and with a deeper understanding of how other cultures view the US.

In 2019 and 2020, I had incredibly busy years

Over five months, I traveled to New York and Washington, DC, as well as to China, Italy, and Romania. Although I loved the travel, it put a ton of pressure on my family.

When I was in Italy in 2020, things were starting to shut down in Europe. I foresaw what was coming and knew it would happen in the US soon.

In June of 2020, because there was no travel, our entire company shut down, and I lost my job. Even though I knew it was coming, it was still devastating.

I was homeschooling my kids and didn't think I could manage starting a new job while trying to educate them during lockdown. I earned a copywriting certification, got referrals from within that certification program, and took on some consulting work for influencers.

I was making six figures by my second full year as a consultant

I worked all the time, and the clients I worked with were demanding and didn't respect my boundaries. I often got messages while on vacation, on weekends, and late into the evenings.

I burned out fast, sometimes working 16 to 20-hour days. The money wasn't worth the headaches, and I developed chronic health conditions from the long hours at my desk without any physical activity.

I hated it. I couldn't sleep, and I always had the weight of other people's businesses on my mind.

In 2024, I gave it all up

After four years, I let the last of my clients go and left the digital marketing industry. I never felt better, except that I had no income and no plan. I just knew I was done working with high-maintenance influencers.

I started searching for a new career path. I'd worked from home for 18 years, so it was hard to think about going back to an office. I felt like it would crush my soul.

I found a job as a cryotherapy spa technician

It was a low-wage, $15-an-hour job with the possibility of commissions from sales. It sounded like a breath of fresh air — just the escape I was looking for. I could go home and sleep at night without worrying about everyone else's business. I applied and started working two days a week and every other weekend.

I thought it would be a temporary job to fill an income gap while I got my own business off the ground. I decided to build an AI automation business because it would allow me to use my writing skills and tech interests to help people generate better leads. It would also allow me to work with many different types of businesses that are not internet marketing, which I was looking to move away from.

I loved my job at the spa

Many of the clients became friends, and before I knew it, my schedule was filled and I was making sales regularly.

The other added benefit is that I get to use the cryotherapy equipment on myself. I've lost inches around my waist, and it's tightened up my jawline. I have so much more confidence, and I'm focusing on my health and well-being — something I had put to the wayside while I was working as a consultant.

Working at the spa has also given me time to reflect on my tendency toward workaholism

As I turned 50, I needed to consider how I wanted to spend the last 15 years of my career. Upon reflection, I loved the people I worked with at the nonprofit and how I got to experience the world. Truthfully, though, I had to depend on a lot of people when I was gone.

My parents and others helped me out with my kids while I traveled, and I missed a lot. My kids often sobbed when I would leave, and my husband dreaded it. Even if I hadn't lost my job due to the lockdown, I wouldn't have been able to work at the nonprofit much longer.

I'm still figuring out what's next for me

I know I can't stay at the spa forever. My AI automation software business is picking up, but I'm acutely aware of my old patterns of workaholism resurfacing.

Just when I think I have it figured out, we're hearing rumblings of economic downturn. It's possible I may stay at the spa longer than I originally expected.

I'll adjust my automation business to strictly working with corporations at a certain revenue level, so I know they can afford my services. Right now, I'm taking it day by day.

Do you have a story to share about recovering from burnout? Contact this editor at [email protected].

• Mark Cuban said work-life balance isn't possible for those who want to win in their field.
• The billionaire said there's always someone trying 'to kick your ass' in a recent video interview.
• Cuban said he didn't take a vacation for 7 years.

Mark Cuban says work-life balance is great — if you're OK with not being the best.

The billionaire and entrepreneur shut down the idea of a work-life balance for the most successful people on an episode of "The Playbook," a video series from Sports Illustrated and Entrepreneur.

"There is no balance," Cuban told Micah Parsons, a 26-year-old linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys. "People are like, 'I need a work-life balance.' If you want to work 9-to-5, you can have work-life balance. If you want to crush the game, whatever game you're in, there's somebody working 24 hours a day to kick your ass."

Parsons told Cuban he wanted to work "non-stop," even at a young age. To Cuban, that didn't seem like an issue.

"That's not a sacrifice. That's doing you," Cuban said on the episode, which aired June 3. "Not doing it would be a sacrifice."

The Shark Tank star said he didn't take a vacation for seven years after starting his first business in his mid-20s. All he did was "learn, learn, learn."

Cuban is now worth $5.7 billion, according to Forbes, but he started his career learning how to code in a run-down apartment.

Many Gen Zers today prioritize work-life balance and job flexibility, research indicates, even though the job market is increasingly tough for younger people. Some workers agree with Cuban's statements, but others have told Business Insider that his approach can lead to burnout and stress.

• Keeping an open mind and being flexible is key to finding a job right now.
• Work is changing fast as artificial intelligence spreads into more aspects of jobs.
• Exploring a range of industries and skill-building opportunities can help you stay competitive.

If you're trying to find a job, it's time to get scrappy.

While the job market hasn't fallen off a cliff and layoffs remain low, stiffer competition for roles, surging use of artificial intelligence, and some employers' hesitation to hire are scrambling some job searches.

That means some job seekers might have to pivot — potentially to an entirely new industry — or find other ways to stand out if they're set on a certain field.

In some cases, you might have to adjust your goals.

"Maybe put aside for the moment that dream to work for Amazon and Google, and maybe think about a different company that's more mid-cap," Angie Kamath, dean of the School of Professional Studies at New York University, told Business Insider.

Kamath said the need to stay open to various options if you're looking for a role reflects the rapid change in many industries, especially as employers and employees alike try to understand what AI will mean for many aspects of work.

"That's here to stay," she said, referring to the need for job seekers to understand how technology might remake jobs.

To keep up, Kamath said, you should find ways to build your skills. That doesn't only mean getting a degree in a field, she said. Kamath said you might look to freebie or low-cost classes, for example, on AI from Amazon, Google, or online learning platforms like Udemy.

"That's my No. 1 advice. Try something out. See if you like it. See if you hate it. See if you're energized by it," she said.

Finding ways to stand out

If you don't want to shift to a different field or job type, you might simply have to work harder to stand out.

Ryan McManus, a vice president at the tech-focused recruitment firm Selby Jennings, told BI that some employers have become more selective in who they hire.

"It might just be a bit more competitive in the sense that we're looking to check more boxes," he said, referring to finding candidates for the company's employer clients.

For those who don't necessarily have every part of a job description nailed down, intangibles like being personable and a strong communicator can make a difference, McManus said.

While finding ways to be flexible and try to stand out in a job search can help, it doesn't necessarily mean it will be easy to land a role. Some employers are slow-walking hiring, and some workers' confidence about business prospects is slipping.

In the Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index released Tuesday, the share of employees who expect a positive six-month business outlook fell to 44.1% in May from 45.8% in April. The May reading was the lowest since 2016, when Glassdoor began collecting predictions from tens of thousands of US workers.

Test your ideas

To navigate an uncertain landscape, NYU's Kamath said job seekers might think of themselves as entrepreneurs who generate more than one idea for a business.

"That's what we should do as we're looking for jobs. We should come up with a couple of versions of success, or what's interesting," she said.

To know which option might be best, Kamath said it can help to ask friends what they think. She said that might mean having a conversation with a connection on LinkedIn who's in the line of work you're considering. Or it could involve visiting an employer that has public events or conferences.

That manner of thinking, Kamath said, helps you avoid putting much pressure on yourself to land a certain role, and the thinking that "anything other than being successful in that one path equals failure."

"It widens out what you might do and where you might do it," she said.

Ultimately, Kamath said, job seekers often benefit when they step back and consider alternatives.

"That's been very eye-opening for our students and our alumni to say there's more out there than the singular path to success," she said.

Do you have a story to share about your job hunt? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Most commencement speeches tend to follow a similar formula.
• However, some are so inspiring that they are remembered long after graduation.
• Presidents, Nobel Prize winners, CEOs, and comedians have all inspired graduates with their words.

Commencement speeches have the ability to inspire and motivate.

They are often an opportunity for media moguls, celebrities, and CEOs to impart wisdom to the graduating classes of colleges and universities across the country. 

Presidents have also used commencement speeches as more casual environments to drive home the values of their administrations, such as John F. Kennedy's 1963 speech at American University that called for peace. 

Here are valuable pieces of advice from graduation speeches throughout history.

"Our problems are manmade — therefore, they can be solved by man." — John F. Kennedy's 1963 speech at American University

Against the tumult of the early '60s, John F. Kennedy inspired graduates to strive for what may be the biggest goal of them all: world peace.

"Too many of us think it is impossible," he said. "Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable — that mankind is doomed — that we are gripped by forces we cannot control."

Our job is not to accept that, he urged. "Our problems are manmade — therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants." 

"Be the heroine of your life, not the victim." — Nora Ephron's 1996 speech at Wellesley College

Addressing her fellow alums with trademark wit, Ephron reflected on all the things that had changed since her days at Wellesley … and all the things that hadn't.

"My class went to college in the era when you got a master's degree in teaching because it was 'something to fall back on' in the worst case scenario, the worst case scenario being that no one married you and you actually had to go to work," she said.

But while things had changed drastically by 1996, Ephron warned grads not to "delude yourself that the powerful cultural values that wrecked the lives of so many of my classmates have vanished from the earth." 

"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim," she said. "Maybe young women don't wonder whether they can have it all any longer, but in case any of you are wondering, of course you can have it all. What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications."

"We can learn to live without the sick excitement, without the kick of having scores to settle." — Kurt Vonnegut's 1999 speech at Agnes Scott College

The famed author was one of the most sought-after commencement speakers in the United States for many years, thanks to his insights on morality and cooperation. At Agnes Scott, he asked graduates to make the world a better place by respecting humanity and living without hate. Hammurabi lived 4,000 years ago, he pointed out. We can stop living by his code.

"We may never dissuade leaders of our nation or any other nation from responding vengefully, violently, to every insult or injury. In this, the Age of Television, they will continue to find irresistible the temptation to become entertainers, to compete with movies by blowing up bridges and police stations and factories and so on," he said.

"But in our personal lives, our inner lives, at least, we can learn to live without the sick excitement, without the kick of having scores to settle with this particular person, or that bunch of people, or that particular institution or race or nation. And we can then reasonably ask forgiveness for our trespasses, since we forgive those who trespass against us."

The result, he said, would be a happier, more peaceful, and more complete existence.

"You are your own stories." — Toni Morrison's 2004 speech at Wellesley College

Instead of the usual commencement platitudes — none of which, Morrison argued, are true anyway — the Nobel Prize-winning writer asked grads to create their own narratives. 

"What is now known is not all what you are capable of knowing," she said. "You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human without wealth. What it feels like to be human without domination over others, without reckless arrogance, without fear of others unlike you, without rotating, rehearsing and reinventing the hatreds you learned in the sandbox."

In your own story, you can't control all the characters, Morrison said. "The theme you choose may change or simply elude you. But being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who you are and what you mean." Being a storyteller reflects a deep optimism, she said — and as a storyteller herself, "I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art."

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose." — Steve Jobs' 2005 speech at Stanford University

In a remarkably personal address, the Apple founder and CEO advised graduates to live each day as if it were their last.

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life," he said. He'd been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a year earlier.

"Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important," he continued. "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

Jobs said this mindset will make you understand the importance of your work. "And the only way to do great work is to love what you do," he said. "If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."

Settling means giving in to someone else's vision of your life — a temptation Jobs warned against. "Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."

"If you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options." — David Foster Wallace's 2005 speech at Kenyon College

In his now-legendary "This Is Water" speech, the author urged grads to be a little less arrogant and a little less certain about their beliefs.

"This is not a matter of virtue," Wallace said. "It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self."

Doing that will be hard, he said. "It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat won't want to."

But breaking free of that lens can allow you to truly experience life, to consider possibilities beyond your default reactions.

"If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable," he said. "But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down."

"If it doesn't feel right, don't do it." — Oprah Winfrey's 2008 speech at Stanford University

The media mogul told Stanford's class of 2008 that they can't sacrifice happiness for money. "When you're doing the work you're meant to do, it feels right and every day is a bonus, regardless of what you're getting paid," she said.

She said you can feel when you're doing the right thing in your gut. "What I know now is that feelings are really your GPS system for life. When you're supposed to do something or not supposed to do something, your emotional guidance system lets you know," she said.

She explained that doing what your instincts tells you to do will make you more successful because it will drive you to work harder and will save you from debilitating stress.

"If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. That's the lesson. And that lesson alone will save you, my friends, a lot of grief," Winfrey said. "Even doubt means don't. This is what I've learned. There are many times when you don't know what to do. When you don't know what to do, get still, get very still, until you do know what to do."

"Life is an improvisation. You have no idea what's going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along." — Stephen Colbert's 2011 speech at Northwestern University

The comedian and host of the "Late Show" told grads they should never feel like they have it all figured out.

"Whatever your dream is right now, if you don't achieve it, you haven't failed, and you're not some loser. But just as importantly — and this is the part I may not get right and you may not listen to — if you do get your dream, you are not a winner," Colbert said.

It's a lesson he learned from his improv days. When actors are working together properly, he explained, they're all serving each other, playing off each other on a common idea. "And life is an improvisation. You have no idea what's going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along. And like improv, you cannot win your life," he said.

"There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized." — Conan O'Brien's 2011 speech at Dartmouth College

In his hilarious 2011 address to Dartmouth College, the late-night host spoke about his brief run on "The Tonight Show" before being replaced by Jay Leno. O'Brien described the fallout as the lowest point in his life, feeling very publicly humiliated and defeated. But once he got back on his feet and went on a comedy tour across the country, he discovered something important.

"There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized," he said.

He explained that for decades the ultimate goal of every comedian was to host "The Tonight Show," and like many comedians, he thought achieving that goal would define his success. "But that is not true. No specific job or career goal defines me, and it should not define you," he said.

He noted that disappointment is a part of life, and the beauty of it is that it can help you gain clarity and conviction.

"It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique," O'Brien said. "It's not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can be a catalyst for profound re-invention."

 O'Brien said that dreams constantly evolve, and your ideal career path at 22 years old will not necessarily be the same at 32 or 42 years old. 

"I am here to tell you that whatever you think your dream is now, it will probably change. And that's OK," he said.

"The difference between triumph and defeat, you'll find, isn't about willingness to take risks — it's about mastery of rescue." — Atul Gawande's 2012 speech at Williams College

Pushing beyond the tired "take risks!" commencement cliché, the surgeon, writer, and activist took a more nuanced approach: what matters isn't just that you take risks; it's how you take them.

To explain, he turned to medicine."Scientists have given a new name to the deaths that occur in surgery after something goes wrong — whether it is an infection or some bizarre twist of the stomach," said Gawande. "They call them a 'Failure to Rescue.' More than anything, this is what distinguished the great from the mediocre. They didn't fail less. They rescued more."

What matters, he said, isn't the failure — that's inevitable — but what happens next. "A failure often does not have to be a failure at all. However, you have to be ready for it. Will you admit when things go wrong? Will you take steps to set them right? — because the difference between triumph and defeat, you'll find, isn't about willingness to take risks. It's about mastery of rescue."

"Err in the direction of kindness." — George Saunders' 2013 speech at Syracuse University

The writer stressed what turns out to be a deceptively simple idea: the importance of kindness.

"What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness," he said. "Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded ... sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly." 

But kindness is hard, he said. It's not necessarily our default. In part, he explained, kindness comes with age. "It might be a simple matter of attrition: as we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish — how illogical, really." The challenge he laid out: Don't wait. "Speed it along," he urged. "Start right now."

"There's a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness," Saunders said. "But there's also a cure. So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf — seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life."

"Do all the other things, the ambitious things — travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness."

"Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer." — Shonda Rhimes' 2014 speech at Dartmouth College

The world's most powerful showrunner told grads to stop dreaming and start doing.

The world has plenty of dreamers, she said. "And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, engaged, powerful people, are busy doing." She pushed grads to be those people.

"Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer," she advised — whether or not you know what your "passion" might be. "The truth is, it doesn't matter. You don't have to know. You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. It doesn't have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring and dreams are not real," she said.

"Your job is to create a world that lasts forever." — Steven Spielberg's 2016 speech at Harvard

"This world is full of monsters," director Steven Spielberg told Harvard graduates, and it's the next generation's job to vanquish them.

"My job is to create a world that lasts two hours. Your job is to create a world that lasts forever," he said.

These monsters manifest themselves as racism, homophobia, and ethnic, class, political, and religious hatred, he said, noting that there is no difference between them: "It is all one big hate."

Spielberg said that hate is born of an "us versus them" mentality, and thinking instead about people as "we" requires replacing fear with curiosity.

"'Us' and 'them' will find the 'we' by connecting with each other, and by believing that we're members of the same tribe, and by feeling empathy for every soul," he said.

"I wake up in a house that was built by slaves." — Michelle Obama's 2016 speech at the City College of New York

In her 23rd and final commencement speech as first lady, Michelle Obama urged the class of 2016 to pursue happiness and live out whatever version of the American Dream is right for them.

"It's the story that I witness every single day when I wake up in a house that was built by slaves," she said, "and I watch my daughters — two beautiful, Black young women — head off to school waving goodbye to their father, the president of the United States, the son of a man from Kenya who came here to America for the same reasons as many of you: to get an education and improve his prospects in life."

"So, graduates, while I think it's fair to say that our Founding Fathers never could have imagined this day," she continued, "all of you are very much the fruits of their vision. Their legacy is very much your legacy and your inheritance. And don't let anybody tell you differently. You are the living, breathing proof that the American Dream endures in our time. It's you."

"Not everything that happens to us happens because of us." — Sheryl Sandberg's 2016 speech at UC Berkeley

During the Facebook COO's deeply personal commencement speech about resilience at UC Berkeley, she spoke on how understanding the three Ps that largely determine our ability to deal with setbacks helped her cope with the loss of her husband, Dave Goldberg.

She outlined the three Ps as:

· Personalization: Whether you believe an event is your fault.
· Pervasiveness: Whether you believe an event will affect all areas of your life.
· Permanence: How long you think the negative feelings will last.

"This is the lesson that not everything that happens to us happens because of us," Sandberg said about personalization. It took understanding this for Sandberg to accept that she couldn't have prevented her husband's death. "His doctors had not identified his coronary artery disease. I was an economics major; how could I have?"

"Empathy and kindness are the true signs of emotional intelligence." — Will Ferrell's 2017 speech at the University of Southern California

Comedian Will Ferrell, best known for lead roles in films like "Anchorman," "Elf," and "Talledega Nights," delivered a thoughtful speech to USC's graduating class of 2018.

"No matter how cliché it may sound, you will never truly be successful until you learn to give beyond yourself," he said. "Empathy and kindness are the true signs of emotional intelligence, and that's what Viv and I try to teach our boys. Hey Matthias, get your hands of Axel right now! Stop it. I can see you. OK? Dr. Ferrell's watching you."

He also offered some words of encouragement: "For many of you who maybe don't have it all figured out, it's OK. That's the same chair that I sat in. Enjoy the process of your search without succumbing to the pressure of the result."

He even finished off with a stirring rendition of the Whitney Houston classic, "I Will Always Love You." He was, of course, referring to the graduates.

"Call upon your grit. Try something." — Tim Cook's 2019 speech at Tulane University

Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered the 2019 commencement speech for the graduates of Tulane University, offering valuable advice on success.

"We forget sometimes that our preexisting beliefs have their own force of gravity," Cook said. "Today, certain algorithms pull toward you the things you already know, believe, or like, and they push away everything else. Push back."

"You may succeed. You may fail. But make it your life's work to remake the world because there is nothing more beautiful or more worthwhile than working to leave something better for humanity."

"As you leave this room don't forget to ask yourself what you can offer to make the 'club of life' go up?" — Issa Rae's 2021 speech at Stanford University

In the speech, Rae pulled lyrics from Boosie Badazz, Foxx, and Webbie's "Wipe Me Down," which she said she and her friends played on a boombox during the "Wacky Walk" portion of their own 2007 graduation ceremony at Stanford, to illustrate the importance of seeing "every opportunity as a VIP — as someone who belongs and deserves to be here." 

Rae particularly drew attention to one line from the song: "I pull up at the club, VIP, gas tank on E, but all dranks on me. Wipe me down."

"To honor the classic song that has guided my own life — as you leave this room, don't forget to ask yourself what you can offer to make the 'club of life' go up. How can you make this place better, in spite of your circumstances?" she said. "And as you figure those things out, don't forget to step back and wipe yourselves down, wipe each other down and go claim what's yours like the VIPs that you are."

"My experience has been that my mistakes led to the best things in my life." — Taylor Swift's 2022 speech at New York University

In her first public appearance of 2022, Taylor Swift poked fun at her "cringe" fashion moments and her experience of growing up in the public eye, which led to receiving a lot of unsolicited career advice.

"I became a young adult while being fed the message that if I didn't make any mistakes, all the children of America would grow up to be perfect angels. However, if I did slip up, the entire Earth would fall off its axis and it would be entirely my fault and I would go to pop star jail forever and ever," Swift said in her speech. "It was all centered around the idea that mistakes equal failure and ultimately, the loss of any chance at a happy or rewarding life."

"This has not been my experience," she continued. "My experience has been that my mistakes led to the best things in my life."

She also alluded to her past feud with Kanye West, joking that "getting canceled on the internet and nearly losing my career gave me an excellent knowledge of all the types of wine."

She elaborated, saying that losing things doesn't just mean losing.

"A lot of the time, when we lose things, we gain things too," she said. 

"Your future is in your hands — all you have to do is listen." — Oprah Winfrey's 2023 speech at Harvard University

Winfrey also spoke to Harvard University's graduating class about how God has guided her throughout her life and the importance of listening.

"Life is always talking to us," she said in her speech. "When you tap into what it's trying to tell you, when you can get yourself quiet enough to listen — really listen — you can begin to distill the still, small voice, which is always representing the truth of you, from the noise of the world. You can start to recognize when it comes your way. You can learn to make distinctions, to connect, to dig a little deeper. You'll be able to find your own voice within the still, small voice—you'll begin to know your own heart and figure out what matters most when you can listen to the still, small voice. Every right move I've made has come from listening deeply and following that still, small voice, aligning myself with its power."

Winfrey also discussed avoiding imposter syndrome, tapping into who you are, and treating others with integrity. 

"We also need generosity of spirit; we need high standards and open minds and untamed imagination," she continued. "That's how you make a difference in the world. Using who you are and what you stand for to make changes big and small."

"The soul of America is what makes us unique among all nations." — Joe Biden's 2023 speech at Howard University

The president received an honorary degree and spoke of the values of America at the HBCU, the alma mater of his vice president, Kamala Harris.

"We're the only country founded on an idea — not geography, not religion, not ethnicity, but an idea. The sacred proposition, rooted in Scripture and enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that we're all created equal in the image of God and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives," Biden said. "While we've never fully lived up to that promise, we never before fully walked away from it."

Biden also addressed many of the causes his campaign has pushed over the years, including the right to choose and "to put democracy on the ballot."

"We can finally resolve those ongoing questions about who we are as a nation. That puts strength of our diversity at the center of American life," he continued. "A future that celebrates and learns from history. A future for all Americans. A future I see you leading. And I'm not, again, exaggerating. You are going to be leading it."

"Humor is the most powerful, most survival-essential quality you will ever have or need to navigate through the human experience." — Jerry Seinfeld's 2024 speech at Duke University

Seinfeld's commencement speech made headlines after students walked out in protest of the war in Gaza. Seinfeld has been public about his support for Israel.

Despite the controversy, the speech offered valuable pieces of advice. The comedian and sitcom star's speech addressed the value of not losing your sense of humor, no matter what life throws at you.

"I totally admire the ambitions of your generation to create a more just and inclusive society," he said. "I think it is also wonderful that you care so much about not hurting other people's feelings in the million and one ways we all do that."

"What I need to tell you as a comedian: Do not lose your sense of humor," he continued. "You can have no idea at this point in your life how much you are going to need it to get through. Not enough of life makes sense for you to be able to survive it without humor."

Seinfeld also offered his "three keys to life": "Number one. Bust your ass. Number two. Pay attention. Number three. Fall in love."

"The vast majority of what you need to know about work, about relationships, about yourself, about life, you have yet to learn." — Jerome Powell's 2025 speech at Princeton University

A graduate of the university himself, the Federal Reserve chair spoke to the 2025 graduating class at Princeton University and offered graceful words to the graduates, saying "each of us is a work in progress" and "the possibilities for self-improvement are limitless."

"We risk failure, awkwardness, embarrassment, and rejection," he said. "But that's how we create the career opportunities, the great friendships, and the loves that make life worth living."

"If you aren't failing from time to time, you aren't asking enough of yourself. Sooner than you think, many of you will be asked to assume leadership roles. It is very common to feel, as I once did, that you are not ready. Just know that almost no one is truly ready," he said. "Be the leader that people can learn from, the one that people want to work for."

Richard Feloni and Rachel Gillett contributed to an earlier version of this story, which was first published in 2016 and was most recently updated in June 2025.

• After taking a career break, I had to jump back into the job market.
• I used ChatGPT to find open roles, write my résumé and cover letter, and prepare for interviews.
• I landed my dream job in AI, making it a full-circle moment.

After a well-deserved career break, I decided it was time to look for a new job. The only problem was that I had last done this 10 years ago, and job hunting was a completely different game then.

In 2025, everything has changed, from how roles are advertised to how candidates are evaluated. LinkedIn isn't just an optional platform anymore. It's seemingly essential. Companies are using automated systems to screen résumés, and social media presence matters more than ever. The landscape has drastically changed, becoming more digital and competitive than ever before.

Facing this entirely new scenario was daunting. The old rules didn't apply, and the anxiety of navigating this new environment quickly set in. I realized I needed help, something or someone, to guide me through these uncharted waters.

I decided to adapt using the very technology shaping the new job market: AI.

Embracing AI to redefine my career path

After years of working as a lawyer, embracing AI felt like venturing into foreign territory, but it also felt exciting. I'd read countless stories about people using AI for everything from meal planning to writing novels, but I wondered how effective it could be for finding a job.

My first step was to have an in-depth conversation with ChatGPT to help identify exactly what I wanted next in my career. After a much-needed career break, I knew I wanted something that bridged my interests in technology and law, but the specifics were blurry.

Through a lengthy dialogue with the AI, during which we discussed my strengths, interests, and professional goals, I was able to clarify exactly what I was looking for. ChatGPT helped me pinpoint roles that sat neatly at the intersection of legal practice and emerging technologies, creating a tailored shortlist of companies and positions that genuinely excited me.

Leveraging AI for résumés, cover letters, and interviews

Armed with this newfound clarity, it was time to get practical. I turned again to ChatGPT, this time for help with polishing my résumé, crafting standout cover letters, and preparing for interviews.

Starting with my résumé, I fed ChatGPT my old document alongside descriptions of the roles I was targeting. Within minutes, it transformed my résumé into a crisp, impactful summary of my professional achievements. It suggested action-oriented language and quantified outcomes, things I hadn't thought to highlight on my own. My previously bland document suddenly felt dynamic and compelling, accurately reflecting my experience and capabilities.

Next, I tackled the dreaded cover letters. Each application felt like writing a small autobiography, a tedious task I usually procrastinated endlessly on. With ChatGPT, the experience transformed. I provided basic details about the role and why I was interested, and the AI-generated, polished, tailored cover letters genuinely sounded like me, only better. Minor tweaks aside, the AI-driven drafts were ready to send out immediately, saving me countless hours of stress and editing.

Then came mock interviews. ChatGPT proved invaluable here, simulating realistic interview scenarios and offering insightful feedback on my responses. It didn't just spit out generic interview questions. It tailored them specifically to each role, asking about industry trends, hypothetical scenarios, and even personal motivations. The AI coached me through my answers, helping me refine my responses to ensure they were concise, authentic, and impactful.

Landing the ideal job: Full circle with AI

The impact of these preparations was swift and substantial. Within just two months of starting this tech-driven job hunt, I secured a role at a cutting-edge tech company developing AI specifically designed for lawyers. It felt surreal yet perfectly aligned. After all, my journey began and ended with artificial intelligence.

This role wasn't just a paycheck. It was a full-circle moment, merging my long-standing passion for law with my newly sparked enthusiasm for technology.

Would I use AI to job hunt again? Absolutely. In fact, I can't imagine tackling such a stressful process without it. AI didn't just streamline tedious tasks. It empowered me to present myself authentically and strategically in a fiercely competitive market. It took the overwhelm out of job hunting, making the process not only manageable but surprisingly enjoyable.

In a world increasingly defined by technology, leveraging AI in your career search isn't just clever. It's becoming essential.

Whether you're pivoting careers, re-entering the workforce, or just exploring new opportunities, AI could be the ally you never knew you needed. For me, embracing AI was the smartest professional decision I made in years, proving that sometimes the best way to adapt to change is to lean into it fully.

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

Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. The dust is still settling on the nasty breakup between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Here's the latest on how the bromance soured so quickly.

On the agenda today:

• Floyd Mayweather's fitness business is on the ropes. Gym owners are punching back.
• Trouble in Florida's real estate is bad news for the rest of us.
• BI obtained a recording of a Tesla training session that reveals what an instructor told staff about company culture.
• Text scammers are preying on job market fears, and young people are taking the bait.

But first: Time to network.

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Business Insider's app here.

This week's dispatch

Networking has a new era

For job seekers, there's a saying that's been around for as long as I can remember: "It's not what you know, it's who you know."

That mantra is perhaps more important now than ever.

My BI colleague Tim Paradis, who writes about leadership and the workplace, published a piece last week titled, "There's really only one way to get a new job these days."

Spoiler alert: It's through networking and connections.

Recruiters and career coaches say professional elbow-rubbing is even more imperative in this economy, where companies are flattening management layers and becoming more discerning about who they hire. Research also shows that companies are hiring fewer people in roles that AI can do.

Friday's jobs report showed the winners and losers of the workforce are increasingly coming into focus. Roles in healthcare and service work are still growing, whereas the white-collar workforce and new grads looking for work are struggling.

In this market, one way for job seekers to get ahead is to build genuine relationships that can help them stand out in competitive hiring processes.

"You've got more reasons to treat networking like healthy eating or hitting the gym — and not something you do only in January," Paradis writes.

BI's Alice Tecotzky and Paradis outlined some of the dos and don'ts of networking in 2025:

Be specific: Make sure your LinkedIn messages stand out. When it comes to online outreach, send a tailored message instead of a boilerplate one.

Keep it professional — even online: Experts say maintaining professionalism on social media is key.

Dress for the industry: In-person schmoozing is back, and dressing the part is crucial. Each industry requires a slightly different look. Know your audience.

Don't wait until you need a job: A common mistake is that people often start networking only when they need a job. Maintaining relationships even when you're secure in a job matters.

Don't make it all about you: Too many people only highlight their own experiences. Come up with questions ahead of time for the people you are meeting.

Don't ask for too much: "You need to be very targeted and strategic about your ask, and you can probably only get away with asking them one thing," Dorie Clark, a communication coach who teaches at Columbia Business School, told BI.

On the ropes

Mayweather Boxing and Fitness had 70 franchises at its peak in 2023. Dozens have shuttered since then, and four of the franchisees have sued.

Ten franchisees who spoke to BI said their industry was facing broader economic challenges, but they also said Mayweather hasn't done enough to promote the brand. The company pushed back, saying it's "deeply misleading" to suggest a lack of contribution from the star boxer, and that Mayweather's stardom isn't a "silver bullet" for a small business.

Facing off.

Tides turn on Florida real estate

The Sunshine State was a pandemic-era hot spot, luring millions of movers. Now, residents are facing an affordability crisis, hurricane-fueled insurance headaches, and steep property tax bills.

Florida's net migration has waned since 2022 despite substantial housing supply. But it's not just a Florida issue; it could be a bellwether for the rest of the country.

A grim warning for America's homebuyers.

Inside a Tesla training session

Tesla halted production at its Austin factory during the week of Memorial Day and held cleaning and training events for employees, including one focused on company culture.

BI obtained a recording of the session, where the instructor encouraged employees to take responsibility for Tesla's culture and play a more active role in improving it. "A lot of people leave this company, and they have kind of a negative taste in their mouth," the instructor said, adding: "It's us as the people on the ground that are a reflection of the culture."

A glimpse into how the company is handling morale.

The rise of text scams

No, it's not just you. There's been an uptick in scam text messages offering fake job offers, and it's about to get worse.

The opportunity is ripe right now for job scammers targeting people desperate for work. The labor market is getting rocky and more Americans are on edge about finances. Plus, AI is making these scams harder to detect.

No one is immune.

This week's quote:

"It's definitely founder preparation boot camp."

— Lisa Vo on how the Forward Deployed Software Engineer role at Palantir is key for producing startup founders.

More of this week's top reads:

• "Looksmaxxing" has roots in the toxic online world of incels. So be careful with this new bot on ChatGPT.
• VC giant Andreessen Horowitz's power move has spurred some niche drama at New York Tech Week.
• Middle manager jobs are changing — and it's a career opportunity for millennials and Gen Z.
• Meet the "reclusive" tech billionaire making an audacious bid to buy TikTok.
• Walmart workers are sharing photos of price hikes of 38% or more — and some prices are up at Target, too.
• Six Wall Street veterans share the best trades they've ever made.
• How Lattice is preparing for a world where humans and AI agents work together.
• The 14 dealmakers investors call when they want to offload their private equity fund stakes.
• What the anonymous tech site Blind reveals about the mood in Silicon Valley.

• What a top Microsoft exec learned from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, per an internal email.

  ---

  The BI Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in Chicago. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York. Elizabeth Casolo, fellow, in Chicago.

• Preparing for a job interview often involves workshopping answers to questions you might be asked.
• But it's just as important to plan the questions you'll ask your interviewer.
• A global talent leader at EY shared with us two questions she loves to be asked by job applicants.

"So what questions do you have for me?"

Just as recruiters and hiring managers have favorite things to ask candidates in job interviews, you should be prepared with questions of your own.

Asking questions during your interview helps convey your interest in a role and employer, and it can give you insights into the job, company, and colleagues you'll potentially have.

Irmgard Naudin ten Cate, global talent attraction and acquisition leader at EY, told Business Insider two of the questions job candidates ask that always make an impression on her.

One is, "What does success look like when I'm doing this job?"

Naudin ten Cate explained why it's such an effective question.

"I always really love that question because when you hear the answer, you hear what's important to people, and then you can follow up with all sorts of questions around that," she said.

It can open up ways to learn what your prospective colleagues do, what kind of work you'd be performing, and where the role fits into the larger picture. You can get more granular by asking what success would look like in the first 90 days, or the first year, Naudin ten Cate said.

Having been at EY for over 20 years, Naudin ten Cate also loves being asked why she's stayed and what she likes about the company. It gives you "a much more personal view of the work," she said.

Posing this question can help build a more personal connection with your interviewer, Naudin ten Cat said, and uncover more about career growth opportunities.

Whether you ask those two questions or others, Naudin ten Cate advises applicants to try to get answers that speak to the company's values so you can see how well they do — or don't — align with yours.

"Those are the questions that always resonate with me," she said.

The sun was shining, the sea was glistening, and the woman in front of me looked every bit the boss of this little slice of paradise in Thailand.

Dressed in breezy beachwear — a matching set with bold prints in yellow, pink, and orange — she stepped out of the hotel's front office and greeted me with a bright smile.

"Sunglasses are a must," she told me with a laugh, as she led me down the long entryway lined with lush greenery, the tropical sun blazing overhead.

Pauline Cabessa runs Cielo Samui, a boutique hotel on Koh Samui's Bo Phut beach.

For more than a decade, Cabessa and her husband escaped their home base in Saint Tropez every winter to holiday in Samui.

They were frequent guests of the hotel — then named Eden Beach Bungalows — where they struck up a friendship with the French owner. One day, during a casual conversation, he let slip that he was looking to sell the property.

Almost immediately, Cabessa and her husband, Francois Vargas, found themselves imagining what it would be like to take over the place.

The idea stuck, even after their vacation ended. "As we were on the plane, going back to work, we kept thinking, 'Oh, we need to find a way to make it,'" she said.

In 2017, they packed up their lives in France, said goodbye to their loved ones, and moved across the world to run the hotel — never mind the fact that neither of them had ever managed one before.

"I felt like it was time in life for a challenge," Cabessa, now 43, said. "Being an employee, doing the same thing all your life — if you don't do things that are a little bit crazy, then afterward it might be a little bit too late."

Renovating the hotel

As much as she loved Asia, Cabessa never thought she'd put down roots in Samui.

But her job managing a restaurant in Saint Tropez had started to feel hollow. It was as if the essence of hospitality was being replaced by a culture of showing off, she said.

"I was really losing the authentic connection I shared with people, and time with my family as well, because I was working a lot," she said. "Well, it was thanks to that that I am here now. With the money I earned there, I was able to take on this project."

She preferred to keep financial details private but said she and her husband co-own the hotel with another couple — longtime friends who came onboard as business partners. While their business partners are primarily investors and live in the US, she and her husband run the day-to-day operations of the hotel in Samui.

The opportunity to take over the hotel came at the right time, since she and Vargas were also thinking about expanding their family. Saint Tropez no longer felt like a place where they wanted to raise their kids.

"I wanted my daughter to learn more English and be in contact with people from different places. I wanted a second child as well," she said, adding that her son was born on Samui.

Her husband needed little convincing — he had been vacationing in Samui since 1997, long before the couple had even gotten together.

Although the idea of leaving his previous life behind to start anew in a foreign country felt daunting, Vargas told me he wasn't too worried.

"Moving to Samui was an opportunity to create our own dream," Vargas, 48, said. "I love what we do, the island, the security we can offer our kids, and the people."

For the first two years, Cabessa ran the hotel as it was, while Vargas, a chef, oversaw the in-house restaurant.

But when business ground to a halt due to the pandemic, she decided it was time to renovate.

"That was not part of our original plan at all," she said.

Cabessa redesigned the hotel herself. Like many modern women, she drew inspiration from her Pinterest board.

With textured limewashed walls, stone floors, and an earthy-neutral palette, it's hard not to notice the strong Mediterranean design influences that Cabessa infused into the space.

She also added a yoga studio and a spa to the compound.

The renovation took nine months to complete and was "quite stressful," she said.

To stay afloat during the pandemic and retain their original staff, they opened a restaurant in the nearby tourist district of Fisherman's Village.

"Everybody moved back here when we reopened," she said.

These days, nightly rates for a regular suite begin at 8,500 Thai baht, or $260, with the largest option — a three-bedroom villa that accommodates up to eight guests — going for 26,000 baht.

Running the biz

Running a hotel is no walk in the park.

"People tell me, 'Your life is cool.' OK, there are coconut trees, there is the sun, I get it. But that doesn't mean that there are no challenges," Cabessa said.

With 45 staff members under her wing, she also finds herself smoothing things over with the occasional picky guest.

"I've got reviews from some people complaining about the noise of the waves when they live in the rooms near the beach," she said. "Sometimes people even tell me that the sand on the beach is too hard to walk on."

While Cabessa is always on-site and ready to fix any problems, some things are simply out of her hands. At the end of the day, Samui is an island. "I cannot control nature," she said.

Thankfully, her background working in Saint Tropez prepared her for high-pressure situations.

"We were doing around 600 people per lunch per day back then," she said. No matter how challenging things get in Samui, she says it's hard to find guests with higher expectations than those in France.

It's easy to see Cabessa's dedication in action: She pauses to greet each staff member by name — and in Thai — and never misses a chance to speak with passing guests, even as she's showing me around.

Most of her guests come from Europe, Australia, or around Asia, including Singapore and Hong Kong. In recent months, she's also seen more American tourists.

An Australian couple in their 40s told me it was their first time in Samui, and they chose to stay here because the place seemed tranquil and the beach was, in their words, "right there."

All room types at the hotel include breakfast. Guests can also enjoy complimentary activities daily, like Pilates, yoga, and Muay Thai classes. Padel and kayaking are also available.

The idea is to create a place where guests can happily spend their entire stay without needing to step outside, Cabessa said.

Adapting to life on Samui

Cabessa says adapting to life on the island was a breeze.

Her kids, now 11 and 5, go to an international school. Her mother, who is retired, even moved to Samui from Lyon three years ago. She now lives just down the street from Cabessa.

"This is a safe country. You can let your kids play in a mall or on the beach, and you are not worried about that," Cabessa said. "I also love the culture of showing respect for your elders."

Working in hospitality, she also appreciates the friendliness of the Thai people.

"People are always smiling, and this is such a relief. Because if you live in Paris and you take the subway, nobody's smiling," she said.

The island has changed significantly since the first time she visited.

It's much easier to find international products or fresh produce now. And if something isn't available locally, she can order it from Bangkok, and it'll arrive within 24 hours.

Cabessa says she'll "never, ever" move back to France. And even if she doesn't live in Samui, Thailand will always be home.

"I'll never quit this country," she said.

Do you have a story to share about moving to a new country to run a hotel or resort business? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Jamie Dimon has criticized the private equity industry's recruiting of its junior bankers.
• On Thursday, the firm warned incoming juniors not to accept future-dated jobs from buyout firms.
• Those who do will be terminated, the bank said in a memo.

JPMorgan is warning junior bankers against taking future-dated jobs with buyout firms — or even sneaking out of job training to take interviews.

On Wednesday, JPMorgan Chase's top investment banking brass sent a memo to incoming first-year IB analysts warning them against participating in the private equity industry's annual recruiting ritual. This whirlwind affair is known as "on-cycle recruiting" and promises young bankers lucrative jobs at the end of their investment banking analyst programs, which often last two or three years.

In the memo, John Simmons and Filippo Gori, co-heads of global banking, admonished analysts who accept "future-dated job offer" or "a position with another company before joining us" within their first 18 months of employment, saying they will be terminated if discovered.

"You will be provided notice and your employment with the firm will end," the executives wrote. They said such offers could constitute a conflict for junior bankers working on transactions for PE sponsors who could also be their future employers.

This year's memo appears to be an escalation of a long-simmering personnel issue important to the bank's high-profile CEO, Jamie Dimon.

"I think that's unethical. I don't like it, and I may eliminate it regardless of what the private-equity guys say," Dimon told college students at Georgetown University last year.

Last year, the firm warned incoming junior bankers against the practice, but stopped short of saying it would terminate those who participated.

This year's memo even vowed to terminate junior bankers who dare sneak out of job training to interview with private equity firms, as many did in 2023.

"To succeed in the Investment Banking Analyst Program, your full attention and participation are essential," wrote Simmons and Gori. "Attendance at all training sessions, meetings and obligations is required. Missing any part of the training program may lead to removal from the program and termination," they said.

The memo was first reported by ExecSum, a newsletter offshoot of the popular Instagram account Litquidity. A JPMorgan spokesperson confirmed its authenticity to BI.

As Business Insider has previously reported, private equity's annual recruiting of junior bankers is a frenetic affair that often starts without warning. Young bankers can be asked to drop everything to interview or miss out — resulting in middle-of-the-night interviews or missed vacations and proving a nagging source of disruption for bank bosses.

Dimon has railed against PE recruiting and its impact on his staff. "I think it's wrong to put you in the position," he said in the fall, adding: "You have to kind of decide the next career move before you have a chance to even decide what the company is like."

It remains to be seen how this new rule could impact the future of buyside recruiting. The industry insiders who spoke to BI expressed skepticism over the bank's ability to enforce the new rule.

"I imagine while some junior bankers will be scared off, many will continue to take the risk," Anthony Keizner, a partner at the headhunting firm Odyssey Search Partners, told BI on Thursday. "They always saw banking as a stepping stone, and won't want to be put off starting the next phase of their career."

A former junior banker who now works in private equity agreed.

"Analysts are going to recruit regardless," this person said, adding that young bankers will simply "shut their mouths about" it.

In what appears to be an acknowledge of the competitive pressures young people in the industry face, the bank said in the memo that it would shorten its analyst program from three years to two and a half, offering juniors "quicker advancement opportunities within the firm."

"All the mega funds already fill spots within the first six months," said the private equity professional, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her job. "They're not going to wait for JPM analysts."

• After 14 years of working in public service, I just started a new career.
• With my new job, I'm outside my comfort zone, but it feels invigorating.
• The change has inspired me to get my kids more involved in the community.

I started to crumble when I was forced to change careers after 14 years of service in local government. I had worked and planned for a life of public service, but then life happened, and suddenly, I was in a new career field and way out of my depths.

The sudden change in careers forced me to take a hard look at how I had been living for the last 14 years. While I was reflecting and mourning my old professional life, I started to notice some other areas in my life that I wanted to change — mainly, my parenting.

Now that I'm in a new career and living outside my comfort zone, I'm pushing my kids to do the same so that we all grow together.

I've started a new job after years in the same career

After a decade in the same, stagnant public service position, my ambition got activated. Suddenly, I was applying for promotions, volunteering for projects, attending leadership seminars, and making myself into the traditional idea of a government professional.

I was given an opportunity to further those ambitions in a new role in a different city. But when that opportunity didn't work out, my 14-year career path came to an end.

I spent weeks analyzing where I went wrong. Were those ambitions ever really dreams of mine, or were they pursued because my peers and co-workers were pursuing the same paths? Was I ever good enough to do this work in the first place? Was this career ever really what I wanted?

That's when I decided to switch careers from public service to research and development. The change has felt like learning to pilot a commercial airline while having the professional credentials of a circus entertainer. But the challenge has been surprisingly invigorating.

It's making me consider how stagnant my professional life has become. Routines have been in place for years, and maybe the comfort of that familiarity is starting to become a hindrance to further growth. That realization made me wonder about how stagnant I am becoming as a parent.

I'm pushing my kids to get outside their comfort zone, too

Take community participation, for example. Despite being involved in Scouts and various church activities, my family had managed to be almost completely absent from most volunteer events and neighborhood activities. We had work (or school). We had extracurriculars, and the rest of the time was ours.

That had worked for us. But while I'm currently spending my work hours getting pushed further out of my comfort zone, I decided my family needed a similar shake-up if they were going to grow.

I should note here that both of my boys were already highly accomplished at school and their respective activities before my mid-life crisis arrived, so the decision to get them more involved in the community was equally based on addressing my own parenting weaknesses and a desire to provide them with new experiences and growth opportunities.

When summer arrives, I'm hoping to get the whole family involved in some kind of community service, like working in a soup kitchen or a community garden. We've been taking greater advantage of the opportunities presented through the Scouting organization, like weekend field trips and merit badge mini-camps.

I've already seen both boys grow as people through those experiences. But only time will tell if these decisions were made as a responsible father or someone struggling with their own career and life anxieties.

• Alvaro Munevar Jr. leveraged middle management jobs to help him retire early from his tech career.
• Now, Big Tech companies are culling middle managers, a reduction that Munevar Jr. said makes sense.
• He said he witnessed how middle managers allowed fiefdoms to thrive and slowed down productivity.

I spent nearly all of my 30-year tech career in middle management. I managed teams that built and delivered web and mobile business applications.

I intentionally stayed in the middle management bracket, where I was paid well and typically worked 40 to 45 hours most weeks. This meant I had enough time to build a real-estate side business. Doing that helped me achieve my goal of early retirement.

In 2024, I left my corporate job and live off my real-estate passive income.

My retirement at 59 came as the wider tech industry began eliminating many middle management positions.

Big Tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Google have been trying to flatten their company structure by removing managers. Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, has said this is to increase efficiency, while Amazon's Andy Jassy, who has said he wants the company to run like the "world's largest startup," has suggested that removing management layers can cut bureaucracy.

Although I really enjoyed working and learning as a middle manager, I did occasionally question the value I was bringing at that level.

I worked in startups and bigger companies alike

Beginning in the late 1990s, I worked in both engineering and middle management roles for a few small startup companies.

These startups maintained a flat management structure where the CEO worked directly with individual contributors to quickly make key decisions and deliver software products. There were few middle managers, and little bureaucracy. This leaner model meant we had fewer scheduled meetings and fewer roadblocks to building out products.

In the startups I worked for, everyone was focused on rapidly solving problems to reach the objective. Your job and future stock awards were based on the team's ability to focus and deliver quickly. Teams could make and execute plans more rapidly without the bureaucracy of a middle management layer — the reviews and approvals that middle managers tend to oversee in larger companies often only slow things down.

When I worked in tech roles at larger companies, my role often involved monitoring progress and confirming that software development teams were meeting the project timelines. I was responsible for explaining the delays to senior management and recommending improvements to avoid future hold-ups.

I spent significant time relaying status updates to the leaders above me and directives to the individual contributors below me. From working at startups, I knew that this back and forth could be reduced in a leaner management environment.

While working at larger companies, I also noticed that fiefdoms began to thrive due to the large number of middle managers.

Fiefdoms, a well-known phenomenon in tech, are essentially siloed groups of workers who are closely controlled by middle managers. These managers oversee what information about the group they share with the rest of the company.

I noticed that fiefdoms often benefited managers. By overseeing a larger head count, they had a greater perceived value. However, it unfortunately ended up isolating teams and departments from one another, leading to duplicated efforts across the company due to limited communication between groups.

On several occasions, my team and I would spend months building out a new software solution only to learn upon presenting our work that another manager's silo of engineers had already built out a similar one.

This is a management fiefdom scenario at its worst, and it negatively impacted morale. My team members were furious that their efforts had been wasted because of the lack of communication.

I'm not sad to see middle managers go

I built my tech career in middle management, so it may seem odd that I recommend removing the very role I once performed.

But after working in tech for over 30 years, I've witnessed significant wasted effort, duplicated results, and territorial management practices in the traditional, heavier middle management model.

There may be disruption and some confusion until the new model has fully worked itself out, but I expect that flattening companies will ultimately create leaner, better working environments.

Do you have a story to share about middle management in tech? Contact the editor, Charissa Cheong, at [email protected]

• Salesforce exec Patrick Stokes advises against going into management by default or simply to advance up the ladder.
• He told BI that he became a manager because he wanted to lead others and share his vision.
• Stokes said if you value personal growth, you should be willing to try out new roles that aren't necessarily a level up.

Transitioning to management might feel like a natural next step in your career. However, Salesforce executive Patrick Stokes cautions that it might not necessarily be the right path for everyone.

"I think it's easy for people to be enamored with the growth of kind of, moving up the ranks, rather than the growth of themselves personally," the executive vice president of product and industries marketing told Business Insider.

Stokes, in a conversation during Salesforce's Agentforce World Tour in New York City, said whenever people tell him they want to move into management, he asks them why. Usually, people say that "it's the next step," he told BI — and that's not enough of a reason.

"No, you need to know why you want to be a manager, because now you have to inspire a team," Stokes said. "You have to think about your day-to-day job very differently."

Salesforce EVP of talent growth and development Lori Castillo Martinez echoed a similar sentiment in a previous interview with BI. "Being a deep expert isn't always an indicator of being a great manager," she said, adding that collaboration and task management skills are more important, and the best managers are those who can analyze their teams and maximize productivity.

Responsibilities naturally shift when you transition from an individual contributor to a manager. Stokes said that if you take on a management role, you may not be able to do some of the things you value.

Stokes, who started out as a developer and transitioned multiple times in his career, said he moved into management because he wanted to be a leader, and he was already acting like one.

The Salesforce executive showcased the contrast in responsibilities between an individual contributor and a manager at the company's Agentforce conference. At the executive level, the job involves more than simply managing massive teams — it can often include public speaking at high-profile events. Stokes, for example, gave a keynote address at the event, opening with an energetic anecdote about recent events in New York City. Then, he introduced the company's digital workforce of AI agents, Agentforce, along with other speakers, all while walking through an auditorium of hundreds of people and talking directly to a video camera that trailed him.

Stokes said he's always had strong opinions and a desire to rally others around his vision. From the time he was in high school, he found himself leading projects, despite frequently sitting in the back of the classroom. He said he didn't announce himself as the leader, but he was often the one coming up with ideas and convincing others to get on board.

"That's what you really need to have if you want to go into leadership," Stokes said.

Stokes said that as soon as he feels "not nervous" about an event or meeting, he wants to try something new, and he's a big advocate for changing roles. The exec said some people tend to "think too narrowly" about changes and only want to switch roles if it's "growth within the org chart." Stokes said that can be tough to find.

"If you value the growth, the personal growth that you're gonna get from that new role, enough, you should be willing to take a step back to go forward," Stokes said.

Outside of leading Salesforce's product and industries marketing team, Stokes said he likes to play chess. He said there's a concept in chess called a "gambit" — fans of the hit Netflix show "The Queen's Gambit" will be familiar — where you make what appears to be a bad move, but is actually designed to get a reaction from an opponent. Stokes said that's how he likes to think about his career changes — seemingly risky but strategic long-term.

"When I first went into marketing, a lot of my peers and product were like, 'Why are you going to marketing?' And I'm like,'Just wait. It'll be fine. I'm gonna be great,'" Stokes said.

• Before OpenAI, Altman was well-known in Silicon Valley as the president of Y Combinator.
• The release of ChatGPT in 2022 catapulted Altman to worldwide fame.
• Since then, he's led the charge to make OpenAI the first company to unleash the power of AGI.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had an eventful 2024, and 2025 is shaping up to be just as big.

While the 39-year-old entrepreneur has been a household name in Silicon Valley for years now, the rest of the world has gotten to know him more recently through the success of OpenAI's AI chatbot, ChatGPT, which launched in 2022.

So far this year, Altman has tried to transform OpenAI into a for-profit company before backtracking in light of a lawsuit filed by OpenAI cofounder Elon Musk, while releasing the company's first "emotionally intelligent" model GPT-4.5, and planning for GPT-5.

Altman also unveiled a new partnership with longtime Apple designer Jony Ive, who, with his design firm LoveFrom, will take creative and design control of OpenAI. OpenAI is also acquiring Ive's hardware startup in a $6.5 billion deal.

This year also marked major milestones in Altman's personal life. Altman, who's married to Oliver Mulherin, announced the birth of his son in February.

In April 2024, Altman was added to Forbes' billionaires list. OpenAI launched GPT-4o — its newest large language model —the following month. In June, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference that the tech giant would partner with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to iPhones.

Before the AI boom, Altman spent years as president of startup accelerator Y Combinator. He also owns stakes in Reddit, a nuclear fusion startup known as Helion, and other companies. In his free time, he races sports cars with his husband and preps for the apocalypse.

Here's a look at Altman's life and career so far.

Altman grew up in St. Louis and he was a computer whiz from a young age.

He learned how to program and take apart a Macintosh computer when he was 8 years old, according to The New Yorker. He attended John Burroughs School, a private, nonsectarian college-preparatory school in St. Louis.

 

 

Altman told The New Yorker that having a Mac helped him with his sexuality

"Growing up gay in the Midwest in the two-thousands was not the most awesome thing," he told The New Yorker. "And finding AOL chat rooms was transformative. Secrets are bad when you're eleven or twelve."

Altman came out as gay after a Christian group boycotted an assembly at his school that was about sexuality.

"What Sam did changed the school," his college counselor, Madelyn Gray, told The New Yorker. "It felt like someone had opened up a great big box full of all kinds of kids and let them out into the world."

Altman studied computer science at Stanford University before dropping out to start an app

The app shared a user's location with their friends. Loopt was part of the first group of eight companies at startup accelerator Y Combinator. Each startup got $6,000 per founder, and Loopt was in the same batch as Reddit, according to The Business of Business.

Loopt eventually reached a $175 million valuation

The $43 million sale price was close to how much it had raised from investors, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company was acquired by Green Dot, a banking company known for prepaid cards.

One of Loopt's cofounders, Nick Sivo, and Altman dated for nine years, but they broke up after they sold the company.

After Loopt, Altman founded a venture fund called Hydrazine Capital, and raised $21 million.

That included a large part of the $5 million he got from Loopt, and an investment from billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Altman invested 75% of that money into YC companies and led Reddit's Series B fundraising round.

He told The New Yorker, "You want to invest in messy, somewhat broken companies. You can treat the warts on top, and because of the warts, the company will be hugely underpriced."

In 2014, at the age of 28, Altman was chosen by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham to succeed him as president of the startup accelerator.

While he was YC president, Altman taught a lecture series at Stanford called "How to Start a Startup." The next year, at 29, Altman was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for venture capital.

After he became YC president, he wanted to let more science and engineering startups into each batch.

He chose a fission and a fusion startup for YC because he wanted to start a nuclear-energy company of his own. He invested his own money in both companies and served on their boards.

Mark Andreessen, cofounder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, told The New Yorker, "Under Sam, the level of YC's ambition has gone up 10x."

 

He finds interesting — and expensive — ways to spend his free time.

In April (the same month he made Forbes' billionaire list), Altman was spotted in Napa, California, driving an ultra-rare Swedish supercar. The Koenigsegg Regera is seriously fast, able to go from zero to 250 miles per hour in less than 30 seconds. Only 80 of these cars are known to exist, and they can cost up to $4.65 million. 

He once told two YC founders that he likes racing cars and had five, including two McLarens and an old Tesla, according to The New Yorker. He's said he likes racing cars and renting planes to fly all over California.

Separately, he told the founders of the startup Shypmate that, "I prep for survival," and warned of either a "lethal synthetic virus," AI attacking humans, or nuclear war.

"I try not to think about it too much," Altman told the founders in 2016. "But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to."

Altman's mom is a dermatologist and told The New Yorker, "Sam does keep an awful lot tied up inside. He'll call and say he has a headache — and he'll have Googled it, so there's some cyber-chondria in there, too. I have to reassure him that he doesn't have meningitis or lymphoma, that it's just stress."

Altman has a brother, Jack, who is a cofounder and CEO at Lattice, an employee management platform.

Along with their brother Max, the Altmans launched a fund in 2020 called Apollo that is focused on funding "moonshot" companies. They're startups that are financially risky but could potentially pay off with a breakthrough development.

In 2015, Altman cofounded OpenAI with Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX at the time.

Their goal for the nonprofit artificial intelligence company was to make sure AI doesn't wipe out humans.

"We discussed what is the best thing we can do to ensure the future is good?" Musk told The New York Times in 2015. "We could sit on the sidelines or we can encourage regulatory oversight, or we could participate with the right structure with people who care deeply about developing A.I. in a way that is safe and is beneficial to humanity."

Some of Silicon Valley's most prominent names pledged $1 billion to OpenAI, including Reid Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn, and Thiel.

Altman stepped down as YC president in March 2019 to focus on OpenAI. He stayed in a chairman role at the accelerator.

At a StrictlyVC event in 2019, Altman was asked how OpenAI planned to make a profit, and he said the "honest answer is we have no idea."

Altman said OpenAI had "never made any revenue" and that it had "no current plans to make revenue." 

"We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue," he said at the time, according to TechCrunch.

Altman became CEO of OpenAI in May 2019 after it turned away from being a nonprofit company into a "capped profit" corporation.

"We want to increase our ability to raise capital while still serving our mission, and no pre-existing legal structure we know of strikes the right balance," OpenAI said on its blog. "Our solution is to create OpenAI LP as a hybrid of a for-profit and nonprofit — which we are calling a 'capped-profit' company."

OpenAI received a $1 billion investment from Microsoft in 2019.

Altman flew to Seattle to meet with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, where he demonstrated OpenAI's AI models for him, The Wall Street Journal reported. The pair announced their business partnership on LinkedIn.

Current and former insiders at OpenAI told Fortune that after Altman took over as CEO, and after the investment from Microsoft, the company started focusing more on developing natural language processing.

Altman and OpenAI's former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, said the move to focus on large language models was the best way for the company to reach artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a system that has broad human-level cognitive abilities. 

In 2021, Altman and cofounders Alex Blania and Max Novendstern launched a global cryptocurrency project called Worldcoin.

The company, now just called World, aims to give everyone in the world access to crypto by scanning their iris with an orb. In January, World said it had reached 1 million people and has onboarded over 150,000 first-time crypto users.

Under Altman's tenure as CEO, OpenAI released popular generative AI tools to the public, including DALL-E and ChatGPT.

Both DALL-E and ChatGPT are known as "generative" AI, meaning the bot creates its own artwork and text based on information it is fed.

After ChatGPT was released on November 30, Altman tweeted that it had reached over 1 million users in five days.

ChatGPT was made public so OpenAI could use feedback from users to improve the bot.

A few days after its launch, Altman said that it "is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness." Altman posted that ChatGPT was "great" for "fun creative inspiration," but "not such a good idea" to look up facts.

ChatGPT then launched a paid version of ChatGPT called "ChatGPT Professional" to give better access to the bot. In December, Altman posted that OpenAI "will have to monetize it somehow at some point; the compute costs are eye-watering."

ChatGPT now has multiple models at different price levels.

In January 2023, Microsoft announced it was making another "multibillion-dollar" investment in OpenAI.

The value of Microsoft's investment was worth $10 billion. Before Microsoft's investment, other venture capitalists wanted to buy shares from OpenAI employees in a tender offer that valued the company at around $29 billion.

Altman is still interested in nuclear fusion and invested $375 million in Helion Energy in 2022.

"Helion is more than an investment to me," Altman told TechCrunch. "It's the other thing beside OpenAI that I spend a lot of time on. I'm just super excited about what's going to happen there."

He told TechCrunch that he's "happy there's a fusion race," to build a low-cost fusion energy system that can eventually power the Earth.

OpenAI launched its subscription plan for ChatGPT Plus in 2023.

People who pay $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus get benefits such as access to the app even when traffic is high, faster responses from the bot, and first access to new features and ChatGPT improvements.

Altman wrote that OpenAI's mission is to make sure AGI "benefits all of humanity."

"If AGI is successfully created, this technology could help us elevate humanity by increasing abundance, turbocharging the global economy, and aiding in the discovery of new scientific knowledge that changes the limits of possibility," Altman wrote on OpenAI's blog.

Despite its potential, Altman said artificial general intelligence comes with "serious risk of misuse, drastic accidents, and societal disruption." But instead of stopping its development, Altman said "society and the developers of AGI have to figure out how to get it right."

Altman went on to share the principles that OpenAI "care about most," including "the benefits of, access to, and governance of AGI to be widely and fairly shared."

Altman said he and OpenAI are "a little bit scared" of AI's potential.

In an interview with ABC News, Altman said he thinks "people should be happy that we're a little bit scared" of generative AI systems as they develop.

Altman said he doesn't think AI systems should only be developed in a lab.

"You've got to get these products out into the world and make contact with reality, make our mistakes while the stakes are low," he said.

In April 2023, OpenAI announced the option to turn off chat history in ChatGPT.

In a blog post, the company said it hoped the option to turn off chat history "provides an easier way to manage your data than our existing opt-out process."

When a user turns off their chat history, new conversations will be kept for 30 days for OpenAI to review them for abuse, then are permanently deleted.

In his first appearance before Congress, Altman told a Senate panel there should be a government agency to grant licenses to companies working on advanced AI.

Altman told lawmakers there should be an agency that grants licenses for companies that are working on AI models "above a certain scale of capabilities." He also said the agency should be able to revoke licenses from companies that don't follow safety rules.

"I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong," Altman said. "And we want to be vocal about that, we want to work with the government to prevent that from happening."

OpenAI launched a ChatGPT app for iPhones and Android users in 2023.

The app, which is free, can answer text-based and spoken questions using Whisper, another OpenAI product that is a speech-recognition model. Users who have a subscription to ChatGPT Plus can also access it through the app.

Altman met with leaders in Europe to discuss AI regulations and said OpenAI has "no plans to leave" the EU.

At the start of his trip, Altman told reporters in London that he was concerned about the EU's proposed AI Act, which focuses on regulating AI and protecting Europeans from AI risks.

"The details really matter," Altman said, according to the Financial Times. "We will try to comply, but if we can't comply, we will cease operating."

However, he shared on X later in the week that OpenAI is "excited to continue to operate here and of course have no plans to leave."

In an October 2023 interview, Altman expressed "deep misgivings" about people befriending AI.

Altman made it clear that he doesn't believe humans should try to be friends with AI in an interview during The Wall Street Journal's Tech Live event.

"I personally really have deep misgivings about this vision of the future where everyone is super close to AI friends, and not more so with their human friends," Altman said.

OpenAI shocked tech fans by announcing that Altman would no longer be the company's CEO.

In November, the OpenAI board of directors announced that Altman would be stepping down from his role as CEO and leaving the board, "effective immediately."

In a blog post, the board said it "no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI," and added that Altman was "not consistently candid in his communications."

"We are grateful for Sam's many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI," a statement from OpenAI's board says. "At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward."

Altman issued his own statement via a post on X.

"i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people," Altman wrote.

He added: "will have more to say about what's next later."

Days after the ouster, Altman returned as CEO.

After a chaotic weekend, Altman and OpenAI announced that he would return to the tech company as CEO.

"We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo," the company wrote on X.

In January 2024, Altman confirmed he had married his partner Oliver Mulherin.

Altman married his partner Mulherin in January 2024.

An attendee of the wedding confirmed to Business Insider that the pictures the couple shared weren't AI-generated. His husband is an Australian software engineer who previously worked at Meta, according to his LinkedIn profile.

OpenAI launched its text-to-video model Sora.

In February 2024, OpenAI unveiled Sora to the public. The program — named after the Japanese word for "sky" — created up to one-minute-long videos from text prompts. 

"We're teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction," OpenAI wrote in Sora's announcement.

Altman and his husband signed the Giving Pledge in 2024.

A few weeks after Forbes declared Altman a billionaire, he and his partner signed the Giving Pledge, vowing to give away most of their fortune.

"We would not be making this pledge if it weren't for the hard work, brilliance, generosity, and dedication to improve the world of many people that built the scaffolding of society that let us get here," the pledge letter read.

They continued: "There is nothing we can do except feel immense gratitude and commit to pay it forward, and do what we can to build the scaffolding up a little higher."

OpenAI introduces GPT-4o.

During its "Spring Update" on May 13, 2024, OpenAI announced GPT-4o, an updated version of its large language model that powers ChatGPT. OpenAI CTO Mira Murati made the announcement, and Altman didn't make an appearance despite actively promoting the event on X. 

Altman might've been absent from the presentation, but the demonstrations of ChatGPT's voice and video capabilities created buzz online. It also led to Altman and his company being called out by actor Scarlett Johansson, who alleged that the OpenAI chatbot Sky's voice sounded "eerily similar" to her own after she declined a partnership.

Altman's post on X referencing a movie in which Johansson voices someone's virtual girlfriend was quickly called into question, and the company soon said that it would not move forward with the voice heard in the demo.

Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

After much debate about how it would enter the AI arms race, Apple announced at WWDC 2024 that it would partner with OpenAI to close the gap between it and its rivals.

Although Bloomberg reported that Apple isn't paying OpenAI in cash, the tech titan's solid installed base of over two billion users means more people may use ChatGPT if it comes integrated with Siri. According to the presentation, Siri will be able to handle more complex requests with help from ChatGPT.

Altman was spotted attending WWDC the day the partnership was announced and speaking to high-ranking Apple employees ahead of the keynote. 

Altman might finally get equity as OpenAI considers restructuring.

Altman confirmed reports that OpenAI was planning a corporate restructuring during a talk at Italian Tech Week in September 2024. 

"Our board has been thinking about that for almost a year, independently, as we think about what it takes to get to our next stage," Altman said. "I think this is just about people being ready for new chapters of their lives and a new generation of leadership."

As part of those changes, Altman might finally get equity in OpenAI, which is now worth about $157 billion after it closed its most recent, $6.6 billion funding round. 

In October 2024, Altman weighed in on how close he is to achieving OpenAI's mission.

At OpenAI's developer conference, Dev Day, Altman said o1, OpenAI's latest set of AI models, which it says has "reasoning" abilities, represented a breakthrough toward artificial general intelligence. 

While Altman said he believes AGI — a still hypothetical form of AI that can solve any task a human can — is still a ways away, there will be "very steep" progress over the next two years.

OpenAI announced in January that it'd be involved in a $500 billion project called Stargate.

On January 21, Altman joined Oracle CTO Larry Ellison, President Donald Trump, and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son to announce a partnership to fund a $500 billion investment in US AI. The companies would form Stargate, a project that seeks to build US AI infrastructure and create jobs.

"Together these world-leading technology giants are announcing the formation of Stargate," Trump said, adding: "Put that name down in your books, because I think you're going to hear a lot about it."

He declined a $97.4 billion bid to buy OpenAI from a group led by Elon Musk.

Though the pair founded OpenAI together, Altman's relationship with Musk has become increasingly tense over the years. Musk offered to run OpenAI, but his proposal was rejected, Semafor reported in 2023. He departed OpenAI in 2018 and went on to start xAI.

Since then, they've had heated exchanges, shared words of appreciation, and entered a legal battle. Musk sued Altman and OpenAI in March 2024, alleging the company violated its founding principles.

In an August 2024 lawsuit, Musk claimed he was "deceived" into cofounding OpenAI.

The most recent development in their feud is a $97.4 billion bid to buy the AI company by a group led by Musk. Altman declined, telling Sky News reporters at an AI summit in Paris, "The company is not for sale, neither is the mission."

He announced the birth of his first child in February.

welcome to the world, little guy!

he came early and is going to be in the nicu for awhile. he is doing well and it’s really nice to be in a little bubble taking care of him.

i have never felt such love. pic.twitter.com/wFF2FkKiMU

— Sam Altman (@sama) February 22, 2025

On February 22, Altman announced the birth of his son on social media. Altman said the newborn will be in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU, which offers medical treatment after birth, "for awhile."

"i have never felt such love," Altman said in his post.

Days later, OpenAI released GPT-4.5.

Altman introduced the new model in a post on X, where he described it as "the first model that feels like talking to a thoughtful person." He added that the model will be "giant" and "expensive," and Altman said it offers a "different kind of intelligence and there's a magic to it."

OpenAI released GPT-4.5 to pro tier users who pay $200 a month and developers in the API with plans to offer it to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Edu users the following week.

OpenAI backtracks on its plans to go for-profit

In a blog post on May 5, OpenAI said it "was founded as a nonprofit, and is today overseen and controlled by that nonprofit. Going forward, it will continue to be overseen and controlled by that nonprofit."

It added that the "for-profit LLC, which has been under the nonprofit since 2019, will transition to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC)—a purpose-driven company structure that has to consider the interests of both shareholders and the mission."

OpenAI also said that the nonprofit will continue to control the PBC and remain its largest shareholder. The new PBC will maintain OpenAI's same mission.

OpenAI acquires the startup io from ex-Apple designer Jony Ive in a $6.5 billion deal.

Altman announced on May 21 that OpenAI was buying a hardware startup called io from Jony Ive, the former Apple exec who led the design of the iPhone and other iconic products. The deal is valued at nearly $6.5 billion, a spokesperson confirmed to BI.

Altman also noted that Ive, and his design firm LoveFrom, would be taking control of creative and design at OpenAI — a partnership that has been two years in the making.

• Airbnb's CEO said he's heard from founders facing a challenging fundraising landscape amid economic uncertainty.
• Brian Chesky said that while a stable economy is needed, there's a "silver lining" to building a business in tough times.
• The Airbnb cofounder said on Michelle Obama's podcast that a tough economy bakes "discipline" into your company culture.

Brian Chesky is no stranger to starting a business in tough economic times.

Chesky cofounded Airbnb in 2007 and built the business during the 2008 financial crisis. In a recent podcast conversation with Michelle Obama and her brother, Craig Robinson, Chesky said it was challenging to get the business off the ground during a recession, even with some of the advantages and connects he and his founders had that other entrepreneurs might not have.

However, he said there was one "silver lining" to growing the business during tough times, which might resonate with founders facing today's economic uncertainty.

"A lot of great companies have been started in a recession," he said in a Wednesday episode of "IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson."

"And the one, I don't want to say it's a good thing, but what it does is it teaches you a certain type of discipline," he said. "A tough economy teaches you a discipline that gets institutionalized into your culture."

By comparison, a strong economy might give founders more cushioning to "perpetuate bad strategies and be a little less disciplined," Chesky said.

"I think the good news is a lot of great entrepreneurs are incredibly resourceful, and they will find a way to work," the Airbnb cofounder said. "But we absolutely need like a very stable economy."

Chesky said that entrepreneurs he's spoken with recently told him "a lot of fundraising, for all intents and purposes, was kind of on hold."

"A lot of limited partners and investors are just like hunkering down. And what we know about investors, they don't like uncertainty," he said.

He believes investors will "sit this one out until things stabilize."

"And if they don't stabilize, we're going to be in for a very prolonged kind of dry spell for fundraising," he said. "If you did not go to a prestigious school, if you weren't, like, purely a team of technical engineers, if you're not trying to create an AI company, you're just trying to create a business, that will be more difficult."

Airbnb isn't the only successful business to emerge from the Great Recession. Companies like Uber, WhatsApp, Venmo, and Square also started around the time of the 2008 financial crisis.

"It's always a great time to start a business — and some of the most successful businesses are started during recessions," certified financial planner Cary Carbonaro previously told BI. "Adversity is the mother of invention."

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

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

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

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

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

I felt at home

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

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

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

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

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

A remote worker's dream setup

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

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

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

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

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

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

The downsides

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

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

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

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

• Warren Buffett said on Saturday he will step down as the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway by year's end.
• The board has voted to make Greg Abel, now a vice chair at the company, its CEO and president.
• Abel is expected to maintain Buffett's existing investment approach.

Hours after Warren Buffett stunned the crowd at Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting by announcing that he'd step down at the end of the year, its board voted unanimously for Greg Abel to replace him.

Buffett — who is 94 and has been the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway for 55 years — will remain as chairman of the board of directors, according to a press release. Greg Abel will become the new CEO and president as of January 1, 2026.

"I think the time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive of the company at year end," Buffett told the audience on Saturday, referring to Abel, one of his top hands.

Abel, 62, has been Berkshire Hathaway's vice chair of non-insurance operations since 2018. He's also chair of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which Buffett hailed as one of the conglomerate's four "jewels" in his annual shareholder letter in 2021, the same year Buffett first tapped Abel as his successor.

While Buffett's approval was a major plus, the company's board of directors was tasked with confirming his successor, and did so on Sunday.

Investors and shareholders expect that Abel will maintain Berkshire Hathaway's investment philosophy. He told shareholders at this weekend's meeting that he would start by maintaining the company's "fortress of a balance sheet," which allows it to make large investments without relying on banks, Barron's reported.

Abel is known, however, for having a more hands-on management style than Buffett.

He was estimated by Forbes to be worth $484 million in 2021. In 2022, he sold his 1% stake in the company's Berkshire Hathaway Energy unit for $870 million.

Abel has risen through the ranks with a persistent focus on energy.

The Canadian native played hockey in his early years and attended the University of Alberta. He graduated in 1984 with a degree in commerce.

He joined PwC after graduation and quickly moved on to a small company called CalEnergy. In 1999, CalEnergy acquired MidAmerican Energy and adopted its name. That same year, Berkshire Hathaway bought a controlling interest in MidAmerican Energy. Abel took over the reins of MidAmerican in 2008 — renamed Berkshire Hathaway Energy in 2014 — and helmed it until 2018.

He's also served on the board of several major companies, including Kraft Heinz, and has been affiliated with organizations and institutions like the Mid-Iowa Council Boy Scouts of America, Drake University, American Football Coaches Foundation, and the Horatio Alger Association.

He lives in Des Moines, Iowa. Those who've spotted him at a hockey rink in town, watching his son practice, say he comes across as a "regular guy," the Des Moines Register reported.

Buffett also has a reputation as a folksy and down-to-earth person, living in Omaha, Nebraska.

At Berkshire Hathaway, succession doesn't seem to be just about handing over a job. With the title, Buffett said he's passing down traditions — like writing letters — and a mindset, too.

In Berkshire Hathaway's 2024 annual report, Buffett wrote, "At 94, it won't be long before Greg Abel replaces me as CEO and will be writing the annual letters. Greg shares the Berkshire creed that a 'report' is what a Berkshire CEO annually owes to owners.

"And he also understands that if you start fooling your shareholders, you will soon believe your own baloney and be fooling yourself as well."

• Vadim Fedotov, the CEO and founder of Bioniq, used visualization techniques when he was in college.
• Visualization, often used in sports, improved his basketball performance when he was injured.
• Fedotov also used visualization to build Bioniq, his personalized supplements company.

Vadim Fedotov first learned about visualizing success after a knee surgery at 23.

In the early 2000s, Fedotov played power forward for the Buffalo Bulls, the University of Buffalo's NCAA Division I basketball team. He worried about repeat injuries on the court — during an eight-year professional basketball career, he had four ACL tears.

Fedotov, 44, told Business Insider that he began seeing a sports psychologist in his junior year to "talk about the mental aspects of the game."

The psychologist taught Fedotov about visualization techniques, commonly used in sports to mentally rehearse the steps to reaching success.

"It started off with a very hesitant approach," Fedotov said. When he saw "quantifiable improvement" in his three-point percentage, it became a regular part of his routine.

Many years later, in 2019, he applied the same visualization techniques when he started Bioniq, a supplement company that creates personalized formulas based on bloodwork.

"If you can't imagine what you're trying to do, then you're not going to do it," Fedotov said.

Visualizing relaxed him on the court

Like many athletes, Fedotov was routine-focused. He didn't waver from his diet and went to bed at the same time every night. Eventually, he tacked on visualization techniques the nights before games.

For about 10 minutes, he'd close his eyes in a quiet space and slow his breathing, visualizing the feel of the court and specific situations like free throws and defensive plays. He would picture the moments after making a basket, too, like the sounds of the crowd or his coach's reaction.

The idea was to create "muscle memory through thoughts."

He compared it to programming your body ahead of time. "Your body and your mind don't have to come up with something to do — they already know what's going to happen," he said.

He felt calmer, and in a few months of consistent practice, saw improvement in how often he scored.

That success convinced him to continue with visualization long after his basketball days were over.

He applied the techniques to starting a company

Fedotov's idea for Bioniq came from experience. In his early 30s, he was trying to optimize his health. He couldn't find a company that provided tailor-made suggestions on what nutrients he needed to improve his cognition or longevity.

He first visualized Bioniq as filling the gaps he saw in the market: supplement brands with no customization or "real reason to stay loyal" and at-home blood tests that offered no follow-up to address issues.

He said visualizing the brand's success wasn't about imagining the fun parts of reaching the end goal, like press interviews or holding meetings as a CEO. It was about convincing investors and consumers to get on board in the first place.

"I knew we were entering a very crowded and complex space," he said. He had to visualize who the clients were and what they needed to trust a new supplement brand.

Just like he did before basketball games, he'd find 10 minutes to run potential interactions with stakeholders in his head. "I'd imagine walking into the room, greeting everyone with calm energy, presenting the idea clearly," he said.

He'd anticipate questions and how he'd respond, including to energy shifts in the room.

Fedotov, who previously worked as the CEO of Groupon in Eastern Europe, knew firsthand the common challenges — and high failure rates — of most startups. He anticipated roadblocks like having too niche of a market, lacking resources, or simply getting the timing wrong.

Visualization got him into a mindset where he felt knowledgeable and confident about the product even in high-stakes presentations.

He'd zoom in on tiny details in his mind, like a key slide in a deck or a conversation pivot where he knew he had to connect with his audience. Doing those mental reps ahead of time helped him "stay grounded when things were moving fast."

Brainstorming future investors

Fedotov drew inspiration from brands like Nike, which, like Bioniq, features collaborations with prominent athletes.

In the early stages of the company, Fedotov remembers brainstorming with his small team about the "perfect embodiment" of the brand. It would have to be someone results-driven and dogged about their performance. Cristiano Ronaldo, considered one of the GOATs of soccer and known for his longevity in the sport, came up in the meeting.

Ronaldo became a Bioniq investor in 2024.

Visualization isn't a magic cure-all for roadblocks. Fedotov said there were events he couldn't have visualized when he launched the company, from Brexit to the pandemic. At launch, Bioniq's business model relied on nurses visiting clients in their homes to take blood samples. Since then, Bioniq has added other versions of its supplements that don't require blood biomarkers.

The early obstacles taught him that visualization, while a powerful tool, isn't everything. The ability to pivot is just as important.

• Tech giants are known for their challenging interviews.
• Google, Meta, and Nvidia top the list of rigorous interviews with multiple rounds and assessments.
• But tough questions show up across industries, according to employee reports on Glassdoor.

It's tough to break into high-paying companies.

Google is notorious for having a demanding interview process. Aside from putting job candidates through assessments, preliminary phone calls, and asking them to complete projects, the company also screens candidates through multiple rounds of interviews.

Typical interview questions range from open-ended behavioral ones like "tell me about a time that you went against the status quo" or "what does being 'Googley' mean to you?" to more technical ones.

At Nvidia, the chipmaking darling of the AI boom, candidates must also pass through rigorous rounds of assessments and interviews. "How would you describe __ technology to a non-technical person?" was a question a candidate interviewing for a job as a senior solutions architect shared on the career site Glassdoor last month. The candidate noted that they didn't receive an offer.

Tech giants top Glassdoor's list of the hardest companies to interview with. But tough questions show up across industries — from luxury carmakers like Rolls-Royce, where a candidate said they were asked to define "a single crystal," to Bacardi, where a market manager who cited a difficult interview, and no offer, recalled being asked, "If you were a cocktail what would you be and why?"

The digital PR agency Reboot Online analyzed Glassdoor data to determine which companies have the most challenging job interviews. They focused on "reputable companies" listed in the top 100 of Forbes' World's Best Employers list and examined 313,000 employee reviews on Glassdoor. For each company, they looked at the average interview difficulty rating as reported on Glassdoor.

Here's a list of the top 90 companies that put candidates through the ringer for a job, according to self-reported reviews on Glassdoor.

• Inventor James Dyson has talked about the importance of embracing "failure" in work and life.
• "I've always said mine is a life of failure," the British billionaire told The Wall Street Journal in an interview.
• He's created thousands of prototypes over his career and also scrapped plans to enter the EV market.

Inventor James Dyson is famous for his namesake vacuums which use his patented cyclone technology. His net worth is $16.8 billion per Bloomberg's Billionaire Index.

But he says that, "mine is a life of failure."

In a video interview with The Wall Street Journal published Saturday. Dyson — who said he created 5,127 prototypes over five years before launching his bagless vacuum cleaner in 1993 — said that embracing failure was essential to life.

"It's true for writers and filmmakers and all sorts of people. It's a life of failure. It takes a long time before you find the one that works," he said. "You just have to get used to that."

Dyson, 77, said he enjoyed the misfires and struggles he's had across his career, saying that real wisdom comes from experience.

"At school, you're taught to get the answer right the first time," he said. While a clever student may get to the answer quickly, he said, they are at a disadvantage to those who take their time getting to an answer, as they haven't "viscerally experienced failure and overcoming failure."

For Dyson, resilience and adaptability are some of the most important skills someone can learn. "Life is about making things work," he said.

He continued: "That's what you have to do. It's trial and error. When something works, it's less challenging, it's less interesting."

Aside from the many prototypes it took him to invent the first vacuum with his namesake brand, Dyson famously abandoned plans to enter the electric car market in 2019 after spending more than $600 million on developing a vehicle that he came to realize was not commercially viable.

"The route to success is never linear. This is not the first project which has changed direction and it will not be the last," he wrote in a letter announcing the decision.

He said of his scrapped EV vehicle, "I could see that it was just too risky."