Careers

Careers

Jerene Yang, a team lead for synthetic data generation at OpenAI, said on an episode of the "AI Across Borders" podcast published Wednesday that her interview process was "extremely quick, extremely efficient, and very no-nonsense." Yang joined OpenAI's San Francisco office in October 2024. Before OpenAI, she was a senior engineering manager at Google, where she led Cloud Spanner and managed large-scale database systems, according to her LinkedIn profile.

"I'm sure they've prepped in a way to not look too bad, but I actually appreciate it when someone says, 'Actually, this was a failure,'" she said. "When they say, 'This was when I messed up,' instead of blaming others." "Those are some of the soft signals that I look for, when the person can accept when things are not working, or can accept that there was a mistake, and evolve and learn from that," Nakajima said.

I apologize ahead of time to anyone who works in mental health care. You've all done so much to reduce stigma and encourage people to get help when they need it. It would be really very wrong to use persisting stigma to get out of an awkward situation at work. And some of the worst trolls are "concern trolls," who say "I'm just worried about..." to use concern to undermine people.

One day, I decided I needed to call everybody. It was during COVID. Maybe it was just because I was sitting at home going, "I wonder what they're up to, what they're thinking, what they're worried about." It turned into this really interesting collection of perspectives because we have employees in 27 countries. You get a view of how they're seeing the economy, their work - what's working for them, what's not working.

As more retirees turn to remote work for flexible income, a growing slate of online gigs is proving that experience can be just as valuable as a résumé full of buzzwords. Retirement used to mean sitting on the porch and watching the world go by, but things have certainly changed in the last few years. Many seniors are finding that a little extra work keeps the mind sharp and the bank account happy, without the need for a stiff suit or a morning commute.

For a while, the biggest professional problem Brad Morgan faced was figuring out how to get toothpaste into a tube. Before you chuckle ... "Believe it or not, pumping toothpaste is one of the most complicated phenomenons you'll ever experience. It's a fluid that, as you pump it faster, it gets thinner," Morgan said. "So without going into great detail, I was working with MIT professionals, the smartest of the smartest on how we can pump toothpaste faster. That was my job."

"They're one strategy, and the companies that understand that are going to be the winners."

The night before the Thanksgiving holiday, I received a message that I was being let go from my job, leaving me reeling in shock and tears, as I faced a holiday season with five kids and no stable income. As a freelancer, I'm somewhat used to instability in my work, but as my writing jobs have slowly vanished over the course of the past year, having my last contract gig taken away really stung.

Anna Lundstrom, now at the helm of Nespresso's U.K. and Ireland operations, once strutted in the world of high-end fashion with Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci on her résumé. In an industry notorious for its cutthroat competition and nepotistic tendencies, landing a job at just one of these fashion powerhouses would be the realization of a lifelong dream for many. Yet, the reality is that the world of couture often remains elusive for the average job seeker.

Grenades - a standard but often unglamorous part of modern infantry combat - have become indispensable in Ukraine's close-quarters and grueling fight against Russia's invasion. The war blends advanced technologies like drones and electronic warfare with grinding, World War I-style fighting, where soldiers sometimes battle at arm's length in muddy trenches and bunkers. In those confined spaces, Ukrainian and Russian troops alike rely heavily on grenades.

If you've walked away from an awkward or uncomfortable interaction at the office wondering what happened to good manners, you aren't wrong in thinking nobody knows how to behave at work any more. Years after remote work became prevalent during the pandemic - and under hybrid arrangements that have permitted employees to continue working from home since - the workplace has become far less formal, and less attuned to the often unwritten rules of modern workplace behavior.

We, of course, make any changes she requests and respect that she takes every single thing we do so seriously, but you know, sometimes it's a Wednesday, and you just want to do your job and be done with it without being bogged down by changes that weren't actually necessary but perhaps made the work just a little bit more perfect.

The Perfect Moment Probably Won't Ever Come That's because if you wait for it, wait for it, wait for the perfect moment, you could end up waiting for a long time, like forever. Life instead will deliver more messy, fruitcake batter-like moments. Life can be quite nuts-but fruitful if you take advantage of such moments, meaning take action. Therefore, take a baby step-a very small, immediately doable action-toward that career direction of interest.

Choosing to work at a boutique firm can come with the tradeoff of not making the market rate. Unless, of course, if you're working at Cohen Ziffer Frenchman & McKenna! The boutique firm has been paying out the big bucks since they got their start in 2021 - 2025 marks their latest year of keeping up with the financial competition!

Don't say bah humbug to applying to jobs during the holiday season. It's easy to feel like a Scrooge about the job market these days. At this point, you might think you'll need a Christmas miracle to get hired in the waning moments of 2025. But unlike Santa Claus, your chances of getting hired in December are real, writes BI's Sarah E. Needleman.

Dermer says a good gift shows you appreciate people's work and pay attention to their interests: "You work with these people everyday, you depend on them, they depend on you"-and a gift should reflect that. Ask yourself: "Where are they in their life?" For example, is someone getting married? How about matching mugs or luggage tags? Or, does your coworker want to learn how to cook? You could get them a cookbook.

Clustering with friends can lead to excessive drinking, and with that comes danger to your health and safety. Staying with your pals or people you work closely with also means you won't broaden your circle of colleagues and that you just might miss an opportunity to get to know someone who could influence your career. Hanging out with people you know often leads to banter about how terrible the party is and how much you dislike these holiday events.

These run-and-gun vehicles don't come with much in the way of external protection, leaving them exposed and vulnerable to Russian drone strikes, but that's the tradeoff for flexibility in combat. Two soldiers in Ukraine's 4th Ranger Regiment, a special operations unit modeled after its US Army counterparts, talked to Business Insider about how they found themselves under Russian drone fire near the front lines while riding in the buggies.

After years of wartime splurging, Russian shoppers are tightening their grip on their wallets - a shift that hints at growing stress in the country's economy. Growth in consumer spending has weakened across most regions, the Central Bank of Russia said in a report published Wednesday. In October and November, demand softened even as unemployment remained near historic lows and inflation expectations ticked higher.

Then the pandemic happened and I did what everybody did: I let my hair go gray. It was a big scary thing, but I was so proud to have done the work - not the hair maintenance work - but the actual self-work to be brave enough to do it. I thought when I had to go back in public again, I would go to the hairdresser and get it done. But I loved the way it looked, so I just let it go.

Across the country, drone schools are training new operators for what has become one of the most important roles in Ukraine's fight against the Russian invasion - flying the drones that scout Russian positions, find targets, and blow up tanks and troops. Three leaders working at two schools told Business Insider that younger students with gaming or tech experience tend to consistently pick up skills the fastest. These students often are already comfortable with controllers, joysticks, and staring at a screen for a long time.

NYU professor Suzy Welch recentlyreleased the results of her study on Gen Z and businesses across America. Welch teaches M.B.A. students and attempts to prepare them for a life of purpose and leadership. There's just one problem: their values. Welch's analysis produced an outcome that startled her and her team: A mere 2% of Generation Z members hold the values that companies want most in new hires, which are achievement, learning, and an unbridled desire to work. Generation Z respondents' top three values were:

Titles convey status, imply expertise, and signal values. They help us connect quickly with others by giving us a shorthand for how to understand and relate to another person. Studies show that titles can even increase satisfaction with work. One study authored by Adam Grant found letting employees choose their own title improved feelings of psychological safety and reduced emotional exhaustion by up to 10% in five weeks.

A majority of those expecting a holiday bonus this year are planning to check out once the check clears. According to a recent survey of 2,000 American workers by AI job application assistant JobHire AI, 59% are "maybe" or "definitely" expecting a bonus this year. Among them, 48% are already job hunting or planning to quit after their bonus is paid, and another 20% are considering leaving in the new year.

European militaries are showing growing interest in a technology that turns standard service rifles into last-resort drone killers, an Israeli weapons maker says, as countries look for cheaper ways to counter the surge in uncrewed systems. A representative of firearms manufacturer Israel Weapon Industries told Business Insider that at least 10 European countries have either purchased or shown interest in the Arbel system, a micro-computer intended to better optimize a gun for shooting down drones, since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.