• WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, like the CEOs of other high-flying startups that have gone public recently, holds shares in his company that will give him extra votes.
• But Neumann's stock will give him 20 votes per share — twice as many as votes as the stock held by many of his peers, the company revealed Tuesday in the paperwork it filed for an initial public offering.
• Thanks to that voting power, Neumann holds majority control over WeWork and is expected to continue to wield that control long after its IPO.
• Read more WeWork stories here.

Many CEOs at the helm of newly public tech companies have special shares with extra voting power, allowing the executives to maintain control over their companies.

But Adam Neumann, the founder and owner of WeWork, has shares that give him even more votes than those held by his peers. Neumann gets 20 votes per share with his superpowered stock; other CEOs with such stock usually get about 10 votes per share.

The We Company — WeWork's parent corporation — will have three classes of shares, it disclosed Wednesday in the paperwork it filed to go public. Class A shares, which will trade publicly after its IPO, will have one vote per share. Class B and class C shares, nearly all of which are owned or controlled by Neumann, will have 20 votes each.

Thanks to that voting power, Neumann holds majority control over WeWork and is expected to continue to have it long after its public offering.

"Upon completion of this offering, Adam Neumann will own or control more than 50% of the total voting power of our capital stock and, as such, we will be a controlled company," The We Company told prospective shareholders in its IPO filing. "For so long as we are a controlled company," We added, "you will not have the same protections afforded to stockholders of [other] companies."

WeWork's share arrangement is related to its complex structure

The We Company just created the class C shares as part of a corporate reorganization over the past two months that put in place an unusual and Byzantine corporate structure, the company revealed in its IPO filing. That corporate structure could limit the taxes Neumann and other insiders pay on The We Company's future profits, while increasing the potential tax liability of outside shareholders.

Class C shares can be converted into class B ones, and class B ones can be converted into class A shares. Class A shares can't be converted into shares of either one of the other classes of stock.

Having multiple classes of stock with differing voting rights used to be unusual and frowned upon by investors. But it's become increasingly common, particularly among tech startups. Google and Facebook both have such structures, as do companies such as Roku and Lyft.

Read more: The era of the all-powerful tech CEO has only just begun, even though Facebook and Snap show why that's a bad thing

Investors have questioned multiclass stock arrangements

Still, even among these companies, few have afforded insiders as much control as WeWork will give Neumann. Among the only executives whose power compares is Snap CEO Evan Spiegel. Although his stock gives him only 10 votes per share, the stock held by everyday investors doesn't get any votes at all, leaving them unable to have any say in corporate matters or oversight.

Companies with dual-class or multiclass stock structures have argued that by giving their founders and other insiders disproportionate power, those leaders can focus on long-term strategy, rather than short-term stock-price fluctuations and quarterly earnings reports. But investors and other critics have countered that such arrangements could allow insiders to act in their own self-interests rather than on behalf of the all shareholders and shield them from accountability for their mistakes. Some institutional investors have been pressuring companies to drop such provisions.

Even before taking his company public, Neumann has already made several eyebrow-raising moves, including purchasing interests in buildings that he turned around and leased to WeWork and raising $700 million by selling or borrowing against his shares in the company.

Got a tip about WeWork or another company? Contact this reporter via email at twolverton@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

• Read more about WeWork's IPO:
• WeWork files for IPO, revealing spiraling losses of $1.6 billion
• WeWork just filed to go public — Check out the company's journey from one SoHo building to a $47 billion valuation
• WeWork is going public with an extremely weird, complicated structure
• We got a peek at WeWork's top landlords. Here's who is most exposed to the fast-growing, but money-losing, coworking company as it prepares to IPO.

SEE ALSO: Snap and WeWork have done an outstanding job showing the problems with making CEOs all-powerful

Join the conversation about this story »

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• David Royce is the founder and chairman of Aptive Environmental, and was an entrepreneur during the Great Recession.
• His company saw revenues up to $23 million during that time, and based on his experience suggests doing five important things to recession-proof your business.
• With another recession possibly on the horizon, he argues that spending on marketing, training, and recruiting great talent is actually the right move, even when you have the urge to save.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The last decade of economic growth has almost overshadowed the sting of the Great Recession. But several recent economic indicators have led some economists to believe another recession may be on the horizon. Whether or not a bust is coming, this boon we've been enjoying can't last forever.

The economy took a downturn just as I was starting my second company. I was a young entrepreneur, and there were plenty of self-proclaimed business experts who were eager to give me advice. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't take most of it. Though I made some mistakes, my team and I discovered a formula for how to not only survive but thrive throughout a recession.

In 2009 — our first year in business — my company reached $3 million in annual revenue. We were small but expanding quickly as we looked for ways to rapidly grow our business at a time while others were struggling. Over the next couple of years, our revenues rocketed to $11 million and then $23 million. The lessons I learned during that time — both from my own experience and other successful companies — continue to inform my business choices today, and it's knowledge I will apply when the next inevitable downturn hits. 

Here's what I learned:

Keep on marketing

It can be tempting to cut back on marketing to save on costs, but that kind of decision usually does more harm than good. You can't grow your business if no one knows about you, and just counting on current clientele to stay with you is a serious gamble in a downturn. 

Instead, maintain your marketing volume for four to six months into the recession and track your profitability on those new accounts to see if you're still getting a return that makes economic sense. In my case, I found our marketing investment brought in sales numbers that were just as good or even better, likely because other companies panicked and took their foot off the gas. That meant there were more customers for the taking — and more revenues to help us grow our organization while others floundered.

Domino's Pizza is a great example of a company that continued to invest during a time of financial instability. When the recession hit, the pizza giant was already struggling with low customer satisfaction, including complaints about the crust "tasting like cardboard" and the sauce being "ketchup-like." In 2009, Domino's not only listened to the complaints, but also responded by rebuilding their pizza from scratch and publicizing the improvement process through marketing. The effort brought massive success, with Domino's gaining additional public interest through their transparent improvement efforts — which, in turn, brought rising revenues to match.

Increase focus on training

Like marketing, training is another investment that can put you ahead of the competition. To avoid your sales team's closing ratios from taking a dip, your company's training efforts will likely need to increase. 

For example, dedicate the first 20 minutes daily to a sales training meeting so team members can brainstorm ways to improve and share best practices. 

Our then-president of sales — now CEO — Vess Pearson was committed to this daily routine for our organization, and we've remained devoted to this practice even once the economy improved. As helpful as it is now, it was vital during the recession to maintain and even improve our team's sales efforts.

Be careful what you cut

During the Great Recession, I made a mistake in cutting back on some of the small things that made my first business fun and engaging for employees. The Great Recession was the first downturn I'd experienced as an entrepreneur, and I had no idea how deep its effects might permeate our financials.  I listened to the advice of other business owners that led me to cut company activities, weekly employee breakfasts, incentive-based competitions, and company retreats — extras that cost money, but also made work a fun place to be.

In the throes of the Great Recession, a group of Wall Street leaders started taking a closer look at employee motivation across the financial industry. Workers, unsurprisingly, were experiencing extreme stress in their jobs, but the causes were less expected. One of their discoveries was that cutting small luxuries had a negative effect on employee morale and motivation disproportionate to the money saved.

This is what we found with our employees as well. My team was already surrounded by a grim economic reality — with even greater fears of what might come to pass. 

Don't make work another source of worry. While a recession might make maintaining the level of those activities unrealistic, keeping them in some way or another is going to help maintain employee morale, as well as give them confidence in you and the organization.

Be flexible with payments

Slower cash flow can affect vendors, customers, and your own business equally, but that doesn't mean you have to necessarily cut back so much as get creative. Recessions don't discriminate between businesses or clients, and you may find some customers struggling to make payments. Rather than writing off that income and sending the customer off to collections, get creative to help the client. 

One idea we implemented was letting customers break up payments into smaller installments and extending their payment period. Recessions are temporary and helping a customer weather the storm can not only help you improve customer loyalty but increase the number of referrals to friends and family.

Just as you can work with a struggling customer, see what flexibility your vendors are willing to give you. Whether you're about to go bankrupt or just trying to increase profit margins, I've found that vendors are most willing to reduce prices and increase payment periods during this stage of the business cycle. 

In strong economies, many of my vendors were demanding annual price increases that were often out of line with inflation. Nothing changes a vendor's tune quite like a recession, so take advantage of this opportunity to lower your costs. It will not only help you get through the recession but give you an additional cushion as the economy improves.

Groupon exercised this idea with great success in a then-novel approach to connecting companies looking for new customers with families trying to make the most out of their shallower budgets. Groupon launched in November 2008 but grew rapidly by offering quick, cheap deals that would-be customers could snap up quickly. Although this meant the vendors they partnered with were making less per customer, they were getting enough extra business to make up for that deficit and expanded their customer base — a benefit that really paid off when the economy improved.

Look out for great talent

It seems counterintuitive to hire when the red downward arrows of the stock market are making other companies reduce their workforce, but a recession can actually bring in some of your brightest talent to help you navigate through this period and even climb to new heights. 

More businesses than usual will inevitably go bankrupt and be forced to lay off some incredible employees, while other great potential hires may be looking to leave their current organizations due to cutbacks, wage freezes, and low morale. According to a 2009 Hewitt Associates survey of 518 companies, 70% of companies had issued or were considering issuing furloughs. We picked up some of our very best and brightest managers shortly after the 2008 downturn, so remember to keep your eyes open and invest in new talent to ensure you pick up some of your future all-stars.

David Royce is the founder and chairman of Aptive Environmental, providing environmentally responsible pest solutions to customers in more than 3,700 cities nationwide. David's areas of expertise include entrepreneurship, sales and marketing, strategy, manager development, business culture, and scaling exponential growth via systems, processes, and technology.  He's built a staff of 4,000, providing entrepreneurial training and financial success to his team members while instilling a unique set of core values. Today, Aptive ranks as the number one fastest-growing company in its industry of more than 20,000 competitors.

SEE ALSO: Elon Musk limits meetings at Tesla to only six people — and made it a rule that employees should 'walk out' if nothing's getting accomplished

Join the conversation about this story »

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• In July, Google Cloud changed how it compensates its sales employees by decreasing the base salary and increasing the bonus.
• This bonus-driven compensation method is similar to legacy software companies like SAP and Oracle. It's a sign of the changing culture under Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and Robert Enslin, its global-customer-operations president, who worked at Oracle and SAP, respectively.
• The reaction to this change was mixed because while the compensation is greater overall if employees receive their entire bonuses, their regular paychecks are less.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Google's Cloud business revamped its sales team's compensation, ratcheting up the incentives — and the pressure — to maximize sales, as CEO Thomas Kurian ripped a page out of a playbook long favored at sales-driven software companies like Oracle and SAP.

The new compensation structure for employees in Google's sales organization looks a lot like the way legacy enterprise companies like SAP and Oracle pay their sales folks, with incentives designed to reward rainmakers and weed out underperformers. Employees received a letter to sign about the new compensation plan in June, and the change took effect on July 1, sources familiar with the matter told Business Insider. 

Under the new system, salespeople will see their base salary reduced, while their potential quarterly bonus for hitting sales targets will increase.

The change comes as Google is aggressively moving to compete in the cloud business, a market dominated by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. Google has said it plans to triple its Cloud salesforce, already one of the company's biggest areas of head-count growth. 

According to one of the sources, Kurian told Google Cloud employees that Google Cloud has a five-year window to become "at least the number 2 cloud."

The Google Cloud sales organization is under Robert Enslin, the president of global customer operations, who joined Google in April after eight years at SAP. It's probably no accident that the new compensation model looks very similar to the way salespeople are paid at SAP. The aggressive sales culture and focus on commissions are also a hallmark of Oracle, where Kurian previously worked.

Business Insider reached out to Google Cloud for comment on this information. Google Cloud declined comment.

A 5-year window

The percentage change in compensation varied depending on the role. A source familiar with the matter estimates that the salary was reduced 10%, while the bonus was increased more than 10%. 

Reception to the new compensation plan was fairly mixed, according to sources familiar with the matter. On one hand, if employees hit their quotas and receive their entire bonuses, their entire compensation will now be greater than it was before. But that means their regular paycheck is lighter — and they have to wait for the extra money because the bonus is paid out quarterly. 

Others were concerned that Google Cloud's culture is becoming more like that of SAP or Oracle.

Google Cloud's leadership told employees the change was being made in order to align the company with the rest of the industry, according to a source familiar with the matter. 

On last quarter's earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Google Cloud planned to triple it salesforce over the next few years. Google has already hired 2,000 salespeople, one person told us. Since Google Cloud is hiring more salespeople, the partner and marketing organizations saw budget cuts of 50 to 60% in February, a source said. 

Read more: Google revealed that its cloud business is on run rate of more than $8 billion, and it plans to triple the size of its salesforce

Google Cloud is working to increase its cloud market share and catch up to Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, both of which have long relationships with cloud customers in the enterprise. Last month, Google announced that its cloud business' revenue would now amount to $8 billion if the current revenue rate was projected forward on an annualized basis.

Do you work at Google Cloud? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at rmchan@businessinsider.com, Telegram at @rosaliechan, or Twitter DM at @rosaliechan17. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Other types of secure messaging available upon request. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

SEE ALSO: NPM, a startup 11 million developers rely on, is tangled in a bitter cultural battle as it tries to actually make money

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• If investors buy into WeWork's ambitious vision when it sells shares to the public in its IPO, a handful of people and investors stand to make a killing.
• The IPO paperwork reveals who the company's biggest backers are.
• We won't know how much their stakes will be worth until the company reveals more details about its IPO, such the initial share price.
• But we still had some fun calculating what these stakes might be worth, based on what shares reportedly previously sold for.
• Read all of Business Insider's WeWork coverage here.

WeWork just dropped the paperwork for its IPO.

That means, we now have a chance to take a closer look at the company's finances, including which investors own the largest stakes.

The We Company, as WeWork's corporate parent is known, has many more private investors than its new S-1 filing reveals and some of them have already cashed out and done well. Insiders have sold billions of dollars of We Co. stock in so-called secondary transactions — in which shareholders privately sell their stock directly to investors — according to Pitchbook, the database that tracks such records.

For instance, shareholders sold $1.3 billion to Softbank in August, 2017, in addition to the $1.7 billion Softbank spent on shares issued by the company. In January, Softbank bought another $1 billion of shares from existing shareholders, as well, Pitchbook says.

The company hasn't yet disclosed the price it plans to sell shares. So it's not possible to know (or even guess) how much each person's stake is worth at this time.

Still, in 2017, when WeWork raised $1.7 billion (and had raised $3.4 billion to date) which valued the company at $21 billion, investors bought in at $57.90 per share, according to Pitchbook.

So, just for the sheer fun of it, we calculated the value of all classes of shares at $58.

We'll learn the true value of each stake when the company prices its shares right before they begin to trade, and we'll update this article at that time.

SEE ALSO: Uber spent over $200,000 on balloons — now its CEO is getting rid of them to cut costs as nervous engineers worry about layoffs

Adam Neumann

WeWork has already made Adam Neumann a very rich man, though the S-1 paperwork doesn't make it easy to figure out how much of his stake he's sold, what he personally still owns and what he's borrowed against.

Neumann has reportedly cashed out $700 million from a combination of selling shares to investors, selling shares back to the company, and taking out loans backed by his shares. 

A separate company he controls called WE Holdings LLC is the largest shareholder in the We Company.

To clarify: The We Company is the company that is going public. We Holdings LLC is a separate company, controlled by Neumann and WeWork's other cofounder, Miguel McKelvey, that holds a good chunk of Neumann's shares (and, presumably most or all of co-founder McKelvey's shares, too).

While both of them are directors of this LLC, Neumann controls 100% of the voting rights of all of its shares, the S-1 says.

We Holdings LLC currently has:

• over 2.4 million shares of Class A common stock
• 111.9 million shares of super voting rights Class B shares, 20 votes per share. 

If each share is worth $58, this stake, controlled by Neumann, is worth more than $6.6 billion.

Adam Neumann, again

Neumann also owns at least three other companies that have shares in the parent company We.

These are Anincentco1 LLC, Anincentco2 LLC and Anincentco3, LLC, the S-1 says.

Plus, he owns an undisclosed number of shares in another company called We Company Partnership, which holds 1.06 million Class C shares.

The shares controlled by We Company Partnership are owned by We's nine directors and executive officers including Neumann, according to the S-1. However, Neumann has sole voting rights, at 20 votes per share, of all of this Class C stock.

Because some of these shares are technically owned by other people, even though Neumann controls the voting rights, the S-1 doesn't spell out what Neumann's actual, personal stake is.

But it does disclose all of the shares that Neumann controls:

• over 2.4 million Class A shares 
• over 112.5 of Class B shares with super voting rights
• Over 1 million shares of Class C shares

If each share is worth $58, this stake is worth over $6.7 billion. Presumably, the vast majority of that is personally owned by Neumann.

The S-1 does say that Neumann will not sell any shares during the IPO and that his lock-up period will last about a year. 

Rebekah Neumann

The S-1 doesn't disclose much financial information regarding Rebekah Neumann, who is named as a co-founder, Chief Brand and Impact Officer and the Founder and CEO of WeGrow.

It says she's never been paid a salary from the We Co.

WeGrow, by the way, is a subsidiary of We that runs an elementary school. The We Co. says WeGrow plans to expand its education and learning programs.

However, because Adam Neumann is her husband, she is, presumably, co-owner of his vast stake and also most likely one of "permitted transferees" briefly mentioned in the S-1 who can assume control of the stock should he become incapacitated.

If each share that Adam controls is worth $58, she's party to a stake worth over $6.7 billion.

Co-founder Miguel McKelvey

The S-1 also didn't disclose the stake of Miguel McKelvey, who is listed as Co-Founder and Chief Culture Officer.

Instead, it mentioned in a footnote that Miguel McKelvey is part of WE Holdings LLC, the company that collectively controls about 114.3 million shares.

Most of those shares may actually belong to Neumann. However, a footnote implies that 11.7 million Class B shares controlled by WE Holdings LLC are not owned outright by Neumann, even though he controls the voting rights to them.

The S-1 does not say that these shares are owned by McKelvey. It simply names both Neumann and McKelvey as the managing members of this company.

We'll see if future updates to the S-1 provide more information about this co-founder's stake.

But if he does own over 11.7 shares of Class B stock, and if they were worth $58 each, that stake would be worth nearly $679.8 million.

SoftBank's Ron Fisher

Ron Fisher, Vice Chairman SoftBank Group, is the man associated with handholding SoftBank's enormous investment in WeWork.

Softbank is the second largest shareholder after Neumann. It owns nearly 114 million shares. However, all of them are Class A shares, with 1 vote per share. Neumann controls nearly 114 million shares of Class B and Class C shares  and all of them have 20 votes per share.

So while the stake is enormous, the power in the company is not.

Even so, should each share be worth $58, that stake would be worth more than $6.6 billion.

Benchmark Capital's Bruce Dunlevie

Benchmark Capital general partner Bruce Dunlevie is the representative for the VC firm's large investment in WeWork.

Benchmark owns almost 33 million shares.

If these shares are worth $58, that stake would be worth nearly $1.9 billion 

J.P. Morgan

A number of J.P. Morgan's private equity funds invested in WeWork and now collectively own 18.5 million shares.

Should those shares command $58, the stake would be worth nearly $1.1 billion.

It's worth noting that J.P. Morgan has been a lender to the company and to founder Adam Neumann.

It's also an underwriter bank for the IPO.

Artie Minson

Artie Minson is the We Company's CFO.

Minson controls just over 1.9 million shares. This stake includes stock options that come due within 60 days, shares he's put in his family trust, and the Class C shares he owns as a member of the We Company Partnership, the S-1 says.

The We Company Partnership is the separate company that controls Class C shares owned by the nine top We executives, with Neumann retaining sole voting power of all of these shares.

It's worth noting, too, that Adam Neumann has the voting power over, 76,177 Class B shares, issued before 2015, that Minson owns as well.

Jen Berrent

Jen Berrent is We Co.'s chief legal officer.

Berrent's stake is about 458,725 shares when adding up all the stock that she can earn within 60 days, either through options or grants.

She also has some undisclosed shares in the We Company Partnership, the company that holds all of the 9 executive officer's Class C stock, however the S-1 says that none of those shares will be vested within 60 days. Neumann controls the voting rights to her Class B and upcoming Class C shares.

Should her 458,725 shares be worth $58, her stake would be worth $26.6 million.

Lew Frankfort

Lew Frankfort is on the We Company's board of directors. He's best known for his years as CEO of luxury leather goods company Coach, where he is now the executive chairman.

He's also the founder of his own venture company, Benvolio Group. 

He owns nearly 2 million shares between the shares owned by Benvolio and those owned by his own family trust. Some of his stake includes super-voting-rights shares that do not appear to be controlled by Neumann (at least the S-1 didn't say that they are).

Should the shares command $58, his stake would be worth about $115.8 million.

Another couple of dozen investors

Many more investors bought shares of WeWork as it raised $8 billion in investment in the past.

Most of them are not disclosed in the S-1 because most of them are not considered major shareholders with at least a 5% stake in the company.

Some of the early investors have already sold all or part of their holdings to other investors who came in later.

But Pitchbook says there's still a total of 32 investors who appear to still have stock. It names investors like Israel's Aleph, Goldman Sachs. T. Row Price, and real estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman.

• 31 teachers from 19 different states revealed to Business Insider how much of their salary they spend on school supplies. 
• Some teachers spend thousands of dollars a year on their classrooms. 
• Salaries for teachers vary. One Mississippi teacher makes $35,000 a year. A teacher from Massachusetts with over 30 years of experience reports an $80,000 annual salary .
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Due to dwindling public-education funding, public-school teachers sometimes shell out hundreds of dollars for classroom chalk and pencils out of their own pocket.

A dozen states spend less on schools than before the 2008 recession, according to a 2019 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Teachers earn less in 42 states than they did a decade ago.

Read more:Teachers in the US are spending $500 of their own money on school supplies like crayons and chalk, and now they're turning to a viral hashtag to ask strangers for help

Many public school teachers have taken to social media to ask for help paying their classroom supplies. The viral #clearthelists campaign began last month after teachers asked strangers and celebrities to buy supplies off their Amazon wish lists. Many of these lists include classroom basics like chalk, crayons, and markers.

Business Insider spoke with 31 public-school educators across the country to find out how much of their salary is being spent on school supplies. We asked them to answer the questions, "How much do you make? Do you spend any money on school supplies? If so, how much?"

While the federal government reports that teachers spend an average of $500 on school supplies, some teachers told us they spend as much as $1,000.

Teachers working in public schools in 19 states were included in this list. Some teachers chose to answer anonymously or just use their first name. Business Insider verified all identities with school badges and emails.

These are the responses 31 teachers gave to the survey question "How much do you make?"

[Editor's note: Some of the responses have been lightly edited for clarity.]

SEE ALSO: Teachers in the US are spending $500 of their own money on school supplies like crayons and chalk, and now they're turning to a viral hashtag to ask strangers for help

"I make $68,000 a year and I spent at least $500 to $1000 on supplies." — A middle school teacher in New York who wished to remain anonymous

"$38,000/year. Yes, about $200 of my own money each year, but I could spend much more." — Vanessa, an elementary school teacher in Florida

"I make $55,000 a year right now and get about a 2% raise per year. I have 9 years of experience with a master's degree in educational leadership. I do not spend my own money on school supplies. I am lucky enough to have a departmental budget for those things." — A high school teacher in Ohio who wished to remain anonymous

"$42,000 a year. I used to spend my own money on supplies but I can't afford to any more." — Kimberly, a high school teacher in Florida

"$58,000. Of course. $1,000 a year." — A high school teacher in Ohio who wished to remain anonymous

"I make $56,000. I spend thousands on school supplies and lessons because I am not provided with a meaningful curriculum for my students and their abilities." — A middle school teacher in Maryland who wished to remain anonymous

"$53,000 after 10 years of teaching. I couldn't tell you an exact number of how much I spend on supplies, but it's hundreds every year." — A high school teacher in Illinois who wished to remain anonymous

"Before taxes, I made $35,000 annually (with an MA and 2 years' experience) in the state of New Mexico. After taxes, I took home $1,900 a month. I spend anywhere from $30 to $100 a month on supplies." — Jennifer, an elementary school teacher in New Mexico

"$76,000. I spend about $1,500. My district gives me $100." — Andrea, a middle school teacher in New Jersey

"I make $35,000 a year. Last year, I likely spent $1,000 to $2,000 of that on supplies." — A high school teacher in Mississippi who wished to remain anonymous

"$60,000-plus. Average $500 per year, maybe more if you add in the snacks I give out all the time." — A middle school teacher in Connecticut who wished to remain anonymous

"I make $48,000. I spend my own money on my classroom decor, around $200 per year." — Melinda, a high school teacher in Illinois

"My salary is $99,000 over 12 months with 20-plus years of experience. Yes, I spend upwards of $500 per year on school supplies." — Brett, a high school teacher in California

"$52,000 and I spend $1,000 a year on supplies." — A kindergarten teacher in Ohio who wished to remain anonymous

"$53,000. How much I spend varies each year, but it's about $300 to $400." — An elementary school teacher in Texas who wished to remain anonymous

"About $70,000, and I spend probably $2,000 a year on school supplies." — John, a junior high school teacher in Pennsylvania

"$73,000 a year, and I spend about $500 to $1,000 a year to get supplies for my classroom." — An elementary school teacher in Kentucky who wished to remain anonymous

"I have 7 years of experience and a master's degree, and I make $45,000 before NY taxes get taken out. I am an art teacher and spend between $200 and $700 on supplies and food for students each year out of pocket. I also have crushing student-loan debt that forces me to live paycheck to paycheck and makes it impossible to get a loan for anything." — A high school teacher in New York who wished to remain anonymous

"$55,000 and $500 probably. Not on consumables but on materials and equipment that I would take with me if I left." — Leigh, a high school teacher in Maryland

"$43,000, and of course I do." — A middle school teacher in Tennessee who wished to remain anonymous

"$75,000 a year after 20 years in one of the most expensive parts of the country to live in. I spend less of my own money than many, but I just spent about $300 to get the year started." — A high school teacher in California who wished to remain anonymous

"After almost 20 years, I make $67,000. I have a master's degree in education. A few hundred dollars a year on supplies." — An elementary school teacher in Illinois who wished to remain anonymous

"I make $61,000. I buy some school supplies, like tissues and hand sanitizer. I also bring in breakfast and other treats occasionally. I probably spend $100 per year on the students." — A high school teacher in Illinois who wished to remain anonymous

"I spent close to $500 on things for my classroom this year." — A high school teacher in Texas who wished to remain anonymous

"I make $65,000 and spend more money on school supplies than my husband is aware of, which is about $500 a year." — Dianna, an elementary school teacher in Nebraska

"I believe it will be $27,000, and I spent about $300 or so." — A high school teacher in Indiana who wished to remain anonymous

"$65,000. All the time. I want to say I average $300/year, but it's probably more. I spent way more this year because I bought flexible seating items." — A middle school teacher in Pennsylvania who wished to remain anonymous

"I make enough to live comfortably, and half of it goes back to school and student reinforcements." — Alfina, a special-education teacher in Colorado

"$80,000-plus (with a master's and 31 years of experience); I spend about $1,000 out of pocket each year for my classroom." — Lisa, an elementary school teacher in Massachusetts

"I make $65,000 per year. I typically spend anywhere from $200 to $800 dollars on school supplies and materials for my classroom. In years past, I have spent significantly more." — Uriah, a middle school teacher in New Jersey

"When the school year starts again I'll be making $40,000 a year. I spend about a thousand dollars a year on supplies. That includes new books, prizes for games, comfortable seating, etc." — Morgan, a middle school teacher in South Carolina

• Business Insider has selected the 30 leaders under 40 who are working to transform US healthcare.
• The list includes scientists, doctors, and entrepreneurs fighting to make US healthcare better for everyone.
• Two of the list's honorees told Business Insider about a mistake they see many founders making: They get tripped up trying to reinvent the wheel when they would do better starting small.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

When Kimber Lockhart, the chief technology officer at the primary-care-clinic operator One Medical, sits down with young people looking to disrupt the healthcare field, she hears a lot of them making the same mistake.

More often than not, a lot of people come to her wanting to completely overhaul one or more parts of the healthcare system — starting from scratch. For example, one person recently told her they wanted to create a better electronic health record (EHR), the digital version of the paper-based patient charts that doctors once used.

Lockhart was recently featured on Business Insider's list of the 30 young leaders under 40 transforming healthcare. You can read the full list here.

Doing something like recreating health records is a tall order for someone who hasn't had any prior experience in the healthcare field, Lockhart, 33, said. EHRs contain medical and treatment histories, past diagnoses and medications, immunization dates, allergies, radiology images, and lab test results. And more than 1,000 vendors have their own ways of collecting that information, according to a recent report from Kaiser Health News.

Someone who wants to make a better version, then, would need to have a deep understanding of everything from what motivates an EHR vendor to the constraints that cause a health system to choose one EHR system over another.

"It's really complicated," she said.

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, Lockhart advises people who want to make an impact on US healthcare to start small.

When it comes to electronic health records, for example, Lockhart would suggest that someone focus on improving one aspect of an existing record-keeping system or trying to create an add-on that would help solve for a specific use case.

"Starting with a slightly smaller scope" can be helpful, Lockhart said.

'There are no silver bullets and no shortcuts'

Sean Duffy, the 35-year-old CEO and cofounder of the diabetes-treatment startup Omada Health and another pick for Business Insider's healthcare transformers list, agreed with Lockhart.

Because the US healthcare system is so complex, Duffy advises newcomers to start humbly, learning how the system works piece by piece and developing an understanding of how each player — from patients and providers to consultants and insurers — fits into the whole.

"Healthcare entrepreneurship is the double black diamond," Duffy told Business Insider. "It's a very intricate place to build a business." 

So to start, Duffy advised working for an existing healthcare startup or consulting firm and learning how to do one aspect of the business well. Once someone has that knowledge under their belt, they'll have a clearer idea of what aspect of the healthcare system they want to improve. That's a better approach than simply looking to reform American healthcare altogether, Duffy said.

"It's one of those things where it's better to go in with a running familiarity of how the bits and pieces tie together. If you don't have empathy for all the stakeholders, it's materially harder to form a business," he said.

In healthcare, "there are no silver bullets and no shortcuts," Duffy added.

DON'T MISS: VCs in the hottest part of healthcare explain why the time is ripe for a mental health funding boom

SEE ALSO: Meet the 30 young leaders who are transforming the future of healthcare and disrupting a $3.5 trillion industry

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg is traveling across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas via boat because she refuses to board airplanes due to their high carbon footprint.
• She will attend climate conferences in New York and Santiago, as well as meet people around the US, Canada, and Mexico.
• She told journalists on Wednesday that while she could have dialed into those meetings instead of making the arduous journey, virtual appearances "don't get any attention at all."
• Being there in person "will do more good," she added as she prepared to begin her almost two-week-long journey to the US.
• She also reiterated her refusal to meet President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly questioned the science behind climate change.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

PLYMOUTH, England — Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, is sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, where she plans to meet world leaders and attend climate conferences in New York and Santiago, Chile.

Her journey will take 13 days, and involves eating freeze-dried food, not showering, and going to the bathroom in a bucket.

Her first stop is the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, where she is scheduled to speak with international leaders, then travel throughout the US, Canada, and South America. She also plans to attend the UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Santiago, Chile in December.

When asked on Wednesday why she's taking the arduous, 3,500-nautical-mile journey instead of dialing in from home, she simply said virtual appearances "don't get any attention at all."

"Of course I can [dial in] and I have attended several conferences and meetings by video link, but unfortunately my experience is that those attendances don't get any attention at all," she said.

"I have been invited there to speak. I have not been invited there to speak on link," she added. "I think it will do more good than if I and the young people were actually there by video link."

Thunberg and her crewmates — her father Svante, professional sailors Boris Herrmann and Pierre Casiraghi, and filmmaker Nathan Grossman — will sail north toward Greenland and down the coast of eastern Canada and New New England, Business Insider's Aylin Woodward reported.

Their boat, a schooner named Malizia II, runs on solar-power and underwater turbines, thereby generating electrical power with zero carbon emissions.

Read more:Here's what Greta Thunberg's zero-emissions journey looks like.

Thunberg and Herrmann said Wednesday that they don't expect everyone to follow their example and spurn air travel, but that they hope that it will persuade people to use alternative modes of transportation that don't use fossil fuels.

The teenager refuses to board any airplanes because of their high carbon footprint, and typically travels by train when moving around Europe.

Thunberg on Wednesday reiterated her refusal to meet US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly questioned the science behind climate change and whose administration is reportedly preventing climate assessments from being published.

"I'm not that special, I can't convince everyone," Thunberg told journalists Wednesday, when asked whether she believes she can persuade Trump on climate change.

"Instead of talking to me and to the school striking children and teenagers, they should be talking to actual scientists and experts in this area," she added, referring to White House officials.

Thunberg also slammed many companies' corporate climate change policies, telling Business Insider on Wednesday that no company on Earth currently has a good enough carbon emissions strategy.

SEE ALSO: Greta Thunberg says no company on Earth right now has a climate change strategy that's good enough

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Before Kristen Park Hopson was a top scientist at the $4 billion biotech Moderna, she was a new college grad debating different professions. 
• That's a common experience, and yet speakers at career talks make a career sound like "it's this absolutely preordained thing," Hopson said.
• Understanding what science research would entail helped Hopson settle on that path, speaking to something she says is especially important in biotech: pursuing opportunities, instead of titles. 
• Business Insider just named Hopson one of 30 young leaders transforming the industry.
• Here's the full list of the 30 people under 40 who are transforming healthcare.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Like a lot of recent college graduates, Kristen Park Hopson wasn't sure exactly what she wanted to do. 

Hopson was leaning toward science research but had also been on the premed track at Connecticut College. So she gave science research a whirl, working as a research associate at the University of Vermont's medical school after graduating.

That early work experience gave Hopson a sense of what that might mean as a career — and speaks to a philosophy that still guides her career choices today. The 39-year-old directs key cancer research at the fast-growing buzzy biotech Moderna, and Business Insider just named her one of the 30 young leaders transforming the industry.

"I've always tried to not say, 'I have to be at this level by this age in my career,'" Hopson told Business Insider. "The way that biotech is, it's less about title and more about opportunity and what you're able to do."

Sure, she wants to advance as a manager and scientist, Hopson said. But "an opportunity might come up, with no title, and be exactly what I want to do," she added. 

Read more:Top young leaders at 23andMe, One Medical, and Oscar Health reveal their best advice for transforming the $3.5 trillion healthcare industry

Careers aren't always 'this absolutely preordained thing'

After working as a research associate, Hopson earned a doctorate in molecular medicine from the Boston University School of Medicine and later began working in the biopharmaceutical industry.

She started at the $4 billion biotech Moderna in 2016, and she now leads projects like its signature personalized cancer vaccines, which are custom-built for each patient in an effort to better treat the disease. 

Hopson is also refreshingly candid about how normal it is to be unsure about one's career path.

At career talks, speakers make their work history sound like "it's this absolutely preordained thing. And it isn't always that way," she said. 

So she advises young people just starting out "to feel OK about not having a direct line of sight to exactly what they want to do" and simply explore the space they're interested in. 

Focus on "do I feel like I'm making a difference in people's lives," she said, "rather than, 'I need to be CEO of a company by age 35.'"

• Read more:
• A $4.5 billion biotech working on tech-driven cancer treatments told us how it's using AI in areas rivals are ignoring, and why companies that aren't could struggle
• A top US health insurer has saved $4 million in one year by making a simple change, and it could be a lesson for others on how to transform a system from the inside out
• A VP at a $2.5 billion startup reveals exactly how she asked her boss for a big promotion at just 33 years old — and got it
• The 29 best books to read if you want to disrupt US healthcare, according to top young leaders in the $3.5 trillion industry

Join the conversation about this story »

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• "Getting good with money" required altering my own stubborn tendencies and thinking beyond budgets.
• I was inspired by perspectives from outside the pages of dusty finance books like "The High Price of Materialism" and "Bossypants."
• Learn to organize your finances from Marie Kondo's "The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying Up" and appreciate what you own with Annie Leonard's "The Story of Stuff."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

For me, spending was an addiction that a hangover-inspired half-oath on January 1 or some color-coded budget spreadsheet couldn't supersede. I had to dig deeper. 

Altering my own stubborn tendencies required thinking beyond budgets.

Here, I'll share my favorite non-finance books for getting good with money. Yes, learning about money has plenty to do with compound returns and debt snowballs. That piece can't be avoided. But for many of us, the struggle to master our finances is also a mental and emotional journey.

'The High Price of Materialism,' by Dr. Tim Kasser

Dr. Tim Kasser spent decades studying materialism and the results are conclusive: an attachment to possessions (and to their pursuit) will not only fail to make us happy but can actually make us unhappy. Beyond a certain level of comfort and security, seeking affluence can impose high emotional and physical tolls — including insecurity, depression, and a reduced sex drive — even when we get what we want! (Why? Because it's never enough).

I can relate to avoiding this book because it can feel like lecturing — like,let me buy my cheetah-print jumpsuit in peace! — but to cold-shoulder Kasser's scientifically supported findings is to risk a lifetime of malaise. Are you working just to buy things (and then working more to buy more things)? Or are you earning to save and invest in the freedom to do what makes you happiest? Anyone interested in the journey towards contentedness should read this book. 

Favorite quote: "Individuals who are strongly oriented towards materialistic values place little emphasis on valuing connectedness to others and the community; it is difficult to impress others and simultaneously be warmly connected to them."

'Bossypants,' By Tina Fey

In "Bossypants," Tina Fey confronts how ridiculous (and expensive!) womanhood can be — and does so without triggering defensiveness in women and feminist alarms in men. Her summary of the body parts women feel obligated to own, buy, or reverse-engineer is a brilliant example of this: Caucasian blue eyes, hairless Asian skin, Michelle Obama's arms, and so on. 

Between advertising, celebrity worship, and cultural obsession with beauty, we've all felt our self-worth under attack at one time or another — though women are doled a majority of the assailing. Fey helps us cope through sincere and self-deprecating recollections of her own dweeby childhood and impressive career trajectory. She reminds us that we don't feel inadequate because we are, but because society sometimes makes us feel this way. 

Favorite quote: [On being 40 years old] "Overnight you may grow one long straight white pubic hair. Not that this happened to me, of course, because every six months I get a very expensive Japanese treatment that turns my pubic hair clear like rice noodles."

'The Story of Stuff,' by Annie Leonard

If any book can put a moratorium on your spending, it's this one. "The Story of Stuff" is an examination of the costs — environmental and social — built into the lifecycles of our possessions. Many will choose ignorance is bliss when it comes to considering the ramifications of consumerism, but we have to be better than that. Leonard's book should be required learning.

It was revelatory to be saddled up with the uncomfortable reality that even my most innocuous purchases — a t-shirt, cheap jewelry, an aluminum can filled with bubbly grapefruit-flavored water — ransack the environment at every stage. From the extraction of resources to production to waste, we are gutting Mother Earth for the sake of vanity, convenience, and — strangely — civic duty. (One example: George W. Bush's response to the 9/11 terrorist attack? Buy more stuff.) 

I know. Can we do anything these days!!? Not to worry, Leonard is not out to make you feel guilty — her solution isn't even for you to stop shopping (although that will help). Leonard wants to shift how we think about stuff, and does — Leonard will change you for the better. You will think twice about buying and reconsider what you already own, with revived appreciation. 

Favorite quote: "We need to object when we are identified as a 'nation of consumers'; individually and collectively, we are so much more than consumers, and those other parts of ourselves have been relegated to subordinate levels for too long."

'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,' by Marie Kondo

Marie Kondo's book on the art of decluttering yields two new ways to look at your personal finances. The first is straightforward — get rid of all the crap in your life and appreciate what is left behind. The sheer volume of possessions we own renders it impossible to enjoy the things we do indeed cherish — so we buy more to fill the void. And duh, this is bad for our bank balances. 

Second, Kondo instills that "a drastic reorganization of the home causes correspondingly dramatic changes in lifestyle and perspective," and this is a practice we can apply to our finances. You can't master your finances without having organized them first. 

Instead of examining physical items, review each line item on your balance sheet and understand where it fits in your overall financial picture. Then, consolidate like hell. Kondo would kick your butt on this — if you don't know what or where it is, you won't be able to fix it.

Favorite quote: "In Japan, people believe that things like cleaning your room and keeping your bathroom spick-and-span bring good luck, but if your house is cluttered, the effect of polishing the toilet bowl is going to be limited."

• Read more:
• In 8 months, I've earned over $250 in interest just by switching to a high-yield savings account
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• I took out $200,000 of life insurance in my early 20s, years before most people ever think they need it — and I've never looked back
• How to look rich when you aren't, according to 'Queer Eye' star Tan France

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Having friends at work can make you more productive.
• One way to make friends is to complain. A recent article in The Cut detailed how positive workplace gossip can lead to friendships and even warn others of difficult managers.
• But gossiping can backfire if not done correctly. Here are some words and phrases you should never say to a coworker.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Getting along with your coworkers is a beautiful thing. It can make your workday less dreary, help you focus better, and make you more productive.

While making work friends can be awkward, one way to break the ice is to start complaining.

Complaining about work tasks means you trust the other person not to spill your secrets, and can lead to closer friendships down the line, according to The Cut. One researcher calls productive work gossip "pro-social," or gossip that can lead to warning your peers about difficult managers or other information that results in more productive work.

Read more:11 tips to help you move on from a job rejection

Some experts, however, warn against getting too chummy with your coworker. While some lighthearted gossiping can be positive, there are certain phrases or conversations that can make you sound unprofessional (and even harassing).  

"In conversation, use a little common sense and discretion, especially when there are others present," says Rosalinda Oropeza Randall, an etiquette and civility expert and the author of "Don't Burp in the Boardroom." "The general guideline is that if you wouldn't say it in front of your boss, don't say it."

Aside from the obvious — like profanity and insults — here are some words and phrases you should never utter to your coworkers:

SEE ALSO: 32 things you should never say to your boss

DON'T MISS: 17 things you should never say on your first day at work

Don't ask your coworker how much they get paid

"This question is not only unprofessional, but awkward," Randall says. "Why do you want to know? Will you complain to your boss if you find it inequitable? Or will you speak to your boss on your coworker's behalf insisting they get a raise?"

Don't ask to borrow

Most of us have forgotten to bring cash or our wallet to work once or twice. Randall says that in this rare occasion, it might be OK to ask your understanding coworker to borrow some money for lunch.

"But if your wallet is always in your 'other purse,' don't be surprised if you're excluded from future lunches," she says.

Stop using the phrase 'honestly'

Barbara Pachter, an etiquette expert and author of "The Essentials of Business Etiquette," says that drawing attention to your honesty at that moment can lead people to wonder, "Aren't you always honest with me?"

Don't spread rumors

"Spread gossip, and you become labeled as a gossip," says Vicky Oliver, author of "Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers & Other Office Idiots" and "Power Sales Words."

"Negative comments about a coworker to another coworker will make you look worse than the person you're talking about, and guess who will be the one who looks bad when it gets back to the person you're talking about?" Randall says.

Don't tell your coworker you like the way her pants fit on her

A compliment isn't against the law, Randall points out, but be selective about what you compliment.

Commenting about a coworker's physical appearance is considered unprofessional, she says — and worse, could be sexual harassment.

Don't tell a coworker, 'You people are always causing problems'

Topics like religion, politics, and child-rearing sometimes come up in the workplace, Randall says. But to negatively comment about any group is unwise and unprofessional, and it could get you in trouble for harassment.

Never ask a coworker if she's pregnant

This question rarely results in a positive outcome.

"If your coworker is not pregnant, you have insulted her," Oliver says. "If she is pregnant, she probably isn't ready to discuss it yet. Keep observations like this to yourself."

Don't say, 'I'm sorry to be a bother'

"Why are you saying you're a bother?" Pachter asks.

And if you are truly sorry about something you haven't done yet, why would you go ahead and do it anyway?

"Excuse me. Do you have a moment?" works much better, she says.

Don't tell your coworkers you are looking for another job, or ask if they know who's hiring

"Sharing this with your coworkers may cause them to instinctively distance themselves, knowing you will no longer be a part of the team," Randall says.

"They also might unintentionally leak the information to your supervisor, which could explain your lack of productivity and absences, resulting in a poor reference or an invitation to pick up your paycheck earlier than you expected," she says.

Don't say: 'See this rash? I'm expecting the lab results tomorrow.'

"Except for maybe your mom or spouse, no one really wants to see or hear about peculiar rashes or any nausea-inducing medical conditions," Randall says. "Limit your sharing to a cold or headache."

Try not to start all of your sentences with 'I think'

Saying "I think" is sometimes acceptable, but only if you truly are unsure.

"Using 'I think' can make you appear wishy-washy," Pachter says. When you know something, state it directly: "The meeting will be at 3 pm."

Don't tell a coworker you were surprised when she was asked to present

You might as well say, "It should have been me."

"The professional response would be, 'Congratulations,'" Randall says.

Don't say: 'Do you mind covering for me while I'm in Bora Bora?'

Flaunting your luxurious lifestyle with your colleagues may set off a jealousy epidemic, Oliver says. In general, it's best to avoid bragging about how great your life is.

Don't ask your coworker if you're invited to a party you overheard him talk about

"This is the grown-up world — not everyone will be invited to everything," Randall says. "Besides, are you prepared for the answer?"

Don't ask a coworker to hook up this weekend

"If you mean 'get together,' then say so," Randall says. "In some circles, a 'hook-up' has a sexual connotation, which could land you in a sexual harassment seminar."

Don't tell your coworkers you're stealing office supplies

You just admitted to stealing, a cause for termination and, at the very least, loss of trust, Randall says.

Don't bring up personal relationship issues

"Intimate details about your personal relationships can divulge unfavorable information about you," Randall says.

Sharing intimate details about your love life falls into the "too much information" category, she says, and "if it doesn't enhance your professional image, or enrich workplace relationships, you should keep it to yourself."

Don't call your coworker a "credit snatcher"

Maybe your colleague or boss took credit for your work, but carping about the problem to your coworkers rarely helps, Oliver says. Instead, it's best to address the issue with the person who took credit for your idea.

Don't ask to borrow deodorant

Really? Sharing is caring and all, but no one at work should be that close.

Don't tell your coworkers you're suing the company

"Whether the charge is legitimate or not, spreading it around will not serve you well — just ask your attorney," Randall says.

If you're really suing your employer, it's best to conduct yourself with discretion and dignity and continue to perform your duties to the best of your ability. If this becomes impossible, you should consider resigning, Randall says.

"But if this is your go-to threat when you're unhappy about something, stop it!" she says.

• "Reply all" messages can become a nuisance, especially if you're trying to get work done and the messages have nothing to do with you.
• To hide notifications from ever-growing email threads, Gmail users can go to a drop-down menu above the thread and click "Mute."
• Whatever you do, don't ask to be removed from the thread via "reply all." Otherwise, you'll be trapped in an email hellscape like employees at Microsoft or NHS.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

If you've ever been roped into a massive email thread, you know how exasperating "reply all" messages can be, especially when they have nothing to do with you. As soon as you click on a new message in the thread, three more come in.

Thankfully, Gmail has a quick fix for that: the "Mute" button.

Here's how you find it.

SEE ALSO: 15 email etiquette rules every professional should know

To find the "Mute" button, go to the email thread you want hidden.

Find the dropdown menu above the thread and all the way to the right.

Once you click "Mute," the thread will be archived, but no longer visible in your inbox.

If you have a change of heart and need it again, it's still searchable.

Another way to get out of an email thread is simply to ask to be removed.

"It sucks when you're stuck on an email thread of declining relevance," writes office culture expert Jocelyn K. Glei in "Unsubscribe: How to kill email anxiety, avoid distractions, and get real work done."

Glei offers a graceful way of escaping a thread by saying this: "Looks like you guys have taken the reins on this conversation! Would you mind moving me to 'bcc' so that I can bow out?"

If the chain isn't work-related, however, Glei gives a more personal example to keep things amiable: "Sean — Would you mind moving me to 'bcc' when you respond? I'm waging war on inbox clutter this week. ;)"

Whatever you do, don't ask to be removed from an email thread via "reply all."

You may end up in a hellish echo chamber with a million people asking to be let out, like NHS employees were in 2016. The UK health service's 1.2 million employees received a "test" email, which caused some of them to hit "reply all," asking to be taken off the recipient list. Since a single email in the thread reaches 1.2 million accounts, NHS's servers slowed down considerably when dozens of annoyed employees sent a collective 140 million emails.

The same thing happened to 11,543 Microsoft employees last January, when an employee reportedly sent out a message to the entire company explaining how to change their GitHub accounts to get fewer notifications.

The irony was not lost on employees, one of whom described the fiasco as a "reply allpocalypse." The moral of the story: don't, under any circumstances, hit "reply all" to thousands of people.

• A new report from The New York Times said staff-free virtual restaurants that only cater to delivery apps are on the rise. 
• Third-party apps are expensive for restaurants to maintain due to high commission fees, so reducing headcount could save businesses money.
• Many restaurants have pointed to minimum wage hikes as reasons why jobs are decreasing slightly in NYC, but they are starting to call out third-party apps as well.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Given the rise of delivery-app use, many restaurants are choosing to do away with tables and chairs entirely, according to the New York Times.

Since restaurants pay delivery apps high commission fees, doing without rent helps businesses save money — but no physical restaurant also means no waitstaff. Restaurants in the city tend to spend one-third of their revenue on labor, according to the New Yorker.

While restaurants have long advocated against minimum-wage hikes for the job cuts they say the move would cause, apps like UberEats and GrubHub may play a role in reduced restaurant employment.

"We saw a direct correlation between the delivery services and the reduction of our income," a restaurant owner who closed two locations after employing delivery apps told the New York Times. "It was like death by a thousand cuts."

Read more:The $15 minimum wage was supposed to bring about the 'restaurant apocalypse.' Here's how 5 major cities are faring so far.

For the most part, food delivery in the US still occurs directly through the restaurant. That means patrons call up a Domino's directly, and an in-house employee delivers the pizza. However, third-party delivery apps like UberEats and Postmates — which any independent contractor can sign up to deliver for — have gained popularity in urban areas and among younger clients, according to eMarketer. The data company found that global downloads of the top five delivery apps grew 115% from 2016 to 2018.

These apps are expensive for restaurants. UberEats charges restaurants a 30% commission on all orders. That means for a sandwich that sells for $17.50 and costs $5.50 to make, Uber Eats takes $5.25 (30%) extra, Skift Table reported. 

"It's really a business model that's bad for restaurants," James Parrott, a director of economic and fiscal policies at The New School, told Business Insider. "Hopefully the industry will come to its senses and push those restaurant delivery services out of the picture, because I have yet to see anything where it's positive for the restaurant industry. It helps crowd out locally owned, smaller restaurants." 

Delivery apps like Uber Eats contend they are helping restaurants by offering more opportunities to give customers food. "Why would a restaurant be working with us if we weren't helping them increase their orders?" Janelle Sallenave, who leads Uber Eats in North America, told The New York Times.

Business Insider has reached out to Uber Eats, Postmates, and GrubHub for comment.

While Parrott couldn't find a direct link to delivery services and restaurant employment, he called third-party delivery apps a "factor" in eroding restaurant employment. He did find that New York City's minimum wage hike had little impact on employment, consistent with reports out of the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Washington. 

Parrott also mentioned app delivery people, who technically work in the restaurant industry, are not counted in overall government employment statistics about the restaurant industry. When compared to full-time restaurant jobs, delivery gigs tend to be dangerous and the pay shaky. The New York Times found delivery apps like DoorDash keep workers' tips (the company later revised its tipping policy). A dissertation out of CUNY found New York City's delivery people tend to be Latino or Asian immigrant men working in unsafe conditions. 

In the last few years, restaurant owners in New York have begun calling out food-delivery apps for hurting their business. The city council recently held a hearing on the impact of restaurant delivery services on the area's hospitality industry.

"There's a concern that it could be a system where restaurant owners are trapped in an unstable, unsuitable business model that not only doesn't add to their bottom line but could eat away at their profits and their ability to keep their doors open," said council member Mark Gjonaj at the hearing, as reported by Nation's Restaurant News.

SEE ALSO: NYC's $15 minimum wage hasn't brought the restaurant apocalypse — it's helped them thrive

SEE ALSO: The $15 minimum wage was supposed to bring about the 'restaurant apocalypse.' Here's how 5 major cities are faring so far.

Join the conversation about this story »

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• For college students looking for a career path, Glassdoor has a list of six-figure jobs that will have plenty of openings in the future. 
• These jobs also allow employees to grow within the role. 
• Physician assistants, for instance, have 10,000 career openings on Glassdoor, and also make more than $100,000 a year. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

If you're heading to college soon and still have no idea what to major in, a good place to start could be looking at high-paying jobs that are hiring right now.

Some of the most in-demand jobs in the US include dentists and accountants, according to a new report from job-listing site Glassdoor. The company released its annual list of the jobs with the best career opportunities, or those that are actively hiring and allow employees to grow within the role. 

Read more:From dancers to photographers and painters, here's how much 28 jobs in the art world really pay

Since many of the fastest-growing jobs are actually low-paying, Glassdoor dug through the data to also find careers that offer salaries as high as six-figures. Physician assistants, for instance, have 10,000 career openings on Glassdoor, and also make more than $100,000 a year. 

Here is the full list of 13 high-paying jobs that are in-demand and offer growth opportunities. 

SEE ALSO: Nurses reveal the 11 hardest parts of their job, from the death of patients to not having time to pee during a shift

25. Software development engineers earn a median base salary of $117,250.

Job openings on Glassdoor: 9,659

O*NET descriptions: Research, design, develop, and test operating systems-level software, compilers, and network distribution software for medical, industrial, military, communications, aerospace, business, scientific, and general computing applications. 

23. Solutions architects earn a median base salary of $130,595.

Job openings on Glassdoor: 7,850

O*NET description: Design and develop solutions to complex applications problems, system administration issues, or network concerns. Perform systems management and integration functions.

20. Product managers earn a median base salary of $117,113.

Job openings on Glassdoor: 12,865

O*NET description: Plan, direct, or coordinate marketing policies and programs, such as determining the demand for products and services offered by a firm and its competitors, and identify potential customers. 

19. Physician assistants earn a median base salary of $107,356.

Job openings on Glassdoor: 10,061

O*NET description: Provide healthcare services typically performed by a physician, under the supervision of a physician.

18. Dentists earn a median base salary of $140,298.

Job openings on Glassdoor: 3,339

O*NET description: Examine, diagnose, and treat diseases, injuries, and malformations of teeth and gums. 

16. Data engineers earn a median salary of $101,527.

Job openings on Glassdoor: 5,489

O*NET description: Administer, test, and implement computer databases, applying knowledge of database management systems.

13. Devops engineers earn a median base salary of $107,619.

Job openings on Glassdoor: 5,505

O*NET description: Develop, create, and modify general computer applications software or specialized utility programs. Analyze user needs and develop software solutions.

11. Product marketing manager earn a median base salary of $121,780.

Job openings on Glassdoor: 2,319

O*NET description: Plan, direct, or coordinate marketing policies and programs, such as determining the demand for products and services offered by a firm and its competitors, and identify potential customers. 

7. Data scientists earn a median base salary of $110,160.

Job openings on Glassdoor: 6,789

O*NET description: Conduct research into fundamental computer and information science as theorists, designers, or inventors. 

6. Audit managers earn a median base salary of $102,521.

Job openings on Glassdoor: 3,050

O*NET description: Examine and analyze accounting records to determine financial status of establishment and prepare financial reports concerning operating procedures.

4. Strategy managers earn a median base salary of $142,328.

Job openings on Glassdoor: 3,131

O*NET description: Develop, maintain, or implement business continuity and disaster recovery strategies and solutions

3. Product designers earn a median base salary of $102,054.

Job openings on Glassdoor: 2,045

1. Tax managers earn a median base salary of $112,021.

Job openings on Glassdoor: 4,803

O*NET description: Prepare tax returns for individuals or small businesses.

• Arbor Ventures managing partner Melissa Guzy says there's a big benefit to being a tech investor based in Asia.
• Being in Singapore and frequently traveling around Asia has given her insights into business trends there and the challenges companies face there, she said.
• Her experience living, working, and investing in Asia helped inform her firm's recent investment in InCountry, a startup that helps companies store data in the countries in which they operate.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Silicon Valley remains ground zero for the venture capital industry, but Melissa Guzy thinks there's a big advantage to being based in Singapore instead.

Living in Asia and traveling extensively in the region has given Guzy, a cofounder and managing partner at Arbor Ventures, a different perspective than she'd have if she were based in Silicon Valley, she told Business Insider in a recent interview. It's given her an up-close perspective on what's going on in Asia and the challenges faced by companies operating there.

"If we were sitting in California, we're just another firm," Guzy said. "When you live globally and you see how different markets are evolving or you see different challenges," she continued, "it really does impact our investment strategy quite a bit."

Guzy's knows from experience. She was a managing director for a Silicon Valley venture firm — VantagePoint Capital — for nearly 12 years before starting Arbor in 2012.

In Silicon Valley "you have less awareness of what the global challenges are"

Last month, Arbor led a $15 million Series A funding round in InCountry, a startup that helps companies store date in the countries in which they operate. A growing number of countries have put in place laws that require data about their residents to be stored within their physical borders or put restrictions on how such information can be used. Companies of all sizes — from giants like Visa or Lufthansa to small startups — are starting to having to contend with such regulations, she said.

Thanks to its position in Asia, Arbor saw this trend emerging and developed an investment thesis around it about a year ago, Guzy said. Because of that, investing in InCountry was "an easy decision for us," she said.

"You don't have to explain to us the problem," Guzy said. "So it's just a question of how good is the solution, because we see the problem. Our companies [that Arbor has invested in] experience the problem."

Read this: This tech CEO has sold 6 startups for a combined $500 million. These are his top tips for selling at the perfect time.

Another example of how Arbor's location has influenced particular investments is Forter, a startup that provides online fraud protection services. Credit card companies usually protect brick-and-mortar retailers when people use stolen cards to make purchases or other types of card fraud. But they don't generally offer the same protections to online retailers; instead, online stores generally have to eat such costs.

That's made many apprehensive about approving transactions that look unusual or sketchy for any reason. Forter and other companies like it, including Signifyd, review and approve transactions on behalf of online retailers and assume the liability for any card fraud.

That investment was informed by Guzy's own experiences living Asia. She'd attempt to purchase an item from a US-based online merchant, but would be denied, not because she couldn't pay or her credit card company rejected the charge, but because the online merchant thought it was too risky, because the order was coming from overseas.

When you're based in the US, as opposed to elsewhere, "you have less awareness of what the global challenges are," she said.

Why Hong Kong is fading, and Singapore is rising

Arbor, which has offices in Singapore, Tel Aviv, and Tokyo, focuses on financial technology companies, defined very broadly. It invests about 80% of its funds in early-stage companies — those raising seed and A rounds — and the other 20% in more mature companies raising later rounds of funding. It splits its events roughly evenly among companies based in the United States, those based in eastern Asia, and those based in Israel or the greater Middle East.

Until November, Guzy and Arbor's main office were based in Hong Kong. Over the last 10 years, Hong Kong has become less of an international business hub and more of just a special region of China that's focused on serving the needs of its parent country, she said. Singapore, by contrast, has started to become the kind of regional center — particularly for technology and venture capital — that Hong Kong once was, she said, noting that the city-state has convinced Google, Facebook, and Palantir to set up offices there in recent years.

"They've done a really, really good job of growing the community, and so we thought it was a necessity for us to be there," she said.

Got a tip about venture capital or startups? Contact this reporter via email at twolverton@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

• Read more about venture capital and startups:
• This VC helped jump-start the app economy by launching the iFund. Now he thinks an overlooked part of the enterprise-software market is about to explode.
• This founder's startup developed a super-efficient chip to help self-driving cars 'see' the world around them. Here's the pitch deck it used to raise $25 million to get the chip in production.
• This VC firm managing $500 million in assets tries to invest in as few companies as possible. And it only wants startups with management teams looking for help.
• One of the first backers of Skype and Wix.com explains why the European startup scene is starting to close the gap with Silicon Valley

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• Ahead of Y Combinator's Demo Day on August 19 and 20, CEO Michael Seibel told Business Insider that a lot of founders are having to work against skeptics.
• Startups shouldn't be conflated with bigger technology companies like Google, Seibel said, because mature tech companies are easier to compare to entrenched players like Exxon Mobil.
• Founders that go through Y Combinator have to remain passionate about their idea without letting controversial topics like regulation overwhelm them, Seibel said.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

With the tech industry under the microscope, Silicon Valley's young startups are caught in the middle of contentious debates about privacy, regulation, and accountability. 

Startup accelerator Y Combinator runs a founder showcase, called Demo Day, which is something of a Silicon Valley legend. This year, the two-day event will run from August 19 to 20 in San Francisco where entrepreneurs at the end of the 3-month program will pitch some of the Valley's biggest investors for funding for their startups.

It's a coveted moment for techies chasing the Silicon Valley dream, and an opportunity to shine in front of a friendly crowd. Outside the confines of Silicon Valley however, the startups will face a much more skeptical audience.  And Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel says startups need to be ready for it.

For a startup pitching an idea for a game-changing tech product, the task is much trickier today, when tech has become a bad word for a lot of people, Seibel told Business Insider in an interview.

"In this age, where I think tech is getting more skepticism, which is legit, you have to make sure you're not letting that splash on to your startup and get you down," Seibel said.

Read More:Silicon Valley's most famous startup accelerator has a lot of participants who have already done the program. Tech founders share why they rejoined Y Combinator even after launching successful startups.

Outside of Silicon Valley, Seibel has noticed people start to refer to startups with the same language they used to describe larger tech companies like Google and Facebook, both of which are facing significant scrutiny from users and lawmakers alike.

At one time, a comparison to Google would have been the ultimate complement. Today, it's a less-than-ideal comparison for founders just starting out.

"Sometimes in the popular culture it's like, it's weird to me, but I think it's very normal to lump Google, Facebook, and then all the startups you've ever heard of. I would hope that we could separate them out a little," Seibel said.

One of the biggest differences, according to Seibel, is the standards founders are held to by the general public and investors. Those expectations tend to remain the same whether a founder is running a four-person team or a 50,000-person team, but Seibel argues that shouldn't be the case.

"It feels like Google and startups should be a closer comparison than Exxon Mobil and startups, but in reality Google is a lot closer to Exxon Mobile than it is to startups," Seibel said.

Although Google and Facebook started out as four-person teams themselves, both tech giants have come under scrutiny for a host of privacy and anti-competitive concerns. In July, the US Federal Trade Commission hit Facebook with a $5 billion penalty over its handling of user data. And Google has been fined billions of dollars in Europe because of its business practices, and is facing an antitrust investigation in the US by the Department of Justice. 

For companies like Google and Facebook, once revered as paragons of business success and innovation, the loss of public goodwill has come as a stunning and humbling blow. And for young startup entrepreneurs who grew up associating Google with its erstwhile "Don't be evil" motto, the change in perception is one more variable to plan for and learn from while building a company.

Many entrepreneurs may dream of achieving even a fraction of the companies' success, but Seibel believes that founders need to hold themselves to a higher standard to avoid the same pitfalls.

"Honestly, maybe the standards should have been higher for those bigger companies back then," Seibel said. "Startups are far more of a faith-based initiative. If you're not in the right headspace, it can really screw you up. You have to really be the biggest fan of your startup to make it work."

SEE ALSO: This 22-year-old dropped out of MIT to launch an AI startup that just got backed by the Twitch and Instagram founders, and Peter Thiel's VC firm

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch SpaceX's 'most difficult launch ever'

• Emotions are complicated.
• For example, facial expressions don't map neatly to emotional states.
• A recent review paper from researchers at Northeastern and the California Institute of Technology found a massive disconnect between common assumptions about how emotions work and what actually happens when people express emotions and how they're understood. 
• This could lead to major problems. As artificial intelligence grows more prevalent, researchers warn that "the science of emotion is ill-equipped to support any of these initiatives."
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Understanding an emotion isn't as simple as noticing a smile — but we still look to facial movements for everything from navigating everyday social interactions to the development of emotionally attuned artificial intelligence.

According to a July study from researchers at Northeastern and the California Institute of Technology, facial expressions reflect only the surface of emotions: The culture, situation, and specific person around a facial expression add nuance to the way a feeling is conveyed.

For example, the researchers said that Olympic athletes who won medals smiled only when they knew they were being watched by an audience. While they were waiting behind the podium or facing away from people, they didn't smile (but were probably still happy). These results reinforce the idea that facial expressions aren't always reliable indicators of emotion.

"Such findings are consistent," the researchers wrote, "with more recent sociological evidence that smiles are social cues that can communicate different social messages depending on the cultural context."

The common assumptions about emotions are getting in the way of actually understanding them — especially in tech

This stance challenges what the researchers call "the common view," or the assumption that certain facial movements, like a furrowed brow or tightened lips, relate to emotional categories like anger or frustration. That presents a real risk for technologists: If artificial-intelligence developers rely on the common view, they could oversimplify emotional states and construct AI based on incomplete information. 

But technology companies are already investing millions of dollars in research around the common view. Amazon is even looking into virtual human tech to interact with consumers, and virtual humans can be used in everything from educating children to training physicians. Regardless of where you stand within the corporate hierarchy, understanding the nuances of emotional intelligence, and how it can be developed, can help you understand yourself and your colleagues (whether human, virtual, or artificial) a bit better. 

The researchers suggest that current research isn't as far along in understanding emotion as people assume — and this may also be why technologies like AI fall short in connecting the dots of human emotion.

Technology companies should take note as they attempt to develop emotional intelligence in AI.

But the 'common view' is also an issue for everyday interactions

On a more personal level, moving away from the common view could influence how well you deal with your emotions. Communicating your emotions as specifically as possible, and learning how you and others express them, elevates your emotional intelligence.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, the lead author on the study and the director of Northeastern University's Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory, introduced the concept of "emotional granularity," or the notion that the better you are at finely tuning and communicating your feelings, the more precise emotions you'll experience.

"So if you have a very fine-grained conceptual system for emotion, you know a lot about emotion, then your brain is able to construct very precise prediction in a way that's tailored very specifically to your situation," she told Drake Baer, the deputy editor at Business Insider. "So you're not using stereotypes; you're using these very fine-grained, honed, situated predictions."

Instead of expressions, humans and AI alike should be looking for emotions in context

Based on that research, tech companies now seem to be asking the wrong question. If individual emotional intelligence can be improved by understanding the context in which emotions occur, and communicating feelings specifically, then AI developers should prioritize those factors over facial movements to understand emotional cues.

"It is time to move beyond a science of stereotypes to develop a science of how people actually move their faces to express emotion in real life," Barrett and her colleagues wrote, "and the processes by which those movements carry information about emotion to someone else."

SEE ALSO: Jeff Bezos just sent a clear signal that AI will remake American jobs

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Slack and Flickr, says 2 beliefs have brought him the greatest success in life

• Brian and Lynn Brandow had a "normal" American family. They were homeowners, took vacations with their three children, and didn't discuss money.
• Whenever they had an unexpected life event, they put it on a credit card, only paying the monthly minimums. After ten years, they had almost maxed out five credit cards.
• Their money problems put a strain on their relationship. The couple began to tackle the debt, but it was rough at first. 
• They began communicating with their kids and each other about money, and made a plan to cut back and pay off debts. While there were bumps in the road, they began to feel much less stress as debts got paid off. Now, their marriage is stronger. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Brian and Lynn Brandow have been happily married for almost 20 years, but they have had their share of money disagreements over the years. Their relationship hit rock bottom after they maxed out all five of their credit cards and amassed $109,000 in debt.

Unsure of how they could ever repay it, the debt brought a lot of stress and anxiety into their marriage.

With their backs against the wall, the Brandows knew they needed to make a plan to save their family. Using the plan they made, they were able to pay off the entire balance in slightly over four years. 

It was an incredible turnaround from their previous financial track record. Brandow even chronicled his family's journey to pay off the debt on his personal finance blog, Debt Discipline.

SEE ALSO: I'm an entrepreneur who made it through the Great Recession with revenues up to $23 million. Here are my 5 tips for recession-proofing your business.

How the spending problems began

Brian Brandow's family of five was like many other American families. They owned a home, took vacations, often dined out, and never talked about money. When life happened unexpectedly — events like a flat tire, a home repair, or an appliance breakdown — they did what they thought was normal: They used a credit card to pay for it. With little to no cash savings, that was their plan for these types of mini-emergencies.

The Brandows communicated very little about money, and certainly never spoke about it with their three children. They just used credit cards as a Band-aid to their overspending, and slowly built up a pile of debt. The couple justified their behavior by telling themselves if they could manage the monthly minimum payment, it would be okay. Little did they realize how much additional money they were paying every month in interest, and the long-term effect a plan like this would have on their finances.

Signs of trouble

This plan worked for close to 10 years — until they ran out of runway. One credit card turned into five, and as balances ballooned, the stress of the monthly payments crept in on them. They began communicating more only in the form of disagreements and money fights over their spending habits. The defining moment came when they were close to maxing their credit limits on all five of their cards and could not finance a summer vacation for their family.

Brian was the one who managed the money in their house. He says, "I felt like I had let my wife and children down." Backed into a financial corner, he knew it was time for a change.

Money problems destroy marriages

One of the top problems facing romantic relationships today is money and debt.  According to a Ramsey Solutions survey, money is the second leading cause of divorce, after infidelity.

Here are some more of the key findings from the Ramsey survey:

Nearly two-thirds of all marriages start off in debt. Forty-three percent of couples married more than 25 years started off in debt, while 86% of couples married five years or less started off in the red — twice the number of their earlier generations. One-third of people who say they argued with their spouse about money say they hid a purchase from their spouse because they knew their partner would not approve.

Ninety-four percent of respondents who say they have a "great" marriage discuss their money dreams with their spouse, compared to only 45% of respondents who say their marriage is "okay" or "in crisis." 

Eighty-seven percent of respondents who say their marriage is "great" also say they and their spouse work together to set long-term goals for their money.

And 63% of those with $50,000 or more in debt feel anxious about talking about their personal finances. Almost half (47%) of respondents with consumer debt say their level of debt creates stress and anxiety.

How they did it

Knowing he needed to make a change, Brandow began to educate himself on strategies to get out of debt. He found several personal finance blogs, the debt snowball technique, and the Dave Ramsey community. With his newfound knowledge, Brandow was able to build a plan for his money — his family's first budget. For their budget, Brandow simply sat down with his computer and an Excel spreadsheet and tallied up all of his family's income and expenses. The couple was then able to decide where they needed to cut back.

The couple reviewed and decided on a plan for their money as a team for the first time. They both agreed that it would be difficult to change their bad behaviors, but that they needed to make the change for themselves and their three children. They also decided that they needed to continue to communicate about their money often, setting up periodic check-ins.

Brian and Lynn also spoke to their three children about their bad financial behaviors. They wanted the kids to understand why spending changes would be taking place and why they might hear the word "no" more often when asking for things.

The first few months of Brian and Lynn's plan were tough. It took time for new habits to form and the whole family to adjust. "We began by paying our smallest debt first — we followed the snowball method (paying off the smallest debt first and then moving up the line of debt). Our total monthly payment for our debt was $2,000 for nearly the entire duration of our debt repayment period," explained Brian. Over time they became experts at finding novel ways to save money and stretch out their dollars by cutting out trips to the salon, cutting out subscriptions they had, and limiting their travel, but they hit a few bumps in the road too.

Lynn was in a car accident and was out of work for over a year. Brian explains, "Our primary goal was to make sure Lynn was healthy. The fact that we now had a plan for our money, [meant] an unexpected life event like this was easier to manage." Lynn recovered and returned to work.

Life after debt

Having a clear "why" really helped Brian and family stay motivated during the long payoff. Saving money wasn't easy, but within the first few months of their repayment, with only a few thousand dollars knocked off of the debt, they began to feel the effects of their progress: less stress in their lives and no bad feelings toward money.

The simple fact that they had built a money plan as a team to overcome their debt helped to strengthen their relationship and marriage. Involving their three children in money discussion brought the family closer together than they had ever been.

"It's a whole new life and relationship together after debt!" Brian says now. 

• The average US workweek may be 38.6 hours long, but quite a few countries have employees who spend even more time at the office.
• Turkey, Colombia, and Mexico all have workweeks that are over 40 hours long, according to the OECD Better Life Index.
• The longest workweek in the world is in Colombia, where workers are expected to clock in 47.7 hours.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Some countries have a work ethic that makes the US workweek look like a walk in the park.

The average US workweek is 38.6 hours long. That may feel like forever to some people, but it's nothing compared to some countries' workweeks. According to a 40-country annual survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the international average workweek was 36.8 hours in 2018. We looked at the OECD's Better Life Index to find out why workweeks were so long in some places, but not in others.

Next time you're feeling envious of the Dutch workweek (at 29 hours long on average, it's the shortest on the OECD's ranking), remember that some workers spend a lot more time at the office than you do.

Here are the countries with the world's longest workweeks.

SEE ALSO: From San Diego to Austin and Seattle, these are the 15 best US cities to launch a startup

19. The United States has a 38.6-hour workweek.

In the US, 11% of workers work over 50 hours a week, in line with the OECD's average of 11%. US workers also have 14.4 hours to themselves outside of work, slightly less than the 15-hour OECD average.

Average annual hours worked per worker: 1,766

18. Lithuania has a 38.7-hour workweek.

Lithuania follows the same five-day, eight-hour workweek as the US, and workers usually come in between 8 and 8:30 am. Occasionally, workers clock in for an extra workday on Saturdays. Workers also get an average of four weeks of paid vacation, which is also standard among other European Union member states.

Average annual hours worked per worker: 1,616

17. Iceland has a 38.8-hour workweek.

Iceland's workweek hovers below the 40-hour mark, but sources like Iceland Review say it's much longer — 45 hours a week. 

Average annual hours worked per worker: 1,469

16. Greece has a 38.8-hour workweek.

Greek workers spend more time working than most of their European counterparts, but that number used to be much higher. A Greek workweek in 1975 was 48 hours long, compared to today's norm of just under 40 hours a week.

Average annual hours worked per worker: 1,956

15. Slovenia has a 39-hour workweek.

Like Greece, Slovenians spend around 39 hours working each week. Slovenians only work 1,603 hours a year on average, unlike Greek workers, who spend 1,956 hours working a year. This is mainly due to far fewer vacation days available in Greece.

Average annual hours worked per worker: 1,603

14. Latvia has a 39.1-hour workweek.

Only 1.3% of Latvians work over 50 hours a week, compared with the OECD average of 11%.

Average annual hours worked per worker: 1,699

13. Slovakia has a 39.1-hour workweek.

The average worker in Slovakia makes about 912 euro a month ($1,022). The most lucrative jobs are in finance and insurance (1,747 euros a month), while some of the lowest-paying jobs are in restaurants (512 euros a month).

Average annual hours worked per worker: 1,698

12. The Czech Republic has a 39.4-hour workweek.

Like most countries in the European Union, the Czech Republic gives workers about 20 vacation days a year, and at least one of the holiday that workers take must be two weeks long.

Average annual hours worked per worker: 1,792

11. Portugal has a 39.5-hour workweek.

Despite having a longer average workweek, only 8% of Portuguese workers work over 50 hours a week, compared with the OECD average of 11%.

Average annual hours worked per worker: 1,722

10. Brazil has a 39.5-hour workweek.

Brazilian workers spend less of their day outside of work than most countries — 14.6 hours are reserved for eating, sleeping, and socializing, compared the OECD average of 15 hours. 

Average annual hours worked per worker: N/A

9. Hungary has a 39.6-hour workweek.

Women in Hungary have lower fertility rates than women in other OECD countries, partly because there aren't many resources for working mothers to take care of their children aside from parental leave. Only 11% of children under age three are in some form of day care.

Average annual hours worked per worker: 1,741

8. Poland has a 39.8-hour workweek.

Poland's employment rate is 66% for people aged 15 to 64, slightly below the OECD average of 68%.

Average annual hours worked per worker: 1,792

7. Israel has a 40.6-hour workweek.

Israel may not have the longest workweek, but it spends a lot of time working over the course of the year, as shown by their annual hours worked. Around 15.4% of employees work 50 hours or more, and the average Israeli worker only has 13.4 hours outside of work each day, including sleep.

Average annual hours worked per worker: 1,910

6. Chile has a 42.8-hour workweek.

Chile is no. 38 out of 40 on OECD's ranking for the most average leisure time. That means many Chilean workers don't have much time to themselves outside of work — just 13.3 hours compared to the OECD's 15-hour average. 

Average annual hours worked per worker: 1,941

5. South Africa has a 42.9-hour workweek.

Only 44% of South Africans aged 15 to 64 have paid jobs, far below the OECD average of 68%. For those who do have jobs, 18% of South Africans work over 50 hours in a week, more than the OECD average of 11%.

Average annual hours worked per worker: N/A

4. Costa Rica has a 44.5-hour workweek.

Costa Ricans not only have long workweeks, they also have the second-highest annual hours worked, just behind Mexico.

Average annual hours worked per worker: 2,121

3. Mexico has a 45.1-hour workweek.

In Mexico, a whopping 28.7% of workers stay in the office over 50 hours a week, and Mexican workers only have 12.4 hours of free time outside of work each day. Despite not having the longest workday, the average Mexican worker puts in more hours at the office annually than any other nationality.

Average annual hours worked per worker: 2,148

2. Turkey has a 47-hour workweek.

Turkey works longer hours than any other OECD country: 32% of workers report working more than 50 hours a week. However, many of them still find free time outside of work: Turkish workers spend 14.8 hours outside the office a day, just below the OECD average of 15 hours.

Average annual hours worked per worker: N/A

1. Colombia has a 47.7-hour workweek.

Colombia is in last place for the OECD's overall work-life balance index for a number of reasons. Aside from having the longest average workweek, Colombians have less free time than any other nationality outside of work: only 12 hours a day on average. They're also ranked no. 38 out of 40 for workers working over 50 hours a week — 26.6% of workers work long hours, behind only Mexico and Turkey.

Average annual hours worked per worker: N/A

• Mariya Filipova, 35, is Anthem's vice president of innovation.
• About 18 months ago, Filipova's life took an unexpected turn when she was diagnosed with a kidney tumor. Since being treated, recovering, and returning to work, she's been able to bring the perspective she had as a patient to her role. 
• In meetings, she said she often asks the question: "What's in it for the patient?"
• Filipova is one of Business Insider's 30 leaders under 40 transforming the future of healthcare. Read the full list here.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Mariya Filipova, 35, is the vice president of innovation at the health insurer Anthem, where she's able to bring her experience as a patient to the industry.

Filipova began her career in finance, working on credit research at Barclays in London through the financial crisis. She later went on to work as a consultant at Deloitte, where she worked with other regulated industries like healthcare. 

About 18 months ago, Filipova's life took an unexpected turn when she was diagnosed with a kidney tumor.

"I learned more about healthcare in my experience in 18 months as a patient than my entire decade as an adviser," Filipova said.

When Filipova was treated, recovered, and ready to go back to work, she made the move over to Anthem, where she joined as the vice president of innovation at the health insurer. In her role, she's able to bring the perspective she had as a patient to her work. For her work, Business Insider named Filipova to Business Insider's list of 30 healthcare leaders under 40 transforming the industry. 

Now in meetings, she said she often asks the question: "What's in it for the patient? What's in it for me as the patient?" 

On the innovation team, she helps look for new investments. Her team also helps other parts of the organization with digital projects, such as predicting if a member might call about a problem and proactively reaching out instead. They also collaborate with other organizations to pin down how the healthcare industry can use new technologies like blockchain. 

When working with innovative new ideas, it's easy to get excited about a new technology or project that seems like it'll change everything.

"It's very easy to get lost in the hype of technology or large scale transformation," Filipova said. "But at the end of the day, a patient doesn't care if we're solving their problem with blockchain or Excel sheets."

Instead, they're thinking about whether or not their problem is getting solved and if that's done in an easy way, she said.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Animated map shows where American accents came from

• School-ranking website Niche rated the best public high schools in every US state.
• To determine the best public high schools, the site looked at SAT and ACT scores, reading and math proficiency, graduation rate, AP enrollment, and diversity, among many other factors.
• The best public high school in the US is Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

There are a lot of high schools in the United States — 18,841 to be exact. And now that another summer is drawing to a close, those 18,841 high schools will soon be opening their doors for a new school year.

To find the best one in each state, school-ranking website Niche rated the high schools according to several factors, including SAT and ACT scores, reading and math proficiency, graduation rate, AP enrollment, and diversity.

Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois, scored higher than any other school, making it the No. 1 high school in the country.

Here are the top high schools in each state.

SEE ALSO: Why going to the most expensive colleges might not be worth it

Alabama: Loveless Academic Magnet Program High School

Location: Montgomery

Overall rank: #52

Graduation rate: 95%

AP Enrollment: 93%

Alaska: West High School

Location: Anchorage

Overall rank: #1,301

Graduation rate: 87%

AP Enrollment: 13%

Arizona: Basis Scottsdale

Location: Scottsdale

Overall rank: #7

Graduation rate: 95%

AP Enrollment: 95%

Arkansas: Haas Hall Academy

Location: Fayetteville

Overall rank: #347

Graduation rate: 95%

AP Enrollment: 71%

California: Canyon Crest Academy

Location: San Diego

Overall rank: #16

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 57%

Colorado: Cherry Creek High School

Location: Greenwood Village

Overall rank: #122

Graduation rate: 93%

AP Enrollment: 34%

Connecticut: Staples High School

Location: Westport

Overall rank: #125

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 36%

Delaware: Charter School of Wilmington

Location: Wilmington

Overall rank: #26

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 42%

District of Columbia: The School Without Walls High School

Location: Washington, DC

Overall rank: #179

Graduation rate: 95%

AP Enrollment: 67%

Florida: Pine View School

Location: Osprey

Overall rank: #69

Graduation rate: 95%

AP Enrollment: 77%

Georgia: Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science & Technology

Location: Lawrenceville

Overall rank: #13

Graduation rate: 95%

AP Enrollment: 68%

Hawaii: Education Laboratory School

Location: Lawrenceville

Overall rank: #13

Graduation rate: 95%

AP Enrollment: 68%

Idaho: Boise Senior High School

Location: Boise

Overall rank: #512

Graduation rate: 92%

AP Enrollment:43%

Illinois: Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

Location: Aurora

Overall rank: #1

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 34%

Indiana: West Lafayette Junior/Senior High School

Location: West Lafayette

Overall rank: #39

Graduation rate: 95%

AP Enrollment: 34%

Iowa: Ames High School

Location: Ames

Overall rank: #164

Graduation rate: 93%

AP Enrollment: 40%

Kansas: Blue Valley North High School

Location: Overland Park

Overall rank: #49

Graduation rate: 96%

AP Enrollment: 44%

Kentucky: DuPont Manual High School

Location: Louisville

Overall rank: #35

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 81%

Louisiana: Benjamin Franklin High School

Location: New Orleans

Overall rank: #32

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 76%

Maine: Maine School of Science & Mathematics

Location: Limestone

Overall rank: #86

Graduation rate: 90%

AP Enrollment: 52%

Maryland: Poolesville High School

Location: Poolesville

Overall rank: #30

Graduation rate: 97%

AP Enrollment: 65%

Massachusetts: Massachusetts Academy of Math & Science

Location: Worcester

Overall rank: #10

Graduation rate: 90%

AP Enrollment: N/A

Michigan: International Academy

Location: Bloomfield Hills

Overall rank: #54

Graduation rate: 90%

AP Enrollment: N/A

Minnesota: Minnetonka Senior High School

Location: Minnetonka

Overall rank: #127

Graduation rate: 96%

AP Enrollment: 46%

Mississippi: The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science

Location: Columbus

Overall rank: #6

Graduation rate: 100%

AP Enrollment: 78%

Missouri: Clayton High School

Location: Clayton

Overall rank: #72

Graduation rate: 98%

AP Enrollment: 33%

Montana: Bozeman High School

Location: Bozeman

Overall rank: #1,210

Graduation rate: 84%

AP Enrollment: 29%

Nebraska: Millard North High School

Location: Omaha

Overall rank: #500

Graduation rate: 93%

AP Enrollment: 33%

Nevada: The Davidson Academy

Location: Reno

Overall rank: #25

Graduation rate: N/A

AP Enrollment: N/A

New Hampshire: Hanover High School

Location: Hanover

Overall rank: #124

Graduation rate: 95%

AP Enrollment: N/A

New Jersey: Bergen County Academies

Location: Hackensack

Overall rank: #12

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 47%

New Mexico: Albuquerque Institute of Math & Science

Location: Albuquerque

Overall rank: #762

Graduation rate: 90%

AP Enrollment: 73%

New York: Stuyvesant High School

Location: New York

Overall rank: #4

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 56%

North Carolina: Raleigh Charter High School

Location: Raleigh

Overall rank: #29

Graduation rate: 95%

AP Enrollment: 54%

North Dakota: Fargo Davies High School

Location: Fargo

Overall rank: #1,194

Graduation rate: 96%

AP Enrollment: 34%

Ohio: Dublin Jerome High School

Location: Dublin

Overall rank: #64

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 40%

Oklahoma: Booker T. Washington High School

Location: Tulsa

Overall rank: #328

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 35%

Oregon: South Eugene High School

Location: Eugene

Overall rank: #493

Graduation rate: 89%

AP Enrollment: 24%

Pennsylvania: Conestoga Senior High School

Location: Berwyn

Overall rank: #24

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 52%

Rhode Island: Barrington High School

Location: Barrington

Overall rank: #496

Graduation rate: 97%

AP Enrollment: 29%

South Carolina: Academic Magnet High School

Location:North Charleston

Overall rank: #40

Graduation rate: 95%

AP Enrollment: 65%

South Dakota: Brandon Valley High School

Location: Brandon

Overall rank: #1,675

Graduation rate: 94%

AP Enrollment: 8%

Tennessee: Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet School

Location: Nashville

Overall rank: #87

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 72%

Texas: Liberal Arts & Science Academy

Location: Austin

Overall rank: #11

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 76%

Utah: Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy

Location: Lindon

Overall rank: #312

Graduation rate: 95%

AP Enrollment: 33%

Vermont: South Burlington High School

Location: South Burlington

Overall rank: #441

Graduation rate: 93%

AP Enrollment: 31%

Virginia: Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology

Location: Alexandria

Overall rank: #2

Graduation rate: 99%

AP Enrollment: 73%

Washington: Tesla STEM High School

Location: Redmond

Overall rank: #43

Graduation rate: 95%

AP Enrollment: 71%

West Virginia: Morgantown High School

Location: Morgantown

Overall rank: #1,828

Graduation rate: 89%

AP Enrollment: 32%

Wisconsin: Whitefish Bay High School

Location: Whitefish Bay

Overall rank: #100

Graduation rate: 96%

AP Enrollment: 31%

Wyoming: Big Horn High School

Location: Big Horn

Overall rank: #1,875

Graduation rate: 90%

AP Enrollment: N/A