Chief executives say the pandemic era has pointed the way toward a near-future of flexible work, a more relaxed work-life balance, and more inclusive cultures.
Once the US emerges from its socially distanced cocoon, the new workplace could address longstanding issues ranging from overwork to lack of paid leave.
This feature is part of a series based on conversations with more than 200 CEOs on how business will be transformed by the coronavirus. To read more, click here.
When the coronavirus pandemic arrived in the US and disrupted the world of work, it threw millions into a strange new, entirely remote world. CEOs included.
For many of those still working amid a historic wave of layoffs, an online workplace culture has emerged, one with entirely new strengths, giving executives a valuable opportunity to rethink their operations.
It made work more flexible because it had to be, and that flexibility might just stick.
Business Insider recently asked more than 200 chief executive officers at some of the world's largest companies how business will be transformed by the coronavirus. Many described a future where some workers can pick when and where they want to clock in; where online tools lead to creative solutions; and where the climate encourages personal lives to be shared with colleagues.
"It's difficult to draw many positives from a crisis that has had such a significant human cost, and that has created such dire economic circumstances for so many families," Lee Olesky, CEO of financial services company Tradeweb, told Business Insider. "I hope we'll use it as an opportunity to ask some tough questions: do we need to adjust the work-life balance? How can we make sure the most vulnerable are better protected? Are we really getting healthcare right?"
The post-pandemic workplace could address issues that were quietly mounting for years. Burnout, or work-induced stress and anxiety, became a clinical syndrome in 2019, and more than half of American workers say their job has negatively impacted their mental health.
Then the pandemic hit, wiping out millions of jobs, particularly those in hospitality and restaurants.
And to be sure, the benefits these CEOs described are likely to primarily extend to workers in office settings, whose jobs can easily be made virtual.
For these white-collar professionals, work may never be the same again.
The flexible work revolution is here
The conversation around increasing work-life balance has, before now, largely centered around the four-day workweek. And that has had some glimmers of success, as when Microsoft cut one day at a Japanese subsidiary and saw a 40% boost in productivity. But executives said a separate breakthrough is emerging from the fog of the pandemic: flexible work.
Flexible work allows employees to choose times and locations that suit their personal and familial needs. The CEOs polled by Business Insider were consistent in acknowledging that they see flexible work redefining their workforces after the pandemic.
Aaron Levie, CEO of cloud content management company Box, said the company will "absolutely" shift to a more "dynamic, real-time" work style, defined by working from home and flexible work hours. Todd McKinnon, chief executive of software company Okta, said the future of work will likely enable employees to work anywhere, without sacrificing benefits like healthcare and volunteer opportunities.
"We used to joke about meetings that could have been emails," said Vice Media CEO Nancy Dubuc, "but now we'll wonder why we can't just do them in our pajamas with our pets on video conference."
Jeff Lawson, CEO of cloud communications platform Twilio, added that "the virtual model of flexibility will always persist. It's up to teams to decide how they persist if they prefer to work remotely or cohabitate in an office." When people do return to offices, Lawson said, "we'll see a lot fewer people five days a week and more people who will work from home one to two days a week."
Arthur Sadoun, CEO of advertising holding company Publicis, agreed, saying that "today, no one cares if the work is in London and the talent that can take it on is in Chicago – everyone is working remotely."
The new flexibility "will benefit employees and leaders alike by boosting team morale," according to Carolyn Childers, CEO of Chief, a private network for female professionals. She noted that remote work is a widely sought-after employee benefit. According to a February 2020 survey of 1,000 US professionals conducted by Deloitte, 94% of employees indicated that they would "benefit from flexible work options."
It could help companies save on travel costs and potentially rent, Childers said, and increase access to new, diverse talent pools beyond the city in which any company is based, potentially transforming the jobs market in rural areas.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who encouraged employees to work remotely in early March, made the policy permanent in early May, Buzzfeed reported this week. The policy applies to all jobs that don't require physical presence, such as server maintenance.
Tech could overhaul brainstorming and communication
A potential downside to a majority-remote workforce could be a kind of "Zoom fatigue," or overexposure to videoconferencing. But online meetings might also benefit employers — with the right technology.
"We used to think that idea-making — to get to the creative part of the business — idea-making had to have a human touch," said Gail Heimann, the CEO of PR firm Weber Shandwick. "You had to be in the room, you had to be kicking it around. You have to be throwing stuff at each other and eating pizza. But idea-making can completely thrive in this virtualized world."
Joe Lusardi, CEO of Curaleaf, a cannabis company, said going forward there would need to be "good justification" for taking business trips for meetings that could have been done on Zoom.
Some research suggests brainstorming online might be more effective than booking a conference room and ordering lunch. One 2007 meta-analysis found 70% of participants came up with more creative ideas when brainstorming virtually than in person.
Harvard Business Review's Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic has found that while traditional meetings typically have a couple extroverts dominating the conversation, online meetings gives participants a sense of anonymity that allows for more balanced conversations.
"The shift to a more personal way of using digital communications, face to face video and information sharing will definitely continue to be more prevalent," said Martin Fritsches, the CEO of Rolls-Royce North America.
But a lot is lost in video calls too: as teams rely on chatrooms for day-to-day communication, they can lose nonverbal cues that establish tone and urgency. Clear communication will be one of the hallmarks of a successful organization "now more than ever," said WW CEO Mindy Grossman.
"No question about it, streaming video works — but it is not the same; the experience is different, and for certain functions and activities it does not produce the chemistry and energy that a person-to-person interaction does," David Brickman, CEO of Freddie Mac, said.
Videoconferencing could usher in a new wave of company inclusivity — and allow you to bring your whole self to work
Videoconferencing enables colleagues to peak into one another's homes to discover what kind of books decorate their shelves and how they communicate with their loved ones. Coworkers can see each other's more personal sides, which has already shown signs of enabling them to bring their whole selves to work in ways that weren't possible before.
Katia Beauchamp, founder and CEO of Birchbox, a beauty subscription service, said that allowing colleagues to invite each other into their homes (albeit virtually) has brought depth to relationships at work "that would take months or years to create."
Jenny Johnson, CEO of investment manager Franklin Templeton, said "video calls have naturally become more personal as kids and pets weave in and out of the frame," and the technology is actually an improvement on much of what came before.
Childers said she has been pleasantly surprised, because her prediction that remote work would negatively impact company culture and connectedness "has not manifested. Many teams are growing closer while working remotely — virtually building relationships with one another's children, removing the corporate facade, and honestly discussing mental health, uncertainty, and coping. Her team even created something called "Camp Chief," where teammates "virtually babysit" their colleagues' children.
Many diversity experts said allowing employees to feel like they can bring their whole selves to work aids allows for greater inclusion and belonging.
White-collar workforces in the US are still essentially homogenous: men and women of color respectively make up 16% and 18% of entry-level roles at 590 major US corporations, per McKinsey, and the ratio diminishes further up the management ladder. A Glassdoor survey of working professionals revealed that 42% of American workers said they have experienced or seen racism at work, and half of LGBTQ employees reported verbal discrimination.
A more diverse workforce is good for business, too. Evidence indicates that non-diverse companies are less innovative and less profitable.
The pandemic that brought colleagues into each other's living rooms could be the catalyst that makes this diversity a fact of life.
"Meetings that were once routine are now happening in makeshift offices, surrounded by family photos, interrupted by energetic kids and pets, and opening up a much deeper level of personal connection," said Lawrence Raffone, CEO of Edelman Financial Engines. "I'm seeing more people be vulnerable and sharing how this crisis has impacted their lives, each in different ways."
Cost of living is a big part of deciding where to live.
The novel coronavirus outbreak has some Americans rethinking residing in big cities.
Using data from the Census Bureau, we found the small town in each state with the highest share of households paying an affordable share of their incomes on housing.
According to a Harris Poll survey reported by Axios, about one-third of Americans are thinking about moving to less dense areas as a response to the coronavirus.
Cost of living is a big part of deciding where to live, and housing affordability is one of the major factors driving how expensive different places are.
The American Community Survey includes data for three types of households — homeowners with a mortgage, homeowners without a mortgage, and renters. For our affordability measurement, we took the average of the shares of each of those household types paying less than 30% on housing, weighted by the number of each type of household in each town.
It is important to note these towns aren't necessarily the places with the least expensive housing, just the places where the biggest share of families fall under our affordability threshold. This means that towns with relatively expensive homes but also high incomes can still have most residents paying an affordable share of that income on their housing.
For instance, Short Hills is the most affordable small town in New Jersey, even though Short Hills is the sixth richest place in America, according to Bloomberg. According to the Census Bureau, the median household income in Short Hills from 2014-2018 was over $250,000, and a large share of residents in the town spend 30% or less of their income toward housing costs.
Here's the most affordable small town in every state:
Located 15 miles south of the Tennessee border, Harvest is part of Madison County and Huntsville, Alabama, where several aerospace companies operate, including NASA and Boeing. Boeing, for example, has invested $40 million in its Huntsville operation for military weapons research. The small town has a population size of roughly 5,700, and Niche ranked Harvest the third best place in Alabama to buy a house.
Alaska: Sterling
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78.69% of homes are affordable.
Sterling is perfect for those who enjoy the outdoors. According to Travel Alaska, the small town is near Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, which is filled with campsites, rivers, and trails to explore. There is also fishing and plenty of wildlife to see. Although the town has affordable homes, Best Places writes the cost of living is about 18% higher than the national average.
Arizona: Corona de Tucson
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86.44% of homes are affordable.
Located 23 miles away from the Santa Rita Mountains, Corona de Tucson offers many hiking trails nearby. According to Niche, it is the best suburb in the state to buy a home. It also ranks highly in terms of its public schools and family friendliness on Niche.
Arkansas: Hot Springs Village
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79.19% of homes are affordable.
Hot Springs Village is a private town surrounded by lakes, making it great for people who want to live close to water or enjoy fishing. The town with nearly 15,000 people also offers many sporting activities, including nine golf courses and 13 tennis courts.
California: Los Altos Hill
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74.17% of homes are affordable.
Located in Santa Clara, Los Altos Hill has plenty of parks and trails. The town usually has plenty of activities to do year-round, such as the Los Altos Hill run or annual town picnic. On Niche, the small town is the seventh best suburb in California to raise a family.
Colorado: Roxborough Park
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81.34% of homes are affordable.
With nearly 9,500 residents, Roxborough Park is located in Douglas County and surrounded by the Rocky Mountains. The town has plenty of trails to explore. According to Census data, the majority of homes in the town are owner-occupied rather than rented, and the median gross rent from 2014-2018 was $2,013.
Connecticut: Sherwood Manor
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71.96% of homes are affordable.
The town is within the northern part of Hartford County, Connecticut. With 5,438 people, 83.4% of the homes are owner-occupied in the small town with a median value of $195,100, according to Census data. The town is a short drive away from Six Flags, Springfield Museums, and Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden.
Delaware: North Star
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81.00% of homes are affordable.
A town in New Castle County, North Star is close to several family-friendly attractions, including local farmer's markets, the historical Hagley Museum, and Carousel Farm Park and Equestrian Center, which offers riding lessons for all ages.
Florida: St. Augustine South
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80.03% of homes are affordable.
Located in St. John's County and next to the Matanzas River, St. Augustine South is close to many outdoor activities. According to Niche, it is ranked the seventh best suburb in Florida to buy a home. The town is a 13-minute drive from St. Augustine Beach, Anastasia State Park, and St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park.
Georgia: Holly Springs
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83.24% of homes are affordable.
This small town in Georgia is said to be "named after a spring surrounded by holly trees," according to New Georgia Encyclopedia and has plenty of national forests and parks to visit nearby. Holly Springs, which is 37 miles away from Atlanta, was named the second safest town in Georgia by the National Council for Home and Safety Security.
Hawaii: Waihee-Waiehu
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69.69% of homes are affordable.
Waihee-Waiehu is a small beachfront community on the island of Maui, the second largest Hawaiian island. Maui's natural beauty is stunning, but Waihee-Waiehu also offers a golf course, surfing, and whale watching.
Idaho: Ammon
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78.50% of homes are affordable.
Surrounded by hills and mountains, Ammon is a small agricultural town in Idaho. Although Ammon is considered a small town, it is rapidly growing its population. The city credits its growth to "open space for affordable residential housing and the city's hometown lifestyle, as well as its near proximity to the urban amenities and job market in Idaho Falls," according to its website.
Illinois: Hampshire Village
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83.67% of homes are affordable.
Hampshire Village, originally named Henpeck according to the town's website, relocated closer to the Chicago-Pacific railroad and was officially incorporated in 1876. The town is part of Kane County, Illinois, which has 51 registered historic places and 76 forests preserved.
Indiana: McCordsville
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85.39% of homes are affordable.
Just outside Indianapolis, McCordsville is a growing town with several local establishments like Trax BBQ and Scarlet Lane Brewing Company. It was founded in 1865 and named after the McCord family.
Iowa: Asbury
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84.19% of homes are affordable.
Asbury was settled back in the 1830s by Methodists. It was named after a British-born bishop named Francis Asbury. Today, most residents don't work in town, but commute to nearby Dubuque or Peosta, Iowa. The town's motto is "You're home."
Kansas: Park City
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84.47% of homes are affordable.
Park City is part of Sedgwick County, Kansas. According to the county's website, while many people work in the town, plenty of residents commute to work in larger cities nearby, such as Wichita. The small town of 7,885 people is about seven miles away from Wichita State University. Some notable places in Park City include the 81 Speedway and Park City BMX tracks.
Kentucky: Francisville
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88.99% of homes are affordable.
Located in northern Boone County, Kentucky, this small town is close to the Ohio River. It ranks highly in different categories on Niche including the seventh best place to buy a house and eighth place to raise a family in Kentucky.
Louisiana: Prien
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87.31% of homes are affordable.
According to Best Places to Live, the small town of Prien is an industrial town that recently experienced job growth, and the cost of living is 6.3% less than the US average. With over 93% of homes owner-occupied and a median home-value close to $213,000, Niche ranks it the top place to buy a home in Louisiana.
Maine: North Windham
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76.65% of homes are affordable.
North Windham is part of Windham, Maine in Cumberland County, the largest county in Maine. The town is a 7-minute drive from Saint Joseph's College of Maine and a 3-minute drive from the outdoor recreational area Seacoast Adventure.
Maryland: Poolesville
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86.80% of homes are affordable.
Poolesville was named after two brothers, John Poole Sr. and Joseph Poole Sr., who owned land in the area. Until 2010, however, its official name was left as "The Commissioners of Poolesville" due to a clerical error. Its motto is "Small town character, down home charm."
Massachusetts: Mansfield Center
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74.89% of homes are affordable.
Mansfield Center is a small town with a population of 7,892. The town has a remarkably low crime rate, with a 1 in 101 chance of being the victim of a crime — that's 61% lower than the US average.
Michigan: Freeland
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88.52% of homes are affordable.
Freeland was home to the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Pottawatomi tribes before the arrival of European settlers in the early 19th century. The town is named after Mammy Freeland, who was the owner of a popular tavern that served local lumberjacks in the mid 1800s.
Minnesota: East Bethel
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86.84% of homes are affordable.
The town includes the Sandhill Crane State Natural Area nature preserve, and it is also close to a wildlife management place, lakes, and a regional park. The cost of living in East Bethel is more expensive than surrounding towns, 6% higher than the state average.
Mississippi: Pontotoc
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83.37% of homes are affordable.
This small rural town is home to about 6,000 residents. Based on the town's website, their motto is "where family comes first and we love every second." Residents can walk along the 43.6-mile Tanglefoot trail which includes the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and different counties. The trail's website says it is a great place to enjoy the slow pace of Mississippi small towns.
Missouri: Dardenne Prairie
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87.49% of homes are affordable.
Dardenne Prairie, in St. Charles County, is said to have gotten its name from the French "terre d'Inde," or "land of India." Others say the town is named after Toussaint Dardenne, an early pioneer of the Mississippi Valley. However, no records show that the pioneer ever explored St. Charles County. A third theory states that the French explorers who did settle the area named it after the Ardennes forest ("d'ardenne" in French). While no one knows the reason any longer, the name has stayed ever since.
Montana: Helena Valley West Central
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79.92% of homes are affordable.
Helena Valley West Central is part of the much larger city of Helena, but offers more affordability and quieter surroundings. One of the benefits of living in Helena Valley West Central is the commute time to downtown Helena: 16.4 minutes on average.
Nebraska: Gretna
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80.52% of homes are affordable.
Located about 20 miles from Omaha, Nebraska, the small town of Gretna is home to 5,037 residents and part of Sarpy County. According to the town's website, the town got its name from "Scotland's Gretna Green, the ancestral county of some of the earliest settlers" and was incorporated in 1889 after the old Forest City lost its growth.
Nevada: Spring Creek
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86.81% of homes are affordable.
Spring Creek is situated between the Elko Hills to the northwest, and the Ruby Mountains to the southeast. Most residents of Spring Creek commute to nearby Elko, which has about 20,000 residents, compared to Spring Creek's 13,805.
New Hampshire: Hampton
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73.41% of homes are affordable.
Located beside the Atlantic Ocean, Hampton is a great small town for those who like beaches and a view of water outside their window. People can live in one of the homes in in Hampton Beach Village District or visit Hampton Beach State Park, which Reader's Digest named the best state park in the New Hampshire. Hampton was one of the first four towns in the state to be established and was first called Winnacunnet, according to the town's history on New Hampshire Employment Security.
New Jersey: Short Hills
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75.78% of homes are affordable.
Located in Essex County, Short Hills is the third best place in New Jersey to raise a family, according to Niche. It is good for people who want to commute to the city — only 21 miles away from Manhattan, New York.
New Mexico: White Rock
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87.96% of homes are affordable.
White Rock, New Mexico has 5,809 residents and is next to multiple mountains, Santa Fe National Forest, and the Rio Grande. It is less than 9 miles away from Los Alamos National Laboratory, which was used in World War II for the Manhattan Project. Niche ranked the town the best suburb to buy a house in the state.
New York: Big Flats
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82.65% of homes are affordable.
Big Flats is in western New York, near the Pennsylvania border. It boasts nearby national forests, is close to the city of Elmira, and is only a short drive away from New York's Finger Lakes.
North Carolina: Wesley Chapel
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85.05% of homes are affordable.
This small town in North Carolina was officially incorporated as a village in 1998 but has existed as a community since the 1800s, according to real-estate site Carolina Small Town Living. Niche ranks the small town as the sixth best place to live in Union County, North Carolina.
North Dakota: Valley City
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78.58% of homes are affordable.
Valley City is also known as the "City of Bridges" due to its many railroad bridges that span the Sheyenne River. The town has a number of tourist attractions, including a scenic bridge tour, and an exhibit on railroad history at the Rosebud Visitor Center.
Ohio: Delhi Hills
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85.36% of homes are affordable.
Delhi Hills is just outside of Cincinnati, on a bluff near the Ohio river. Delhi Hills' main attraction is Delhi Pike, a popular strip of highway lined with fast food eateries and stores like KFC, Burger King, Wendy's, and Kroger.
Oklahoma: Tuttle
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81.18% of homes are affordable.
The first baby born in Tuttle, in 1902, was Tuttle Meder, named not only after the town, but after its namesake, James H. Tuttle, a local rancher who was one of the town's founders. It maintained a low population for decades, until more residents settled there and brought the population up to its current number of 6,982.
Oregon: Bull Mountain
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77.99% of homes are affordable.
Bull Mountain got its name from the hill it was founded on, in northwest Oregon. The town is still unincorporated, despite having a population of 9,591. A nearby town, Tigard, tried to annex Bull Mountain under its own city limits, but Bull Mountain's residents protested, putting a stop to the annexation.
Pennsylvania: Shanor-Northvue
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81.52% of homes are affordable.
Shanor-Northvue is part of Butler County, Pennsylvania. Residents can visit Clearview Mall and there are plenty of options for food along the Pennsylvania Route highway. People can attend the Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival to celebrate where the car was created.
Rhode Island: Cumberland Hill
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74.11% of homes are affordable.
Cumberland Hill is a suburb of Providence, Rhode Island's capital. The town is a residential community mostly made up of families. The public schools are highly rated, according to Niche.
South Carolina: Tega Cay
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83.34% of homes are affordable.
The city of Tega Cay is located on Lake Wylie, between Charlotte, North Carolina and Rock Hill, South Carolina. And thanks to its location, there are plenty of activities for residents and visitors alike — parks, playgrounds, boating, golf, and swimming, to name a few.
South Dakota: Harrisburg
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86.21% of homes are affordable.
Harrisburg, a suburb of Sioux Falls, is an active community with several attractions. Locals enjoy Lake Alvin Recreation Area, which offers beaches, fishing, and boating. Good Earth State park has two miles of trails for anyone looking to enjoy the outdoors.
Tennessee: Atoka
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83.71% of homes are affordable.
The town of Atoka has seen growth in recent years, with a current population of 9,139. People can commute to Memphis with a 36-minute drive from Atoka. According to the town's website, Bloomberg Businessweek in 2010 named the small town "Tennessee's Best Affordable Suburb based on our low property taxes, excellent schools and affordable home prices."
Texas: Bridge City
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83.24% of homes are affordable.
Bridge City, with a population of 8,004, is close to many bodies of water, including the Gulf of Mexico, Neches River, and Cow Bayou. People can get to Bridge City from nearby Port Arthur via the Rainbow Bridge, one of the tallest bridges in Texas.
Utah: West Point
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87.16% of homes are affordable.
Located about 30 miles away from Salt Lake City, West Point is a rural small town with close to 10,500 residents. It is five miles away from the Hill Air Force Base and close to Farmington Bay.
Vermont: Montpelier
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66.82% of homes are affordable.
Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, is the least populous state capital in the United States, with only 7,547 residents. Its small population doesn't prevent it from having a capital city's personality, with its stately buildings and lively downtown.
Virginia: Independent Hill
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85.02% of homes are affordable.
About 9,500 people live in Independent Hill, which is located next to State Route 234 and a short drive to larger cities in Virginia. The rural small town has many parks to visit, such as Prince William Forest Park.
Washington: Duvall
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83.88% of homes are affordable.
A 30-minute drive away from Seattle, Duvall is named after James Duvall who owned the area before selling it to Cherry Valley Town Site Company. The town has a historical society to help preserve its history, such as opening Dougherty Farmstead, one of the oldest buildings in Snoqualmie River Valley, to visitors.
West Virginia: Brookhaven
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84.09% of homes are affordable.
Niche ranks this small town in Northern West Virginia as the fifth best place to raise a family in West Virginia. Most people in the town own their homes and monthly median rent is less than the national average according to figures on Niche.
Wisconsin: Rib Mountain
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84.52% of homes are affordable.
The town, named after nearby Rib Mountain, has plenty of nature and trails for people who enjoy the outdoors and is also home to the largest retail center in North-central Wisconsin. The town's motto on their website is "Where nature, family, and sport come together."
Wyoming: Ranchettes
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83.80% of homes are affordable.
Located at the bottom of the state, Ranchettes has a population of 6,097. The small town is part of Laramie County, known for having the first woman to vote in a general election in the United States.
It's hard not to take job rejections, like any other form of rejection, personally.
But separating yourself from the situation is the key to moving on after a job rejection said Erica Keswin, workplace strategist and author of "Bring Your Human to Work." Hiring managers must look through numerous candidates at a time — assuming your résumé makes it to a human in the first place— so the tendency is to be curt when rejecting applicants.
While Keswin said companies should be as respectful to candidates as interviewees are expected to be, she recommended you don't dwell too much on a rejection.
"The idea of honoring relationships starts with people who don't even work there yet," Keswin said. "When it comes to some of these recruiters, there's no excuse in how they are treating people, but try to keep it at arm's length."
"It's one of the most disheartening things, especially when you think not only about the time and effort that goes into applying, but how much emotion you've invested in the job," Taylor said.
While talking about being rejected can be embarrassing, there are steps job seekers can take to make the most of a door closed. Here are Taylor and Keswin's best tips on getting over a job rejection.
When you first get a rejection email, take a step back and a moment to congratulate yourself for making it this far.
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The time immediately after getting a rejection letter can be disheartening, Taylor said, especially if it's one you have been interviewing for. If you made it through several rounds, take the initial moments to congratulate yourself for scoring the interview in the first place, and then take a step back from your computer to go outside or distract yourself.
Rushing to crank out the next cover letter right after getting rejected can also be counterproductive, as you should wait until you are in a more positive mindset to get back into applying.
"The best way to move on is to just realize that you only need one job, and this is one of many job interview situations that are there for you," Taylor said.
Remember that if the company did not want to hire you, you probably would not have wanted to work for them anyway.
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Often times when applicants submit their résumés, they go into a "big black hole, never to be heard from again."
If a company did not send you a personalized rejection letter, or otherwise made you feel like they did not value your time, Keswin said there is a good chance you would not have felt welcome once you got to the company.
"All of those things speak to company values and how they treat their people," she said. "I would look in the mirror and say, 'Is that a really company I would be happy at?'"
Set up social events with close family and friends, and reach out to mentors.
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For those feeling particularly stung, Taylor recommended reaching out to friends or family in your inner circle who can remind you of the bigger picture. Before you hop back into the job hunt, use the first couple of days to build up your self confidence. Reaching out to mentors for feedback or support can also be helpful, Taylor added.
Be sure to thank your interviewer the day you get a rejection.
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Send a thank-you email the day you get a rejection letter, as even a day later a hiring manager could be on to the next 12 candidates, Keswin said.
If you moved onto the interview phase, Keswin recommended reaching out to not just your recruiter, but the specific people who interviewed you, and thanking them for taking the time to meet with you.
"You had a different type of connection with all of these different people," Keswin said. "You should try to make a personal connection in that email and say you hope to keep in touch.
If you particularly enjoyed interviewing for the company, ask your interviewer to keep you in mind for future positions.
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A rejection letter doesn't have to close all doors: "Especially if it's a company you really thought you were interested in, you always want to leave things in a positive way to leave the door open," Keswin said.
Sometimes, when a new manager comes in and needs to hire, companies keep records of former applicants they liked so they can fill open positions. Other times, companies will reject applicants for a full-time position, but offer them contractual work, Taylor said. Maintaining a connection with your interviewer could lead to a job down the line.
You can ask for feedback on why the hiring manager didn't go forward — but be cautious.
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The best way to know why you didn't get a job is to ask, Keswin said. As you send a thank-you note to interviewers, she suggested saying sorry it didn't work out, but if they had any specific feedback, you would love to hear it.
Taylor, however, said that this approach could backfire. Managers often don't have time to give detailed feedback to each rejected candidate, and asking them to take time out of their day for you could feel burdensome. "There's a 60/40 chance you're irritating them more than anything else," Taylor said.
If you received a few rejections in a row, take the time to analyze what could be missing in your resume.
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Many times people apply to several jobs during the interview stage. If multiple of your applications come out unsuccessful, you might need to examine your skills more critically, Keswin said.
"I would urge people to really be honest with themselves to do a post-mortem analysis on what the issue was," she added.
The first step is to figure out whether your rejections stem from missing skills or not being a culture fit. In the case of skills, it could be as simple as taking an online class and learning something new for your résumé.
If you have the means, hiring a career coach could help you figure out what isn't working.
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If the reasons why you got rejected were because of not being a cultural fit, or if they were unclear, seeking professional help could go a long way, Keswin said. As a career coach at NYU, she helped qualified candidates during the financial crisis figure out which of their skills were transferable, then she targeted jobs that could use those skills.
A career coach helped Business Insider reporter Shana Lebowitz feel more empowered, and she learned how to make a roadmap to reach her goals. Career coaches can be expensive, however, so Keswin also recommended reaching out to university alumni networks first to get the same type of support without paying a fee.
When you get back into job searching, try being more flexible with what you'd consider applying to.
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If at first you were uncomfortable relocating or transferring your skills to other industries, the time following a rejection could be a chance to widen your horizons, Taylor said.
"Especially if you're willing to be flexible on the exact job description, widen your scope just a little bit," she said. "That may help your mindset."
If you're currently employed, taking on another project at work could bulk up your résumé.
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Taking on a new job could mean sacrificing the flexibility you earned through years of working at your current job, Keswin said. One way to get over a rejection is to focus on what you have, rather than what you don't.
You can also build skills for when you do try to seek greener pastures: Take on a new project at your current job, or focus on growing your side hustle.
"If you realize the job search may be taking longer than you'd like, ask what are some positives you can focus on in other aspects of your life," Keswin said.
After you build up your skills, don't be afraid to try again at your dream company.
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If a hiring manager tells you that you were a good candidate, but they found a "rock star," and they offer to keep in touch, don't take that information lightly, Keswin said. If you can figure out the skills you may be missing, you could try reaching out to similar positions at the company down the road. "It shows you're really interested in the company," she said.
Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, vice president of augmented and virtual reality at Facebook, has explained how employees from all walks of life can create their own "Application Programming Interfaces" (APIs).
Using a simple analogy from computer science, Bosworth's idea is for employees to gain a greater understanding of themselves and thereby maximize their own usefulness.
Writing on his personal blog Wednesday, he explained four simple ways in which employees can do this.
These include explicitly describing how you'd like to work and spelling out your own limitations to bosses.
One of Facebook's most important executives has explained how employees can create their own application programming interfaces (APIs) to maximize their career development.
The idea is the brainchild of Andrew "Boz" Bosworth – vice president of augmented and virtual reality at Facebook – who spelled it out in a post on his personal blog Wednesday.
It's a slightly labored analogy perhaps, but APIs are a bunch of features that developers can use as building blocks for their own apps. Apple, for example, offers an API for the iPhone camera which means anyone building a photo app doesn't need to build the camera software from scratch.
As such, Bosworth reckons that if employees write their own APIs – and define how others should best interact with them – they'll enable colleagues to get the most out of their abilities. More specifically, he listed four ways people can do this.
1. Take control of your career progression
"First, engage your manager," he wrote. "Rather than being a passive participant in the relationship you should be actively steering it. Make your manager into your sponsor.
"They should be sharing your narrative in rooms you aren't in. Tell them what kinds of problems you'd like to be working on and check up with them regularly on their progress finding you more opportunities.
2. Create opportunities for collaboration
Boz continued: "Second, master the art of the humble biography. When you meet a new colleague, introduce yourself and add a sentence about what kinds of things you love to work on and maybe give an example. The goal here is not to impress them but rather to enlist them so they are able funnel interesting work your way if they see it."
3. Volunteer to solve problems...
Bosworth also described opportunism and the ability to set your own boundaries as key parts of your personal API.
"Third, don't miss the opportunities that do come by. When you are in a meeting and a problem that interests you comes up don't hesitate to speak about your enthusiasm to work on it. Ask teams who are working on interesting things what kinds of problems they have that you might be able to help with.
4. ....but avoid failures
Bosworth's last piece of advice is to try and avoid anything you think might fail.
"Finally, learn when to say no," he wrote. "Just as important as finding more work you are interested in is avoiding a reputation for doing work you aren't interested in, especially if you don't think you will do it well."
The confident, outspoken nature of Bosworth's post is typically in character, too, as he's far from averse to sharing his views on a range of topics.
In a 2016 internal company memo leaked to BuzzFeed News, Bosworth famously described Facebook's "ugly truth" as a "de facto" faith in connecting people even where such connections could be used to facilitate bullying or terrorism.
Scott Galloway, a bestselling author and top-ranked professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, recommended that students defer college enrollment and take a gap year during the coronavirus pandemic.
While top 20 universities will withstand and come back stronger after the pandemic, Galloway said tier-two colleges like Drexel and Fordham University might not survive the crisis.
Students should consider taking a gap year instead of enrolling in the school in the fall, said Scott Galloway, a bestselling author and marketing professor at New York University's Stern School of Business.
Galloway's got a knack for predicting future trends. He was one of the first people to flag WeWork's IPO failure, and he also anticipated Amazon's Whole Foods acquisition a month before it happened
Now, Galloway is predicting that that COVID-19 will spur major changes to higher education. Galloway teaches brand strategy and digital marketing to second-year MBA students, and he's also been named one of the world's 50 best business school professors by Poets & Quants.
US colleges are taking a hard hit and are near collapse right now. The coronavirus outbreak can cause a more than $100 million loss at some institutions, CBS News reported. Several institutions have announced hiring freezes, and others have had to reimburse dining and housing fees.
Moreover, a growing number of colleges that shifted to online classes are simply unprepared to create interactive e-learning experiences — which is exactly why incoming students should take a gap year, Galloway said.
"If you're contemplating showing up for fall as an undergrad, or thinking about an MBA, I think this is a wonderful time to take a gap year because we as academics need a year to figure this out," Galloway said previously. "[The pandemic] is what's going to create the absolute implosion in education, which I think will be good. I think a lot of students, and a lot of parents, are going to rethink the value proposition and decide to defer or take a gap year."
A gap year can mean better educational and career outcomes for students
If you're planning to enter school this fall, the business school professor recommends that you wait until the pandemic blows over. Plus, taking a gap year can be a positive thing for students.
"There's a lot of evidence showing that if your kid takes a gap year, he or she is more likely to graduate when they come back with better grades," Galloway said previously. "They need a little bit more seasoning, a little bit more maturity."
A lot of students are not ready for the competitiveness and intensity that comes with college, he said in an interview with Intelligencer. The professor said that students might perform better in school and in their careers if they deferred.
Galloway's argument is backed by research. Gap years have been gaining popularity in the US in the past several years, The New York Times reported. Harvard University, for example, saw a 33% increase in deferring students in 2016. MIT also reported a doubled amount of deferrals between 2009 and 2010, Business Insider previously reported.
According to a study by AGA, a nonprofit that accredits gap year programs, about 90% of students who take a gap year are also more likely to graduate on time with a higher GPA, CNBC reported.
Schools need time to adapt to the pandemic
Some schools might not survive the pandemic and all institutions need a game plan.
As undergraduate and business school classes go virtual during the crisis, people are realizing that Zoom classes without the campus experience is not worth the hefty tuition, Galloway noted.
"And we've all raised our prices in lockstep and preyed on the hopes and dreams of the middle class to charge what is the most ridiculous high-margin, expensive product that translates to debt on young people, which results in having a hamstrung economy where young people don't buy houses, they don't start businesses, because they are literally crushed with student debt," he said.
Galloway further explained that the disruption in education has been accelerated by the coronavirus, and that tier-two colleges like Drexel, Pace, or Fordham University might not make it out of this crisis.
The professor anticipates the emergence of "zombie universities," or schools that will rely on alumni donations until they're forced to shut down.
"I think a gap year in deferring 2021 is going to be what I'd call a disruptive but a terrible year for the end consumer, as we as academics try to maintain this hallucination that we can continue to charge what we're charging for a totally substandard experience via Zoom," Galloway said previously.
Nevertheless, Galloway thinks that the top-20 universities will be welcoming in more students and will come out stronger after the pandemic.
In a written post on Business Insider, he predicted big and small tech firms will partner with elite universities to offer 80% of a traditional four-year degree for 50% of the price. For example, MIT and Google could offer a two-year STEM degree.
"There will also be a reshaping of priorities as we take attributes that make us most human — the discovery, empathy, and emotional growth of a campus-based liberal arts education (a luxury only the wealthy will be able to afford) — and replace them with the pursuit of vocational skills and shareholder value," he wrote. "Big tech's impending march into higher ed will bring more learning to more humans, and erode our humanity."
ESPN created a 10-part documentary series about Jordan and his final season with the Chicago Bulls, called "The Last Dance," also available on streaming services such as Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV.
"Winning has a price. And leadership has a price. So I pulled people along when they didn't want to be pulled; I challenged people when they didn't want to be challenged," Jordan said in Episode Seven.
This spurred an outpouring of support on social media, with users designating it as one of the top leadership quotes of our time.
The name "Michael Jordan" is synonymous with one of greatest players of NBA history, who competed in 15 seasons and led the Chicago Bulls to six championship wins. And with all eyes on ESPN's documentary highlighting his illustrious career with the team, Jordan's leadership skills are in the spotlight, nearly 17 years after his retirement.
ESPN's "The Last Dance," a 10-part series following Jordan's final season with the Bulls, showcases the trials, tribulations, and successes of the 1997-1998 season — the last time the Bulls won the NBA title. When asked whether his drive to win ruined any chance of having a reputation as a nice guy, Jordan — holding back tears — responded with what is now being called one of the best pieces of leadership advice on social media.
Here's the full quote from Episode Seven of "The Last Dance:"
"Winning has a price. And leadership has a price. So I pulled people along when they didn't want to be pulled; I challenged people when they didn't want to be challenged. And I earned that right because my teammates who came after me didn't endure all the things that I endured.
"Once you joined the team, you lived at a certain standard that I played the game at, and I wasn't gonna take anything less. Now if that meant I had to go in there and get in your ass a little bit, then I did that. You ask all my teammates: 'The one thing about Michael Jordan was he never asked me to do something that he didn't do.'
"When people see this, they're gonna say, 'Well, he wasn't really a nice guy, he may have been a tyrant.' Well, that's you: Because you never won anything. I wanted to win, but I wanted them to win and be a part of that as well. Look: I don't have to do this. I'm only doing it because it is who I am. That's how I played the game; that was my mentality. If you don't wanna play that way, don't play that way."
Google has significantly scaled back diversity and inclusion efforts, moves that employees said were meant to help the company avoid a conservative backlash, NBC News reported Wednesday.
Since 2018, popular training programs have been watered down or scrapped entirely, and jobs on the team responsible for the programs have been outsourced or reassigned, according to NBC News.
"Any suggestion that we have scaled back or cut our diversity efforts is false. Diversity, equity, and inclusion remains a company wide commitment and our programs have scaled up to match the pace of Google's growth," a spokesperson told Business Insider.
Google has made massive cuts to its diversity and inclusion initiatives, with current and former employees saying the moves were meant to shield the company from conservative backlash, NBC News reported on Wednesday.
Since 2018, several popular programs aimed at teaching employees about implicit bias and how to have difficult conversations about race and inequality have been scaled back, while the team responsible for the programs has gotten smaller — due to outsourcing and Google opting not to refill positions after employees leave — according to NBC News.
"One of the major motivations for cutting Sojourn [one of Google's diversity initiatives] is that the company doesn't want to be seen as anti-conservative," an employee told NBC News. "It does not want to invite lawsuits or claims by right-wing white employees about Google discriminating against them."
A Google spokesperson disputed employees' claims, telling Business Insider in a statement: "Any suggestion that we have scaled back or cut our diversity efforts is false. Diversity, equity, and inclusion remains a company wide commitment and our programs have scaled up to match the pace of Google's growth."
A former Google engineer and author of a controversial anti-diversity memo circulated while he was still an employee sued the company in 2018, alleging that Google discriminated against conservatives, but he dropped the suit earlier this week.
Google told NBC News that it cut Sojourn because the program was mainly focused on racism in the US, making it difficult to scale globally. The majority of Google's 100,000-plus full-time employees are based in the US.
In November 2018, nearly 17,000 employees staged a walkout in protest of the company's handling of sexual misconduct investigations following a report that Google paid a top executive $90 million despite concluding he needed to resign due to a credible misconduct allegation against him.
Since then, employees have also spoken out against racism and sexism within the company's ranks. An engineering director who is black said last fall that he would be harassed less at work if he dressed like a janitor, while a black former employee circulated a memo saying he "never stopped feeling the burden of being black."
Last September, a Google engineering executive sued the company, alleging she was paid "hundreds of thousands" less than her male peers and demoted for complaining. Multiple employees have left or been fired by Google after speaking out about its treatment of women and marginalized groups, and the company now faces an investigation from the National Labor Relations Board into its firing of four employees in November.
Google's diversity and inclusion efforts haven't yet led to substantial progress for marginalized groups. The company's chief diversity officer left the company in April 2019 amid a string of controversies.
In 2019, black employees made up just 2.7% of Google's global workforce, a gain of 0.2 percentage points from the year before, while the share of Latinx employees increased from 3.6% to 3.8% and Native Americans made no progress, remaining at 0.3%. Similarly, women represented 30.9% of Google's workforce in 2018 and just 31.6% the following year.
Google's struggle to hire and keep diverse candidates reflects a broader trend in the industry, even though the issue has received widespread attention in recent years thanks to the #MeToo movement and several years of tech companies releasing diversity data.
Joe and Bianca are a British-South African couple who work on a private luxury yacht that splits its time between the Greek Islands and the Mediterranean Sea.
Summer events and travel bookings hit an abrupt pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the couple found themselves on lockdown aboard the yacht along with three other crew members.
The crew has been keeping busy with baking, reading, and Zoom trivia nights — and Joe and Bianca were also recently able to go ashore for a socially-distanced hike.
Yacht crew in ports around the world have found themselves confined to the luxury vessels that are both their places of employment and their home.
In Monaco, Joe and Bianca are a British-South African couple who have spent the last three years working onboard a 196-foot private yacht that typically spends winter in the wealthy Mediterranean principality and cruises the Greek Islands in summer.
Normally, the yacht would be preparing to welcome its first guests of 2020 for the Cannes Film Festival. The red carpet event was scheduled to start on May 12 but has instead been adapted for an online format in June.
With travel still on hold in most European countries, the duo — like everyone in the yachting industry — face an uncertain summer season that most agree won't start until July at the earliest, if it gets underway at all.
The couple met in 2018 when Joe joined the yacht crew six months after Bianca.
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Bianca and Joe were just a few days out from departing on vacation back to visit Bianca's family in South Africa. In anticipation of Monaco's lockdown, which started on March 17, the captain asked them to cancel their trip to guarantee safe manning of the vessel. Bianca, the yacht's second stewardess, is philosophical about how the situation has worked out. "I think it would have been strange to go home," she told Business Insider.
The superyacht, which can accommodate 10 guests in five staterooms, has been locked down with only five of its usual 12 crew members on board.
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"We each have a crew cabin to ourselves," said Bianca, adding that they all appreciate the extra space. Joe, the second engineer, says the atmosphere is more like being at home than at work. As the only engineer currently on board, his workload has been reduced. "There's obviously only a certain amount I can do on my own, so I'm doing what I can to keep the boat ticking over. It's not stressful," he said.
At 8 p.m. every evening, the vessel, like many others around the Mediterranean, sounds its horn as a sign of gratitude towards frontline workers.
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Under lockdown rules, yachts have not been able to leave or arrive into a harbor unless granted express permission by port authorities.
Both Bianca and Joe are aware of — and appreciate — their privileged position in this crisis and are thankful to have jobs when others in the industry are losing theirs. "Our owner has assured us that there will be no redundancies or pay cuts," Bianca said.
The yacht's owner has also made it very clear that their health and safety comes first.
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"They want us to be safe, to stay inside, and to not worry about anything else," she said. If one of the crew were to fall ill with the virus, one of the guest staterooms at the aft (rear) of the yacht would become a sickbay to isolate them.
Extra hygiene measures have been put in place for when they leave and return to the boat.
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"We have gloves for when you take out the trash or go shopping. When you return there is a sanitizer and a high alcohol concentrate spray that we made ourselves to spray your shoes," Bianca explained. Before Monaco's lockdown measures eased on May 4, she had only been leaving the yacht to visit a nearby supermarket.
It's always been part of their job to spend weeks, sometimes months, at sea.
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Bianca thinks that this makes yacht crew more suited to handling these strict confinement measures. The couple explains that, onboard, they're all looking out for each other's mental health. "We've been quite fortunate — the general mood on the boat is happy, and there have been no conflicts," Joe explained.
Calls with friends and family have become an important part of the lockdown routine.
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Fiber optic internet was recently installed on the yacht, and has been a blessing to the crew during this time. Their usual routine has been slightly modified to reflect the current situation: Everyone is starting work at 8:30 a.m. and finishing by 3 p.m. Outside of work hours, they're spending their time baking, reading, watching TV, and exercising. A Zoom quiz involving all 12 crew members and Joe's family back in England has quickly become a Saturday evening highlight. Each week has a dress-up theme, such as fancy dress and pajamas — "but that's all we wear in quarantine anyway," laughs Bianca.
The crew also hosted a Zoom trivia night from the sundeck.
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Now that warmer evenings have arrived in Europe, the couple is spending more and more of their downtime outside on deck. The dress code for one of their recent trivia nights was "sunglasses and shorts," and they dialed in from the sundeck.
The couple are excited to get back to the 'simpler things' as lockdown restrictions begin to lift.
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As lockdown restrictions are lifted in the principality, a hike in the hills behind Monaco was the couple's first afternoon away from the yacht. What Bianca is looking most forward to, however, is seeing her family in South Africa. "But realistically that's not going to be until next year now — as long as things are better by then."
A new survey from startup incubator 500 Startups found that 1 in 3 female founders were struggling to balance their responsibilities at work and at home.
Almost all the women agreed that childcare is key to making sure working moms will still be able to raise funding and manage remote teams, but many women-led companies have shuttered amid widespread shelter-in-place orders across the country.
Lindsay Kaplan is riding out New York's shutdown upstate with her partner and their two kids. Her sons are 4 years old and 4 months old, and demand near constant attention. Like many other New York City refugees, Kaplan's childcare support is virtually nonexistent, and it has largely fallen to her and her partner to make things work.
But unlike many other escapees, Kaplan is also trying to keep her company, a woman's networking startup called Chief, humming along with virtual board meetings and team check-ins between nap times.
"I have no childcare up here, and like so many working parents, I'm drowning," Kaplan said. "I don't need to tell you how impossible it is to tend to an infant, entertain an extroverted four-year-old, cook, clean, care for the household — and try to run a business."
Working moms were already shouldering the burden of household and childcare responsibilities, and now that a majority of the United States is housebound that has only intensified, according to a recent essay by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in Fortune that explored the concept of a "double-double shift." But while Sandberg calls for employers to step in to better support working parents, many founders are left with little to no recourse as self-employed workers, and the challenge can feel insurmountable.
"Every day is 10-out-of-10 on a scale of overwhelming, unsustainable disaster," Kaplan said. "Does this sound stressful? It's stressful as hell. But we're super thankful to be healthy, safe, and employed."
According to a new survey of female founders from startup accelerator 500 Startups, Kaplan's experience has largely been par for the course. The survey, which asked female founders about their challenges in the current climate, found that roughly 1 in 3 female founders found the balancing act between home and work responsibilities to be "extremely challenging or impossible."
The new reality, as many female founders have dubbed the current blend of chaos and survival, is hitting woman entrepreneurs particularly hard compared to their male counterparts. And it's not just due to their struggles with childcare and household work. Many experts have forecast that a pullback in venture funding could disproportionately affect female and underrepresented founders, although women already reap less than 3% of all venture funding in boom times.
"At a macro level, regardless of industry, there is a lot of evidence that women are disproportionately impacted by the economic fallout of COVID," 500 Startups CEO Christine Tsai told Business Insider.
Business Insider spoke with six female founders and investors, many of them working moms, to get a sense of what could come next. Although many expressed how overwhelming and all-consuming the situation is, some also provided glimmers of hope and solutions for how venture investors and the startup ecosystem writ large could better serve founding moms moving forward.
Childcare is key
The biggest obstacle facing female founders right now is a lack of childcare options, several female founders told Business Insider. Many had already negotiated an equitable distribution of household and childcare responsibilities with their partners to make time to grow their companies. But the precarious juggling act has now encroached on the traditional workday.
"The conversation philosophically gets back to the idea that work and childcare just do not combine," Kinside cofounder and CEO Shadiah Sigala told Business Insider. "[COVID] exposed the fragile system of childcare in the US and our fragile earning potential. Women depend on childcare to work, and we depend on this system for us to go to work and be at work. When those shut down, there is literally zero infrastructure."
The irony of the sudden halt to childcare is not lost on Sigala, whose startup provides childcare benefits to workplaces across the country. She estimated that roughly 20% of childcare providers will go under as a result of statewide shelter-in-place orders and social distancing measures. If those providers never return to the childcare workforce, that will make the situation only more dire as states begin telling women to go back to work. The mothers may not be able to do so.
"In a two-person household, the caretaker will be the one that ducks out of the workforce first," Sigala said. "If we do not say that we need to support women and create a safety net, we might actually regress instead of advance."
Division of labor
For startup founders, that tradeoff can be high stakes. Many have yet to generate significant revenue from their companies, but may have taken millions of dollars in venture funding. For those with partners in other, more secure industries, it may feel more like a gamble to try to continue running a young company without childcare. But others, like Humane cofounder Bethany Bongiorno, have the advantage that their partner is a cofounder.
"Imran and I are in a unique position in that we are married and also cofounders," Bongiorno told Business Insider. "There were benefits to that when we started sheltering in place because we were in the same place, and we have a lot of practice navigating the responsibilities of home and work."
Bongiorno said that empathetic and transparent communication has been key in managing the workload on top of remote schooling their 13-year-old daughter. If Bongiorno wants to do a quick yoga session or has to take a late meeting, she said, her husband will take over dinner and homework responsibilities. It's not an ideal long-term solution, she said, but it gets the job done right now.
Former IBM exec Marie Wieck led the company's efforts around software, cloud computing, and blockchain.
Wieck always seized opportunities to learn, even if it meant going out of her comfort zone.
That approach may help today's professionals succeed. The pandemic and economic downturn have forced many people to find new roles and forge new career paths.
Even beyond that, technology is changing rapidly, and executives are increasingly saying they want employees who are adaptable and willing to try different things.
It was 1993, and Marie Wieck was IBM's executive assistant to the chief financial officer.
Wieck, in her 20s at the time, was paging through some business publications when she saw an advertisement featuring a curious line of text. There was a "www" at the beginning, and a couple of slashes.
It was a URL.
"I went to our CFO at the the time, and said, 'This is big,'" Wieck told Business Insider. If a major business-news outlet ran an ad with a URL, it must mean that the internet was becoming more mainstream.
The CFO, Jerome York, responded promptly: "What's a URL?"
Wieck recently retired from IBM after more than two decades there. Most recently, she was head of IBM's blockchain business. (You can think of blockchain as a digital ledger that records transactions in an uneditable history, Business Insider's Becky Peterson reported.)
Wieck still remembers that interaction with her CFO as an "aha moment" in her career. IBM was already involved with the internet, both in its technical products and in its research on systems, software, and personal computing. But Wieck realized that the web browser would make it easier to share information, and could transform the way companies did business.
That anecdote neatly illustrates the way Wieck has approached both IBM's business strategy and her own career development. At IBM, Wieck embraced emerging technologies — including blockchain, cloud computing, and software — as exciting challenges. She saw these new platforms as prime opportunities to build her own leadership profile, developing expertise in areas that most people didn't know anything about.
As the coronavirus pandemic and the economic downturn disrupt business as we know it, many people will be forced to find new roles. Wieck's strategy is one that anyone can emulate — regardless of their specific job function, organization, or industry — as a way to forge a new career path and stand out from equally ambitious professionals.
Emerging technologies can be prime business and career opportunities
It can be easy to dismiss new technologies as either too complex or too strange, and to assume they're not worth learning more about.
Wieck thinks business leaders who do that are missing out.
"If you can keep your eye on those things that can make what you were doing radically simpler, or change the process, or change the business model," she said, "there are bound to be business opportunities."
Sure, it's scary to think that a robot can do your manufacturing job twice as well as you can. Or that another robot can, ahem, write an article in half the time it takes you. Instead of resisting these new, and perhaps inevitable, developments, try leaning into them. Think about what you can do that a robot can't, and how you can work with the new technology to do your job even better.
It's even better if you don't know the first thing about the new technology. "Don't be afraid to try," Wieck said. "Just get in there and jump into the pool. Because you'll figure things out as you go."
During her career at IBM, Wieck worked on innovations like fiber-optics for high-speed data transmission, Java for web programming, and the automation of business processes. Many of these areas had only "grassroots tech community adoption" when she first started looking into them, Wieck said.
Shortly after Wieck noticed the URL in the business publication, IBM started posting its financial earnings online. Previously, analysts attended in-person meetings with company executives, and earnings weren't published instantaneously like they are now. The new approach made things considerably easier.
The willingness to learn and stretch yourself is a way to stand out from other ambitious professionals
Some executives say they've always seized the chance to learn new skills. Even if the role doesn't seem like the obvious next step in their careers, the more important thing is that they'll be challenged and stretched every day. On a more practical note, they'll be first in line for promising new job opportunities in fields that are still unfamiliar to most professionals.
Libby Leffler, president of the Northern California division at the real estate technology company Compass, previously told Business Insider, "I was really always drawn to things that intrigued me, gave me the chance to learn as much as I could, and gave me the opportunity to learn something new, with plenty of room for experimentation." Leffler has been an account strategist at Google, led the business-development team at Facebook, and run the membership division at SoFi.
And Dane Holmes, the former human-resources chief at Goldman Sachs, previously told Business Insider how he decided to leave the bank to run an HR-tech startup. Holmes isn't an expert in artificial intelligence or data science, and he's never worked in Silicon Valley before. But he said he's always been excited about the chance to "build things," which was "more valuable to me than the subject matter" of the specific job.
Even before the pandemic hit, experts said that a positive attitude toward learning, and a willingness to be vulnerable, would propel modern professionals through their careers. (The staffing and recruiting firm ManpowerGroup calls it "learnability.") Technology is changing so rapidly that many executives look for adaptability above all in job candidates. You need to be flexible enough to learn new skills and try new ways of achieving the same outcomes if you want to find — or keep — a job.
It doesn't matter so much whether the product or service you're working on changes business the same way the web browser did. The point is less to become an expert in that specific domain, although that could be a handy outcome, than it is to become an expert at learning quickly.
"The most important thing for anybody in a career journey is — it sounds trite — but do something that gets you up in the morning," Wieck said. "Do something that you love and where you will learn something new and where you bring something to the table to give back." As long as you're enjoying yourself and adding value, Wieck added, "the rest you'll figure out."
Chris Litster is CEO of Buildium, a platform that helps property managers become more efficient and profitable.
Working remotely has made us appreciate working together in-person more, and made us realize we're all a lot more similar.
From crawling kids to decorative home offices, this period has brought us closer together; now it's time to prepare to carry lessons learned from working at home to the office.
And it's important to remember that work is not the most important thing, even once we're in the office.
Five months ago, a new employee joined our company. I knew he was an incredibly focused, driven guy. Detail-oriented, precise, all-business (in a good way). What I didn't know was that he is also a human jungle gym ... or at least his three kids seem to think so.
Mid-Zoom call this week, a giggling trio burst into his home office to crawl all over him. He good-naturedly rolled his eyes and tried to continue his presentation — flying kid elbows be damned. With this glimpse into his life as a parent, our relationship immediately, and incalculably, deepened.
The irony, of course, is that this humanizing moment happened on a screen.
To be clear, I don't think the future of work is 100% remote. Nothing can beat in-person, and lots of us are realizing that now. But here's the thing, the experience of working remotely — of not being in person — has had the unexpected consequence of more fully humanizing the people we work with. And that's a really good thing.
As we slowly return to our offices in the months ahead, we've got an opportunity to bring some of these shifts in outlook, and shifts in how we work, back with us. Here are three lessons I want to remember, and what I hope doesn't go back to "business as usual."
1. Being in-person matters. Let's make the most of it.
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This isn't the first time I've experienced working from home. After my previous company was acquired by IBM, I worked remotely for five years. I thought I handled it well, but then I landed a new job back in an office. A week later (and I'll never forget this), my wife turned to me and said, "We're so glad we got the old Chris back."
COVID-19 has shown us the power of remote working tools. It's been invaluable in helping so many businesses keep the lights on. My company has always been flexible in this regard and, whenever Boston is cleared to work again, we'll be sure to integrate not only additional technology but the many lessons learned from this period of time.
But we're not about to eliminate face time all together. There's a reason why even the biggest tech companies in the world, who have every remote tool at their disposal, prefer to have employees in office. Google's HR research has pegged the ideal amount of work-from-home time at 1.5 days a week, to maximize those in-person "moments of serendipity."
This absolutely mirrors my own experience. I know I feed off the energy of other people. But even deeper than that, I find working with others has a leveling effect — the way colleagues can raise you up on dark days, and even act as a brake when you get too high on an idea or impulse. No Zoom call can really replicate that. For all those reasons, I can't wait to get back in the office and, more than that, to make the most of my time with the people there.
2. Your rowdy kids and tacky loveseat are a reminder of our shared humanity
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I've always prided myself on knowing my colleagues as people: Then I got a streaming, real-time camera into their lives. I now know the names of your cats, your taste in furniture, what kind of art you have on your walls. Not only do these details round people out, but they're also a reminder that there's a deeper life behind the work facade — the messy stuff we all knew was there, but traditionally agreed to overlook from 9-to-5.
Early on in our work-from-home days, one coworker's son ran into a Zoom meeting and screamed into the camera. The guy was mortified and sent an effusive apology letter afterward. For me, this was a wake-up call. Why should he be apologizing for having his real life seep into work, at a time when we're all adjusting? But deeper still, why do we have to pretend that life and work never mingle? This should have been obvious all along, but now it's totally in our faces: We all bring stuff to work besides work, pandemic or no pandemic. Ignoring that is never a great approach.
One recent personal example: I was upset to learn that my son's prom and graduation had to be cancelled. According to the old rules (which I've never really believed in, anyway), I should have been this stalwart, rock of a CEO and not even acknowledged my bad mood with my team. Instead, I shared my frustration, and even ended up tearing up. But it was only by clearing that emotion that I was able to bring more focus — and more of me — to the table.
We didn't ask for it, but we've all had to get radically vulnerable and open with each other. And personally, I'm wondering how we can keep those walls down and bring our whole selves to work once we're out of our homes again.
3. There are more important things than work — duh
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This crisis got us back to appreciating the basics: a roof over our head, food on the table, being thankful for good health. So the question now is how can those lessons be applied in the workplace, in terms of not sweating the small stuff?
I think that means avoiding diving back into "hustle culture." As much as we all say we want work-life balance, we've probably put work over relationships at one point or another, and maybe some of us more than we want to admit. Before joining my current company, I was lucky enough to take a DIY sabbatical. With it came a renewed perspective on what I really valued: Work, of course; but, time with family and friends brought me true meaning and joy. With the pandemic, we've all been forced to slow down, recalibrate and rediscover what really matters, namely, family, friends and human connection.
That means extending that kind of next-level understanding to customers, too. We've always been a relationship-driven company. In the past few months, we've seen up close the challenges of the property managers we work with, folks at the frontline of the economic crisis. Sustaining that deepened commitment and connection to them, not to mention the community and city we work in, is one legacy I'd love to carry forward.
I'd like to think all of this adds up to something deeper, something that will stick with us. Tens of millions of people and countless businesses have been brought to their knees. Yet we've seen people rally together, too, in new and inspiring ways, from rounds of applause for first responders to neighbors offering to pick up groceries for each other.
We live in a shared web of human connection. And business — the way we work, who we do business with, how we treat customers — is as integral a part of that web as any other. We've always known this, I think. But it's been brought into stark relief by the crisis, and I hope it's something we can carry with us longer after it's over.
When Mary Wheeler first learned that her husband had nearly $34,500 lingering in student loan debt, she was determined to help him pay it off as quickly as possible.
Wheeler learned everything she could about her husband's loan types, interest rates, and due dates before creating a repayment action plan.
After two years, they had finally paid off the entire balance together — $22,680 of which Wheeler paid personally.
"People may say paying off someone else's debt is enabling them," Wheeler said. "But I didn't see it this way. Student loans are different from other debt. By paying down his loans, I was building our net worth as a couple."
Before I married my husband, I knew he had student loan debt. But I didn't know exactly how much, nor did I ask. One day, I was sorting through some paperwork when I stumbled across one of his student loan statements. After reading it, I was shocked to see a balance of almost $35,000. In the eight years since we had graduated from college, he had only chipped away at $15,161 of the principal and paid $14,924 in interest.
Shock turned to anger.
I wasn't angry at my husband. I was angry at the student loan servicer. How was it possible that he had paid $30,000 to date, but still owed an additional $34,500? I naively thought.
While anger doesn't get rid of your debt, it can be a great motivator. So I got focused, did my research, and created an action plan to eliminate his debt in two years.
When it came to my husband's student loan debt, I asked myself an important question: Why did I want the debt gone? It had relatively low interest rates, tax write-offs, and a low monthly payment — so what was the big deal?
The thought of having student loan debt until our late 40s or early 50s was terrifying. That was my main motivator: time. Taking 30 years to pay off an undergraduate loan in TV studies was baffling.
The amount of interest we could save was my next motivator. And lastly, we were looking to buy a house. The lower our debt-to-income ratio was, the better our mortgage terms would be. So going into this, I knew I had three concrete reasons why I wanted the debt gone.
2. Do your research
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I learned everything I could about my husband's loan types, interest rates, and repayment schedule. Since the loans were legally not in my name, I could only go off the information on the statements. Turns out he had five different loans (one fixed and four variable) with interest rates varying from 3.7% to 6.1%. He was on an income-based repayment plan, and had only been making minimum monthly payments of $232. At this rate, it was going to take him 18 more years to retire his loans.
While the initial process was overwhelming, I found that doing my research and knowing exactly what I was getting into was a great starting point.
3. Set a realistic timeline
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After I showed my husband that he was spending around $1,500 a year in student loan interest, we decided that I would start paying a portion of his loans — with a deadline of two years. We didn't decide on a set monthly amount — the expectation from the beginning was just whatever I could contribute. My average monthly payment was $612.
I was able to have that extra $600 or so a month for a few reasons: First, I had low monthly home expenses during that time. Second, we kept to a one-car household; I refused to buy my own car and used public transportation, which was easily a savings of $500 a month. Having no student loan debtor credit card debt myself was also very helpful.
I also made other sacrifices: Before I starting paying his loans, one of my vices was shopping for clothes. I definitely had to cut back in this department. Initially it was difficult, but I soon found that redirecting my shopping money towards debt was so much more rewarding than a new pair of pants, which I probably would have only worn a few times.
All of this was done on a modest salary — by day, I work as a coordinator in higher education.
When I was determining how much extra to pay each month, I would often use the Student Loan Hero prepayment calculator. It was a powerful illustration of what an extra $10 or $25 per month can do to your principal balance. That motivated me to keep stretching my payments a little higher. Over the two years, I also made four larger lump sum payments — ranging from $1,500 to $2,670 — by taking funds from my savings or a tax refund.
4. Maintain other financial goals
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During this time, I continued making contributions to my retirement account and saving for a down payment on a house. I wanted the debt gone, but I also didn't want to put all my eggs in one basket. I had other financial goals — and I didn't think it was realistic or sustainable to neglect these just to become debt-free.
5. Become an authorized payer and keep good records
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To streamline the process, my husband made me an authorized payer on his account. I made all my payments through QuikPay — which was linked to my checking account. After a payment was made, I would email the provider asking them to apply my payment to the principal balance of a certain loan, and that it should not be treated as an acceleration of a future payment. All payments were logged in an Excel workbook, which included the payment amount, date of payment, and loan total after the payment had been processed.
6. Own your decision
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When I told a friend what I was doing, she thought I was crazy. "It's not your debt," she told me. But when you're married, it is your debt. And as a couple, it's important to tackle it as a team and remove any negative emotions that could cloud your judgment and ultimately sabotage your end goal.
People may say paying off someone else's debt is enabling them. But I didn't see it this way. Student loans are different from other debt. Don't get me wrong — debt is debt. But his student loans were a one-time debt and have proven to be a solid investment. By paying down his loans, I was building our net worth as a couple.
I realize that what I did won't work for everyone. When paying off a spouse's debt, you can't view this as a "loan" or expect to be paid back at some point. You're willingly giving this money to help them with no resentment. If you can't get past this, you shouldn't pay off their debt.
It's been a little over a year since we paid off the full balance. In total over two years, I paid $22,680 and my husband paid nearly $12,000, making the total cost of his undergraduate loans nearly $65,000. Every so often I still log into his account just to see, "Your balance is currently $0." The joy I feel when I see this is insurmountable. My decision to pay off a portion of his loans was entirely psychological, not financial. It's a greater high than anything I could get from the stock market.
Mary Wheeler is a freelance writer based outside Boston, MA, and a program manager at MIT Sloan School of Management. Her work has appeared in Metro US, Men's Journal, and several regional publications.
Research into the psychological impact of quarantine indicates that extended isolation can have negative impacts on mental health, from increasing stress and sadness to igniting irritability and emotional anger.
Amy Morin, a psychotherapist, licensed clinical social worker, and mental strength coach, says that there are different steps you can take to safeguard your mental wellness while social-distancing.
Morin recommends building a routine of healthy coping skills for when you're feeling down, staying physically active, and keeping in touch virtually with friends.
The pandemic changed most people's daily routines. School and daycare closures, workers being told to work remotely, and brick and mortar store closures have resulted in most people's lives being swiftly flipped upside down.
Just as stress levels rose, many of us also lost access to our go-to coping skills. We can't get together with loved ones. We can't go to the gym. And we can't do many of the fun activities that help moderate our stress.
It's the perfect recipe for mental health problems. So it's not surprising that researchers have discovered that quarantine can lead to a rise in mental illness.
Quarantine and the decline in mental health
Individual reactions to quarantine vary — along with the circumstances. Someone who lives alone and continues to work from home will have a very different experience than someone who loses their job and has children that need help with schoolwork during the quarantine.
Therefore, everyone's mental health is affected in a slightly different way. So while rates of depression and anxiety may increase, not everyone will develop symptoms that warrant a clinical diagnosis. This doesn't mean they won't still experience a decline in psychological well-being, however.
It's a common misconception that people are either mentally healthy or mentally ill. But in reality, mental health is a continuum. And on any given day, we may slide up the continuum toward better mental health, or we may slide down the continuum toward poorer mental health.
The stress related to quarantine causes many people to experience a decline in mental health.
A 2019 study published in The Lancet reviewed previous studies that assessed quarantine and the impact it had on mental health. Researchers discovered that during and after quarantine, people often experienced increased:
Sadness
Numbness
Fear
Insomnia
Low mood
Depressive symptoms
Anger
Confusion
Post-traumatic stress symptoms
Stress
Irritability
Emotional exhaustion
Emotional disturbance
In addition to increased mental health issues, substance abuse may also increase during and after quarantine. The same study found that substance and alcohol dependency were more common up to three years after quarantines had ended.
How to stay mentally healthy
Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to build mental strength and improve your mental health during and after quarantine.
If you view yourself as "being stuck," you'll feel like a victim. If, however, you tell yourself that you're choosing to stay home to help everyone stay safe, this will empower you. It will help you look at quarantine as an opportunity (where you can read more books or learn a new skill) rather than a threat to your well-being. And an outlook like this can help you stay strong.
2. Find healthy coping skills
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Think about strategies you can use to manage your stress right now. You may need to get a little creative if you can't rely on some of your usual coping skills (like going out with friends). Look for ways to relax, have fun, and enjoy life — like taking a virtual yoga class or watching a funny movie. Just make sure the coping skills you use don't create bigger problems in your life (which could happen if you turn to food or alcohol to feel better).
3. Connect with others
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Whether you schedule a weekly video call with a loved one, or you text your friends throughout the day, stay connected with other people. Even on the days when you might not feel like you have much to say, reach out and say hello.
4. Stay active
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Physical activity does wonders for your mood and your mental health. If it's safe to do so, go outside and get some exercise. If not, find some workouts you can do from home. Physical activity is a powerful way to combat mental health problems.
5. Practice healthy self-care
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If you're not sleeping well, not eating well, and not caring for yourself, your mental health will decline. It's important to make sure you're taking care of yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually if you want to function at your best. So make self-care a priority to help you maintain your mental health.
6. Reach out for support
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If you're feeling stressed out, or you've noticed a decline in your mood, seek professional help. Fortunately, you don't have to wait for quarantine to end to speak to a licensed mental health professional. You can get help from an online therapist in the comfort of your own home.
As many Americans are staying at home during the novel coronavirus pandemic, workers are saving time that they would normally spend commuting to and from their offices.
Business Insider used data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey to find which cities people spend the most time a week commuting to work, on average.
Seven cities in California ranked in the 20 cities with the longest average weekly commute.
While many Americans have been adjusting to working from home during the novel coronavirus outbreak, one positive is that people are saving time and money that they usually would spend on their commute.
According to Census Bureau data, the average commute time to work across US metro areas was an hour and 56.7 minutes per week in 2018.
To determine which metro area residents are saving the most time from not commuting during the pandemic, we used data from the Census Bureau's 1-year American Community Survey estimates for 2018, the most recent year available. For each metro area, we calculated the average weekly one-way commute to work, assuming a five-day work week, using the average daily commute time in minutes for workers age 16 and over.
East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, was at the top of the list with an average weekly commute to work of 3 hours and 12.5 minutes in 2018. New York and Stockton, California, followed closely behind.
Read on to find out the 20 cities with the longest average weekly commutes to work. We also included the share of residents who did not work from home as of 2018 and the share of residents whose daily commute to work was at least an hour.
Melissa Petro is a freelance writer based in New York with her husband and two small children.
She started couples counseling with her husband in February, just before the coronavirus began to spread throughout the US.
Although they were hesitant at first to switch to virtual meetings, the weekly sessions soon began inspiring huge improvements in how Petro and her husband were communicating every day.
If you are quarantining or working from home with your partner, and are starting to get on each other's nerves, Petro recommends looking into couples therapy — it can be more impactful now than ever.
My husband and I started couples counseling at the end of February, when coronavirus had yet to be widely detected in the US. Becoming parents had tested our relationship, and recent challenges in particular — including the arrival of our second baby this past December — had made existing tensions worse. We wanted to communicate better, to treat one another more lovingly and bicker less often, particularly in front of our two year old son, who — much to my heartbreak — had begun acting out when the two of us would start fighting.
Arran and I were three sessions in and things were going well when the public health crisis escalated. As New Yorkers, we were encouraged to practice social distancing and began sheltering in place. We pulled our son out of daycare, and my husband began to work remotely. Thankfully, we've relocated to a spacious house upstate, rather than our 600-foot apartment. Even so, it's been an emotional rollercoaster. Like most Americans, we're stressed about money. We take turns feeling anxious and fearful. We're sometimes at odds when it comes to parenting our rambunctious toddler. Even though we all love to spend time together, we definitely get on one another's nerves.
While the midst of a deadly pandemic may feel like the wrong time to be working on your #couplesgoals, experts are clear in their advice that now is not the time to stop taking actions that address your mental health — and when it comes to interventions like couples or family therapy, it might even be a great time to start.
Whose turn is it to walk the dogs? You spent how much on what? When's the last time we had sex? Even when the end of the world feels imminent, experts say it's not unusual for couples to find themselves embroiled in the same old petty fights.
"Under stress, any difficulties get bigger," says licensed marriage and family therapist Bina Breitner.
Breitner — who is based in Tucson, Arizona, and currently under quarantine in Rome, Italy — has been working with couples and families in person as well as remotely for over 22 years. Efforts to deal with COVID-19, she says, have changed our schedules and disrupted our typical daily rhythms. As the crisis wears on, she warns, it's bound to get worse.
"People will to lose money and feel anxiety," Breitner warns. "They'll get cabin fever. They'll have many fewer interactions out in the world, and with other people." All this — compounded by fear of illness, loss of loved ones, death, and panic — puts pressure on individuals, Breitner says, which in turn taxes our relationships.
"It's going to be tough," says Brietner.
Talking with a neutral party can help
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"Couples therapy draws out each individual's feelings and needs — in the presence of the partner — so each person becomes educated about themselves, about their partner, and about the way they dance together emotionally."
Couples therapy offers its participants a greater awareness and concern for oneself and one's partner, Breitner explains. You develop an awareness of your patterns of interaction.
"You see how things work," Breitner says, "and realize you have choices."
Couples therapists work differently, and there are different modalities. These days, whatever the style, it's being done remotely.
Because of our schedules compounded by childcare issues, my husband and I had set ourselves up for telecommunicating even before the coronavirus hit. I worried sessions over the internet would feel impersonal and, well, remote. Instead, it feels as if we're inviting our therapist into our home. Without childcare, she gets a chance to see our parenting in action.
It allows you to work through tough emotions
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Our therapist, Rachel, is leading us through a popular approach called the Gottman method. Developed by American psychological researcher and clinician John Gottman, the Gottman method uses couples therapy techniques to increase affection, closeness, and respect. The program starts with a thorough assessment that my husband and I both completed separately. Rachel tailors each session to our specific needs based on the assessment's findings. We're also given homework in-between sessions.
Our first session, Rachel let us know that our assessment determined that while Arran and I share a good deal of affection and respect for one another — and that our relationship had a lot of other positive attributes — as a couple, we had trouble managing conflict.
That session, we practiced taking turns as the speaker and listener, and using "When you... I feel..." statements. Having done years of therapy, and given the fact that I write frequently about parenting and mental health, the whole situation — including this particular technique — wasn't entirely unfamiliar. Even so, it felt good to articulate myself to my partner in so unapologetically earnest a manner. And the whole situation was new for my husband. He fumbled a bit when it was his turn to talk and afterwards, he commented that he felt like he'd done it incorrectly. Instead of criticizing him like I might've done reflectively in the past, I reassured him. "If we did it perfectly, we wouldn't need to be there," I said, and thought: See, it's already working.
In this challenging time, counseling may matter more than ever
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There's a stigma to being in marriage counseling — as if seeking professional help is akin to admitting you're on the brink of divorce. On the contrary, I'm a firm believer that everyone can benefit from relationship counseling, whether or not your marriage — or the whole world — is in crisis.
In between sessions, Arran and I make a real effort to practice what we're being taught, even when it's awkward and although it feels somewhat embarrassing. When tension starts bubbling up, one of us will grumble to the other, "Do you want to do that thing Rachel suggested?"
The techniques are surprisingly effective at diffusing conflict and inspiring empathy. I walk away from each session — even the difficult ones — with a feeling of "we're in this together."
Couples therapy gives us something to do, and something to look forward to. It's a little social interaction with a relative stranger once a week, something completely novel in the time of the coronavirus.
Thousands of white-collar employees have adapted to working from their homes during the pandemic, and remote work will likely be more widely accepted in a new era of office culture.
That reality could accelerate an exodus of urbanites from expensive major cities to more affordable US locales.
People were already leaving the San Francisco Bay Area in droves — the region's housing supply is low, and housing and living costs are subsequently high.
But many more may begin to opt for living outside of the region, including tech workers that have already been used to remote work in an industry where results are prioritized over mere office attendance.
When people start returning to work, it will look very different from what we were used to in the "Before Times" prior to the coronavirus pandemic.
Design firms say employers may have to implement one-way hallways to minimize cross-traffic. Workstations may be staggered. You might be a part of an office cohort with a few handfuls of your coworkers. You may only go into the office on days when you have group work, with individual tasks completed at home. There may be single-occupancy bathrooms, and the workday may be shorter to allow cleaning rooms ample time to conduct the kind of rigorous wipe-down needed.
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But even as companies ponder eventual office reopenings, thousands have adapted to remotely working out of their homes, causing many to rethink the purpose of the workplace.
"We don't really keep offices to deal with the work that we do," Melissa Hanley, the CEO of design studio Blitz, told Business Insider. "So why do we go to the office?"
Where we do work is definitely shifting, said Hanley, whose firm has developed designs for the likes of Skype, Google, and Microsoft. Before the pandemic upended daily life, many did not have efficient work areas carved out of their homes, including those living in pint-sized spaces in the Bay Area.
"I do think it's going to have a major impact in our homes," she said. "I think about apartments in San Francisco — they don't have space for home offices or at least a legitimate home office."
That's why Hanley said we could see an "urban flight" from dense, major cities. Many are rethinking their decision to live in such pricey, bustling places as the pandemic-driven shutdown spells the closure of desirable urban amenities like bars and museums, as Business Insider's Aria Bendix reports.
"Maybe that's not so bad, and I get way more for my money somewhere else," Hanley said. "I can actually have that home office."
That includes the Bay Area, where a trickle of fleeing residents had already formed in recent years as the exorbitant cost of living, soaring housing prices, and a low supply of homes have made it difficult for many to retain a lifestyle in the urban environment.
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Real-estate site Redfin found that San Francisco lost more residents than any other city in the US in the last quarter of 2017. A 2018 survey from the Bay Area Council advocacy group found that 46% of residents said they planned to leave the region. As for their reasons why, 45% of residents cited high living costs, and 27% cited rising housing prices. And a 2019 Brunswick Group survey of 300 tech workers in the Valley found that 41% of 18- to 34-year-olds planned to leave the region in the next year.
There's even a Silicon Valley startup that offers tech workers a $10,000 stipend to leave the Bay Area and work remotely in coworking spaces outside the region.
Tech companies are tasked with incentivizing the best of the tech talent stock with high salaries, equity, and out-of-the-box job perks, like catered meals, bountiful snack assortments, and on-site exercise options. But it's getting more difficult to convince workers that living in such a high-cost city is worth it.
Female founders only receive 3% of all venture capital funding, even though teams led by at least one female founder perform 63% better than companies with all-male leaders.
To bolster female founders and entrepreneurs of color, Allison Byers and Ann Sublett developed Scroobious: a video-pitch platform that connects startup founders to interested investors.
Byers and Sublett are bootstrapping their business and working on a prototype which they hope to complete in May.
They said others hoping to kickstart a business during the pandemic should hold off on raising funds and instead focus on building relationships with investors.
When investors fail to place their money in diverse companies, not only do these founders end up at a disadvantage, but investors themselves lose out, too. Consider that teams led by at least one female founder perform 63% better than companies with all-male leaders. That's according to research highlighted in the 2019 "Beyond the VC Funding Gap" report from Morgan Stanley, which refers to the gender gap in funding as the "trillion-dollar opportunity" investors are missing out on.
A new startup from two female co-CEOs aims to shrink this funding gap.
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When Allison Byers advanced from first founding employee to co-president and director at Digital Cognition Technologies (DCT), a digital health company spinoff from MIT that's developed a test of cognitive function by applying artificial intelligence to neuropsychological testing, she spent four years fundraising, successfully bringing in $9.6 million for the company — all while witnessing first hand "the extra challenges faced by women and minorities" when trying to seek outside investment, she told Business Insider.
Byers, based in Boston, started to develop a theory: Just as singles benefit from expanding their pool of potential matches by tapping into online dating, both founders and funders could benefit greatly from expanding their pool of contacts through an online platform.
"I envisioned a platform solution for the investing industry itself that utilizes video and data science to create a humanized and efficient way to connect underrepresented founders and the investors looking to reach them," she shared.
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Meanwhile, in New York City, Ann Sublett, after gaining 20 years of management experience at companies like Forbes, Central Park Conservancy, the New York Botanical Garden, and Sandow and founding the Pallas Network, a networking group with more than 700 female members around the world, decided to turn to angel investing. Her priority was to put her money behind companies created by women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and those from geographically diverse backgrounds, but she quickly discovered that tools to find these kinds of founders were "extremely lacking," something she heard repeated among other angel investors as well, she shared with Business Insider.
"That got me thinking: How could I use my experiences — and frustrations — to create a tool to broaden the pool of potential investments not just for me, but for any investor with a strong investment thesis and a commitment to diversity?" she said.
It's only fitting that an online platform for women in tech, Elpha, brought these two (and their ideas) together. Teaming up as cofounders and co-CEOs, Byers and Sublett are launching a lightweight version of the platform that combines their shared vision this summer.
Dubbed Scroobious— in a nod to a poem by Edward Lear, "The Scroobious Pip," that celebrates being unique — the technology will enable founders to showcase their startups through four-minute video pitches. By leveraging predictive algorithms, similar to technology used by companies like Netflix and YouTube, the idea is that investors will be shown video pitches that are a best match for their interests.
"Scroobious' mission is to shrink the funding gap for female and diverse founders by creating an efficient way for investors to source outside their own networks and for underrepresented founders to connect with funders they otherwise couldn't access," explained Byers.
Byers and Sublett, who are currently bootstrapping Scroobious and working with an outside tech team to build the initial prototype, which they hope will be complete in May, shared with Business Insider how the platform works, what the company's launch strategy looks like amid the coronavirus pandemic, and their advice for female founders and founders of color trying to navigate securing funding at this time.
Launching a startup in a pandemic
The cofounders hope to onboard their first cohort of founder and investor beta testers over the summer to gather feedback on the platform, with about 40 to 50 of each group to start — something they're well on their way to reaching, Byers shared.
The need for the platform feels more urgent than ever to the co-CEOs, both for founders and investors they hope to attract, because limited movement resulting from sheltering in place is restricting networking.
"We have been talking to a lot of [angel investors], and … many of them would like to keep investing, despite the pandemic," said Sublett. "How do you network when all the events are cancelled? We feel strongly that Scroobious can help fill that need."
Building relationships with investors when you can't meet in person
Byers and Sublett plan to self-fund Scroobious through the beta-test time period and leverage usage data and feedback from this initial cohort to then expand upon the platform offerings and raise funds.
"That way we will be informed and have a wealth of knowledge to draw on when talking about product strategy and use of funds," shared Byers.
With the pandemic, Byers has seen founders who were planning to raise funds pause their efforts and investors slowing their pace. Her advice to entrepreneurs navigating the pandemic: Hold off on raising funds if at all possible and instead focus on cultivating relationships with investors. That way, when investors "are more freely deploying capital, the rapport and comfort levels will have been built and you will already be in the pipeline," she explained.
Sublett said that one ineffective strategy that she's heard is on the rise is a "spray and pray" approach. That is, investors in her network are receiving spam messages on channels like LinkedIn from entrepreneurs who haven't done their homework first.
"There's real frustration there on the part of the investors because they're receiving requests for Zoom meetings and phone calls with founders that aren't even in their area of investment focus," said Sublett.
"A well-crafted cold email," on the other hand, can lead to a first connection, said Sublett.
Her advice: Learn about the investor's portfolio. Find out the answers to questions like:
What types of companies do they invest in? At what stage?
Has the investor invested in a business like yours before? Is your company relevant to their portfolio?
If so, why should they invest a second time in a direct competitor?
If they haven't invested in companies like yours, why would they now be interested?
Do they know someone you would like an introduction to?
There are two key components to a solid cold email, according to Sublett.
For your warm intro, build on the research you've done and explain how you found the investor and why you're interested in connecting.
Then, for the heart of the pitch, be clear and specific about what you're asking, but also have something to offer. For instance, you can say something like: "I would like to speak with you for 15 minutes to ask you about X, Y, and Z." And then include an offer like, "I am an alumni of/used to work at/have connections through X and would be happy to connect you if a need ever arises."
Including an offer shows you're willing to reciprocate and give back your own "social and emotional capital," and it lets the person know you have the savvy to make connections, a critical part of successful fundraising and business development, explained Sublett.
It's more important now than ever for startups to recognize the value of investors' time, "especially now that people are working from home, sometimes with extended families around," Sublett noted. "It can be incredibly exhausting just to get through a day let alone pick up the phone or hop on a Zoom call to ask a friend or colleague to speak with someone they just met."
And developing relationships and securing meetings will take longer than they did before the start of the coronavirus outbreak, she added.
"Be patient … Do everything you can to preserve cash. This is an ultramarathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself," she said.
Leveraging video and predictive analytics to eliminate barriers to funding
Driven by data, Byers and Sublett both conducted market research, informational interviews, and online surveys to inform their strategy and product design.
"We have a huge shared file where we store cited statistics and quotes about the investing landscape as it pertains to women and minorities and the opportunity diverse founders present to smart investors," shared Byers, which includes the Morgan Stanley report.
Byers and Sublett turned to video for the power of visual content, again sharing data they found that indicates visuals are processed 60,000 faster than the written word, and because it offers entrepreneurs a platform for demonstrating traits like passion, something that's harder to convey over a traditional pitch deck. They landed on a four-minute pitch based on findings that investors look at pitch decks for an average of three minutes and 44 seconds.
"Our original plan was to film founder pitches in person to standardize the process and provide in-the-moment coaching and encouragement," said Byers, noting that due to the pandemic, their strategy had to be adapted. "We have changed our process so that founders can film at home." The founders will still offer remote pitch development guidance and support, based on Byers' 20 years of pitching experience.
In addition, entrepreneurs who participate will receive "aggregate data about how investors are interacting with their video" and messages from interested investors, explained Byers.
Scroobious will also offer community forums for both founders and angel investors, and a vendor marketplace for companies that offer services for early-stage companies — think payroll, bookkeeping, legal services. Members will be able to rate vendors, just like people can rate businesses on Yelp or hosts on Airbnb.
The long-term plan is to monetize the platform through a basic SaaS subscription with tiered monthly fees — with the specific pricing to be determined for both founders and funders, explained Byers. "A percentage of referred revenue from vendors on the marketplace will be a secondary stream," she added.
"I have thought a lot about what success for Scroobious looks like, and in the end that success will be defined by how far we can help move the needle on increasing the amount of private market money that goes to founders outside of the 'norm,'" said Sublett. "I hope that Scroobious makes it easier for investors to invest in their beliefs, whether that's to support founders like them — for instance, a founder from a rural state or a disadvantaged socioeconomic background, or an LGBTQ+ founder, or founders of color — or founders who are very different from them."
The travel and hospitality industries have taken a significant hit. In addition to several airlines, major businesses like Marriott, the world's largest hotel company, and Walt Disney World have both announced furloughs.
Here's a roundup of the major companies who have announced downsizing their workforce due to coronavirus thus far.
Ride-hailing giant Uber announced it is cutting 3,700 jobs — or 14% of its workforce — on May 6. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will forego his $1 million base salary this year.
Airbnb announced it is laying off about 25% of its workforce, or 1,900 employees, on May 5. Its severance package includes several months' pay, a year of healthcare, and support finding a new job.
Ride-hailing company Lyft is laying off 982 employees and furloughing another 288, accounting for 17% of the company's workforce. The company made the announcement on April 29 and added that other cost-cutting measures include pay cuts for executive leadership.
Boeing announced that it would cut about 10% of its workforce — or about 16,000 jobs — on April 29. The cuts are expected to be through a combination of buyouts, voluntary layoffs, and involuntary layoffs.
On April 12, a union representing workers at Walt Disney World said the company will be furloughing 43,000 employees starting April 19. The amusement parks have been closed since March 16 and 200 essential workers will continue maintaining them.
On April 7, Tesla sent an email to employees saying it will furlough all nonessential workers until at least May 4, and reduce all employees' pay by at least 10%. These cost-cutting measures are expected to start April 13.
JCPenney has already started furloughing workers and confirmed it would continue to furlough a "significant portion" of its 85,000 employees as of April 5.
The Wing, a buzzy Instagram-ready women's coworking company, is laying off nearly all of its hourly employees and half of its corporate staff as of April 3, according to Vice. The company confirmed the layoffs but did not elaborate on numbers. Its founders are foregoing their salaries.
ClassPass, the billion-dollar fitness platform, furloughed or laid off over half of its 700 employees on April 2 — 22% were laid off and 31% were furloughed.
On April 2, airplane manufacturer Boeing announced that it would offer a voluntary layoff plan to employees to cut costs. Those opting into the layoff plan will leave with a pay and benefits package, but the company offered no details about compensation.
Sephora laid off over 3,000 employees across the US via conference call on March 31. "It is our sincerest hope that we are able to bring these employees back on staff in the near future," Sephora said in a statement.
Macy's CEO Jeff Gennette informed his staff via email that the company would be furloughing most of its 125,000 employees on March 30. The company only plans to have work for "the minimum number of employees necessary to maintain basic business operations" across Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and Bluemercury, Gennette wrote. He will stop receiving his salary, along with the rest of the board of directors.
Everlane, the clothing retailer focused on ethical sourcing, laid off over 200 employees and furloughed 68 others on March 27. CEO Michael Preysman will reduce his salary to zero.
ZipRecruiter laid off 443 employees and furloughed dozens more on March 27, days after CEO Ian Siegel said the billion-dollar online job-hub company was safe.
Sonder, a billion-dollar apartment-rental startup billed as a hospitality industry disruptor, laid off or furloughed 400 people — one third of its workforce — on March 24, according to The Information.
GE announced that it will be reducing approximately 10% of its aviation unit's workforce, amounting to about 2,500 employees, on March 23. It also announced a three month furlough impacting 50% of its maintenance and repair employees. GE CEO Larry Culp will forgo his salary for the rest of the year, while GE Aviation CEO David Joyce will give up half of his salary.
According to the Washington Post, at least 200 workers across President Trump's hotels in Washington DC, New York City, and Las Vegas were laid off as of March 20. Other Trump properties, like Palm Beach's Mar-a-Lago, have temporarily closed.
Air Canada announced it is set to lay off more than 5,100, or 50%, of its flight crew on March 19. Renee Smith-Valade, the airline's vice president, called the decision "difficult but necessary" in a statement.
Cirque du Soleil announced it is laying off 95% of its 4,679 person staff on March 19, a week after canceling all its upcoming performances. The circus producer kept 259 staffers to plan and sell tickets for future tours.
New York's Metropolitan Opera is the largest performing arts organization in the US by budget. On March 19, the Met laid off all of its union employees for the duration of the coronavirus outbreak. The Met also announced the cancellation of all performances through the end of the 2019-2020 season, which was set to end May 9.
Famous restauranteur Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group, which owns beloved NYC staples like Gramercy Tavern, laid off 2,000 employees, or 80% of its workforce, on March 18.
Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, which owns over 50 hotels in the US including the W in Los Angeles, laid off 50% of its 8,000 employees on March 17. CEO Jon Bortz also told the Los Angeles Times that the company may need to lay off an additional 2,000 employees by the end of the month.
Marriott International, the world's largest hotel company, said it has started to furlough what could amount to tens of thousands of employees on March 17. Furloughs, as opposed to layoffs, occur when employees are required to take an unpaid leave of absence. Arne Sorenson, the president and CEO, announced that his own salary will be suspended for the rest of the year and senior executives' salaries will be reduced by 50%.
Norwegian Airlines announced the temporary layoff of 90% of its workforce on March 16, amounting to 7,300 employees. The airline also canceled 85% of its flights.
Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) announced that it would temporarily lay off 10,000 employees — 90% of its staff — on March 15. SAS also halted the majority of its flights and is operating with limited service.
Founder and CEO, Manish Chandra, said the app's fundamental business model has enabled the company to operate through the coronavirus pandemic without extensive changes.
He predicted that the future of retail will be more personalized and immersive, with resale at the forefront.
Long before most Americans began working remotely during the pandemic, there was a whole crop of solopreneurs building six-figure businesses from home— which they started with little more than their phones and the clothes in their closets.
Popular shopping apps like Poshmark have made it possible for almost anyone to start a resale business. Poshmark founder and CEO, Manish Chandra, built the app to be just that — an accessible way for millions of people to sell, ship, and shop from their homes.
"Our peer-to-peer model and extensive suite of seller tools makes it easy for anyone to earn extra income," he told Business Insider. A consumer-to-consumer model, if you will.
Chandra has over 20 years of experience building and scaling companies including Kaboodle, a social shopping business that was acquired by media giant Hearst Corporation in 2007.
Poshmark has over 60 million users in the US and just launched a stories feature on the app, similar to Instagram and Snapchat.
Chandra said a strong logistics and inventory network is what makes Poshmark's business model more resilient to disruption than others in its space. The company's fundamental advantage during this time is that it doesn't rely on manufacturers and it already had a system in place to provide shipping for all users.
"Because of this foundation, Poshmark has been able to continue to operate without extensive changes," he said.
Before coronavirus, the retail industry was already battling several disruptive forces — a quicker direct-to-consumer cycle, the death of shopping malls, reinventing brick-and-mortar, and a new era of marketing that advocated real over sexy. Now, as we grow accustomed to doing more from the comfort of our homes, it could benefit from the future of retail becoming more personal.
"Our innate architecture supports this new way of life and I believe the kind of personalized and immersive retail experience fostered on our platform will be the 'new normal' going forward," Chandra said.
Poshmark users praise its tight-knit community of shoppers and sellers, which in many ways acts as its own social media platform. "The intergenerational movement that resale has ignited is fueling the acceleration of social commerce at scale, delivering on consumers' need for connections and a newly awakened sense of community," he said.
And resale could be at the forefront of this newly social retail industry, as Chandra said consumers are looking to platforms that prioritize financial and environmental sustainability. "If one thing is true, this pandemic has exacerbated people's need and desire for genuine connection," he said.
Having a sponsor at work — someone who advocates for you — can mean the difference between getting a promotion and staying stagnant for years. A sponsor goes beyond a mentor, who gives career advice. They call out your hard work in meetings, mention your name in rooms you're not in, and can champion you when it comes time to hand out new opportunities.
According to joint research by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org, black women are much less likely than their colleagues to have a work sponsor. They're also less likely than other women to feel that promotions are fair and objective.
"It's something that I heard on the road, across 28 cities, in lots of emails and direct messages," Harts, who's currently on book tour, told Business Insider.
In fact, it's an issue she faced herself.
"It took about six years before I realized that I was spinning my wheels trying to figure out how other people were getting advanced, and I didn't; I was still performing at a high level, but I just wasn't getting the same opportunities," she said.
Lack of sponsorship is certainly not the only obstacle women of color face in their careers. Hiring discrimination, lack of promotion opportunities, microaggressions and racism, and lack of representation of people who look like them in the C-suite, among other roadblocks, compound the issue. However, it is an issue employees and managers can begin to change themselves, immediately.
There are several steps black women and senior leaders can take to address the issue.
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For black women looking for a mentor or sponsor:
Introduce yourself to senior leaders.
After not getting a promotion for several years, Hart decided one day to take matters into her own hands. She introduced herself to leaders (largely white men) in her company.
"Sometimes the way the game is played is, we're going to have to make ourselves known," Hart said.
It worked. One of those leaders, a white man, began to mentor her. After several months, he became her sponsor.
"He catapulted my career by years. He brought me to the table. He helped me secure additional bonuses and salary increases. He put me on projects that his colleagues questioned if I was ready for. He vouched for me," she said. "If I hadn't introduced myself to him and created a relationship with him to notice me, I probably would still be sitting in the same spot."
Build your network.
"I am very adamant about telling women of color, telling black women that we have to go out to the happy hours, we have to go to the birthday parties, and the break room," Hart said.
In order for people to want to be a part of your success, they have to know who you are and what you're doing. Meeting new people both within, and outside of the office, is crucial.
Employee resource groups, company happy hours, local industry groups, as well as groups specifically for other black women are great opportunities to expand your network.
Tell yourself a new narrative.
"It was always difficult because I felt like I was in a double bind. You're a woman, but you're also a black woman," Hart said.
While you may feel at a disadvantage, it's important to not let that hold you back. Know that you are capable, and deserve success.
"Even though we may be the only one in the room who looks like us, it doesn't mean that we can't be as successful as some of our counterparts," Hart said.
Keep an eye out for other opportunities if you're having trouble finding support.
If after months of seeking out mentorship opportunities from leaders and peers at your company, you're still feeling stuck, start relying more on your contacts outside of your job. They can potentially help you find a better opportunity.
"If you find that you're hitting a brick wall. Know that you don't have to stay with your head against a brick wall for the next 20 years," said Avis Jones-DeWeever, author of "How Exceptional Black Women Lead."
"Keep a foot on both boats. Plant some seeds for relationships within your organization, among a wide range of people, but also form and maintain relationships with people who can be that safe space to provide and guidance on your overall career outside of your job."
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For leaders looking to be a mentor or sponsor:
Be aware of the need.
"A lack of consideration, in terms of just not being aware of the need to mentor black employees, is often the first issue. Sometimes it doesn't even cross a non-African American's mind to help," said Shawn LaRe Brinkley of the Black Women's Network.
Simply being aware of the need is a good start.
Have more team lunches and outings.
"Be open to having more interaction in a less formal way with your staff. Having those opportunities for people to get to know each other, to connect with each other, helps build relationships," said Jones-DeWeever.
Establish yourself as a resource.
Tell your team you're here to help guide them. This will make it easier for employees, especially those who may feel hesitant or afraid to approach you, to do just that.
"Don't be afraid to open the door. Allow black women opportunities to grow," Jones-DeWeever said.
"Being approachable and opening the door is important. Make it an option for the employee to reach out and seek mentorship," Brinkley added.
Use questions as opportunities to mentor.
It's unlikely someone is going to straight up ask you to be their mentor or sponsor.
"More likely, she will request your help on a project or ask you to explain an organizational process. Capitalize on her initiative and discuss how consistent mentoring may help her in significant ways," according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology in its Mentor's Guide.
Find out what they're interested in and seek understanding.
Seek to understand your mentee's culture and background.
"There's a certain amount of respect for a person who says, you know what, I don't know you, can we get coffee?" Brinkley said. "Being able to understand a person's background and their culture, some of the issues that a black person may face in the workplace, is important."
