Author: arthursheikin@gmail.com

[ad_1] This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 55-year-old Alice Peacock from Reading, England. The following has been edited for length and clarity.I fully intended to go back to work after having my first child.I looked into nurseries near my workplace and tried to get increased flexibility to cut my hours at my company, but nothing seemed to be working out.My first child, Michael, was born in 2001, and I fell in love. When my maternity leave was coming to an end, I questioned whether I wanted someone else to look after him.I decided to give my…

[ad_1] After years of ramping up its RTO push, Dell called all its employees living near an office back to their desks full time starting March 3, saying it expected employees to do “a regular working day in the office” with “flexibility as needed.”Three months in, 10 Dell employees based in offices across the US have told BI that — in addition to challenges with RTO mandates like overcrowded offices and parking lots — the degree of enforcement so far has depended on the role and the manager. Some employees said they are in eight hours a day, while one…

[ad_1] CNN  —  Job insecurity and unaffordable housing are among the biggest reasons why millions of people worldwide can’t have the number of children they want, the United Nations said Tuesday, calling for “urgent action” to address the “fertility crisis.” Together with market research firm YouGov, the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency UNFPA conducted a survey across 14 countries to find out whether people are able to have the families they want. They found that almost a fifth of adults of reproductive age do not believe they will be able to have as many children as they would like,…

[ad_1] Starbucks could soon pay two lucky people to post about their cup of Joe.The Seattle-based coffee chain is hiring two content creators to travel the world for a year and shoot content for its social platforms, and paying them up to $136,000 for the gig.”For one epic year, you’ll travel the world — think Milan, Tokyo, Colombia, Dubai, Costa Rica — and more capturing the vibes, culture, and people behind every Starbucks experience,” Starbucks said in the job listing posted on May 28.The roles are full-time, remote jobs that last for a year. Per the job listing, the content…

[ad_1] The oft-debated recession indicator. Lipstick sales, the “men’s underwear index,” and … an increase in TaskRabbit applications?There’s been an uptick in recent years in the number of people looking to shore up their income streams with gig work.That’s been the case for TaskRabbit, which matches up “Taskers” with clients that need things built, installed, repaired, or otherwise completed by a gig worker. Its CEO, Ania Smith, told the podcast Decoder that applications to be a “Tasker” have spiked in the last year.”As the economy has changed over the last few years — and especially over the last couple of…

[ad_1] New York CNN  —  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is personally assembling a team to achieve a “superintelligence,” machines that are capable of surpassing human capabilities, according to a Bloomberg report. Zuckerberg is reportedly so frustrated with Meta’s efforts in the artificial intelligence space that he has taken it upon himself to meet with experts in the field at his homes in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto, California. Meta and Zuckerberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Meta has created AI tools that are woven into Facebook, WhatsApp and other Meta-owned apps, as well as its Ray-Ban…

[ad_1] All good buddy comedies come to an end. For President Donald Trump and first friend “Uncle Elon” Musk, theirs wrapped up with the same explosive fanfare upon which it started. But now their shared enthusiasm for cutting government waste has morphed into animosity for each other so deep and personal that it’s become a textbook case study in management gone wrong.In November, just after Trump’s reelection, I asked management experts if Musk could mimic his track record of juicing everything he could out of his lean companies to make the government run more efficiently. They were reluctant to doubt…

[ad_1] Zoom’s CEO says he has two priorities: work and family. When they collide, family wins.On an episode of the “Grit” podcast published on Monday, Eric Yuan, who founded the company, said he doesn’t have bandwidth for much outside his job and his wife and three grown children.”I do not have a lot of hobbies at all,” he said. “Family and Zoom, that’s pretty much it.”Yuan said he wants to lead by example.”I tell our team, ‘Guys, you know, there’s no way to balance. Work is life, life is work,'” Yuan said. “However, whenever there’s a conflict, guess what? Family…

[ad_1] Starbucks is serving up cheap drinks in China this summer.Starting Tuesday, the coffee chain is lowering the prices of more than 20 drinks in its Frappuccino, iced shaken tea, and tea latte product lines, Starbucks representative Kok Kuan Tan told BI. He said the company hasn’t determined an end date for the promotion.The chain said in a Monday post on Chinese social media site Weibo that prices will be brought down to as low as 23 yuan, or about $3.20, for the summer.Tan said Starbucks’ grande drinks in the three lines will get cheaper by an average of 5…

[ad_1] New York CNN  —  In a little more than two years, AI has gone from powering what was once a niche chatbot to being a catalyst for what some tech leaders are calling a tidal wave that could be as life changing as the internet. AI is being framed as the next major iteration of how people use technology. But that shift is already unfolding very differently from how other major technological advancements have played out, like the internet, social media and the smartphone. While Apple and Samsung release new smartphones once or twice a year, AI models are…