Author: openjargon

• Burger King and McDonald's are both set to launch their own $5 value meal deal.
• Other fast-food and restaurant chains are also getting involved in the value-wars.
• Chains are trying to lure diners back in, after high prices of fast food have turned many away.

The fast food wars are heating up, as Burger King is set to launch its own $5 value meal deal.

It's not the only fast food chain to start offering lower-priced deals. So how do the other fast-food and restaurant chains offers stack up?

Burger King's offer is similar to the McDonald's deal. It includes a sandwich, chicken nuggets, fries, and a drink all for $5, Bloomberg reported. But this deal is set to run for over a month, unlike the one from McDonald's.

McDonald's will launch its $5 offering at the end of June. It includes a choice between two of the chain's signature burgers — a McChicken or a McDouble — and a four-piece McNuggets, fries, and a drink.

Other chains are expanding their meal deals. Wendy's has announced that it's adding to its $3 breakfast deal for a limited time. Customers can pair a small portion of seasoned potatoes with a choice between two breakfast muffins — a bacon, egg, and cheese English muffin or a sausage, egg, and cheese English muffin, the company said.

Earlier this year, Taco Bell overhauled its Cravings Value Menu by adding six new "meal-sized" items to the menu, which features items under $3. The menu update came as customers are seeking more value, but have found rising prices at fast food chains.

Fast-food prices have stayed high since chains raised their menu prices during the pandemic in response to soaring food and labor costs. It's led some customers to order smaller portions or to start cooking more at home.

Restaurant chains like Chili's are also rolling out more deals and portion sizes to capture some of fast-food's lost diners. Chili's launched its new Big Smasher burger earlier this year — the burger costs $12.99 but comes down to $10.99 when part of the chain's "3 For Me" meal combo. The cheaper deals hope to capture those diners looking for value as fast-food prices creep up toward restaurant chain prices.

• Apple's new iPad lineup debuted on May 7 with flashy new features.
• The new iPad Pro has a powerful M4 chip, but it's unclear who's buying iPads these days.
• Both analysts and owners suggest that the upgrade cycle might be to blame.

Apple launched its latest iPads earlier this month with great fanfare and a host of new bells and whistles.

While it's clearly a move to update the product line and invigorate customers, it's also led many to ask: Who's actually buying new ones?

The tablet computer debuted in 2010 with a price tag of $500, and the lineup has since expanded to include tablets that fit the needs of kids, creatives, and business professionals. Its most recent versions include the thinnest yet, with an impressive OLED screen — if you want to spend $3,000 on a new iPad, that is.

But the overall iPad line "has been in a funk for three years," said Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management. Apple's most recent earnings showed quarterly revenue of $5.56 billion — down 17% year-over-year and below analysts' estimates.

One major issue, analysts who spoke to Business Insider said, is how regularly owners feel the need to buy a new one.

"They use their iPad, but they don't use it enough that they need to upgrade super often," Munster said.

In fact, Wedbush Securities managing director Dan Ives estimated that 70% of iPad owners haven't upgraded in 4 years — seemingly a lot longer than people keep their iPhones.

One Reddit user recently asked in the r/iPadPro subreddit if 2018 iPad Pro owners were finally ready to upgrade to the latest model, and the responses were mixed.

"My beloved 2018 died last month. I drove that poor iPad into the ground and she held strong. I already ordered the 2024 and plan to keep it for at least another 6 years," one user wrote.

Others weren't so quick to give up on their old iPads, which are still running and can still support current software.

"I'm waiting for some useful 3D model editing app or something that needs something more powerful to make me push my 2018 past its breaking point but haven't gotten there yet," another user replied.

Better computing power could be something that drives sales. Ives said the new M4 chip in the new iPad Pro, which Apple touted as an "outrageously powerful chip for AI," could lead more consumers to buy an iPad over a Mac.

It's key as AI becomes increasingly ubiquitous. Apple CEO Tim Cook has said there are "big opportunities across our products" for generative AI, so the newest iPad should reasonably be compatible with any updates the company could announce at its Worldwide Developers Conference.

Meanwhile, Munster believes education is still the tablet's strongest market. Remote learning prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic grew iPad sales in 2021, and Apple offers deals on devices for students.

Apple execs are optimistic about the tablet, at least in the short term. CFO Luca Maestri said on May 2's earnings call that the company expects iPad revenue growth in the double digits in the current quarter.

But it'll need to bounce back sustainably if Apple hopes to wow analysts.

"This has been a long, slow, downward trend for the iPad," Munster told BI.

• Etienne Constable was ordered to hide his boat from the street or face a $100 fine.
• Constable asked his neighbor to paint the boat on his city-mandated fence that blocks it from view.
• The neighbor, artist Hanif Panni, said he's been inundated with requests to paint similar murals.

SHOULD WE WORK INTO A BULLET THAT THE CITY IS CHANGING/CONSIDERING CHANGING ITS POLICY OR RELEGATE THAT TO THE BODY OF THE STORY?

A fence in California is catching eyes not for its extravagance or scale, but for its playful defiance against a city ordinance.

In July 2023, Senior Applications Manager Etienne Constable received a notice from the city of Seaside, a 30,000-person enclave on the Pacific Coast about 116 miles south of San Francisco. It requested that he build a barrier to shield his boat, parked in his driveway, from street view — and he faced a $100 fine if he didn't comply, with the possibility of it escalating to a maximum of $500.

In a cheekily clever move, he sought the help of his neighbor, artist Hanif Panni, to devise an ingenious workaround: building a fence, yes, but adorning it with a strikingly lifelike mural of his boat.

"He came to me and said, 'Wouldn't it be funny if we did something like this?'" Panni told Business Insider. "He's not a prankster, but he does have some pretty interesting ideas for fighting bureaucracy in a positive way."

Constable, who told Business Insider that he has lived in his home for 29 years, has parked his boat trailer in his driveway without contest for the majority of that time.

The regulation within Seaside's Title 17 Zoning Ordinance Code mandates that boats and trailers be enclosed by a six-foot-high fence along their sides and fronts, but Constable said it wasn't enforced with any regularity.

"Before last July, I was never aware of it," he said.

However, everything took a turn in early 2023 when Seaside stepped up its code enforcement efforts in response to many long-standing complaints. The city started issuing letters to residents, including Constable, as reported by The Washington Post.

"I was certainly surprised and immediately a little bit angry since I've had a different boat trailer parked there almost the whole time I have lived in this neighborhood," he said. "I knew I couldn't fight city hall because I'm not famous or rich, but I thought I could start with my intellect."

Panni said what he was paid to paint the mural was considerably "less than what the city would have charged Constable if he hadn't built the fence."

Constable and Panni's innovative solution was greeted with uproarious laughter and attention on social media. As a result, Panni has been inundated with requests from other Seaside residents who are eager to have their own fences similarly — and defiantly — transformed.

"It's been pretty hilarious," Panni said. "I have a couple inquiries, and I'm meeting with people that have similar letters from the city. It's really refreshing that this public art statement is inspiring so much conversation."

Seaside's city leaders are, surprisingly, quite pleased with Constable's rebellious fence.

In May, Police Chief Nick Borges, who currently serves as the acting city manager, visited Constable's home to discuss the fence's mural.

During their meeting, Borges not only extended his congratulations to Constable but also expressed his admiration with a heartfelt high-five. According to Constable, Borges also mentioned that he was in favor of the city getting rid of some ordinances, including Title 17.

"We're not taking any action," local news outlet KSBW reported Borges said. "The only action I'm going to take is a high five, and that's it."

• China's EV industry is booming — but it could be about to face a painful reckoning.
• Price wars and slowing demand are putting Chinese EV players under pressure. 
• Execs are warning that 2024 will be a "knockout round," with some firms pushed to the brink.

China's EV industry has boomed over the last few years — but it could soon face a painful reckoning.

The International Energy Agency wrote in a recent report that despite EV adoption in China being expected to grow to 45% this year, there are still "far more EV companies in China than can possibly survive in a competitive market."

"In 2014 alone, ten years ago, over 80,000 companies registered in China entered the electromobility sector. In 2023, over 80% of electric car sales in China were concentrated in just over 30 companies," it read.

China's EV market is known for being brutally competitive, with around 123 companies jockeying for customers. Executives and experts are warning that the number of players will likely shrink in the coming years, with economic headwinds piling the pressure on electric vehicle manufacturers.

The IEA report concludes that China's EV market will likely coalesce around a handful of "robust champions."

Some Chinese EV CEOs have echoed that sentiment, and are steeling themselves for what Xpeng boss He Xiaopeng described as a "knockout round" that could end in a "bloodbath" with prices continuing to drop even as growth slows.

"It is not correct for a startup firm to chase idealism," said William Li, CEO of Tesla rival Nio said at a media briefing in December, per The South China Morning Post.

"Nio, as an EV business, has to face the grim reality and try to dodge the bullet as market competition intensifies," he added.

Consolidation looming

This pessimism is rooted in expectations that the rapid pace of EV adoption in China will slow this year, as the Chinese economy struggles with rampant deflation and an ongoing property crisis.

According to China's Passenger Car Association, sales of new energy vehicles are expected to rise by 25% in 2024, down from 36% the year before.

Two of China's biggest automakers, BYD and Li Auto, both recently reported mixed first-quarter earnings. BYD sold 300,000 battery EVs in the first three months of the year, a drop from a record 526,000 in the previous quarter.

Li Auto, meanwhile, saw vehicle sales and net income fall short of analyst targets and cut delivery targets for its new battery-electric van after it failed to sell as well as expected.

Slowing demand has sparked a brutal price war initiated by Elon Musk's Tesla. The automaker started cutting the prices of some of its Chinese models in 2022 and has continued since then, forcing local rivals to retaliate and slash their own prices to keep up.

It has also led to fears of overcapacity, with healthy subsidies for the EV industry leading to a glut of new factories being built over the past few years.

Many of them now sit empty, with China's National Bureau of Statistics estimating that capacity utilization across the auto industry was at 65% in the first three months of this year, down from 75% in 2023 and 80%-plus before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to The New York Times.

This has put increasing financial pressure on China's EV makers, many of whom have accumulated losses as they have rapidly scaled up their businesses.

Nio, for example, has never turned a profit and reported a $2.9 billion loss last year. Rival Xpeng posted a narrower-than-expected net loss of 1.41 billion yuan ($195 million) for the first three months of 2024, delivering 21,821 vehicles.

Regulators have issued their own warnings. Xin Guobin, vice minister of industry and information technology, cautioned against expansion in the face of "insufficient" consumer demand for EVs and said Beijing would take "forceful measures" to address "blind" construction of new EV projects.

"There are a lot of EV companies in China. The average volume per brand is very low, not sustainable, and so there will be eventual consolidation," Stephen Dyer, head of Asia auto and industrials consulting at Alixpartners, told Business Insider.

Dyer said consolidation would likely be a protracted process, with investors and local governments reluctant to let EV companies die.

But he added that only "a handful" of Chinese firms are likely making a profit on their EV business, meaning a crunch is inevitable.

"Among the little over 120 EV brands that are selling EVs in China, we think about 20 to 30 will probably be financially viable in the long term," he added.

The red ocean

There are signs this thinning of the herd has already begun.

Several smaller Chinese EV makers have run into financial difficulties in recent months, with Shanghai-based WM Motor filing for pre-restructuring last October and the company behind the premium EV brand HiPhi suspending production in February for at least six months.

Tencent-backed Aiways, meanwhile, is reportedly moving its operations from China to Germany, with sources familiar with the matter telling Autocar the move was due to intense competition and pricing pressure back home.

EV parts suppliers are also feeling the squeeze as car makers take longer to pay the bills.

Bloomberg reported this month that both Nio and Xpeng are taking longer to clear their receipts payable — something Alvarez & Marsal consultant Lin Zhu warned was pushing smaller suppliers to the brink.

"We've seen more car components producers approaching us to improve their performance and some of them are thinking about offloading unprofitable businesses," Zhu told Bloomberg.

"The weak ones in the supply chain will face a high risk of being kicked out of the game," she added.

The pain is even more severe for foreign automakers, who have seen their position in China gradually decline in favor of local manufacturers.

"It is a matter of existing at the moment. It's becoming more and more difficult for European manufacturers in China," Linda Jackson, CEO of French brand Peugeot, told the Financial Times Future of the Car Summit. Peugeot did not respond to BI"s request for comment on whether it is currently selling EVs in China.

"To be there, you either enter into what I would call the red ocean (of losses), or you stand back, reduce your volume and wait to see where the market goes," she said.

"There will be consolidation, even in the Chinese market … a large majority of Chinese electric vehicle startups are not making any money," Jackson added.

A fight to survive

Paul Li, the CEO of China-based EV tech firm U-Power, told BI that Chinese EV companies needed to change their business models to become profitable and avoid extinction.

This means developing vehicles with an "EV methodology," he said, by prioritizing intelligent vehicles and new features rather than simply converting combustion engine vehicles into electric models.

He also said they needed to find new ways to profit from their vehicles after the initial purchase, as EVs require less maintenance and fewer part replacements than gasoline vehicles.

"The carmakers can find a lot of new ways to make a profit rather than just selling the car," Li said.

"Batteries can become a service, charging can become a service, finance, insurance, and autonomous driving can all become a service," he added.

Ultimately, the biggest challenge Chinese EV makers face is differentiating themselves from the hundred-plus other companies fighting for customers — and until they do, the price war will likely continue, Stephen Dyer of AlixPartners told BI.

"Most of the companies are not clearly differentiated. And if your product is not differentiated, it is going to end in a price war," he added.

• Tesla is hiring for its Autopilot division following weeks of mass layoffs.
• The automaker listed several engineering roles after scrubbing its jobs board earlier in May.
• In April, Elon Musk stressed the need for head count and cost reduction.

Tesla is looking to grow its Autopilot division after weeks of mass company layoffs.

The automaker listed over a dozen roles involving its driver-assist software and AI on its careers page over the course of the week. The roles are based out of Tesla's engineering headquarters in Palo Alto, California, and include software engineering job functions for Autopilot's internal and external user interfaces, as well as AI research roles on the Autopilot team.

Tesla, which dissolved its PR team years ago, did not respond to a request for comment.

Earlier in May, Tesla removed over 3,000 job postings on its site, only a few weeks after the company began a series of layoffs. Up until this week, the main roles listed on Tesla's site had been positions within its manufacturing development program, a training program based out of community colleges near the automaker's three US factories. The program is designed to equip workers with the necessary skills to transition to a production associate role at the factory.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk told staff he planned to cut more than 10% of the company's total workforce on April 14. Over the past few weeks, Tesla has continued to lay off staff, even cutting and then reportedly rehiring some of its Supercharger staff. In May, Tesla also began rescinding some offers for incoming full time employees, as well as interns.

Musk told executives in April that Tesla needs to be "absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction," according to a report from the Information.

The company has faced headwinds in recent months due to an industry-wide slowdown in EV sales. Musk has said the company is "between two major growth waves" and has promoted Tesla's self-driving technology as a key driver of growth. The CEO said in April that the company would unveil its first robotaxi on August 8.

Do you work for Tesla or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at gkay@businessinsider.com or 248-894-6012

• John and Matine Yuksel moved from San Francisco to the Midwest in 2020.
• The brothers and business partners lived in Iowa and Cincinnati while launching their startup.
• They sometimes miss California life but love Cincinnati's friendly people and affordability. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with John Yuksel, 33, and Matine Yuksel, 29, two brothers who moved from San Francisco to Dubuque, Iowa, in 2020 to start Beltways, an accelerating walkway company. The brothers then moved to Cincinnati in 2022. Their company is based nearby in Northern Kentucky.

John: We're children of immigrant parents who grew up in southern Arizona.

I've always known I wanted to be close to my brother. He's my only sibling. We lived in San Diego for a few years after college, and then we moved to San Francisco in 2018.

Matine: San Francisco is amazing. It's the most diverse environment I've been in, and it's high-caliber for business, especially tech.

John: Matine was working for Walmart e-commerce and then later got a job with Apple. I was working as an attorney.

We were paying incredibly high rent but we had the best view, looking over the Pacific Ocean with the sunset in our windows each night.

But San Francisco was apocalyptic. During COVID, the streets were barren. It felt unsafe. I had my car broken into multiple times.

Matine: COVID helped us rethink and reprioritize things. Rather than work to release the next-generation iPhone, I wanted to make a new product that few people have ever heard of.

John: Beltways is really our father's dream. Forty years ago, he was living in Istanbul and he realized today's forms of mobility were not moving people efficiently. He thought up a modular design to make walkways 10 times faster.

My brother and I always wanted to do something together and years after our father came up with the idea, we started looking into it.

Matine: We established Beltways in July 2020. We quickly realized we had to move out of San Francisco. It would have been way too expensive to do what we needed there.

John: It wasn't the right place for our startup. We're a big hardware manufacturing startup. It made a lot more sense to be near industrial clusters of technology. We wanted to be in the Midwest, where there's still viability for manufacturing.

Matine: John met someone with experience in the walkway industry and he offered us a shop out in Iowa.

We moved to Dubuque, Iowa, in 2020

John: It was a very small town in the middle of the cornfields, an hour and a half from any airport. Dubuque is a beautiful, quiet town on the Mississippi River. We could drive anywhere in town in two minutes.

We basically lived in a mansion. We had a three-story, four-bedroom place for half the price of our condo in San Francisco.

Matine: The snow was definitely a change of pace. We got our fair share of workout shoveling.

It was a different way of life. We needed to be focused and Iowa was good because we didn't have too many distractions. The two years we spent in Iowa went by very fast.

John: We built the prototype for the world's fastest-moving walkway while we were living there. It was a hundred-foot-long system and it got us our first VC check.

That was a big milestone for us. We put all our money into this company. We left stable jobs. We refinanced our home. There's been nothing more fulfilling than making our father's invention something commercial.

Matine: It was a surreal day when he came out and rode the system for the first time. It was the icing on the cake to see his excitement standing on something he thought up so many years ago.

John: We needed to start scoping out the next spot for our company. The next step was to pilot our walkway. We were invited by several airports to do a pilot demo of our system.

We knew CVG Airport in Cincinnati had a real track record of innovation and taking care of startups. The area was also advantageous for manufacturing. It's super cheap. The facility we're currently in is only a little more expensive than my rent in San Francisco, and this is 20,000 square feet.

We moved to Cincinnati in 2022

John: We even moved our parents out here, too. We wanted our father to work with us and be part of the company in person. Our parents live three floors below us in our building in the Mount Adams neighborhood.

Moving to Cincinnati felt like we were back in a big city after two years in Iowa. We have major sports teams and a large hub airport. It's a much more temperate climate.

The winters have been pretty mild so far. The spring is lush and green. You can kayak down the rivers, and there are amazing trails nearby. The air quality is great. And the summers aren't 120 degrees like they were in Arizona.

I met my partner, and now I have a child that was born here in Cincinnati. The city has become home for us. The company is here, the whole family is here.

We miss life on the coast sometimes. California is a beautiful place. We love that climate and the diversity of people. San Francisco is where tech starts and bleeds out from. It's really the birthplace of a lot of amazing stuff.

Matine: But Cincinnati's tech scene has also been very good to us. It's growing. It's a close-knit startup community. From the moment we got here, the community has been so welcoming.

John: And it's a lot cheaper here.

Bringing our father's dream to life has been incredible

Matine: We started Beltways in a humble garage in Tucson, where my brother built prototypes himself. Now, we're in a 20,000-square-foot facility here in Northern Kentucky, right next to our first airport customer. And we're US-made.

John: Our goal is to become an official partner of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics to provide temporary high-speed conveyance.

Cincinnati is a great place to raise a family and have a business. We see ourselves staying for the foreseeable future.

But our ultimate goal is to make our walkways commonplace and spread this technology around the world. So wherever we have to go to make that possible, we will. This is bigger than us.

• Rising unemployment in 21 states points to a recession later this year, Nancy Lazar says.
• Piper Sandler's top economist flagged stark divides between the rich and poor, and big and small.
• A recession would probably hit stocks and home values, but inflation and interest rates could fall.

Job markets in nearly half of US states are flashing red, signaling a recession will hit by the end of this year, one expert warned.

Nancy Lazar, Piper Sandler's chief global economist, told Business Insider that unemployment has risen significantly in 21 states.

Specifically, three-month average unemployment has increased by at least 0.5 percentage points from its low over the last 12 months in all 21 states. The group, which includes California and Illinois and numbered 19 states a few weeks ago, generates more than 40% of US GDP.

Lazar said that when joblessness has spiked across that many states in the past, a protracted downturn has followed almost every time. The state-level indicator is based on the "Sahm Rule."

"We do think the economy moves into recession in the back half of this year," she said.

Lazar predicted GDP would decline by 1%, unemployment would jump from below 4% to nearly 6%, and there would be even greater pain in vulnerable sectors like commercial real estate.

Two worlds

The economy is starkly divided between the rich and the poor, and between big corporations and smaller businesses, Lazar said.

Since the pandemic, rich people have grown wealthier thanks to rising stock and house prices and larger interest payouts from their bonds and savings accounts. Large companies have kept costs low and raised prices to bolster their profits.

In contrast, lower-income households are battling inflated prices for basics like food, fuel, and rent; larger monthly payments on their credit cards, car loans, mortgages, and other debts; and a worsening job market. Smaller businesses face steeper input costs, higher interest expenses, and tighter bank lending.

Lazar, the cofounder of Cornerstone Macro and ISI, called the US a "bifurcated economy." The minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting show the central bank's officials see similar trends — rising delinquency rates and greater reliance on credit cards and "buy now, pay later" services among the less affluent, and "hefty wealth gains" from stocks and homes for the rich.

Bleak outlook

Consumer confidence surveys, retailers' earnings reports, and rising volumes of late payments show households are being squeezed hard by inflation and higher rates, Lazar said.

If that trend continues, consumer spending could falter and company earnings could suffer, resulting in a recession. On the bright side, that would likely result in inflation falling toward the Fed's 2% target, Lazar said, freeing the central bank to cut rates to stimulate economic growth.

However, if no recession materializes, inflation could prove sticky and rates might stay higher for longer.

"We think we need a recession to see a sustained shift down in inflation," Lazar said, explaining that higher unemployment would reduce people's real incomes and cool upward pressure on prices.

Yet a recession, which many experts agree isn't off the table, would be bad news for investors.

"You usually do see a decline in the stock market," Lazar said. "Companies will struggle as earnings start to disappoint."

There isn't the same kind of dangerous leverage in the real estate market as there was during the mid-2000s bubble, but Lazar cautioned that the sector could also see a correction. "We would expect some weakness in housing."

The veteran economist underscored that if the US does dodge a recession, inflation lingers, and rates stay high, that could support stocks in the short term. But she warned that persistent price increases would make her "worry about the stock market going down."

• The F-method helps recruiters identify key info by structuring résumés for how they read them. 
• This approach can help job seekers because recruiters might spend only seconds looking at a résumé.
• Highlighting key skills and accomplishments up top can help hiring managers and scanning software.

Sometimes, an F can be a good thing.

Take the so-called F-method. It's a way of organizing your résumé so that a recruiter can read the most important parts across the top — like the upper portion of the letter F.

The next most essential info goes farther down with keywords or points sticking out like the arm on an F.

The idea behind the framework is to help someone looking over your résumé get to the good stuff right away. That's because recruiters might spend only seconds scanning your work history and other accomplishments, and you need to make sure you really stand out, really quickly.

"The skills section on my résumé is in that 'F.' It's in that direct line of sight," Lee Woodrow, owner and principal consultant at Bigger Fish Executive Branding, told Business Insider.

Highlighting the top information right away is all the more important in an environment where it's getting harder to get desk jobs — and where the ease of applying means recruiters are often overrun with applications.

'Buzzword bingo'

Woodrow, who's been writing résumés for others for many years, said the top of a CV built around the F-method should include essential information about the value you bring: details like who you are professionally, what area your expertise is in, and which industries you've worked in.

"It's an elevator pitch," he said. That information belongs at the top near your name, he said, so that it gets seen. "That entices the reader to read on."

It's also important, Woodrow said, to have the right words and phrases up high where a busy recruiter can see them.

"It's like buzzword bingo," he said.

This is often important when recruiters are trying to fill technical roles. They might not have a lot of background in the particulars of a job, so they might be on the hunt for phrases or words that a hiring manager has flagged.

Setting your résumé up with the F-method can mean a break from traditional formats, such as listing your work experience in reverse chronological order, which may surprise some.

But Woodrow said floating the most important ideas to the top makes sense if, for example, your most relevant experience for a job isn't tied to your latest role. Or, in other cases, he said, a job posting might call for someone with a master's degree or a Ph.D.

"Why would you put it lower down on page two or three? You'd want it on page one somewhere — highlighting it in that area which is in the 'F,'" Woodrow said.

In any case, he said, it's important to keep the most relevant information on the first page of a résumé.

Have a few goals in mind

Woodrow said one goal for your résumé should be ensuring it can be easily read by the applicant-tracking software companies often use to sift through job applications. Another aim should be having clear section titles so the document is a breeze for a recruiter to navigate. Highlight things like relevant job experience for a role you're going for, he said.

Last, Woodrow said, a résumé needs to influence a decision-maker by giving proof of your accomplishments. He recommends including three brief examples on the first page about how you solved a problem. To do this, describe a situation, give context, and use metrics from the business, if possible, to demonstrate how you improved a situation.

It's an abbreviated version of the STAR technique, sometimes used in interviewing, and involves describing a situation or task, actions, and results.

Kyle Samuels, founder and CEO of the executive search firm Creative Talent Endeavors, told BI that using the F-method to lay out a résumé can make sense for technical roles where a recruiter needs to know you have a certain amount of experience with, say, a particular programming language or modeling.

But in other cases, where a job might be more senior, artificial intelligence tools that do a first pass on a stack of résumés might make the F idea somewhat moot because AI bots can scoop up huge volumes of information.

"It kind of feels like a poor man's AI," Samuels said, referring to the F-method.

He said that with a role like a VP of marketing, you might have several candidates who would be a great fit.

"We're not expecting to see the exact same formatting or skills or experience, and so we really pore through the résumé," Samuels said.

That's why, especially when recruiting for more senior roles, there's little substitute for reading a résumé thoroughly, he said.

"I study it like the Torah," Samuels said.

• The US isn't in a recession; a majority of Americans in a Harris poll for the Guardian said there is one.
• Media coverage is one possible explanation for why Americans feel the economy isn't doing so great.
• Business Insider looked at data to see what's actually going on with the US economy.

Hey, America, we totally understand if you're not feeling so great about the economy.

But if you think we're in a recession, here's some good news: We're not in one, and there likely isn't one coming, based on economic data and what experts who talked to Business Insider are seeing.

A Harris poll for the Guardian found 56% of Americans believe the US is in a recession. Plus, it found a majority think we have a shrinking economy. Two reasons people may be feeling like the economy isn't doing so well — despite the US not being in an official recession since the two-month one in early 2020 — are due to media coverage and how people view economic trends.

David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management; Eugenio Alemán, Raymond James' chief economist; and Gregory Daco, EY's chief economist, told Business Insider the US isn't in a recession.

"Americans' negative attitude towards the economy is largely due to incessantly negative media coverage of economic and social issues amplified by an even more negative social media feed," Kelly told Business Insider in a statement.

Of course, not everything is perfect, and that could sour people's views. Daco said that when you consider cost fatigue, inflation's cumulative effect, the largely frozen and unaffordable housing market, and also "the reduced amount of churn in the labor market and this perception that there are fewer opportunities out there in terms of jobs, then that leads to more pessimism about the implied state of the economy."

"And I think that's really what we're seeing in terms of this particular survey — is that there is this difference between how people perceive consumer spending trends, inflationary trends, employment trends, and how they are from a data perspective," Daco said, adding "that misperception is exacerbated by the fact that we have different sources of intelligence, different media sources that may bias the underlying take as to how the economy is behaving."

If you're interested in learning more about what's going on with the economy take a look at the charts below.

US GDP is still growing

Kelly listed "growth and expected growth in quarterly GDP" as one of the "most important numbers to watch" in addition to payroll gains — which recently cooled but are still signaling a strong labor market — and the weekly unemployment insurance claims — which have been low as large-scale layoffs have not yet emerged.

Real GDP for the US has continued to be robust, even if growth has been slowing.

Unemployment rates in the US have been low

The unemployment rate did climb from 3.8% in March to 3.9% in April, but that's still low.

"We're still seeing strong job growth momentum," Daco said. "We have a historically low unemployment rate."

In the Great Recession, the US unemployment rate skyrocketed from 5.0% in December 2007 to 9.5% in June 2009. It took years for the job market to fully recover after that recession, while unemployment plummeted after the brief but deep Covid recession in 2020.

CPI data shows US inflation is stubborn but has been under 4%

Inflation is still elevated and stubborn, but the year-over-year change in the Consumer Price Index has cooled from the high 2021 and 2022 rates. Alemán said while inflation is comparatively low, "the surge in inflation since 2021 has pushed Americans to try to figure out what to buy and what not to buy — something that we were not used to doing before."

"Probably the cost of searching for a better price has put a lot of stress into Americans' lives that they did not have before," Alemán said.

The S&P 500 has generally been rising for over a year

In 2024, the S&P 500 hit multiple all-time highs. The Harris poll for the Guardian found nearly half thought the S&P 500 index had actually been down.

There isn't a US recession now or one coming soon either

If you're worried about a recession coming soon, you may feel better knowing that experts don't think so. Alemán said Raymond James doesn't foresee one but expects a slowdown in economic activity. Looking at the next 12 months, Daco said recession odds are relatively low. Kelly said the US isn't "even close" to a recession.

"Indeed, the so-called 'misery index', the sum of the inflation rate and the unemployment rate is currently 7.3%," Kelly said. "This is better, that is lower, than it has been more than 75% of the time over the past 60 years."

There are still some data points and trends Americans may be concerned about. Sales for existing homes and new homes dropped recently. While mortgage rates are back below 7%, they're still elevated. Layoffs are happening at some major companies, inflation is still not back to the Fed's 2% target, and it looks like interest rates are still going to be high for a while.

"The longer we have very, very high interest rates as we have today, that will increase the probability that something will break and that we might face a recession in the future," Alemán said.

So hooray for no recession and likely no recession anytime soon. However, just because we aren't in a recession doesn't mean the economy is perfect.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appears to be entering a new era.
• Altman was lauded as the leader behind ChatGPT when it launched in 2022.
• But recent exits from OpenAI's safety team and a dispute with Scarlett Johansson have brought scrutiny.

Many of them start the same, with a potent mix of genius and idealism and a promise to improve the world with their brilliance. People believe them — pouring millions of dollars into their nebulous ideas — and soon, they are gracing the covers of magazines and headlining summits and conferences the world over.

And then, inevitably, gravity does its thing. They fall.

We've seen it time and again with tech founders: Mark Zuckerberg went from boy genius to a string of scandals. Elon Musk went from "the real Tony Stark" out to save the world to critics casting him as the caricature of an evil billionaire seeking world domination. Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried were once regarded as saviors. Now, both are in prison.

It looks like Sam Altman, who has been hit with bad headline after bad headline over the past couple of weeks, is the latest to succumb to the narrative: The OpenAI CEO and cofounder appears to have entered his villain era.

After ChatGPT took the world by storm in late 2022, Altman went from being virtually unknown outside Silicon Valley circles to a household name. He was named Time Magazine's 2023 CEO of the year, and Microsoft showed its confidence in him with a $10 billion investment. His short-lived ousting last year — marked by colleagues and the tech elite rallying around him — only strengthened his power (though it also pointed at some of the AI safety concerns that have flared up again this week.)

"It's Sam's world, one prominent tech developer told BI last year. "And we're all living in it."

All the while, he promised to do good through his work.

"I think we can have a much, much better world," Altman told BI last year about AI's potential. "I think there's a few things that need to happen for it. And I like feeling useful."

Meanwhile, Altman was personally investing in clean energy and research into antiaging, and he even cut a check to help a startup fund payroll during the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

"Sam Altman is a hero of mine," former Google CEO Eric Schmidt tweeted in November "I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work — it's going to be simply incredible. Thank you @sama for all you have done for all of us."

From hero to antihero: the initial villain inklings

As Bruce Wayne once learned — and Altman is likely learning in real time — you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.

For months now, there have been murmurs that Altman may not belong on the pedestal the world was putting him on. (To be fair, Altman has never claimed to be perfect or all-knowing and has been quick to respond directly to criticism.)

Some in his circles have raised eyebrows at his web of investments, which seemed to promote an outlook reminiscent of a sci-fi film.

"Look, if your worldview is that you have AGI and it's basically superhuman, and these are like the gods, we invented god, yeah then maybe you should turn the whole planet upside down," Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told BI earlier this year. "I don't think that's what's happening."

There were signs in March that some in the VC world were starting to see past the Altman hype.

"Him and his brother have always been superhyped," one VC partner told BI in March, referring to Sam and his brother Jack. "It's always been like, 'Oh, the Altman brothers,' it's just going to be way overpriced just because of who they are."

"He's one of the more intellectually dishonest guys in tech," another said at the time."I've had plenty of meetings with him where he says things where I'm like, 'That just cannot possibly be true,' but he can kinda get away with it."

Sam Altman's rough couple of weeks

Now, the criticisms seem to have expanded beyond Silicon Valley circles.

Last week, OpenAI announced its new flagship AI model, GPT-4o, which can interact via text, audio, and video. On X, Altman seemed to liken the new model to the AI from the movie "Her" — but it's not clear he watched the film to its dystopian completion.

Critics were quick to respond, saying the AI assistant sounded sexualized and was too flirtatious. One said it gave them "mega ick," and others said it sounded eerily similar to Scarlett Johannson, who voiced the robot in "Her."

The actor released a scathing statement, saying she had declined multiple offers from Altman to voice the AI and was "shocked" and "angered" by the similarity.

A week after the voice, named Sky, was launched, it was put on pause. The company has maintained it did not deliberately set out to mimic Johannson's voice.

Still, the seeds of a dystopian future — one in which artificial intelligence could take on a human's likeness without their permission — were sowed.

The company was simultaneously waging a defensive war on another front. The day after GPT-4o was released, cofounder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and machine learning researcher Jan Leike stepped down. Together, they led OpenAI's superalignment team, which had seen several other departures in recent months.

By the end of the week, the team, whose job it was to keep humans safe from AI superintelligence, was completely disbanded, leaving OpenAI's commitment to safety in question.

"Over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products," Leike wrote in a series of social media posts announcing his departure.

To make matters worse, Vox published a damning report about OpenAI and Altman's leadership. Former employees were unhappy with safety standards at the company and lost their trust in Altman, per the report, and they were afraid to talk about it because they could lose vested equity if they disparaged the company or even mentioned signing NDAs.

Altman appeared caught with his back against the ropes. He and OpenAI president Greg Brockman wrote a lengthy social media post on Saturday delineating their commitment to safety.

In response to the question of the unusual NDAs, Altman expressed regret: "This is on me and one of the few times I've been genuinely embarrassed running openai; I did not know this was happening, and I should have."

But he would only look worse. In a follow-up, Vox reported that it seemed as if Altman did know about the equity.

If tech's fallen star history repeats itself, things are not looking good for Altman. His dream of a utopia seems more like a dystopia to some, and his image as a Silicon Valley do-gooder is unraveling.

Of course, it's not all over for Altman. As far as we know, he's done no crime that would see him suffer the same fate as Bankman-Fried and Holmes.

And there's the chance he can pull a rebrand — something no one has done better than Zuckerberg. It looks like Altman may need to hit the gym, pick a few well-timed fights with another tech billionaire, and maybe even get a chain necklace.