Author: openjargon

• Roblox CEO David Baszucki said that a recent attempt to understand all of the latest AI research was "humbling."
• "It is hard to get to a position where you can understand all of those research papers," he said on the "Access" podcast.
• Baszucki, who did the reading while on sabbatical, concluded that AI research in the 3D space was still very early.

New AI research is published at a steady clip, sometimes daily, and often featuring increasingly technical terms and concepts. How do you keep up?

Roblox CEO David Baszucki recognizes the struggle. On the "Access" podcast, the executive was asked about his recent sabbatical, where he'd spent some delving into AI.

"It was very humbling," Baszucki said. "It is hard to get to a position where you can understand all of those research papers."

Baszucki founded Roblox in 2005. In the company's early days, the CEO said that he read "all the research," from physics simulation to rendering technology.

"People were thinking about all of these new ways of doing gaming, and generally I could understand all of it," he said.

Then came the "horizontal wave" of AI research, which Baszucki called "so massive and so fast." From transformers to diffusion and world models, there's "a lot going on," he said.

Over the past few years, AI research has expanded from an academic subject to a national interest. Major tech companies, such as Meta and Microsoft, have developed in-house research labs — and awarded lucrative compensation packages to top AI researchers.

There are signs that AI research is becoming more private. In 2023, Google informed its staff that it would reduce the amount of AI research it published.

"Now it's time to compete and keep knowledge in house," a Google Brain staffer told Business Insider in 2023 of the company's philosophy.

While much of the AI industry is now focused on scaling compute, OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever recently said that research itself was the key to unlocking the tech's future.

"It's back to the age of research again, just with big computers," he said.

As for Roblox, Baszucki's conclusion from his deep dive into the latest research was that it's still "very early in the 3D space."

Baszucki called AI a "very physically unnatural space," fed on human-made text and images.

"We're training AI models on this thing we made up," he said, rather than "on the 3D raw material of the world itself."

• After years of writing about Temu, I finally tried to buy a Christmas gift on the app.
• I thought it would be as simple as getting a gift from Amazon or Walmart — now I'm not so sure.
• The products were interesting, and the prices seemed low, but the shopping experience was chaotic.

Temu is not exactly new news, I know.

Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo launched the marketplace in the US back in 2022, and it has since taken the retail world by storm. [user

As a retail reporter, I've written about Temu and its impact on US companies, but I never got around to actually trying it myself.

That changed on the Sunday after Thanksgiving when I wanted to find a specific Christmas gift inspired by "KPop Demon Hunters."

In the Google search results, Temu had a better-looking option than what I saw in the official Netflix store, so I decided to give the site a try, assuming it would be as straightforward as buying from Amazon or Walmart.

It was not.

When I clicked on the listing, a prompt suggested I could have the item for free if I used the app.

Doubtful, yet curious, I downloaded the app. Then it wanted my phone number — OK, fine.

Then it asked me to spin a wheel to get a deal. (The fine print says everyone gets the best deal, regardless of the apparent spin.)

Then another bonus unlocked, and another.

Soon, the app prompted me to fill a cart with additional items, assuring me that they would be sharply discounted.

Faced with an endless scroll of apparel and kitchen listings, I tried to build an order of stuff I would actually use.

But every time I got nearly ready to check out, the app offered yet another deal that required the addition of still more items.

The experience was somewhere between gambling and gaming, and I found myself losing touch with any sense of price rationality.

Exhausted, I closed the app for the night without buying anything at all.

On Monday morning, I checked the app and saw the myriad offers from the day before had expired. I had to drop the kids off at school and get to work, so I emptied my cart of everything except the original KPop shirt that got me into this situation, declined several more Cyber Monday bonus offers, and bought the one product.

I've since received two text messages a day with various offers of rewards, credits, reimbursements, and other phrases that sound like money, but involve a lot of steps to redeem.

As I was writing this article, I decided to test one of the bonus offers, a $800 coupon bundle that I could "earn" for the trouble of making a single purchase. I picked a $12 sweater and unlocked a stack of coupons for 20% off various transaction sizes, all of which expire in two days.

Meanwhile, my original order from Monday is still being prepared for shipping, and I have yet to see anything else that I actually want or need on the app. A lot of it honestly reminds me of a Sky Mall brochure.

I asked Temu about this highly gamified app experience, and a spokesperson said many users have shared appreciation for the features' added engagement.

"The interactive elements of our app are intended to enhance the shopping experience and allow customers to unlock additional discounts," the spokesperson said.

I believe I could eventually find something interesting at a great price and wait for it to arrive, but I'm not sure the time and effort required to shop on Temu's chaotic app are worth the potential savings.

I'll be sticking with my familiar e-commerce options for the foreseeable future — at least until I'm much older.

• Humanoid robots are having a moment.
• Companies are racing to build the market for robots, with Tesla's Optimus set to enter mass production next year.
• Morgan Stanley analysts identified 25 companies poised to dominate the humanoid robot boom.

The race to get in on the humanoid robot boom is heating up.

In a research note released earlier this month, analysts at Morgan Stanley broke down a list of the 25 companies best positioned to dominate the market for humanoid robots, which the investment bank estimates will be worth more than $5 trillion by 2050.

The list focuses on companies with expertise in AI and computing chips, cameras and perception, and sensors and movement technology, the analysts said.

They added that the list is intended to help investors look beyond humanoid robot manufacturers and focus on the foundational component suppliers who stand to benefit as robots become mainstream.

Morgan Stanley is not the only one making ambitious predictions about the potential for a robot boom. Elon Musk said last month he thinks Tesla's Optimus robot will be able to "eliminate poverty" and grow the global economy by a factor of 10.

Tesla is set to begin mass production of Optimus by the end of next year, but has not said how many it expects to build.

Other companies are also racing to build their own bipedal bots, including Chinese Tesla rival Xpeng, which unveiled its creepily lifelike "Iron" robot last month.

However, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote that while they estimated that more than a billion humanoid robots would be deployed worldwide by 2050, adoption of humanoid robots would be "relatively slow" until at least 2035 as the technology continues to develop.

It comes after China issued a warning last week that a bubble risked forming in its own robotics industry, with more than 150 companies competing to roll out humanoid robots.

Industry heavyweights like Nvidia, Samsung, and AMD all feature in Morgan Stanley's "Humanoid Tech 25" list. The list also includes lesser-known names such as Hesai, a Chinese lidar maker that analysts said stands to benefit as its sensors could be used to help humanoid robots improve their navigation and situational awareness.

Morgan Stanley analysts also highlighted California-based semiconductor design firm Synopsys as another potential winner, noting that its semiconductor designs had applications in humanoid robot brains. Nvidia announced on December 1 that it would make a $2 billion investment in Synopsys.

Here's Morgan Stanley's list of the 25 companies at the forefront of the humanoid robot boom:

• Baidu
• iFlytek
• Desay
• Horizon Robotics
• Alibaba
• Samsung Electronics
• NVIDIA
• Cadence
• Synopsys
• ARM
• AMD
• Texas Instruments
• Samsung Electro-Mechanics
• Onsemi
• Microchip
• Sony
• Ambarella
• NXP
• ROHM Semiconductor
• Melexis
• STMicroelectronics
• Infineon
• Renesas
• Joyson
• Hesai

Do you work in robotics and have a story to share about your company's development or workplace culture? Get in touch with this reporter at tcarter@businessinsider.com, or tcarter.41 on Signal.

• Banks are working to reskill developers as they race to adopt AI.
• Efforts include capstone-style courses, video modules, and voluntary initiatives, like hackathons.
• Tech leads said English communication with AI agents is key in the new "continuous learning" era.

Not long ago, bank software developers only had to adjust to major technological shifts every few years. Today, those shifts are arriving every other month.

Engineers are in "continuous learning mode" as they race to keep up with the rate of change, Trevor Brosnan, Morgan Stanley's global head of technology strategy, architecture, and modernization, told Business Insider.

Technologists on Wall Street today are often grinding through capstone-style courses, working on basic communication skills, or watching a bunch of YouTube-style videos as many banks help them upskill to keep pace with AI advancements.

"Something you thought you knew about AI three months ago might be out of date by now," Jonathan Lofthouse, the chief information officer at Citi, said.

Banks from JPMorgan to Citi are pouring billions into AI to make their workforces more efficient, deliver better client experiences, and ultimately cut costs. They're also scrambling to recruit the talent needed to bring those strategies to life.

The engineers who do best at these banks will be those who learn how to use AI effectively — and the banks are going to great lengths to help them learn fast, according to Alexandra Mousavizadeh, the cofounder and co-CEO of Evident, which tracks AI use in the financial industry.

And when it comes to recruiting new talent, a willingness to take advantage of the "continuous learning" is crucial.

"We are hiring for potential upskilling," Nish Rana, the senior director of Enterprise Data at Capital One, said of his hiring for the bank's AI and machine learning capabilities. Business Insider spoke with technology leaders at Citi, Morgan Stanley, and Capital One about their strategies for upskilling their engineering ranks. Citi and Morgan Stanley respectively employ 30,000 and 15,000 developers, and Capital One has around 15,000 engineers.

"It's a lot of time spent now on helping accelerate developers' adoption, so that they can become more aware of these and give back some of their capacity," Dov Katz, a distinguished engineer at Morgan Stanley, said.

Communication is key

One key part of that upskilling involves learning how to talk to agents, much as they would with another engineer.

Developers need to communicate with the newest generation of generative AI tools in English, not in code, "and not everybody in technology has a reputation for being an excellent communicator," Katz said. As Citi's Lofthouse put it, most developers' second language is Java.

"And actually, Java is sometimes a bit easier to express problems in than a first language," he said, especially when it comes to describing the complexities of the financial markets.

It's important to give an AI agent as much guidance as possible on the task to perform and the desired output, said Brosnan.

"That is a shift from, 'Okay, I'm the person writing all the code, but have a little assistance,' to now, I'm giving much bigger tasks and delegating them to an agent," Brosnan said. Everyone he works with is learning that skill in real time to use the tools most effectively. It is, he said, a "fundamental shift" in what it means to work as a developer.

That's not to say that coding is irrelevant — all of the technology leads said it's still important to know foundational coding languages, especially since humans have to check all of the code that AI agents write.

Banks are creating in-house AI courses

Capital One has developed its own AI Academies, Rana said, which are "considered a one-stop solution to grasping fundamentals, all the way up to advanced learning." The courses cover tech initiatives within the bank, including AI/ML Foundations, ML Modeling, and Research & Prototyping.

"New engineers who are coming into our company don't necessarily need to have an extensive background," Rana said. "We have formal training that can bring them up to speed in a very consolidated and accelerated way."

Morgan Stanley also offers a mix of outsourced and in-house courses, and Citi recently ran a "Techflix" series, where anyone on the technology and business enablement team could watch videos and participate in associated challenges, some of which related to AI.

Each of the banks Business Insider spoke to said they offer engineers video modules to master emerging AI skills. Brosnan said they can be as short as five minutes. He added that many employees learn a lot from YouTube, whether for work or personal interests, and that videos have proven to be a powerful tool.

Older educational efforts continue

Beyond their AI-specific upskilling efforts, the banks Business Insider spoke with have continued with older programs, like hackathons and technology all-hands meetings. Opt-in programs are hugely popular, Brosnan and Lofthouse said, and have proven to be crucial educational architecture as the pace of learning continues to accelerate.

Learning opportunities aside, the rate of change is a source of anxiety for many engineers, as some worry the shine of a computer science degree is fading in a world where bots can spit out code at record speed. Yet the tech leaders said that AI will ultimately let their engineers, equipped with the right skills, focus on higher-order thinking and higher-impact work.

"There's anxiety about the change, but it's balanced by how exciting it's going to be," Lofthouse said.

Rana said that some veteran engineers are anxious about keeping pace with the rapid shifts in AI.

Everything his team is doing — from AI academies to online videos to tech talks — is aimed at giving engineers not only the tools to succeed, but the "psychological safety net" of learning in a comfortable corporate sandbox.

• E. Gluck Corporation, the maker of Armitron watches, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
• The decades-old company struggled as consumers shifted from traditional watches to smartwatches.
• Armitron has touted itself as the "official timekeeper" of the New York Yankees.

The decades-old watchmaker behind the "official" clock at the home of the New York Yankees filed for bankruptcy last week.

E. Gluck Corporation, the maker of the Armitron watch line and the manufacturer of timepieces for fashion brands like Anne Klein and Nine West, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Manhattan federal bankruptcy court last Monday.

The family-owned company, founded by late Holocaust survivor Eugen Gluck in 1956, said in legal filings that it has been squeezed as consumers have drifted away from traditional watches, thanks to the rise of smartwatches and other devices.

This financial strain, the watchmaker said, was compounded by its own failed expansion into the smartwatch accessories market.

At its peak, the New York-based company generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue through brand licensing deals as well as distribution to department stores, off-price retailers, club stores, and more, its chief financial officer, Adam Gelnick, said in court papers.

The company's website lists name brands like Juicy Couture and Vince Camuto among the labels it has worked with. A Google search shows Armitron watches can be purchased at places like Amazon, Walmart, and JCPenny, and tend to cost between $30 and $85.

"For many years, this mix created a stable and profitable foundation," wrote Glenick. "Yet, in recent years, management recognized that traditional watches were a mature, slow-growth category, increasingly pressured by shifts in consumer behavior and the rise of smart devices."

As of October 31, the company owed more than it was worth, with over $36 million in liabilities versus just under $36 million in assets, court documents show.

Over 30 years with the Yankees

The company's bankruptcy filings list the Yankees among its 20 largest creditors with unsecured claims. E. Gluck owes the Major League Baseball team $590,000 in contract damages, court papers said.

E. Gluck's ties to the Yankees stretch back decades. Armitron, the company's proprietary brand, has touted itself as the baseball team's "official timekeeper" since an Armitron clock has sat above the scoreboard at the Bronx's Yankee Stadium for more than 30 years.

Armitron has even previously produced Yankees-branded watches.

In a December 2024 post on the official Facebook page of the 27-time World Series champions, Armitron was described as "an Official timepiece of The New York Yankees."

Representatives for the Yankees did not respond to a request for comment by Business Insider for this story, nor did the bankruptcy attorney for E. Gluck.

Smartwatch bet backfires

In an effort to diversify its business, E. Gluck acquired WITHit in 2021, a company specializing in smartwatch and wearable tech accessories.

E. Gluck hoped that WITHit would help push the company into "faster-growing product categories," Glenick wrote in court papers.

However, the deal "did not deliver the benefits that management anticipated," wrote the CFO.

The smartwatch accessories market "proved more fragmented, competitive and difficult to scale than projected," Glenick wrote.

Sales fell, and margins were further eroded due to supply chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as tariffs and increased freight costs, Glenick wrote.

Through the Chapter 11 process, E. Gluck plans to shed "unfavorable service contracts" tied to the WITHit acquisition and "unwind operational redundancies that never integrated cleanly with the core watch business," Glenick wrote.

It was Friday afternoon, and I'd just hit send on my weekly report to Amazon's Retail vice presidents, detailing what the Global Merchandising team I'd created had accomplished that week.

I was 38, and the role — which oversaw standards, best practices, and technology for Amazon's 200+ site merchandisers — was the biggest of my life by far, one I'd been thrust into just three months after my arrival in Seattle and at Amazon.

I was thrilled (and a bit terrified) by the size of the opportunity, and threw myself into it. Two years in, my team had 18 sizable projects underway. We accomplished so much that documenting our progress in that weekly email took me hours — and yet in two years, I'd rarely received so much as a "thx" in return.

"At Amazon, silence from the top means you're doing a good job," a colleague reminded me, with rueful humor. She was right.

But the feedback vacuum made it increasingly difficult to know if I was fulfilling my mandate. Was I moving fast enough? Still aligned with their priorities? Anxiety filled the void. I pushed myself and my team harder and took on even more.

I'd once been someone with passions — yoga, reading, arthouse movies — but all of that had faded. When I did find time for something I enjoyed, I was distracted, worried that I'd miss an urgent email. It felt easier to stay vigilant at all times.

As I stared at my email that day, I thought, None of this actually matters — followed by the sense that I had to keep pushing forward anyway. That if I slowed down even a little, my career would collapse.

Later in the parking garage, I stared numbly at the car in front of me when it hit me: Is this what burnout feels like?

It was. I just hadn't realized it could happen to me.

I used to think burnout was for the weak

I was a naturally driven person who liked being busy; I thought burnout was for the weak. And at work, it was hard to distinguish between burning out and just keeping up. In school and at other jobs, I'd often wished that other people would think bigger and move faster; now I was surrounded by smart, fun, driven coworkers on that same wavelength. I rarely had a moment of boredom at Amazon, and I loved that.

But there was a dark side. Add in scarce resources, time pressure, and our inability to say no — to our bosses, to each other, and to ourselves — it was a recipe for exhaustion.

I'd been raised to believe I could do anything if I only tried hard enough. That worked out pretty well when it was roller skating or long division, but it started to work against me by high school. When I earned my first Cs, I saw it as a failure of willpower, not a sign that I had strengths and weaknesses like any other human.

I carried that harsh self-judgment through college and grad school and into the working world. My version of self-care was drinking white wine and shopping, which often drained me further.

When it dawned on me that I was burned out, I was finally able to face it. And over the next months, without ever saying a word about burnout to my boss or co-workers, I slowly pulled myself back to health.

Here's what I did to get there.

I practiced true self-care.

Shopping is fun, but what I really needed were things like sleep and food. I started reading novels before bed instead of emails. I made a point of eating lunch every day, even if it was at my desk. Occasionally, I snuck out for a short walk around the block. The views and movement left me calmer.

I waited for my gentler lifestyle to blow up in my face — all that time working at a frantic pace had convinced me that slowing down would backfire terribly. But nothing happened. It didn't seem like anyone at work even noticed, though my husband and dog did, and I even passed the occasional coworker on a walk outside the building.

The stories I'd told myself about being "found out" hadn't been based in reality.

I learned to say no.

I couldn't change Amazon's culture of overwork, but I could dial back some of the work I volunteered for to be helpful and prove my worth.

I was someone who'd rarely turned down ad hoc committees or mentorship requests, especially when it could help elevate women. But those "after-school" assignments did little to advance my career. At performance review time, all that really mattered was what I'd done to grow the business.

I decided that unless an opportunity offered a clear benefit not just to Amazon but to me —or unless it was important to my boss, whom I trusted — I'd turn it down. I felt like a selfish jerk at first, but once again, the sky didn't fall. People simply moved to the next candidate on the list.

When I did say yes, I was more engaged and effective, sitting in hiring loops for teams I was curious about and joining occasional projects to work alongside former colleagues. Fun counts as a benefit, and pleasure helps cure burnout.

A day where I laughed a lot, did work that fascinated me, or simply learned something new was a day where I got something instead of just giving.

I became a beginner again.

A fear of embarrassment or failure at work meant I was always ready with a fast response to any executive's question, but it also kept me from challenging myself in new ways.

To keep stakes low, I began looking for modest challenges outside work that I could squeeze into small pockets of time, like learning to solve British-style crosswords or making a soufflé. Later, I added Italian lessons, trained for a half-marathon, and joined the board of a local nonprofit serving prison inmates.

My "electives," as I thought of them, became a safe place to make and learn from rookie errors, reminding me that being a beginner is exhilarating — and that I was more than just my job.

I got help from a pro.

I found a therapist who specialized in cognitive behavioral therapy who showed me how to distinguish between passing thoughts and objective reality.

When I thought, "If I say no to this project, someone will think I'm lazy," I learned to ask questions: Did I have evidence of that happening in the past? How about evidence of saying no and still being respected? If someone did think I was lazy, how might I cope? What would I say to a friend with the same worry?

I still experienced panicky feelings, but I stopped mistaking them for facts.

Recovering from burnout wasn't a perfect process

My comeback from burnout was imperfect and sometimes halting. At times, it scared me to feel calm and well, so I'd dive back into frantic overwork — only to learn all over again that I wasn't more effective that way, just busier.

I never worked up the courage to talk to my managers or peers about burnout, even though signs of it were everywhere. In a culture where exhaustion and overwork were worn as badges of honor, I feared that even broaching the topic would mark me as lazy or weak. As a leader, I wish I'd had the courage to push for a broader dialogue about burnout, but I also understand why it didn't feel safe.

I have 2 tips for people facing burnout

In an era of mass layoffs, I hear from tech workers who feel pushed to work harder and longer than ever before to avoid losing their jobs. They know they need to pull back, but they're afraid.

I have two pieces of advice for people in that situation. The first is to recognize that pushing through burnout won't make you better at your job. The numb, frightened, sleepless version of you can't fire on all cylinders, which could put your job at risk.

Prioritizing your own basic needs can be scary, but it's critical.

Second, understand that small steps matter. Maybe you're not in a position to turn down extra assignments; maybe the thought of adding an Italian class or half-marathon to your life makes you laugh hysterically to keep from crying.

But you can make sure to eat lunch. You can carve out a three-minute breathing space to calm your nervous system. (No one can find you in a restroom stall.) You can run modest experiments, like closing your email after a certain time in the evening, just to see how it goes.

Pick something to try, and once it becomes a habit, add something else. The benefits will slowly accumulate, and you'll begin to recognize yourself again.

Amazon did not provide a comment for this story.

Kristi Coulter spent 12 years at Amazon and left in 2018. She's the author of "Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career" and "Nothing Good Can Come From This."

• "YOLO" is making a comeback. This time, it's shaping the AI industry.
• The term has been used to describe huge investments and fast-moving AI development.
• That YOLO culture presents a risk for a technology that can have far-reaching implications.

The term "YOLO" was cool once, made so in 2011 by Drake in his hit song, "The Motto." Then it slipped into the domain of the unhip and out-of-touch.

Well, it's now back.

This time, it's being used by the AI vanguard to describe the state of the industry, which is a tad worrying to those concerned about AI's far-reaching implications for the world.

Last week, at The New York Times DealBook Summit, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei took a dig at his competitors, like OpenAI and Meta, when he said, "There are some players who are YOLO-ing, who pull the risk dial too far, and I'm very concerned." In other words, their approach to developing AI models is more reckless than rigorous.

Anthropic, he said, is trying to manage its growth as "responsibly as we can."

The term is being used by AI researchers, too.

Jason Wei, a researcher at Meta, wrote on X that one of the great skills he's seen is "yolo runs" — a sort of instinctive flow state where a researcher or developer throws caution to the wind.

In a "yolo run," he said, a researcher "directly implements an ambitious new model without extensively de-risking individual components. The researcher doing the yolo run relies primarily on intuition to set hyperparameter values, decide what parts of the model matter, and anticipate potential problems. These choices are non-obvious to everyone else on the team."

This approach contrasts with the traditional research approach to carefully change one thing at a time, he added.

During a discussion at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, which seeks to understand the impacts of technology, Harvard professor Jonathan Zittrain used the term to describe the AI industry's current approach.

Zittrain said the "YOLO model" is driven by founders and VCs who will try anything quickly: Launch an idea, see if it sticks, and if the company collapses, just move on to the next startup. If it succeeds, he said, they cash in.

The resurgence of the term highlights a growing tension between the AI industry's full-throttle race to build ever-larger and smarter models and the more safety-minded voices urging caution.

On the one hand, competition is fierce in the AI industry, with tech giants issuing "code reds" to their teams every time a competitor launches a successful new model. And the money is flowing. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft all logged record-breaking capital expenditures on AI chips, servers, and data centers this quarter. The scale of AI spending pushed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to record highs in recent weeks.

At the same time, others warn this sort of YOLO culture ignores AI's potential threats — anything from misuse by bad actors to unintended AI model behavior.

AI "godfather" Geoffrey Hinton said in a conversation with Sen. Bernie Sanders at Georgetown University last month that the rapid development of AI could spark mass unemployment, deepen inequality, and even change the nature of human relationships.

An analysis conducted by AlphaSense found that 418 publicly traded companies valued at more than $1 billion have cited AI as a risk to their reputations and security in reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Many companies have also been slow to implement AI ethics officers and governance experts in their rush to make productivity gains.

As the "YOLO" mindset takes root in the AI industry, Zittrain asked: "Is that an OK model of development for this possibly transformative tech?"

• OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair said the key to a small and efficient team was not hiring middle managers.
• She only hires senior and junior talent in the company, which has a lean team of 42 full-time staff.
• In recent years, Big Tech has endured the "great flattening," a rapid culling of middle management roles.

The CEO of OnlyFans has a rule on how to rake in big bucks with a tiny team: don't hire middle managers.

Keily Blair, OnlyFans' chief executive, spoke with Jeff Berman, the host of the Masters of Scale podcast, during the November Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon.

Blair said in the interview that OnlyFans, a subscription-based content platform founded in 2016, has only 42 full-time employees.

Berman chimed in, saying that it was "very powerful" that the company was making $7 billion in annual revenue with such a lean team. Blair said she was proud of her team, which she called a "pretty efficient bunch."

The key to this, she said, was to eliminate middle management roles in the company.

"So we hire incredibly senior talent, and then we hire incredibly hungry junior talent, and we look for attitude and aptitude in hiring rather than experience," she said.

"And we do not have that sort of squidgy layer of middle management in the middle, because nobody's ever had a really good middle manager in my experience," Blair added.

She said that leaders in big companies are often judged by the number of people reporting to them, a concept she did not agree with.

"We've said to our teams, 'You can be a team of one and deliver exceptional results, and that will be so valued,'" she said. She added that there is no "manager track" for her staff's career progression in the company, and every OnlyFans employee is an individual contributor.

OnlyFans, which initially started as a platform for creators to earn money from paywalled content, has become synonymous with adult, NSFW content. Blair, who became the company's CEO in 2023 after years of work as a lawyer, said in the interview that OnlyFans has 400 million users globally and 4 million content creators.

OnlyFans' middle-managerless workforce aligns with the broader trend of Big Tech firms eliminating this layer of staff. In recent years, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Intel, and Google have all reduced the head count of middle managers, opting for a flatter hierarchy in the name of efficiency.