Author: openjargon

• Chapter 11 protections allow companies to reorganize debts in order to become profitable again.
• Companies like Hooters, Marvel, Converse, and GM have used the process to come back stronger.
• Here are 10 household name brands that have bounced back after filing for bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy often marks the end of a company — but not always.

While corporate bankruptcies have been on the rise in recent years, some brands have used the process to rebuild.

Chapter 11 protections mean that declaring bankruptcy doesn't necessarily signal the end of a company.

With the right restructuring strategy, brands can get back on their feet and emerge from bankruptcy stronger than ever.

Here are 10 household names that used the bankruptcy process to restructure their debt and get back into the black.

Marvel filed for bankruptcy in 1996 and dominated the silver screen a decade later.

Marvel Entertainment filed for bankruptcy in 1996, citing declining comic book sales. After merging with Toy Biz and selling film rights to characters like Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, the company managed to regain its footing.

Disney purchased Marvel for $4 billion in 2009, and its Avengers franchise has become a cash cow for the House of Mouse.

Converse filed for bankruptcy before being bought out by Nike.

Faced with rising debts and a falling stock price, Converse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001. Sold at auction, Converse's new owners tapped a former North Face executive to revive the brand, eventually selling to Nike for $1.9 billion in 2003.

Delta Air Lines filed for bankruptcy in 2005 and spent a year and a half restructuring.

Delta exited bankruptcy in 2007 after cutting 6,000 jobs and reducing labor costs by $1 billion. By maximizing use of its Atlanta hub, expanding its international reach, and cutting costs, the company bounced back.

Six Flags filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and eliminated its debt a year later.

Six Flags eliminated $1 billion in debt in 2010 by offering bondholders ownership of the company. The amusement park chain went on to post nine straight years of record revenue, and in 2024, the company merged with former rival Cedar Fair.

It seemed like Hostess was closing for good in 2012, but the beloved brand is back.

Hostess filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012, and it seemed like the end of Twinkies, Ho Hos, and Ring Dings.

The company was bought by a private equity firm in 2015, which invested $375 million in the company, took it public, and reduced costs, bringing the classic Americana pieces back to store shelves.

The comeback captured the attention of J.M. Smucker Co., which completed an acquisition in 2023.

American Airlines was profitable three years after declaring bankruptcy.

American Airlines filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and spent the next several years reducing its workforce and restructuring its business. After merging with US Airways, the company returned to profitability in 2014 and has largely managed to stay in the black, aside from during the COVID-19 pandemic.

General Motors filed for bankruptcy at the height of the Great Financial Crisis.

When GM filed for bankruptcy in 2009, the US government spent $50 billion to bail it out and save autoworkers' jobs. The Treasury Department said in 2013 that the moves ultimately lost about $11.2 billion, but that the alternative would have been much worse.

The lifeline for GM helped the company transform into one of the world's best-run car companies and has contributed to the revitalization of Detroit.

Betsey Johnson filed for bankruptcy and closed all 63 stores in 2012 before relaunching her fashion brand.

Betsey Johnson had planned a massive expansion during the 2008 financial crisis. Instead, the company ended up $4 million in debt.

After filing for bankruptcy, the brand was acquired by Steve Madden in 2010, and Johnson has since revamped her fashion line to focus on lower-priced items to be sold in department stores.

Hooters filed for bankruptcy in 2025 and was sold back to a group that included the chain's founders.

Chicken-wing and skimpy-uniform restaurant chain Hooters filed for Chapter 11 protection in March and emerged several months later under a deal with the company's original founders to "re-Hooterize" the brand.

At Home's CEO said exiting bankruptcy represents 'an exciting new beginning.'

Texas-based housewares chain At Home filed for Chapter 11 protection in June and emerged in October with $2 billion less in debt, $500 million in exit financing, and a new ownership agreement among a group of its lenders.

CEO Brad Weston said the chapter now represents "an exciting new beginning."

• Posting work on LinkedIn and his website helped Dhyey Mavani land an engineering job at LinkedIn.
• Sharing projects and personal stories online expanded his professional network and visibility.
• Mavani encourages others to post their journeys to unlock career opportunities and mentorship.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dhyey Mavani, a 21-year-old software engineer at LinkedIn, based in Sunnyvale, CA. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I moved to the US from India in 2021 to attend Amherst College, where I triple-majored in computer science, mathematics, and statistics. During my freshman year, I developed a support system for statistical programming that became part of an introductory statistics course.

Opportunities to talk about my work on and off campus started coming up, which led to different perspectives, insights, and connections. I thought about how I could scale this up to a broader audience.

I started posting my work on my personal website and LinkedIn in 2022. Reach-outs, research, and informal job opportunities started coming in, which made me realize that posting online about your work is as important as doing the work itself.

After seeing my work online in 2023, a recruiter at LinkedIn contacted me directly on the platform to discuss an internship opportunity, which ultimately led to my current full-time position as a software engineer at the company. I started full time this year.

I started building my network through my online presence

I started posting because people on campus were reaching out and asking to chat through ideas and career advice, and I couldn't devote much time to each individual. I still wanted to share my resources, so I decided to document my learnings and my progress and share them online.

Since I started posting, I've significantly expanded my network to over 500 connections and more than 6,000 followers. I posted about a research paper I wrote, and in the post walked through a short summary about my research, how I got there, what the key accomplishments were, and what things I'm still looking into for future work.

That gained some traction with over 45,000 post impressions on LinkedIn. Then I had people working in research labs at Princeton and other universities reach out, which led to further conversations about job opportunities that I never could've had otherwise.

I had to get over the fear of being judged

It's terrifying to put your work out there. I also thought of this as an opportunity to be resourceful and repay the help that my upperclassmen and alumni have given me.

That motivation really helped me overcome all the other worries I had. If it's for a good cause and to help others, I shouldn't worry about people judging my work. If they do, I try to take it in a constructive manner and learn from their perspectives to identify areas for improvement.

It's important to post the whole journey, not just your achievements

Adding personal anecdotes to the technical content that you post makes it more engaging for users. As I scroll on LinkedIn or read blog posts, I always engage a lot more with content that has a personal element. It gives me a thrilling ride through the adventure that the person went through to come to this conclusion or achieve this goal.

It's helpful to phrase the posts you share in a value-first manner, where you provide some of your own perspective and explain why you stand by it. When I share my work online, I like to walk readers through why I pursued this project, what it entails, and who it impacts.

I also try to engage with content I see to increase visibility and expand my network. I recently commented on a post about Google, sharing my thoughts on the company's strategy, and my comment had over 100,000 impressions.

Content works for you while you sleep

When I first heard someone say that content builds your career while you are sleeping, that really moved me.

I realized that there are opportunities that arise from organic posting and genuinely engaging with other people's content. I've received numerous outreach requests from people who have been working in similar fields that I admire, as well as for my internship opportunity at LinkedIn and other places that haven't yet had job postings listed.

Sharing content about an achievement helps me close that chapter of my work in my mind, and it can serve as a good checkpoint for people who are just starting on that journey when I'm ending it and seeking guidance.

I wouldn't have the job options, the reach, network for mentorship, and other engagements if I hadn't started sharing my journey online.

Do you have a similar story to share? Contact this reporter, Agnes Applegate, at aapplegate@businessinsider.com.

• A philosophy professor warns that reliance on AI is quietly eroding workers' core skills.
• She says junior employees risk becoming "useless" when they over-rely on AI tools.
• Data shows most ChatGPT use is personal, raising concerns about cognitive offloading.

Companies are racing to adopt AI tools they believe will supercharge productivity. But one professor warned that the technology may be quietly hollowing out the workforce instead.

Anastasia Berg, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, said that new research — and what she's hearing directly from colleagues across various industries — shows that employees who heavily rely on AI are losing core skills at a startling rate.

"We have a tremendous amount of empirical data on this question of skill attrition or skill atrophy," Berg said on "The Philosopher" podcast this week. "We talk a lot about what it takes to acquire a skill," but skills also require maintaining, she said

While Berg did not cite particular studies, there is research from Oxford University Press and journals, including Springer and MDPI, that suggests AI may boost speed and engagement in learning, but often at the cost of depth, critical thinking, creativity, and long-term skill development.

AI could be damaging the workers who need to learn the most

Berg said the workers most vulnerable to this deskilling effect are junior employees.

She said it's not just a problem with the humanities subjects; computer science professors say that students and early-career developers are relying so heavily on AI tools that they're no longer learning how to write or debug code on their own.

"It's one thing for a senior coder to use AI," she said. "But the junior people are useless because they cannot help themselves from using it."

Because they lean on AI from day one, Berg said, they never build the foundational knowledge required to understand what the AI is doing — let alone verify or correct it.

AI is becoming a crutch — even outside work

Berg said AI dependency is spreading far beyond the workplace. Adults now consult chatbots for everything from emotional support to daily decision-making — a shift she believes erodes independent judgment.

"The majority — if not something close to — of AI use among adults isn't work-related," she said, pointing to "constant advice," "a lot of weird sociability," and "emotional task management."

An analysis of 1.58 million ChatGPT conversations by researchers at OpenAI, Duke University, and Harvard University found that by June 2025, 73% of messages from adult users were non-work-related, though the study did not break down the specific non-work uses.

That kind of reliance, she said, weakens the cognitive capacities people need not only to perform specialized jobs but to function independently in everyday life.

A looming crisis of competence

Berg's point is that AI doesn't merely automate tasks — it automates the very processes through which people develop their skills.

Once workers grow dependent on AI, they lose the friction that strengthens their ability to reason, problem-solve, and make decisions.

"We have them compromising their most basic levels of their ability," she said. "The threat to the highest level of their ability is just tremendous."

If companies continue to push AI into every workflow under the banner of efficiency, she said, they may end up with a generation of employees who appear more productive on paper but lack the ability to perform without digital hand-holding.

In other words, AI might not be enhancing the workforce. It might be slowly dismantling it.

• Uber, Lyft, and other apps market themselves as ideal side hustles.
• One driver said the work hasn't fit well with her schedule as a medical student.
• The driver has looked at other gigs, such as substitute teaching, to make money.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Porshaye Watkins, a 37-year-old ride-hailing driver for Uber and Lyft in Atlanta. Business Insider verified her work and expenses. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I started medical school in January 2020. Then, life happened.

My grandmother passed. She raised me, so after that, I had to navigate life a little differently. I became the sole caretaker for my Vietnam War veteran grandfather and my intellectually disabled adult brother.

In the fall of last year, I had the wonderful idea to use rideshare to supplement my income while studying and caring for my family. However, it has not been what I've planned.

The story I had heard from others who drove rideshare was that they did it full-time and were able to make thousands of dollars a week. But the most profitable times to work don't always fall within the hours I'm able to spend outside and work. Sometimes I have to study when lots of people are requesting rides, such as at night.

Initially, when I started driving rideshare, I rented a vehicle through Lyft. It was very expensive: I was paying about $300 a week for the car, and that doesn't include a deposit, taxes, fees, or insurance. So I was paying over $1,000 a month for a car that I didn't own. When some rides paid as little as $2 or $3, it didn't make financial sense. Earlier this year, I ended up buying my own car.

Some weeks, I end up driving for 55 hours to make enough money to cover my expenses. So far, I've completed about 1,400 trips on Uber and 500 on Lyft. I'm taking a break from school, although I plan to re-enroll and complete my final year in January.

As a future doctor, I see certain behaviors among other drivers that concern me. Like me, a lot of other ride-hailing drivers whom I talk to while working or getting rides myself say they sacrifice downtime and sleep to drive. That can make them more anxious, especially late at night, which puts everyone on the road at risk.

(Editor's note: A Lyft spokesperson said driver health and well-being is a top priority, and the company encourages drivers to take breaks and limits drivers to working 12 hours at once. An Uber spokesperson declined to comment.)

I've also noticed that I'm sitting a lot more as a driver than I used to when I was in medical school. It doesn't do the body good. I'm trying to figure out a way to get more active again.

Over the past year or so, I've realized that driving for rideshare is not a sustainable side hustle for me. I've started applying for other jobs, but I usually don't hear anything back. I've also been making grocery and restaurant deliveries through Instacart and DoorDash. The main alternative that has worked out for me is working as a substitute teacher.

It's devastating to me that I'm working this hard. I hoped the rideshare industry could be a reliable option for someone like me who needs flexibility, but it's not.

Do you have a story to share about Uber or other gig work? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com or 808-854-4501.

• There's an ongoing debate in the tech world about whether we're in the midst of an AI bubble.
• That debate is just now starting to make its way into the halls of power in Washington.
• AOC said that we could be in a "massive" bubble — and there should be no bailout if it pops.

Are we in the middle of an AI bubble? Ask a lawmaker, and they probably won't have a definitive take for you.

"If I knew that, I'd be in a different line of work," Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat who represents much of Silicon Valley, told Business Insider.

The AI bubble debate has been raging in the tech world since August, when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that investors had grown "overexcited" about the technology.

There are also concerns about circular spending patterns among tech companies investing in AI technology, and fears that companies won't be able to recoup the billions of dollars they're spending on data centers and other AI infrastructure. Bill Gates has explicitly compared it to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.

However, many in the tech world remain confident that there's no bubble, citing continued high demand for AI products.

"Are we in an AI bubble? I have no idea," Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii told Business Insider. "Even the AI people don't know."

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said that while she was unsure whether there's a bubble, she's concerned by "how much of the economic activity in the stock market and across the country is driven by this one sector."

"If it is overvalued, when that bubble pops, it's going to be felt everywhere," Warren said. "The concentration makes the economy far more vulnerable than it otherwise would be."

One of the few lawmakers who's been outspoken about the potential for a bubble is Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who said at a hearing last week that we may be in a "massive economic bubble" that could pose "2008-style threats to economic stability."

"Should this bubble pop, we should not be entertaining a bailout," Ocasio-Cortez added.

The debate is slowly making its way to Capitol Hill as the Trump administration and some Republicans in Congress are pursuing ways to make it easier for the AI industry to do business.

President Donald Trump, when asked, has largely shrugged off questions about whether he's worried about a bubble.

"I guess. I worry about everything," Trump said in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" earlier this month. "I hope it's gonna be very good. But if it's not so good, we're protected."

Trump has begun to talk up the need to restrict states' ability to regulate AI, reviving a fight that played out over the summer as Congress considered the "Big Beautiful Bill."

The bill originally included a provision that would have blocked states from enacting some regulations on AI for 10 years. It was strongly supported by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee who's positioned himself as an ally of the AI industry on Capitol Hill. It was later stripped out of the megabill in a 99-1 vote.

When asked last week whether he sees a bubble in the AI industry, Cruz was circumspect.

"Will there be uncertainty? Will there be economic challenges? Of course," Cruz told Business Insider. "But for technology of this magnitude, it's in our interest that America win the race, and not China."

Ocasio-Cortez argued that there's a connection between the potential bubble and financial incentives to make AI technology more exploitative.

"People's deepest fears, secrets, emotional content, relationships can all be mined for this empty promise that we're getting from these companies to turn a profit," Ocasio-Cortez said at the hearing.

But for some of those who want to see stronger regulation of AI, the question of a bubble is largely beside the point.

"Bubble, no bubble, whatever," Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said. "We need to focus on the effect on working people."

• People analytics firm Visier analyzed who is more likely to be rehired within 15 months of being laid off.
• Managers and workers in the finance and retail industries were more likely to be called back.
• Andrea Derler, principal researcher, expects the rate to rise as companies deal with AI and uncertainty.

Sometimes a layoff isn't a farewell forever.

Rehires of people who were laid off could become more popular in a shaky job market. Visier, a people analytics firm, looked at how many people were rehired at their previous employers within 15 months of being terminated. Visier found about 5.3% of laid-off employees were rehired, based on global data from 2018 to 2024 covering 142 large organizations with over 2 million employee records.

Andrea Derler, principal researcher at Visier, expects boomerang hires of people who were previously laid off to increase as companies figure out how to handle "AI-induced pressures" and economic uncertainty.

"In times of extreme turmoil, where workforce planning is made even more difficult due to rapid, unexpected, and unpredictable changes, layoff boomerangs seem to be more prevalent," Derler said.

Separately, ADP Research found that the share of new hires who were boomerang employees increased from 26% in March 2022 to 35% this past March. "In an era where the outlook on the jobs market is fuzzy or uncertain, it makes sense for both employers and employees to stick with what they know," Nela Richardson, ADP's chief economist, previously told Business Insider.

The US is in a mostly frozen job market marked by low layoffs, but also low hiring. Job growth slowed from a monthly average of 111,000 between January and March to about 62,000 between July and September.

Layoffs in the US are low, but announcements are adding up. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that there have been over 1 million job cuts announced from US-based employers this year as of October. Verizon, Amazon, government agencies, and others have made headlines for their decisions.

Managers and people in finance and retail are more likely to rejoin their companies

Derler said Visier's data doesn't show a surge in manager layoffs, but they are also more likely to be rehired. "Organizations realize that it's really hard to find a good manager because the manager is responsible for a lot of things: performance, productivity, but also engagement of other employees," she said.

Among the handful of industries Visier looked at, finance and retail had the highest rates of laid-off employees that were rehired at 7.5% each. Derler said retail has a lot of turnover, so it makes sense that workers may go back and forth. She suspects the rate for the finance industry is because the work duties involve certain skills and expertise. Instead of tapping into a new talent pool, businesses may turn to people previously on their payroll and who have already demonstrated their capabilities.

Meanwhile, Derler said tech's rate of 4.3%, below the average rate and the lowest among the five industries looked at, could be because desired skills and knowledge quickly evolve. So, unlike finance, firms may want to look at a new talent pool.

"Prompt engineers a year ago was the big job — nobody talks about prompt engineering anymore," Derler said. "Skills are changing so fast, so that's why I can assume that they'll be looking for new people with new skills rather than those who they know."

Before being laid off, network and develop your skills

Derler said all parties need to have good "layoff hygiene," where both sides are respectful. She said workers should also try not to internalize their layoff or think it's something they did wrong.

She also emphasized the importance of always keeping up your skills, so that if you are laid off, you can confidently add your knowledge to your résumé or talk about it in an interview.

Derler also suggested staying connected with people you worked well with in case you do rejoin — not just so it's pleasant to return, but because they might know about an opening.

Derler said she interviewed some boomerangs and found some were still in touch with their old boss. "When their manager then realized they actually needed somebody again, they would be the first that they would call," she said. "Makes sense, right? Because you know the person, you get on well with them."

Have you gone back to your previous job? Are you a hiring manager who has made boomerang hires? Reach out to this reporter at mhoff@businessinsider.com.

• There is plenty of fear about AI rendering an expensive Stanford degree obsolete.
• While most classes still ban AI, one of the most popular courses encourages students to use AI coding tools.
• A who's who of AI software development engineers has guest lectured in the class.

In a dimly lit Stanford University basement classroom packed with anxious computer science students, lecturer Mihail Eric tells the class he's going to teach them how to code without writing a single line of code.

Eric's class, The Modern Software Developer, has quickly become one of the hottest Stanford CS courses this semester, which bills itself as the first attempt at a major university to embrace coding tools like Cursor and Claude.

It is an unsettling time to be a computer science major, even at a school as prestigious as Stanford, knowing you will be graduating into a world where AI is getting better at programming by the day.

"It can be scary because you think your job security is being compromised, and you might get replaced," said Brent Ju, one of the class's dozens of students. Ju is graduating this spring and so far has no job offers. "The market is a little tough. I am still interviewing."

"If you can go through this entire class without writing a single line of code, more power to you," said Eric, a Stanford alum who purposefully designed the course to be an antidote to the majority of classes that still ban the use of AI.

A who's who of AI coding luminaries has stopped by the bucolic Palo Alto campus to guest lecture, including Boris Cherney, creator of Claude Code, and Gaspar Garcia, head of AI research at Vercel. Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, will address the final class next week.

On a recent morning inside the classroom, Silas Alberti, head of research at Cognition, delivered a lecture called "The Opinionated Guide to AI Coding in 2025."

"I think what you learn in school has always been a little bit behind, so I'm glad that this course exists to teach the newest stuff," Alberti said after his lecture, surrounded by students lined up to greet him like a celebrity. "If you learn with yesterday's methods, you are not going to be super competitive, but if you really lean into the tools, you can be a super engineer."

Excitement and fear

The mood of the students in the class reflects the current zeitgeist of Silicon Valley, with excitement about what many consider one of the most significant technological advancements of our lifetime. But there is plenty of fear about AI rendering an expensive Stanford degree obsolete.

When Eric graduated in 2016, getting a Stanford CS degree was the golden ticket.

"People thought 'I'm going to go to an elite university, and then I'm just going to be set for life and have a cushy six-figure job for as long as I want at a FAANG company,'" he said.

The number of CS students surged as tech companies embarked on a massive hiring spree.

"Meanwhile, a lot of companies that hired a lot during COVID saw that they overhired," Eric said. "Now you have a surplus of young talent and also a surplus of newly laid-off, quite experienced talent."

Making matters worse, AI is already proficient in coding and continues to improve rapidly. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said up to 30 percent of the company's code is being written by AI, while Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei predicted in March that AI had the potential to write "essentially all" of the company's code within a year.

Ju, who says his dream job would be to work at Anthropic, says he is trying to stay positive.

"It's exciting because if the tools aren't going to replace you, but act as an assistant, it can really supercharge your productivity and make you a more effective developer," Ju said. "I'm more of an optimist who leans toward that direction."

Zach Lloyd, founder and CEO of Warp, a developer tool for agentic workflows, delivered a guest lecture last month and maintains he is still very interested in hiring CS students.

"The idea that people from a place like Stanford with a CS education won't be able to get jobs as engineers is a little overblown," he said, adding that knowing the fundamentals of programming is still vital to effectively using Warp or Claude. "These tools are accelerators but not replacements yet, and the actual people who will be best at wielding them are those who have a solid foundation."

Eric plans to teach the course again next year, though he says AI is advancing so fast that the class will likely look very different.

"People were asking me if I was concerned that by week seven, things are going to be obsolete that I talked about in week one?" he said. "Yes, it is a concern. So far it hasn't happened yet."

• Beans are a good source of plant-based protein and fiber.
• The CEO of a premium bean company has written two cookbooks to inspire people to eat more beans.
• Amelia Christie-Miller, a former private chef, adds beans to soup and pasta dishes.

If you're looking for an easy, cheap, and delicious way to add protein and fiber to your diet, the answer is simple: beans.

"Everyone's talking about ultra-processed foods. Everyone's talking about gut health, fibre, and protein, and they've just been completely overlooked," Amelia Christie-Miller, the CEO of Bold Bean Co., a premium bean company, told Business Insider.

Christie-Miller is on a mission "to make people fall in love with beans," and part of her strategy has been writing two cookbooks dedicated entirely to bean recipes. "They can fit into so many different cuisines and flavors and recipes," she said.

Legumes, such as beans, chickpeas, and lentils, are excellent sources of both plant-based protein and fiber. Just one cup of black beans, for example, contains around 15 grams of both.

As such, they're something of a cheat for boosting gut health. The fiber in beans is both soluble, which promotes regular bowel movements, and prebiotic, which feeds the "beneficial" bugs in the gut microbiome, the trillions of microbes that live in the colon lining and impact overall health.

She shared three easy swaps to add beans to your meals.

Add beans to your favorite pasta dish

If you're making a pasta dish, consider adding beans or replacing some of the pasta. "You'll realize just how well they meld with the flavors," Christie-Miller said. You can add beans to any sauce you like, from marinara or meat sauce to pesto.

Christie-Miller's go-to pasta sauce is puttanesca, a Neapolitan tomato-based sauce with olives, capers, pecorino cheese, and anchovies.

Swap croutons for crispy beans in soup

Throwing some beans into a soup is a simple and fast way to add protein and fiber. Or you can roast them in the oven or air fryer with some olive oil and sprinkle them on top like croutons.

"Crisping up beans is a really great texture topper," Christie-Miller said.

Soups often don't contain any protein or fat, which help us feel full. This means they often leave us hungry an hour or so after eating them. But, "if you add beans, you're going to feel way more sustained, and it's a really easy way of making a soup way more satisfying," she said.

Try "bean-otto" instead of risotto

Christie-Miller is a big fan of what she calls a bean-otto. "You take the concept of a risotto, but you replace the rice with beans," she said.

Her favorite is a Bold Bean Co. recipe called Porcini mushroom bean-Otto, which she makes with white beans, dried Porcini mushrooms, and chestnut mushrooms. She starts by frying the mushrooms with butter, thyme, and onions, then adds garlic and white wine. Once that's cooked off, she adds mushroom stock, which she makes using the dried Porcini mushrooms, then the beans. After the liquid has mostly evaporated, she stirs through some butter, Parmesan cheese, black pepper, and fresh parsley.

It comes together much faster than risotto because you don't have to wait for the rice to cook, and it contains far more protein and fiber. "You're actually going to feel so great afterward," she said.

• Some workers are getting remote exceptions from their managers — others are finding workarounds.
• Childcare needs and long commutes are pushing some workers to seek more work-from-home flexibility.
• Some managers may be willing to accommodate top performers to maintain team performance.

After months of battling LA traffic, Leslie Snipes decided it was time to talk to her manager.

For the first few months of her job as a director of marketing at a Los Angeles-based creative agency, she drove 60 to 90 minutes to the office a few days a week — but the commute eventually began to take a toll.

"I was wasting hours just sitting in traffic," said the 34-year-old.

In April of last year, Snipes decided to ask her manager whether she could work remotely almost exclusively. She explained that she'd be more productive working from home and that her team's strongest bonding often happened during business trips and off-site projects.

Snipes said she received verbal approval in less than a day — and that she now typically works from the office once or twice a month to "show face" and connect with colleagues.

"I feel less stressed, since I'm not spending hours sitting in traffic," she said. "It's a setup I wouldn't have unless I asked."

While some workers are more than happy to return to the office for camaraderie and a change of scenery, Business Insider spoke to seven people who have found ways to secure flexible work arrangements — whether or not they're officially sanctioned.

Nick Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University who studies remote work, said work-from-home rates have remained fairly stable in recent years, despite companies' implementing stricter return-to-office mandates. He believes that's offset by other employers — many of them smaller companies and startups — offering more flexibility. He also hypothesizes that employees are securing exceptions that allow them to work from home more frequently than their company's official policy permits.

Bloom pointed out a possible motivating factor for allowing these exceptions: Managers are generally judged on how their teams perform, and they don't want to risk their best talent quitting or becoming less productive if they're forced back to the office. For this reason, some managers may choose not to enforce office attendance policies too strictly.

"Managers ultimately care about their team performance," he said.

Securing flexibility to meet childcare demands

Childcare responsibilities are a common factor pushing workers to secure work-from-home flexibility. In November 2024, Georg Loewen began working as a senior director of digital marketing at a public relations agency with a three-day-a-week in-office policy, which required him to make a roughly one-hour commute from New Jersey to Manhattan.

But that commute proved challenging. Loewen was responsible for dropping off his one-year-old daughter at day care most mornings, and the 8 a.m. drop-off often made it difficult to catch the ideal 8:20 train that would get him to the office just before 9 — the next one wouldn't get him in until after 10. Even when he was on time, finding a parking spot at the station wasn't guaranteed.

Early this year, Loewen's manager initiated a conversation about his challenges getting into the office. Eventually, they came to an agreement.

"If drop-off ran long or parking didn't work out, I'd just work from home," said the 34-year-old.

Loewen said he typically works from the office once or twice a week. His current routine involves dropping off his daughter, heading home to park his car, and then riding a foldable bike 1.5 miles to the station, which allows him to avoid the hassle of finding a parking spot.

He said he sometimes worries about how his arrangement might be perceived by coworkers who don't have the same flexibility, but added that he's consistently felt supported. He may need to work from the office more frequently as his team grows, he said, but for now, he's grateful for the leeway he's been given.

A Wisconsin-based mother of three is similarly thankful for the flexible understanding she came to with her manager. In 2023, she'd considered leaving her corporate manufacturing role after the company announced a five-day-a-week office policy. She worried she couldn't meet her childcare responsibilities with a two-hour round-trip commute.

Instead, she had an "off the record" conversation with her manager about how much remote work she could get away with. She said they told her to "be here as much as you can." As long as she was in the office a few days a week — especially on days with key in-person meetings — they wouldn't stand in her way.

"If I need to work from home for whatever reason, whether it's work or personal reasons, then that's OK," she said.

Leaving early and having a remote backup plan

Some workers have found creative ways to spend less time at the office.

When Elysa Ellis began looking for a new role last year, she was hesitant to give up the remote work flexibility she'd grown used to. After landing an interview with a local nonprofit that required employees to work from the office five days a week, she came with a prepared request: a 9-to-3 schedule, instead of the typical 9-to-5.

Ellis said it was important for her to be able to pick up her two children from school around 3 p.m. and spend time with them until her husband finished work.

"My children are young, so I knew that stepping into an in-office role would impact them a lot," she said, adding, "I felt like I had nothing to lose."

By the time Ellis was offered the job, her request had been granted. She would work from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. — and still receive her full salary.

In 2022, when a millennial IT professional heard rumors that his employer might implement a stricter return-to-office policy, he began searching for a new role. Shortly after, he landed an offer for a remote position similar to his current role.

However, he was hesitant to resign while his company's official policy still allowed remote work, so he decided to secretly juggle both roles — earning $250,000 annually, roughly double his previous income. And if his initial employer ever adopted a stricter in-office policy, he figured he had a backup plan.

"I ultimately decided to try it since I could easily just drop one if it was too much," he said.

For a millennial finance manager at Amazon, maximizing his work-from-home time meant doing the bare minimum at the office.

When Amazon announced in 2023 that it would require corporate employees to work from the office three days a week, he began going in the required number of days — but only worked between nine and 12 hours total across all three days. He said it was feasible because he was the only member of his team based at that office.

"I would go into the office for a few hours, avoid rush hour, and fulfill my badging requirement," he said.

Work-from-home flexibility sometimes comes down to your choice of employer

For some, the simplest way to secure work-from-home flexibility is to find a job that offers it from day one.

After being laid off from a remote job, a New Jersey-based e-commerce professional landed an offer last year for a role at JPMorgan — one that would require him to commute to a Manhattan office three days a week.

As he considered the offer, he estimated that commuting would take nine hours a week and cost him more than $7,000 a year. Around the same time, he received another offer — this one for a remote role with a salary about $5,000 lower than the JPMorgan position.

When he compared the two jobs in terms of what he'd earn for every hour he'd have to "invest" in them — factoring in both commuting time and related costs — he said the decision was easy.

"JPMorgan just could not compete," he said, adding: "A 40-hour week plus nine commute hours is basically a 50-hour week for the salary that they were offering."

• Business Insider flew with a Royal Air Force Voyager aerial refueling tanker this week.
• The Voyager refueled British and Swedish fighter jets in Eastern Europe, close to Russian territory.
• This is what it's like in the tanker, which is crucial for enabling long-distance air operations.

ABOARD A BRITISH VOYAGER AIRCRAFT — With rows of economy seats, overhead baggage bins, television screens, and illuminated seatbelt signs, the cabin of this Royal Air Force tanker looks nearly identical to that of a commercial jetliner.

But out the window, NATO fighter jets are flying just a few feet away, receiving fuel from the Voyager at nearly 30,000 feet and at speeds around 300 miles per hour near the militarized Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. It's a fast and dangerous job, where even the slightest mistake could be deadly.

The Voyager — essentially a flying gas station carrying enough fuel to keep fighter jets flying for thousands of miles — is the RAF's only air-to-air refueling tanker, crucially allowing the UK to extend the range of NATO air operations.

Business Insider embarked on a Voyager flight this week for a NATO mission in support of Eastern Sentry, defensive operations that include air patrols launched in mid-September after roughly 20 Russian drones violated Polish airspace.

Since then, NATO fighter jets — enabled by the Voyager aircraft — have regularly flown patrols, missions, and training exercises along the Eastern flank of the alliance, serving as a warning to Russia.

'We can operate anywhere'

Under the cover of clouds and darkness early Thursday morning, the Voyager — call sign KAYAK21— departed from base at RAF Brize Norton, west of London, for a nearly nine-hour journey that took the tanker over the Baltic Sea and Eastern Europe, and on the edge of Russian territory, before returning to England.

Several times during the journey, the Voyager refueled an assortment of British Eurofighter Typhoon and Swedish JAS 39 Gripen multirole fighter jets, a process that takes roughly 10 minutes. Finnish F/A-18s Hornets joined along at one point before splitting off.

The Voyager is based on the twin-engine Airbus A300-200. It became fully operational with the RAF in 2013, replacing the VC10 as the UK's main tanker aircraft. It is typically staffed by two pilots and a mission systems operator, who facilitates the air-to-air refueling process.

The Voyager KC3 variant features two underwing pods for refueling fighter jets, equipped with retractable hoses, and a third centerline hose for larger aircraft.

Tankers like the Voyager or the US military's KC-135 Stratotanker are designed to extend the range of fighter jets, early warning aircraft, and other aircraft, enabling longer-distance and duration air operations.

Aircraft would be limited in range or forced to spend time refueling at bases without the tankers, said one of the Voyager pilots, who, like other members of the crew, could not be named for security reasons.

With the air-to-air refueling capability, "we can operate anywhere in the world," the pilot said.

In a demonstration of this capability, a Typhoon fighter took off from Scotland on Thursday and linked up with the Voyager over the North Sea. The jet traveled with the tanker over Eastern Europe and logged more than 2,000 miles by the time it returned to base.

This aerial refueling capability provided by the Voyager helps enable the NATO fighter jets to monitor Russian threats, as they are tasked with doing under the Eastern Sentry operation, the other pilot said.

The Voyager can carry up to 109 metric tons of fuel and nearly 300 passengers, although there were only 12 people aboard the tanker on Thursday, giving the feel of a severely undersold commercial flight on the world's least-busy travel day.

Fighter jets take a very methodical approach to the fuel hose, inching closer until a locking mechanism connects the basket at the end of the hose trailing the tanker to a mechanical arm at the front of the jet.

Two aircraft operating in proximity are inherently dangerous, but a Voyager pilot said they reckon with this by training a lot and doing the refueling process very slowly.

The Voyager offloaded about 20 metric tons of fuel to the Typhoons and Gripens during the flight, which brought the tanker to the edge of Russian and Belarusian airspace as it slipped through the Suwałki gap, a thin corridor between those two countries that connects NATO members Lithuania and Poland.

Around here, the Voyager crew experienced some GPS interference — a common occurrence near Russian territory and one of the biggest issues that the tankers have to deal with, the mission systems operator said.

The Voyager has a defensive suite designed for some types of surface-to-air missiles, but it lacks protection against electronic attack. Still, the pilots were able to quickly mitigate the effect by switching over to other systems, they said.

GPS interference has been prominent in the Baltic Sea region for several years, but it has worsened amid Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the mission systems operator said.

The operational tempo is high right now, with several Voyager flights operating daily out of RAF Brize Norton. The tankers aren't always doing air-to-air missions; sometimes they're transporting personnel or cargo.

Thursday's mission focused on training with other nations, refueling the jets as they engaged in simulated combat with each other. It's all part of NATO's increased efforts to caution potential Russian activity in Eastern Europe just by being present in the area.

The message to Russia, one of the pilots said, is that "we're using this airspace. And we're using our rights to be in this airspace."