• A product manager who worked at Meta and Google reveals which company is best for work-life balance

    Google and Meta logos
    A product manage described the differences between working at Google and Meta based on his time at both companies.

    • A product manager wrote a blog about his experiences working at Meta and Google.
    • Both are great companies to work for, but Google employees may make less money, he wrote.
    • However, the search giant may also provide better work-life balance, according to the PM's blog.

    What's the better company to work for, Meta or Google?

    A Meta product manager who also worked at Google in a similar role revealed some differences between the tech companies based on his experiences over the past six years.

    Daniel McKinnon was a product manager at Meta between 2018 and 2022. Afterward, he worked at Google for two years before returning to Meta in February to work on the company's Ray-Ban AI glasses.

    Business Insider verified his employment history.

    McKinnon wrote on his personal blog that while the companies may seem similar, prospective candidates should know some key differences between the two, from work-life balance to compensation.

    "Meta and Google are both phenomenal technology companies where great PMs can thrive," McKinnon wrote, adding that if someone is looking for "growth at the expense of stress and pressure, Meta is probably a better fit."

    "If you want to prioritize work-life balance, stability, and job security, Google could be a great place for you," he wrote.

    A spokesperson for Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

    Here are some of the differences, according to McKinnon.

    Compensation

    Meta and Google offer product managers a salary, bonus, and Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) grants but have different pay structures, according to McKinnon.

    McKinnon wrote that Meta evenly distributes its RSUs over four years, while Google front-loads its grants, in which 70% of the stock is provided within the first two years of employment.

    Overall, the "typical Google employee" may make less each year because the company offers much smaller stock refreshers than Meta, he wrote. Some companies provide stock refreshers — essentially more stock after the initial stock grant is provided — as an incentive for employees to stick with the employer.

    "Refreshers at Google are significantly smaller than Meta for the same level and role and performance multipliers are much scarcer," McKinnon wrote.

    According to McKinnon, at Google, employees can be rated to have a "significant impact" on the company but receive no additional bonus or stock refresher.

    In a statement to Business Insider, a Google spokesperson disputed McKinnon's assertion that employees make less each year partly because they aren't awarded additional bonuses or stock refreshers for having a "significant impact" rating.

    "A 'Significant Impact' rating provides a generous multiplier for every employee who receives it, which boosts their bonus and equity refresh above the target amount. We know most Googlers are making a significant impact, and we want to reward them for that," the spokesperson said.

    The spokesperson also noted that the "vast majority of Googlers received a compensation increase" in 2024, including a salary bump, equity grant, and bonuses.

    In March, Business Insider reported Google employees received smaller compensation packages this year.

    One employee told BI that the stock refreshers were "noticeably smaller than what Google has historically offered," while a manager said some workers saw their total compensation drop despite receiving an "outstanding" rating.

    Project opportunities

    McKinnon describes Meta and Google as "bottom-up" companies, where ideas largely originate from small teams building prototypes and other colleagues joining in if the prototype gains traction.

    "Both Gmail (Google) and Marketplace (Meta) were famously side projects that grew into major components of the businesses," McKinnon wrote.

    However, the companies evaluate and support new ideas differently, McKinnon wrote, saying Meta's leadership can be enthusiastic about new projects and pursue them "aggressively," but the idea can be quickly dropped if it does not meet expectations.

    The product manager recalled how he worked on an audio-social project when Clubhouse, an audio-based social media app, was popular.

    "A couple hundred friends and I got invited to see if we could make social audio work in Facebook Blue," he wrote, referring to Facebook's attempt at the time to make an audio-social app competitor. "Less than a year later, when it was clear we weren't meeting expectations, our team was blown up."

    According to McKinnon, Meta's leadership, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, can also intervene if they find conflicting visions among teams for a product.

    "If Mark or his execs encounter two different visions for a product, they request reviews from the battling parties and make a call based on their judgment," McKinnon wrote. "This top-down control can cut both ways, depending on which side of the decision you're on."

    At Google, however, teams can work on similar projects for "literally decades" without leadership intervening, McKinnon wrote, pointing to Maps and Waze, GPS apps that are both owned by Google.

    This can be fruitful for product managers who want to pursue their visions for a product with their respective teams but also "frustrating for ambitious PMs who want to build products that require larger teams," he wrote.

    In addition, project timelines can "span decades" at Google, according to McKinnon.

    He wrote that when he pitched an idea to a Google VP, the executive responded back that the idea was great but that he'd rather have employees focus on Google's search business.

    "This interaction encapsulates how Google thinks about change, which is likely correct from the perspective of Google shareholders but potentially not appealing to prospective product managers," McKinnon wrote.

    A Google spokesperson pointed to CEO Sundar Pichai's statements regarding Alphabet's first-quarter performance, in which the CEO explained how the company is trying to move faster by simplifying team structures.

    Company transparency

    Meta does maintain some of the transparency the company was known for in its earlier days, McKinnon wrote.

    At Meta, McKinnon was aware of what other teams were working on, partly through the company's internal forums and dashboards.

    CEO Mark Zuckerberg also still hosts the weekly Q&A sessions with his employees, taking questions "off the cuff," McKinnon wrote.

    Managers are expected to be upfront in their reports about promotions and employee ratings, and "compensation is formulaic and predictable," he wrote.

    One downside to the transparency is that employees have "nowhere to hide," meaning everyone knows what employees are working on, and people won't be able to "take a back seat," according to McKinnon.

    At Google, employees mostly communicate through email or chat, so it's more difficult to know what everyone is doing, McKinnon wrote.

    McKinnon also wrote that he felt Google CEO Sundar Pichai wasn't as candid with his answers to employees like Zuckerberg.

    He wrote that compensation is also less predictable, and feedback from leadership is harder to obtain at the search giant.

    "While this isn't great for those looking to learn and grow, this organizational style makes it much easier to let work drift into the background when other life priorities need your attention," he wrote.

    Overall, transparency has declined for both companies, McKinnon noted.

    'Expression' in the workplace

    At Meta, McKinnon feels that dissent is welcomed.

    "Meta feels like a quasi-academic, truth-seeking organization where decisions are made with data and dissent is encouraged," he wrote. "This environment can be quite unsettling to those used to a more consensus-based or non-confrontational culture."

    Google is different when it comes to "free expression," and employees are more "reserved," according to McKinnon."

    "Questioning priorities is generally not encouraged, which does tend to make for a more collegial work environment but can be frustrating for PMs who want to effect change," he wrote.

    In April, Google fired at least 28 employees for protesting the company's Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud-computing contract with Israel's government.

    Career ladder

    McKinnon wrote that the career ladder seems faster at Meta than at Google, where progression can often be based on seniority.

    McKinnon mentions that Meta's leadership is filled with young VPs, including the company's chief financial officer, Susan Li, who assumed the role when she was 36.

    "Google is much more time-based," McKinnon wrote.

    Managers are given a quota for tenure-based promotions, and while promotions based on excellent performance can happen, they are "much rarer," according to McKinnon.

    He adds a caveat: "However, these career progression observations cut both ways. I have never been in this situation, but I believe that it is much easier to get fired for poor performance at Meta than Google, which should certainly be a factor for those for whom job security is paramount."

    PMs vs. Software Engineers

    Product managers at Meta and Google can serve different purposes, according to McKinnon.

    At Google, McKinnon saw that projects were largely created and led by software engineers, and PMs played a more auxiliary role.

    At Meta, there's a stronger emphasis on product managers who are "responsible for both ensuring the broader team is building something useful and that usefulness can be quantified and iterated on," he wrote.

    "Both approaches have their merit, but I never could shake the feeling that Google could delete its entire PM function and not feel much in the way of repercussions," McKinnon wrote.

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  • Downtown Los Angeles is bustling with new residents. Not so much with office workers, though.

    Los Angeles, California, at night
    Downtown Los Angeles.

    • Los Angeles' downtown has become a hot spot for residential growth in the city.
    • The neighborhood's office market, however, continues to languish.
    • Downtown LA is expected to be a major draw for residential living over the next few decades.

    For generations, downtown Los Angeles was the region's nexus of commerce, as vast office spaces and old-line department stores made the neighborhood a business powerhouse.

    But urban decay and suburbanization, which accelerated after World War II, made downtown into more of a 9-to-5 office hub. For decades, the city core was a destination for work but not much else.

    That all changed after 2000 when there was sustained residential growth in downtown Los Angeles. And since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, that growth has only strengthened. The neighborhood is now a major draw for residential development.

    According to the DTLA Alliance, a coalition of more than 2,000 central business district property owners, there are nearly 100,000 residents living downtown in new developments like the 41-floor Figueroa Eight apartment building or the numerous historic buildings that have been restored in the area.

    It's created one of the country's most unique downtown living dynamics: Most downtown residents don't work in the neighborhood, The Los Angeles Times reported.

    While the neighborhood benefits from its Union Station transit hub and is home to Los Angeles City Hall, it has — like other cities — seen an exodus of businesses as work-from-home policies put into place during the pandemic caused many companies to either relocate to smaller spaces, cut the amount of office space that they needed downtown, or abandon their office footprints altogether.

    The real estate services firm CBRE recently reported that only about two-thirds (65%) of office space in downtown Los Angeles was occupied in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Times.

    Despite the office emigration, living in downtown LA has become so desirable that Jessica Lall, the head of CBRE's downtown Los Angeles office, told the Times a plan endorsed by the city would allow the neighborhood to absorb 20 percent of the projected housing growth for the entire city through 2040, a significant figure in a city starved for affordable housing and a state where there's been an exodus of residents due to high housing costs.

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  • Here’s the ‘true solution’ to the problem of audio deepfakes, according to the CEO of ElevenLabs

    ElevenLabs cofounders
    ElevenLabs cofounders Mati Staniszewski (left) and Piotr Dabkowski (right) built a unicorn just a year after launching in beta.

    • AI voice tech company ElevenLabs is grappling with deepfakes.
    • The technology, while innovative, has the potential for misuse, leading to concerns from lawmakers.
    • ElevenLabs CEO said digitally watermarking synthetic voices is a solution.

    Companies at the forefront of AI voice technology are grappling with how to regulate deepfakes without stifling innovation. 

    "It's going to be a cat-and-mouse game," Mati Staniszewski, the cofounder and CEO of ElevenLabs, told The Atlantic

    ElevenLabs —  which vaulted to a $1.1 billion valuation after launching in beta last year — uses AI to generate convincing audio clips. That includes text-to-speech voiceovers, dubbing audio into 29 languages, and cloning voices. The company claims its users generated over 100 years of audio in the past year. 

    However, lawmakers worry the technology has a dangerous potential for abuse.

    Advances in AI have correlated with a rise in supercharged phone scams in which imposter scammers cast themselves as love interests, family members, or government officials. Biden's AI chief, Bruce Reed, has even said "voice cloning" is the one thing that keeps him up at night.

    And last year 4chan users exploited the tool from ElevenLabs to generate deepfakes of celebrities spewing racist and transphobic content, according to Vice.

    But Staniszewski is an idealist.

    He sees ElevenLabs' technology contributing to a world where patients with neurodegenerative diseases like ALS can still communicate in their voice after they lose the ability to speak. It also has potential as a tool to help people communicate across cultures and languages.

    New York Mayor Eric Adams has been making robocalls in Mandarin, Yiddish, and Haitian Creole with ElevenLabs technology and said he's been able to reach more of the city's non-English speaking residents.

    To capitalize on this potential while preventing fraud, Staniszweski said users should be able to identify AI-generated voices from human ones. The "true solution," Staniszewski told The Atlantic, is digitally watermarking synthetic voices so humans can differentiate real from fake.

    The company is developing the technology, but it'll only be effective with the cooperation of other companies. ElevenLabs has signed an accord with several other AI companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta to combat deepfakes in the 2024 election.

    ElevenLabs did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

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  • Ex-GOP Rep. Ken Buck says he wanted to leave Congress ‘about three weeks’ after he arrived: ‘It took me a long time to figure out how to get out of this place’

    Ken Buck
    Former Colorado Rep. Ken Buck.

    • Onetime Rep. Ken Buck didn't have a very good impression of Capitol Hill upon his arrival in 2015.
    • Buck told The New York Times that he wanted out of Congress "about three weeks" into the role.
    • But the ex-congressman remarked that it took him a while to map out a plan to leave the House.

    Former Rep. Ken Buck has not been shy about calling out what he says is the highly dysfunctional nature of Congress.

    The Colorado Republican, who was first elected to the House in 2014 and resigned in March after declining to seek reelection this fall, has also been critical of the GOP in how they've handled their majority status in the lower chamber, recently telling The Washington Post that he got "more good work done" when Democrats were in charge.

    And during an interview with the The New York Times, Buck — alongside 11 members of Congress retiring at the end of their terms — rattled off a list of why they were leaving the storied American institution.

    But not even a month into his tenure in Congress, Buck revealed that he was already eyeing the exits.

    "I knew it was time to leave about three weeks after I got to Congress. It just took me a long time to try to figure out how to get out of this place," the former congressman told the Times.

    One of the biggest problems on Capitol Hill that the members — and Buck — identified in their interviews was the influence of money and special interest groups in politics.

    "I was told at the beginning that I had to raise $250,000 if I wanted to be on certain committees. And if I wanted to be on more important committees — or committees with broader jurisdiction — I needed to raise even more money," the ex-congressman told the newspaper. "Buying a committee seat is not something that most Americans know that most members have to do."

    Buck also said it was "very difficult" to maintain two residences on his $174,000 salary, noting that his compensation was significantly higher than what many of his one-time constituents earn each year.

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  • Bitcoin trader loses almost $70 million after sending crypto to wrong online account address

    Bitcoin rally
    A crypto trader lost nearly $70 million in an "address poisoning" scam.

    • A cryptocurrency trader lost nearly $70 million in an 'address poisoning' scam.
    • Scammers made spoof accounts to trick the victim into sending funds to the fake address.
    • Crypto-related scams are on the rise, costing investors almost $4 billion last year, the FBI says.

    A cryptocurrency trader reportedly lost tens of millions of dollars in a so-called "address poisoning" scam.

    Address poisoning scams are carried out by thieves who make spoof accounts of their victim's online crypto "address," which they use to send a small amount of currency to the victim in hopes that they will accidentally send money to the fake address later, according to Transak, a crypto trading platform.

    Because blockchains are public, it's easy for scammers to find people's crypto addresses and send out spoof transactions to phish for victims.

    CertiK, a blockchain security firm, confirmed it detected a transfer of $69.3 million worth of Bitcoin to an address "linked with address poisoning" in a post on X.

    The victim's crypto wallet now shows a total loss of around 97% of its assets on Coinbase. The account is now worth just more than $1.6 million.

    Peckshield, another security firm, wrote on X that the scammers traded the stolen Bitcoin for 23,000 Ethereum and then transferred the funds. Ethereum is trading at $3,116 a coin, according to The Daily Hodl.

    Trezor, another crypto trading platform, recommends double-checking every address before sending a transaction and never copying an address from transaction history when transferring funds to avoid address scams.

    Sending a small test transaction before making a large transfer is also an effective method of verifying the address, the company says.

    Cryptocurrency-related scams are on the rise, according to the FBI's 2023 internet crime report. Crypto-related frauds cost investors $3.94 billion last year, the report says, making up more than three-quarters of the year's investment scam losses.

    One study showed that crypto "pig butchering" scams cost investors $75 million from 2020 to 2024. The fraud starts with criminals sending a wrong-number text that they use as a way to build trust with victims.

    Then, they send small payments to them and lure them into making fake crypto investments, only cutting off contact once the victim has sent a large amount of money to the thief.

    The scam's name refers to fattening a pig up before the slaughter.

    Most cryptocurrency scams involve scammers trying to get victims in unrelated scams to pay them in Bitcoin so that their crimes cannot be traced, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

    The best way to spot a crypto scam is to never trust someone who will only accept payment in crypto or who is promising big profit returns on a fishy investment, the agency says.

    "Investment scams are one of the top ways scammers trick you into buying cryptocurrency and sending it on to scammers," the FTC says. "But scammers are also impersonating businesses, government agencies, and a love interest, among other tactics."

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  • Russian soldiers were convicted of over 100 murders when they returned home last year, a report says

    Soldiers march during the Victory Day military parade to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory in the Great Patriotic War at Red Square on May 9, 2023 in Moscow, Russia.
    Soldiers march during the Victory Day military parade to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory in the Great Patriotic War at Red Square on May 9, 2023, in Moscow, Russia.

    • Russian military personnel convicted of murder increased by 900% in 2023, 
    • Russian military personnel were convicted of 116 murders in 2023, the Mediazona website reported.
    • About 15,000 pardoned prisoners returned to Russia, some of whom committed new crimes.

    Russian military personnel were convicted of 116 murders in 2023, Mediazona, a local news website, reported.

    It is almost a 900% increase from the previous year when there were 13 convictions, said the UK Ministry of Defence on X.

    The data came from Judicial Department of the Supreme Court's published statistics on the work of courts for 2023, said Mediazona.

    Conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and desensitization to violence, bred on the battlefield, often linger long after the conflict ends. Alcoholism and drug abuse exacerbate these problems, said the UK defense ministry last week.

    "The high number of homicides by serving and veteran Russian soldiers are likely in part due to enduring war-related chronic poor mental health issues," it wrote.

    Compounding this is the return to civilian life of ex-convicts who had volunteered to serve in Ukraine and secure their freedom. They were men with a pre-existing propensity for criminality and extreme violence, said the UK defense ministry.

    Citing Olga Romanova, the head of Russia Behind Bars, The New York Times reported that 15,000 pardoned prisoners had returned to Russian society after serving in penal military units, such as the Wagner Group and Storm Z. 

    Members of Wagner group looks from a military vehicle in Rostov-on-Don late on June 24, 2023.
    Members of Wagner group looks from a military vehicle in Rostov-on-Don late on June 24, 2023.

    The New York Times report detailed cases of high-security prisoners in Russia being offered a clean slate and freedom by the Wagner mercenary group if they agree to fight in Ukraine.

    An ex-Wagner prisoner-soldier was sentenced by the Kirov court on April 24, 2024, to 22 years for the crimes of murdering and raping an elderly woman post-discharge, said the UK defense ministry.

    When ex-prisoner Viktor Savvinov was pardoned after serving in Ukraine earlier this year, he drunkenly murdered two people upon returning to his native village.

    "It is a story about invisible violence," said Kirill Titaev, a Russian sociologist and criminology expert at Yale, told the Times. "It is a big problem for the society, but one they do not recognize."

    Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the risk of pardoned convicts re-offending upon their release "inevitable," per the Times.

    "But the negative consequences are minimal," Putin said.

    In March, it was reported that Russia has tapped on so many inmates to fuel its war effort in Ukraine that it's closing down some prisons.

    The Kremlin is now resorting to recruiting female convicts to replenish its troops.

    According to recent UK estimates, about 450,000 Russian personnel have been killed or wounded, with tens of thousands more deserting their posts since the full-scale invasion commenced in February 2022.

    The New York Times reported that in the fall of 2023, recruiters toured Russian prisons offering female inmates a pardon and $2,000 a month — 10 times the national minimum wage — in return for serving in frontline roles for a year.

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  • A GOP senator says Kristi Noem is ‘done’ as a possible Trump running mate after revealing she killed her dog

    Kristi Noem
    Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota.

    • Gov. Kristi Noem has long been touted as a potential running mate for former President Trump.
    • But Noem's recent admission that she killed her family's dog has attracted a wave of criticism.
    • A GOP senator told The Hill that Noem has essentially tanked her VP chances with Trump.

    South Dakota GOP Gov. Kristi Noem has long been a potential running mate for former President Donald Trump, largely on the strength of her conservative credentials and the Republican Party's push to appeal to more female voters.

    But Noem's admission that she killed her family's 14-month-old dog, Cricket, has elicited bipartisan outrage in recent days — and it could prompt Trump to look elsewhere should he be seriously considering Noem for the No. 2 slot.

    In her forthcoming memoir, "No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward," Noem wrote that she killed her dog because the dog was "untrainable" and "dangerous to anyone she came in contact with," according to an excerpt obtained by The Guardian.

    Noem has continued to defend the act, stating last week on the Fox News program "Hannity" that the dog posed a threat to her children.

    "She attacked me. And it was a hard decision," Noem said.

    But according to a GOP senator who spoke to The Hill, Noem has sunk her chances with Trump.

    "She's just done, too much drama," the unnamed lawmaker, who remains in contact with the former president, told the outlet.

    Mike Rounds, one of Noem's Republican home-state senators, said the governor's actions could damage her in the eyes of voters should Trump select her to be his running mate.

    "I don't see how it helps," the senator told CNN last week. "I've had dogs. I just think that when a family decides to put down dogs, it's a very personal and private decision to be made."

    "These dogs become a member of a family, you know?" he continued. "People identify with that."

    However, Dusty Johnson, the state's at-large GOP congressman, came to Noem's defense.

    "I will tell you, there are lots of people in rural America, who if an animal's got to be put down, they would do that themselves," he told CNN. "I know most people would go to the vet, but I would tell you that Kristi Noem was not the first or the one thousandth, you know, farmer or rancher that's put down an animal themselves."

    Noem, in late April, took to X to remark on the circumstances of such situations.

    "We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm," she wrote. "Sadly, we just had to put down three horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years."

    Business Insider reached out to a representative of Noem for comment.

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  • A 9-year-old boy mistook a millionaire for a homeless man and gave him his last dollar, report says

    Laughing child with money box and one us dollar on blackboard background - stock photo
    Stock image of a boy with a dollar bill.

    • A nine-year-old boy mistook a businessman as homeless and gave him his last dollar.
    • The businessman, Matt Busbice, rewarded the boy with a shopping spree.
    • Busbice said he hadn't had "that much faith in humanity in a very long time."

    A nine-year-old boy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, mistook a businessman as homeless and gave him his last dollar, local news outlet WBRZ reported.

    The incident occurred after 42 year-old Matt Busbice had left his house in a rush one morning after hearing a fire alarm.

    Finding no fire, he headed to a local coffee shop, placed his order, and then stepped outside to do his morning prayer, as security camera footage of the incident shows.

    As he finished, nine-year-old Kelvin Ellis Jr. approached him with his hand held out, thinking Busbice was a homeless man.

    "'I said, 'Excuse me, sir, are you homeless? Because if you are, here's a dollar,'" Ellis Jr. recalled, adding that he had always wanted to help a homeless person.

    "I had money, it wasn't that much — but it could still help him get something," he said.

    Busbice told CBS News he hadn't had "that much faith in humanity in a very long time."

    As a thank you for the kind gesture, Busbice bought Ellis Jr. breakfast as well as a coffee for his father. He also took Ellis Jr. on a shopping trip to his sporting goods store, BuckFeather, giving him 40 seconds to choose anything he wanted, per the report.

    According to WBRZ, Busbice is a millionaire who found success after opening a string of outdoor businesses and brands focused on the hunting industry.

    "If you give, you're actually going to get more out of that," Busbice told CBS News. "I couldn't grasp that as a kid. And if we can spread that around, everything changes."

    Louisiana has experienced huge swings in the number of homeless people in the state over the last few years, likely driven by the devastating impact of Hurricane Ida in 2021.

    From 2020 to 2022, the state suffered the second-largest percentage increase in homelessness levels, up 132.4%, per the 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress.

    From 2022 to 2023, Louisiana had the largest percentage decrease in the number of homeless people, down 57%,

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  • Disney World theme parks are becoming remote working hotspots

    The statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse at Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom, at Walt Disney World, in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
    Disney World, Florida.

    • Increasingly more people are choosing to work remotely from Disney theme parks.
    • The trend began in the wake of the pandemic, as remote working became more popular and parks reopened.
    • Writers and social media workers are among those heading down to work in Orlando.

    More and more people are choosing to work remotely from Disney World theme parks — and it's not just Disney bloggers.

    Writers, techies, and social media workers are just some of those heading down to Orlando and sharing their experiences online.

    Workers are taking to TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit to document their days at the parks, sharing tips on the best spots to work from, how to navigate the parks, and how they plan their schedules.

    AJ Wolfe, who runs the Disney Food Blog, told NBC News that the number of remote workers setting up in Disney World had increased since the parks reopened in late 2020 after they'd been forced to close due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Wolfe said that it likely reflected the "blurring between conventional workspaces and leisure time" that has occurred in the wake of the pandemic.

    "I think people are adopting and looking to adopt a situation where they can work at the same time they're experiencing something they enjoy," she said.

    "People want to move to Orlando, they want to feel like they live in Disney World," Wolfe added. "You're closer to the place that makes you happy, and you can access it much more quickly when you're done working."

    While it may not work for everyone, certain professions could be particularly suited to the environment.

    Jenna Clark previously wrote for Business Insider that the parks were ideal for her job as a writer, as the hustle and bustle of the many guests helped her research and brainstorm new story ideas.

    One concern for her, however, was the lack of indoor seating available.

    "If you're wanting to sit and work in air conditioning, have a couple of dollars handy just in case you need to purchase something," she wrote.

    Clark used her annual pass to access the four theme parks at Disney World, which costs about $1,500 annually.

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  • Turkey suspended trade with Israel pending a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. Here’s what that could mean for Israel.

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks in Istanbul, Turkey.
    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks in Istanbul, Turkey.

    • Turkey has suspended trade with Israel, demanding a cease-fire in Gaza.
    • Turkish authorities criticized Israel, as well as the West, in its announcement.
    • Turkey is one of Israel's largest trade partners.

    Turkey halted trade with Israel last week, demanding a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and criticizing Western influence in the war.

    Turkey criticized Israel's response to the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, during which fighters killed 1,200 Israelis and took about 200 others hostage. More than 100 of those hostages are believed to be still in Gaza.

    An outpouring of global support for Israel in the aftermath of the attacks quickly dissipated, however, as the scale of Israel's response grew. Some 34,000 Palestinians, mostly civilian women and children, have so far died in Israel's campaign.

    Turkish authorities cited Israel's "uncompromising attitude" toward Palestinians, particularly the Israel Defense Forces' recent escalation in the Rafah region of Gaza, in its decision to suspend trade, Reuters reported.

    Turkish officials said the country would suspend all exports and imports with Israel, valued at about $7 billion annually, until there is a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.

    That's a significant portion of Israel's trade, according to recent trade data. In 2022, the only nations Israel imported from more than Turkey were China and the United States, according to data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a project from the MIT Media Lab.

    Though they didn't name the United States, Turkish leaders also called out the West's tolerance and support of the war.

    "I want this to be known: we aren't chasing animosity or a fight with any country in our region," Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said, according to Reuters.

    In March, diplomatic tensions grew after the United Nations voted for a cease-fire in the region. The United States abstained from the vote, sparking sharp dissent from Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu. While the US Congress recently approved a multibillion-dollar aid package to Israel, the relationship between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden is at an all-time low.

    "We have a single goal here: to force the Netanyahu leadership, which has gotten out of control with the West's unconditional military and diplomatic support, to a cease-fire," Erdogan said, according to Reuters.

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