• Jugal Bhatt struggled to land tech interviews before rethinking his job search strategy.
• He made a list of over 100 target companies and tried to connect with recruiters and employees.
• He said the shift helped him land a software engineering job at Amazon.

This 'as-told-to' essay is based on a conversation with Jugal Bhatt, a 24-year-old software engineer at Amazon based in Phoenix. Business Insider has verified his employment with documentation. This essay has been edited for length and clarity.

Eight months before graduation, I began searching for a software engineering role. I thought my job search approach was solid, but in hindsight, it was holding me back.

In 2024, I moved to the US from India to pursue a master's in computer science at the University of Illinois. I kicked off my job search that September — not just to give myself time before my May 2025 graduation, but because I'd heard that August, September, and October were peak hiring months.

I struggled to gain traction, and for the first few months, I didn't land any interviews. Slowly but surely, I realized I needed to make a change.

After implementing a new approach that incorporated Boolean search techniques, strategic networking, and targeted LinkedIn posting, I began receiving interviews. My strategy eventually helped me land a software engineering role at Amazon.

My initial approach was flawed

At the start of my job hunt, I was mostly cold-applying for software engineering jobs — whatever I could find of interest on company websites and job platforms. I didn't ask many connections for referrals or reach out to many recruiters, and I used the same résumé for every application.

My strategy shift began around the end of last year. One of the new things I focused on was making connections with recruiters, hiring managers, and employees at companies of interest in the hopes of giving my application an edge.

I got strategic with Boolean searches and networking

I started by making a list of 100 to 150 companies I wanted to work for, a mix of startups and larger tech firms. Every morning, I'd spend time searching for people from these companies on LinkedIn. I did so in part by using Boolean search techniques — searching terms like "recruiter" or "hiring manager" in quotation marks, along with the company name.

I'd identify more than a dozen people from each company and try to connect with or follow them. Once I found them, I'd comment on their LinkedIn posts to get on their radar — and eventually reach out about roles of interest. I think the comments served their purpose because conversations seemed to flow more naturally when they were familiar with me.

When it came to my résumé, I started tailoring it to each role I applied for.

Being active on LinkedIn and GitHub helped me land my first job offer

I also started writing a lot more posts on LinkedIn — sharing my projects and thoughts on different startup products. After doing that, I started getting more messages from recruiters.

But I didn't just work on my own projects. Some startups had publicly available repositories on GitHub, and I began contributing to them to increase my visibility.

My efforts eventually started to pay off, and this strategy helped me land my first job interviews, including one for a founding software engineer role at the startup LiteLLM. I had commented on LinkedIn posts of the company's founder and contributed to their GitHub repository, and someone from the company reached out and asked if I'd be interested in interviewing for a role I hadn't applied for.

I later accepted an offer with them to start full-time after graduation.

A connection with an Amazon recruiter helped me land a job

When I accepted the offer at LiteLLM, I was still being considered for other roles, including a software engineering position at Amazon.

That opportunity began when an Amazon recruiter reached out to me via email about a role that typically required more than three years of experience, which I didn't have at the time. I asked if there were any more junior-level openings, and they told me to keep an eye out and reach out if I spotted any good fits. It sounded like they might be able to help get my résumé a closer look.

Around the end of March, I spotted three or four roles that seemed like a good fit and emailed the recruiter. I was asked to complete an online assessment for a software engineering position before participating in a series of interviews.

In July, I received an offer from Amazon and resigned from LiteLLM.

My advice for Amazon applicants

I believe my connection with the Amazon recruiter gave me a competitive edge in the application process. Now that I work at Amazon, I've seen how recruiters can flag promising candidates and help their applications stand out.

My top advice for anyone looking to land a job at Amazon is to identify the recruiters and hiring managers involved in the decision-making process, whether through LinkedIn searches or connections within Amazon.

Additionally, I recommend you take ample time to prepare for the company's interview process. Reflecting on my time at Amazon, the work has definitely been challenging — but in some ways, the interview preparation was harder than the job itself.

• Several major fashion brands and retailers have filed for bankruptcy in 2025.
• Economic challenges, tariffs, and competition from fast-fashion brands like Shein hurt sales.
• Store closures and shifting consumer spending patterns continue to impact the fashion industry.

It's been a busy year for corporate bankruptcies, and fashion brands and retailers aren't immune.

An uncertain economic environment has led some consumers to be more selective about where they spend their money. As a result, some are reaching for cheaper styles — fast-fashion retailers like Shein took market share from competing brands in 2024, according to data and analytics company GlobalData — or buying secondhand clothing.

Many retailers and restaurants, such as baby apparel brand Carter's and department store chain Macy's, have been shuttering stores. More than 3,700 stores have closed across the US in 2025, by Business Insider's count.

President Donald Trump's tariffs have also created new challenges for fashion brands, from Abercrombie & Fitch to Nike, some of which have said they're raising prices or altering their supply chains to minimize the financial impact.

However, other companies haven't been able to bounce back from waning traffic, tariffs, and more. These apparel brands filed for bankruptcy protection in 2025.

Forever 21

Forever 21 was once a mainstay in fast fashion for young women shopping at the mall. The past six years have been marked by financial losses, and the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection twice.

The rise of online fast-fashion brands like Shein and Temu, which typically offer styles at a lower price than Forever 21's already budget-friendly offerings, has hurt the brand in recent years.

In a March 2025 bankruptcy filing, the company cited the "de minimis" rule, which had permitted shipments valued under $800 to enter the US without tariffs, as a key factor that weakened its ability to compete on price with foreign online retailers.

Authentic Brands Group, the owner of Forever 21's intellectual property, said in September that it found new partners to renew the US business and transform it into a digital-led brand.

Ssense

Online retailer Ssense is known for selling niche luxury fashion brands. In August, the marketplace filed for Canada's equivalent of bankruptcy protection in the Quebec Superior Court.

Business of Fashion reported that Ssense CEO Rami Atallah blamed the company's downfall on the Trump administration's trade policy, in an email sent to staff. Canada faces a 35% tariff on goods that are not covered by a free trade agreement between the nations.

Liberated Brands

Liberated Brands, which operated Billabong and Quicksilver, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February. The case was dismissed in May, and the company has shut down its US and Canadian retail operations.

In February court filings, Liberated Brands said it had been hit by macroeconomic pressures, supply-chain disruptions, and declining profits.

Sneakersnstuff

The popular Stockholm-based sneaker retailer filed for bankruptcy in January, as Swedish outlet Ehandel first reported. It was confirmed by Sneakersnstuff cofounder Peter Jansson in a now-deleted Instagram post.

The company was acquired by German investment company Reziprok Ventures in February.

• A University of Texas professor says AI didn't break college — it revealed how broken teaching was.
• Steven Mintz said that mass lectures and formulaic essays dehumanized education long before AI.
• He said that schools must automate rote learning so humans can focus on thinking and mentorship.

When Steven Mintz, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, opened 400 essays from his students, he noticed something uncanny. The sentences were the same. The structure was the same. Even the conclusions matched.

In a LinkedIn post, Mintz said this wasn't a cheating crisis but a pedagogy crisis.

For years, he said, universities have operated like factories: mass lectures, standardized prompts, and rubric-driven grading handled by what he described as overworked teaching assistants.

Professors have called this mentorship, he said, but it's really "industrialized education," he wrote in a more detailed Substack post on the topic. And AI, he believes, has simply revealed how hollow that model had become.

"Machines can already do most of what we ask students to do — and often do it better," Mintz wrote on LinkedIn. "When 400 students can generate identical essays in 30 seconds, the problem isn't the students. The problem is the assignment."

The death of the take-home essay

In an email to Business Insider, Mintz said the traditional take-home essay is obsolete because it tests exactly what AI now excels at — research, understanding context, and constructing and developing an argument.

"AI can now do all that," he said.

As a result, he said he has moved away from essays done outside class and toward forms of assessment that demonstrate visible learning, including in-class writing assignments, oral presentations without detailed notes, and student-led discussions.

There should be "no outside of class graded assignments. Assessment will be based exclusively on activities that can be observed in person," he said.

Mintz envisions a system where AI handles what he called "mastery learning" — basic facts, chronology, and conceptual frameworks — freeing students to focus on what he described as "inquiry learning": asking students to pose questions and construct complex arguments.

He believes schools should double down on timeless literacies — research, writing, numeracy, and critical reading — but in ways that demand creativity and independent thought.

"We must ensure that students graduate with the ability to conduct research, write and speak clearly and analytically, read closely and critically, be numerate, culturally literate, and well prepared for their future career," he said.

If universities continue with "business as usual," he said, public faith in higher education and the value of a degree will "wither."

A final reckoning for higher ed

For Mintz, AI is a mirror, showing universities how deeply they've relied on mechanical learning, and how far they've drifted from the roots of education.

"AI doesn't threaten to dehumanize higher education," he wrote on Substack. " It reveals how thoroughly we've already dehumanized it — and offers us one last chance to recover what we've lost."

Looking ahead, he told Business Insider that the next five years must be a period of reinvention.

"We must reinvent assessment," he said, and offer courses that center on "slow reading, deep questions, ethical dilemmas, historical reasoning, data fluency, and creative problem-solving."

"We must invest in seminars, mentorship models, undergraduate research, and experiential learning," he said.

Now, colleges face a choice: double down on surveillance and standardization, or rebuild around what machines can't replicate.

"This is our moment to redesign — not defend — the future of learning," he wrote on LinkedIn.

• Employees who reshape their jobs around AI report higher engagement and motivation at work.
• Multiverse found that "job crafting" with AI cuts down on low-effort, low-quality "AI slop."
• Deeper AI collaboration links to higher focus, energy, and commitment, the researchers said.

Tired of "AI slop"? A team of learning scientists at AI skills platform Multiverse says there's a fix.

Employees who take the initiative to reshape their roles around artificial intelligence — rather than simply using it to speed through tasks — are more engaged, motivated, and creative at work, according to new research from Multiverse, the upskilling platform for AI and tech adoption.

The study, conducted in June and July, analyzed 295 UK full-time professionals across industries, including finance, government, and technology, all of whom had used generative AI for at least six months.

It found that those who actively "job craft" — redesign their tasks and workflows to integrate AI — experience significantly higher engagement than those who use the technology passively.

"Job crafting essentially means reexamining the components of your role and reshaping them to suit the needs of the task at hand," Barry Goulding, an organizational psychologist at Multiverse, told Business Insider.

"So moving from 'this is my job' to 'this is how I could do my job better.'"

'AI slop' comes from low engagement

The Multiverse team sees "AI slop" — the flood of low-quality, generic output produced by generative AI — as a symptom of disengagement rather than a flaw of the technology itself.

"AI slop is a function of employees not properly engaging with the tech," Goulding said.

"Copy-pasting a report written by AI without reviewing or revising it isn't an indicator of a highly engaged employee, nor does it suggest that they are deeply collaborating with the AI tool they're using," he added.

Job crafters, on the other hand, he said, are the ones who "catch errors, question the AI's logic, and ultimately ensure the final product is high-quality."

By training employees to think critically about how AI fits into their role, companies can curb sloppy output and foster higher-quality work, he added.

AI engagement isn't automatic — it depends on intent

The findings also challenged a popular narrative that AI reduces cognitive engagement.

While some studies, including OpenAI and MIT's research on ChatGPT and Oxford University Press's study on AI tools, have found that AI can cause people to think less deeply, Multiverse's data suggests that when used intentionally, AI can actually increase focus and dedication.

"If the intent is low-effort automation, you'll no doubt see low cognitive and employee engagement," Goulding said.

"But our data shows that when employees use AI with intent, and proactively reshape their job around it, their absorption, dedication, and vigor (the factors that make up employee engagement) increase."

Goulding said this proactive mindset helps employees move from a passive to an active relationship with AI.

He cited a customer service manager, for instance, who could go beyond answering tickets one by one and instead use AI to analyze trends and recommend process improvements.

That kind of mindset shift, he added, "can provoke a real uptick in work engagement."

How leaders can make 'job crafting' part of their AI strategy

To harness these benefits, Goulding said AI adoption needs to go beyond rolling out new tools.

"Handing out licenses to AI tools without training employees in how to use them is pretty much guaranteed to ensure lower-quality outputs, low engagement, and negligible impact on productivity," he said.

He recommends embedding training within broader AI strategies, measuring outcomes, and giving employees space to experiment.

Leadership, he added, plays a crucial role in setting expectations and modelling the right behaviour.

"Give employees the agency to reshape their roles and the licence to experiment within guardrails," Goulding said. "Lead from the front."

He pointed to the consulting firm Capita as an example of a company that has made AI adoption a strategic transition, rather than just a tech rollout.

One employee there, after being trained in AI, built an "Ask Me Anything" assistant that has already handled more than 70,000 queries across the firm, he said.

Don't track job crafting — track what it drives

Rather than trying to measure "job crafting" directly, Goulding advised leaders to focus on the outcomes it's meant to drive.

"You won't see value if you're just trying to track a behavior," he said.

"It's more important to measure the output and impact you're after: is productivity improving? Are employee engagement scores going up?"

He added that training people to use AI effectively within their context naturally leads to curiosity, problem-solving, and higher-quality collaboration with the technology.

Goulding said he believes job crafting will soon become a core competency for the AI era.

"AI will change how we all work," he said. "Those who grab hold of the reins will win quicker and win bigger than those that don't — and the benefits will multiply at an organizational level if you can embed these behaviours through tech training."

• Victoria Dobbie plans to leave her dream job at TikTok so she can travel the world.
• Knowing she has decades of work ahead of her, Dobbie doesn't want to miss out on adventures.
• This is the fourth installment of a four-part personal essay series, Quitting Without Regret.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Victoria Dobbie, 30, who works in ad sales at TikTok and lives in Munich. She has given notice that she plans to leave her job in December, so she can travel the world for at least six months. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.

My decision to quit my job and go traveling came from a realization that, most probably, we're all going to be working until we're 65, 70. I never took a gap year, as is commonly done in Europe, because I was so ambitious. I wanted to get out of uni, do my first internship, and first grad program.

I'm now 30. I'm single. I don't have kids, and I don't have a mortgage. The idea of having to work for the next 30, potentially 40 years, without a longer break is somewhat daunting. So, I thought, "Why don't I take off six months, maybe a year, if finances allow, to do something I've always wanted to do?"

Two ex-colleagues did that before me. I remember thinking, "Risky, but so damn cool." Work is important, and earning money is important, but isn't living, as well?

My situation is probably quite unique in that most people take a sabbatical or a career break when they're either burned out or they're frustrated in their jobs. I'm in a fortunate position where I've had my dream job for the last four years, and TikTok has treated me very well.

I have loved my colleagues and my bosses and feel very valued. So that makes it potentially even crazier because a lot of people haven't found what they want to do, or haven't got their dream job, particularly with the job market being challenging. I don't know if this is just blind confidence in my abilities to get a job later.

An emotional decision

I've been thinking about it for at least a year, if not longer. I gave my notice around August. In Germany, notice periods are quite a bit longer than elsewhere. I wanted to spend Christmas with my family in London, and then the plan is to go off in January.

I'm selling my furniture — most everything worldly that I own. Then, I'm moving back to my parents' at the age of 30, which was definitely not on my bingo card when I was a child.

The realization that I'm going to be leaving the country that I've called home for the past seven years is quite sobering and emotional. I moved to Germany after I graduated. Basically, I've become an adult here. Giving up my apartment, my friendship group, and a job I've identified with very closely is painful. It's like a breakup in some ways.

Finances were a big thing for me. How was I going to get the money together to take six months off and have an emergency fund? I've had to give up a part of what I would have put down on a house or an apartment to do this. I sold off some of my investment fund just to have it in the bank.

A 30-year-old barista

I've lived in a few different places. I've spent time in Brazil, I did a semester in Italy, and then in Germany. So, I've had to go through that experience a few times of having to say goodbye to a place. Probably because of that, it's given me the confidence to know that better things are to come. Maybe I'll find a place I fall in love with and stay there. I'm open to the opportunities.

My first destination is New Zealand — going as far away as possible. I'm a big hiker, and there is a lot of hiking to do there. I've got an idea of maybe going to Australia, Southeast Asia, and maybe to Japan and Nepal. I want to do very adventure-y things like surfing, horseback riding, climbing, and mountaineering. I'll base the countries on the activities that I want to do.

I'm thinking about doing some freelance consultant work while on the road. The idea is not to be a digital nomad. I want to actually be enjoying my time. But if I can have some money coming in, that would be good.

If it's not successful, I might not be able to continue traveling for a whole year. I could dip into my savings, but that might be painful. I'll probably start looking for jobs after three or four months. Maybe I should be more scared than I am. I might be a 30-year-old barista, and that's absolutely fine. I worked as a waitress all through high school and university and loved it.

Rose-tinted glasses

I think traveling will be quite an adjustment for me, because I've never not had a goal. I've always had an exam coming up, or I have to go back to work. I think it might take me a while mentally to adjust to not being productive all the time.

I think there will come a point where I will look back with sort of these rose-tinted glasses on my time at TikTok. The amazing times I had, the business travel I did, and the colleagues I got on so well with.

I just felt compelled by this realization that we don't have forever on this planet to go out there. I'm in a privileged position to be able to do this, but this is something that I'll take to my deathbed. If it means giving up my dream job, then it means giving up my dream job.

Do you have a story to share about your career? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com.

• I've been on dozens of trips with my kid and have never liked the cheap souvenirs they ask for.
• Now I put that money toward something way more memorable: local cooking classes.
• The unique classes offer wonderful experiences and provide us with recipes to make back home.

I've traveled to dozens of countries with my children and criss-crossed the United States, taking them along for the ride. I like to think that photos and our memories are the only mementos we need to commemorate our trips. However, my kids disagree.

Despite my best efforts, we picked up a lot of junk during our early trips. We came home with stuffed animals that my kids promptly tossed in a pile and never thought about again. We bought an endless number of keychains that fell off my children's backpacks within days and novelty t-shirts emblazoned with UK flags or seashells from the Bahamas that my kids absolutely had to have, but found embarrassing to wear once we returned home.

I was tired of spending money on souvenirs that made my children, ever so briefly, happy in the moment but ultimately created clutter and stress. Eventually, I found a solution. Now, there is one souvenir I look forward to getting on every trip that takes up no space in my suitcase: a recipe for a favorite local dish.

Reining in our souvenir purchases left us with more time and money for experiences

At first, my kids were disappointed when I started saying "no" to their requests for souvenirs. To my children's dismay, many snow globes and miniature replicas of iconic buildings like the Eiffel Tower were left behind on store shelves.

Slowly, my children came to accept that we would no longer buy these trinkets, and we stopped lingering at the gift shop at every attraction we visited. The time and money we saved allowed us to focus more on experiences while traveling.

My family discovered a love of cooking classes

Although I had nixed cheap souvenirs, I still wanted my kids to have something to help them remember their trip, besides photos. I decided to lean into experiences. I wanted them to have something that would bring them back to adventures together in ways plastic trinkets never could. One of the new experiences we tried was cooking classes abroad.

I am, admittedly, not the best in the kitchen. However, my children love to cook and will gladly whip up a batch of cookies or baked pasta with minimal supervision. When we went to Rome, my pizza-obsessed son wanted nothing more than to take a class to learn how to make authentic pies in the very country where his favorite food was invented.

I wasn't sure my kids would have the stamina to make it through the class. However, they did great and we had a lot of fun. We learned more than I expected about Italian cooking and culture, and enjoyed eating our freshly baked homemade pizza after the class was over.

Even better, we left with a great recipe for authentic Neapolitan pizza, which turned out to be our favorite souvenir of all time. Now, my kids ask to take a cooking class wherever we go.

The recipes we collect from cooking classes are our favorite souvenirs

Since our first cooking class in Rome, we have taken classes in Petra, Jordan, and Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan. Each time, we spend a few hours with a local chef learning about life in the area we are visiting and its food traditions.

We always get great tips about local hidden gems and the best restaurants that don't make the guidebooks. Plus, there is always a delicious meal we made with our own hands at the end.

The classes are often in unique locations

In Tokyo, my children and I wandered down alleys until we found the small kitchen marked by a red lantern, where we had our class. We laughed as we stomped on the dough we had kneaded to perfection, flattening it enough to roll into noodles. My son took it as a point of pride that he was selected to assemble the final bowls of ramen.

In Kyoto, we visited a chef's home to learn how to prepare all the ingredients that go into a traditional bento box. My children poked fun at my inability to cut my sushi rolls into evenly spaced pieces, yet again proving their superiority in the kitchen.

In Petra, we visited a local restaurant to learn how to prepare a feast of Jordanian specialties, including salads and traditional lentil and rice dishes.

The cooking classes we take aren't only fun and educational, they are also the source of our favorite and most used souvenirs. At the end of each cooking class, we walk away with recipes for the dishes we cooked, from ramen to falafel. These recipes have become more than instructions for assembling dinner. They are memories we can literally feel and taste, ones that can take us back, instantly, to some of our favorite times, and they are far more valuable than any t-shirt.

• E-commerce entrepreneurs are using live selling platforms to grow their businesses.
• Live selling requires minimal equipment. Many top sellers got started with their phones.
• The key to retaining viewers is engaging with them and building an online community.

E-commerce entrepreneurs are experimenting with app-based live selling — the new-age QVC, if you will — and some of them, through charisma, charm, and an ability to connect with buyers in real time, are moving heaps of product.

You don't need a lot of money or equipment to hop on the trend. Most live sellers Business Insider spoke with started streaming from their home offices or basements with an iPhone.

However, you do need to tap into your extroversion.

"You've got to talk to people," said Clinton Benninghoff, who started streaming on the auction-based platform Whatnot in 2024. His gift of gab made up for a lack of understanding of nearly everything in the live selling space.

"I had no idea what I was doing. That first day, I think I was live for like 20 minutes. I sold a putter, and everybody in my stream was actually telling me how to stream."

He's been working at a Midland-based golf apparel and equipment store, Golf Headquarters, since 2011. Going live on Whatnot has "drastically changed our business," he said. According to a screenshot of his seller dashboard, The GHQ Crew has brought in more than $1 million in 2025 from Whatnot.

Benninghoff and other top sellers explained how any e-commerce entrepreneur can incorporate live selling into their sales strategy in two steps.

1. Start with what you already have and put in sweat equity

Since the stakes are relatively low, don't overthink the production quality. Sign up for Whatnot, TikTok Shop, Palmstreet, or any other live selling platform — note that you'll have to apply to sell, and different platforms may have different seller criteria — and commit to learning as you go.

"Everything doesn't have to be perfect," said Casey Wehr, who started selling sports cards out of his home office with his two sons in late 2023. "The time we said, 'let's do it,' to the time that we turned on the first show was probably a week."

Over the last two years, their store, Krunk Cards, has generated millions in sales, and Wehr has hired a team of five, including one employee whose sole responsibility is to procure inventory.

Don't expect to make millions right away. Val Zapata, who turned her sneaker-collecting hobby into a seven-figure business through live selling, described her first Whatnot show as "mayhem."

"I made like 50 bucks. I was probably negative after the boxes," she added.

The more you go live, the more opportunities you have to make sales and the better you'll get at engaging with viewers.

Initially, Zapata hosted daily shows from her childhood home, where she was living at the time, for multiple hours at a time.

"I would wake up so fried from eight or nine hours of really high-intense energy, because we bring the show," said Zapata, whose setup consisted of an iPad and a $15 desk ring light. Her backdrop was a couple of racks of sneakers.

2. Engage with your viewers and build a community

Your product is important. That's e-commerce 101.

"You want to make sure that you have the inventory that generates the excitement and demand for viewers to want to bid," said Wehr, who carefully follows the trends in the sports card industry and pays attention to which athletes are performing well.

But a good product can only get you so far in the live selling space.

"To have a big viewership and a big community, you've got to engage with those people," said Benninghoff. "You've got to make them feel like they are family — not just a person buying items from you."

Benninghoff has found success by simply being the same person on camera as he is in real life.

"The biggest thing I've learned is to just be myself," he said. "Because people respect you if you're transparent and honest with them."

• Thrive Capital partner Philip Clark said that AI is augmenting engineering jobs — not substituting them.
• Clark said that he couldn't think of one company he'd invested in that "laid off engineers because of these tools."
• "You can actually make everyone the 10x or proverbial 100x engineer in a really exciting way," he said on "Sourcery."

AI code editors are radically changing the job of a software engineer — but not eliminating jobs entirely, a Thrive Capital investor says.

Philip Clark has witnessed the rise of vibe coding tools firsthand. At Thrive Capital, he's worked on the firm's investments in OpenAI — which debuted its Codex AI coding tool in May — as well as Cursor. In September, Clark was promoted to partner.

Clark was optimistic about the future of engineering jobs during a recent interview on the "Sourcery" podcast.

"I'm an investor in a lot of companies that use AI tools," he said. "I cannot think — especially on the coding side and engineering side — of a single one that has laid off engineers because of these tools."

Clark said that companies in his investment portfolio might be able to "grow without adding quite as much headcount," but that job elimination was not happening.

"Will there be some turnover in economic centers?" he said. "Of course, there always is. But it's actually been much more of an augmenting technology than a substituting technology."

There has yet to be substantive data about AI-related engineering cuts. Hiring appears to be down — software engineer job postings on Indeed recently hit a five-year low — but it's challenging to pinpoint the exact cause.

Gen Z may be the most worried about these AI tools. 62% of college seniors familiar with them told Handshake that they were worried about their job prospects. Some Gen Z engineers have faced fewer entry-level openings and less training when they start their jobs.

AI tools also have their advantages, including productivity gains and unlocked opportunities.

"You can actually make everyone the 10x or proverbial 100x engineer in a really exciting way," Clark said.

The "100x engineer" — as in, a 10x multiple of an engineer who is already ten times more productive than the average engineer — is a new term among tech circles. Surge CEO Edwin Chen said that AI tools were creating 100x engineers, which helped build the "$1 billion single-person company."

Clark remained optimistic that AI would replace menial work. He listed some areas of research that, because of AI gains, humans could more meaningfully pursue: oncology, sustainable mining, and space habitation.

"The beauty of AI is that we're going to be able to reallocate a bunch of human brainpower, firepower, creativity to these most important problems," he said.

That brainpower can move away from work that is "not the highest marginal use of humanity's creative and intelligence potential."

• Non-surgical cosmetic procedures or 'tweakments' are growing in popularity.
• Sonal Chavda-Sitaram, a pharmacist with a Ph.D, said she would only do one type of tweakement.
• Microneedling is FDA-approved for treating acne scars and lessening wrinkles.

From CO2 laser skin resurfacing to platelet-rich plasma therapy, there are countless "tweakments" that promise to make your skin look flawless.

But Sonal Chavda-Sitaram, a pharmacist with a Ph.D in topical and transdermal drug delivery, told Business Insider there's one she recommends above the rest: microneedling.

For the uninitiated, tweakements are non-surgical cosmetic procedures, like fillers or laser treatments. The number performed worldwide grew by nearly 2 million between 2017 and 2020. The number of dermal filler procedures and body procedures is expected to hit 23 million and 14.6 million, respectively, by the end of 2025, according to Allergan Aesthetics, one of the leading providers of Botox.

Chavda-Sitaram, 43, who believes the most important part of skincare is leading a healthy lifestyle, said: "There are lots of new trendy procedures, but for me, microneedling is probably the one that I find is most effective and makes sense in terms of the science behind what you're doing. "

She has had microneedling twice, but would do it more often if she had the time.

Microneedling stimulates collagen production

Microneedling involves puncturing the skin with tiny needles to make micro-injuries. When the body responds by healing the holes, it produces collagen, the primary building block of skin that we naturally make less of as we age. This can lead to smoother, tighter-looking, and more even-toned skin.

The skin barrier, the outermost layer that keeps toxins and bacteria out of the body, is very good at its job, Chavda-Sitaram said. So most skincare products don't reach the deeper layers. But, by creating "micro-channels" in the dermis, which lies beneath the skin barrier, products can be absorbed more deeply, she said.

Microneedling is generally considered safe and effective, and has been cleared by the FDA for use as a treatment to improve the appearance of facial acne scars, wrinkles, and abdominal scars in people aged 22 and above. The skin might be red, swollen, and feel tight or dry after treatment, but this usually resolves itself within a few days.

Chavda-Sitaram tried microneedling in preparation for a big event, but depending on your goals, you might need multiple sessions over weeks or months to see results.

An inside-out approach

Facial treatments can be incredibly effective, Chavda-Sitaram said, but they work best when the skin is already optimized from within. Eating a balanced diet, getting enough sleep and exercise, as well as managing stress, are all important for skin health.

"When you undertake these invasive procedures, you're essentially damaging your tissue and then waiting for it to heal and rebuild," she said. "If your skin doesn't have the necessary building blocks, these treatments are just going to be very expensive and not as effective."

"I'm not anti-procedure at all, but I am pro-foundation," Chavda-Sitaram said.

• "Learning with Lyrics" is a surprise hit on Reels and TikTok.
• It features AI-generated songs about how things are made.
• A 21-year-old college student in California created the account, which uses Taylor Swift-sounding songs.

Have you ever wondered why manhole covers are round instead of square? Or who invented the steamroller? Or why giant steel coils are transported on their sides instead of flat?

Sure, you can do a simple Google search to find out. But what you really might need is a video set to an AI-generated song that sounds like Taylor Swift if she went through a messy breakup with construction equipment.

This is Learning with Lyrics, which has an Instagram account with 900,000 followers and a TikTok account with 548,000 followers. I kept coming across these videos, so I did some investigating: I was surprised to find that a 21-year-old marketing major at California State University in Long Beach was behind the account.

It's an illustration of what someone with an idea and access to off-the-shelf AI tools can make these days. It's pretty fascinating.

"I've always been someone who's curious about stuff," Cashen Tomlinson told me about his inspiration for starting the channels, which launched in September. Tomlinson said he loved videos about how things were made, and came up with the idea to make some of his own, setting them to songs.

Tomlinson comes up with the ideas for the subjects of the videos: like how vending machines detect fake coins, how Post-it Notes work, or what causes airplane contrails. Then, he gets to work — with AI at his side.

"I use AI to generate a detailed research brief on the topic at hand, then I personally verify everything to ensure my facts are 100% correct," he said.

Then, that's where the catchy songs come in. He instructs Google's Gemini to create a rough draft of the lyrics. "The real work during the lyrics creation is the polish, where I rewrite all the hooks, simplify or reword complex terms, reduce wordiness and increase clarity, ensure the outro is memorable, etc.," he said.

Tomlinson then uses the AI music generator tool Suno to produce a song — often the same melody for different videos, with the sound of an AI-generated female vocalist.

For the visuals, he uses a mix of stock footage, his own custom animations, and video clips he generates with AI tools like Veo or Sora.

And yes, the girl in the profile image for the @LearningwithLyrics social accounts is also AI-generated.

Tomlinson told me it usually takes him two or three hours to make the song, and about 5 hours total for each video. So far, he says he's made a few thousand dollars through the TikTok creator rewards program, which was thrilling for a college kid.

While it may seem, at first glance, that these videos are aimed at children, Tomlinson says his main audience is 25-to 35-year-olds.

The comment sections show a devotion to the catchy songs. Some samples: "This is my favorite Taylor Swift song" (of course, it's not her), and "How do I download this to my phone and listen to it on repeat forever?"

It's hard to describe exactly what's so fun about these videos. Sure, they're catchy, and "How it's made" videos have always had an appeal. But there's something about the AI voice that takes it to a level where you can't totally tell if it's ironic or not.

Tomlinson doesn't think of this as brainrot, however. "I think the reason you might call it [brainrot] is because it's so captivating and you can't really look away from it," he said. "But I think it's kind of good that these videos are something you can't look away from, because it's something that's actually teaching you something interesting."