• Sanders and NYC mayor-elect Mamdani joined striking Starbucks workers on a Brooklyn picket line.
• Their visit comes as Starbucks faces a record $38.9 million settlement over worker-rights violations.
• Mamdani slammed CEO Brian Niccol's record pay, saying baristas are "striking for the bare minimum."

Starbucks baristas on an open-ended strike in Brooklyn got the kind of star power most labor actions can only dream of.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani showed up to walk the picket line alongside them on Monday, lending momentum to a movement energized by a historic legal win.

New York City announced on Monday a $38.9 million settlement with Starbucks for what officials described as "systematic violations" of the city's Fair Workweek Law.

A multi-year investigation by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection found the coffee giant committed more than 500,000 violations across 300 stores, including arbitrarily slashing hours, unpredictable schedules, and keeping baristas involuntarily part-time.

More than 15,000 baristas in the city are now set to receive restitution checks as soon as this winter.

Against that backdrop, Sanders and Mamdani joined striking workers outside a Brooklyn Starbucks store, posing for photos and blasting the company's labor practices.

Starbucks could not be reached for immediate comment.

Scroll to see photos from the Brooklyn picket line.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani joined the picket line on Monday

The strike — which began on Red Cup Day, historically one of Starbucks' busiest sales days where customers can get a free reusable cup with their order — has already spread to dozens of stores nationwide.

The union has warned that the work stoppage could expand to more than 500 stores if negotiations continue to stall.

Sen. Bernie Sanders marches with Starbucks strikers

Sanders, a longtime champion of labor rights, voiced support for workers demanding stable schedules and a living wage.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke to the press

Mamdani, who urged New Yorkers to boycott Starbucks during the strike last month, used the moment to reaffirm his intentions for the mayoralty.

In one photograph he shared on social media, he appeared to be holding a sign that read: "No contract, no Starbucks."

'Glad to be on the right side of the picket line with them'

Mamdani has highlighted the pay gap driving worker frustration.

In a post on X on Monday, he contrasted the company's record executive compensation with what striking baristas say are basic demands for stability and respect.

"Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol made $95 million last year. His workers are striking for the bare minimum. Glad to be on the right side of the picket line with them," Mamdani wrote.

"We are continuing to fight back against Starbucks' greed"

In a press release announcing the city's settlement, a Workers United union boss called it a "major victory."

"It shows the power baristas have when we stand together and demand change," Kai Fritz — a New York City Starbucks worker — said, which was also included in the press release. "We are continuing to fight back against Starbucks' greed and will not stop until we have a fair contract that ensures the support and protections we need to thrive."

• Melania Trump's 2025 White House Christmas decorations are more traditional than in past years.
• Donald Trump, meanwhile, has made dramatic White House design changes during his second term.
• The first lady appears to be playing it safe, while the president is doing anything but.

Gone are the bare white branches and blood-red forests that once adorned the halls of the White House in December. Instead, they've been replaced with classic Christmas trees and standard-issue garlands.

While first lady Melania Trump's Christmas decorations leaned more avant-garde in her first term, during a visit to the White House on Monday, I saw she has taken a more traditional approach in her second term as first lady.

Now, President Donald Trump is the one making dramatic White House design choices.

This year, the first lady chose to decorate the White House around the theme of "Home Is Where The Heart Is," drawing inspiration from the nostalgia of childhood toys and the transformative symbolism of butterflies, according to the 2025 "Christmas at the White House" guidebook.

Her signature detail is the red bows that appear on the 75 wreaths in the White House windows, a more conventional choice in line with past first ladies' holiday displays.

Melania Trump's yuletide aesthetic plays it safe — an approach that has been reflected in other areas of her life.

Her fashion choices have been noticeably more muted than the outfits she wore during her first term as first lady. She often opts for skirt suits in gray and beige with only the occasional vibrant piece, a departure from her statement-making and sometimes controversial style during the first Trump administration.

She also told Fox News in January that instead of residing at the White House full time, she planned to divide her time between Washington, DC, Trump Tower in New York City, and Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, making her public appearances more infrequent.

Contrasting styles on display

While Melania Trump keeps a lower profile at the White House, Donald Trump's is doing anything but.

In addition to adding numerous gold embellishments to the Oval Office and portraits of himself to the Cross Hall, he oversaw the demolition of the entire East Wing to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom.

This disparity was evident when I visited the White House to view the Christmas decorations on Monday.

The absence of the East Entrance and East Colonnade, due to the demolition of the East Wing, left the first lady with a smaller canvas to decorate.

The halls lined with Christmas trees and garlands chosen by Melania Trump were certainly beautiful. The decor featured "Be Best" ornaments in a nod to her initiative focused on children's wellness and AI-generated, 3D printed ornaments in recognition of her Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge.

The piece of decor that attracted the largest crowd was one of Donald Trump's design contributions: a portrait by artist Marc Lipp depicting the president with his fist in the air after surviving an assassination attempt.

Melania Trump may have been the one to deck the halls, but it was Donald Trump who seemed to steal the show.

• Amina Green, 29, was stuck in a Waymo after two men blocked her robotaxi near a traffic light.
• Green said the experience left her frustrated, and she stopped taking robotaxis for a few months.
• However, Green said she'd still prefer a robotaxi over human drivers. Here's why.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Amina Green, a 29-year-old data scientist based in San Francisco. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. A Waymo spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

I remember being excited for my first Waymo ride earlier last year.

When I was a child, I got into a really bad car accident, so I've always been afraid to drive myself around. It's a personal choice for me not to get my driver's license, so I walk most places in San Francisco or use ride-hailing.

I've known about autonomous-driving technology for a while. I've been living in SF for about five years. So it was exciting just to even step inside a Waymo for the first time.

The robotaxi felt safe. I appreciate the ease of use, the convenience, and the privacy.

Sometimes, after coming back from therapy, I call a Waymo because I can be in a sensitive state of mind, so I'd prefer to be alone.

It's also just fun. It feels so sci-fi. I even made a video of myself doing my makeup inside the robotaxi, and it got a lot of views on social media. There's the novelty of it to some extent. But it's also like having my own energy or vibe in the car; I can set the music to what I like, I can control the temperature — those sorts of things.

Then, in September 2024, I was involved in an incident inside a Waymo that left me a little scared and frustrated.

I was heading to an appointment to get my hair braided. I remember sitting in the front seat of the Waymo, filming randomly as I've gotten into the habit of recording myself inside the car.

Then, near the South of Market-Tenderloin area, these two guys stepped right in front of my ride after the Waymo stopped for a red light.

I don't know why they did that. They seemed like they were trying to be silly, but they kept badgering me for my number. I repeatedly told them to get out of the way, to stop, and that they were holding up traffic.

I was annoyed because I was already running late for my hair appointment. But I was also a bit afraid. I used to work for a nonprofit in this neighborhood, so I knew that if something happened, there wouldn't be police nearby or anyone to really help.

The most frustrating part was that after the guys left, my Waymo just sat there. It was a little scary, but also kind of annoying. Other drivers on the road were getting upset, and I felt like a sitting duck. If it had happened at night, it would've been a lot scarier.

I don't remember if I called Waymo's remote assistance or if they contacted me, but the support team determined that something had happened during my ride. They asked if I was OK; I said yes and talked a bit. Throughout the day, they called me two more times to make sure I was OK.

I ended up getting $100 in credit and participated in a user research experience with the Waymo team. It was interesting to see the features they're working on.

After the incident, I stopped taking Waymo for maybe about two or three months.

Waymo feels safer

After a while, I started taking Waymo again because I still feel safer riding in a Waymo than in a human-driven vehicle.

I've been using ride-hailing services for nearly 10 years. I've had mostly positive experiences using them, but I've also had a few weird incidents.

There are situations where I wouldn't have wanted to be alone in a car with a stranger at night.

Sometimes, the ride is just straight-up dangerous. I recall a driver who was distracted by his phone, watching YouTube videos while driving.

I usually report these incidents, but I'm not sure how the companies handled the situation.

I feel safer knowing that Waymo has personnel on standby in case something happens to its cars.

The robots could improve

That's not to say Waymo is perfect.

Beyond getting the engineering right, I think there are social and cultural factors the company should consider if it wants the technology to be widely adopted.

For example, people interact with the streets differently in different neighborhoods. I think about the Tenderloin, where it's common for people to run into the middle of the street. Is Waymo thinking about the kinds of environments its cars go through?

Maybe Waymo could give users different route options that could avoid certain neighborhoods. It may not be politically correct to say, but I think this is just the basic reality of the world we live in: There are certain neighborhoods where women, or any person, might be more likely targeted if you're by yourself.

It would also be nice if there were an extra security feature, such as automatically locking the door once the rider steps into the car.

Then, there are a lot of people in the city who aren't in tech. To them, Waymo is a symbol of this larger cultural change in the region that they feel like they're being left out of.

So, while I don't agree with it, I almost understand why some people would vandalize the cars.

I'm also just a practical rider. I still use human ride-hailing services — I'd say it's about 50-50 — because Waymo's wait time can be a bit long. Or sometimes Waymo's just way more expensive.

Ultimately, I'm positive about the technology. I hope this will be widely available, but there are some considerations and edge cases that may need to be addressed before mass adoption.

Do you have a story to share about preferring a human driver or a robot taxi? Contact this reporter at lloydlee@businessinsider.com.

• Logan Brown, a corporate lawyer, left Cooley to launch Soxton, an AI law firm for startups.
• Soxton raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding and has served over 270 early-stage companies.
• Soxton offers affordable legal services, targeting founders who might otherwise use ChatGPT.

Logan Brown, a 30-year-old corporate lawyer, began the year billing hours at the global law firm Cooley. Now she's building a tech-first law firm that meets the routine needs of startups, without the Big Law price tag.

Soxton, Brown's new venture, has raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding, Business Insider has learned exclusively.

"I didn't have a deck. I didn't have a team," Brown said.

Instead, she told investors, "I am building the solution for founders. That is not the billable hour."

Cooley hired Brown straight out of Harvard Law School. She spent about two and a half years working with emerging companies and helping open the firm's Miami office. In May, she took a risk and left a secure Big Law job to launch her own startup.

Two weeks after her last day, she flew to New York City and dropped in on an event hosted by a fund she had pitched.

There, she met Katie Jacobs Stanton, a venture capitalist who founded Moxxie Ventures and who has held executive roles at Twitter, Google, and Yahoo. Brown gave her the quick version of Soxton on the spot. Moxxie Ventures sent over a term sheet within a week.

"I've never moved so fast to invest," Jacobs Stanton told Business Insider.

Moxxie led the round, with participation from Coalition, Strobe Ventures, Flex, Park Rangers Capital, and Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake.

Unlike the legal software vendor Harvey, Soxton doesn't sell software to law firms. It offers legal services directly to startups. Brown said the company helps founders tick the boxes at the top of their checklists: incorporation, fundraising, equity issuance, and compliance checks.

Brown said Soxton does not replace a law firm when it comes to nuanced legal work. What it can replace, she says, is the shaky legal advice founders might pull from ChatGPT or another chatbot.

For $20 a month, clients can grab a contract template from Soxton's library and tweak the language. Most clients request a custom contract reviewed by an attorney, Brown said, with Soxton turning it around in four hours for $100.

While Soxton has been operating in stealth, with only a waitlist on its website, Brown said more than 270 companies — mostly pre-seed startups — have used it so far. Many clients are founders who wouldn't hire a lawyer so early and would otherwise turn to ChatGPT to ask questions.

"People put their contracts into ChatGPT, and they say, 'What does this mean?' It's often very wrong," Brown said. "I think it's designed to sound correct. Founders really rely on that, and so we're working on retraining founders."

A smaller slice of clients are startups that have raised funding and are already working with a Big Law firm, though they still route low-stakes work such as advisor agreements and influencer contracts through Soxton.

The legal tech industry has undergone major shifts this year. The first wave of startups developed tools for law firms, aiming to make legal services faster and cheaper. The newer wave handles the work itself, hiring lawyers on contract and arming them with software that can chew through documents and spit out summaries and drafts.

Crosby, backed by Sequoia Capital, handles the unglamorous but essential chore of contract review. Covenant helps private-market investors parse dense fund documents. Manifest Law and Casium use AI to file and track visa applications for employers.

Brown shrugged off comparisons to Crosby. That startup, which announced a $20 million Series A in October, largely serves more established companies than Soxton's typical day-one clients. Brown casts Soxton as more of an outside general counsel for founders, while Crosby focuses on contract review.

Ashley Mayer, cofounder and general partner of Coalition, says while other companies focus on "bigger-ticket" mid-market and business customers, Brown makes a smart bet on young companies.

"By offering a better, more affordable product, Soxton actually expands the market, making it possible for a broader set of startups to access foundational legal services and for those moving away from big law firms to increase their consumption," Mayer said.

"If your mission is to end the billable hour," she added, "this is the place to start."

Jacobs Stanton described Brown as a high-energy founder with "a history of winning." While at Harvard, Brown also started a pantsuit company after a frustrating search for something to wear to an interview.

Zooming out, Brown is part of a broader reshuffling in the legal profession.

At conferences and in online forums, talk of a Big Law exodus has gotten louder. More associates are stepping off the partner track to build the next generation of legal software. Startups such as Harvey, Norm Ai, and Legora are hiring "legal engineers," with JDs preferred.

Soxton plans to start snapping up attorneys. For now, it has three software engineers on payroll and a roster of contracted attorneys working through a separate Massachusetts law firm. Brown said she's about to make her first full-time offer to a Big Law attorney.

"She is just a force of nature," Jacobs Stanton said.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at mrussell@businessinsider.com or Signal at @MeliaRussell.01. Use a personal email address and a non-work device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• A 26-year-old Google software engineer says it took her a year to transition to an AI team.
• Maitri Mangal dedicated two hours daily toward upskilling and still spends hours learning weekly.
• She says making content helped her understand material and suggests solo projects to nail concepts.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Maitri Mangal, a 26-year-old software engineer at Google, based in New York. Her identity and employment have been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

When I started off as a software engineer, my dad, who also works in tech, kept telling me to get into AI.

I brushed it off because I was just starting off my engineering career, and no one was really talking about AI in 2019, unless they were getting a PhD.

Then in 2023, the tech industry changed and everyone started going into AI. That led me to want to start pursuing AI as a job, and also creating content about it. When trying to join an AI team, I think having a strong presence and personal brand is crucial for others to take you seriously.

In my three years at Google, I've changed roles three times, most recently switching to the Workspace AI team.

It's important to make a distinction between an AI machine learning engineer and an AI software engineer. An AI ML engineer creates the model, trains it, and evaluates it. An AI software engineer integrates AI capabilities into software applications, and builds APIs and infrastructure to serve the model to the end user.

My transition to an AI team didn't happen overnight. It required spending about a year upskilling through courses and creating content about the material, which forced me to learn the concepts.

Here's how I made the switch:

Creating content about AI

In the spring of 2024, I started creating tech content on Instagram and LinkedIn, outside my job. That became a major factor in my transition to an AI team.

Making content motivated me to keep learning and also made me confident about sharing what I knew. Once I started seeing how much it helped people, I wanted to learn more. So that's where the upskilling started, and I started taking courses to understand the fundamentals of AI.

Eventually, I started applying to AI teams at Google. I felt like if I was going to spend so much time upskilling and making content about AI, I should make the most of what I had. I started searching for new roles in January, about seven months after I started upskilling. In March, I landed the new job.

I still spend an hour a day upskilling

I typically take Google's internal courses to upskill. Coursera also has amazing courses.

The easiest way to start is by taking the basics of AI, like Google's Introduction to Generative AI and Google Prompting Essentials. Since I have a computer science background, I was able to get more in-depth with concepts like linear regression and vector analysis.

I took courses for about two hours a day, but in order to absorb the material, I had to talk about it, not just read. When I verbalized the concepts through making content, it helped me understand the material.

I also get feedback from my followers, and when they ask follow-up questions in the comments, it makes me go even deeper into understanding a topic. Talking to friends or teammates who are excited about AI also helps me better understand the material.

In this field, it's very hard not to learn. I'm not necessarily still dedicating two hours daily to courses, but I still spend about an hour a day upskilling, whether that's in the form of internal trainings for my job, or watching YouTube courses for the content I create.

Not everyone wants to create content, so that's not always the best way to go about transitioning to an AI team. If you're just starting out in tech, my biggest piece of advice would be to take on projects. You should definitely take courses about AI, but keeping up-to-date with the news and doing AI projects also really helps. Many AI courses have users do mini projects, so you get to know how to work with it.

Since I applied internally, I didn't have to go through the same interview process. However, I still had to submit my résumé, which included all of my side projects, and I think that really helps.

• IBM's CEO walked through some napkin math on data centers— and said that there's "no way" to turn a profit at current costs.
• "$8 trillion of CapEx means you need roughly $800 billion of profit just to pay for the interest," Arvind Krishna told "Decoder."
• Krishna was skeptical of that current tech would reach AGI, putting the likelihood between 0-1%.

AI companies are spending billions on data centers in the race to AGI. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has some thoughts on the math behind those bets.

Data center spending is on the rise. During Meta's recent earnings call, words like "capacity" and AI "infrastructure" were frequently used. Google just announced that it wants to eventually build them in space. The question remains: will the revenue generated from data centers ever justify all the capital expenditure?

On the "Decoder" podcast, Krishna concluded that there was likely "no way" these companies would make a return on their capex spending on data centers.

Couching that his napkin math was based on today's costs, "because anything in the future is speculative," Kirshna said that it takes about $80 billion to fill up a one-gigawatt data center.

"Okay, that's today's number. So, if you are going to commit 20 to 30 gigawatts, that's one company, that's $1.5 trillion of capex," he said.

Krishna also referenced the depreciation of the AI chips inside data centers as another factor: "You've got to use it all in five years because at that point, you've got to throw it away and refill it," he said.

Investor Michael Burry has recently taken aim at Nvidia over depreciating concerns, leading to a downturn in AI stocks.

"If I look at the total commits in the world in this space, in chasing AGI, it seems to be like 100 gigawatts with these announcements," Krishna said.

At $80 billion each for 100 gigawatts, that sets Krishna's price tag for computing commitments at roughly $8 trillion.

"It's my view that there's no way you're going to get a return on that, because $8 trillion of capex means you need roughly $800 billion of profit just to pay for the interest," he said.

Reaching that number of gigawatts has required massive spending from AI companies — and pushes for outside help. In an October letter to the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recommended that the US add 100 gigawatts in energy capacity every year.

"Decoder" host Nilay Patel pointed out that Altman believed OpenAI could generate a return on its capital expenditures. OpenAI has committed to spending some $1.4 trillion in a variety of deals. Here, Krishna said he diverged from Altman.

"That's a belief," Krishna said. "That's what some people like to chase. I understand that from their perspective, but that's different from agreeing with them."

Krishna clarified that he wasn't convinced that the current set of technologies would get us to AGI, a yet to be reached technological breakthrough generally agreed to be when AI is capable of completing complex tasks better than humans. He pegged the chances of achieving it without a further technological breakthrough at 0-1%.

Several other high-profile leaders have been skeptical of the acceleration to AGI. Marc Benioff said that he was "extremely suspect" of the AGI push, analogizing it to hypnosis. Google Brain founder Andrew Ng said that AGI was "overhyped," and Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch said that AGI was a "marketing move."

Even if AGI is the goal, scaling compute may not be the enough. OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever said in November that the age of scaling was over, and that even 100x scaling of LLMs would not be completely transformative. "It's back to the age of research again, just with big computers," he said.

Krishna, who began his career at IBM in 1990 before rising to eventually be named CEO in 2020 and chairman in 2021, did praise the current set of AI tools.

"I think it's going to unlock trillions of dollars of productivity in the enterprise, just to be absolutely clear," he said.

But AGI will require "more technologies than the current LLM path," Krisha said. He proposed fusing hard knowledge with LLMs as a possible future path.

How likely is that to reach AGI? "Even then, I'm a 'maybe,'" he said.

• Brittney Ball is struggling to find work after getting laid off from Meta as a 'low-performer.'
• Ball says she's been leaning on her parents, partner, and LinkedIn network for support.
• She recently launched her tech startup, TechniDox, and enrolled in college at Trinity University.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brittney Ball, a 36-year-old former Meta employee in Washington, D.C. It's been edited for length and clarity.

When I got hired at Meta in 2020, it was life-changing for me as a single mom. It represented safety and stability — a place to work hard at and retire from.

So, when I was let go in February in a round of layoffs aimed at "low-performers," it felt like a punch in the gut.

Nine months later, my severance and savings have run dry, I'm struggling to find a tech job, and I feel that the low-performer "label" is part of the reason. I'm no longer the same happy-go-lucky person I used to be, applying for jobs with excitement.

But my layoff is not just this bad thing that happened. It actually changed me for the better.

I was devastated to be laid off as part of an effort to remove 'low performers'

I was once a single mom in a homeless shelter. I taught myself how to code and broke into tech without a college degree. Getting hired as a documentation engineer at Meta meant everything, not only to me, but to my family. I made my parents proud. I was the success story.

I really loved my time at Meta and took a lot of pride in my work and the community I built. I served as the global lead for the Black@Pride ERG and assisted with its developer advocacy team for a brief period. I truly believed I'd stay forever.

We knew layoffs were coming, but we didn't know who would be affected. Maybe my head was in the clouds, but I really didn't think I would be.

I was shocked to be laid off, especially since it was part of a round of layoffs targeting low performers. I was always so proud of my work, and I just didn't think I fell in that category. It was devastating, and I had no idea what to do next.

My mindset about tech has changed

I used to be naive and filled with excitement to work for a tech company, but since the layoff, I just see it as a resource to fund my life. It no longer feels like the secure space it once was.

I took about a month after the layoff to process everything and figure out what it meant for me. That's when I conceived the idea to create my own tech startup, TechniDox, an AI-powered documentation platform.

It really began as a way to distract myself and a space to pour my passion into, but it's gained some traction, and I'm continuing to build it in hopes that it will grow into something bigger.

I've been applying to jobs, mostly at smaller tech companies, but I haven't gotten any offers yet. I have the skills and passion, so I'm unsure what the problem is. The low-performer "label" could be the reason I'm still unemployed.

I've found support through family, friends, and my LinkedIn network

I know the layoff is not my fault, but it's been devastating not to be able to turn it around in a way that helps me provide for my family as a mom.

Unemployment services have not kicked in, so I've been in a gray area where my parents and partner have been helping me pay bills and for groceries. I've always been the independent type who doesn't ask for help, so it was initially uncomfortable, but I've learned that I can't always do it alone.

My best friend has dropped everything to be with me when I needed it, and my partner supports me by reminding me to get some sunlight and stay active. I have a team of people who want to see me succeed and are helping me to achieve it, and I'm so grateful for them.

My LinkedIn network has also been super supportive. I've been posting about my layoff, and people have reached out to offer résumé reviews, send me referrals, or simply tag me in a post with kind words. I had no idea that I had such supportive people watching me on my journey. That has been truly heartwarming.

My layoff has pushed me to try new things

I was so focused on Meta while working there that I didn't upskill as much as I should have. I'm focusing on learning new things and putting myself out there.

I'm reviving an old YouTube channel and posting about my company on LinkedIn as I build it. I never attended college, so I recently enrolled at Trinity University and am working toward a dual degree in journalism and computer science. During this challenging time, I've been finding joy in learning about things that excite me.

Even though I haven't landed a job, I remind myself that this is also happening to so many other people. The job market is hard, but I'm not giving up.

• Shubham Malhotra is a software engineer at Amazon with experience at Microsoft and Salesforce.
• He has five proven strategies that he's used to land all of his Big Tech software engineering jobs.
• He emphasizes the importance of internships, tailored résumés, and job search timing for career success.

Shubham Malhotra's Big Tech journey began during his fifth semester at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where he was juggling coursework with a co-op at a real estate-focused tech firm.

While gaining experience and refining his résumé, Malhotra — who grew up in New Delhi, moved to the US to study software engineering, and is now a software engineer at Amazon — applied to roles at top tech companies.

He landed internships at Salesforce in the summer of 2021 and at Amazon AWS in the fall of 2021. During his second internship, he applied for a full-time position at Microsoft through a job portal and ultimately secured an offer for 2022.

Malhotra stayed at Microsoft for two and a half years before leaving the company in November 2024, when he relocated to the Seattle area to join Amazon.

Here are five job-search strategies he employed to secure multiple offers from Big Tech companies.

1. Take initiative during internships

Malhotra believes that completing purposeful internships on systems-focused teams was a significant factor in his success. "Breaking into Big Tech is hardest at the beginning," he said. "For me, that breakthrough came via internships at Amazon and Salesforce, which gave me enough credibility to land my Microsoft offer."

Treating his internships like "engineering labs," Malhotra said he used these experiences to intentionally build up infrastructure, performance, and systems expertise far beyond surface-level coding.

"I wasn't just doing 'intern tasks' — I was already solving latency and error-tolerance issues that directly affected customers and operational SLAs," he said. "This was mostly driven by my own initiative, with support from my managers."

During his internships at Salesforce and Amazon, Malhotra would ask his manager and senior engineers, "What's a real reliability or latency problem on the critical path that no one has had time to fix yet?" From there, he'd volunteer to own a slice of it, then they'd scope it out together.

"Doing this complex problem-solving also helped give me great visibility within my teams," he said.

These early experiences enabled him to craft a résumé that showcased both internships and technical depth, which he believes was key to landing his Microsoft interview. Then, the work he did to secure his internship offers meant he'd already practiced for the big leagues.

"Because I'd already been preparing through prior internship interviews, I was technically and behaviorally ready to interview for full-time positions at top tech companies."

2. Write a résumé that works for both ATS and humans

Malhotra avoided generic buzzwords and focused on scale, reliability, and research contributions in his résumé. He also reverse-engineered company job descriptions to match his résumé with ATS filters.

"I used LaTeX via Overleaf to create a clean, technical résumé optimized for parsing and readability," he said.

Another one of his strategies was tailoring keywords for each role, emphasizing "cloud computing," "distributed systems," and "backend engineering" throughout the document. Malhotra also ensured that his résumé bullets focused on measurable outcomes, rather than just effort.

"Every bullet emphasized not just tasks but quantifiable impact — like "reduced data latency by 40%" and "streamlined workflow to cut API response time by 25%."

3. Time the market as a new grad

Malhotra wanted to ensure that he applied for Big Tech roles at the right time. "As a fresh graduate, I learned that timing your job search is just as critical as skills," he said.

He began his application process early, around August, when most tech companies kick off full-time recruitment.

"From August to mid-November, companies fill the bulk of their head count for the next year," Malhotra said. "After a brief halt, a second hiring window opens between February and April of the following year."

Malhotra signed his Microsoft offer in October 2021. For his most recent move to Amazon as an experienced hire, his offer was also finalized in October with a November start date.

4. Scale interview prep to the role's specific challenges

Malhotra prepped for coding interviews using LeetCode, CodeChef, and HackerRank, identifying weak areas and tracking performance.

For behavioral rounds, he followed the STAR method and mapped his stories to leadership principles. He also ramped up his preparation for interviews using white papers, books, and real-world architecture case studies to help him discuss company-specific challenges.

5. Don't take shortcuts

Malhotra said he chose his college specifically for its co-op structure, helping him gain early real-world experience and build a strong US-based engineering track record.

Feeling confident in this background, he decided to try an out-of-the-box approach to his job search. Instead of relying on referrals, Malhotra cold-applied and followed up via LinkedIn with tailored pitches.

His cold outreach strategy centered on emailing recruiters with short, personalized pitches that included how he found their contact information, a brief introduction of himself, a clear ask to review his résumé for specific roles, and a note on why he was excited about the company.

His "short, personalized pitch" strategy played the biggest role in his Amazon transition.

"I leaned heavily on concise, personalized emails and LinkedIn messages to recruiters, plus a few warm intros," Malhotra said. "Most of my serious interview loops, including the one that led to my current offer, started from that outreach rather than just submitting an application and hoping."

He also developed personal projects, such as a handwriting recognition tool utilizing AWS Textract, which he hosted on the cloud with authentication and shared functionality.

"I treated job hunting like system design — mapping companies, targeting roles, cold emailing with personalized subject lines and value propositions," Malhotra said. "I always kept a ready-to-send project repo or research paper link handy to prove my value."

Malhotra is happy at Amazon

He's working on deep-seated infrastructure problems that he believes have a real impact. "It's exactly the kind of work I wanted when I first set my sights on Big Tech," he said.

If he had to look for another job in today's market, he says he'd use the same five strategies, but with one additional point.

"I'd run the same system again — just with a bit more compounding from public work and relationships," Malhotra said. "I'd add an even stronger emphasis on building signal in public while things are going well — open-source contributions, writing, small talks, and a tighter network of engineers and hiring managers. Those make your résumé, outreach, and timing work even harder for you when the market tightens."

• Lots of tech leaders like to say they hate ads.
• Then they decide that, actually, they don't hate ads, because ads can help them make money.
• It seems like OpenAI and Sam Altman are headed that way with ChatGPT.

ChatGPT turned three years old the other day, which means we've spent three years in an AI frenzy.

It also means hundreds of millions of people have been using ChatGPT for years and … not seeing any ads at all, whether they're using the paid version or the free one.

That's not totally astonishing: We've gotten used to consumer internet products like Google, Facebook, and Instagram taking off without ads for a few years. And then, the deluge.

So how much longer will ChatGPT remain ad-free? And what happens when it isn't?

Over the weekend, we got a hint that an ad push may be underway, via some code from ChatGPT's Android app unearthed by developer Tibor Blaho:

Scouring apps for yet-to-be-released features is a long-standing tech hobby, and sometimes it really does yield results. It's also entirely possible that what Blaho found is … something other than an ad product road map.

But it still seems very, very likely that ChatGPT will have ads at some point.

We know this in part because OpenAI executives, starting with Sam Altman, have suggested they will be coming (in 2024, Altman said ads were gross; this year, he allowed that maybe OpenAI could make "some cool ad product").

We know it because OpenAI has been stocking itself with talent from Meta — one of the most successful advertising companies in the world.

And we know it because it's simply logical: Altman says ChatGPT has around 800 million weekly users, and only a small percentage of them pay. At some point, his company will want to convert those non-paying users into revenue-generating ones, and ads are the obvious way to do that.

Meanwhile, The Information reports, OpenAI focus groups show that some ChatGPT users already assume ads play a role in the results they're seeing. (I've asked OpenAI for comment; while we're here, I'll note that OpenAI has a business partnership with Axel Springer, which owns Business Insider.)

But all of that is different from saying ads are coming soon, or knowing what kind of ads OpenAI would want to put into ChatGPT. And it certainly doesn't address the core question about what happens when you inject ads into an answer machine: Does that machine give you the best answers? Or the answers someone has paid to give you?

Which brings us to the next question: If ads do show up, what would they look like? Because sticking ads into an AI assistant isn't like putting them next to search results or inside a news feed. There's no feed. There's just the answer.

There are a few obvious possibilities, none of which are mutually exclusive:

• Search-style intent ads

This is the Google model: You tell Google exactly what you're looking for — "dumpling spot near me," "best Chromebook" — and advertisers bid to appear next to those queries. If ChatGPT is now a legitimate Google rival, why not use Google's business model, too?

• Personalized ads based on everything ChatGPT knows about you

This is the Meta model: Instead of bidding on queries, advertisers target people, based on what it has learned about their behavior, on and off Meta's properties.

• Old-school text links

The simplest version: "You asked for the best toaster, here are three recommendations, one of which is sponsored." That's basically affiliate marketing. It's low-key and probably the least lucrative.

• Multimedia ads

You are probably typing things into ChatGPT and reading its results. But it doesn't have to work like that: ChatGPT can already talk and show you images. Via Sora, it can show you video. The magic device famed designer Jony Ive is building for the service likely won't have any screen at all. All of which means that Altman and Co. may have a choice to serve you ads that aren't tiny boxes of text on your phone.

But no matter what route OpenAI takes, all of its ad plans will have the same peril: the possibility that injecting paid messages in a service you count on could change your relationship with that service, and weaken that trust.

It's a gnarly problem, even for a company that's used to moving quickly and fixing messes after the fact. They might move more slowly on this one than some people think.

Bryan Johnson, the 48-year-old centimillionaire and nocturnal-erection-measuring longevity influencer, sits in the lotus position on a white loveseat, his knees grazing the knees of Kate Tolo, his 29-year-old business partner and, today, his spiritual guide through his psychedelic mushroom trip. "My body feels so nimble and supple and loose," he says. "Everything feels youthful."

Like thousands of people watching the livestream on X, YouTube, or Instagram, I spent a portion of my Sunday watching "Bryan Johnson Takes Magic Mushrooms," a new entry into the Thanksgiving family entertainment canon in which Johnson took 5.24 milligrams of mushrooms, a near-heroic dose, "for science." I watched the entire five-and-a-half-hour production, "for journalism," to document a new phase in tech elites' evolving experimentation with psychedelics.

Observing the entrepreneur touch God's flesh in a plant-filled living room, share how he felt like a newborn baby while peeing, and be joined by his son, his father, Grimes, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and several other business leaders cheering him on and extolling the virtues of longevity science was a surreal, moving, and at times nauseating trip itself — and I fear my grip with reality may now be permanently lost.

Johnson's life's mission is to vanquish death. As he notes on the livestream, he is "targeting 2039 as the date we arrest aging." To do this, he is spending $2 million a year on an elaborate daily anti-aging regimen that includes 5 a.m. light therapy, several dozen supplements, an hour of exercise, and eating a macadamia nut pomegranate juice, and pea protein mixture he calls "nutty pudding."

He postulates that taking magic mushrooms may also be a key protocol to living forever, or at least past 120; some studies suggest they may help extend the lifespan of mice, reduce inflammation, and increase neuroplasticity. So to begin testing that hypothesis — and to do what Johnson does best, preach the longevity gospel with content — Johnson decided to trip on X.

Lest the viewer switch over to NFL games or venture outside and experience what Johnson would soon call — while baked out of his gourd — "the gorgeous gift of existence," he puts up a slide listing his bona fides: His muscles are in the 98th percentile of all men, his blood pressure is lower than 90% of 18 year olds, his bone mineral density is in the 99th percentile, and he's more fertile than 99 percent of all men. Then he teases a tip for the men who want to join his ranks: You should do sauna daily, but before you do, "you have ice on your boys, otherwise it wrecks your fertility markers."

"We are in a legal environment," says Johnson. Soon after, his business partner asks him to take his shirt off.

He then pivots from frosting balls to tripping balls. "Mushrooms are a really serious molecule," Johnson cautions. "We are in a legal environment." Soon after, his business partner asks him to take his shirt off. He obeys, and Tolo shoots his naked chest with a thermal gun, recording his upper body temperature.

This is one of 249 biomarkers Johnson takes of himself before, which he re-measures after he takes the mushrooms, as part of the "most quantified psychedelic experiment in history." Tolo collects his saliva, tests his reaction time, and measures his brain activity via a snowboard helmet-shaped device that measures the brain's oxygen levels (Johnson founded Kernel, the maker of the helmets, in 2016). While this science experiment unfolds, hundreds of incisive comments stream in, like "my telomeres are so long" from @lasercupcake, "are skidmarks biomarkers" from @bobfreakman and "what is the ideal age to poop" from @jaredafrica.

Johnson and his business partner have a distinctive synergy. "Kate just makes everything better, everything is better with Kate," Johnson says of Tolo. A few minutes later, she gently puts a metal slinky on his knee, and he closes his eyes in ecstasy. She then gently rubs his back in silence. Later, while laying in bed during the peak of his trip, Johnson holds his business partner's hand in silence for 20 minutes.

Before ingesting, Johnson sets an intention for his trip. With rapid advancements in AI, he says, "this sobering moment to be a human." This trip is an opportunity to help put humanity on a path where "existence itself is the highest virtue, it's not wealth, it's not power, it's not status."

Because it's illegal for Johnson to show on screen the thing everyone tuning in has come to see him do — take the shrooms — when he does, a red cartoon Alice in Wonderland-like mushroom appears over his face as he downs them.

Minutes later, Talmage Johnson, 20, one of Johnson's three children, joins the livestream from a separate video feed.

"What's it like seeing your dad do a psychedelic like this?" Johnson asks.

"For some reason, I don't really bat an eye; it's kind of expected at this point," Talmage says. Johnson has also infused himself with his son's plasma, and has publicly compared the force of his nighttime erections, which he ritually measures, with his son's on X. (The younger Johnson's johnson just edged out the elder's, with 184 minutes of hardness to dad's 182 minutes.)

"I have to say, Talmage really is a phenomenal son," Johnson says. "I love you very much. I think you're amazing."

"Mmm. I could not have said it better," Talmage says.

Just when I start to think, "Am I tripping?" I'm reminded of something Bryan Johnson said in an interview with Wired earlier this year: "Bryan Johnson in 2025 is a normal dude in 2030."

Some 30 minutes after he takes the shrooms, they hit him, and he says the sorts of things teenage YouTubers say in videos of their drug trips. "I feel a lot more love, a lot more compassion immediately," he says. "Everything's alive." He plays with a slinky for five minutes.

For the next 20 minutes, the livestream is in a quad screen. In the upper left is the journalist Ashlee Vance, sitting in his kitchen in front of a framed poster of a quote from the comedian Bill Hicks: "Don't worry, don't be afraid ever, because this is just a ride." Below him is the entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant, who tells Vance "I don't want to die either," and calls Johnson "a one-man FDA."

And beside him, huddled close in a living room, are the entrepreneur and "All-In" podcaster David Friedberg and Marc Benioff, who tells Vance they're beaming in from a "super secret location," before espounding on his bible study that morning, which was about the Genesis story of Jacob's Ladder. Vance interviews them as the entrepreneurs explain the science of stem cells. All four men take heaping sips of what appears to be coffee — Friedberg and Benioff with matching venti Starbucks holiday cups — but Johnson, who does not drink caffeine because it "creates too much of a metabolic rollercoaster," is not present to chastise them. He's in the bottom right screen, laying under the covers of a twin bed, wearing a sleep mask and wriggling like a worm.

Johnson, the star of the show, remains supine and masked for more than two hours.

In 1653, a 15-year-old Louis XIV starred in a 12-hour-long ballet at the Louvre, performing before the royal court and ambassadors of every European nation to display his mastery over mind and body and the prowess of French culture. The lifespan in France at the time was about 30. Johnson's marathon livestream is something of the 2025 equivalent, a prince of tech displaying his mastery over mind and body and the prowess of technology — and its promise to expand our lifespans, so that we enjoy ever more years of consuming marathon livestreams.

At some point during Grimes' DJ set — a thing that also happened — the stomach bug that'd been going around my five-year-old's kindergarten class hit her, and she threw up. I'd never been more relieved to have to clean up vomit.

When I return 20 minutes later, Johnson is doing post-trip analysis with his son and his father. "We like you even more on shrooms," Johnson's father says.

Johnson asks Talmage to write down and then share a favorite memory with his father. His son recounts a time Johnson brought a calzone to his school.

"Parents: It's worth it. Kids suck on so many levels," Johnson says, tears in his eyes. "They're also like the most majestic creations within our reach."

Just before the livestream ends, Talmage reflects on what he and some very online corners of the world just witnessed over the past 334 minutes — just half an hour shy of his and his father's combined duration of their nighttime erections. "When people see this," he says, "they'll see he's just like one of us. He's human."

Zak Jason is the executive editor of Business Insider's Discourse team.