• Sergey Brin says retiring before COVID left him "spiraling" and pushed him back into Google's AI work.
• He'd planned to "sit in cafés and study physics" in his retirement, but couldn't due to the pandemic.
• Brin admitted Google initially "underinvested" in AI and let rivals get the upper hand.

Sergey Brin tried retirement — and immediately regretted it.

Speaking at Stanford University's School of Engineering centennial celebration last week, the Google cofounder said he stepped back from day-to-day work in December 2019, imagining he'd spend leisurely days and "sit in cafés and study physics."

Then the pandemic hit.

"That didn't work because there were no more cafés," he joked.

Worse, he said he felt himself "spiraling" and "kind of not being sharp" without the intellectual stimulation he'd always relied on.

So as soon as Google began allowing a small number of employees back into its offices, he joined them — eventually diving into what became Gemini, Google's flagship AI model.

"To be able to have that technical creative outlet, I think that's very rewarding," the 52-year-old said. "If I'd stayed retired, I think that would've been a big mistake."

Inside Brin's AI rethink

Brin also offered a candid assessment of Google's AI trajectory.

Despite publishing the 2017 "Transformer" paper that underpins nearly every major AI model today, he said Google "underinvested" in the technology and was "too scared to bring it to people because chatbots say dumb things."

OpenAI, he said, "ran with it, which, good for them."

Still, he said Google retained an edge through its long-standing investment in neural-network research, custom AI chips, and massive data center infrastructure.

"Very few have that scale," he said.

Asked what students should study in an era when AI can code, Brin warned against fleeing technical fields.

"I wouldn't switch to comparative literature because you think AI is good at coding," he said. "The AI is probably even better at comparative literature."

He also shared what he sees as the biggest mistake founders make — one he admits he fell into with Google Glass.

He rushed the product before it was affordable, polished, or even actually ready.

"Everybody thinks they're the next Steve Jobs," he said. "I've definitely made that mistake."

Now deeply involved in Gemini, Brin said the pace of AI development keeps him energized.

"It's absolutely amazing just the rate of innovation," he said. "If you skip the news for a month, you're way behind."

• Cabbage, the cheap, high-fiber leafy green, appears to be having a moment.
• It's popping up on more menus, and Pinterest searches for cabbage-related recipes have spiked.
• Cabbage is packed with nutrients that support gut health and help protect the brain from disease.

After decades of terrible PR (think: WWII boiled cabbage recipes and The Cabbage Soup Diet of the '80s), cabbage — the cheap, high-fiber, low-calorie vegetable — is quietly gaining cultural capital.

A recession indicator? Maybe. But also, likely a result of our obsession with health, longevity, and the gut microbiome.

People are looking for ways to eat more fiber, support their gut health, and eat more plants without blowing their budget, Rob Hobson, a registered nutritionist and author of "The Low Appetite Cookbook," told Business Insider.

"In a world of 'fibre-maxxing' and fermented foods trending on social feeds, it makes perfect sense that cabbage is having a moment," said Hobson, who predicts fiber will overtake protein as the trendiest nutrient next year.

A cheap flavor vessel for chefs

Of course, kimchi, the fermented Korean cabbage dish, has been a staple of cosmopolitan American food culture since at least the 2010s.

But, whether you've noticed it or not, the data shows that interest in cabbage appears to be growing once again. Hispi cabbage (known in the US as sweetheart cabbage) is a mainstay of trendy restaurants across London.

Chefs at some of the city's buzziest kitchens, including Rochelle Canteen, Ottolenghi, and Fallow, told the New York Times of their love for the conical leafy green in August for a story headlined: "London's Sexiest Produce Star Is a Cabbage." It's used in all sorts of cuisines ranging from Sri Lankan to Middle Eastern to British.

It's an "ultimate vessel for flavor," Will Murray, a chef and founder of Fallow, which is known for its steaks and Sunday roast, told the outlet. The current cabbage dish on the restaurant's menu is confit smoked cabbage with miso butter, pickled walnuts, and chestnuts.

Cabbage is making headway on US menus, too. The number of menu items mentioning "cabbage" grew 20.65% year on year between October 2023 and October 2025, led by Mexican restaurants, according to data that Tastewise, a food and drink market research agency, shared with Business Insider. The dataset included 636,366 cabbage menu items across 166,984 restaurants and 8,543 chains, plus 24,023 cabbage items across 5,070 schools.

Online, people are searching for cabbage recipes: From September 2024 to August 2025, Pinterest searches for cabbage dumplings spiked by 110%, searches for glomupki soup, a Polish dish that consists of cabbage and ground beef in a tomato broth, rose by 95%, and cabbage alfredo, a lower-carb version of the pasta dish, was searched for 45% more, according to the platform's 2026 Pinterest Predicts report.

This affordability and versatility make it appealing to today's bold-flavor seeking consumer, Wesley Allan, a consumer insights analyst at Tastewise, told Business Insider.

"Today's consumer is more open to exploring global cuisines than ever. Cabbage's versatility comes in handy, as it can be a part of tacos, rice bowls, noodles, and other culturally relevant dishes," he said.

Cabbage has major health credentials

With 84% of US consumers saying wellness is a "top" or "important" priority in McKinsey & Company's 2025 Future of Wellness survey, "functional" foods are king, and cabbage fits the bill.

Cabbage "punches well above its weight in terms of nutritional value," Hobson said. It's a rich source of fiber, which supports digestion, and provides fuel for the beneficial bacteria in the gut, vitamin C, which helps protect cells from damage, and vitamin K, which plays a key role in bone health and blood clotting," he said. It's also very low in calories, making it appealing for those on a calorie deficit looking to add volume, fiber, and micronutrients to meals.

Dean Sherzai, a neurologist and dementia researcher, previously told Business Insider that eating leafy greens — which includes cabbage — is his number one tip for fending off cognitive decline.

With two servings per day, "you've significantly reduced inflammation, oxidation, glucose dysregulation, and lipid dysregulation," which are hallmarks of many age-related diseases, he said.

Given its low cost, many health credentials, and ability to take on almost any flavor, what's not to love?

"If anything, it feels like cabbage has been waiting for its moment," Hobson said.

• Five Below CEO Winnie Park has been in her current role for one year.
• Once a relatively little-known retail executive, she has led a major turnaround for the discount retailer.
• Analysts trace her impact to a laser focus on retail fundamentals and sharp merchandising.

Christmas, it is often said, is a time for second chances.

So it would seem for Five Below, which is celebrating a transformational year under the leadership of CEO Winnie Park.

The stock is up about 85% this year so far — that's well more than the returns of most major retail stocks and AI chip darling Nvidia in the same period.

To rewind, last year's holiday season wasn't looking like a very joyful one for the tween- and teen-focused retailer.

The Philadelphia-based company was on its way to posting its fourth-straight quarter with negative or flat comparable sales, and that was coming off several prior years of underwhelming performance.

While Five Below was managing to grow overall sales through the addition of new stores, existing stores weren't resonating with shoppers. It was also dealing with industry-wide challenges, including shoplifting and the rise of low-priced e-commerce players like Shein and Temu.

With Five Below's stock languishing around a third of its 2023 peak, the company tapped Park, then-CEO of Forever 21, to take over as CEO in December 2024 during the holiday rush last year.

Betting on Park's 'complete package' of retail experience

"When she came in, she was sort of an unknown quantity," Mizuho retail analyst David Bellinger told Business Insider. "It was a question of how is she going to fix this business immediately."

While Park may not have been the most widely known CEO on Wall Street, she did come equipped with decades of industry experience, including as CEO of Forever 21 and Paper Source, as well as executive roles at Duty Free Shoppers and Levi's, and a stint with McKinsey's retail team.

"Her background allows her to really understand how all of these different aspects of the Five Below business work, because she's drawing on a very rich career," Global Data retail analyst Neil Saunders told Business Insider.

"A lot of people come in sometimes as CEOs, and they don't have a tremendous background in retail, or they may have experience in merchandising, but not in supply chains," he added. "Winnie Park was almost like the complete package."

Five Below did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Getting the business back to retail fundamentals

Park wasted no time diving in with cofounder and executive chairman Tom Vellios and chief operating officer Ken Bull.

The first order of business was refocusing the merchandise on what Five Below's core teen and tween customers want.

Bellinger said this was a result of Park's major reset with the sourcing teams, guiding them to find hot items and buy with confidence, while steering away from items, like luggage, that were more adult-focused.

"They loaded the store up with 'Lilo and Stitch' merchandise, SpongeBob, Hello Kitty — so when you do have these good, well-known brands, it sort of lifts the whole store," he said.

The merchandising effort was also paired with a social media push that the company says has helped attract new shoppers.

Park's other major area of focus was simplifying store operations for both employees and customers.

With a bit of planning and an incremental investment in labor hours, Five Below says it has improved in-stock rates and customer support at its stores, helping to drive higher sales.

"Winnie Park is the type of leader that has a very clear vision for the business," Saunders said. "She doesn't really overcomplicate things."

Letting some things go can help the business move ahead

In addition to getting Five Below back to some principles it may have lost touch with in recent years, Park is also showing a willingness to let go of at least one thing that may have been holding the company back: its $5 price point.

The last few years of inflation haven't made it easy for retailers with dollar-denominated branding to stick to their original promises. Dollar Tree had to hike its base price to $1.25, and it's tough to run a 99 Cents Only store at a time when the US government is eliminating the penny. President Donald Trump's trade war this year hasn't been much help for import-heavy businesses, either.

To manage these cost pressures, the company lumped more merchandise in a catch-all section of the store called Five Beyond, which it had set up years earlier.

But that distinction brought unnecessary complexity without meaningful benefit, and the company recently ditched the plan in favor of grouping products by category instead of a price threshold.

"It was a very disjointed merchandising set," Bellinger said. "Anything in that price threshold was in the back there."

Now, he said, "the way they've assorted the store and spread these items out makes a lot more sense."

Looking beyond price to focus on value

Bellinger said the move shows that Park understands a critical lesson that successful retailers have had to reckon with in the last few years: value and price are not the same thing.

"You could find value in that $30 item. It's all relative," he said.

Taken together — exciting products, well-run stores, a focus on great value — Five Below is starting to look in some ways more like a warehouse club than a discount store.

"Five Below is essentially the Costco for kids," Bellinger said. "Maybe you want to get some core birthday or party items, and then you wind up expanding your basket and buying all these things you didn't know were there. And then it leads you to your next visit, and you just keep coming back."

The success of the past year will raise the expectations for next year's quarterly comparable sales numbers, but Five Below still has several levers it says it can pull to meet the moment.

Bellinger said investors are keen to see whether the recent changes at Five Below have led to a structural shift that will drive long-term performance.

The average Five Below store generates annual sales of around $2.1 million, but Bellinger said Park's initiatives could significantly boost that number: "Why can't that be a $3 million store now, or even higher?"

• $3.2 billion Eisler told investors it was closing down due to the high costs of talent in September.
• The firm had more than 250 people based in nine offices across the US, Europe, and the Middle East.
• The manager has had discussions with onetime rival funds about purchasing their risk system, Photon.

Shutting down a hedge fund isn't as simple as turning off the lights and handing the office keys to the building manager.

Trades need to be wound down slowly to make sure backers don't lose money in a fire sale. Employment contracts with payouts and deferred compensation need to be honored. Anything worth selling needs to find a buyer.

At $3.2 billion Eisler Capital, the London-based multistrategy fund founded by Goldman Sachs veteran Ed Eisler, the firm's late September letter to investors about liquidating the firm was just the first step.

The firm had transformed itself from a macro shop into a fund with dozens of different teams trading their own specialities and had ambitious goals. In a conversation with Business Insider at the end of 2023, Eisler's COO, Chris Milner, said the manager had increased head count by more than 40% that year and had "a lot of support from our capital partners and the Street right now and don't feel constrained."

"What we don't want to do is grow for growth's sake. Against that, though, we are an ambitious organization," Milner said.

Unfortunately, 2023 was a high point for the firm. The firm made 3% in 2024, trailing its larger multistrategy peers, as costs mounted. Key moneymakers Adrien Delattre and Lewis Morton left the firm despite being named partners at the end of 2023.

"The challenge of attracting and retaining experienced money managers capable of deploying capital at scale within a cost structure acceptable to investors has grown significantly," the firm told investors in its letter.

Compared to the typical fund liquidation, Eisler has the ongoing attention of the industry due to its high head count and a possible sale of some of the firm's intellectual property.

In talking with backers of the firm, people close to the manager, and industry experts, Business Insider has pulled together the latest on the firm's potential sale of its risk system, Photon, the portfolio manager rival funds are trying to hire, and where some of the fund's investing talent has already landed.

The manager declined to comment.

The battle for Eisler's risk system

While Eisler's returns lagged behind those of its peers in 2025, with a loss of 1.7% through August, the firm's risk and analytics system, developed by Eisler and his right-hand man, Sam Wisnia, was known throughout the industry as well-designed. One person at a rival fund said Eisler's macro background gave the system a unique feel compared to others in the industry, which were made with long-short equity or quant trading in mind.

Multistrategy funds, the sprawling giants that have come to define this era of the industry, are hyper-focused on risk, given the key part of their pitch to large institutional investors: We can make money in any market environment.

While the cutthroat, immediate firings for any PM who loses 3% are not as common due to the talent war, these firms use a host of systems and tools to monitor the exposures and risks of each trading team, ensuring that no one portfolio drags down the entire fund. Eisler's Photon is considered to be one of the best for tracking macro risks.

Several people said the firm has had conversations with funds such as Verition and Taula Capital about buying the system, which is named Photon. Verition and Taula declined to comment.

Two LPs of the fund told Business Insider that they are frustrated that the money made from the potential sale of the system will not be distributed to them, but instead will go to Eisler and Wisnia. These backers feel entitled to a share of the proceeds from any sale, given that their pass-through fees covered the development of Photon.

A person close to the firm said that Eisler's legal documents with investors clearly give the ownership of intellectual property, such as Photon, to the founder.

The PM everyone is circling

In late 2023, in an effort to keep top talent at the firm, Eisler named four new partners. A little over a year later, three of them, including the aforementioned Delattre and Morton, had departed the fund — an ominous sign for how top performers viewed the manager's future.

The one new partner who stayed with the firm through its closing is now one of the most coveted potential hires for rivals, according to business development executives at two different multistrategy funds.

Massimiliano Pignatelli is a Milan-based portfolio manager who joined Eisler in 2020 after a stint on a trading desk for Macquarie in London. His resume includes a decade-long stint at French bank Société Générale, where he was the head of European Forward Trading, a type of derivative trading.

While he's worked in different European cities in his career, including Paris, the Italy native relocated to Milan while at Eisler. The financial center in northern Italy has become a haven for London's wealthy fleeing the United Kingdom's high tax regime.

He did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Where the talent has landed

Pignatelli is far from the only Eisler talent in demand.

With more than 250 people across nine offices in the US, Europe, and the Middle East, the manager had a significant staff despite its relatively low asset base.

Despite a potential 30% cut to their bonuses if they left the fund immediately, Eisler executives and PMs have already started popping up at other funds. Below are some of the individuals who have already made a move, according to media reports, LinkedIn profiles, and industry sources.

Name	Title at Eisler	New firm
Colin Teichholtz	Head of fixed income	Symmetry
Jeff Russel	Head of discretionary long short equity	ExodusPoint
Panos Yiasoumi	PM, focused on fixed income	BlueCrest
Frank DiSanti	PM, focused on mortgages	Schonfeld
Alexander Alekseev	PM, focused on quant	Balyasny
Ram Subramanian	PM, focused on macro	Moore
Kumar Velayudham	PM, focused on mortgages	Brevan Howard
Werlson Hwang	PM, focused on equities	SummitTX
Greg Bugaj	PM, focused on commodities volatility	Walleye
Prabhat Malhotra	PM, focused on interest rates	Verition
Michael Whited	PM, focused on energy	Balyasny
Alberto Fabbri	PM, focused on relative value macro	Brevan Howard
Nicolas Pai	PM, focused on delta one	Verition

• Elanco CEO Jeff Simmons said he urges his six kids to find their passions in their careers.
• Simmons said everything changed once he found his 'why.'
• He also emphasized the importance of a strong work ethic and good social skills.

When Jeff Simmons isn't steering animal-health giant Elanco, he's focused on a different kind of leadership challenge: raising six kids.

"We have family meetings every Sunday," Simmons told Business Insider.

Those check-ins double as career-coaching lessons. With some of their children already in the workforce, Simmons said he and his wife are consistently coaching their kids.

The CEO's core message is straightforward: "Find your 'why.'"

One of his sons has already put that advice into action, leaving a broadcasting job in Lexington, Kentucky, to pursue a path as a pastor.

Simmons said it took him 13 years to uncover his own sense of purpose, and "everything changed" once he did. Simmons described coming across a desperate father and his two daughters who hadn't eaten in two days. He says it was a defining moment that "wrecked him" and made him realize his purpose.

"It unlocked something in me. My 'why' is hungry," the CEO said, adding that he's passionate about about solving food insecurity and also drawn to the mindset of a hungry leader.

Simmons, who has been with Elanco for over three decades, has centered his life around that passion. The company is focused on changing animal care through innovation and helping farmers improve animal health while reducing their environmental footprint. Roughly a decade ago, Simmons founded Hatch for Hunger, an organization that delivers protein-rich meals to those in need.

The nonprofit is about to hit 100 million meals given this year, an Elanco spokesperson told Business Insider. To fuel his drive to help leaders, he also serves as the chairman of EDGE Mentoring, a mentoring organization.

Simmons said he loves "hungry leaders," and when he sees that trait in someone else, it evokes an emotional response in him.

"When somebody finds their 'why,' they will go places they couldn't imagine going," Simmons said.

Work ethic and manners matter

In addition to teaching his kids to find what motivates them, Simmons said he believes in the power of working hard. He said his family even had a bumper sticker last year that said: "We can do hard things."

The CEO said that while many students may work during college, they aren't prepared for the stamina required to handle a 14-hour workday or the greater demands of navigating a full-time job.

Simmons said he teaches his kids that there's "power in the ability to work," and that the first five years on the job can make a difference in your career. Simmons said his son, who recently graduated from college and works in Dallas, told him that a number of his friends who graduated in May have already quit their jobs.

"His playback to me, and I agree with, is they didn't learn the muscle of work," Simmons said.

That mindset also shapes his view on showing up in person early on in your career. While the CEO encourages flexibility in the workplace, he said entry-level employees should "no question, be in the office," if they have the option to be.

He and his wife also constantly preach the importance of what he refers to as basic social "hygiene," like sending thank-you notes.

"I think the basics can be forgotten," Simmons said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jane Way, 84, who lives in a suburb of Phoenix. Way works 30 hours a week as a US-based accountant for a South African orphanage. She works partly out of financial necessity but said she would work regardless, despite some health issues. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I started working at 7 in my parents' restaurant. I have a degree in accounting. I was the first woman from Cal Poly to be invited to help recruit students for CPA firms. I was then offered a position at a Big 8 firm, where I worked for two years and became certified.

I was a CPA for 46 years in various roles, including franchising and retail, across different kinds of companies. I was a prominent figure in accounting and finance departments.

My husband was also a CPA. He started an import business after a massive heart attack in 1972. I've been widowed since 1987 and never remarried.

At the time, I was the CFO of an international franchisor of rental equipment and party goods. My husband and I also owned and managed an import company specializing in gourmet and decorative accessories.

After his death, I was not prepared to handle all the responsibilities of a high-ranking CFO accounting position. I began working as a contract employee for various companies and with a rental company for several years.

I've primarily worked in the private sector. My emphasis for the last 12 years has been with nonprofits, and I'm currently working with an Arizona nonprofit that has an orphanage in South Africa.

I'm very active in my church and serve on the missions committee. Someone brought this charity to the church as an opportunity for us to get involved.

I work night and day, literally

9 a.m. my time is the end of the day in South Africa. My workday for Open Arms Home for Children begins at 11 p.m. and ends at 8 a.m.

I do some work during the day that I can complete without direct supervision. I don't work a full day most days, but it averages about 30 hours a week. I do financial statements, analyses, and reports during the regular day. I take a couple of long naps every 24-hour cycle.

I'm a person who thrives on work. I need to be doing something to make things better for people. Otherwise, I don't feel like I'm productive at all.

My mantra for many years has been to share my best. For me, work is its own reward, and it keeps me thinking fresh thoughts. I need the money and am open to additional opportunities, but I would work anyway.

I've retired at least twice, and it just doesn't suit me. I was shortly retired in 1990 after running my accounting practice, and my "long retirement" was from 2004 until 2011. In my 60s, I thought I was through with work.

I'm dependent on both my Social Security and my nonprofit income

I put two grandchildren through college and spent my retirement early, so I don't have huge resources. This is what I chose to do.

When the family gathered to celebrate my 80th birthday, I shared that I have a 20-year plan. I'm almost five years into that plan, and some things are better, while others are worse, but I intend to be here to celebrate reaching 100 and hope to still be working.

Our lives shape us, just as we shape our lives. My priorities are my faith and family, followed by work, and then writing. I'm very close to my family. I have one son and three grandchildren. I decided that I needed to be an influence in their lives.

I have several health issues

Some are serious, but I don't think about that, any more than necessary, as there are other things that need to be done. You don't reach 84 without facing some health challenges.

I've been in a wheelchair for five years, so my ability to be mobile and do things outside my home is pretty limited. My entire career and family are ways for me to stay connected to the world.

I work from home, and everything I need is conveniently located nearby. My son and one of my grandsons live with me. My son had a stroke in 2016 and is disabled. My grandson's marriage fell apart, and we decided it was a matter of economy for the three of us to live together.

It has gone very well. Everybody takes care of their own stuff, and I do most of the cooking. We share expenses.

Since I share my home with my son and grandson, I have ready tech support. Along the way, I've had to take breaks due to health issues, the most recent being COVID-19 in 2023. I was in the hospital for almost two weeks and then in rehab for six weeks.

I hope to stay with this organization for the next decade and contribute to its success. I know they're pleased with the work I do, and it will be up to me to decide when I no longer want to work.

Work is its own reward

Find a field you enjoy, and it won't be work. It's important to volunteer and give back to your community.

If I had regrets, one might be that I didn't cultivate relationships. I met friends at church. My close friends here in Phoenix started out as clients in Yuma in 1987. I have many newer friends my age, and we get together and do things, but it isn't the same as having people who know your history.

The most important thing is to be true to yourself and do what you want to do and what makes you happy. People need to be able to make their own life choices and suffer the consequences if they don't turn out as they hoped.

Part of what makes us adults is going through the hard times and understanding that that's a part of living. Nothing is just handed to us.

When CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned Meta employees in January to "buckle up" for an "intense" year, he meant it.

Determined to dominate the next era of AI, Meta has spent the past year in blitz mode. Zuckerberg has overhauled divisions, reallocated resources to new products, and poured billions into the AI arms race with OpenAI, Google, and others. Zuckerberg's push came with a marked shift in leadership tone as well, including his public celebration of what he described as more "masculine energy."

Along the way, the company has trimmed its metaverse ambitions, raised performance expectations, and cut thousands of jobs, all while chasing Zuckerberg's grand vision of "personal superintelligence."

In some ways, the moves have boosted efficiency and led to faster innovation. In others, some divisions have been roiled by internal tensions, including clashes resulting from AI reorganizations and Zuckerberg flaming the AI talent wars, according to current and former employees. Some also said Meta's layoffs earlier this year were unnecessarily demoralizing when Zuckerberg branded the affected employees as "low performers."

The company's transformation comes at a time when Big Tech is rewriting its playbook, cutting costs, toughening its tone with employees, and making massive bets that AI will determine who leads in the next decade.

Meta is wagering that moving harder and faster will help give the company an edge over its rivals. After months of a cultural reset in early 2025, employee sentiment improved in recent months, a Meta spokesperson said, citing a recent internal employee sentiment questionnaire.

Investors are worried about the company's strategy, particularly its plan to sink tens of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure and talent. The question is whether Meta is overdoing it. Shares have risen 7.5% this year, less than half that of the S&P 500, and have underperformed most of the so-called Magnificent 7 companies.

"The company must articulate its vision, show how its pieces fit together, and, most importantly, demonstrate steady growth," said Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, who covers Meta.

This account of Meta's "year of intensity" is based on interviews conducted by Business Insider with more than a dozen current and former employees, analysts, and academic researchers.

The AI overhaul

Over the summer, Zuckerberg sought to change the perception that Meta was trailing behind its AI rivals. In June, the company made a $14 billion investment in AI training company Scale AI and hired its 28-year-old founder, Alexandr Wang, as chief AI officer. Two months later, it rebranded its team focused on AI efforts to Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL).

As Meta's leadership sought to reorganize teams and recruit top talent from competitors, some ex-employees went public with the view that the company lacked a coherent AI strategy.

Joena Zhang, a former Meta Superintelligence Labs employee, said in a November LinkedIn post that "nobody really knew what anyone was doing" during the first half of the year at MSL — then called GenAI. She said there were "endless" meetings that didn't result in "actual decisions." And in a July Substack post, former Meta researcher Tijmen Blankevoort wrote that Meta had "a wavering vision that was tough for team members to enthusiastically rally behind."

Meta began offering massive compensation packages to attract top AI talent from rival labs, including OpenAI and Google's AI division, DeepMind.

This created rifts between the "old guard" and newer hires by offering outsiders significantly more compensation than existing employees got. It fueled a quiet competition to prove whose ideas for AI features were more valuable, according to two MSL employees.

The tensions also revolved around access to computing resources and the prestige of being associated with the elite team at the center of MSL, as one researcher previously told Business Insider.

In August, Meta undertook its fourth major reorganization in six months to streamline its AI efforts, dividing MSL into four teams: a new TBD Lab (short for "to be determined"), a product team overseeing the Meta AI assistant, an infrastructure team, and the company's long-standing Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab.

After the shake-up, it was unclear who owned which projects, and people were reassigned between teams, according to the two MSL employees, one of whom added that the flow of information between TBD and MSL wasn't always even.

Asked about the internal shake-up, a Meta spokesperson pointed Business Insider to an X post from Andy Stone, a Meta communications executive, describing previous reporting about the company's AI restructuring as "navelgazing."

At least eight of Meta's AI staffers, including researchers, engineers, and a senior product leader, left the company within two months of MSL's formation. Meta said most had been with the company for years, and that some attrition is normal for an organization of its size.

Two months after the August shuffle, Meta cut about 600 jobs as part of a wider reorganization of the MSL division. Wang told employees that the cuts were designed to speed up decision-making.

Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities, told Business Insider that the changes have helped Meta move faster in model releases and in integrating its AI across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

"Meta is now one of the only companies training frontier-class models and deploying them to billions of users, which is exactly where I want it to be," he said.

Meta also shook up its leadership ranks in Reality Labs, the division responsible for developing its virtual and mixed reality products.

The company is considering budget cuts for the metaverse unit that sits within Reality Labs, which could result in job cuts, a person familiar with the matter previously told Business Insider. A Meta spokesperson said that it is reallocating some of its investment "from Metaverse toward AI glasses and wearables" to match momentum, adding that the company "wasn't planning any broader changes than that."

'Intense' performance reviews

The MSL layoffs were part of a broader effort by Meta to tighten operational efficiency this year, as the company reduced layers of management and implemented a stricter performance review process than in previous years.

Zuckerberg told employees in January he had "decided to raise the bar on performance management" and would move quickly to cut about 5% of "low performers." The company cut about 3,600 jobs in February from its workforce of about 78,450 employees.

By May, it directed managers to place a higher proportion of employees in its bottom review rankings: For teams of 150 or more, 15% to 20% of employees should be rated in the "below expectations" tier, compared with 12% to 15% the previous year.

Multiple employees said the revised system created a pressure-cooker environment and encouraged more cutthroat competition between staff. Managers and employees described a shift toward short-term projects as teams looked to protect themselves from landing at the bottom of the ranking.

The requirement to place more staff in lower performance tiers saw some managers strategically leave positions open or hire employees solely to place them in the bottom tier, two managers said.

The company says employee sentiment improved in the second half of the year. Its latest internal employee sentiment questionnaire, which ran from October 20 to November 3, showed "optimism" rose to 80%, "pride" at 71% and "confidence in leadership" at 68%, according to data Meta shared with Business Insider.

Each of those metrics was up between 10 and 12 percentage points compared to the last survey, which ran April 21 through May 5, the spokesperson said. The latest survey had a 91% participation rate, Meta said.

Departures and loyalists

The combination of policy shifts, reorganizations, job cuts, and stricter performance expectations triggered a wave of departures in 2025, according to five internal farewell posts reviewed by Business Insider. Some employees said Meta's evolving political posture and internal governance changes no longer aligned with their values.

"Meta in 2025 is a very different company from what Oculus & Facebook were in 2017," one engineer, who left Meta in August after nearly eight years at the company, wrote in an internal farewell message, viewed by Business Insider. These types of notes are known internally as "badge posts."

He cited a "matter of principles" for his departure, adding that the "sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit alignment with the new US government" clashed with his personal values.

Similar themes surfaced in other employee departures this year.

"The unnecessary pressure, lack of empathy, and occasional lack of fairness," one former employee wrote in another farewell post from January, seen by Business Insider. "Fighting for scope. Narratives. Oh, the narratives – I'm so looking forward to not hearing that word for a while. Smart and kind people bending their values to survive because they've been on the edge of their seats for too long."

A Meta spokesperson said the resignations represent a small slice of the company. Meta has 78,450 employees, and head count is up 8% year-over-year.

Some departing employees told Business Insider that they no longer had a meaningful outlet to share feedback with leadership on topics such as DEI and embracing "masculine energy" because questions for Q&A sessions were preselected, and that posts critical of leadership decisions were sometimes removed from the platform.

"We will skip questions that we expect might be unproductive if they leak or things like people-related questions that have already been answered," Meta's VP of internal communications, Jonny Oser, informed employees in an internal post earlier this year.

In a January poll titled "Measuring workplace fear," dozens of Meta employees voted anonymously on how afraid they were that speaking openly about working conditions could lead to disciplinary action. The winning responses were "extremely afraid" and "very afraid," according to a screenshot of the poll viewed by Business Insider.

Even as some employees headed for the exits, others say they are optimistic about the new environment.

Two current employees told Business Insider that Meta can be a rewarding place to work, particularly for individuals accustomed to operating in high-pressure environments.

"I would say that people who are confident in their skills and are high performers generally thrive," one senior engineer said.

Another Meta veteran said the company used to "coddle its staff" — but "that's changing."

An engineer said there are reasons to stay put. "The positives are that we are still on the frontier in R&D," they said. "There are a lot of cool AI, wearables, and robotics things going on," giving high-performing employees a chance to learn and build "a lot of good skills."

"Also, we get paid a lot, still, and get free food and snacks," they said. "That helps."

• NFL Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton is an Apple shareholder.
• He remains bullish on the tech giant even as some investors worry about its pace of AI developments.
• "They've been around for 50 years, and look what they've done in those 50 years!" he told Business Insider.

NFL Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton started buying up shares of Apple a decade ago — and he doesn't plan on selling them any time soon, he told Business Insider.

"The Apple stock never gets sold," Tarkenton said in a recent interview.

Tarkenton said he "sleeps well at night" knowing that, regardless of what happens with his companies, he always has his backstop of Apple stock, of which he owns hundreds of thousands of shares, according to records viewed by Business Insider.

"I first met Steve Jobs when he was out of Apple and building Pixar, but I really started buying their stock around 10 years ago," Tarkenton added in a follow-up email. "I've handled my own money for a long time, because I wanted to know what the companies I was investing in were doing."

The Minnesota Vikings legend, who made the bulk of his fortune after retiring from the league, said he bought his first Apple shares in 2015 after researching the company.

"I started getting to know some of the people there, and they were brilliant people," he said. "I began investing in Apple, and I don't sell it. I reinvest all the dividends. I read about them and what they're doing every day, so I know that's the company I believe in more than any other."

Tarkenton told Business that he saw Apple's diversification and its famously high gross margin as too good to pass up.

"They've been around for 50 years, and look what they've done in those 50 years!" Tarkenton said. "They're so diversified; they're in everything, they have more assets than any company in the world, and they keep on growing and building in new ways."

'Tim Cook came in and didn't try to be Steve Jobs'

Tarkenton praised Apple CEO Tim Cook's "authentic leadership," saying that he has handled the difficult task of replacing the iconic cofounder Steve Jobs well.

"He's a very different person from Steve Jobs, but he's been just as good and maybe even better for Apple," he said.

"Tim Cook came in and didn't try to be Steve Jobs. Instead, he was his authentic self, and he's a genius leader," Tarkenton added. "Coming in after an icon like Steve Jobs is a tough job, and he's handled it magnificently."

Under Cook's leadership, Apple has grown at a staggering pace, increasing its market cap from $350 billion in 2011 to over $4 trillion. During that time, Apple unveiled hit products such as the Apple Watch and AirPods, as well as services like Apple Pay and Apple TV+ — though it also launched the relatively slow-selling Vision Pro and reportedly scrapped its long-in-development electric car project.

Meanwhile, Cook is steering Apple through the AI race, which it got a late start to — a critique that Tarkenton said TV pundits like to talk about but that he dismissed.

Tarkenton isn't worried about who will replace Cook, who is nearing retirement age. Cook has said Apple has "very detailed succession plans" and that he would like his replacement to be an internal hire. John Ternus, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, is widely seen as the frontrunner, though Apple hasn't publicly discussed succession candidates.

"I don't think he'll leave in the next year; maybe in the next couple of years," Tarketon said in his follow-up note. "But if and when he does step away, they'll have another person ready to step up, because they've built that kind of company with that kind of leadership culture."

Tarkenton sees big things ahead for Apple TV

Tarkenton, who co-hosted "Monday Night Football" and an ABC reality TV series after retiring from football in 1978, said he foresees Apple making a big play for NFL rights.

One of the pillars of Cook's tenure at Apple has been building its services business, a high margin enterprise that includes Apple TV, iCloud, and Apple Music, among other digital subscriptions.

The iPhone giant has struck some major deals in the sports space in recent years, including a $2.5 billion agreement with the MLS and the rights to stream "Friday Night Baseball."

In October, Apple announced that it had struck a five-year deal with Formula 1 to exclusively stream races in the US starting next year.

In 2023, Apple began sponsoring the Super Bowl Halftime show, but it has yet to broker any deals to exclusively stream games for the NFL, the ratings king for live sports.

Tarkenton is betting that changes.

"They're going to end up being the biggest televisor of NFL football and maybe college football too, because they'll know how to do it better than anybody else," he predicted.

It doesn't matter what it is, Tarkenton said, as long as it has Apple attached to it.

"When Apple gets on something, it's going to be really good," he said.

Steven Tweedie contributed to this report.

• The Education Department is working to expand Pell grants to short-term credential programs.
• The department cited data showing Americans' declining faith in the value of a four-year college degree.
• High student debt loads and shifting labor market demands have sparked growing interest in short-term programs.

The four-year college degree no longer has the same pull it once did — and the Trump administration agrees.

The Department of Education concluded its negotiations on the Workforce Pell program on December 12, a new initiative included in President Donald Trump's "big beautiful" spending legislation.

The program would extend Pell grants to low-income borrowers in short-term certification programs, with the intention of providing more funding for alternative paths to a four-year college degree or trade school.

Nicholas Kent, the department's undersecretary, acknowledged during remarks at the beginning of negotiations that a standard four-year college degree is losing its value.

"Americans are questioning whether the value of higher education is worth the cost. Polling also shows that students do not believe they are graduating with the specific skills that they need," Kent said. He added that skepticism about college degrees has led to students "showing more interest in pathways that get them into the labor force more quickly and without unnecessary debt."

College still remains the primary path in the US for postsecondary education, and recent data from the New York Federal Reserve showed that it continues to lead to higher earnings. In addition, proponents argue the value of college extends beyond earnings to social opportunities and exposure to new ideas.

However, high student debt loads and a growing number of jobs eliminating degree requirements have sparked a growing interest in short-term credential programs and the trades, which the Trump administration is attempting to boost.

Chris Madaio, a senior advisor at the nonprofit The Institute for College Access and Success, told Business Insider that with more Pell grant support extended to short-term programs, it's likely that more schools will offer them and more students will enroll.

"I think it's all ensuring that students take what's right for them," Madaio said. "These programs should pay off for students, and they should give a good value and use students' limited lifetime Pell grant eligibility for something that's going to work for them and potentially allow them to get a job later down the road."

Strengthening the college and non-college paths

The Department of Education's Workforce Pell proposal will have a period of public comment before it is set to be implemented in July 2026.

If the rule is implemented as proposed, eligibility guidelines would vary by state. According to the department, each state will determine what qualifies as a high-skill, high-wage, or in-demand job based on what aligns with the industry needs in that state. For example, a state where agriculture dominates the economy might choose to prioritize short-term programs in that field.

Madaio said that this state variance is by design: "It's really important that states are taking a close look at what they're approving to ensure that there are jobs in that state and that these are valuable workforce training programs for jobs that are needed in that state."

Accountability is key here, Madaio said, and states should ensure that schools are delivering on the value of the programs they offer. Otherwise, students could be left paying off loans they cannot afford — and that's something that the gainful employment rule, which the department is set to negotiate in January, will address.

"These are really positive developments that show that there's a broad agreement across the political spectrum that we owe it to students to make sure that the programs that they're investing in are going to provide a quality education and that they're going to get something out of it," Carolyn Fast, director of higher education policy at the left-leaning think-tank The Century Foundation, told Business Insider.

Some high schools across the country are working to shift the emphasis away from a four-year college as the only option. Business Insider previously visited a public high school in rural Wyoming, for example, that works to equip students for college, career, or the workforce, giving students the freedom to choose the path that best suits their interests.

Overall, the higher education financing landscape is undergoing significant changes. In addition to the negotiations on Workforce Pell and gainful employment, the Department of Education recently concluded negotiations on a repayment overhaul that condenses the number of existing repayment plans, replacing them with less generous options that could lead to higher payments and shorter timelines to debt relief for student-loan borrowers.

As the slew of higher education changes takes effect, Madaio said that students should expect to see more advertising for short-term programs that are funded by grants. He recommended that students closely examine the actual costs of a program and its outcomes to avoid predatory behavior by schools.

"A critical piece is for students to do their homework when deciding on a certificate credential program, and then consider what kind of jobs they can get for that, and are those things that they need the training for?" Madaio said.

Sriraam Raja, the founding engineer at the software company Decode, has been using generative AI to write code for two years. He says he can get projects done about twice as fast when he uses a chatbot to code with intention. Then one day, he fired off directions, and as he sat there while the bot's wheels turned, he realized he could have actively written what he was aimlessly waiting for the bot to do. "I was giving away a bit of my agency, and so I made a decision to be very conscious," he tells me.

Raja has become "very specific about when I delegate, and also how much I delegate," he says. Waiting for the AI to spit out code can disrupt the flow of his work, and trusting too much work to it has led him to sometimes get bogged down in a lengthy review process. He's also anxious about the long-term effects AI can have on how we all think and problem solve. "There's a side effect where everyone's confidence has increased, but so has their laziness, and their willingness to learn things from first principles has dropped," he says. "I've definitely seen a drop in curiosity that I haven't seen before, and so that worries me."

The Collins dictionary made vibe coding its 2025 word of the year. Coined by OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy in February, the term refers to using language and generative AI to speed up the coding process. Soon after, companies were adding it as a desired skill in job listings.

Vibe coding was the catalyst for the sort of vibe work era we've entered. It's a shift in how people think about their roles and relationships to work amid an AI boom, and software engineering, long considered a stable and lucrative career path, has perhaps been the career most scrutinized and pushed down a path toward automation. Product managers have suggested that AI will supercharge them, allowing them to take on some technical coding tasks and work without engineers.

Execs have been all-in: Mark Zuckerberg said he expected AI to write half of Meta's code within a year; this spring, AI was already doing about a third of code at Google and on some Microsoft projects. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted in March that 90% of code would be generated by AI in three to six months. The bullish estimate hasn't materialized for most, but Amodei said in October the company's AI tool Claude was writing most of the code at Anthropic. Cognition, which built an AI-powered software engineer it named Devin, is now valued at $10 billion. Some without computer science backgrounds or any training in coding are vibe coding their own projects.

Vibe coding isn't yet the miracle that AI evangelists have professed. AI-generated code can have sneaky errors that pose security risks. As it takes on the work of junior developers, companies eager for gain could displace humans. Time banked with shortcuts now could disrupt training ground for learning basic coding skills, creating a tech worker career ladder collapse could ricochet through the industry. There is potential for developers to save time, to use AI to learn new languages and skills (something Raja tells me he's done), and to pare down their technical debt, or code that needs maintenance. But the impact of AI on the industry is more complicated than it is a silver bullet to efficiency.

Last year, "we were dealing with a lot of optimism and a lot of magical thinking" around the capabilities of AI, says Tariq Shaukat, CEO of Sonar, a company that provides developers with tools to verify code. "The vibe engineering tools are producing a lot of quantity. It's getting more functionally correct, but it's actually becoming more difficult to determine the quality and get the level of trust that you need to integrate that into your code base." The ranks of AI holdouts among developers are shrinking. A 2025 survey of professional developers from Stack Overflow found that only 19.3% don't use AI, and a commensurate 19.7% have an unfavorable opinion of AI. Yet less than 3% of respondents said they highly trust AI for accuracy.

Anyone who has asked a chatbot a question knows that even a short inquiry often results in a verbose response. The same is true of code — when AI generates it, it's typically longer, making the possibility of errors hiding in the code more likely. Amy Carrillo Cotten, senior director of customer transformation at software development company Uplevel, told me in September: "For a lot of engineers, the only thing that looks different is where they spend their time, not exactly how much time it took." Uplevel studied 800 software developers last year and compared the productivity levels of those who used GitHub's Copilot to those who did not. The developers who used Copilot weren't more efficient or less burnt out, and their code had bugs in it 41% more frequently. (GitHub's own research found that those who used Copilot wrote about 18 lines of clean code, compared to 16 lines for those who didn't.) For many, that shift from writing to reviewing code is "not the job they signed up for," Shaukat says, which brings a big adjustment for many developers.

"The job looks completely different," says Frank Fusco, CEO of a software company called Silicon Society. His company works with clients on their software, but now they often get amateur, vibe coded versions of those ideas as the starting point. "What I would normally do in code that would take me days, I now do in words and it takes me hours." But Fusco tells me he worries about a decline in critical thinking and basic coding skills. We're "hardwired," he says, to find "the shortest path to the solution." But that approach isn't the best for sharpening coding skills. "It really is a muscle that you have to work all the time."

It's tricky to say AI is already killing developer jobs. Years of layoffs and "right-sizing" in the tech industry, paired with the economic precarity that has also defined 2025, could be shifting industry roles alongside AI. As of November, there were about 92,500 active job postings seeking software engineers, down from nearly 102,000 last November and 159,000 at the start of 2023, according to data from CompTIA, a nonprofit trade association for the US IT industry. The number of active tech job posts overall has fallen, from 621,000 in early 2023 to 433,500 last month. But the proportion of open jobs looking for AI skills has jumped by 53% this year.

After two decades of being told to pursue computer science as a stable career and a proliferation of coding bootcamps, working as a developer may not be as cushy. College seniors studying computer science are more likely than any other discipline to say they're "very pessimistic" about their careers, according to a 2025 survey from early career website Handshake. They're the group most likely to say the advances of generative AI have made them regret their major choice. But young people are divided — 43% of computer science majors said they think AI will have a positive effect on their careers.

Automation is in some ways marking "a correction" on the developer labor market, says April Schuppel, developer relations manager at software company Apryse. Before AI, "we needed as many people who were really pushing out the code to take the ideas of the visionaries and bring them to life." Now, "the people who have always been able to make the most impact, they're still the ones that are the safest." Developers who looked at their jobs as clearing tickets might be more replaceable than those who were creative and cared about the project from start to finish. We're far from realizing the end game of vibe coding, but for creative, forward-thinking developers, there's optimism for now. "The more well-rounded people are the ones that are going to have success," Schuppel says.

AI could bring more opportunity for software testers, and also help companies pare down their technical debt. The developer job market might look messy right now, but there's still a heavy focus on the human aspect of the career than in the picture painted by some Big Tech execs. "If there are opportunities for more fine-tuned models, more specialized models that only do certain types of code updates, and there is a way to use that more to augment human developers as opposed to replace, that seems like that's where this is going," says Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA.

Codebases are valuable, and the security risks posed by goofs in AI code are serious threats. Traffic to vibe coding sites slumped in September after a summer of hype. Even Karpathy said his latest project is "basically entirely hand-written (with tab autocomplete)" in a post on X. "I tried to use claude/codex agents a few times but they just didn't work well enough at all and net unhelpful." If 2025 was the year tech companies went all in on AI, 2026 might be the year when some of the craze around vibe coding subsides and reality sets in.

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Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.