• Emil Barr, 22, started a company in his college dorm and is worth over $25 million.
• He said he spent most of his time at college working and has no regrets.
• Barr said he still works around the clock, but has optimized his life so he has more time for family.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 22-year-old Emil Barr from Ohio. Business Insider has verified Barr's claims, including his net worth. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

When I wrote that maintaining a work-life balance will keep you mediocre in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in August, I didn't think my views were that controversial.

I built my first company, Step Up Social, from my dorm room during my 2021 and 2022 sophomore and junior years at Miami University.

I received thousands of comments beneath the article and on social media on the three-and-a-half hours I slept on average each night, the classes I skipped, the friends I lost, and how I outsourced everything nonessential, including cooking food, meaning I gained 80 pounds.

It was all so I could spend as much time as possible on my company, and get closer to achieving my goal of being a billionaire by age 30.

Step Up Social was worth $15 million when I exited last year, and my second business, the employee upskilling platform Flashpass, is now valued at $50 million.

What really surprised me was how negatively many people reacted. Some called me crazy, which I took as a compliment, as I've always been a bit weird. Others thought I was a jerk because I suggested they weren't making money because they weren't working hard enough

But we can't be the generation that demands paid internships while we're still in college, wants to work from home in our pajamas, and preaches this idea that everyone should make six figures and work a four-day week.

I believe advocating for extreme work-life balance is a recipe for mediocrity.

I accept that lots of people have very fulfilling lives working 40-hour weeks and being able to show up for their kids, and that making $20 million in your early 20s is not the norm.

I ate a lot of cheeseburgers and cookies to survive working until 3 a.m.

At the time, it was all about survival. You get really hungry when you're still working at 3 a.m. Unfortunately, in my college town, the only places open after midnight were the cookie store and the cheeseburger joint, so I ate a lot of those.

Since cutting out the midnight cookies and cheeseburgers, I've lost about 30 pounds, but I'd love to lose another 30 in the next year. I've tried to do things like hire trainers, but my work schedule is still far too demanding. I care very little about how I look and more about how my weight and health affect decision-making.

Focusing on my business instead of getting blackout drunk wasn't a huge sacrifice

Most of my relationships didn't survive. But I find college relationships inherently superficial, with very little business yield and far less personal yield than people think. Drinking with a group of quasi-strangers for six hours until I black out has never really appealed to me. It didn't feel like an immense sacrifice to not have 50 people blowing me up on Snapchat to go to the bar on a Saturday night.

I've also had childhood friends reach out and say, "If you don't hire me for at least $100,000 a year, we're no longer friends." Some people become a bit parasitic and feel like they're entitled to some portion of your wealth.

But I have really valuable and deep relationships with others who are either starting and building companies or who have built and sold them. There's such a small group of entrepreneurs who have also really had to make sacrifices.

I've optimized my life to spend more time with my family

As for my family, I don't think they had any idea what was going on.

I missed most major events, like Christmas and Thanksgiving, from 2021 to 2023. I always thought I would spend more time with them once I had achieved some degree of financial freedom, but I didn't convey that to them. That was a bit painful for my family, because it felt like I was estranged, and they didn't know why. But if I had communicated the degree of financial risk and pressure I was under, I think it would have made them far more worried about me.

I think they get it now, especially since I've optimized my life to spend time with them. I typically work 100-hour weeks, getting up around 8:30 a.m. and working with minimal breaks until about 6 p.m. Then I'll spend between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. with family and friends, then work until 1 a.m.

Financial freedom has also enabled me to have a more flexible travel schedule. Sometimes I'll visit my grandparents in Chicago or my dad in New Mexico. I've also been able to gift my family things like cars.

My girlfriend, whom I met at college, has been super supportive. She lives with me and is used to how I work. I'd like to have a family, but I don't think about it too much, as I'm sure most 22-year-olds don't.

I would make the same choices again. I was fortunate in how quickly my sacrifices resulted in a return on investment. This was not 15 years of not seeing my family or becoming chronically obese. This was a very concentrated, 24 months of real effort that started with me as an 18-year-old with no money and ended with me being a millionaire.

• A Russian drone nearly struck a vehicle carrying a small crew of Ukrainian special operators.
• An operator who survived the attack told Business Insider that he credits the driver's skills.
• The driver managed to maneuver away from the Russian drone, and it struck the side of the road.

The Russian drone screamed as it chased down the Ukrainian vehicle at high speed, going for a direct strike. One of the soldiers in the back opened fire with a machine gun, but couldn't knock it down.

"It starts to maneuver to hit us," said Khyzhak, one of the Ukrainian special operators who was riding shotgun in the vehicle.

"And my dude in the backseat, he started the shooting — firing — at the drone," he said. Drones, though, are notoriously hard to hit. The operator couldn't get a clean shot.

"But our driver — he drove like a god," Khyzhak said.

In his first interview since the harrowing incident, Khyzhak — for security reasons identified only by his call sign, "Predator" in Ukrainian — told Business Insider that the Russian drone armed with an explosive closed to within just a few feet during the chase.

He captured the entire incident on his helmet camera. The drone narrowly missed and detonated by the roadside.

Checking to see if they had been hit, the Ukrainian soldiers scrambled to get out of the vehicle. After realizing they had actually survived the attack, a shock in this war where so many haven't, they quickly got back in and sped off, fearing that another Russian drone might be on its way to their location.

The dangerous incident occurred in September in Ukraine's northeastern Sumy region, but the 4th Ranger Regiment, a Ukrainian special operations unit modeled after its US Army counterparts, only published the footage captured from Khyzhak's camera in mid-November.

The footage offers a front-row seat to the style of drone warfare that has been playing out on the battlefield in Ukraine for years. First-person-view (FPV) drones that carry explosive warheads, like the one in this video, are a common way for both sides to deliver cheap and deadly precision strikes on vehicles and personnel.

At the time of the incident, Khyzhak, a small-unit commander in the 4th Ranger Regiment, was traveling back to base with two other operators and their driver after completing a front-line mission.

The Ukrainians were in a buggy, a four-wheel vehicle with no external protection but excellent maneuverability and speed, when the Russian FPV drone suddenly appeared from behind.

The hostile drone was a fiber-optic FPV, meaning that it could not be jammed and disabled with electronic warfare. The best chance soldiers have to defeat these weapons is to shoot them, but even then, it requires precision and a lot of luck. It's a hard shot even when soldiers aren't fighting from the back of a moving vehicle.

Khyzhak said he experienced an "instant adrenaline explosion" and that there was no time to think; all he knew was that they needed to shoot it down.

"I'm looking at the drone, [and the] drone's looking at me. I know it wants to kill me, or just hit me, so I need to do something with that," he recalled. But options were limited. "You can try to shoot it down, and you can try to maneuver, just what our driver did."

The buggy driver saw the drone coming from behind and realized it was moving into position to strike the front of the vehicle. He pumped the brakes a few seconds before the anticipated impact, and it exploded a few feet away.

In the scramble to exit their vehicle, one of the operators broke his leg while jumping out. In the moment, though, they were focused on surviving and then getting out of there before another drone came to kill them. It's not uncommon for more to follow.

Khyzhak said that he "absolutely" credits the buggy driver with saving the crew's lives. In such an exposed vehicle, a direct hit would have almost certainly caused serious damage, as well as injuries or worse, among the operators.

"Our drivers in our battalion — our squad — I think they're big, big professionals, and we are lucky to have them on our side," Khyzhak said. "I trust them absolutely and completely."

Russian and Ukrainian forces continue to use small drones with explosives to deliver strikes on enemy positions, equipment, weaponry, military vehicles, and personnel as uncrewed systems increasingly dominate the conflict.

Drones are estimated to be responsible for destroying around 90% of targets on the battlefield, Lt. Col. Yurii Myronenko, Ukraine's deputy minister of defense for innovation and a former drone unit commander, recently told Business Insider.

• Realtor.com ranked the 10 US cities where home values have increased the most since 2019.
• The company found that the cities are mostly located in the South and Northeast.
• A Tennessee boomtown leads the way, with average home values up $189,865 since 2019.

If you've checked your home's estimated value on a real-estate listing site like Realtor.com or Zillow lately, you may have noticed it dip.

You're not alone. In cities across the country, high mortgage rates and economic uncertainty have cooled buyer demand, slowing price growth and knocking the value of some homes down by thousands of dollars.

However, some cities are doing better than others. Realtor.com has identified 10 metros, mostly located in the South and Northeast, where home values have experienced the largest double-digit gains since 2019.

To find them, Realtor.com looked at the top 100 US metros and calculated the average change in a home's value between October 2019 and October 2025 in each city, then compared that to the average 2019 value to determine the percentage difference.

Here are the 10 cities where home values have climbed the most since 2019, according to Realtor.com.

Business Insider included each city's percentage change in home values and average dollar change since October 2019, as well as the median home sale price as of October 2025 using data from Realtor.com.

10. Chattanooga, Tennessee – Georgia

• Percentage change in home values since 2019: 72.9%
• Average amount of change since October 2019: $149,470
• Median listing price as of October 2025: $399,950

9. Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, North Carolina -South Carolina

• Percentage change in home values since 2019: 73.1%
• Average amount of change since October 2019: $206,597
• Median listing price as of October 2025: $438,348

8. New Haven, Connecticut

• Percentage change in home values since 2019: 73.8%
• Average amount of change since October 2019: $209,131
• Median listing price as of October 2025: $459,500

7. Rochester, New York

• Percentage change in home values since 2019: 75.2%
• Average amount of change since October 2019: $133,699
• Median listing price as of October 2025: $267,950

6. Portland-South Portland, Maine

• Percentage change in home values since 2019: 75.7%
• Average amount of change since October 2019: $289,366
• Median listing price as of October 2025: $599,000

5. Syracuse, New York

• Percentage change in home values since 2019: 77.6%
• Average amount of change since October 2019: $131,816
• Median listing price as of October 2025: $297,450

4. Scranton-Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

• Percentage change in home values since 2019: 78.4%
• Average amount of change since October 2019: $89,803
• Median listing price as of October 2025: $262,350

3. Charleston-North Charleston, South Carolina

• Percentage change in home values since 2019: 81.3%
• Average amount of change since October 2019: $311,798
• Median listing price as of October 2025: $499,250

2. Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, Arkansas

• Percentage change in home values since 2019: 84.5%
• Average amount of change since October 2019: $195,153
• Median listing price as of October 2025: $438,486

1. Knoxville, Tennessee

• Percentage change in home values since 2019: 85.9%
• Average amount of change since October 2019: $189,865
• Median listing price as of October 2025: $449,900

• For the past three and a half years, I've been living in a tiny home in the mountains of California.
• I love many things about this lifestyle, like not having clutter or much space to clean.
• However, I miss living near my parents in the Midwest and wish I had more space for my belongings.

I was first drawn to the idea of tiny living after watching "Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things" on Netflix.

As a recovering compulsive collector, the concept of living a simpler, smaller life was very appealing to me. From there, I decided I also wanted to live in a community of tiny homes, where I'd be surrounded by others with some similar ideals.

After a few years of researching and planning, I got a house and moved from Minnesota to a tiny-home community inside a national forest in California.

My home is just 388 square feet, with two lofts (including one with full-size stairs leading up to it), a full bathroom, a kitchen, and a washer and dryer.

It's one of about two dozen others in my community, where people can park the homes they own or rent them from others. My neighbors are wonderful, and I've gotten to know them even more because I got a job nearby.

I've had a great experience living this way for the past three and a half years — even if I may not stay here or in such a small space forever.

This lifestyle has come with great lessons and perks

One of the most important lessons I've learned over the past few years is that less is more.

Having less clutter around me also seems to keep my mind in a way more peaceful state. Fortunately, a small space makes it easy to own fewer things.

When I lived in bigger houses, I would find myself accumulating possessions without even thinking about it. Now that my space is limited, I make every purchase with great intention and consideration.

I prioritize essentials, and if I need new clothing items, I first make room for them by donating garments I no longer wear.

I spend far less time doing household chores now than before I moved in here, too. A significant advantage of a tiny house is that I have less space to clean.

Though I used to let my laundry pile up for weeks at a time, I no longer have the room to do so. Now, I wash my clothes once a week.

For me, home is wherever my house is — and that might be changing in the next few years

My parents are still settled in Minnesota, and I miss them dearly.

My mom has been struggling with her health, and I don't want to leave the responsibility of taking care of our aging parents solely to my sister, who lives much closer.

If I were to move back home, I'm leaning toward bringing my house with me because I'm pretty attached to it and not yet ready to retire from tiny living.

Fortunately, my house is on four wheels. Plus, my parents still have a leveled space on their property where my home used to sit before I moved it.

I'd have to bring the structure back across the country with a long-haul transport company, just as I did to get it to California in the first place.

From there, I'd mostly just have to navigate connecting my home to their electricity, water, and septic systems.

Though I love tiny living, I know it probably won't be forever

At this point in my life, I'm very comfortable in my tiny home, but for a few reasons, I know I won't live this way forever.

Though having less stuff around is definitely a plus, I still miss some of my possessions.

My old bedroom at my parents' house serves as my storage unit, complete with a fairly large collection of artwork and many knickknacks with sentimental value that I currently don't have room to display.

I also have quite a few pieces of wood furniture that I love, but have no space for. I'd be lying if I said my house wouldn't feel like much more of a home if I had room for these things.

I'm also supposed to inherit a piano from my parents, and that's definitely not going to fit in my tiny home.

One day, it'd also be nice to have enough room so I don't have to modify positions during my at-home yoga classes. I also miss having a real closet, as a garment rack just isn't the same.

Additionally, the ceilings in my lofts are 4'7", and I'm 5'7" — bending over to put away laundry or change my bed already takes a toll on my back, which I imagine will only worsen as I age.

Though I'm currently happily single and have been for years, I'd like to leave room in my life, both emotionally and physically, for another person.

Unfortunately, it'd be extremely challenging to share my small space with someone. I could see myself someday living in a house that's just a bit bigger … maybe 600 to 800 square feet would be ideal.

But, for now, the positives of tiny living far outweigh the negatives. I'm grateful for however long I get to experience this lifestyle, whether it's a few more months or another decade.

• Gloria Cazares's daughter, Jackie, 9, was killed during the Uvalde school shooting on May 24, 2022.
• The mom has kept the girl's bedroom exactly how it looked on that tragic day she left for school.
• Cazares appears in a new Netflix film about the now-empty bedrooms of victims of school shootings.

This story is based on a conversation with Gloria Cazares, 42, a home healthcare nurse from Uvalde, Texas, whose daughter, Jackie, 9, was killed during the Robb Elementary School shooting. She appears in the Netflix short documentary "All The Empty Rooms," premiering on December 1. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

My husband, Javier, 45, has gone into our daughter Jackie's bedroom every day since she passed, because he feels closer to her there.

He recites a prayer that they used to say together each night: "Angels East, angels West, North and South. Just do your best. Watch me and protect me while I rest."

The words bring some comfort, but the room should be filled with joy, warmth, and life as it once was.

We've kept it just as it was when Jackie, a fourth grader, left for school on May 24, 2022. We never thought of changing it because it pays tribute to the memory of our bright, funny little girl.

The bedroom pays tribute to Jackie's memory

The walls are painted purple and pink, her favorite colors, and a string of LED lights surrounds the ceiling. They shine bright to this day.

Javier, a glazer and talented in art, painted a unicorn on one of the walls. She loved it, especially because her dad used fluorescent paint, so it glows in the dark. Beneath it, there's a fairy swinging on a heart.

Recordings of Jackie's voice are inside two Build-A-Bears

She watched the cartoon "Miraculous," set in Paris, and was obsessed with the city. Her pink and white comforter is covered with miniature Eiffel Towers, and she had other Paris-themed knickknacks, such as an Eiffel Tower-shaped box to store her jewelry.

There are plushies on her bed, and Build-A-Bears that were gifted to us after she died. Two of the bears contain recordings of her voice. She's singing a song in one and laughing out loud with her dogs in the other.

Those recordings bring back her personality, always characterized by kindness to others. She loved to look after people and take on a responsible role. If she were at a birthday party, she wanted to serve the ice cream or cut the cake.

Jackie was also enthusiastic and smart. Javier and I attended a special awards ceremony at her school on the morning of the shooting. It celebrated the students' accomplishments. That was the last time I saw my daughter.

A coworker wrote that there was an active shooter at the school

We left the ceremony at 11:08 a.m., timestamped by a photo I sent to Jackie's phone of her with some friends when they were younger. Later, we found out that the shooting had started at 11:33 a.m.

I was back at work and leaving a patient's house when I received a text from a coworker close to noon. She'd heard there was an active shooter inside Jackie's school.

Instinct made me drive to the school. The moment I was on the main highway, I saw police cars and other law enforcement vehicles rushing in the same direction. I followed behind them.

I got to a block away and joined other parents who had gathered on the opposite side of the fourth-grade hallway. Then we heard gunfire. It was chaotic.

The hospital nurses wanted to speak to my husband and me

Javier was there by then, and children were later loaded onto buses. But they couldn't find Jackie. My niece heard that they were taking students to the hospital and headed that way because she was closer.

She saw an ambulance pulling into the ER and a little girl being taken out on a stretcher. She looked like Jackie. When Javier and I got to the hospital, they wouldn't tell us anything for hours. Then, around 4 p.m., two rangers and a chaplain said the nurses wanted to speak to us.

They said they had a child who matched our daughter's description and wanted us to identify her body. It was Jackie. She was gone forever.

I have an ache in my heart

Three and a half years on, grief is part of me now. Some days you can just carry it with you, and there are other days when it just knocks the wind out of you. The days when I talk about her and share her personality and our deep love for her help a little bit with the ache in my heart.

Meanwhile, whenever Javier and I go to her bedroom, our eyes settle on Jackie's comforter. She wanted to visit Paris when she was older. We might have taken the trip as a graduation gift for her.

• AI is changing the way we search — and transforming the practice of search engine optimization.
• Brands want to ensure they're visible in AI searches and that they're accurately represented.
• Experts from Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity shared their top generative engine optimization tips.

Artificial intelligence is transforming online search.

Rather than peruse the list of long links on a search engine results page, users are increasingly being served AI overviews — snippets of content that aim to immediately answer their questions — or consulting chatbots and answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity when researching purchases.

About half of US consumers are using AI-powered search to evaluate and discover brands, per a recent McKinsey report.

The shift is upending the world of search engine optimization (SEO), a practice that involves designing web pages and securing links from high-quality sites to help brands rank highly on search engine results pages.

New cottage industries like generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) are emerging as companies strive to keep their brands visible — and accurately represented — within AI-driven interfaces.

For Business Insider's recent series on the shifting search landscape, we asked experts at some of the biggest AI platforms how brands can best position themselves for this new era of conversational, AI-powered search.

Here are some key GEO tips from Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity

Google:

Danny Sullivan, director at Google Search, said the core principles of SEO generally apply to new forms of AI search.

"Plenty of sites succeed because they don't do SEO, or hire SEOs," Sullivan said. "They don't think about it because they're just focused on making great content."

General website and structured data hygiene are important for ensuring Google's search crawlers can get to the relevant content, Sullivan said, and are also important for AI answers because they still have a lot of traditional search results at their core.

AI formats are also getting better at multi-modal queries, such as when a user asks, "What's in this video?" That's an extra reason for brands to incorporate more images and videos, Sullivan said.

"If you've still been a text-only kind of player, more images and videos may help you. But they would have helped you anyway," Sullivan said.

Sullivan said any GEO tools that advise designing content solely for rank and visibility purposes lose "track of the big picture."

"Are you doing things that are useful for human beings?" he said. "That's what we want to reward."

Microsoft:

Krishna Madhavan, principal product manager for Microsoft Bing, said the fundamentals of SEO are still critical, including structure and freshness signals that make content easier for AI to consume.

This includes using Q&A sections, sitemaps, and schema — a code that helps search engines understand sites — as well as adopting IndexNow, a protocol that tells search engines when a site changes.

Stylistically, Madhavan also suggests lists and tables instead of long walls of text, and advises keeping punctuation simple, including avoiding em dashes and symbols.

"The way to win remains the same: disciplined fundamentals, not shortcuts or hype, then quick innovation," Madhavan said.

What is new, Madhavan said, is that companies must think about optimizing for inclusion in a synthesized answer, rather than simply a list of links on a search results page.

"Think beyond keywords to user intent, question‑answer structure, and machine‑readable cues that make your content easy to parse," Madhavan said.

Perplexity:

"There's going to be a lot of people who benefit from implying that they're very good at GEO," said Jesse Dwyer, head of communications at Perplexity. "And then there's going to be a lot of tech companies, specifically AI companies, who benefit from saying that it's all hogwash. The reality is always somewhere in between."

With the shift from SEO to GEO, "the biggest mistake you can make is to just try and transfer your understanding apples to apples," Dwyer said — and a lot of the companies offering GEO services are doing just that.

Dwyer said he's also been advising marketers that AI search will shift budgets toward old-fashioned brand marketing. AI removes the "friction" of search and lets people buy things just by asking for them. As a result, building a strong brand will become increasingly important, he said.

• This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.

Are you fed up at work? Sick of it all? Ready to throw in the towel?

You're likely not alone. The job market isn't providing a lot of opportunities for mobility, keeping most people stuck in place, even if they'd otherwise look to move.

But everyone has their limits.

The new year is a great time for a professional reassessment. (I'm not suggesting quitting before bonus season. Do you think I'm an animal?)

If you're thinking of jumping into the great unknown, we've got some advice for you. BI compiled four personal essays from people who quit their jobs and aren't looking back. The series — "Quitting Without Regret" — shows that while quitting isn't easy, it can lead to a more intentional and meaningful career.

Here's some of the advice that came across in the essays.

Have a plan, even if you can't stick to it. Jenny Wood created a detailed spreadsheet to weigh the pros and cons of quitting her job at Google, where she had spent nearly two decades. She also identified the people she wanted to network with before she left. Ultimately, though, she recognized she couldn't plan everything out and had to take action. "Fear adds friction, which slows you down without actually minimizing risk," she said.

You just gotta keep livin', man. Quitting isn't always about being frustrated at work. Sometimes it's because you're hoping there's more out there than maintaining what can feel like the status quo. Jim Kukral left his job as a sales director at 54 years old to start a party boat business. He recognizes it's a risk (and his and his wife's retirement at stake), but "if I don't do it, I feel like I can't break free from this matrix of a world that we've created for ourselves."

Remember: Work isn't life. What if you love your job? That's the case for Victoria Dobbie. She loves her job at TikTok, but the 30-year-old decided she wanted to travel the world for at least six months. With no kids and no partner, she feels now's the best time to do something she's always wanted to do.

Don't let the golden handcuffs scare you. Jay Gengelbach was making $700K working in tech when he quit in mid-2024. He was terrified of walking away from such a big compensation package, but was feeling unfulfilled. He eventually landed at a smaller tech company, where he's enjoying the quicker pace of delivering things at a smaller company.

• Business Insider asked etiquette experts about the mistakes to avoid when attending a work event.
• Showing up dressed inappropriately and not greeting members of leadership are major faux pas.
• Hiding behind your phone instead of socializing can also be seen as rude.

No one wants to be that coworker. You know, the one everyone talks after a work party.

Work gatherings can be a great way to connect with your colleagues and celebrate your professional accomplishments together. However, inappropriate behaviors can harm your professional reputation.

That's why Business Insider asked two etiquette experts to share the mistakes guests should avoid making at work events. Here's what they said.

Showing up dressed inappropriately

Pamela Eyring, owner of The Protocol School of Washington, which teaches business etiquette, told Business Insider that when it comes to work events, a big faux pas is dressing too informally for the business environment.

"Before you go to the work party, think about what you're going to wear," she said. For example, you don't want to dress like you're going to a nightclub.

When in doubt, avoid styles you'd be uncomfortable wearing to work during the day. You can also try checking the event's invitation for a dress code.

In addition to dressing professionally, though, Eyring also emphasized the importance of communicating the dress code to any guests you bring.

Making assumptions about what people celebrate

At seasonal events and parties, it's especially important to steer clear of holiday-specific wishes unless you know exactly what your colleagues celebrate.

When in doubt, Sheree Bryant Sekou, a business-etiquette expert and leadership consultant, said it's best to stick to broad, culturally sensitive greetings like "happy holidays."

Skipping leadership greetings

"A lot of people avoid senior leaders, like the president, CEO, or even their boss's boss" at work events and parties, Eyring said.

But instead of being fearful of saying hello, she told BI that guests should use this opportunity to make their presence known to senior leaders.

If you're unsure of what to say, try referencing something they've shared recently — or simply thank them for hosting the party.

Sitting out on the fun and ignoring planned activities

"If there's a DJ or band, prepare to get up and dance, even if you don't like to or don't think you are good at it," Eyring told BI. "If there are activities, participate."

After all, this is your opportunity to connect with coworkers and show them a lighter side of you that they may not always get to experience in the workplace.

Hiding behind your phone instead of socializing

Eyring told BI that one of the biggest mistakes you can make at a work party is hiding behind your phone.

"There are a lot of people who feel anxious when attending these events, and they don't really know many people," Eyring told BI. "Instead of mixing and mingling because they're introverted or feeling anxious, they sit behind their phone and scroll."

However, by doing this, you're missing out on a valuable chance to network and get to know other people at the company.

Of course, there are valid reasons to have a phone out during the party. But if you're showing colleagues photos on your phone, for example, do it quickly and then put it away, Eyring said.

Taking photos of people without their permission

Eyring said another appropriate use case for phones at a work party includes taking photos with coworkers — but only if permission is obtained first.

"People don't always like having their photo taken when they aren't posed or haven't been asked to be a part of a photo," she told BI.

Likewise, it's a good idea to ask for permission before posting or sharing the photo with others. "Some people also don't want to be seen on someone else's social media page drinking, or holding a glass, either," Eyring said.

Discussing sensitive conversation topics

At work events, it's best to steer clear of any topic that could be seen as delicate or controversial.

"Proceed with caution when mentioning anything that falls into a category where people might have distinct or strong feelings about that topic. That includes politics, romantic relationships, money, and religion," Sekou told BI.

Instead, she said, it's safer to have low-stakes conversations about family, vacations, and hobbies.

Packing up leftovers to bring home without permission

When extra food is left behind, it can be tempting to pack it up to take home. However, this can come across as rude at a party.

"When you attend a work event, the goal is to connect and build relationships. Packing up food and other leftovers could be perceived as uncouth," Sekou said.

She also suggests being mindful when it comes to how much you take to eat in general. If you're not served a pre-portioned plate, avoid taking more food than you plan to eat in the moment.

Overstaying your welcome

Company events can be a great excuse to get to know your coworkers on a deeper level. However, it's important that you don't let an engaging conversation cause you to overstay your welcome.

According to Sekou, it's essential to pick up on social cues and leave at the appropriate time.

"Pay attention to cues around exiting. Sometimes the music may go down, or the lights may come up. You might start to see people putting away dishes," Sekou said. "That's your sign to start winding it down."

• Andrew Yang warned in 2018 that automation could "destabilize society" and spark riots.
• He says that future is here, predicting 40 million job losses and urging a UBI funded by AI giants.
• "We could be doing much more for the millions of Americans who are going to be displaced," he said.

Andrew Yang has warned for several years that automation would upend the American workforce.

In the run-up to his 2020 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, he predicted that self-driving cars alone could displace a million mostly male truck drivers with limited education — a shift that could "destabilize society" and even trigger "riots in the street," he told The New York Times in 2018.

Seven years later, Yang says the crisis he feared is no longer hypothetical.

"It's aging very, very well, unfortunately," he told CNN's Michael Smerconish of his predictions in a recent interview.

AI job losses are no longer theoretical

Recent analyses indicate that AI and automation are already capable of performing a significant share of US labor tasks and are reshaping employment.

MIT's Iceberg Index, released last week, found that current AI systems can already technically perform skills representing 11.7% of the US labor market — roughly $1.2 trillion in wages across finance, healthcare, and professional services.

The New York Times, citing internal Amazon strategy documents and interviews, reported in October that the company believes automation could allow it to avoid hiring more than 600,000 US workers over the next few years, and that its robotics team has an ultimate goal of automating 75% of its operations.

Salesforce, Walmart, HP, IBM, and Fiverr have all cited AI in recent rounds of layoffs or announced layoffs tied to AI.

"44% of American jobs are either repetitive manual or repetitive cognitive and thus could be subject to AI and automation," Yang said in the interview with CNN. "We're seeing that unfold right now."

Yang's 44% estimate is broadly in line with some major studies on automation.

An IMF analysis from 2024 suggested that around 60% of jobs in advanced economies will be affected by AI, with half benefiting from the technology and the other being negatively impacted by it.

A McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report released last month found that technologies could theoretically automate more than half of US work hours.

Yang's warning: Up to 40 million jobs could vanish

Yang pushed back against Roman Yampolskiy, a computer science professor at the University of Louisville and an AI safety researcher, who in September predicted 99% unemployment within five years.

"It's going to get bad. I certainly don't think 99% bad," Yang said.

Using his 44% vulnerability benchmark, Yang offered a rough projection: if the US "churns through" even half of those jobs over the next decade, the country could see 30 to 40 million positions eliminated.

"That would be devastating," he said. "That would be catastrophic for many, many communities."

His fix: guaranteed income paid for by the companies winning the AI boom

The rapid pace of AI-driven disruption has revived Yang's signature policy idea: a universal basic income that gives every American adult $1,000 a month, no strings attached.

He said guaranteed cash would help workers survive the shockwaves of automation and maintain basic economic stability.

To fund a nationwide program, Yang said the firms driving AI's explosive growth should bear the cost.

He cited Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who floated to Axios in May the idea of a "token tax" that the government should levy on AI companies.

With tech giants generating "hundreds of billions" in value — powered in part by data the public never knowingly provided — Yang said an AI tax or "compute tax" could raise "very big numbers very quickly."

Given that the US produced roughly $85,000 in GDP per person in 2024, according to the World Bank, Yang said his $12,000 annual Freedom Dividend "seems pretty modest and reasonable."

A final warning

Yang said that a cash stipend isn't a cure-all — people also need purpose, structure, and a sense of community.

But without financial stability, he said, millions risk being left behind and pushed toward radicalization.

"We could be doing much, much more for the millions of Americans who are going to be displaced," Yang said.

• A shadow market for AI training accounts has emerged as demand for data labeling surges.
• Opportunists are offering to buy and sell "verified" accounts to access remote AI training gigs.
• Business Insider found 100 Facebook groups containing posts promoting this shadow market.

There's a new black market in the world of AI.

Companies like Scale AI, Surge AI, and Mercor are hiring thousands of contractors around the world to help train AI chatbots by evaluating their responses for Big Tech clients — and that's given rise to a shadow economy in which workers' accounts are being illicitly offered for sale.

Business Insider's investigation found 100 groups on Facebook illicitly selling access to real and fake AI training accounts, which contractors require to work for data-labeling companies. After we flagged the phenomenon, Meta removed about 40 groups and pieces of content for violating its policies and is continuing to investigate, a spokesperson said.

The prominent AI training companies ban account reselling and say they have safeguards in place to prevent the practice. But what are purported to be "verified" accounts continue to be up for sale on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram.

Internal documents show Scale AI, which received a $14 billion investment from Meta in June, has been battling fraudulent and duplicate accounts and VPN misuse for years, and the company has barred users from some countries from projects to curb cheating.

These AI training companies have raised billions this year as tech giants race to secure the data needed to train their AI models and hire contractors, who are often referred to as "ghost workers" for their behind-the-scenes role in AI development.

Business Insider's findings show how AI training, also known as data labeling, is attracting scammers and shortcut seekers, similar to the account sharing that happened for food delivery and ride-hailing apps. It raises concerns for account buyers and sellers, who could be scammed and have their private information leaked, and for the clients paying the contracting companies.

Sara Saab, vice president of product at Prolific, a UK-based data-labeling startup, said that the company's research has shown that no single fraud ring is behind the movement, and that the underground industry has reached a level of sophistication seen in bank fraud or concert ticket scalping.

"Technologies that are helping data labeling companies are also helping people with bad intentions, fraudsters and scammers," she said.

When the work dries up, opportunists step in

Before contractors can receive tasks such as labeling images or suggesting alternative chatbot responses, they have to create accounts and complete screening tests on platforms like Scale AI-operated Outlier or Surge AI-operated DataAnnotation.tech. The work is remote, asynchronous, and pay can hit over $100 an hour.

Platforms like Outlier offer task-based projects that can last anywhere from a few hours to several months, often in regions where language translation or data annotation work is needed, or where pay rates are lower. When projects dry up, so does contractors' pay. That's where opportunists step in.

They target would-be trainers by selling "verified" Outlier accounts that belong to people in countries such as the US, where projects are still active, according to two former Outlier contractors in Kenya. Some may be real accounts, and some may be fake — but either way, reselling accounts is barred by the companies.

The two Kenyan contractors, whose identities are known to Business Insider, said they personally know people who had purchased accounts. They added that some also bought accounts if they were unable to pass the screening tests.

Account buyers use tools like a VPN or a "shadow proxy" to mask their true location by routing their internet connection through another person's device in the target country, said the two former contractors in Kenya.

There are plenty of social media profiles that claim they can teach account buyers how to get around data contracting companies' rules. Business Insider reviewed YouTube channels and Telegram groups that sell would-be taskers guides to "bypass geo-restrictions" or answers to Outlier's onboarding tests or specific projects.

Those who "rent" out their accounts to taskers charge an upfront fee, a percentage of future earnings, or both, according to four contractors who have been approached by people looking to buy their accounts.

Business Insider found one paid ad on WhatsApp that was seeking to purchase and resell verified accounts for two of the biggest AI training platforms, Outlier and Mercor.

Playground for scammers

Both sides are wary of scams, two contractors based in the US told Business Insider. Buyers worry that a "seller" may take payment and disappear. Sellers worry that their buyer won't offer them a percentage of future earnings once they hand over account login details.

In several posts seen by Business Insider, Facebook users said they had been scammed. Some said they paid for an AI training account, only for the scammer to block them and disappear with their money. Others said they were given an email address and password that wasn't actually registered with an AI training firm.

The two US contractors said that they often received direct messages on Reddit from people seeking to purchase their accounts after they passed the screening tests. Would-be buyers offered them a "fair payment" plus an unspecified cut of future earnings made via the account, according to a chat seen by Business Insider. One contractor said they ignore the requests because their accounts could be banned if they were caught. Another concern: They would be on the hook for income taxes for any paid work performed under their accounts.

Representatives for the biggest data companies, including Scale AI, Mercor, Prolific, and Surge AI, said buying and selling accounts is banned and that they have a variety of mechanisms, from monitoring Facebook groups to account-level pattern analysis, to detect fraud.

Facebook posts advertising the sale of such accounts also violate Meta's community standards and fraud and scams policy, a spokesperson confirmed.

"We use device, IP, and behavioral safeguards to identify and remove suspicious accounts before they can access any customer work," said a Scale AI spokesperson.

Scale AI confronts 'cheaters'

Internal Scale AI documents reviewed by Business Insider show that the company, founded in 2016, has been dealing with scammers for at least two years. On a project for Google in 2024, thousands of taskers were flagged in a document as "suspected spammers" or "cheaters." In a 2023 spreadsheet titled "Good and Bad Folks" and another called "suspicious non-US taskers," which Scale accidentally left public to anyone with the link, the company collected details of potential fraudsters.

Another spreadsheet from late 2023 shows rampant use of VPNs and multiple accounts belonging to the same person. The document contains a list of 490 contractors that were removed: 48 for using a VPN and a digital payments app that allows users to withdraw money in US dollars; 70 for accounts registered under the same name; and 11 for having two accounts. Another 21 users were removed for being "low quality" taskers.

The documents also show that a project with an unnamed client was plagued with quality issues. In one project progress tracking document, Scale AI managers discussed various strategies to "be ahead of the spammers." They included banning certain accounts from Egypt, Kenya, Pakistan, and other countries from participating in the project for using ChatGPT, and blocking the copying and pasting of content. The Kenya-based contractors Business Insider spoke to said that all AI training project opportunities in the region have sharply declined since late 2024.

The black market for Outlier accounts has spurred another cottage industry: hijacking real ones. Contractors have received fake job promotion emails asking for their login credentials. Scale AI banned one user for harvesting workers' contact info and spamming them in the summer, according to an email seen by Business Insider.

Prolific's Saab described the targeting of AI training platforms as an "accelerating arms race" between them and fraudsters — and said it requires proactive action from companies to stay ahead.

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