Tag: News

• Senior product manager Yung-Yu Lin shares six strategies for preparing for FAANG interviews.
• Strategies include mock interviews, subscribing to company news, and contacting recruiters.
• He also suggests people make notes and ask insightful questions at the end.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Yung-Yu Lin, a senior product manager at Google in Sunnyvale, California. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified his employment history.

In my two-decade-long tech career, I have worked in Taiwan, where I am from, and spent the last eight years in the US.

I was a software engineer at Yahoo in Taiwan, and moved to the US to pursue an MBA in 2014. Since graduation, I have worked at Meta, Visa, and PayPal and am currently a product manager at Google.

Over the years, I have designed an interview preparation strategy that has worked for me.

Here are six things I do leading up to a big technical interview:

1. Mock interviews

It doesn't matter who you are — everyone gets nervous in interviews.

The only thing you can do is practice and familiarize yourself with the interview process.

This is why I am a big believer in mock interviews, which can be taken on several career-building sites such as IGotAnOffer, which is what I used when preparing for Google.

I took four mock interviews, which were structured so that I was paired with another candidate attempting to get into Google. We took turns role-playing as an interviewer and a candidate. It was a helpful format because I not only got a second set of eyes on my performance, but also took notes on what my partner did well and what they didn't.

2. Prepare for technical questions

As a product manager, I did not have coding rounds like other tech roles such as software engineering or data science. However, I did have technical interview rounds focused on system design questions.

Practice system design questions are available on several websites and there are books. I would go through them one to two weeks before the interview and try to answer them.

I focused on preparing different examples for each use case.

3. Drop the recruiter a message

If I am able to clear the first round, I will proactively ask the recruiter what the second round looks like.

I always try to view recruiters as partners in my application process, and tell myself that they have the most information about the role. I always ask them for any information they can share about my next interview and what a successful candidate for my role looks like based on their experience.

4. Read my own notes

In the last 24 hours before a big interview, I stop doing any mock interviews or looking at new technical questions to prevent feeling even more anxious.

Instead, I keep a notebook where I jot down what went well and my weaknesses after each interview or question practice session. On the last day, I just go through those notes and try to sleep well.

5. Subscribe to company news

To have a good discussion, and to be able to ask informed questions at the end of my interview, I set up Google Search alerts for the company I am interviewing at.

I take a look at whatever is happening in the past week and if there are any significant updates or news about the company. I would try to plan a few questions around these updates, and ask interviewers what it means for the company or industry.

6. Prep questions to ask the interviewer

One of the biggest reasons I landed my first job at Meta was that my manager was happy with the questions I asked. They told me: "When we interviewed you, you had a good understanding of the company, about the business model, about the team's responsibility."

"You will need less time to boot up and to get on board," they said.

Here are two questions I try to ask:

1. What does a good team player look like?

   This shows you what their team dynamics looks like, and what you should pay attention to to be seen as a good colleague. And it gives your hiring manager confidence that you're interested in being part of a team.

2. What is the most challenging project of their time at the company?

   This can give you signals that if you join, how big is the scale of the problems you will be working on. It can also give you insight into opportunities for growth and what domains you will be working with.

   Do you work in tech, finance, or consulting and have a story to share about your career journey? Get in touch with this reporter at shubhangigoel@insider.com

• Camp David has been a destination for presidential rest and relaxation since it opened.
• The camp has also been the site of meetings and summits with various world leaders over the years.
• Camp David has been the site of some big national and foreign policy decisions.

Nestled in the countryside of Maryland, in the Catoctin Mountain Park, is the presidential country retreat known as Camp David.

The first parts of the complex were built by the Works Progress Administration in 1935, and Franklin D. Roosevelt made it the presidential retreat. FDR originally named the property "Shangri-La," a name it kept until the Eisenhower administration, who named it Camp David after his grandson.

The compound has expanded over the years, with new cabins being built and even a pool. It has also been the site of diplomatic events like the Camp David Accords in 1978 and the G8 summit in 2012.

Here's a look inside Camp David, where presidents go to escape Washington.

The original name of Camp David was Shangri-La, the name of a fictional Himalayan paradise in the 1933 novel "Lost Horizon."

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower took office, he renamed the property "Camp David," after his father and grandson who had the same name.

By the end of the Eisenhower administration, Camp David looked like this. The president's cabin — Aspen Lodge — was originally called the Bear's Den by FDR.

From the beginning, Camp David gave presidents a chance to enjoy the countryside.

Here, FDR and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill fish in the woods around "Shangri La." The two men reportedly planned the D-Day invasion from a porch on one of the cabins.

Since Camp David is in the Catoctin Mountain Park, it has a number of trails around it that presidents and their families can enjoy.

Horseback riding is also a common activity for the trails, as seen here with President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush.

Originally, the pool at Camp David was far from Aspen Lodge. President Lyndon B. Johnson can be seen enjoying the pool with family, friends, and staff.

Here's another shot of Johnson at the Camp David pool.

President Richard Nixon added a pool behind the Aspen Lodge in the 1970s. President Barack Obama apparently still enjoyed it decades later.

Obama White House photographer Pete Souza snapped a number of great behind-the-scenes shots of life at Camp David, which also has tennis and basketball courts.

As well as a pool table.

Camp David can provide a relaxing setting for presidents to do their work, away from the chaos of Washington.

Many presidents have spent Christmas at Camp David.

It's pretty nice in winter too.

President Jimmy Carter turned Camp David into a place where diplomacy was conducted, like the landmark Camp David Accords in 1978.

Like Carter, President Bill Clinton used Camp David as a location for talks between Israel and Palestine.

Obama also used Camp David as a place for diplomatic events.

In 2012, he hosted the leaders of the G8 nations at Camp David.

It's not all work, though. European leaders took a break during the 2012 G8 to watch the overtime shootout of the Chelsea vs. Bayern Munich Champions League final.

President Donald Trump visited Camp David five times in his first year in office, calling it "a very special place" in one tweet.

In January 2018, Trump brought senior Republicans to Camp David for a leadership retreat.

During his presidency, Trump frequented his properties more than Camp David.

Before taking office, Trump once told a German journalist in an interview, "Camp David is very rustic, it's nice, you'd like it. You know how long you'd like it? For about 30 minutes."

By August 2020, Trump had made 500 visits to his properties. Of those 500, Trump had visited Mar-A-Lago 134 times. 

Comparatively, Trump visited Camp David five times in his first year in office, according to USA Today. He visited his golf clubs 150 times in his first year. 

Sources: Washington Post, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, USA Today

President Joe Biden made his first trip to Camp David three weeks into his presidency for Valentine's Day weekend in 2021.

Source: Reuters

Biden was at Camp David during the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.

He spent 72 hours at Camp David and cut his trip short to return to the White House and address the nation. 

Source: Washington Post

In February 2023, Biden and his team prepared for his State of the Union address from Camp David.

Source: CBS News

Biden and his family spent the Fourth of July weekend at Camp David in 2023.

Source: Washington Examiner

Biden gathered with close family members at Camp David in June 2024.

President Joe Biden leaned on his family during a difficult stretch of his reelection campaign following his first 2024 debate with former President Donald Trump.

Editor's note: This story was first published in February 2018 and has been updated with recent information.

• Boeing earlier reached a deferred prosecution deal with the DOJ for two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019.
• The DOJ now plans to charge Boeing with fraud after officials found Boeing violated that deal.
• The new plea deal doesn't hold Boeing accountable for the deaths, an attorney for the families told BI.

Families of the victims of the two fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes are denouncing a plea deal the Justice Department is preparing to offer the airplane manufacturer, an attorney representing some of those families told Business Insider.

Federal prosecutors have given Boeing until the end of the week to accept the deal and plead guilty to fraud or risk going to trial in relation to the two fatal crashes that killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019, sources told Bloomberg.

The Justice Department notified the victims' families and their attorneys on Sunday of the end-of-week deadline, the sources said.

Spokespeople for the DOJ and Boeing did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider.

Paul Cassell, an attorney for 15 of the victims' families, told Business Insider in an email that the DOJ's offer is "another sweetheart plea deal," to which the families vehemently object.

According to Cassell, the details of the agreement, which the DOJ has not yet made public, include a "small fine," a three-year term of probation, and a corporate monitor, but "no recognition of 346 deaths."

"The deal will not acknowledge, in any way, that Boeing's crime killed 346 people," Cassell wrote to BI. "It also appears to rest on the idea that Boeing did not harm any victim. The families will strenuously object to this plea deal."

Boeing had initially avoided a fraud charge related to the two fatal crashes — one near the coast of Indonesia and another in Ethiopia — after agreeing to a $2.5 billion settlement in a deferred prosecution agreement.

Along with the fine, the airplane manufacturer had to agree to a strict "compliance program," according to a DOJ press release from 2021. The agreement required Boeing to meet with the DOJ's Fraud Section and submit annual reports on "remediation efforts."

But in May, investigators accused Boeing of violating the terms of the agreement, once again exposing the company to criminal charges.

US prosecutors recommended the DOJ file federal criminal charges against Boeing, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

With the DOJ's potential plea deal for Boeing, a judge "will have to decide whether this no-accountability-deal is in the public interest," Cassell wrote to BI.

"The memory of 346 innocents killed by Boeing demands more justice than this," he wrote.

• Redbox's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
• The company's net loss was $636.6 million in 2023.
• Employees haven't been paid since June 21.

Redbox's parent company hasn't paid its employees in over a week amid financial woes that ultimately resulted in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday, and Redbox Entertainment filed the following day, according to online records. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment completed a $370 million deal to acquire Redbox Entertainment in 2022.

The media company's $970 million debt has trickled down to its employees, who haven't received payment since June 21 and worked without health insurance since May, according to The Verge.

Several employees spoke to Deadline, including one senior executive who said management hadn't provided a clear schedule for when payroll would start again.

"We haven't heard anything over the past couple of days," the employee said in the article published June 26. "Initially, they said checks would go out Tuesday at the latest. And now here we are."

The bankruptcy filing might help.

Employees received a message early Saturday morning announcing that court approval for the bankruptcy protection could jump-start payments. Staff medical benefits could also be reinstated, according to Deadline.

"In connection with the filing, we have applied for approval of a debtor in possession [DIP] loan," the message said. "Upon court approval, we expect payroll to be funded early in the week and funding for this upcoming week's payroll to also be secured. We also expect to have the funds to reinstate medical benefits back to May 14, 2024 and going forward. We will provide regular updates."

Representatives for Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Chicken Soup for the Soul's financial issues took a turn for the worse in 2023. In addition to the debt assumed from acquiring Redbox, the company also struggled amid the Hollywood writers' and actors' strike that year, which caused a decrease in physical disc rentals.

The company missed payments owed to vendors and filmmakers, prompting some to file lawsuits.

Chicken Soup for the Soul recently settled with NBC Universal but missed the first payment, according to the Verge. A court order will require the company to pay the entire $16.7 million balance.

• Publishers want compensation from OpenAI for using their works to train AI models.
• The Center for Investigative Reporting filed a lawsuit against the company this week.
• The New York Times and other outlets also have similar lawsuits against OpenAI.

OpenAI uses any and all publicly available data to train ChatGPT, including books and articles from the internet. Now, those who own them want to be paid for their work.

Training data is an essential part of creating the AI models that are taking over the tech world. Leading tech companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft are all scrambling to find new sources of data. Meta at one point even considered buying Simon & Schuster, one of the world's biggest publishing houses.

Part of the problem is that publishers are increasingly accusing these companies of hoovering up copyrighted data. They'd like to be paid for their work. Meta and OpenAI have argued in comments to the US Copyright Office that putting copyrighted material on the internet makes it "publicly available" and thus under fair use.

But they'll still have to make that argument in court as the company faces lawsuits from several groups over the copyrighted material.

The Center for Investigative Reporting, a news nonprofit known sometimes by its acronym CIR and which merged with Mother Jones and Reveal earlier this year, sued OpenAI and Microsoft last week in federal court. The lawsuit accuses OpenAI of being "built on the exploitation of copyrighted works belonging to creators around the world, including CIR."

Lawyers for the CIR accused OpenAI and Microsoft of using copyrighted material from Mother Jones to train their GPT and Copilot AI models.

"OpenAI and Microsoft started vacuuming up our stories to make their product more powerful, but they never asked for permission or offered compensation, unlike other organizations that license our material," Monika Bauerlein, CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting, said in an announcement about the lawsuit. "This free rider behavior is not only unfair, it is a violation of copyright."

The lawsuit says that "16,793 distinct URLs from Mother Jones's web domain" appeared in a published list of the top web domains present in the company's WebText training set.

In another class action lawsuit from the Author's Guild, two authors claimed that the company used information from their books to train ChatGPT. The New York Times also filed a similar lawsuit against the company in December 2023.

In May, court documents in the Author's Guild lawsuit revealed that OpenAI deleted two huge datasets used to train GPT-3. Lawyers for the guild said the two sets likely contained "more than 100,000 published books."

The two employees responsible for putting together the data no longer work for OpenAI, court documents say.

OpenAI has begun signing licensing agreements with news organizations to fairly use their work. The company has signed such agreements with The Associated Press, publishers of The Wall Street Journal and New York Post, The Atlantic, Prisa Media, Le Monde newspaper, Financial Times, and Business Insider parent Axel Springer.

But the scale of content required for these bots to continuously learn will require far more than a handful of licensing agreements.

One solution is synthetic data, which is artificially generated rather than collected from the real world, and can easily be generated by machine learning algorithms.

OpenAI has considered synthetic data as an option to train its models, but CEO Sam Altman has raised concerns about producing quality data.

"As long as you can get over the synthetic data event horizon, where the model is smart enough to make good synthetic data, everything will be fine," Altman said at a tech conference in May 2023. The company has also explored a process in which AI models work together — one AI system produces data, while another judges it.

OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider.

• The far-right scored a major win in the first round of parliamentary elections in France.
• Marine Le Pen's National Rally won roughly 34% of the vote, per projections.
• President Emmanuel Macron called for a snap election in early June in what was a huge gamble.

The far-right National Rally has opened up a lead in the first round of critical parliamentary elections in France, with results that could soon spell the end of the centrist government alliance backed by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Projections in Sunday's first round showed that Marine Le Pen's National Rally had secured 34% of the national vote, followed by a roughly 29% share for the leftist alliance New Popular Front and 20% for Macron's Together alliance.

The second round of voting will be held on July 7.

The parties are competing for 577 seats in the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament.

After the initial first-round results, Le Pen told supporters it was important to earn a majority vote in the second round — a feat that could usher in National Rally president Jordan Bardella as France's prime minister.

Macron called for a snap election earlier this month after Le Pen's party scored major wins in the European parliamentary elections.

The move by the French president was seen as a major gamble as there were only three weeks to campaign. He recently sought to warn voters of what he said were the perils of potential far-right or far-left governments.

"When you are fed up with everything, when daily life is hard, you can be tempted by extremes that have quicker solutions," Macron said during a recent interview on the podcast "Generation Do It Yourself."

"But the solution will never lie in rejecting others," he added.

Macron defeated Le Pen in both the 2017 and 2022 French presidential elections. However, while Le Pen only won 34% of the national vote share in the first election, she made substantial gains two years ago and captured more than 41% of the national vote amid growing dissatisfaction with Macron's leadership.

Should the National Rally perform strongly in the second round of this year's parliamentary elections, it could give France its first far-right government since World War II.

• A jailbreaking method called Skeleton Key can prompt AI models to reveal harmful information.
• The technique bypasses safety guardrails in models like Meta's Llama3 and OpenAI GPT 3.5.
• Microsoft advises adding extra guardrails and monitoring AI systems to counteract Skeleton Key.

It doesn't take much for a large language model to give you the recipe for all kinds of dangerous things.

With a jailbreaking technique called "Skeleton Key," users can persuade models like Meta's Llama3, Google's Gemini Pro, and OpenAI's GPT 3.5 to give them the recipe for a rudimentary fire bomb, or worse, according to a blog post from Microsoft Azure's chief technology officer, Mark Russinovich.

The technique works through a multi-step strategy that forces a model to ignore its guardrails, Russinovich wrote. Guardrails are safety mechanisms that help AI models discern malicious requests from benign ones.

"Like all jailbreaks," Skeleton Key works by "narrowing the gap between what the model is capable of doing (given the user credentials, etc.) and what it is willing to do," Russinovich wrote.

But it's more destructive than other jailbreak techniques that can only solicit information from AI models "indirectly or with encodings." Instead, Skeleton Key can force AI models to divulge information about topics ranging from explosives to bioweapons to self-harm through simple natural language prompts. These outputs often reveal the full extent of a model's knowledge on any given topic.

Microsoft tested Skeleton Key on several models and found that it worked on Meta Llama3, Google Gemini Pro, OpenAI GPT 3.5 Turbo, OpenAI GPT 4o, Mistral Large, Anthropic Claude 3 Opus, and Cohere Commander R Plus. The only model that exhibited some resistance was OpenAI's GPT-4.

Russinovich said Microsoft has made some software updates to mitigate Skeleton Key's impact on its own large language models, including its Copilot AI Assistants.

But his general advice to companies building AI systems is to design them with additional guardrails. He also noted that they should monitor inputs and outputs to their systems and implement checks to detect abusive content.

• Billionaire Robert Kraft donated $1 million to Yeshiva University for a new program.
• The program "will help accommodate transferring Jewish students," the university said.
• Kraft withdrew support for Columbia University after campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war.

Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, donated $1 million to Yeshiva University to establish a program for Jewish transfer students after yanking his support from Columbia University.

Yeshiva University, a private Orthodox Jewish institution in New York City, said in a press release that the Blue Square Scholars program "will help the University accommodate transferring students who are switching to YU for its quality education and nurturing campus atmosphere."

The university earlier said it had seen an increase in enrollment since the start of the conflict in Gaza, which has divided universities across the country.

"In the aftermath of October 7th, YU has been at the forefront of universities fighting the rise of antisemitism on college campuses across the country and has opened its doors to transfer students who feel unsafe on their current campuses," the university said.

The press release said Kraft's donation would aid the university's efforts to help Jewish students grappling with antisemitism. Kraft founded the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism in 2019.

"I am honored to establish the Blue Square Scholars program at Yeshiva University in order to give students a welcoming place to further their education and grow into leaders who will serve as advocates for unity and respect and will push back on all hate," Kraft said in a statement.

Representatives for Yeshiva University and Kraft did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Kraft's $1 million donation comes two months after he severed ties with Columbia University, his alma mater.

Kraft had been a reliable megadonor for Columbia University but criticized the school after campus protests broke out in April. Pro-Palestinian supporters held demonstrations calling for a cease-fire and demanding the school divest from Israel and any companies doing business in the country.

In a full-page ad in May, Kraft accused elite universities of causing "hate" on campuses. "The leadership and faculty of so many of our leading educational institutions have failed their students," he wrote.

Other universities, like Harvard, have also faced the ire of Jewish megadonors over student protests against the war.

Islamophobia, meanwhile, also increased on college campuses in the wake of the war.

Despite his criticisms, Kraft told CNN he will still support The Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life at Columbia University.

• Sen. John Fetterman leaped to Biden's defense after his poor debate performance last week.
• "I refuse to join the Democratic vultures on Biden's shoulder after the debate," he wrote on X.
• Fetterman, who once faced his own bad debate, slammed pundits who said he'd lose in 2022.

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman has a message for Democrats who want President Joe Biden to step aside following his poor debate performance on Thursday: "Chill."

For Fetterman, the second-guessing and outright panic from some Democratic quarters toward Biden is reminiscent of the criticism he faced following a rocky 2022 Senate debate against his then-opponent, GOP nominee and celebrity surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz.

In a series of remarks following Biden's debate with former President Donald Trump, Fetterman made it known that he disagreed with members of his party who were seeking alternatives to the president.

"I refuse to join the Democratic vultures on Biden's shoulder after the debate," the senator wrote on X. "No one knows more than me that a rough debate is not the sum total of the person and their record."

Biden now faces one of the most daunting challenges of his political career as he continues to campaign while reassuring supporters of his fitness for office and resisting pressure from some Democrats who want him to make way for a new, younger nominee.

Fetterman said that after his 2022 debate, some pundits predicted that he would lose to Oz. The senator was more than happy to point out that not only did he win, but his Senate race was the only one in the country that year where the seat changed parties.

"What happened?" Fetterman wrote. "The only seat to flip and won by a historic margin (+5). Chill the fuck out."

During an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," the senator once again compared his situation with Biden's.

"We had a difficult debate, and yet we still managed to go on to win," he told host Shannon Bream. "One debate is not a career."

Fetterman's debate took place in October 2022, following a stroke that he suffered in May of that year. The then-candidate's speech patterns were affected by the stroke, and Republicans leaped at the chance to make his health an issue ahead of the general election, questioning whether he had the acuity to serve in the Senate. Some Democrats at the time also wondered why Fetterman agreed to debate Oz at all, concerned that his performance had boosted GOP fortunes.

After Fetterman began his term in the Senate last year, he took time off to enter the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he was treated for depression. He has spoken openly about the experience and the "downward spiral" that he endured after winning the Senate contest.

• Workers are more confident — and anxious — about AI than they were a year ago, a BCG survey found.
• Leaders are also more confident and trained in AI than their workers.
• Companies are trying to address the AI knowledge gap with upskilling programs for their employees.

Generative AI seems to be a double-edged sword.

According to a new report from Boston Consulting Group, workers' confidence in generative AI has grown over the past year — but so has their anxiety.

BCG surveyed over 13,100 respondents, evenly divided between frontline, managerial, and leadership roles.

It found that confidence in generative AI surged 16% between 2023 to 2024, but that anxiety did too: about 5%. The percentage of workers who worry that AI will eliminate their jobs in the next decade has jumped significantly in the past year.

Frontline workers — those without managerial responsibilities — are most anxious about the technology, with 22% saying they were worried about it compared to 18% of managers and 15% of leaders.

There's a clear knowledge gap between executives and their employees, too. Only 28% of frontline workers reported being trained on how the technology will impact their jobs, compared to 30% of managers and 50% of leaders. Frontline workers say their top three concerns about generative AI are that they haven't been given enough time to learn about it, sufficient training opportunities, or knowledge of when to use the technology.

"There is undoubtedly a shortage in AI talent," Alex Libre, cofounder and principal recruiter of Einstellen Talent, a service that matches job candidates with generative AI startups, previously told Business Insider.

Companies are trying to address the gap by offering workers upskilling programs.

PwC, the consulting firm, has rolled out a training program for 75,000 workers across the United States and Mexico to teach employees how to incorporate the technology into their daily work. The goal is for all 75,000 employees to "know how to use it and start to be able to comment on it in a very informed way," Shannon Schuyler, US chief purpose and inclusion officer at PwC, previously told BI.

Others say the goal is to free up humans to do more meaningful work and even get more fulfillment from their jobs. But the worry right now is that AI might draw a line between the haves and have-nots: Those who know how to use AI and keep jobs and those who don't and lose them.