Tag: News

• Rare earth minerals are critical for national defense and industry.
• National stockpile levels are a mystery, though.
• And there are indications that the stockpile is insufficient, worrying experts.

Rare earth minerals are needed to make all sorts of things, from F-35 stealth fighters and night-vision goggles to internet fiber-optic cables and MRI machines.

They are a subset of the critical minerals deemed essential for national security. If the supply chain for these minerals is disrupted, the negative impact on the US could be considerable. Stockpile sizes are unclear, yet there are indications that levels aren't where they need to be.

Part of the military's mission at home is to keep stockpiles of goods like critical minerals on hand for emergency wartime use. Recent government research suggests that Congress knows that the stockpile levels are insufficient, but the numbers aren't made available to the public. That opacity is troubling to some experts.

In the dark on the stockpile

Although the name suggests otherwise, rare earth minerals are not exactly rare — in fact, they're relatively plentiful. But finding them in large enough deposits to mine is difficult, and the refining process, separating the minerals while they're bound up in chunks of ore, is expensive.

China dominates global markets for mining critical earth minerals and the labor-intensive refining process, a challenge for the US given its rivalry with China and dependence on the minerals.

The Biden administration began cutting American imports of Chinese rare earth minerals a few years ago in an effort to decrease US reliance on China for critical minerals. More recently, the White House initiated a push to forge new partnerships with allies for mining and to boost mining investments within the US.

Some experts say the lack of transparency on mineral stockpile levels within the US leaves the public in the dark about what's actually being done to curb American dependence on what the Pentagon calls its "pacing challenge" for the critical minerals it would need in a great-power conflict.

Gregory Wischer, who serves as a mineral consultant for Dei Gratia Minerals and has written extensively about critical minerals, suspects national stockpile levels are well below where they should be given the available information.

"Congress has broad authority to dictate to the Defense Logistics Agency how much minerals they should stockpile and which minerals they should be stockpiling," he said.

But the Department of Defense's consumption rates of critical minerals aren't publicly available either, Wischer added, explaining that it's hard to ensure critical mineral stockpiling is happening correctly if people do not know exactly how many minerals are used in an average year.

Releasing that kind of data, he said, would increase public reassurance concerning wartime preparation. "You need to have ten-times that stockpile amount for a potential conflict because we would be going through munitions so quickly," he said.

Why the stockpile matters

The Department of Defense released its first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy in January to improve the resilience of the American military supply chain, in part by increasing stockpiles of critical minerals. Submarines, fighter aircraft, magnets used in missiles, radar systems, and drones all require critical earth minerals for manufacturing.

A past report for Congress on rare earth minerals for national defense, for instance, noted that a single Virginia-class submarine requires 9,200 pounds of REM, while an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer requires 5,200 pounds.

US partnerships with Pacific allies for mineral mining and processing are options for decreasing US reliance on China during peacetime, but Wischer argued that relying on safe ocean supply lines to move processed or raw minerals might not make a lot of sense when preparing for and waging a war in the Pacific.

"We're relying heavily on Japan and South Korea for these refined elements," Wischer said. "And if we get into a potential conflict [in the Pacific], those supply chains are in no way guaranteed to have safe transport to the United States." That makes the stockpile even more important.

A congressional report released late last year noted the 2023 stockpile report to Congress, which is not public, "discovered net shortfalls in 88 materials, valued at $14.83 billion."

Necessary for more than just defense

The US military has said that it aims to have "a sustainable, mine-to-magnet supply chain capable of supporting all US defense requirements by 2027."

As part of the "mine-to-magnet" effort — the naming for which is based on the military logistics phrase from "factory to foxhole" — the DoD awarded $20 million to a company called MP Materials to start processing and refining REM at the company's mine in California, the largest REM operation in the US, and the Australian-based mining company Lynas USA has been awarded nearly $260 million from the DoD to build a rare earth processing facility in Texas.

It's unknown when US-based mining operations might be able to operate at a high enough capacity to offset Chinese imports. For now, US-based mining operations can't produce enough minerals to replace Chinese imports.

Fabian Villalobos, an engineer and defense supply chain expert with the RAND Corporation, said that compared to some other industries, the US military is a relatively minor consumer of critical minerals. Industries such as healthcare, petroleum, transportation, and consumer electronics, as well as the Biden administration's push toward green energy, all depend heavily on these minerals.

"The National Defense Stockpile, or the NDS, is the Nation's stockpile for strategic and critical materials," said DoD's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Industrial Base Resilience Halimah Najieb-Locke in a congressional hearing last year. The stockpiles serve "as an important buffer during emergencies. Stockpile reserves allow us to release materials to keep key production lines operating until long-term supply chains are restored."

But in the same testimony, Najieb-Locke also argued that research has indicated that there are shortfalls within defense stockpiles of critical minerals.

"Recent disruptions and adversarial actions have underscored what we have long recognized," she said. "It is more urgent now than ever to build our capability, resilience, and environmentally friendly supply chains for critical minerals."

• This post originally appeared in the Insider Today newsletter.
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Almost Friday! Robots with skin!? There's a valid reason researchers are doing it — helping plastic surgeons train — but it doesn't make it any less creepy.

In today's big story, we're looking at the first — and somewhat unconventional — US presidential debate happening tonight.

What's on deck:

• Markets: The next great war could be over the price of food.
• Tech: Tesla's headquarters received several "terroristic" threats, according to law-enforcement records.
• Business: Your boss wants you to make friends at work. But do you really need a work bestie?

But first, your time starts now.

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The big story

New debate, who dis?

It didn't come easy, and it won't feel quite the same, but we're getting our first US presidential debate tonight.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will square off at 9 p.m. ET for a 90-minute debate.

But don't be surprised by some noticeable differences from what you've come to expect when two presidential candidates face off.

There will be no audience, and the candidate who isn't speaking will have his mic muted. The bipartisan group that typically holds the debates isn't running it. And it's also the earliest major debate on record.

Business Insider's Brent D. Griffiths has the full rundown on what to expect tonight.

The impact debates have on an election is… up for debate. Candidates who aren't well known, not a problem for Trump or Biden, see the biggest impact.

But that doesn't mean the debate isn't important. It's one of the few live events that isn't football which is guaranteed to draw millions of Americans' attention.

It also represents a big gamble for Biden, Brent writes, as the president tries to silence critics on everything from his age to his handling of the economy, which is a key issue for voters.

Meanwhile, the debate itself has some interesting subplots.

For one, it will feature commercials for the first time. CNN, which is hosting, is selling two tiers of advertising, with the more premium version reportedly costing at least $1.5 million.

But in a unique twist, CNN might not come away making the most from the debate. Rival networks can air the broadcast and sell commercials. And with Fox News and MSNBC often outpacing CNN in viewership, they might be able to sell ads for more money, writes BI's Alice Tecotzky.

Debates are also typically easy fodder for social media, specifically X, as viral moments are bound to occur. And this marks the first presidential debate the platform navigates under the Elon Musk regime.

Meanwhile, it'll be interesting to see how things go on Instagram's Threads, which has largely avoided political discourse.

However, one group won't be able to benefit from the debate despite being perfectly positioned for the action: US sportsbooks. So-called prediction markets do exist for political betting, but regulators want to ban them.

US sportsbooks have avoided the entire political sphere — sorry, no same-debate parlays — despite it being big business for UK bookmakers.

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3 things in markets

1. A commodity trader is warning about a potential "food war." A combination of trade barriers and climate risk is threatening to exaggerate the demand-supply imbalance in food, according to commodity executive Sunny Verghese. "We have fought many wars over oil. We will fight bigger wars over food and water," he said at a recent conference.
2. Goldman Sachs' bankers are going to get a big boost from AI next year. Top bank executives told BI the plan is to roll out a series of generative AI tools starting in 2025. The tech will "influence our workflows [and] begin to help us create new competitive advantages," one Goldman partner said.
3. Trump's mass deportation plan could trigger a recession, leading economist says. Adam Posen, president of the nonpartisan Peterson Institute, warned that Trump's pledge to deport the most workers in US history is a massive stagflationary hazard. Those effects would be exacerbated by Trump's high-tariffs proposal, Posen said.

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3 things in tech

1. "Terroristic" threats at Tesla. Texas law enforcement records show Elon Musk's company was the target of multiple "terroristic" threats over the past two years. These include a clumsy extortion scheme by a fake hitman and a hoax active-shooter threat at its HQ. There's little real danger to Tesla's employees, though, thanks to the site's tight security.
2. Should AI help you ace a coding test? Silicon Valley is split over whether job candidates should be allowed to use AI chatbots in technical interviews, which test engineers' grasp of coding basics. Though stances vary across companies, there's a noticeable divide between smaller startups and tech giants.
3. To do: Improve Microsoft's reputation. Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft's new AI chief, said bringing the company out from under Google's shadow was on his to-do list. He also said one of his main goals is to "uplevel the quality of Copilot."

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3 things in business

1. Inside the new CEO stress test. An intelligence exam originally designed to identify the best NFL quarterbacks is making waves in corporate hiring. The test measures fluid intelligence and decision-making under pressure, skills that can make potential CEOs. But it isn't foolproof.
2. Maybe you don't need work friends after all. Work friendships are great for employers: They can help workers get more done and make them more reluctant to leave their friends for a new gig. But they're also disappearing — and that may not be a bad thing.
3. "Silent layoffs" could backfire. The tactic, where companies give staff severance but ask them to keep details of their departure quiet, is on the rise. Experts said while the goal is to maintain trust across the business, it can actually do the exact opposite.

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In other news

• A SCOTUS opinion allowing emergency abortions in Idaho was posted on the court's website and then quickly removed.
• Amazon is getting an impressive number of people to watch Prime Video, new data reveals.
• The biggest scandal in gaming right now, explained.
• Elon Musk is reigniting his space feud with Jeff Bezos: 'Sue Origin.'
• Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital makes a further push into entertainment, backing A24, the studio behind Euphoria and Uncut Gems.
• Shein and Temu use a US tax loophole to keep their prices low. Now, some American brands are, too.
• Biz leaders could learn a thing or 2 from the way Ayo Edibiri directed her very first episode of 'The Bear.'

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What's happening today

• RFK Jr., who did not qualify for the CNN presidential debate, will answer debate questions via livestream during his campaign's counter-programming.
• Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes final GDP data for Q1 2024.

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The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Jordan Parker Erb, editor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Annie Smith, associate producer, in London. Amanda Yen, fellow, in New York.

• A TikToker claimed hardworking, nice employees rarely get promoted.
• Experts say high performers often face "performance punishment" and are seen as less assertive.
• Toxic cultures and outdated leadership still exist, but many companies also now favor soft skills.

If you're good at your job and have a nice personality, you'll never get promoted.

At least, that's the theory put forward by lifestyle content creator Jacqueline Morris, who posted a TikTok about the issue a couple of months ago.

"You will never be promoted out of a hardworking, more junior position where a lot of the hard work exists," she said in the post, which gained 8.2 million views.

"Let me explain. If you are in an executive suite, you do not have to be a pleasure to work with or good at your job. You don't have to be either of those. If you are at a VP or director level, you can either be really good at your job or a pleasure to work with. You don't have to be both, and sometimes people are still neither."

The people at the bottom, where the "actual work is being done," Morris said, don't tend to move up the ladder if they keep doing it well.

"I don't know how to get out of that cycle, but I believe in it," she said. "It's a curse."

A glass ceiling for the agreeable

It sounds cynical, but Morris might be onto something.

Paul Bramson, who offers leadership training programs as CEO of The Paul Bramson Companies, told Business Insider that competent, likable employees "often face a glass ceiling when it comes to promotions."

Bramson said that when people have an underlying need to be liked, executive leaders can see it as a "weakness" or an inability to make tough decisions or have difficult conversations.

"A lack of firmness or assertiveness can be problematic, as it might seem like the individual isn't taking people and decisions in hand effectively," he said.

This is, of course, a generalisation. A company's corporate culture and leadership style will impact which personality traits are considered during promotions. A person's specific role and skill set also affect how much their personality changes their career trajectory.

The research on what traits workplaces favor is mixed.

A 2018 study from the Universities of Bristol, Minnesota, and Heidelberg found that being nice and conscientious had a "transitory and small" impact on someone's success.

According to data from Truity Psychometrics, a company that designs personality and career tests, logical, analytical people tend to manage larger teams than those who are considered agreeable.

Disagreeable men in the workplace also have an edge and are paid more, according to 2011 research conducted by the University of Notre Dame, Cornell University, and the University of Western Ontario.

However, a 2020 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that selfish, combative, and manipulative people are no more likely to get ahead at work than their good-hearted counterparts.

According to Cameron Anderson, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of California at Berkeley who conducted the study, dominance and kindness are both associated with rising up the ranks.

As BI previously reported, the assertiveness of being a jerk can help, but Anderson's study suggests their lack of generosity holds them back.

Performance punishment

Experts say that in some organizations, high performers get overloaded with more work but aren't necessarily rewarded or promoted, which is known as "performance punishment."

Mary McConner, the founder and CEO of Inclusive Excellence Consulting, told BI this is when high performers get overloaded with work because they are reliable. People with an agreeable nature can find themselves in the same boat.

"Unfortunately, performance punishment often leads to burnout and resentment because their good work isn't rewarded with advancement, but with more work," McConner said.

While cooperative and reliable employees are strong contenders for promotions, they may be overlooked if they are perceived as less assertive or they are taken for granted, she

Mary Barnes, the CEO of the business consultancy Evolve Your Performance, told BI that in organizations with toxic cultures, "skewed values and misaligned metrics prevail."

In certain environments, overconfident people with dark triad traits can easily climb the ranks and perpetuate a destructive cycle.

"In such environments, pleasant and competent employees often get sidelined," Barnes said.

Even in healthier companies with better cultures, leaders can prioritize people who are emotionless and rational, Barnes added. But it's soft skills that are actually vital.

"Managing down requires empathy and empowerment, treating people like whole humans instead of cogs in a corporate wheel," Barnes said.

Some viewers of Morris' video likened her observation to "The Peter Principle," which is a management concept by the Canadian educationist Lawrence J. Peter.

It explains how people can be promoted based on their previous success rather than their suitability for a new role, finding themselves in positions they don't yet have the skills for, and thus reach "a level of respective incompetence."

Barnes said that people promoted to leadership positions may stop being so kind and competent if they struggle with this conundrum and start overcompensating for their imposter syndrome and micromanaging without empathy.

"Few master this balance, and those who don't are destined to become mediocre leaders at best," she said.

Being nice but ballsy can pay off

Luke Blaney, the managing director of the recruitment agency ARx, told BI there is "a lot of truth in the whole 'nice guys finish last' saying."

"Especially if people aren't prepared to even ask for what they want," he added.

Blaney said it's all in the delivery when asking for a raise or a promotion.

"I don't think being ballsy enough to ask is the same as not being pleasant," he said.

Carolina Caro, a leadership coach and CEO and founder of Conscious Leadership Partners, thinks times are changing, however. She told BI that she thinks the notion of being a tough leader is "completely outdated."

Rather, businesses are now interested in people who can handle tough situations "tactfully and with compassion," she said.

"Organizations are recognizing the need to invest in the development of their leaders so that they can be the type of leader that people want to work for and foster engagement," Caro said. "That's the goal — but it doesn't mean all the organizations are there yet."

Some companies have "remnants of archaic leadership models where the more aggressive you are as a leader, the better," Caro said.

"But this type of leadership is generally seen as ineffective," she added. "Particularly in today's landscape with a multigenerational workforce that expects something completely different, or they simply leave."

• Indianapolis has the highest birth rate among major US cities, per SmartAsset analysis.
• It used US Census data from 2021-2022 to compare birth rates in 37 large cities.
• Immigration and a population's age composition could play a role, a demography expert told BI.

Indianapolis is the US city with the highest birth rate, according to a new analysis by the financial technology company SmartAsset.

SmartAsset analyzed the most recently available US Census data for 37 of the largest US cities to determine where birth rates and family sizes are the highest and lowest.

It looked at the number of women aged 15 to 50 who had a baby in the 12 months between 2021 and 2022, comparing this with the total number of women in that age bracket.

Indianapolis topped the list, with Seattle ranked lowest.

The data suggested that 6.5% of Indianapolis women aged 15 to 50 had a child in 2022, leading to 14,482 births. In Seattle, it was just 2.6%.

The study also found that birth rates in major cities were lower than the national average.

Birth rates are a crucial indicator of population growth.

"What's happening in the US is we have more people dying than birth in some of these metropolitan areas," Emilio A. Parrado, the director of the University of Pennsylvania's Population Studies Center, told BI.

Parrado emphasized that high birth rates in Indianapolis could have significant policy and urban planning implications.

These include preventing school closures, increasing demand for childcare, and "producing children that are going to maintain Indianapolis if they don't leave," he said.

Parrado said there was insufficient data in the analysis to directly attribute the higher birth rates to a particular cause, but factors such as domestic and international migration, as well as a high proportion of women of prime childbearing age, likely contribute.

Parrado also told BI that the study's limitation in not controlling for age makes it challenging to distinguish between the fertility rate and the population's age composition, and that a more precise measure would be the total fertility rate, which estimates the number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime.

According to the most recent Indiana natality report, from 2017, Marion County, which includes Indianapolis, had a total fertility rate of 1.933, higher than the overall US rate of 1.62.

Many demographers and governments are concerned about declining fertility rates in the US and elsewhere.

Dudley L. Poston Jr., an emeritus professor of sociology at Texas A&M University, told BI that various factors influence fertility levels, including ethnicity, education, poverty status, employment outside the home, and whether women live in urban or rural areas.

Various countries around the world are experimenting with solutions to try to address low birth rates, including everything from unusual economic incentives to changing immigration policies.

• Warren Buffett didn't just rely on financials and listings to pick winning stocks in the early days.
• He spent weeks counting railcars, went to see "Mary Poppins," and tested the American Express brand.
• "Buffett's Early Investments" outlines how the investor vetted bosses and hunted down shares to buy.

There's a common perception that Warren Buffett struck gold as a young investor by poring over long lists of stocks and scooping up the cheapest ones. But he went to far greater lengths to understand what he was buying before he pounced, a recent book points out.

Author Brett Gardner details several examples of the Oracle of Omaha's dogged pursuit of information in "Buffett's Early Investments: A new investigation into the decades when Warren Buffett earned his best returns."

The future billionaire and Berkshire Hathaway CEO skipped class to attend annual meetings or paid others to go and ask questions for him. He flew around the US to meet company executives and looked into their personal finances, habits, and motivations.

During a 2010 interview, Buffett's biographer Alice Schroeder also discussed Buffett's technique. "He behaves like an investigative journalist. "All this stuff about flipping through Moody's Manuals picking stocks … it was a screen for him, but he didn't stop there."

Here are 6 of the most striking examples of Buffett's rigorous approach:

1. Before investing in Disney in 1966, Buffett went to see Walt Disney, who gave him a tour of Disneyland and walked him through his plans for the company.

   Buffett also went to see Disney's latest blockbuster in a New York City theater to gauge its long-term value.

   "Here I am with a briefcase at 2:00 in the afternoon, heading in to see 'Mary Poppins,'" he once told a class of college students. "I almost felt like I had to rent a kid."

2. Prior to piling into American Express in 1964, Buffett assessed whether the company's salad oil scandal had tarnished its brand.

   "Buffett started dropping in on Omaha restaurants and visiting places that took American Express cards and Travelers Cheques," Schroeder writes in "The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life."

   He also tasked a friendly stockbroker with digging into the business, which produced a foot-high pile of research on American Express bank tellers and officers, restaurants, hotels, and credit-card holders. The investigation satisfied Buffett that the business was going strong and customers still trusted its products.

3. Buffett told Forbes that he "spent the better part of a month counting tank cars in a Kansas City railroad yard" in 1965. The investor was digging into Studebaker and wanted to gauge the demand for STP, a gasoline additive sold by one of the vehicle maker's subsidiaries.

   He knew where Studebaker was sourcing a key ingredient for STP, and how much it needed to produce one can. Tallying railcars indicated that STP production was ramping up, prompting him to pounce on the stock.

   

4. As a graduate student, Buffett took a train from New York City to Washington on a Saturday morning in 1951, only to arrive at Geico's offices and find the doors locked.

   He banged until a bemused janitor let him in and directed him to the only other person he'd seen in the building: Lorimer Davidson, the future CEO of the insurance company.

   Buffett seized the chance to pepper Davidson with questions about insurance for four hours. The answers confirmed he'd found a winner; he went on to invest about two-thirds of his net worth in the stock, and Berkshire acquired the business in full in 1996.

5. In the mid-1950s, Buffett dispatched a partner to track down shares of National American Fire Insurance held by farmers scattered across Omaha.

   "He cruised around the state in a red-and-white Chevrolet, showing up in rural county courthouses and banks, casually asking who might own shares of National American," Schroeder writes about Buffett's associate in her book.

   "He sat on front porches, drinking iced tea, eating pie with farmers and their wives, and offering cash for their stock certificates."

6. Buffett took a different tack in his search for Union Street Railway stock in 1954. The company was seeking to buy back shares by running ads in a local paper, so Buffett ran his own ad inviting stockholders to sell to him instead, Schroeder writes.

   He also woke up at about 4 a.m. on a weekend to drive to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and meet the company's boss.

Buffett is known for investing based on fundamentals like company cash flows and price-to-earnings ratios. But Gardner's examples show he ventures far beyond financials and is both persistent and creative in his information hunts and stock searches.

• You won't see the McPlant on McDonald's US menus anytime soon.
• Trials in Dallas and San Francisco failed because there wasn't enough demand, the president of McDonald's US said.
• The non-meaty burger was tested at hundreds of restaurants in California and Texas in 2022.

The McPlant is unlikely to return to McDonald's menus in the US anytime soon.

Trials of the product in Dallas and San Francisco failed because there simply wasn't enough demand for non-meaty burgers among American diners, Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald's US, said Wednesday at The Wall Street Journal's Global Food Forum.

The tests in the two cities were "not successful," Erlinger said, per Bloomberg.

"I don't think the US consumer is coming to McDonald's looking for the McPlant or other plant-based proteins," he said, per The Journal.

Tests of the burger in the US started in late 2021 and were expanded to hundreds of restaurants in California and Texas in early 2022. The McPlant patty, developed with Beyond Meat, was made from pea and rice proteins.

It was served with mayonnaise and American cheese and cooked on the same grills as meat products, meaning it wasn't vegan.

McDonald's also rolled out the McPlant in other countries with greater success. In the UK, where the McPlant is certified as vegan and served with vegan cheese and sandwich sauce, it has been on menus since November 2021. The non-vegan version is also available in countries including Germany, the Netherlands, and Portugal.

It seems unlikely that the McPlant will be making a return to US menus. McDonald's is instead investing more in chicken, which is now more popular among its customers than beef, partly because it's cheaper, Erlinger said, per Bloomberg.

Beyond Meat, a leading producer of plant-based meat alternatives like burger patties, chicken, and sausages, has posted slumping sales in recent years after booming at the start of the pandemic.

Don't expect to see salads on the menu again

The McPlant isn't the only thing gone from McDonald's menu. When it streamlined its operations at the start of the pandemic, McDonald's removed salads from its US restaurants — and more than four years later, they're yet to reappear.

There wasn't enough demand, and McDonald's doesn't plan on bringing them back to US menus nationally, Erlinger said Wednesday, per The Journal.

People wanting a healthy meal tend to turn to dedicated salad chains like Sweetgreen, Chop't, and Cava. Business Insider visited Cava's first Chicago restaurant three weeks after it opened and witnessed an hourlong line for its salad and grain bowls at 8 p.m. on a Friday.

"If people really want salads from McDonald's, we will gladly relaunch salads," Erlinger said at the Global Food Forum, per Bloomberg. "But what our experience has proven is that's not what the consumer's looking for."

• I was a parentified child and my mom leaned on me a lot when I was young.
• My parents had a difficult divorce, and my sisters and I got a rocky start with my mom's new fiancé.
• When she asked us to walk her down the aisle, it helped give me a new perspective.

Just a week out from her wedding, my mom sent the following text to our family group text: "Oh yeah, I wanted to ask y'all something very important." After a minute-long pause, she wrote, "Would you four girls want to walk me down the aisle and give me away to Bryan?"

It took some time for my sisters and me to connect with my mom's fiancé

My 54-year-old mother and her 49-year-old fiancé, Bryan, had been dating for nearly six years when they announced they were getting married last Thanksgiving. My mom made the announcement as my sisters and I were preparing our holiday meal. She was grinning ear-to-ear, visibly elated while side-hugging her beau. My sisters and I stood shell-shocked because although we knew this day would likely come, we still weren't prepared for the news.

Our introduction to Bryan started off on rocky footing, as his relationship with my mother sparked at the tail-end of a tumultuous divorce from my father. Among small annoyances, the biggest nuisance was that my mother never gave us a formal introduction to Bryan. We would "run into him" in public places, or she would bring him to a family gathering without any forewarning.

For us, this new relationship was a lot to take in, especially when we were all reeling from the excruciating end to our parents' 30-year marriage and still grieving the loss of our little brother to suicide in 2015. Moreover, we were worried that our mother was making a brash decision and that it would end just as her relationship with our father had ended: painfully.

Over the years, Bryan made more effort to build a relationship with my sisters and me. He redeemed himself by apologizing for his previous immature behavior in a handwritten letter to me and my sisters. Further, he not only displayed his love and respect for our mother but also went out of his way to share his intentions and feelings, which, to our relief, were genuine and true.

I realized that my initial impression of him was based on the behaviors of two freshly divorced and deeply hurt individuals, not on who he was as a person. My concerns about him began to waver, and I started to accept Bryan as my mom's "other half."

I had to let go before I could walk my mother down the aisle

As a "parentified" child, I spent most of my childhood and adolescence playing the role of parent to my young mother. She and my father married at the courthouse when she was 16 and he was 18, and she gave birth to me a year later. From a young age, I was my mother's best friend, confidant, and personal assistant. I cooked, cleaned, spoke to debt collectors on the phone, and folded laundry. In moments of high stress, I wiped away her tears and told her she was a good mother. I also enforced rules, set boundaries, and even disciplined my four younger siblings when my parents weren't home or emotionally unavailable.

My mom and dad struggled emotionally, mentally, and financially for the majority of my childhood. We lived paycheck to paycheck, which caused countless volatile arguments between my parents. When I was old enough to get a job, I also helped pay the bills.

I've spent nearly two years now in therapy trying to heal from my childhood. Therapy has shown me that I am not responsible for my parents' behaviors or their life choices. It has also given me the space to release the deep-seated emotions I've buried and has permitted me to relinquish responsibility. I've come to accept that what my mother needs is different from what I think she needs, and that's OK. I've also realized my mother's decisions are not a reflection of me or my worth but rather are a reflection of who she is.

Therapy helped me see my mom from another perspective

Yet, as I heard wedding bells in the distance with each passing day leading up to my mom's wedding date, I couldn't stop the circuitous and ceaseless questions regarding her fiancé: Was he trustworthy? Would and/or could he take care of her, both financially and emotionally? Was my mother making another decision she'd later regret? Would I be willing to accept this person as her life partner?

Thankfully, as the big day rapidly approached, my therapist encouraged me to think back to my most recent visits and interactions with her and Bryan. She coached me to observe and note my mother's demeanor when she was around him. By quieting my own thoughts and critiques of my mother and her relationship with this man, whom I was still getting to know, I saw her. She was lighter, happier, freer than I had seen her — ever. So, why should I worry about the "what ifs" when the "what is" was standing right there in front of me?

My mother's casual yet profound text message request solidified her stance on our mother-daughter relationship and offered something new: an olive branch of peace, an offering to let go.

And on that beautiful, sunny spring day last March, my sisters and I walked our mother down the boardwalk, over the sandy dunes, down to the beach, and to her groom, who was weeping buckets of happy tears. My mother, stunning in a traditional white wedding dress with flawless makeup and her jet-black curls in a timeless updo, was a beautiful, beaming bride. When asked by the officiant who was giving our mother away, my sisters and I replied in unison while holding a picture of our deceased and sorely missed brother: "We do."

• Uber and Lyft drivers struggle with inconsistent tipping despite efforts to improve service.
• Drivers are trying new strategies such as offering cold water or investing in carwash subscriptions.
• Some drivers told BI that they feel like their attempts to improve the ride experience go unnoticed.

Christina, an Uber and Lyft driver in Las Vegas, said about half of her passengers tip on a good day. But she feels tipping is inconsistent and that sometimes her efforts to please customers go unnoticed.

She keeps a clean car, has a bubbly personality, and tries to connect with passengers by asking questions, she told Business Insider. But she's not always super talkative. When she looks in the mirror and sees a passenger on their phone, she takes that as a cue to stay quiet.

"I think when a customer feels closer to you as a person — that they could see themselves in the position of the driver — then they are more likely to tip," said Christina, who asked to use her first name for fear of professional repercussions. "However that still doesn't guarantee a tip because I've had fantastic rides and conversations, and they give me a compliment but no money."

When her mother was dying a few years ago, Christina sometimes mentioned it in conversation, which drove up tips. Still, she sometimes sees herself having to fight for tips. Some riders have told her they don't know how to tip, forcing her to show them on the app. Some international passengers don't tip, she said, because they don't understand tipping culture. And others don't view driving as a legitimate job compared to other service roles.

Christina isn't alone. Drivers, riders, and gig economy experts told BI that historical tipping norms, rising fares, inconsistent driver service and the fact that Uber originally launched without a tipping feature could be contributing to lower tips. However, while many drivers are testing new strategies to increase the frequency of receiving tips, others are giving up. Some told BI they've stopped going the extra mile because their prior efforts rarely paid off.

"While tipping culture in restaurants is fairly well-established in the United States at this point, it's still evolving when it comes to rideshares, and many riders may not understand the financial realities of rideshare driving," Nick Leighton, an etiquette expert and co-host of the podcast Were You Raised By Wolves, told Business Insider via email."This may explain why there's so much inconsistency currently in when or how much riders choose to tip."

Ride-hailing drivers told Business Insider that customer tips are hard to come by. An analysis of over 500,000 US gig drivers provided to BI by Gridwise, a data-analytics company that helps drivers track their earnings, found that 28% of Uber and Lyft trips got tips in the first half of this year, compared to over 70% of food-delivery and grocery trips.

To be sure, some drivers have fared better when it comes to securing customer tips. In the second half of 2023, Lyft said the median US driver earned about $31 per hour of engaged time — en route to pick up a passenger or had one in their vehicle. The company said these earnings included a median tip of $2.41 per engaged hour.

Meanwhile, an Uber spokesperson told BI in May that across the US, drivers are "earning more than $30 an hour while engaged on the app." Uber said that over the last four years, ride-hailing tipping frequency and the average tip size have roughly doubled — adding that the average ride-hailing tip amount rose nearly 10% over the past six months.

Nine ride-hailing drivers shared what strategies have helped them land tips and why sometimes providing good service is not worth the effort. Some drivers requested partial anonymity due to fear of professional repercussions.

How drivers try to maximize tips

Stuart R., 55, recently stopped driving for Uber and Lyft. He reluctantly returned to work in IT, as he struggled to make ends meet driving full-time. Still, he said tips helped him stay afloat after burning out from his previous job.

He maintained a 4.99 driver rating in Austin and said he frequently got tips for simple things such as greeting passengers, assisting with luggage, and keeping his car "immaculately" clean. He found he got better tips when he practiced "safe humor," or joking with passengers without mentioning politics.

Additionally, he had signage hanging from headrests noting that tips were greatly appreciated. Still, he said, even keeping cool water on hot days or engaging in deep conversations with passengers was never a guarantee of a tip.

Being helpful to tourists has been an effective strategy for Marilyn Cassady, a five-star Uber and Lyft driver in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, who drives a few days a week to supplement her Social Security income. She said she gets tips for nearly 50% of her rides. Cassady said female passengers are often relieved to have a female driver and tip more. Still, she acknowledges there's only so much she can do. Sometimes, the app's navigation falters, she said, which can delay some rides and result in lower tips.

"There are some days when I don't see any tips at all," Cassady said.

Some drivers like Jillian, 67, who drives in Santa Clarita, California, have a simple solution for getting more tips — asking riders directly. Before riders get out, she asks them nicely if they could leave a tip.

However, it's not a perfect strategy. She's recently gotten a lot of $1 tips and, despite keeping her car in mint condition, she can work for six to eight hours without a tip.

The inconsistency is working against some drivers

Alex Santiago, a 48-year-old Uber driver in northern Virginia, used to dress business casual and catered music to passengers. But after years of inconsistent tips, he stopped trying so hard.

Some days, he drives with slippers on. Other days, he listens to podcasts he wants to hear. He displays signs stating what passengers can't do, such as eating or talking on speaker. After making these changes, he said he hasn't seen tips decline.

"I'm not providing amenities such as water and games — I don't run a day care, I drive a car," Santiago said.

He's realized tipping patterns are often inconsistent, even though he still aims to provide good service — he keeps his car clean with a $35 monthly subscription to a carwash, and he always helps riders with luggage.

"There are days where I'll get zero tips on 20 rides, then there are days I get tipped eight out of 20 rides," Santiago said.

Jason S., 50, said the frequency and quantity of tips he's received fell during the pandemic. He estimates between a third to half of riders tipped pre-pandemic, but now he's lucky if it's one in six. He suspects increasing rates for riders has reduced tips, as he hasn't changed his driving habits. Those who tip likely always tip regardless of service, he said.

"I used to look at tips as extra, now I desperately need those tips to keep my hourly up," Jason said. "I used to be able to earn anywhere from $32 an hour up to as much as $55 an hour with good bonuses. Now if I hit $25 an hour, it's a miracle."

He thinks there's nothing he can do differently to maximize tips. People rarely request music and he said most riders will turn down candy or drinks.

"One extra good-quality ride with me is probably not going to make the difference to a person who doesn't want to tip anyway to all of a sudden deciding, 'I better tip this guy,'" Jason said.

For some drivers, trying to get tips can backfire.

Andre Kingston, 50, said passengers sometimes reprimand her for trying too hard to get tips. The Detroit-based driver said she'd gotten one-star reviews for "talking too much" or not being polite, even though she says she always greets people and asks them for their music selection.

"It is the talking accusations that hurt the worst," Kingston said. "They make me not want to talk to others. They make me afraid to open my mouth."

Low tipping levels have led Jason, a 49-year-old ride-hailing driver in Phoenix, to no longer provide the same level of service.

"I used to open doors for everyone and adjust the seats for everyone and offer whatever music request any passenger wanted and engaged in whatever conversation the passengers wanted to engage in," he told BI. "But I don't get tipped for it anymore, and I'm over it."

He said his new strategy is to not accept rides that pay him below $20, even though this has lowered his acceptance rate and made him ineligible for Uber's driver rewards program.

"I can no longer accept cheaper rides and hope for a tip to get me there," he said.

Are you a gig driver who is struggling to make ends meet? Are you driving into your retirement years? Reach out to these reporters at nsheidlower@businessinsider.com or jzinkula@businessinsider.com.

I will never play quarterback in the National Football League. I can't plant my feet in the pocket and throw into a tight window. I'm too short and flat-footed, and my asthmatic lungs give up after mere minutes of physical exertion. In high school, the only varsity letters I received were for marching band.

But when I recently took the NFL's preeminent player evaluation, it revealed that I have several skills that pro teams are looking for. In fact, I outperformed nearly all draft prospects in certain categories of this test, floundering on only one. The best part? I didn't even break a sweat.

I took the exam while sitting in an office chair within the suburban Tennessee corporate headquarters of a testing startup called S2 Cognition. Purporting to be the "only sports evaluation that scientifically measures an athlete's game-speed cognitive abilities down to a millisecond level," these tests — which feel like a cross between playing Pong and taking an eye exam — have fast become part and parcel of how many scouts find the next billion-dollar athlete. More than 52 colleges and universities and 16 of the NFL's 32 teams pay S2 to administer tests to prospective signees and to keep the results confidential.

Jack Marucci, the longtime athletic-training director at the SEC powerhouse Louisiana State University, told me the tests helped him identify his athletes' natural strengths and weaknesses and adjust their training to get the most out of them. "We get a lot of Maseratis here," Marucci said, "but we've got to fine-tune the engine a little bit and find out what's going to make them stay at that high gear."

While others have questioned S2's professed efficacy, the company is quickly expanding beyond sports and into law enforcement, the military, and even the boardroom. In the not-distant future, as the corporate hiring process grows ever more layered and as the compulsion to measure every conceivable facet of ourselves grows ever more feverish, you might be taking a version of this high-speed, highly stressful test to land your next job.

This is what brought me to Nashville. I may be genetically damned to never be a Tennessee Titan, but perhaps my test results can help propel me to become a titan of industry. Somehow, I have a slightly easier time believing that.

---

When I arrived at S2's brand-new, still undecorated offices this spring, I was greeted by its founders, Brandon Ally and Scott Wylie, two college athletes turned neuroscientists. After spending their early careers researching individual differences in cognitive deterioration — Ally studied Alzheimer's disease and Wylie studied Parkinson's disease — they founded S2 in 2015, deciding they could apply their work to studying individual differences in cognitive function in world-class athletes. "We are essentially working at both ends of the spectrum, from breakdown to elite expression of cognitive systems," Ally says.

They drew interest for their work with quarterbacks, who often need to be the quickest thinkers on the football field. The difference between throwing a touchdown and taking a brutal sack could be that extra tenth of a second the QB takes to see patterns developing downfield. To gauge whether a QB has the brainpower to handle the pressure and noise, S2 has designed a sequence of tests to measure their reaction time, impulse control, and processing speed, among other traits.

By 2016, S2 had found a hungry market in the NFL. For general managers, drafting and trading players are high-stakes decisions, with up to hundreds of millions of dollars — and the managers' own jobs — on the line. Selecting the wrong quarterback can set a franchise back years, while nabbing the next Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson (neither of whom was the first quarterback drafted in his class) can catapult a team to year-after-year Super Bowl contention. Small wonder teams would pay a king's ransom for a test that promises to give them an edge in knowing which quarterback to draft out of college or sign in free agency.

For many years, the standard-bearer for evaluating the brains of NFL athletes was the Wonderlic, a short IQ test with a series of increasingly difficult questions. While the test is still used in the corporate world, often as part of the interview process, it has largely fallen out of favor in pro sports as research has indicated its scores are not statistically correlated with athletic performance. The Wonderlic has also been criticized as perpetuating racial and socioeconomic biases.

"We are always living under the ghost of the Wonderlic," Ally says. "People think whatever's between the ears is all sort of the same thing — that it's all IQ." For S2, he says, it's a marketing challenge as much as anything to convince prospective clients that "there are things in the brain, and that the brain does, that can correlate to performance in sports." John Michel, an associate professor of management and organizations at Loyola University Maryland who has extensively studied the efficacy of testing in workplaces, agrees there's a distinction. While the Wonderlic, he says, assesses only crystallized intelligence ("How well can you remember something you've learned?"), the S2 gauges fluid intelligence ("How well can you observe multiple objects moving at once in space? How well can you keep track of things?").

Can a test designed for pass rushers and designated hitters really help companies evaluate candidates and fast-track potential executives?

But not everyone is convinced that S2 is a magic bullet. In April 2023, an independent reporter published leaked test results from the Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud, then favored to be the first player selected in the NFL draft, over the Alabama quarterback Bryce Young. The report indicated that Stroud had bombed the S2, scoring in the 18th percentile, while Young scored in the 98th. One week later, Young was drafted first overall, and Stroud fell to second. But then Stroud, the alleged dolt, went on to have one of the best rookie campaigns of any NFL quarterback, while Young struggled all year. Headlines flooded in calling the S2 the second coming of the Wonderlic, or an outright sham.

While S2 won't publicly talk about the details of Stroud's results, Ally said Stroud's reported score was "not legit." Stroud himself seemed to admit he didn't give the test his full effort: "Some things I apply myself to, some things I don't," he told The Athletic.

Still, the backlash has continued into this year. In February, the prominent sports agency Athletes First, which represents Stroud, the Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, and many other top players, instructed its clients to skip cognitive evaluations including the S2 and Athletic Intelligence Quotient, a rival test.

---

At the S2 office, it was time for me to take the test. Unlike the Wonderlic, the S2 isn't anything like a standardized exam: It's a rapid-fire battery of pressure-filled visual simulations that require split-second decision-making, conducted on a gaming laptop or Xbox console connected to a hypersensitive keypad. "I don't care if you have Einsteinian-level IQ or you barely pulled a D-minus average," Wylie told me just before I began. "That's not going to help you."

We agreed I wouldn't divulge the specifics of the test, but I'll say that there are eight five-minute modules: One evaluates your perception speed, another your tracking ability, and another your abilities to intuit a pattern on the fly. Many of them involve dots flying around a screen or flashing before your eyes, and demand an instant reactions by clicking a button or pressing an arrow.

It was grueling, requiring intense concentration and locked-in vision. I wasn't on a football field with 300-pound linemen protecting me from shifty edge rushers, but I felt the pressure. There were moments when I felt completely in the zone, and others when some subconscious impulse led my button-mashing prowess astray. By the end I felt exhausted, and I was certain I'd failed.

---

Unfazed by the controversy over Stroud, S2 has begun selling its tests to other sectors. The several law-enforcement agencies and special operations military groups it has partnered with so far feel like a natural extension: People in both fields often require the same high-pressure, split-second decision-making skills as athletes.

But the company's expansion into corporate settings is a more significant departure. Can a test originally designed for pass rushers and designated hitters really help companies, as S2 claims it can, evaluate outside talent, invest in worker training, and fast-track potential executives?

For many metrics-intensive corporations, S2's testing isn't all that different from what they've been using to assess candidates for decades. IQ tests and personality tests like the Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram have long been deployed to evaluate candidates' aptitude, intelligence, and cultural fit. Many of the world's top companies, such as Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Meta, and Alphabet, already do many of the things S2 is offering, albeit by compiling teams of psychometricians or human-resources experts in bespoke assessment centers. It's no surprise, then, that Fortune 500 companies have been reaching out to S2. (The company won't disclose its nonathletic clients.)

A few years ago, S2 ran a pilot program at three companies in different industries. Wylie says it focused on evaluating employees and discussing with them, rather than their managers, how their results could help them "understand themselves a little bit better beyond just personality and group dynamics" and find ways to adjust their workflows or different roles they could move to. "If we can help every individual maximize their performance and efficiency," Wylie added, "gosh, that's just going to elevate departments, elevate teams." The S2 team learned that some workers were more sensitive than others about what they wanted their employers to know about them.

When Ally and Wylie evaluate so-called corporate athletes — a term that makes even them cringe a bit, though they nevertheless use — they look at dynamic memory systems, including explicit and implicit memory (think recall versus intuition), and executive cognitive systems (such as impulse control and risk-taking). Some of these have crossover with a pro athlete's skill set, while others fall outside.

Michel says a fluid-intelligence test like the S2 could be helpful in deciding whether a candidate would make the right hire or whether an employee is right for a managerial role, but only as part of a suite of tests and reviews of their work product, or as a way to narrow down a large pool of interview candidates.

Wylie and Ally also say their tests should work in tandem with other evaluations. After all, perhaps there's no bigger red flag for a prospective employee than when your future employer relies on one metric to say whether you're a fit or not, whether you can handle the work and live up to expectations. I know I'd be turned off.

---

After finishing my test, I nervously trudged down the hall to a conference room, where Wylie had my results displayed on a laptop screen. To my surprise, he was smiling.

It turned out that my tracking capacity — my ability to follow movements around a screen — was less than stellar. Among NFL prospects, I would have scored in the 6th percentile. My perception speed was fairly average (48th) and my impulse control above average (84th).

But in instinctive learning — in which I had to trust my gut, figure out a pattern, and stick with it despite distractions being thrown my way — I somehow scored in the 97th percentile. "Most people get up and say, oh man, that was tough," Wylie said. "You actually deduced the optimal responses very quickly, very efficiently. A lot of our general managers crush that."

Earlier I had told Wylie that I was easily distractible and often struggled to focus. But then I scored in the 98th percentile on the distraction-control test. "I don't care what you say: When you want to lock in and block out distractions, you can," Wylie said

Perhaps, it's time for me, as a worker, to amend my environment so I can find better ways to remove distractions and lock in. When I finally do that, NFL front offices should give me a call. I won't need the tracking ability of an NFL safety watching a play unfold in front of him, but maybe I can run a franchise.

---

Scott Nover is a freelance writer based in Columbus, Ohio. He is a contributing writer at Slate and was previously a staff writer at Quartz and Adweek covering media and technology.

• Tech industry layoffs are ongoing and widespread, impacting companies like Google, Tesla, and Apple.
• CEOs at big tech companies blame the cuts on overhiring and a shift towards a smaller workforce.
• Companies are also restructuring workforces to prioritize AI development.

Layoffs have been plaguing the tech industry since the start of 2023 — and for many companies, the cuts have continued into 2024 and aren't over.

A number of Big Tech companies have laid off staff this year, including Google, Tesla, Apple, and dozens more. Ironically, companies haven't been slowing down on innovation, with many releasing a constant stream of AI updates and product launches.

Mark Zuckerberg shared his theory on the first round of industry-wide layoffs in an interview with "Morning Brew Daily" in February. He said companies overhired during the pandemic due to e-commerce sales skyrocketing and had to cut back once sales returned to normal.

That seems to ring true for a lot of CEOs. Discord CEO Jason Citron also said in an employee memo in January that the company had increased its workforce by fivefold since 2020. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in 2023 that the company experienced "dramatic growth" over the past two years, which led to hiring "for a different economic reality" than the present.

Salesforce CEO and cofounder Mark Benioff also relayed the same sentiment in a letter to employees announcing layoffs in 2023. He said as revenue increased during the pandemic, the company hired "too many people leading into this economic downturn."

But why are industry-wide layoffs still so widespread and ongoing?

We took a look at what CEOs have said about staff cuts to help us understand why it's still going on.

The less, the better

Zuckerberg said in the "Morning Brew Daily" interview that companies realized the benefits of being leaner, which led to more layoffs. Meta's an example of that — after thousands were cut in Zuckerberg's "year of efficiency," in 2023, the company appeared to make a comeback.

"It was obviously really tough. We parted with a lot of talented people we cared about," Zuckerberg said in the interview. "But in some ways, actually becoming leaner kind of makes the company more effective."

Google seems to be enacting a similar strategy this year. CEO Sundar Pichai told Bloomberg reporter Emily Chang in May that the company is removing some teams completely to "improve velocity."

The tech giant conducted multiple rounds of layoffs this year, with the most recent being in its Cloud unit at the end of May.

Wayfair's cofounders also seem to think the company operates better with fewer people. The company has conducted multiple rounds off layoffs since 2022 and most recently laid off 13% of its workforce in January.

CEO Niraj Shah and cofounder Steve Conine wrote in a letter to shareholders in February that several rounds of layoffs helped the company get more done at a faster rate and lower cost.

Jobs are being restructured for AI

Google's CEO also said in the Bloomberg interview in May that the company is "reallocating people" to its "highest priorities."

Some of those priorities include AI projects, like the creation of an ARM-based central processing unit, the advancement of Gemini, an AI-powered Search, and various updates to Google Workspace.

Google isn't the only one to restructure its workforce to make room for AI.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella explained similar reasoning in a memo last year and said the company would continue to hire in "key strategic areas."

Last May, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said he could easily see 30% of HR and non-consumer-facing roles "replaced by AI and automation" in the next five years. The company conducted its latest round of cuts in March.

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston similarly said in a 2023 layoff announcement that its next stage of growth required a different set of skills, "particularly in AI and early-stage product development."

It's unclear how long the restructuring will last. But for the moment, tech companies don't seem to be slowing down on AI advancement.