Before the holidays, Adam Conner began vibe coding. Like everyone else in the know, he was using Claude Code. Compared to popular chatbots, Anthropics advanced AI agent speaks the language of computers: code. Normally, you click buttons in browsers, open folders, and drag files. But you can also do so by codinginteracting with software by typing commands into a terminal, a text-based app.
Claude Code goes beyond such primitive tasks, though: an AI that can code can effectively do nearly anything on a computer.
We expected developers to use Claude Code for coding, but then something unexpected happened, an Anthropic spokesperson tells Fast Company. We started seeing the discovery arc where people would approach Claude Code to tackle a coding task, then have an ‘aha moment’ when they realized it could help with other tasks.
The result of that aha moment is a vibe coding phenomenon that lets developersand, crucially, non-developers such as Connerharness the AI agent to write code and create projects that could grow tomato plants, knit sweaters, and build fully fledged iOS apps in hours.
Conners vibe coding wasnt as dramatic as keeping living organisms alive, but no less impressive. He used it for his work: an AI labor market simulator, built from Bureau of Labor Statistics and Federal Reserve data. It projects the potential impact that AI could have on the economy. (Headline: its pretty big.)
I got it running in a day, says Conner, whos also the vice president for technology policy at the Center of American Progress (CAP), a think-tank. It shows how this AI is more accessible and powerful. You can have limited programming experience, and still build something quickly.
But the real revelation, says Conner, came using Claude Code to form his own policy council: 21 AI agents with competing ideologies and political agendas. Within minutes, it had generated 24-page proposal papers, 12-page draft legislations, and hundreds of policy ideas.
You can now direct a small army of bots to do the tasks of humans relatively quickly, says Conner.
Its not yet the game changer that can fully automate someones job, but you can begin to see how AI could be transformational.
Were now in the fourth year of widely available generative AI tools. As adoption has ticked up23% of U.S. workers are now frequent AI users, nearly doubling year-over-yearso too have AI-related layoffs.
Despite many companies citing AI as the cause for layoffs, though, actual mass job displacement due to AI has yet to materialize. But the capabilities of Anthropics Claude Codeand in particular its advanced AI workplace tool, Claude Coworkcould change that.
The new knowledge worker
So far, generative AIs use case has been split fairly equally between work and personal needs, such as generating ideas, editing, and even companionship. In 2025, bots were more often leveraged for therapy, life coaching, and, increasingly, codingthe latter likely driven by the popularity of Claude Code: generating more than $1 billion in revenue, just six months after general availability, according to Anthropic.
On January 12, the San Francisco-headquartered company launched Claude Cowork. Its effectively a UI update to Code for the mass market. Whereas Code can only be utilized through a terminals command linethe barebones essence of human-to-computer interactionCowork adds the friendly, compliant chatbot layer to the Claude desktop app.
Currently, anyone with a $100-per-month Claude Max subscription can prompt the AI to complete nearly any computer-related task.
Compared to popular chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or the original Claude.ai, Cowork can, in theory, leverage users hard drivestheir digital livesin its working memory.
In practice, as a workplace tool, Cowork can organize haystacks of files into neat, delineated folders; turn screenshots of invoices into actionable spreadsheets; pull material from multiple websites, synthesized and analyzed in a single document; and even action slide comments.
In short, its a general AI assistant, built for knowledge work.
Its like having a junior researcher thats proactive, makes few mistakes, and solves problems before you realize there even was one, says Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, professor of business psychology at University College London and Fast Company contributor whos written books about AI. Compared to other AI platforms, Cowork is smarter and more autonomous, he adds.
In contrast to how people typically use ChatGPToften for their personal lives, such as travel plans, self-therapy, or recipesAnthropics latest agent can be more entrusted with their work. I use Cowork to digest research: Upload this folder and create a review of these articles main points, then look online for everything Ive written on this topic. So you can give it multi-layered tasks and receive highly accurate outputs, says Chamorro-Premuzic.
These sorts of tasksbite-sized chunks of reading, researching, and writingare traditionally delegated to entry-level employees, says Conner. Its how knowledge workers judgment and expertise is honed on their gradual climb up the career ladder. If AI takes over some of those junior-level processes, it could pull the ladder up from them, he adds.
The risk is that the effectiveness of AI agents like Cowork, and their widespread adoption, could impact entry-level hiring, continues Conner. This has long-term consequences for the economy. And in some ways, its already impacted how many entry-level jobs are available right now; some data suggests a 35% plummet in entry-level openings in the U.S. since 2023.
Fewer junior roles eventually leads to fewer qualified candidates for mid-level and senior roles, Conner says. So, while short-term financial focus means some companies may want to adopt AI more and hire fewer junior folks, its possible we look back years from now and realize it hurt the talent pipeline.
Coding the future
Cowork has already deeply impacted the economy, just over a month after launch.
p>On February 3, $300 billion was wiped from software and data stocks. It swiftly followed Anthropics release of plug-ins that can tailor Cowork to specific roles across sales, legal, financial analysis, and other industries. The worry is that if in-house lawyers can just use Cowork to do their work, they no longer need legal software, says Chamorro-Premuzic.
He believes Cowork is an incremental upgrade, rather than exponential. But the next iteration will likely come soon. On February 5, Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.6. It has four times the effective recall of Opus 4.5, its predecessor that made Claude Code go virallaunched just 73 days before.
The pace of release is accelerating (Sonnet 4.6, Anthropics free model, was released on February 17). Thats not just because of the AI raceClaude Code already writes 90% of its teams code. On December 27, its lead developer said all 40,000 lines of new code hed contributed in the past 30 days were written by the agentic tool. An autonomous, self-perpetuating feedback loop means the next upgrade is always imminent.
We’re going to see AI involved in improving and building itself more and more, says an Anthropic spokesperson. In the closer term, Claude Code helps people build faster, with fewer resources, and the result is innovation across entire industries. We’re in the early innings of what’s possible.
Claude Cowork isnt perfect. It requires oversight, particularly with high-stakes tasks. Like all AI, it can also make mistakesand given it can have access to personal files, apps, and tools, those errors can be more widespread than a chatbots text output. Its also not compliant first: conversation histories are stored locally, rather than within tightly regulated workflows.
However, mass adoption of advanced AI tools like Cowork will likely be inevitable. So will labor market displacementits only the extent thats unclear.
There are already signs that junior workers and college graduates are disproportionately affected by the onward march of AI. A November 2025 Stanford University study found a 16% relative decline in employment for early-career workers in occupations most exposed to the technology since 2022, such as software developers and customer service representatives.
Not all entry-level jobs will be decimated by AI. Companies will always want to hire the best talent, and train them over time to accumulate institutional knowledge, workplace culture, and project history in ways technology cant.
But there are concerns over how roles may be reshaped.
If knowledge work merely becomes entering and fine-tuning prompts, it risks workers automating themselves, hampering their development and soft skills. Generative AI can tell you what to say in giving critical feedback, but its not the same as having a hard conversation and learning from it, says Chamorro-Premuzic. It becomes judgment without experience.
The power of Claude Cowork means were one step closer to that future.
Its like seeing the Wright brothers fly for the first time, says Conner. You wouldnt have understood the concept of a Boeing 767 flying across the ocean, but youd have grasped the idea of aviation. With Claude Cowork, you can see the future more clearly, and how this technology will have a major impact.
Bourbon was once hailed as the poor mans drink. The spirit has since developed, however, from a mass-market American staple into a luxury class, and limited releases, higher prices, and brands vying for prestige have caused a crowded top tier.
Even though the premium field has widened, the very top of the market remains stubbornly narrow, according to whiskey expert Fred Minnick.
During a blind tasting of his top 100 American whiskeys of 2025, Minnick evaluated leading contenders anonymously. Even without labels, the rankings reflected the same hierarchy seen at retail and on the secondary market. The most scarce, high-status bottles still rose to the top, regardless of brand recognition.
George T. Stagg claimed the number one spot, followed by Sazerac Rye 18 Year at number two. Both are part of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, one of the most limited and consistently in-demand product lines in American spirits. Buffalo Trace, beyond its Antique Collection, also produces the popularand often hard to findEagle Rare, Blantons, Weller, and Pappy Van Winkle whiskey brands.
Minnicks ranking reinforced a key dynamic shaping the bourbon market. While dozens of producers now compete in the premium tier, demand continues to concentrate on a small set of legacy brands whose supply is structurally constrained by long aging cycles and finite inventory. Scarcity, not novelty, appears to be one of the most powerful differentiators at the top end.
That scarcity has also shaped customer expectations. People who are out buying bourbon want to buy something that feels fancy, Minnick said, whos next book, Bottom Shelf, comes out next month. Bourbon, which used to be the poor mans drink, is now like a fancy mans drink.
Those changing expectations are reflected not only in pricing and branding but in how elite bourbon is judged. Minnick noted that higher proof and longer finishonce defining markers of top-tier releasesno longer carry the same weight on their own. For the first time in my career, Im breaking protocol, he said. Im not rewarding the longer finish.
Instead, Minnick favored the bourbon that delivered what he described as a fuller, more immersive experience, one that absolutely drenches my tongue and completely encompasses my entire mouth.
While each bottle featured in Minnicks review is among the top American whiskeys, the most supply-constrained, prestige-driven brands still set the markets upper bound. And without labels, the qualities that signal luxury still held up under blind tasting.
Check out the top five bottles below, and watch the full video on YouTube:
George T. Stagg, Buffalo Trace Antique Collection
Sazerac Rye 18 Year, Buffalo Trace Antique Collection
Bombergers PFG
Brother Justus Founders Reserve American Single Malt
Heaven Hill 90th Anniversary
Leila Sheridan
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister website, Inc.com.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday is likely to be a test run of the message Republicans will give to voters in November’s elections for control of the House and the Senate.The president and his party appear vulnerable, with polls showing much of America distrusts how Trump has managed the government in his first year back in office. In addition, the Supreme Court last week struck down one of the chief levers of his economic and foreign policy by ruling he lacked the power to impose many of his sweeping tariffs.Though Trump is expected to focus on domestic issues, his intensifying threats about launching military strikes on Iran over its nuclear program cast a shadow over the address.Here are a few things to watch as Trump tries to make his case:
Economy and immigration are no longer strengths for Trump
Trump swept back into the White House on promises to bring down prices and restore order to immigration in America. But on both issues, public sentiment has turned against him.Only 39% of U.S. adults approve of his economic leadership and just 38% support him on immigration, according to the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey. Those low numbers show the country is still fretting about the costs of groceries, housing and utilities, a problem compounded by Trump’s whipsawing use of tariffs. They also show how the public was disturbed by videos of violent clashes with protesters, including two U.S. citizens killed by federal agents.Since his party passed a massive tax cut bill last year, Trump has yet to unveil major new policy ideas on the economy. In recent speeches, he has largely offered the public reruns about his tax cuts, plans to reduce mortgage rates and a new government website for buying prescription drugs.The Supreme Court ruling against many of Trump’s far-reaching global tariffs on Friday and the president vowing to use other means to forge ahead with import taxes will only prolong the economic turmoil over trade and prices.“I think it makes it even more important that the speech really focus on the economy,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist.Conant said between the tariff ruling and a Commerce Department report on Friday that showed U.S. economic growth slowed in the final three months of last year, “the president needs to bolster his economic message.”
Blame everything on Biden
The administration is trying to make the case that despite Trump’s rewiring of global trade and tax cuts, the economy is still struggling because of choices made in 2021 and 2022 by his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden. But Trump is also seeking to take credit for positive signs in the current economy, such as recent stock market gains.“Watch the State of the Union. We’re going to be talking about the economy. We inherited a mess,” Trump said at the White House on Wednesday.Of course, Trump made the same kind of argument in his address to a joint session of Congress last year, invoking the Biden name 13 times.
Trump’s focus on foreign policy has yet to resonate politically
Despite Trump’s America First credo, his aggressive approach abroad over the past year has sparked concerns among some of his supporters about whether he should spend more time focusing on voters at home.Trump, who’s made it clear he covets a Nobel Peace Prize, is likely to use the speech to remind Americans of his attempts to try to broker peace accords in global conflicts.But in many respects, the president hasn’t been extending olive branches. Within the past year, his administration has launched strikes in Yemen, Nigeria and Iran, along with an ongoing campaign of lethal military strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels near South America. Trump also shocked the world in January with a surprise raid to capture Venezuela’s then-leader, Nicolás Maduro, and floated the idea of using force to seize Greenland.In recent weeks, as he pressures Iran, Trump has bolstered the U.S. military’s presence in the Middle East. But he has yet to make a clear case to voters about what his actions overseas mean for their lives.He might even minimize foreign policy in his State of the Union despite his belief that it’s been a major success.“For as much as foreign policy has dominated his last year in office, this speech will mostly focus on the economy,” Conant predicted.Vice President JD Vance offered a similar prediction, saying in an interview Saturday on Fox News Channel that in the speech, “you’re going to hear a lot about the importance of bringing jobs back into our country, of reshoring manufacturing, of all these great factories that are being built.”He said Trump would also speak about lowering energy costs.
Trump has made the State of the Union his own
The State of the Union used to be about recapping accomplishments and seeking to unite the country, but it increasingly reflects divisions in society.“What you’re going to expect is some version of a campaign speech in which the Democrats are the villains, the Republicans he likes are the heroes, and he is the savior not only of the nation but of the globe,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania.Trump supporters might cherish the moment in 2020 when the president midspeech reunited a military family. He also bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host and author who died in 2021. But that moment turned off Democrats who saw Limbaugh as a destructive figure in political media.
Reaction in the room could matter as much as Trump’s words
Trump is delivering the speech, but his audience sitting in the House chamber has a big role, too. When Trump delivered his 2020 State of the Union, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi theatrically ripped up a copy of the speech afterward, overshadowing much of what Trump said.House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York has said in a letter to colleagues “it is important to have a strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber,” indicating some members might choose not to attend in protest to Trump. But there’s also the possibility of Democrats razzing Trump as Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, did in 2025, leading him to be removed from the chamber.If Trump in his speech lays out a fuller case for why he’s using other mechanisms in federal law to continue his tariffs, Conant said it’ll be interesting to see the reaction from lawmakers.“I think that any House Republicans that don’t applaud his tariffs are going to be featured prominently on the telecast,” he said.
State of the Unions have short shelf lives
While some presidential phrases endure, much of the rhetoric in State of the Unions is forgettable. And with Trump who’s known for veering off-script there’s a good chance a stray comment or a social media post could step on his message.Matt Latimer, a former Republican speechwriter for then-President George W. Bush, noted in an email that people hear the president talk all of the time, so the State of the Union has lost much of its luster.A State of the Union “only matters in moments when the country is undergoing a great trauma a war, an attack, a global crisis and a president and Congress want to speak in a (mostly) united voice to the country,” he said. “That’s not what we are experiencing now.”
Josh Boak and Michelle L. Price, Associated Press
Cheap tote bag collections everywhere just got an attachable clip-on upgrade.
Snatch is a shoulder strap system designed to attach and detach to fabric surfaces without damaging them. The clips are comprised of three pieces of hardwarea button, slotted loop, and fastenerand they can give thin-handled tote bags new life with a wider, sturdier shoulder strap in just a few steps, exemplifying a simple and solutions-oriented Occam’s razor approach to product design.
[Photo: CW&T]
To assemble, you place fabric over the button piece and thread it through the aluminum slotted loop. The fastener holds it all into place, and the strap is then attached onto a g-hook on the slotted loop.
[Image: CW&T]
The black strap has a 3M retro-reflective print on one side for nighttime visibility, and it’s woven as a single piece with openings every inch so it can be adjustable without requiring extra hardware.
“We wanted to avoid additional hardware or sewing,” says Taylor Levy, one half of CW&T, the Brooklyn art and design studio behind Snatch. “Tri-glide or other buckle hardware works well for adjustable shoulder straps, but all those require sewing. We wanted to keep things as simple as possible, so we opted for this mille-style webbing that lets you hook directly into any notch to adjust strap length.”
[Photo: CW&T]
The product typifies CW&T’s approach to product design: clean, minimal, and useful. The idea for the Snatch came during a trip when Che-Wei Wang, the agency’s other designer, started thinking about ways to easily and non-destructively attach a strap to a bag or fabric. He considered how when outdoors, fabric can be wrapped around a rock with a knot tied around it and the rock distributes the load to hang a tarp.
“Snatch works using the same principle,” Levy says.
The device affords a wider, adjustable shoulder strap, making any tote bag personalizable. Additionally, it gives tote bags tracking device compatibility, as the button in the clip was designed to hold an AirTag inside. Snatch retails for $52 and comes with two clips, one strap, and a free tote.
[Image: CW&T]
But it’s not just for tote bags. CW&T says the device should be thought of as “an interface for attaching anything to fabric” with versatile uses, like making a backpack or attaching a pouch to a shirt, or used to hang a tarp or hammock outdoors.
For cute tote bags with uncomfortable or inconvenient handles, though, Snatch makes it possible to finally and more comfortably put them back into rotation.
If youre in the Northeast, theres a good chance youll be hunkering down inside for a few days as a major snowstorm batters the East Coast.
And if you have a flight to catch, well, theres a high probability that it might not be taking off at all. Due to the blizzard, which is forecast to bring up to two feet of snow in some areas, thousands of flights have already been canceled or delayed.
Heres what you need to know if you have a flight to catch.
Thousands of flights have already been canceled due to the snowstorm
As of the time of this writing, 5,348 flights within, into, or out of the United States today have already been canceled, according to data compiled by the flight tracking platform FlightAware. Additionally, another 703 flights have been delayed.
The number of todays cancellations already outpaces yesterday, when 3,436 cancellations within, into, or out of the United States took place.
It is highly likely that as the day continues onand the storm continues along its paththat more flights will be canceled or delayed.
And the majority of those cancellations and delays can be blamed on the winter storm that is bearing down across the Northeast.
As NBC News reports, the storm has already resulted in more than 200,000 people losing power across the impacted area, which stretches from Maryland to Maine. In total, blizzard warnings currently cover 41 million people.
School closures have already been announced across major cities like Boston and New York, the latter of which has a travel ban in place until later today. In New York, officials said todays blizzard could be one of the citys 10 worst over the past 150 years.
Major airlines issue travel alerts for dozens of airports
Americas three largest airlines have issued travel alerts for flights scheduled to depart from or land into dozens of airports. The airlines, which include American, Delta, and United, say the travel alerts are in place from yesterday, February 22, 2026, until Wednesday, February 25, 2026. Those airports include:
American Airlines
American has issued travel alerts for the following airports due to the winter storm:
Baltimore, Maryland (BWI)
Boston, Massachusetts (BOS)
Hampton / Newport News, Virginia (PHF)
Hartford, Connecticut (BDL)
New York Kennedy, New York (JFK)
New York LaGuardia, New York (LGA)
Newark, New Jersey (EWR)
Norfolk, Virginia (ORF)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (PHL)
Providence, Rhode Island (PVD)
Richmond, Virginia (RIC)
Salisbury / Ocean City, Maryland (SBY)
Washington Dulles, Washington D.C. (IAD)
Washington Reagan, Washington D.C. (DCA)
White Plains / Westchester County, New York (HPN)
Worcester, Massachusetts (ORH)
Delta Air Lines
Delta has issued travel alerts for the following airports due to the winter storm:
Albany, NY (ALB)
Allentown, PA (ABE)
Baltimore, MD (BWI)
Bangor, ME (BGR)
Boston, MA (BOS)
Charleston, WV (CRW)
Charlottesville, VA (CHO)
Cleveland, OH (CLE)
Elmira, NY (ELM)
Harrisburg, PA (MDT)
Hartford, CT (BDL)
Ithaca, NY (ITH)
New York, NY (JFK)
New York, NY (LGA)
Newark, NJ (EWR)
Norfolk, VA (ORF)
Philadelphia, PA (PHL)
Portland, ME (PWM)
Providence, RI (PVD)
Richmond, VA (RIC)
South Bend, IN (SBN)
Washington, DC (DCA)
Washington, DC (IAD)
White Plains, NY (HPN)
Worcester, MA (ORH)
United Airlines
United has issued travel alerts for the following airports due to the winter storm:
Allentown, PA, US (ABE)
Albany, NY, US (ALB)
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, PA, US (AVP)
Hartford, CT, US (BDL)
Boston, MA, US (BOS)
Baltimore, MD, US (BWI)
Washington, DC, US (DCA)
Newark, NJ/New York, NY, US (EWR)
Washington, DC, US (IAD)
New York, NY, US (JFK)
New York, NY, US (LGA)
Manchester, NH, US (MHT)
Norfolk, VA, US (ORF)
Philadelphia, PA, US (PHL)
Providence, RI, US (PVD)
Portland, ME, US (PWM)
Richmond, VA, US (RIC)
What should I do if I have a flight scheduled for the next few days?
Before you head to the airport, you should monitor for any announcements about your flight. The easiest way to do this is to check your airlines app to see whether your flight is on time, delayed, or canceled.
You can also enter your flight information on the airline’s website to get the latest updates for your journey.
What are my options if my flight is delayed or canceled?
If your flight is delayed or canceled, you should check with your airline about alternate travel options.
Some airlines are also allowing affected passengers to reschedule their flights. United, for example, is allowing passengers with original travel dates between February 22 and February 25, 2026, at select airports to change their flights without incurring change fees or fare differences, under certain conditions and limitations.
If your flight is delayed or canceledor you just dont want to travel during the stormits best to call your airline to ask what your travel options are.
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc.and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
During Charles Giancarlos first all-hands meeting after becoming CEO of Pure Storage in 2017, an employee asked: How long are we going to keep the name Pure Storage? The question suggested that having storage in the companys name limited the range of products and services it could offer customers.
My response at the time was, We can think about a new name as soon as we start doing something other than storage, Giancarlo recalls.
Though the company may be best known for its data storage platformincluding its all-flash hardware that uses ultraefficient flash memory modules instead of spinning hard drivesGiancarlo is pushing the Santa Clara, Calif.-based tech concern into data management. Today, he unveiled a new name, Everpure, reflecting his ambition to deliver a broader array of products and services to enterprises.
A brand by any other name
The Everpure moniker preserves the brand equity of Pure from the original company name. Ever nods to the companys Evergreen storage-as-a-subscription program. A new logo retains the Pure Storage logomark, and the companys ticker symbol, PSTG, remains unchanged.
Renaming a company isnt cheapbrand management platform Frontify estimates that a complete brand overhaul can cost companies $1 million or more. And while consumer branding changes are often hotly debated (hello, Cracker Barrel), business-to-business (B2B) marketing moves rarely elicit more than a shrug. Giancarlo himself says it is unlikely that anyone will be talking about the name change a year from now.
But an enterprise rebranding can help reframe a companys remit for employees, investors, and prospective customers. Indeed, Giancarlo believes the new name will help open doors with chief data officers and AI strategists. The person who cares about data management inside our customers is different from the person that cares about data storage, he explains. And when they hear the name Pure Storage, theyre likely to say, Oh, I dont need to meet with them. Theyre the storage people.
New name, new opportunities
The rebranding is also a manifestation of Giancarlos bet that enterprises will pay Everpure for more than data storage, aligning the companys name and brand with the future it aspires to build. To take full advantage of the promise of AIsuch as agents that can monitor a supply chain or automatically generate financial reportingcompanies need to organize, tag, and unify information that often exists in different systems and databases. Everpure is ready to help them do that.
Many customers who were furthest along in adopting AIwho were gung-hoare saying, my biggest challenge in being able to deploy AI is that my enterprise data is not ready, Giancarlo says. Everpure is seeking to address these challenges with its Enterprise Data Cloud architecture, which promises to simplify the process of cleaning, reshaping, and moving data so it can be useful to companies.
However, the companys success is by no means assured. Its competitors include Dell EMC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), heavy hitters who are also seeking to help customers with their data management needs.
Giancarlo says Everpures edge is its willingness to invest in innovation. When he arrived at the company, after 13 years at Cisco Systems and 8 years at private equity firm Silverlake, he committed to maintaining heavy investment in research and development. In its fiscal year that ended February 2, 2025, the company spent $804 million on R&D, 25% of its $3.2 billion in total revenue. Everpure reports 2026 revenue this week. While some mature companies might look to improve profitability by cutting that spending, Giancarlo says he still intends to maintain high levels of R&D investment, adding: Maybe Im perpetually immature.
What investments do you prioritize?
What are the tools your company uses to help realize your ambitions? Send your responses to stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Ill publish some of your manifestations in a future newsletter.
Read more: the business of rebranding
7 designers on the most influential rebrands of 2025
The biggest branding trends youll see this year
6 situations that call for a rebrand
New York City is a city of walkers. More trips are made on foot than by car (41% versus 28%) and the citys “80X50” climate action plan envisions that 80% of all trips by 2050 will be made either on foot, by biking, or by public transit. The problem is that pedestrian movement in the city has remained largely unmapped and underestimateduntil now.
Together with a team of researchers, Andres Sevtsuk, an associate professor in MITs Department of Urban Studies and Planning, has built what he says is the first complete model of pedestrian activity in New York Cityand it’s a model that can now be applied to any U.S. city.
The model, which maps foot traffic across all sidewalks, crosswalks and footpaths in NYC during peak periods, reveals surprising patterns about the way people move around the city, as well as where they are most vulnerable to vehicle crashes (hint: its not Midtown Manhattan). It could have tremendous benefits for city planners.
Spatial distribution of estimated foot-traffic volumes in New York City during the weekday AM peak period. Blue labels describe observed pedestrian counts during the AM peak hour (in 2018 or 2019) and the white labels describe model estimates. [Image: MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning]
The pitfalls of a car-centric country
Much ink has been spilled on the car-centricity of American cities. Americans average two vehicles per household (among the highest rates in the world) and car ownership has shaped everything from suburban sprawl to infrastructure spending priorities.
Over the past decades, transportation agencies have become experts at modeling traffic and predicting vehicle flows, but as Sevtsuk points out in a study accompanying the model that was published in the journal Nature Cities, “what gets counted, counts.” The amount of transportation infrastructure funding that states receive from the Federal Highway Administration, for example, relies on vehicle miles traveled in that state. The more residents of that state drive cars, the more funding the state receives.
If cities could count the number of pedestrians that walked across their streets, they could steer more federal money into urban, people-oriented infrastructure. But while car domination in the U.S. has long relied on tremendous lobbying from automakers, the pedestrian movement has had no champion pushing for data collection. “Nobody has monetized walking,” says Sevtsuk, “and this is actually a good thing.”
Until 1994, the U.S. didn’t even have an accurate roadway map. That year, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order directing federal agencies to build a standardized digital road network. As Sevtsuk explains, this helped revolutionize traffic modeling and paved the way for more efficient deliveries and various location-based services.
If a similar order were to help develop and standardize a pedestrian network nationwide, it would highlight where communities have systematically worse pedestrian infrastructure, and help target public space investments in places where they affect the most people.
[Image: MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning]
The Manhattan bias
Over the past decade, Sevtsuk and his team have built various district-wide models in places like Melbourne, Australia, and Cambridge, MA, but they have never built a model at this scale. “A lot of cities don’t even know where their sidewalks are,” he says, “and the sad part is, some cities don’t want to know where sidewalks are.”
Indeed, cities face legal obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act to maintain accessible sidewalks, but a comprehensive tracking system also exposes them to greater liability. The result, according to Sevtsuk, is a perverse incentive whereby cities that don’t systematically inventory their sidewalk conditions can more easily defend themselves against injury claims by arguing they weren’t aware of specific hazards.
In New York City, Sevtsuk’s model revealed illuminating findings. One of them has to do with the way street improvements are funded in the city. In 2020, the NYC Department of Transportation released a New York City Pedestrian Mobility Plan that laid out a road map for ongoing improvements for pedestrians and other road users. The plan laid out five corridor classification types intended to serve as a guideline for pedestrian infrastructure renovations. Most streets with the highest classification type”global corridors” that would receive priority funding for sidewalk widening, pedestrian plazas, and other improvementswere located in Manhattan.
Sevtsuk acknowledges that many of these streets, including Broadway and Fifth Avenue, are important corridors, but his teams model shows that 26 streets in the outer boroughs had higher pedestrian volume than 75% of the “global corridors” designated by NYC DOT, yet they were categorized lower, meaning they won’t receive the treatment or investment they deserve.
Average pedestrian volumes weekday evening peak period 5-6 p.m. in 59 NYC Community Districts. [Image: MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning]
“We discovered there is a Manhattan bias in policymaking,” he says, noting the discrepancy was likely due to a lack of metrics. “They were guesstimating, and with guesstimation, we’re all flawed and have biases,” he added.
Comparison between the total number of crashes involving pedestrian injuries between 2012 and 2023 (left), and the rates of pedestrian injuries (right), where the crash counts are divided by foot-traffic. [Image: MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning]
Another finding had to do with car crashes. For years, transportation officials have thought the highest number of pedestrian injuries involving vehicle crashes was around Times Square, in Manhattan. But these numbers never took crash rates per pedestrian into account, meaning they simply looked at where the most crashes occur, without considering the fact that there were more crashes simply because there were more people. “We need to take into account how many people actually walk there, then look at crash rates per pedestrian,” says Sevtsuk.
Using data from the model, the researchers mapped the rate of pedestrian crashes and found the highest concentration in The Bronx, Staten Island, as well as outer regions of Brooklyn and Queens. Not a single street below 125th in Manhattan lit up on the map. “Midtown sees a lot of crashes but it’s a safe place to walk because it has very high level of foot traffic,” says Sevtsuk.
A template for cities worldwide
The implications of the team’s work extend far beyond New York City. In fact, what makes the model particularly powerful for other cities is how adaptable it is.
The researchers approach builds on a framework called Urban Network Analysis that Sevtsuk and his team have been developing for a decade. The team started by assembling data on where in NYC sidewalks, crosswalks, and footpaths are located, then mapping major trip origins and destinationsthink home to school, job to subway, or restaurant to park. They then simulated how pedestrians move between these locations, accounting for the fact that people don’t always take the shortest route and often have multiple subway stops to choose from.
Using pedestrian counts from over 1,000 locations from NYC DOT as ground truth, the team calibrated the model using machine learning to ensure the estimates matched real-world observations. Once calibrated at those locations, the model could predict pedestrian volumes across every street in the city. The process took about a year to complete, but relatively speaking, it’s still much easier than building a full-fledged traffic model, says Sevtsuk.
The researchers are now working with 140 cities across the state of Maine to better understand the kinds of upgrades and safety improvements they could make for pedestrians. They have also partnered with LA Metro to identify opportunities where the city could do small but important interventions that would help them better prepare for the LA28 Olympic Games, but also everyday users. “They are trying to use [the interventions] as a kind of legacy, using some of the Games budget to support walking in the city,” says Sevtsuk.
Ghost jobs are postings for positions that don’t actually exist for various reasons, and they waste countless hours for job seekers who apply to roles that were never meant to be filled. Experts in recruiting and career strategy have identified specific warning signs that reveal when a posting is likely fake or abandoned. This guide breaks down how to recognize these red flags before investing time in an application, so you can better focus your efforts on genuine opportunities.
Prioritize Responsive Employers that Show Immediate Engagement
One reliable way to identify a ghost job is to see whether applying to it leads to any human response at all. Today, silence has become the norm. I’ve watched thousands of job seekers reach out to employers saying it feels like they’re reaching out into a void. The numbers tell a similar story; research shows that only about 20% to 25% of applications submitted on large job boards, like Indeed, receive any response, which means the majority of applicants never hear back.
That is why so many job seekers feel stuck. Many are not being rejected, but they’re being ignored by jobs that were never truly open. Some listings exist to build applicant pipelines, satisfy internal posting requirements, or because job distribution is automated even when no recruiter is actively reviewing candidates.
We’ve learned to spot the difference between a real opening and a ghost job by watching for one thing: action. When a role is genuinely open, employers engage quickly by reviewing candidates, sending messages, or moving applicants into next steps. When there is no engagement at all, the listing may exist in name only.
Job seekers can better focus their efforts by looking for signals of immediacy and accountability. Listings that include clear location details, shift times, pay ranges, or start timing are far more likely to be tied to real hiring needs. Applying locally and prioritizing roles where employers are actively engaging candidates leads to better outcomes than applying broadly and hoping for a response.
Debbie Emery, Cofounder & CSO, Juvo Jobs
Follow Projects and Investment Signals for Reality
Another good way to spot a ghost job is to look at how disconnected the posting feels from what’s actually happening in the sector. In energy, where I specialize, hiring is almost always tied to a real project, a capital investment, or some kind of regulatory timeline. So that’s a key indicator: If a role keeps getting reposted for months, the description never really changes, and there’s no clear business reason behind it, it might just be a ghost job.
I’ve seen this happen a lot with software and data roles at utilities. There was one utility that kept reposting a cloud engineering role for close to a year. On paper it looked urgent. In reality, their digital transformation project had been paused while they waited on regulatory approval, but HR kept the job live to collect résumés. Candidates were spending hours interviewing for a role that couldn’t even be funded yet. Internally, everyone knew what was going on. Externally, it looked like a great opportunity.
For job seekers, I’d say the safest move is to follow the money and follow the projects. Pay attention to which companies just secured funding, announced expansions, or won major contracts.
In energy, hiring tends to follow infrastructure. If a company just broke ground on a new facility or announced a big grid modernization program, those roles are usually real.
Your sector likely has its own red and green flags; take a minute to establish them early on. Then, keep your eyes open.
Jon Hill, Managing Partner, Tall Trees Talent
Target Newly Posted Positions with Urgency
An easy way to spot a ghost job listing is when the same role sits online for months with no real changes. In real hiring cycles, things usually move fast, or at least you see progress. When a job keeps showing up again and again, or never fully closes, it is often there to collect résumés or test the market, not to hire right now.
We constantly update our job postings on Indeed. I work closely with our team managers to shape each listing, tweak the wording, and pull roles down when hiring pauses. That is why ghost jobs stand out to me so clearly.
There was this one company in particular that always seemed to have the same opening listed on Indeed. It was a marketing manager’s role that got reposted every 30 days for almost a year. We’ve posted and filled at least five positions over the past six months, but that specific position was still open.
Behind the scenes, I’m guessing candidates kept applying and following up for that role. But no interviews were happening at all. The post stayed live only to build a future talent pool, which felt unfair to job seekers putting in real effort.
To focus on real opportunities, I usually tell job seekers to look for roles posted within the last 14 to 30 days and scan for signs of real activity. This can be a named hiring manager, clear next steps in the process, or recent team growth on LinkedIn.
From what I have seen, applying to fewer roles with stronger signals of urgency works better than sending out dozens of applications and hoping one sticks.
Lauren Byrne, Co-Owner and Head of HR, My Biz Niche
Watch for Reposts, Research Beyond the Listing
Job searching requires time, emotional energy, and vulnerability. When a role turns out to be a ghost job, or worse, a risky one, it understandably erodes trust in the hiring process and in employers more broadly.
One reliable way to spot a ghost job is when a role has been posted or repeatedly reposted for months with no visible hiring activity or meaningful evolution. These listings are often vague, evergreen, and disconnected from a clear, time-bound business need.
I see this most often with fast-growing companies that are fundraising or planning for future scale. From an employer perspective, building a talent pipeline is strategic. From a candidate perspective, applying to a role that is not actively being filled can feel misleading. A strong candidate experience depends on transparency. If a role is exploratory or pipeline-based, say so clearly. Candidates deserve to know whether an opportunity is immediate or future-facing.
Other things to be mindful of: Legitimate employers do not ask for personal or financial information such as banking details, SIN/SSN, or government ID during the application or interview process. That information is only collected after a formal offer has been made and accepted, typically through secure onboarding systems. I have seen candidates targeted through fake or misleading job posings that quickly move conversations off platform and request personal details under the guise of “pre-onboarding” or “payroll setup.” These are clear red flags.
For job seekers, taking your research further can make a meaningful difference. Look beyond the posting itself. Review the company’s website, its LinkedIn employer profile, and the profiles of potential hiring managers or team members. Platforms like Glassdoor can also provide useful context when viewed thoughtfully. Pairing this research with a focus on recently posted roles and clear ownership, and combining applications with targeted outreach, helps reduce wasted effort and job search burnout.
For employers, the takeaway is simple. Hiring practices are part of your brand. If you are building a pipeline, be transparent about it. Trust is built through clarity, not ambiguity.
Heidi Hauver, Executive Advisor & Mentor | Fractional VP, People & Culture
Spot Vague Descriptions
Vague job descriptions paired with little or no movement in the hiring process are another red flag. If a posting lists generic responsibilities, lacks clear success metrics, and there’s no defined next step or timeline; it’s often a sign that the company isn’t truly ready to hire.
I’ve seen this firsthand when companies post roles before aligning internally. They think they’re hiring, but they haven’t clarified what success in the role actually looks like. That lack of structure leads to stalled searches and leaves candidates hanging.
To avoid ghost jobs and focus on real opportunities, job seekers should look for postings that are outcome-based, with clear expectations and a transparent process. Companies that understand job fit, and define the role based on competencies, tend to move faster and hire more intentionally.
Linda Scorzo, CEO, Hiring Indicators
Chase Recently Funded Firms where Demand Exists
Another reliable way to spot a ghost job is to step back and look at the hiring context of the company, not just the job description itself.
First, pay attention to the total number of open roles a company is posting and whether the employer is actually a recruiting or staffing agency. Agencies often publish large volumes of roles to build résumé pipelines, even when no active opening exists. If a company consistently posts dozens or hundreds of similar roles without clear hiring updates, that’s a strong red flag.
Second, if the company has only a few openings, check who the company is and why they might be hiring now. Well-known brands or Fortune 500 companies often keep roles open continuously for “evergreen” hiring or future needs. In contrast, genuine hiring urgency is usually tied to recent business events, such as a funding round or rapid expansion. You can verify this by checking sources like TechCrunch or recent press releases.
From my experience, the most efficient strategy is to focus on startups that raised significant funding within the last one to three months. Fresh capital almost always translates into real hiring pressure, defined roles, and faster decision cycles. Platforms like Wellfound (AngelList Talent) make this especially easy, as many startups there are actively converting funding into immediate hires.
In short, job seekers should shift their effort from volume-based applying to signal-based targeting: companies with recent funding, clear growth drivers, and a concrete reason to hire right now. This dramatically reduces wasted applications and increases the odds of engaging with real, active opportunities.
Bogdan Serebrykaov, Founder & CEO, Careery
Favor Definite Steps toward Live Interviews
One reliable red flag is a process that never outlines clear steps toward a live interview. At the SHRM25 Executive Network Experience, HR leaders told me they are bringing candidates into the office earlier to confirm identity because of deep fakes, and processes that outline this process upfront are more credible than those that are vague. Job seekers should focus on employers that clearly describe those in-person steps in the job description and early communications.
Colleen Paulson, Executive Career Consultant, Ageless Careers
Match Role Scope to Company Stage
One thing I’ve learned is that a job posting can sound way bigger than the company actually is, and that’s a strong sign it might be a ghost job. If the role promises “global leadership,” “building a world-class team,” or “executive-level strategy” for a startup that only has a handful of employees, it usually means the posting was created to attract clicks or collect résumés, not to fill a real position.
I once saw a listing for a “VP of Growth” at a tiny SaaS company with no marketing team and only a couple of customers. The job description read like it was written for a large enterprise. When I checked the company’s LinkedIn and website, there was no evidence they were scaling at that level, so it didn’t feel genuine.
To avoid wasting time, I recommend focusing on companies whose job descriptions match their real size and stage. A genuine opportunity will clearly describe the team structure, the current product roadmap, and what success looks like in the first 90 days. If those details are missing or exaggerated, treat it as a red flag.
So my advice is to avoid chasing roles that sound too big for the company. Instead, focus your energy on listings where the job scope matches the company’s real-world reality. That’s how you find real opportunities.
Monica Panait, CMO, Brizy
Cross Check Ads against Employer-Owned Channels
I would say that one reliable way to spot a ghost job is to check when the job was posted against the company’s own careers page or their social media activity.
I tend to see roles on LinkedIn which say that the job was posted two days ago. But if you really dig into the company’s website, the same role has been listed with the exact same description for several months now.
You should focus on the active signals instead of just open roles. I recommend looking for a hiring manager posting about the role personally on their LinkedIn profile or on Twitter in the past week.
If you’re only able to find evidence of that job on an automated feed on a job board, then it’s quite likely just a “pipeline builder” and not something the company is taking very seriously. But if there’s a human behind it talking about the role, then there is a real budget attached to that role right now.
Jeremy Chatelaine, Founder & CEO, MonsterOps
Verify Local Contact Numbers before You Proceed
Job seekers should know that an out-of-townor countryphone number is often a red flag.
On its own, it seems like a small detail. People move and often keep their old numbers. But businesses are different. A legitimate company hiring for a real, funded role should have a local presence tied to the market they operate in. Even large national or global companies still maintain local recruiting numbers, local HR contacts, or at minimum a clear corporate line that routes internally. So, when a posting claims to be hiring in Dallas, Chicago, or Toronto, but every call comes from an overseas call center or a rotating set of untraceable numbers, that’s worth paying attention to.
In my experience, real hiring teams want to be reachable. They want candidates to be able to call back, verify who they spoke with, and feel confident about who is on the other end of the process. When a company refuses to provide a local number, hides behind VOIP lines, or routes all recruiting through offshore screening centers with no accountability, it often means the role itself isn’t real. It doesn’t mean you walk away immediately. But it does mean you proceed carefully, protect your time, and keep your expectations realistic.
Ben Lamarche, General Manager, Lock Search Group
Ask Specific Questions, Confirm Real Work
The most reliable signal of a ghost job is how the hiring manager responds to technical questions about the actual work. When I’m actively hiring, I can tell you exactly what technologies you’d be working with, which client projects need support, and what the team structure looks like. If you ask specific questions about the tech stack, the development process, or what the first month would look like and get vague answers or deflection, that’s your warning sign. Real hiring managers are usually eager to talk about the work because they need to fill the role and want candidates who understand what they’re signing up for.
Job seekers should treat initial conversations like due diligence, not auditions. Ask about timelines, who you’d report to, what problem this hire solves, and why the position is open. A legitimate manager will answer these directly because they’re trying to assess fit just as much as you are.
I’ve seen candidates waste months chasing roles where the company was “just collecting résumés” or the position was frozen but still posted. The ones who filtered fast by asking pointed questions about the actual work moved on to real opportunities while others were still waiting for callbacks that would never come.
Sergiy Fitsak, Managing Director, Fintech Expert, Softjourn
Review Team Activity around Announced Vacancies
If the hiring team or recruiter don’t have activity regarding the open position, that can be a red flag. Let’s assume a company advertises open roles. If the hiring team or internal recruiters haven’t posted, shared, or commented on these open positions, it is likely a ghost job.
Companies tend to be loud and very active about their open positions and willingness to recruit people to join their mission. Check for activities from the company’s hiring team or internal recruiters.
Even better, use LinkedIn to search for people who worked at the company and if they started new jobs elsewhere within the last month. If they did, then the company is trying to fill their vacuum and the opportunity is real.
Anush Gasparian, Human Resources Director, Phonexa
Treat Easy Apply as a Red Flag
I have seen the job search process from all sides, and for me, the most striking indicator of ghost job postings is the use of LinkedIn’s Easy Apply feature.
When an employer posts an Easy Apply job, they instantly receive hundreds or thousands of responses, most of which are irrelevant, while worthy candidates get lost in the white noise. In addition, candidates sometimes simply don’t remember that they applied for your job and may not respond to your messages. In short, from the perspective of a recruiter or hiring manager, digging through hundreds of résumés is simply not practical.
In my opinion, if you see an easy apply button, then something is wrong with this vacancy. And I know at least a couple of reasons why these ghost vacancies are posted:
To gain followers. When a candidate applies for a vacancy, they automatically subscribe to the company’s page. This allows companies to grow their followers and raise their authority on LinkedIn.
To show potential investors, clients, or partners that the company is growing.
If I were looking for a job right now, I would perceive the easy apply button as one of the warning signs. Of course, there are genuine vacancies among them, but this is the first red flag.
Michael Vavilov, Product Manager, Glozo
After officials released millions of pages of documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, revelations in his emails and other files have led to the resignations of multiple corporate executives, new investigations into abuses by Epstein and potential accomplices, and even the arrest of the United Kingdoms former Prince Andrew.
For those looking to research Epsteins vast correspondence and web of connections across industry, government, and academia, some of the most effective tools have been built not by federal investigators or big-name news organizations but by a scrappy team of volunteer developers.
Starting with a website called Jmail, which made Epsteins publicly released emails searchable through an interface cheekily copied from Gmail, they have since built a set of web apps modeled after familiar sites like Google Drive, Wikipedia, Amazon, and YouTube. The goal: to turn messy PDFs and other files released in bulk by federal officials into something members of the publicincluding journalistscan more easily search and understand.
Key to the projects speedy success is the technical talent of the team of around 15 named core contributors. But equally vital, they say, is the current wave of AI tools that helped them rapidly generate code and process huge troves of data.
So not only do we have an app that we were able to make very quickly, we have data that can populate that app with real content, says Luke Igel, among the projects initial creators. Both those things had to come together; both of those were not possible a few years ago.
Igel, an MIT grad who is cofounder and CEO of video software company Kino, says the inspiration for the project came after he and a friend were discussing an initial tranche of Epstein-related documents released by members of Congress in November. They were struck by the extent of Epsteins ties to political figures across party lines and around the world but questioned whether the public would be able to fully understand the story as the data was initially presented.
Igel then reached out to Riley Walz, a developer and entrepreneur known for creative internet projects (including a recent parody of Apples Find My interface that tracked San Francisco parking enforcement officers) about collecting the emails in a Gmail-style interface.
Thanks to AI development tools like Cursor and Anthropics Claude models, the pair was able to put together the first version of Jmail in just a few hours, Igel says. We cloned Gmail, except you’re logged in as Epstein and can see his emails, Walz announced in a viral X post in November.
When the Department of Justice released an additional trove of files in December, spurred by the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed by Congress the previous month, a group of about 10 collaborators gathered at Igels San Francisco home and via video conference to build the next iteration of the software.
The team also had help from a company called Reductoa maker of software that turns messy PDFs and other complex documents into structured datato parse the newly released files, which had become too complex for general-purpose AI tools to decipher reliably.
A lot of these PDFs are scans of printouts or handwriting, says Adel Wu, who works on growth at Reducto. It was actually very messy.
The companywhich is located in the same building as Kinohad already been considering doing something with the Epstein files and quickly decided to support the Jmail effort after hearing about it, says founding engineer Omar Alhait, noting, We very quickly went through all of the documents and parsed out all relevant email information from them.
Reductos software helped accurately render redactions within the documents and even let the team extract complex information like Epsteins flight data, which was made available in a Google Flights-style interface called JFlights. Again, AIincluding Anthropics then-new Claude Opus 4.5 modelhelped the Jmail team rapidly develop new features and apps and merge thousands of code updates in a short time.
So much of what I thought was core to software engineering is actually something that this model can help you with and help you blast through very quickly, Igel says.
The teams investment in infrastructure let them quickly import, process, and share additional documents released just before Christmas, though the project drew even more attention after a massive DOJ release of millions of Epstein-related files on January 30. Handling that release required not only processing the new documentsAlhait says it took Reducto about three days to crunch through the databut also beefing up the projects infrastructure to handle an influx of traffic as public interest in the files continued to grow.
Tons of people came to the house again, and this time we really just had to make it scale, Igel says. Everything broke. Tons of scaling issues we thought we had solved, with database outages and caching failing, came through again.
With the help of AI tools, the team stabilized the site, which has now served more than 500 million page requests to more than 50 million unique visitors. The project has also expanded beyond Jmail and JFlights to include an AI guide to the files called Jemini, a video repository called JeffTube, a file repository known as JDrive, and even a searchable log of Epsteins Amazon orders called Jamazon.
The team works to ensure information in the files is properly redacted to protect sensitive details, taking care to update the sites available materials to reflect any new redactions by federal officials. It’s very, very important to us to be as responsible as possible when surfacing information to the public, says Melissa Du, an AI research engineer who works on the project. We obviously don’t want to be over-redacting, but also the privacy of the victims is of utmost importance.
Du, another MIT grad, says she became morbidly fascinated by the first set of files released on Jmail, including documents referencing MIT-linked academics such as former Media Lab director Joi Ito and professor emeritus Noam Chomsky. She has since worked on aspects of the project such as JDrive for data management and the Wikipedia-style Jwiki, which was first populated with write-ups of key Epstein-linked figures generated by AI and then carefully vetted before publication.
Perhaps most striking about the project is that a small group of developers was able to do what major media organizations had done in organizing previous viral data repositories, like former intelligence contractor Edward Snowdens revelations about government surveillance or the offshore finance leaks known as the Panama Papers.
The team has received about $32,000 in donations to cover various costs, along with donated technical services from Reducto, Kino, and cloud provider Vercel. But the core work has been carried out by developers with their own day jobs and startups.
Though at times Igel wondered whether the project would be effectively scooped by big news organizations building their own Epstein data explorers, data from the Jmail project has actually been cited by news outlets including The Economist. The team has also been in touch with congressional staffers about passing on crowdsourced requests for release of potentially excessively redacted files.
And additional features are being considered, including a Google Calendar-style interface to explore calendar data in the repository, says Igel, who notes that the underlying code from the project will also likely be released as open source in the future.
Already the project stands as an example of whats possible for a talented team equipped with the latest in AI development and data processing tools. We’ve really relied on the new AI models, Du says. “And we’ve also just had a very high level of trust across the team.
With uncertainty as the new norm, leaders are understandably searching for psychological anchors. Theyre looking for ideas that can steady people and sustain energy through change. One of those anchors is hope.
Across corporate mission statements, fresh publications from thought leaders, and HR manifestos, corporations have elevated hope from a state of being to a strategic imperative. But what happens when an emotion becomes a business model?
How to define hope in an organizational context
Psychologically, hope is a cognitive and motivational state defined by three elements: agency (belief in your capacity to shape outcomes), pathways (the ability to identify routes toward goals), and goals themselves. Psychologist C.R. Snyder conducted research in the 1990s that reframed hope as a measurable construct. Snyder correlated the concept with performance, well-being, and perseverance.
Hopes modern strategic allure has deep cultural roots. In ancient philosophy, hope oscillated between virtue and vice. The Greeks saw it as both a comfort and a trap. When they opened Pandoras box, hope was the last thing left inside, which they ambiguously positioned between salvation and delusion.
By the 20th century, hope became a secular virtue central to progress and humanism. In psychology, post-war theorists viewed hope as a coping mechanism that could inoculate individuals and societies against despair. More recently, the positive psychology movement of the early 2000s further codified hope as a measurable, trainable mindset.
Today, in a world shaped by disruptiontechnological, social, and ecologicalhope has reemerged as a leadership commodity. In the absence of predictability, its a currency of cohesion.
The upside of hope at work
In organizational life, hope can offer the following tangible benefits:
Motivational fuel: Hope maintains focus on goals when there are distant or ambiguous outcomes.
Resilience amplifier: Employees with strong hope scores typically recover faster from setbacks and see alternative routes when plans fail.
Cultural glue: Hope-based narratives can create psychological safety. This allows people to see themselves as coauthors of a positive future rather than passive recipients of corporate fate.
Innovation driver: Hope enables experimentation by reframing failure as learning, not loss.
In these ways, hope can act as a psychological lubricant, reducing the friction caused by doubt, fatigue, and fear. So why does hope in a corporate setting leave a bad taste in my mouth?
Hopes hidden downsides
Hopes fierce glow can be blinding. When hope decouples from reality, it risks morphing into delusion or denial. This is particularly dangerous in workplace cultures that prize positivity over honesty.
Untampered, hope can produce three organizational distortions:
Deferred reality: Leaders may avoid confronting hard truths, preferring to hope things improve. This delays critical decisions about restructuring, investment, or strategic pivoting.
Toxic positivity: Teams pressured to stay hopeful may feel unable to surface legitimate concerns or dissenting views. The result is conformity disguised as belief.
Chronic stress and burnout: Sustaining high levels of hope in the face of repeated setbacks can exhaust employees, which produces emotional dissonance when ones lived experience doesnt match the optimistic messaging.
In essence, hope without realism becomes institutionalized avoidance.
Why hope isnt strategic
The current corporate positioning of hope as a strategy often stems from crisis communication. During market downturns, layoffs, or rapid transformation, hope becomes both a message and a salve. Yet, when you wield hope as a rhetoric rather than a practice, it erodes trust. Employees can sense when a message from leadership is inconsistent with conditions on the ground. The gap between them declaring hope and observable action breeds cynicism. This is a core component of workplace burnout, and a form of psychological corrosion that is far more damaging than pessimism.
The case for realistic optimism
A more sustainable alternative is realistic optimisma mindset that balances hopeful vision with clear assessment. Martin Seligman, one of positive psychologys founders, described optimism as the expectation that good things can happen, while realism ensures those expectations align with evidence and constraints.
Realistic optimism doesnt deny difficulty: it contextualizes it. Leaders who embody realistic optimism model three habits:
Evidence-based hope: They openly acknowledge setbacks and uncertainties while identifying genuine paths forward.
Transparent communication: They link belief with action by showing how theyre addressing challenges, not merely stating that things will get better.
Adaptive goal-setting: They recalibrate expectations when circumstances change, preserving motivation through clarity rather than blind positivity.
For example, a startup facing funding shortfalls might cultivate realistic optimism by acknowledging fiscal pressure while outlining tangible cost-saving measures and revised growth trajectories.
Realistic optimism transforms hope from sentiment into discipline. It requires intellectual honesty, emotional agility, and the courage to engage with uncertainty without succumbing to fantasy. In cultivating this balance, leaders create cultures that are not only hopeful, but credible.
A quick guide to leading with realistic optimism
If youre a leader and you want to know how to go about leading in a way that combines optimism and reality, start with the following steps below:
Start with the facts. Before inspiring your team, ensure the data supports your message. Sustainable morale begins with credibility.
Name the challenge, then the path. Hope grows when people see a route forward, not just a reason to believe. Pair optimism with concrete steps.
Model uncertainty tolerance. Encourage dialogue about whats unclear. When leaders admit they dont have all the answers, hope becomes collective rather than performative.
In an era when believing in better has become a hollow corporate refrain, leaders who master realistic optimism stand apart. They demonstrate that the most enduring form of hope is not a declaration, but a practice. And its one that they build with clarity, accountability, and shared ownership of reality.
