Romance scams used to feel like a cliché. Everyone pictured an email from an overseas “prince” that was poorly written and full of typos and pleas for cash. Now, that cliché is dead.
Todays romance scams are industrial-scale operations. Attackers use artificial intelligence to clone voices, create deepfake video calls, and write scripts with large language models (LLMs).
In 2024 alone, the Federal Trade Commission reported that financial losses to romance scams skyrocketed, with victims losing $1.14 billion. The real number, hidden by shame and silence, is likely triple that.
Romance scams arent just a tragedy for the victims. A successful scam is a massive risk for businesses, too. When an employee with access to sensitive data or funds is compromised, the “heartbreak hack” can harm an entire organization.
What Today’s Romance Scams Look Like
Phase 1: Contact. Romance scams often start on dating appsbut theyre also prevalent on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedInwith a seemingly innocent message. These scams arent necessarily about love; theyre about establishing trust.
For example: Is this Alex? We met at the conference last week, or Sorry, wrong number, but your profile photo is lovely.
The goal is to continue the conversation on an encrypted app, such as Telegram or WhatsApp, where traditional security measures cant monitor conversations. Once contact is established, the manipulation becomes emotional.
Phase 2: Love bomb. Over weeks or months, the scammer builds intimacy. Theyll share mundane details, such as photos of their dog or personal struggles.
But with todays AI upgrade, LLMs can craft empathetic responses that mimic shared information to gain trust. Eventually, the relationship is leveraged for financial gain.
Phase 3: Pivot. Once trust is established, the conversation pivots. The scammer doesnt ask for a plane ticket or emergency money. They talk about success.
They might say, My uncle has an exclusive crypto trading algorithm. They’ll agree to teach the victim how to invest, showing massive (yet fake) returns on a legitimate-looking app. Then, the victim invests large sums of money.
What makes these scams especially dangerous is that old warning signs no longer apply.
When the Bot Flirts Back
We used to say, If they wont video call you, its a scam. That advice is now obsolete.
In deepfake video calls, for example, scammers use real-time face-swapping technology. On your screen, the person moves, blinks, and smiles, wearing the face of the stolen identity. While the tech is good, its not perfect. Tip: Look for blurring around the neck and hairline or glitches when they pass a hand in front of their face.
In voice cloning, scammers send voice notes that sound exactly like the person in the photos. Free AI tools now require less than 10 seconds of audio to clone a voice with 85% accuracy, enabling voicemails that reinforce the persona’s reality.
Organizations Need to Pay Attention
You might be thinking, Why is it a CISOs problem?
Take the now-former CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank, who fell victim to such a scam. Convinced he was investing in a crypto opportunity for his “friend,” he embezzled $47 million of the banks funds, leading to the banks total collapse and a 24-year prison sentence. Had the bank’s chief information security officer known what was going on, the situation might have been identified earlier and nipped in the bud.
Here are three forms of the corporate blast radius.
Embezzlement: Employees with access to payroll or wire transfers may “borrow” company funds, believing theyll pay it back once their “investment” clears.
Sextortion and blackmail: Scammers typically encourage victims to share intimate images. Once they have this, it becomes leverage.
BYOD malware: The “trading app” the victim installs is often sophisticated malware that gives the attacker backdoor entry. If that device connects to your corporate network, the attacker is inside.
How to Stop a Romance Scam
Defending against romance scams requires recognizing patterns in infrastructure and the psychology of influence. Here are three tips to avoid falling victim to a fraudster.
Watch for the vibe shift: If a romantic interest mentions cryptocurrency, foreign exchanges (forex), or nodes within the first few weeks, its a 100% positive indicator of a scamno exceptions. If theyve been patient for months, but suddenly an opportunity is closing quickly, this is manufactured urgency designed to bypass critical thinking.
The “specific action” test: Try to hop on a video call, and take two actions. First, ask the person to turn their head all the way around. Deepfake models often struggle with extreme movements or facial expressions, and the face can glitch. Second, ask the person to wave a hand in front of or behind their head. AI often gets confused about which object is in front, leading to face distortion.
Move beyond awareness training: Social engineering defense used to be treated as a training problem, measured by click rates and phishing simulations. But modern attacks go beyond inboxes, and they dont wait for employee mistakes.
Todays most damaging campaigns leverage impersonation tactics across email, messaging platforms, and social media, often targeting trusted relationships. Defense requires moving beyond reactive training toward early detection of impersonation and coordinated disruption, supported by human rsk management practices that help employees recognize how attacks like romance scams begin and escalate.
Trust, But Verify
Theres now little distinction between personal life and corporate risk. When an employee or executive is emotionally compromised, so is the organization. Human intuition cant win a fight against AI-powered psychological warfare.
The heart will always be a vulnerability, and in the age of AI, its also an attack vector. Romance scams prove that attackers dont need to break a firewall; they just need to break a heart, and its time to defend with rigor.
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During an earnings call in June 2025, KB Homes McGibneywhose company prefers outright home price cuts over incentives when adjustments are neededsaid that some buyers turning to competitors are effectively overpaying for new builds to obtain mortgage rate buydowns. If those buyers need to sell in the near term, he warned, they could find themselves underwater and unable to recoup the artificially high base prices.
“I believe that there are [builder] customers that are overpaying for the home to effectively get an incentive… They may potentially be upside down when they try to sell that home, McGibney said back in June.
In January 2026, ResiClub interviewed KB Home CEO Jeffrey Mezger and COO Rob McGibneybeginning March 1, 2026, McGibney will assume the CEO role. During that conversation, ResiClub asked KB Home about that upside-down comment.
Mezger and McGibney reaffirmed their stance, saying theyll continue to lean into transparent pricing over incentives.
We believe in price transparency, Mezger tells ResiClub. Our biggest competitor is resaleand [resale] sellers dont offer incentive packages.
In the view of KB Home executives, leaning too hard into incentive-driven strategieswhen affordability adjustments or net effective price cuts are needed to meet the marketcan translate into inflated base prices, larger loan balances, and greater near-term resale risk if a buyer needs to move sooner than expected.Our buyers tell us they like the clarity, McGibney tells ResiClub. They [our buyers] know exactly what theyre paying for I think [transparent pricing] really lowers that risk of [the buyer] overpaying for a home and potentially being upside down.
Not long after mortgage rates spiked in 2022 and the pandemic housing boom fizzled out, many large homebuilders began offering sizable mortgage rate buydowns. Some have gone as far as shelling out $40,000, $50,000, or even $60,000 toward forward commitments that can get a borrowers mortgage rate below 4.99%or even 3.99%. Through an economic lens, the homebuyer is still ultimately paying for those buydowns if the headline price isnt coming down.
According to AEI Housing Center, 64% of new single-family home sales in June 2025 by the 21 largest U.S. homebuilders included a permanent buydowncompared with 13% for all other new-home sales. Many large homebuilders do this because arbitrage in the bond market allows them to achieve a marginally larger reduction in a buyers monthly payment for each dollar spent on mortgage rate buydowns than for each dollar spent on outright price cuts.
Here’s what Edward Pinto, senior fellow and co-director of the AEI Housing Center, wrote in a report published in November 2025:
Why dont [more] builders just cut prices instead? The main reason is that permanent buydowns are far more cost-effective lowering the rate [via forward commitments for buydowns] by 100 bps costs the builder roughly 3.2% of the sale price. To achieve the same monthly payment through a direct price cut, the builder would need to cut the price by 10%. Furthermore, once a builder cuts the price on one home, buyers would expect similar discounts for the entire subdivision. But there is another factor at work. Permanent buydowns funded through bulk forward commitments are excluded from the seller concession limits, which cap how much a seller can contribute toward the borrowers closing costs. For Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac seller concessions are generally limited to 3-6% and for FHA the limit is generally 6%. Over 40% of sales by large builders have a combination of seller concessions plus permanent buydown cost in excess of 6%.”
Start in a low-level position and work your way upward. Does that even apply anymore? In fact, the career ladder doesnt work for everyone anymore. Right now, as technology disrupts the work rules, there are no clear paths forward.
The linear career path changed somewhere between the rise of the gig economy and the rise of artificial intelligence. Companies are restructuring. Some industries may collapse entirely in the next five years. Ive gone from studying law to studying software entrepreneurship to being a self-improvement essayist. My career is still an experiment in progress. The world of work is changing. And Im changing with it.
The people who make it are not those with impressive titles, but those who are willing to adjust to the new 21st-century workplace. Thats why these ideas matter right now. I hope they help you rethink your work life.
1. Build skills, not titles
If the promotion is not coming, dont dwell on it. Or obsess over the next one. Focus on what you can do to take control of your skills. The title may look great on LinkedIn, but you will want more than that. Do more for your present skills. Can you get good at other skills beyond your current expertise? Can you interpret data? Manage difficult conversations? Build better relationships with the people on your team?
These skills travel with you. Titles dont. Titles change, while your values and skills evolve. You are either ahead of change or being left behind. Dont focus too much on reaching the final level of management. Stack indispensable skills you can take anywhere.
That means take that weird project nobody wants. Youll learn something. Say yes to the cross-functional teameven if its more work. Learn the skill that scares you a little. You will probably be terrified in the process. But you will learn a thing or two. That new skill will open more doors than any title ever could.
2. Think in networks, not hierarchies
The org chart lies to you. It tells you theres one path up. It tells you your bosss boss is more important than the engineer in another department. Or to keep your head down and wait your turn. You are better than that. Ignore it. The most valuable people I know have spider-web abilities. They know people across industries, across functions, across companies.
When opportunity knocks, it usually comes through someone you helped three years ago, not through your annual review. I worked with the Microsoft small-business team a few years ago because someone saw my work on a blog. If you can help a former colleague troubleshoot something, try to find a pocket of time to help. You never know how you could cross paths again. Be curious about what others doeven when you are out for a chat.
Start small. Message someone whose work you admire. Just say you admire it. Introduce two people who should know each other. Share what youre learning. Publicly. Even if it feels scary. Make yourself useful to people you respectnot just to your boss. Useful to humans doing interesting work.
3. Experiment like your career depends on it
Sometimes it does. Whats risky is betting your entire future on one carefully planned path. Diversify. Its easier said than done, but do what you must within what works for you. It will become the foundation for a career you didnt even plan for. Be ready for what could happen.
You could be sabotaging your work life if you are waiting for the right time or the perfect plan. Your experiments dont need to change your entire work life. Youre not quitting your job (unless you are, in which case, have fun). Youre just testing things. You could spend a few months learning something unrelated to your job after work.
Youll gain skills youd never get at work. Start a personal side project with no clear return on investmentjust because it interests you. Follow your curiosities. Experiment your way into new skills. Those that fail teach you what you dont want. The ones that succeed show you possibilities.
4. Redefine what “success” means for you
Ask yourself: Whose definition of career success am I pursuing? I ask myself that question all the time. I spent my twenties trying to impress people. I wanted to work for a prestigious company, and have an impressive title. I got the offer. It didnt feel right. I turned it down. Ive never looked back. Your success may not be the pursuit of a career ladder. It may be living a life that fits you.
Maybe success is the flexibility to pick up your kids from school. Or working on problems that matter. Maybe its having time to train for something youve always wanted to do. Maybe its all three, in different seasons of your life. My point is, you get to decide. And you get to change your mind. Find answers to these questions: What does a good day look like for me? What am I optimizing for right now? Money? Learning? Growth? Time? What would I do if I wasn’t trying to impress anyone? Your answers will change over time. Thats fine. You are evolving.
The 21st-century career right now is not linear. But you have more choices. More opportunities to find your zone of genius. The uncertainty is the opportunity. Every unexpected change in your career. Every time the path disappears. Thats where you get to choose who you become. Youre not climbing a ladder anymore. Youre exploring what could be. Thats more interesting, I think. You get to build something wider and more uniquely yours. So stack those skills. Grow your network. Run your experiments. Define success on your terms. The career you build wont look like anyone elses. Its yours now and in the future.
Below, co-authors Jared Lindzon and Joe OConnor share five key insights from their new book, Do More in Four: Why Its Time for a Shorter Workweek.
Jared is a freelance journalist who has been reporting on the future of work for publications like Fast Company, Time magazine, and the Globe and Mail for over a decade.
Joe is the CEO and cofounder of Work Time Reduction, a global consulting and research organization that helps organizations find innovative ways to reduce working hours. Over the last eight years, it has helped hundreds of companies and thousands of employees pilot a four-day workweek in North America, Europe, the U.K., and Australia.
Whats the big idea?
Working less time and generating better results is about as counterintuitive as it gets. Logically, it shouldnt work. And yet it does, time and time again, across industries, geographies, company sizes, and cultures.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Jared and Joebelow, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. There is no good reason for the workweek to be five days long
It isnt backed by science, ancient wisdom, or divine decree. Nobody sat down to conduct an objective analysis of the optimal number of days for humanity to work and rest, and determined that the current 5-2 split was right, fair, or necessary. Our conventional workweek was instead shaped by a period of rapid economic and technological change that concluded over 100 years ago, during the Industrial Revolution.
For 95 percent of human history, we worked an average of 15 hours per week, and that work was typically fluid, flexible, and quintessentially human. Then the early industrial era changed both our relationship with work and the kinds of skills needed to thrive. In the early industrial era, there were no evenings or weekends; those who showed up were paid for the hours they worked, and those who didnt were replaced.
That was until the early 19th century, when Christian groups successfully lobbied the American government to close the post office on Sundays so that workers could attend church, and gradually other employers followed. Jewish workers were instead given Saturdays off to accommodate their sabbath, but that didnt sit right with the Christian groups, who insisted on having both days off for all workers. That is ultimately how we arrived at our current workweek, but it wasnt even codified into the American Fair Labor Standards Act until 1940, well after the 40-hour standard was adopted by most major employers.
While that standard served us well for the last 85 years, work has changed dramatically in that time. As we undergo another period of rapid disruption, we are once again in a unique position to reimagine work in ways that better suit todays realities and tomorrows opportunities.
2. Using industrial-era metrics in the digital age is proving unsustainable
Since the Industrial Revolution, we have been calculating productivity in hours, which is a useful tool for measuring output on an assembly linenot so much in a knowledge economy. There are many ways to fill an hour at work, but not all contribute equally to the businesss bottom line.
Quantifying productivity is no longer as simple as counting hours. It has become a much more complex, holistic equation that includes hard work as well as the quality of rest and recovery, time off, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and much more. There is a strong argument to be made that there is now a greater correlation between worker well-being and productivity than there is between hours worked and productivity.
Productivity will be all about digital efficiency plus human effectiveness.
In a fast-approaching reality in which digital labor, in the form of agentic AI, can infinitely scale a repeatable process, racing against the machine will be a dead end for the human workforce. Productivity will be all about digital efficiency plus human effectiveness.
These increasingly valuable capabilities rely heavily on leveraging well-being, motivation, energy, and recovery. Like our pre-industrial ancestors, work is evolving to leverage our most human skills. Those abilities can be optimized through a four-day workweek, in which, instead of seeking to do more in less time, we use AI to do fewer, high-impact tasks better.
3. A four-day workweek only works under the right circumstances
You cant just march into the office on Monday, announce a four-day workweek, and expect workers to magically fill the gap.
Much like the transition to hybrid or remote work, the switch to a four-day workweek must be thoughtfully designed and implemented. It requires strategy, discipline, and a willingness to challenge everything you thought you knew about productivity.
Rather than an extra weekly vacation day, the four-day workweek should be leveraged as a powerful incentive to rally staff members to completely overhaul their work processes and adopt new technologies to accomplish more in less time.
Such changes are often difficult to implement on their own; if you ask your staff to be 20 percent more productive, they probably wont respond positively. If, however, you tell them they can work one less day each week if they can find ways to be 20 percent more productive, they will likely be more than happy to take on the often difficult but potentially game-changing tech adoption and work redesign efforts that can help them achieve it.
The four-day workweek is about using time as a shared reward for better performance, engaging your staff on a collective mission to reduce hours without compromising outcomes.
4. The four-day workweek can address specific organizational challenges
Organizations that adopt a four-day workweek typically use it to address significant challenges related to employee well-being, recruitment, or tech adoption. Many organizations have leveraged it to address each in a way that would be difficult or impossible otherwise.
For example, we offer case studies featuring a nonprofit organization and a family law firm that both struggled with high absenteeism and burnout due to the intense nature of the work. Both ultimately found that any cost of moving to a four-day workweek, which they reported as minimal, was more than offset by sharp reductions in turnover and absenteeism.
Research shows that many employees are actively sabotaging their organizations attempts to adopt new AI tools out of fear of being replaced by them.
We also share the stories of midsize tech firms struggling to compete with industry giants offering salaries they could never match. Rather than trying to win the recruiting game on the same terms, they decided to change the game by offering a perk that none of their competitors would. As one firm told us,the difference between an A player and a B player is much greater than the 20 percent in lost time. Another also shared how the simple practice of auditing how staff spend their time at work revealed a disconnect between what employees thought mattered to the business and what actually improved its bottom line. Having a roster of all-stars, all squarely focused on the metrics the business cares about most, has enabled each to be more successful in four days than they were in five previously.
The four-day workweek can also be an effective way to rally staff around internal projects that they might otherwise resist. Research shows that many employees are actively sabotaging their organizations attempts to adopt new AI tools out of fear of being replaced by them. If an employees only reward for learning new skills and adopting new ways of doing things is more work, less job security, or the opportunity to earn more money for shareholders, theyre probably not going to make that transition easy for the company.
In the book, we share the stories of an American architectural firm, a British environmental consultancy, and the New Zealand office of global consumer goods behemoth Unilever, each of which used the four-day workweek to motivate major operational improvements by letting staff share in the rewards.
5. The four-day workweek can help address some of our greatest societal challenges
The four-day workweek can offer measurable environmental benefits by taking more cars off the roads and more workers out of office towers during the week, and by encouraging more sustainable behaviors. In Joes four-day workweek pilots, participants reported recycling more, volunteering more, and spending more time in nature. They also suggested that the four-day workweek gave them time to engage in more sustainable habits, like cooking instead of ordering takeout, or biking instead of driving.
The four-day workweek is also being looked at seriously by jurisdictions around the world to help address declining birth rates. According to pilot studies, the four-day workweek not only makes it easier for women to balance their careers and home lives but also encourages men to chip in more, while saving on childcare costs and allowing families to spend more time together.
Perhaps the greatest impact, however, is in the workplace itself. By including caregivers and non-caregivers under the same companywide policy, those with greater responsibilities at hometypically working motherswere more likely to be seen as equal contributors and considered for advancement opportunities, rather than feeling singled out for needing a shorter schedule.
While the four-day workweek cant solve all of societys challenges, it provides an opportunity to make meaningful progress in a way that gives people something of value, rather than a personal sacrifice.
Perhaps the greatest impact, however, is in the workplace itself.
The shift to a five-day workweek began as a grassroots movement long before it was signed into law, and we believe the same will be true for the four-day workweek.
Although ongoing political efforts from the United States to the U.K. to South Korea help bring attention and credibility to the four-day workweek, change is most likely to originate in academic papers, picket lines, break room chats, and Slack channels long before the conversation is brought into the boardroom, and even longer before it reaches the legislative floor.
When it comes to setting a new standard for working hours, history has shown that leaders, business owners, and employees have more power to drive lasting change than politicians. The future of the workweek isnt up to them; its up to you.
Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea app.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Artificial intelligence has shifted from an experiment to an expectation. Boards push CEOs about ROI. CEOs launch enterprise rollouts. Leaders invest in tools, platforms, and governance. Yet adoption still stalls. Work-arounds spread. Risk grows. Value lags.
The failure rarely sits with the technology. The breakdown sits in adoption design. Many organizations treat AI as an IT rollout or a standard change initiative. Tools gain approval. Policies circulate. Training launches. Whats missing is the rigor leaders apply to external products. Employees receive tools without a clear value proposition. Managers face delivery pressure without added capacity. Governance favors control over learning.
The result is predictable. Hesitation rises. Burnout grows. Execution fragments, especially in the middle of the organization.
Dana, a VP leading AI enablement at a global business-to-business services firm, lived this firsthand. The mandate was clear: deploy approved AI tools across marketing, sales, and customer success within eight months. Legal and PR aligned. Training sessions were launched as well as dashboards to track usage.
On paper, the rollout looked disciplined. Usage dashboards showed logins, prompts, and license activity. In practice, teams struggled to use the tools in live client work. Approved platforms added steps, limited outputs, or failed to match real workflows. Under delivery pressure, some teams tested briefly and moved on. Others complied superficially. Many shifted core work to external tools that felt faster and more flexible, while using approved systems only enough to register activity.
Dana ran into what we call the mandate trap. Leaders mandate AI from the top. The work of making it usable lands in the middle.
We didnt have a resistance problem, Dana reflected. We had a design problem.
Her experience reflects what we see across organizations and in AI adoption workshops with C-suite and senior leaders. Teams revert to familiar workflows. Learning time disappears as daily delivery targets crowd out capability building. Worse, often, leaders label this gap as a resistance to AI, rather than identifying the underlying problems and solving them.
Through our advisory work and research, Jenny as an executive coach and learning and development expert, and Noam as an AI strategist, we see three practices separate the organizations that are able to scale AI within their organizations from the ones that have stalled rollouts.
Reframe ‘Resistance’ as a workflow problem
Leaders often label hesitation as a mindset issue. In reality, hesitation reflects risk. Employees disengage when expectations are off, outputs feel unattainable, or policies feel unclear. Under delivery pressure, people choose speed and safety. When AI complicates execution rather than simplifying it, adoption stalls.
Middle managers absorb the strain. They must deliver faster, coach new behaviors, manage risk, and hold uncertainty, without changes to incentives, capacity, or decision rights. Adoption breaks where pressure concentrates. The issue is not motivation. It is an internal product-market fit problem.
Internal product market fit exists when a tool solves a real workflow problem well enough that teams keep using it under real constraints. This insight shifted Danas rollout. She stopped pushing compliance and paused deployment to focus on solving the problems internal teams were running into.
What leaders can do:
Diagnose hesitation: Identify where trust breaks. Unreliable outputs. Unclear revision paths. Slow approvals. Fix friction before pushing usage.
Start small: Focus on one workflow, one outcome, one team learning together.
Name the fear: Address job loss concerns directly. Clarify what stays human-led and how AI fits workforce plans. Psychological safety creates engagement.
Relieve pressure: Protect learning time. Reset targets or adoption stays surface level.
When leaders treat resistance as a design signal, adoption moves from compliance to progress.
Treat Employees as ‘Customer Zero’
Leaders who succeed stop deploying AI and start selling it internally. Strong AI adoption follows a different playbook. Leaders anchor change in outcomes, redesign workflows, involve employees as cocreators, and invest in learning as a core capability. Dana pulled in platform teams, product marketing, communications, and functional leaders. Teams receive a clear value proposition tied to real workflow friction, not feature lists or policy decks. Trust grows when people understand how outputs form, how risks are managed, and where human judgment remains essential.
Early wins rarely show up as profit. They show up as faster cycles, higher-quality work, fewer errors, and less rework. Tools gain traction when they simplify work.
Dana ran short discovery sprints with marketing, sales, and operations. She stopped asking whether teams used the tools. She asked where work slowed, where rework piled up, and where judgment mattered most.
What leaders can do:
Anchor on outcomes: Define what should feel faster, easier, or more reliable.
Build trust early: Set clear governance and human-in-the-loop guardrails.
Reimagine workflows: Integrate AI into existing systems and execution moments.
Cocreate with employees: Involve teams in discovery and testing.
Treat learning as core work: Protect time to experiment and build confidence.
When leaders treat employees as customer zero, adoption shifts from compliance to sustained change.
Protect the Middle to Unlock Learning
AI adoption breaks most often in the middle. Managers must change how work gets done while hitting the same targets. Meanwhile, managers drive most team engagement while carrying the heaviest strain. When learning competes with delivery, delivery wins.
Effective leaders redesign these conditions. They reset expectations to protect time to learn. They reward experiments that reduce risk over time. Before scaling, they ask two questions: Does this remove real workflow friction? Do people trust it enouh to use it?
Dana acted on this insight. She gave managers protected time to test workflows and share findings. Early wins became simple playbooks. Only proven practices scaled. Managers moved from firefighting to coaching. Governance shifted from gatekeeping to enablement.
Dana narrowed focus instead of widening it. Teams submitted real workflow tests. Dana selected only those with clear impact and protected a full quarter to run them end to end. Some tools removed friction and earned trust. Others added noise. She scaled the winners and retired the rest.
What leaders can do:
Spot what works: Identify teams who are already using AI to reduce friction. Turn those efforts into repeatable practices.
Reward learning: Recognize managers for building capability and sharing insights, not tool usage.
Run disciplined experiments: Require clear hypotheses, small pilots, and documented learning.
Hold the bar high: Reward honest reporting of failures so scale stays credible.
AI transformation is an organizational design challenge, not an IT rollout. The mandate trap is avoidable. Leaders escape it when they stop pushing adoption and start earning it.
The biggest accounting firm in the U.S. just announced a major structural reset: PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) will now only hire new associates in its advisory division to work out of 13 offices, down from 72.
Yolanda Seals-Coffield, chief people and inclusion officer for PwC US, confirmed the decision to Business Insider, explaining that the move aims to foster a sense of community among workers. “The idea is that we want to bring people together in a connected way for those first couple of years,” Seals-Coffield said.
“You may start in Atlanta and then say, ‘Great, I’ve got my two years of experience. I want to go work in Alabama, which is where I’m from and where I really want to work,” she said.
The slimmed-down choice of locations isn’t the only major change hitting the company. In recent years, PwC has delayed start dates for some entry-level consulting hires. And in 2025, it became clear that landing a job at the firm straight out of college would become more difficult; it announced it would recruit a third fewer new graduates by 2028.
The company has also been making major shifts toward upskilling its workforce in the era of artificial intelligence. On February 5, PwC announced the launch of its “Learning Collective,” a workplace training initiative that it describes as “an ecosystem for accelerated growth built for the possibilities of the AI age.”
Learning can no longer wait for the right time, place, role, or ladder, Seals-Coffield said in the announcement. It needs to be a full-immersion experience that accelerates people and their organizations forward with speed.
Despite the positive spin on the company’s clear gear shift, it’s hard to imagine that the recalibration doesn’t signal an age of growing uncertainty within the industry. Some experts say it’s a response to economic uncertainty, as well as an ever-changing world that’s grappling with how to best integrate employee capabilities with AI advances.
Deepali Vyas, global head of data and AI at global talent partner ZRG, tells Fast Company that in the AI age, “firms have to double down on what technology cannot easily replicate, including judgment, client presence, collaboration, and problem framing.” She adds that they must become “far more intentional about how they manufacture talent.”
Overall, that seems to mean entry-level roles are seriously shrinking as tasks typically done by first-year hires are increasingly being handed to AI. For Gen Zers who are hoping to get a foot in the door, the problem feels unavoidable, as some reports estimate that entry-level job postings are down by 35% since 2023.
PwC maintains that in a time when so many individuals work remotely for a good portion of the workweek, the move really is about employees getting back to learning from one another in a dynamic environmentwhich has become increasingly relevant during this post-COVID-19 era. Fast Company spoke with a PwC representative who pushed back on the narrative that the shift signifies an industry slowdown and said that employees and the company alike can make big strides with a more collaborative approach.
Still, as searching for a job has become a truly anxiety-inducing part of lifeeven for the most competitive of college graduatesany amount of company downsizing is still going to read as a bad omen. When it comes to PwC, the major cut to office space is a highly visible one at that.
The legacy of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show continues. Streams of his catalog jumped 175% in the U.S. on Monday, the day after the Super Bowl, when compared to the previous Monday, Feb. 2.
Thats according to Luminate, an industry data and analytics company that provides insight into changing behaviors across music listenership.
Bad Bunny received nearly 100 million streams on Monday in the U.S. that’s 99.6 million in one day compared to 36.2 million streams the previous Monday.
That’s noteworthy, too, because Monday, Feb. 2 was the day after the 2026 Grammys, when the artist born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio won album of the year. It marked the first time an all-Spanish language album took home the top prize. And as a result, he was already seeing a significant jump in streams: On Feb. 2, his on-demand U.S. streams spiked 117% from the previous Monday, Jan. 26.
And globally, Bad Bunnys on-demand streams increased 132% on Monday, Feb. 9, compared to Feb. 2, a difference of 271 million to 117 million.
Bad Bunny’s most-streamed songs in the U.S. on Monday, Feb. 9
1. DtMF” with 10.4 million
2. Baile Inolvidable” with 6.7 million
3. NuevaYol with 6 million
4. Tití Me Preguntó with 5.4 million
5. EoO with 4.5 million
On Monday, Apple Music, a Super Bowl halftime show sponsor, found that Bad Bunnys show playlist became the most-played set list on the music streaming platform shortly after the performance. The Puerto Rican superstar went on to dominate the Apple Music Daily Top 100 Global chart, landing 23 songs in the Top 100, including nine in the Top 25 and five in the Top 10. His track DtMF rose to No. 1. His album Debí Tirar Más Fotos appeared on album charts in 155 countries, reaching the Top 10 in 128 countries and hitting No. 1 in 46, including Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Germany, France and Spain.
Spotify found that U.S. streams of Bad Bunnys music jumped 470% on the platform. Thats when examining an hourly increase in U.S. streams between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. ET on Sunday, Feb. 8, compared to the same time frame the week prior.
And Amazon Music reported that streams of Bad Bunny’s music in the U.S. jumped 480% following his performance.
Music discovery platform Shazam reflected a similar spike in engagement. Apple Music said Bad Bunny’s performance Sunday marked the biggest day ever on Shazam for any Latin or non-English-language artist. Across Bad Bunnys catalog, Shazam recognitions increased by more than 400% during and immediately following the halftime show compared to the daily average.
By Maria Sherman, AP music writer
Associated Press Entertainment Writer Jonathan Landrum Jr. contributed to this report.
2025 was defined by reports of a low-hire, low-fire environment: the unemployment rate remained fairly low, at just over 4% in December; yet headlines of constant layoffs seemed to dominate the news cycle, and those who are unemployed are taking longer to find work.
Its all been very confusing. And the most recent U.S. jobs report, released today, presents more mixed signals.
This weeks report indicated American employers added 130,000 jobs in January, and the Labor Department reported the unemployment rate fell to 4.3%. Everything in the report isnt good it also indicated just 181,000 jobs were created last year, which is the lowest number since 2020 but perhaps its not quite as bad as many predicted.
So will low-hire, low-fire still be the way we describe a new job market for a new year?
What is a low-hire, low-fire economy?
A low-hire, low-fire economy is defined by low job hirings coupled with low job firings having slashed 108,435 jobs last month, employers arent making big moves now in either direction. This kind of economic dynamic results in a lower number of available jobs, which means that those 100,000 people who are out of work may struggle to find something sustainable. That, in turn, could mean that unemployment rates will rise in the coming months.
High-profile job cuts, such as news of hundreds of layoffs at the Washington Post last week, can also stoke fears of trends in the broader labor market, CNBC noted this week. Other companies that have announced layoffs include Amazon, UPS, and Dow.
UPS in particular will cut 30,000 workers, and Amazon announced plans to lay off 16,000 people last month. The two companies account for nearly 40% of all of Januarys layoff announcements.
Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January, Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer at outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement. It means most of these plans were set at the end of 2025, signaling employers are less than optimistic about the outlook for 2026.
How we got here
American employers announced more than 100,000 jobs were cut in January a jump of 118% in the same month last year and the highest for any January since 2009, global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas announced this month.
At the same time, employers announced only 5,306 hiring plans on February 5, the lowest for the month since the company began tracking employment trends in 2009. The same day saw a jump in first-time unemployment claims: Per CNN, there were 231,000 initial jobless claims filed at the beginning of February, a leap of 22,000 additional claims from the week before.
The reasons given for the fresh 2026 job losses include contract loss, market and economic conditions, restructuring, and closures. Last years layoffs were attributed to much of the same, though a pivot to AI often gets cited often as well, regardless of how much of a factor the technology really is.
Data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics also supports the idea that the job market may get tough sooner than later. Job openings dropped to 6.5 million at the end of December the lowest since September 2020. Some of the cause for that drop is political, CNN also reported, and many employers are concerned about import and export tariffs issued by the Trump administration last year. Some companies are focusing their hiring efforts in the world of AI instead, and the so-called hiring recession may linger.
There is a (potential) bright side: reports from Challenger compile layoff intentions so actual job losses may not take place for weeks or even months, if they take place at all.
Inside the latest economy report
Although job growth can be described as sluggish at best, the American economy is still chugging along. This weeks job creation report far exceeded the 75,000 new jobs that many experts predicted, and average wages rose .04% from December 2025 to January 2026.
Some of the uncertainty surrounding job creation is due to the impact of high interest rates, a carryover of uncertainty that surrounds the Trump administrations shifting trade policies. But per this weeks news, Americas output of goods and services logged its fastest pace in two years at 4.4% from July to September 2025, and consumers kept spending money. Theres also speculation from experts that job creation may catch up to economic growth, and the Trump administrations tax cuts could result in increased consumer spending.
Perhaps the latest jobs news is an indication that the economy, much like other elements of American life, is in a state of flux that a little stability could resolve. Low-hire, low-fire may still be at play for a few more months. . .but the economy might just have time to catch up.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Offices 10-year outlook projects worsening long-term federal deficits and rising debt, driven largely by increased spending, notably on Social Security, Medicare, and debt service payments.
Compared with the CBOs analysis this time last year, the fiscal outlook has deteriorated modestly.
Major developments over the last year are factored into the latest report, released Wednesday, including Republicans’ tax and spending measure known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, higher tariffs, and the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, which includes deporting millions of immigrants from mainland U.S.
As a result of these changes, the projected 2026 deficit is about $100 billion higher, and total deficits from 2026 to 2035 are $1.4 trillion larger, while debt held by the public is projected to rise from 101% of GDP to 120% exceeding historical highs.
Notably, the CBO says higher tariffs partially offset some of those increases by raising federal revenue by $3 trillion, but that also comes with higher inflation from 2026 to 2029.
Rising debt and debt service are important because repaying investors for borrowed money crowds out government spending on basic needs such as roads, infrastructure, and education, which enable investments in future economic growth.
Congressional Budget Office projections also indicate that inflation doesn’t hit the Federal Reserves 2% target rate until 2030.
Jonathan Burks, executive vice president of economic and health policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center said large deficits are unprecedented for a growing, peacetime economy, though the good news is there is still time for policymakers to correct course.”
We encourage lawmakers to work together to explore options for raising revenue, trimming spending, and slowing the growth of the major cost drivers, Burks said. “Congress and the administration should seize the opportunity to act now before the available menu of choices becomes much more painful.
Lawmakers have recently addressed rising federal debt and deficits primarily through targeted spending caps and debt limit suspensions, as well as deploying extraordinary measures when the U.S. is close to hitting its statutory spending limit, though these measures have often been accompanied by new, large-scale spending or tax policies that maintain high deficit levels.
And President Donald Trump at the start of his second term deployed a Department of Government Efficiency, which set a goal to balance the budget by cutting $2 trillion in waste, fraud, and abuse; however, budget analysts estimate that DOGE cut anywhere between $1.4 billion and $7 billion, largely through workforce firings.
Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peterson Foundation said the CBOs latest budget projection is an urgent warning to our leaders about Americas costly fiscal path.
This election year, voters understand the connection between rising debt and their personal economic condition. And the financial markets are watching. Stabilizing our debt is an essential part of improving affordability, and must be a core component of the 2026 campaign conversation.
By Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
Amazon is expanding its same-day delivery services for its Pharmacy. In an announcement Wednesday the company said plans to bring Amazon Pharmacy to nearly 4,500 locations around the country, which is an addition of around 2,000 cities and towns by the end of 2026.
Amazon Pharmacy was first launched in 2020 in 45 U.S. states. By 2023, it served some locations in all 50. But the service has been continuously expanding to cover a growing number of locations since its launch while offering same-day delivery in more cities. Per Amazon’s announcement, the most recent expansion will now offer same-day delivery to its newly served customers in Idaho and Massachusetts.
“Patients shouldn’t have to choose between speed, cost, and convenience when it comes to their medication, regardless of where they live,” John Love, vice president of Amazon Pharmacy, said in the announcement. “By combining our pharmacy expertise with our logistics network, we’re removing critical barriers and helping patients start treatment fastersetting a new standard for accessible, digital-forward pharmacy care.”
Amazon Pharmacy has served as a competitor to traditional pharmacies since its launch, offering home delivery on most name brand and generic prescription medications. In 2023, Amazon also launched RxPass, a monthly subscription that offers Prime members in the U.S. as many generic versions of medications as they need for a $5 monthly fee.
Additionally, in December, the delivery giant began testing in-office pharmaceutical kiosks filled with medicine at certain One Medical locations. The kiosks aimed to help combat pharmacy deserts, or areas in the U.S. where traditional pharmacies have become more and more scarce.
According to research published in JAMA Network in 2024, around 15.8 million people in the U.S. live in pharmacy deserts. Unsurprisingly, areas with decreasing access to pharmacies are disproportionately affecting more socially vulnerable individuals.Amazon’s announcement addressed the issue of a growing number of unserved communities in the announcement, explaining, “In pharmacy deserts, Amazon Pharmacy helps fill critical gaps through 24/7 access to licensed pharmacists, automatic refills, and PillPack from Amazon Pharmacy.”
It continued, “PillPack from Amazon Pharmacy organizes medications by dose and time into easy-to-open packets and delivers them monthly to help customers and caregivers manage multiple prescriptions more reliably. In 2025, Amazon Pharmacy also introduced a caregiver support feature to help families manage medications for loved ones.”
