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When working parents consider going part-time, the question often sounds straightforward: Should I cut back my hours? But beneath that lies a tangle of deeper issuesidentity, ambition, money, family dynamics, and long-term career trajectory. Its rarely just about schedules or paychecks. For some, the hope is relief from burnout or more presence with loved ones. For others, its a way to preserve their career by making it sustainable. Yet without clarity and intentional boundaries, part-time can just as easily create new pressures as it relieves old ones. Here are some things to consider before making the decision: {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/acupofambition_logo.jpg","headline":"A Cup of Ambition","description":"A biweekly newsletter for high-achieving moms who value having a meaningful career and being an involved parent, by Jessica Wilen. To learn more visit acupofambition.substack.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/acupofambition.substack.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}} Start by naming what youre really after When someone tells me theyre thinking about going part-time, my first question is always: What do you hope this will give you? Sometimes the answer is obvious: more time with children, space to care for aging parents, recovery from burnout. Other times its murkier: a sense that life is slipping by too quickly, or that work has crowded out everything else that matters. Its important to pause here. Because part-time is not a silver bullet. Working fewer hours wont automatically create balance, ease guilt, or generate fulfillment. In fact, unless youre clear about what you want to gainand disciplined about how youll use that timethe space you carve out can quickly fill with the same obligations, distractions, and patterns that left you depleted in the first place. Ive seen people go part-time only to spend their free hours running errands, fielding work emails, or taking on invisible labor at home. Instead of relief, they feel even more fragmented. Thats why it helps to move beyond the surface question of Should I reduce my hours? and toward the deeper one: What is the life I want to create, and will going part-time bring me closer to it? Questions to reflect on: If I start working part-time, what exactly am I doing with the hours Ive freed up? Am I seeking relief from something (stress, overwork, burnout), or am I moving toward something (a passion project, deeper presence with family)? Would going part-time actually address the tension I feel, or am I hoping it will solve a deeper dissatisfaction with my work? The practical realities (and the myths) Theres the fantasy of part-timeleisurely mornings, meaningful afternoons, a career that flexes gracefully around life. And then theres the reality. In some workplaces, part-time can mean doing nearly the same work in fewer hours, with less pay. Unless responsibilities are explicitly renegotiated, reduced hours often become compressed hours where the same expectations are squeezed into a smaller container. The result? More stress, not less. This is why clarity and boundary-setting matter so much. Without a realignment of duties, you may find yourself trapped in what I call the illusion of part-timeofficially working 60 or 80%, but in practice carrying the same mental load, answering emails on your days off, and constantly feeling like youre falling short both at work and at home. It can leave you not only exhausted, but resentful. Questions to reflect on: If I reduce my hours, what tasks or responsibilities must I explicitly let go of? Who will need to adjust their expectations of me, and how willing are they to do so? How comfortable am I with disappointing others in order to protect the boundaries of a part-time schedule? The dollars and cents of it all Finances often make this decision feel tangible. A reduced salary is the most obvious consequence, but the subtler effects are equally important: diminished retirement savings, lower Social Security accrual, or loss of employer-sponsored benefits. These ripple effects compound over time. That said, some professionals discover that once they account for reduced childcare, commuting, or outsourcing, the trade-off is manageable. Others find the long-term cost outweighs the short-term relief. The question is not simply Can we afford it? but also What does this financial decision represent about what we value? Questions to reflect on: What would I need to give up financially, and does that feel tolerable or destabilizing? How do I weigh immediate well-being against long-term financial security? When I think about money, am I motivated more by fear of loss or by desire for freedom? The psychological adjustment Even when the numbers work, the inner shift can be surprisingly difficult. For many high achievers, work is not just a job, its a primary source of identity. Going part-time can feel like a loss of status, relevance, or ambition. Ive seen professionals struggle with a quiet internal voice: Am I still serious about my career? Will people think Im less committed? Am I letting down my colleagues? Sometimes, they try to silence these doubts by working just as much in fewer hours, overcompensating to prove their worth. That undermines the very reason for going part-time in the first place. This is where mindset matters. Part-time work requires redefining successnot by how many hours you log, but by how you use them. It requires tolerating the discomfort of doing less, while holding onto the bigger truth: that stepping back can be a strategic, intentional act, not a retreat. Questions to reflect on: How much of my self-worth is tied to being constantly available and productive? What fears come up when I imagine saying no or being less visible at work? Can I imagine new ways of defining professional success that dont hinge on hours logged? The family system Many women I work with often imagine that part-time work will instantly create harmony at home. More time for children, more support for a partner, more balance. And sometimes it does. But it can also surface new tensions. If one partner reduces hours, assumptions about who shoulders domestic labor may shiftsometimes explicitly, but often invisibly. Children may not respond the way you imagine; more presence doesnt automatically translate ino more connection. And caregiving for elders can quickly exceed the hours youve carved out. That doesnt mean the choice is wrong. It simply means it requires explicit conversations. What will this change look like day-to-day? How will household responsibilities shift? What do family members hope forand what do they fear? These conversations may be just as important as the HR paperwork. Questions to reflect on: What assumptions might my partner or children make if Im home more? How do I want to use the time at home and what boundaries will I set there? What conversations do we need to have as a family about expectations, roles, and values? Career trajectory For ambitious professionals, the biggest fear is often: What will this do to my career? And the honest answer is: it depends. The hard truth is that, in some fields, part-time status is stigmatized. Colleagues may equate fewer hours with lesser commitment. Promotions or leadership opportunities may be harder to come by. In other fields, performance matters more than face time, and part-time professionals continue to advance. But heres a reframe I often share with clients: Going part-time doesnt have to mean stepping off the track. It can mean running the race at your own pace. It can mean preserving your career by making it sustainable. It can even mean broadening your definition of achievement to include the personal, not just the professional. What matters is intentionality. If you see part-time as a failure, others may too. If you frame it as a strategic decisiona way to align your work with your values and capacitiesit is more likely to be respected. Questions to reflect on: What career opportunities might I forgo by going part-time, and am I comfortable with that? How do I want to explain this decisionto myself, to colleagues, to mentorsso it reflects strength, not retreat? What kind of long-term professional identity do I want to build, and does part-time support that vision? Alternatives worth exploring Its also worth asking: Do you need part-time, or do you need something else? Sometimes what people truly want is not fewer hours but greater autonomy. A flexible schedule. The ability to work remotely part of the week. A job crafted to shed responsibilities that drain energy but dont add value. In some cases, those adjustments can deliver as much relief as going part-time, with fewer trade-offs. Part-time can be the right choice. But its one option among many. Exploring the full menu can prevent premature decisions. In closing The decision to go part-time is rarely just about schedules. It reaches into questions of identity, ambition, money, relationships, and what it means to build a sustainable life. The goal isnt to settle the question once and for all, but to respond to the realities of this moment. Life has seasons, and work can too. A part-time schedule may be exactly the right fit for a while, and then lose its utility. Full-time may feel overwhelming at one stage, and energizing at another. The point is not permanence, but responsiveness. So instead of asking only, should I go part-time?, consider asking: What do I need in this season to make my work and life more sustainable? Your answer may shift over time, and thats the point. These choices can ebb and flow with you. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/acupofambition_logo.jpg","headline":"A Cup of Ambition","description":"A biweekly newsletter for high-achieving moms who value having a meaningful career and being an involved parent, by Jessica Wilen. To learn more visit acupofambition.substack.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/acupofambition.substack.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}}
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Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. Im Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, Im focusing on Californias SB 53, the states second attempt at meaningful AI safety regulation. I also look at the ongoing VC spend-fest on vibe coding startups, and at a few of the AI features in the new Apple AirPods Pro 3. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. A new California AI safety bill is marching toward passage After House Republicans tried to include a state-level ban on AI regulation in Trumps so-called Big Beautiful Bill in July, California is again moving to pass an AI safety law. Much of the countrys AI development happens in the state, and Californias approach often sets the tone for tech regulation nationwide. The first attempt (SB 1047) cleared the legislature in 2024 but was vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom after facing fierce opposition from AI startups and investors. Now the author of SB 1047, Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), has introduced a revised bill, SB 53. It would require companies developing the largest frontier models to file regular confidential risk assessments of their models to the Governors Office of Emergency Services. Developers would also have to notify the state if their models attempted to deceive humans about the effectiveness of their built-in safety guardrails, such as refusing to help create a bioweapon. The bill also calls for a public cloud compute cluster, CalCompute, to be housed at the University of California, which would provide free and low-cost access to compute for startups and academic researchers. The California Assembly and Senate are expected to hold final votes on SB 53 before the legislative session ends at midnight on September 12. Recent amendments align the bill more closely with recommendations from Newsoms Joint Policy Working Group on Frontier AI Models, which was convened after his veto of SB 1047. The final version of SB 53 will ensure California continues to lead not only on AI innovation, but on responsible practices to help ensure that innovation is safe and secure, Wiener said in a statement this week. Money is rolling in for AI agents. So are the bugs Earlier this week I published a feature on the rise of so-called vibe coding companies drawing major attention and capital from venture investors. Startups like Replit, Lovable, and Anysphere offer AI tools that let developers, and even complete amateurs, build apps and web services simply by describing them to an AI agent in plain language. The tools rely on large language models to interpret requests and translate them into working code. But as several sources note in my piece, these tools often generate code that doesnt integrate smoothly with other software within a codebase, creating security bugs and reliability problems that can emerge down the line. But those concerns havent slowed the flood of venture cash. Just days after my article ran, Replit announced another $250 million funding round led by Prysm Capital, with participation from American Express Ventures, Googles AI Futures Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and Y Combinator. The round nearly tripled Replits valuation to $3 billion. The company says it now has 40 million users and that its annualized revenue increased from $2.8 million to $150 million over the past year. With between 150 and 200 employees, that values Replit at between $15 million and $20 million per employee. That same calculation puts Cursor-maker Anysphere at about $66 million per employee. Investors are certainly aware of some of the high-profile app fails and security breaches allegedly brought about by vibe coding. The repeated exposure of millions of pieces of sensitive personal data and private messages of users of the dating-intel app Tea were likely the result of code generated by an AI assistant. And in August, Replit itself suffered a public stumble when one of its agents, while helping SaaS investor Jason Lemkin build a web app, deleted an entire database of executive contacts. Lemkin, who built the app entirely through Replits chat agent over nine days, saw the data restored after the company apologized, but the incident underscored the fragility of vibe coding tools. That said, the technology is improving. Developers say that systems like Anthropics Claude Code and OpenAIs Codex are getting far better at testing code and making changes that dont have adverse effects on other parts of a users code base. Replits new funding suggests investors expect smaller startups in the space to achieve similar gains with their respective coding tools. Some see AI coding assistants as the first true killer app of the generative AI boom. Maybe so, but the tools still have growing up to do. Apple injects more AI into AirPods Pro 3 Apple said earlier this year that the much-hyped Apple Intelligence features it announced in 2024including a new highly personalized version of Siriare still not ready to ship and likely wont arrive until 2026. That gave many the impression Apple had fallen behind its peers in AI. But the company could be biding its time, waiting for powerful use cases where large language models truly excel. On Tuesday, Apple announced that its AirPods Pro 3 will feature live translation powered by computational audio and Apple Intelligence. The beta feature fits naturally in AirPods because users dont need to fumble with a phone or device to follow a bilingual conversation. The translation feature supports English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, with Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese coming by year’s end The in-ear translation supports two interaction modes. An English speaker, for example, might display translations of their words on an iPhone for a non-AirPods-wearing Chinese speaker. Or, if both people wear AirPods, each will hear real-time translations of the others words directly in theirears. If the tech works as promised, AirPods translation could remove friction from personal and business travel with a relatively discreet, hands-free device. Apple also introduced an AI-powered fitness feature called Workout Buddy. Users wearing earbuds during workouts can hear an AI-generated voice giving them personalized motivational insights that are based on their workout data and fitness history. The $249 AirPods Pro 3 will go on sale September 19. More AI coverage from Fast Company: The vibe coding hangover is upon us This startup is bringing AI to an Excel-style spreadsheet Helen Toner wants to be the peoples voice in the AI safety debate What is BYOAI and why its a serious threat to your company Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium.
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The battle among billionaires for bragging rights as the world’s richest person got heated Wednesday with the surprising surge of an old contender: Larry Ellison.In a stunning few minutes after markets opened, stock in Ellison’s Oracle Corp. rocketed more than a third, enough for him to temporarily wrest the title from its longtime holder Elon Musk and hand it to the software giant’s co-founder.But the stock market is fickle, and Musk was back on top by the end of the day, at least according to Bloomberg, as Oracle gave up a bit of its earlier gains.For those keeping score, the difference now is a billion, which isn’t much given the size of the figures: Musk’s $384.2 billion versus $383.2 billion for Ellison.The dueling fortunes are so big each could fund the lifestyles of 5 million typical American families for a year, about the entire population of Florida, allowing them to all quit their jobs. Or they could just tell all of South Africa to take a vacation for year and produce nothing, based on its gross domestic product.The brief switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle powered by multibillion dollar orders from customers as the artificial-intelligence race heats up.Musk became the world’s richest person for the first time four years ago. A big reason is his stake in a hot, but now cooling, electric car maker, Tesla.Stock in the company has been moving in the opposite direction of Oracle’s, dropping 14% so far this year. Musk also controls several private companies, including rocket maker SpaceX, his artificial intelligence company xAI and the former Twitter, now called X.Ellison owns about 40% of Oracle, which means its surging stock added $100 billion to his net worth in little over a half-hour after the stock market opened.The night before, after trading had closed, the company announced in an earnings report that it had struck more than $300 billion worth of new deals, including contracts with the OpenAI, Meta, Nvidia and Musk’s xAI. It said that it now expects revenue from its cloud infrastructure business to jump 77% to $18 billion this fiscal year. then rise to $144 billion in four years after that.Ellison said in an earnings call that Oracle would not just be making money from its computing centers that help build the next chatbots, but from the day-to-day running of those AI systems to run robots in factories, design drugs in laboratories, place bets in financial markets and automate legal and sales work at companies.In other words, Ellison’s surge in wealth Wednesday morning reflected investor expectations that computers will take over many jobs now done by humans and Oracle will benefit.Or as the 81-year-old said on the call, “AI Changes Everything.”Musk is hoping the same for Tesla and his own net worth, but he’s been struggling to convince investors.The company had been promising a big turnaround in electric car sales after they fell sharply earlier this year, but the bounce back hasn’t happened. Musk has been downplaying the bad numbers by trying to shift investors’ focus to Tesla’s other business of making robots and advances in the artificial intelligence behind its cars and robotaxis.While he keeps talking up the Tesla future, though, the bad news keeps coming.Tesla sales in the European Union plunged 40% earlier this summer, the seventh month in row of drops, as customers balked at buying his cars after he took to X to support extreme right-wing politicians there. The company has been losing market share in the U.S., too, as buyers angry with his embrace of Donald Trump have stayed away from Tesla showrooms.Oracle stock closed Wednesday at $328.33, a 36% jump. Tesla was up less than 1% at $347.79.-AP writers Matt O’Brien and Michael Liedtke contributed to this story. Bernard Condon, AP Business Writer
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