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British entrepreneur Emma Grede, who founded the women’s bodywear company Skims along with her husband, Jens Grede, and Kim Kardashian, is getting a lot of attention after dismissing work-life balance as a priority for employers. “Work-life balance is your problem, not the employer’s responsibility,” Grede said on The Diary of a CEO podcast on Monday, hosted by British entrepreneur Steven Bartlett, which features interviews with CEOs and other successful leaders. “Look, I have four kids, and I had to figure out how I would think about my own ambition balanced with my parenting. That’s the truth,” she continued. While they say that all PR is good PR, Grede’s claim is sure to be controversial among leaders, employees, and employers. She also added that she viewed the priority negatively in the hiring process. “When somebody talks to me about their work-life balance in an interview process, I’m, like, ‘Something is wrong with you,’ ” Grede told Bartlett, calling it a red flag to bring up in a job interview, and recommending that prospective employees not ask about it. However, Grede’s comments feel problematic in the context that Skims is marketed primarily to women, who still bear a heavier load than men in balancing work and family, despite progress in recent decades in the workplace, according to the Pew Research Center. In fact, women are more likely than men to report experiencing work-life balance challenges, with 60% of women saying it’s a significant issue, versus 47% of men. That’s because women continue to shoulder a greater amount of work at home, both in childcare and housework, and continue to be paid less in the workplace for the same job on average. Furthermore, a 2023 Pew report that researched opposite-sex marriages found that even when earnings are similar, husbands spend more time on paid work and leisure, while wives devote more time to caregiving and housework. The research found that even in so-called “egalitarian marriages,” wives are still spending more than double the amount of time on housework than their husbands (4.6 hours per week for women versus 1.9 hours per week for men), and almost two hours more per week on caregiving, including tending to children. Husbands, meanwhile, spend roughly three hours more per week than their wives on paid work, and three-and-a-half hours more on leisure activities. Some experts also disagree with Grede’s view. Psychologist Katina Sawyer told Business Insider that considering work-life balance a skill reinforces “flawed thinking,” and “allows employers to ignore the role their expectations play in employee burnout and to shift the blame onto individuals when performance suffers.” Fast Company has reached out to Grede at Skims for comment. Speaking of podcasts, Grede also happens to be launching her own on Tuesday, called Aspire With Emma Grede, featuring “honest and unfiltered” conversations with business moguls, starting with two episodes with actress and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow and the former chair of Starbucks, Mellody Hobson. “Aspire is my way of scaling mentorship,” Grede told People magazine. “Theres so much advice out there, but most of it doesnt reflect the reality of what it actually takes to build something or change your life.”
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E-Commerce
In the constant hustle and bustle of one of the busiest airports in the United States, a terrifying 90 seconds of quiet had disastrous results. On April 28, the Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) lost both radar and radio for a minute and a half due to a fried piece of copper wiring, the New York Post reported. This meant that air traffic controllers could not see, hear, or speak to aircraft or pilots around the airport. The event did not lead to any crashes, but it did cause significant stress on employees working at the time; five FAA employees are reportedly taking trauma leave, according to CNN, making them eligible for 45 days to recover from the event. How has the incident impacted flights? Along with a slew of other problems slowing down the airportsuch as the temporary closure of a major runway for repair work and a nearly 30-year low of air controller staffinglast Mondays incident has led to major delays and cancellations for the airport. And these delays and cancellations have continued to persist: According to the flight tracking website FlightAware, Newark airport has seen over 200 delays and 110 cancellations by 12:30 today. What have airlines said about the situation? Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, wrote in a message on Friday that Newark airports technology problems were compounded when over 20% of the FAA controllers for EWR walked off the job, putting further stress on already understaffed systems. Without these controllers, its now clear and the FAA tells us that Newark airport cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead, He wrote. Due to these difficulties, Kirby added, United would cancel 35 round trips per day from Newark beginning this past weekend. It’s disappointing to make further cuts to an already reduced schedule at Newark, but since there is no way to resolve the near-term structural FAA staffing issues, we feel like there is no other choice in order to protect our customers, says Kirby. How long is this chaos going to last? While issues like the runway closure will be resolved in June, the severe lack of air traffic controllers and replacing old equipment is a longer-term problem. According to a report by Axios, the New York City region only had around 65% of its target number of certified air traffic controllers as of September 2023. This is in part because of the relatively narrow window in which people can enter the position. The FAA does not allow anyone to apply to be a controller if they are over the age of 30 and requires all controllers to retire by the age of 56. Additionally, training to become a certified professional controller (CPC) is a long and difficult process spanning 3-4 years and causes around 40% of paid trainees to drop out. In order to boost the numbers of air traffic controllers, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a press conference on May 1 that the Department of Transportation will roll out incentives such as: A 30% salary increase for new hires A $5,000 bonus for FAA Academy completion Additional resources to help students improve final exam scores Bonuses to controllers nearing retirement age Bonuses to controllers willing to staff less popular locations Were hoping in three to four years we can get to full staffing, not 20 years, Duffy said. Additionally, in a statement on May 5, the FAA said that it is working on speeding up modernization efforts to improve Newark airports technology infrastructure. “We are working to ensure the current telecommunications equipment is more reliable in the New York area by establishing a more resilient and redundant configuration with the local exchange carriers. In addition, we are updating our automation system to improve resiliency,” the agency said. What if I’m flying in or out of Newark? Although the FAA and Department of Transportation are promising improvements for Newark airport, the unfortunate reality is that it will take a long time for travelers to see the results from them. Travelers with flights going through Newark in the coming weeks and months should stay alert and check frequently for possible delays and disruptions and consider backup plans when possible. It also may be a good idea to try to book flights earlier in the day as they are typically less likely to be delayed or canceled. In the case that your flight is cancelled or heavily delayed, the Department of Transportation says that you are entitled to a refund: If an airline cancels a passengers flight or makes a significant change in the flight, regardless of the reason, airlines are required to provide a prompt refund to a ticketed passenger, including those with non-refundable tickets, should the passenger choose not to accept the alternative offered, such as rebooking on another flight.
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E-Commerce
OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit with a mission to build safe artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity. For a while, that structure made sense. But in 2019, the company made a discovery that changed everything: Scaling up AI modelswith more data, compute, and parametersled to predictably stronger results. The insight was formalized in a 2020 paper titled “Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models,” and it reshaped OpenAIs trajectory. That same year, the company released GPT-3, a model 100 times larger than GPT-2. Microsoft invested. Venture capitalists piled in. Inside the company, employees began to see Sam Altman as the one who could turn a nonprofit breakthrough into a world-changingand highly profitablebusiness. And yet OpenAI remained a nonprofit company. Seen in that light, yesterdays announcement that OpenAIs for-profit arm will become a public benefit company (PBC) is no big surprise. Under the newly proposed structure, OpenAI will continue operating as a for-profit AI business housed within a nonprofit parent. (Altman said last year he wanted to free the for-profit from the nonprofit parent.) We made the decision for the nonprofit to retain control of OpenAI after hearing from civic leaders and engaging in constructive dialogue with the offices of the Attorney General of Delaware and the Attorney General of California, OpenAI board member Bret Taylor said in a blog post Monday. The change is that the for-profit part will now be a public benefit corporation and no longer a capped profit entity. Now theres no limit on how much OpenAI shareholdersincluding investors and employeescan earn. Dropping the capped-profit model was also a condition of OpenAIs last two funding rounds. In the most recent (and largest), lead investor SoftBank stipulated that OpenAI adopt a new corporate structure by the end of 2025. Investors are willing to bet big on OpenAI, but they want the potential for big returns. Altman and others at OpenAI have said that bringing in revenue has become more important with the realization that building progressively better models will require massive investments in infrastructure and computing power. The key worry about Sam Altman is that, under his leadership, the company might prioritize pushing toward superintelligent AI without adequately safety-testing its models or mitigating their risks. The new PBC structure likely wont do much to quiet those concerns. OpenAIs announcement is effectively a commitment to maintain the status quo, with some changes around the margins, Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman said in a statement Monday night. Under the new arrangement, OpenAI nonprofit will continue to have a controlling interest in the for-profit, now accompanied by some shareholding. Since the nonprofit has done nothing discernible in the past to control or in any way restrain the for-profit, theres no reason to think it will do so in the future.” Elon Musk, an early founder of OpenAI, sued the company for violating its original nonprofit mission to develop human-level AI for the good of humanity. OpenAI says Musk, who owns a competing AI company, is simply trying to slow its progress. Both claims may be correct. OpenAI will continue releasing new models at a rapid clip, and it will keep the technical details of its best models tightly held as trade secrets. The nonprofits board of directors, which once challenged Altmans commitment to safety and even managed to briefly oust him for dishonesty in late 2023, is now filled with people more aligned with the CEOs goals. And the nonprofit board will receive a significant number of shares in the for-profit public benefit corporation. Microsoft will have to sign off on the new structure, but why wouldnt it? Even though OpenAIs relationship with Microsoft isnt as tight or aligned as it once was, Microsoft still stands to benefit from maximizing the financial payoff of the large stake it holds in the AI startup.
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E-Commerce
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