Author: Editor

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Georgian Tutuianu, a 36-year-old AI engineer at HubSpot, based in Boston. His identity and employment have been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Loading audio narration… I started my career as a structural engineer. I went from traditional engineering, to software engineering, to AI engineering, which I’m doing now at HubSpot.While I was a structural engineer, there was a lot of new technology coming out with machine learning. There seemed to be a lot of opportunities to integrate it in the field. So I…

Pet-care app Rover is adapting to a new reality: Many of its youngest users are cat people.During the pandemic, many people adopted dogs, cats, and other pets. Those with jobs that allowed them to work from home often enjoyed the companionship and, without a commute, had more time to take the dog for a walk or break out a laser pointer for an energetic cat.Now, though, Rover is seeing more requests for its gig-worker sitters to check on cats, CEO Brent Turner told Business Insider in an interview. The trend is particularly pronounced among Gen Z users, he said.”Dog adoptions…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sue Miller, 83, who lives in Wisconsin. Miller raised three children, two grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, much of which was on her own. Miller now lives alone near her autistic son and works as a lunch lady. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.I’m blessed because even when things were really hard, it always seemed like something came up to help me out. There was always some job for me. I’ve always been a survivor. How can I see it any differently?I had three kids, 11 months and 15…

It started with a mysterious slack from our editor-in-chief, Jamie Heller: Can you talk now? It was the kind of urgent message you never want to get from your boss’ boss. What did I do? Am I in trouble? Is she laying me off? I scoured my brain for all the ways I’d probably disappointed her and the correspondingly appropriate ways I could apologize for those offenses. Then she called me to give me the news: She wanted to send me to Davos in January.I’ve known about Davos, the World Economic Forum’s annual conference that gathers the global elite, for…

My husband and I took over four hours to file our taxes the first time we filed jointly. We each dreaded the task as single adults, but together it was somehow even more unbearable. Not only is there more paperwork to submit, but the vibe can turn tense — and anything but romantic — when it comes to dealing with our finances.To mitigate this, we each gather our tax documents in advance. We learned the hard way that getting organized beforehand cuts our time spent sitting at the computer by literal hours. When we each take time to gather what…

A few years ago, Grace Guo began to crave places in New York City where hanging out with friends didn’t have to involve alcohol.Newly sober and surrounded by friends who also chose not to drink, Guo said she wanted alternatives to the typical social scene. After some research, she landed on Bathhouse and Othership: social wellness clubs designed to create communities around improving health.”Honestly, it kind of just feels like going to a spa together and spending an afternoon together. I think for me, it just feels much better rather than staying out late at night,” Guo told CNBC. She’s…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Simone Solazzo, 31, a former tech worker from Italy, and Anne Leijdekkers, 32, a Dutch arts entrepreneur. In 2025, the couple built their house and transported it to the tiny-home village of Minitopia in Valkenswaard, the Netherlands. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.Anne: When we decided to build our tiny home in late 2024, we had no building experience whatsoever. Simone had never even painted a wall before.Thankfully, ChatGPT had arrived at the perfect time.We spent our evenings asking it about almost everything. While AI was genuinely helpful…

I wish I had known about coworking spaces with attached childcare/preschools much sooner in my parenting journey. This community helped me solve a problem I had been stressing over for two years. Loading audio narration… I’m a Chicago mom, an on-air contributor on “The Fred Show,” a nationally syndicated morning radio show, and the founder of The Mami Collective, a media platform for ambitious mothers. My workdays aren’t traditional, and they certainly don’t fit into a 9-5 schedule.My mornings typically start at 4 a.m., and once the show ends at 10 a.m., the rest of my morning is packed with…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 41-year-old Chaim Mazal, chief security officer of Gigamon, a cloud security company based in Santa Clara, California. This story has been edited for length and clarity. Loading audio narration… I got my first computer in the early ’90s when I was 8 years old and living in Florida. A few years later, I started hanging out in hacker chat rooms on a service called Internet Relay Chat. My parents had no idea.I was very taken by the hacker community. The people in these chat rooms talked about making programs to perform…

Jeff Mason, 76, could get by if he didn’t drive for Uber until 2 a.m., but money would be tight.Decades ago, Mason had a stable job in construction, while his wife, a stay-at-home mom, returned to work. However, in 1993, she had pains that required gallbladder surgery. They paid to keep her employer’s health insurance after she took a leave of absence. While undergoing treatment, she discovered a lump in her breast. It was cancer.Months later, bills started pouring in. They later discovered they didn’t have coverage, as her cancer was a pre-existing condition. They cashed in their IRA, sold…