job
It’s been well over two decades since I’ve seen my brother. Although he’s five years older, we were close growing up. Loading audio narration… When he left for college, he rarely returned home, choosing to live in his college town year-round, but we kept in touch. When I was 19,…
A few years back, when ChatGPT first became available, the hype got loud, and one of my freelance clients was shouting the loudest. He called me one afternoon and declared that paying writers was a thing of the past, as this new technology could do in five minutes what all…
I started applying for jobs in the first week of my senior year at Stanford University, assuming I would have something lined up by graduation, if not sooner. I was surrounded by friends entering finance and consulting, where recruiting begins early and offers are secured months, sometimes years, in advance.…
Elon Musk thinks he has a solution to AI-driven job losses: the government pays for everyone to live well. Loading audio narration… “Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI,” the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said in…
Growing up, I expected to live the fast-paced life of a performer. Loading audio narration… I’m a Jersey girl with a New York City spirit. As a kid, my backyard was the Hudson City Skyline, and my dreams were set on being a principal actor on Broadway.Most of my childhood…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jason Zhang, a 25-year-old former Google employee based in Seattle. It’s been edited for length and clarity. Loading audio narration… When Google hired me as a software engineer at 22 years old, it felt like a huge accomplishment. It wasn’t just…
Michael struggled to pay down debt until he turned to an unconventional strategy: secretly working multiple full-time jobs at once. Loading audio narration… In 2020, Michael was working remotely as a technical recruiter, and his job wasn’t very demanding. He wished he could do something more productive with his time.”The…
Before throwing a résumé draft into ChatGPT or asking another AI tool to craft a message to hiring managers, job seekers should avoid a few things. Loading audio narration… “I never used the wording ChatGPT spit out, but I definitely used it to figure out where I was lacking in…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nicholas Jenkins, a market research analyst in his 40s who lives in Texas. He previously worked as a program manager at Amazon until leaving the company in December 2024 after being placed on a performance improvement plan. The following has been…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Chris Fong, 25, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. In March 2025, he was laid off from a tech startup. After about nine months of searching for a job, he started a content-creation business. The following has been edited…
