Navigating Big Tech's new era
Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. Warren Buffett is officially hanging it up. The 94-year-old investing legend plans to resign as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after 55 years in charge. Buffett broke the news to a stadium full of Berkshire shareholders in Omaha. BI's Theron Mohamed was there — here's what he witnessed.
On the agenda today:
Why millennials' retirement estimations might just be plain wrong.
Inside Big Law's fight against Donald Trump.
Influencers are selling get-rich-quick courses to young men skeptical of higher ed.
How AI is transforming work for consultants at McKinsey, BCG, and more.
But first: Talking all things Big Tech with Alistair Barr, the author of our soon-to-be-launched Tech Memo newsletter. (Sign up to get the first edition in your inbox!)
If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Business Insider's app here.
This week's dispatch
Introducing Tech Memo
Alistair Barr, a longtime tech editor at Business Insider, will be helming a new newsletter for us called Tech Memo. It aims to deliver the best of BI's inside coverage of Big Tech and the broader industry.
I connected with Ali about his plans for this new reader service.
Ali, what should readers of the BI Tech Memo expect that they won't get elsewhere?
This newsletter, for starters, is for people working in tech companies, or who want to. How is the work environment changing? What's the best way to thrive and get ahead in Silicon Valley? Then, anyone who does business with these organizations, and those who want to understand them more intimately, will get great value from this, too. BI has always excelled at providing an exclusive look at what's really happening inside these powerful companies. My goal is to bring the best of this coverage to readers every week.
What big themes are top of mind?
New, powerful tools, such as AI, are being unleashed across these huge organizations and disrupting how things are done. Changes within tech companies will influence how we all work in the future. And I'm laser-focused on the changing relationship between employees and companies in the industry, so we'll be sharing more insights, such as our piece this week about new Big Tech performance-management approaches. Finally, with tariffs, it will be interesting to see how tech companies adjust their operations, particularly their hardware supply chains. This applies especially to Apple.
I'm obsessed with Elon Musk and all of his companies. His raw way of blurting out what's on his mind is a stark change from the usual pre-packaged, PR-checked talking points of most executives. Sam Altman is challenging Musk for the crown of "most interesting tech CEO" right now. Then, I'm keen to see how Mark Zuckerberg's more open approach to AI model development will work out (or not).
The Millennial Retirement Panic
Between the dot-com bubble bust and the 2008 Great Recession, millennials started off adulthood at a retirement disadvantage — and they could face even greater upheaval in the decades to come.
Current retirement estimates don't factor in the economic impacts of AI, the climate crisis, and more — all things that could make millennials' retirement future rocky.
.
Big Law fights back
When President Trump issued a barrage of executive orders targeting several of the nation's biggest law firms, many struck deals. Four firms chose to fight the administration in court.
So far, that gamble looks like it's paid off. In each of the four suits, judges blocked the most consequential elements from each executive order and signaled they'd later rule in favor of the firms.
.
Meet Richard Lawson, the sole Justice Department lawyer taking on Big Law in court
Plato vs. Porsches
Kimberly Elliott for BI
Disillusioned with higher education and facing a masculinity crisis, young men are gravitating toward college alternatives. Manosphere influencers are answering the call.
Denouncing college as a scam, they're marketing a lifestyle full of fast cars, private jets, and Dubai mansions. All this could be yours, they promise, if you buy their $1,000 course.
And young men are buying.
AI comes to consulting
Workers at big consulting firms like McKinsey and BCG were initially ambivalent about AI. Now, it's helping them save time on rote tasks, which they've reinvested into more advanced work.
The two firms — plus Deloitte, KPMG, and PwC — told BI how they're implementing AI into their workflows, from streamlining writing style to experimenting with AI agents.
Here's how the tech is reshaping the industry.
McKinsey, BCG, and Deloitte's new competition is small, fast, and driven by AI
This week's quote:
"We eat our own dog food."
— Ryan Carrillo, who used an assumable mortgage to buy his home. He's the cofounder of Assumable.io, which also helps buyers find homes with assumable mortgages.
More of this week's top reads:
Google is shaking up its compensation to incentivize higher performance.
Walmart is once again America's grocery king, but rival Costco is rapidly gaining ground.
The smartest things economists are saying about a possible recession.
A BI reporter went to Trump's first 100-day rally. The key issue for rallygoers was, surprisingly, not the economy.
Inside the first week back at JPMorgan's largest US office, from the memos to the jockeying for desks.
BI went to the "Conclave of Silicon Valley." It showed the hold tech has on DC.
Starbucks is staffing up its stores with baristas and ditching machines in the latest stage of its turnaround.
with music they hate.
The BI Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York (on parental leave). Grace Lett, editor, in Chicago. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York. Elizabeth Casolo, fellow, in Chicago.
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CNBC
2 hours ago
- CNBC
What stocks to buy and when to buy in Monday's Iran-driven market
He bombed. Two words and the world went akilter. We get that. Visions blind us: a blocked Strait of Hormuz; $100 per barrel oil; a de-stabilized Iran and mullah revenge; our troops in harm's way; and no end to Israel-Iran missile volleys. Monday's reaction in the market? Always the same. Big institutions sell stocks, which are so-called risk assets, even as we know from the rise in the S & P 500 all of these last 40 years that stocks are hardly risky. No matter, the institutions want cash. They always want cash. They don't know any better. They want to sell the high price-to-earnings ratio stocks and look for safety. They are the drivers of the lower bond yields we will get, especially the 10-year Treasury. To which I say to these institutions, "Whoa there, cowboy." That's been the playbook for them ever since 1982. It's been wrong every time except 2007 when the Great Recession struck. Why did selling fail as a strategy every time but once? Because all of the major waves of selling in the wake of some incident of uncertainty were caused by momentary risk that did not ultimately threaten stocks, or the banking system — or, ultimately, the economy. This time is no different, unless the Strait of Hormuz is closed by Iran. Following Saturday's President Donald Trump -authorized strikes at three Iranian nuclear sites, Iran is said to be considering such a move. On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for China to prevent Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz, which is one of the most important trade routes for oil in the world. Crude prices rose in Sunday trading, and U.S. stock futures were lower. I think a conflict with a deeply hobbled non-nuclear, fourth-rate power, that is the current Iran does not create systemic risk even with higher oil. Let's take that off the table. This is not China. This is not on par with a seizure of strategically important Taiwan, which China has threatened to do, or a shutdown of all rare earth materials, which are dominated by China and needed for manufacturing in sectors including autos, semiconductors, and defense. Iran isn't a trading partner. It isn't even much of a trading partner with Russia or China. It lost its proxies through a stealth war against Israel that you could argue they have been winning for ages, simply because they are a terrorist condoning regime. They are no longer winning. They are losing big and seem hellbent on reducing their state to rubble. Given the apparent extent of the damage at the heavily deepened Fordo nuclear site, I also want to take existential risk off the table. Iran has not and will not be allowed to create a nuclear weapon. Israel seems to be able to anticipate everything they do, as Israel seems to have someone(s) infiltrated at a high level. I will not take the Strait of Hormuz off the table because it's the only gambit left of the terrorist regime. We will play that out momentarily — but, spoiler alert, it's not a meaningful plot. I don't detect a possibility of regime change in Iran, however, despite what some of the Western press says, because "the people" there are not going to rise up. And, the Western types are not going to push to overthrow. So, what works then for the CNBC Investing Club's portfolio? Monday's schematic The stock market is controlled, in moments like these, by the S & P futures markets, which overwhelm the opening bell in New York, as they have every time since the 1987 crash. It's axiomatic. It doesn't matter if it is mistaken, which it is. It's just what happens. The S & P futures sellers don't know a health care stock from a semi. They are using the futures as a hedge for their long-side portfolio. So are the hedge funds, except some will use the futures as a way to get short — bet against the market. The money goes into bonds, which due to their inverse relationship, means bond prices go up and bond yields go down. We know that tends to be positive for stocks. Some will choose to buy traditional safety stocks. Again, a mistake. There are now too many flaws. When a Procter & Gamble or a Johnson & Johnson doesn't offer protection — and, they most certainly do not, stay away. Think of how horrendous the food and drug stocks really have been. Most of these are nightmares. Our plan involves knowing and accepting the constraints forced upon us by the overwhelming negative power of the S & P futures out of Chicago. Selling doesn't let you get any palatable prices for your stocks. The good prices were Friday's close. You can sit on your hands and do nothing, which can work in times of uncertainty. Or you can buy, but you have to remember that there will be big institutions that will, all day long, be selling the stocks you want to buy. They will bury you. Here's why: Their sell orders will be huge. The prices they will get on the first parts of their orders will be ugly at the start of the day because of the negative power of the S & P futures sellers. Their sell orders are so large they will be "worked" all day. The traders handling these orders at the brokerage houses, like a Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan, are now you're enemy because they need to demonstrate their selling prowess. That means getting a price for their client that is, in aggregate, better than the closing price of the day. The best way for a trader to handle large sell orders on days like Monday is to skillfully sell when buy bids build and walk away for a bit to let bids build. That's careful selling. Cat and mouse. The worst way to do it is to sell all day at any price and then save a big chunk of the client's sell order for the closing bell, blowing the stock to smithereens. That causes a price that is the low of the day. Therefore, the trader will be giving the customer an average price that is better than the self-controlled, marked-down closing price. The client is oblivious and grateful for an average price that is better than the closing price, even as the execution was sub-optimal. All they know is they "did better" than the closing price. That's why it is so hard to buy on the first day of any sell-off. No matter what you do, whatever price you pay, you will most likely have a loss at the end of the day because of that process. Knowing this, you can't be heroic at the opening. Those who do will try to catch what they think will be the low of the day. When stocks start sinking again, as they almost always do, these opportunists will end up trying to scalp for pennies and will be gone by 10:30 a.m. ET. They will most likely be losers. Day trading stinks. Now, I am presuming if you are a Club member, you aren't on margin, or you wouldn't be reading this. Who wants to read an article by someone who has nothing but contempt for you? If you do have cash, and because the S & P Short Range Oscillator , a market momentum indicator that I have trusted for decades, is flat and will most likely be negative by the end of the day, I am going to err on the side of buying. After all, as long-term investors, one day of trading is not make or break for us. We're in the market for the long haul. If you don't have cash on hand, you sell some of your losers and use the day to reposition. What to buy It's very counterintuitive. The institutions sell the highest multiple stocks. They do so because they are up a lot. Those are the ones we want. These sell-offs give us a chance to get a better average cost basis. Our only obstacle here is that Micron Technology reports this week — and I fear, after this run, that it won't be good enough. Still, I will scan to see what we can buy that will matter. We can buy some industrials. They have been rock solid, and given that we don't see a recession on the horizon, that might be a great bet. I also think that the dollar store stocks will finally come in, and Club name TJX Companies will finally stop going down. Intriguing. Low multiple tech like Bullpen name Cisco Systems or the redoubtable IBM makes sense. I like the data center. I like Club name Amazon as well as Netflix and Tesla with a flat-fee robotaxi. The "normal" winners, the J & J and P & G's, just don't work anymore. After J.M. Smucker two weeks ago, forget food, especially General Mills , which reports this week. FedEx reports, too, making it tough to buy any transports. How about the oils. I would prefer to be a seller, not a buyer. We are pumping roughly 13.5 million barrels a day . We can up that by a million barrels on command from Trump. The Russians are pumping like mad. Who knows what Iran is doing, but it's probably trying to sell as much as it can to pay the bills. Do we really think the Saudis are against what Trump did Saturday? They are grateful and will sell whatever is necessary to keep oil down. Which is why I think that the Strait of Hormuz is not a sustainable worry. It's a big reason why I would be a buyer of the rest of the market. When to act Everyone I know is worried about a big down day. So, I am worried about a big up day. We will know what happens if the selling dries up at 2:45 p.m. ET. Why then? If nothing bad has happened by then, some sellers might walk away. The margined sellers are done. If the selling slows down, shorts will start covering, and some intrepid longs will wade in. There is time for a rally to build, and it won't be met by new sellers because there isn't enough time. If a rally starts earlier than 2:45 on Monday afternoon, it will be overwhelmed by sellers who are grateful for better prices. If it starts much later than 2:45, there won't be time to mount a rally before the 4:30 p.m. ET close. So, if you do wade in, think about waiting an hour after the 9:30 a.m. ET open and some by 3:30 p.m. ET — the latter being hard for us because of the constraints of the Club, which puts our trade alert deadline before 3:15 p.m. ET, because we always wait 45 minutes to execute our trades to give members a shot at the best prices. Be prepared for a long day. Be prepared for plenty of rumors. Be prepared for the Trump haters to say everything is going to be wrong. Be prepared to buy. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Business Insider
7 hours ago
- Business Insider
I was laid off from Microsoft after 23 years, and I'm still going into the office. I feel responsible for my team and customers.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Freddy Kristiansen, a 59-year-old former Principal Product Manager at Microsoft's Denmark office who was laid off in May 2025. Business Insider has verified Kristiansen's employment. The following has been edited for length and clarity. A couple of weeks ago, after 23 years at Microsoft, I was laid off. Yet here I am, back in the office. It might sound strange to show up at the office after being let go, but I still feel committed to the products, the people using them, and my colleagues. I was laid off in May, and per Danish law as an employee of over nine years, I have a six-month notice period. I've been relieved of my duties, but I am still officially an employee until the end of November. I'm also entitled to three months of severance pay after my notice. I didn't plan to stay at Microsoft for two decades I was originally hired by Navision in 2002. I saw it as a job I'd stay in for a year or two, but shortly after I joined, Microsoft acquired Navision. From then on, I was a Microsoft employee. That's when I thought, "Maybe this could actually be something long-term." Indeed, it ended up being my professional home for the next 23 years. Over the years, I have held a variety of roles, from group program management to technical evangelist. Although I never had an official developer title, I have been developing products throughout. My last major project was AL-Go for GitHub — a tool that helps our partners use DevOps, a software development approach, in their daily work without needing to understand the complex technical details. I didn't expect to feel relieved when I got laid off I've found the work fulfilling, but around five years ago, I started dreaming of my own business. During the last round of Microsoft layoffs in 2023, I submitted an anonymous question during an all-hands asking if they would consider voluntary redundancies. If the option came up in the future, I might volunteer. It never did. One morning in May this year, I got an invite to a one-on-one meeting with my manager. I said to my wife, "This is it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be laid off." I thought I might feel upset, but, in reality, it was kind of a relief. Some of my colleagues were devastated. They are worried about what the future might hold. But I'm nearing 60. For the past decade, I've worked very hard and put in long hours. However, I'm at the stage of life where I'm no longer interested in working 60-hour weeks. It felt like the right time to finally pursue my long-overdue dream of doing work on my own terms. During that layoff call with my manager and HR, I wasn't sad; I was already thinking about what I wanted to do next. I believe this new chapter will be good for me. I'll be able to take more time for myself, and hopefully I'll be less stressed as I can set my own hours. Starting a business is my silver lining My focus is now on figuring out a business plan that will allow me to deliver the most value to partners and customers in the least amount of time. I plan to offer CTO services, project management, and maybe even some motivational speaking, while squeezing in travel and getting back into a regular exercise routine. Since the layoffs, I've been reminding myself that every cloud has a silver lining. In Danish, we say, "Nothing is so bad that it isn't good for something." In this case, the upside was the severance package. If I'd quit, I'd have received nothing. Because I was laid off after so many years of service, I was entitled to at least nine months of pay. I can use this package as a foundation to build toward my future plans. I still am going into the office for talks and office hours I still have an office access card and my company laptop, at the latest until December when I'm officially terminated. In the meantime, I'm still keen to be helpful. I went into the office today because we had a call with our AL-Go for GitHub product users. Over the years, I introduced this tool to many customers and partners at conferences and in blog posts. I feel a responsibility not only to maintain the product but also to reassure them that they are in safe hands. I'm also in touch with my former team. If they need my help, I'll answer questions, share guidance, or whatever else helps. There's no reason to stop doing that. Next month, I'll be hosting a session for current staff — a kind of motivational talk about my career at Microsoft and the good, bad, and not-so-fun decisions I made. One of those decisions was working my butt off for years. Nobody told me to spend 20 hours on weekends or to work as hard as I did, but I did it because it felt like the right thing to do. I did it because I genuinely felt a connection to our partners, our customers, and my colleagues. And, honestly, I still do.
Business Insider
8 hours ago
- Business Insider
5 Googlers who started as interns share their advice on securing a full-time offer
With internship application season in full swing, you might be wondering how to make the most of your summer gig — and how to turn it into a full-time offer. Landing an internship at a Big Tech company is highly competitive, but having one on your résumé can help you get in early. Google offers general online guidance for navigating the hiring process, including practicing coding on platforms like CodeLab, Quora, and Stack Overflow. The company also suggests keeping your résumé to one page and considering skills relevant to the role. Business Insider spoke to five former Google interns who turned their summer gigs into full-time job offers at the tech giant. They shared their process of landing internships at Google and advice on landing a permanent offer. If you want direct insight from the perspectives of those who landed internships and turned them into full-time jobs, keep reading. Nancy Qi Nancy Qi graduated in the winter and planned to return to Google full-time last June after spending three summers there as an intern, the first two with STEP and the last with Google's Software Engineering internship. Her primary advice: start early. Qi said she started taking data structure classes in high school at a community college and was practicing with leet code the summer before she started college, well before she had interviews lined up. When Qi started sending out applications in the fall of her freshman year, she said her résumé mainly had website initiatives and leadership experience for volunteering clubs from high school. She said she also had some part-time tutoring experience teaching math and English, " I think at that age, you're not expected to have so much CS experience or coding experience," Qi said. "So I think if you have some leadership experience or experience that shows your character, I think that's important at that time." During her internship, Qi said she thinks her strong suit was building relationships with her teammates by getting lunch with them every day. She said doing helped to create "team chemistry," and she also said it helped her feel excited for work and "motivated to pump out code." Islina (Yunhong) Shan Islina (Yunhong) Shan interned at Google three times, beginning in the summer of 2022. She graduated from an accelerated computer science Master's program at Duke University and started a full-time role as a software engineer at the tech giant this spring. Shan first participated in STEP and later in the Software Engineering Internship, which is a more competitive program geared toward technical development. When she applied for her first internship, Shan said she had some hackathon experiences and some technical projects from school. After she sent her résumé, she was invited to two rounds of final interviews, both of which were technical and back-to-back, she said. Her advice to interns hoping to secure full time jobs: choose a team during the match process that you're actually interested in. "Interest is really important in driving you to finish the project," Shan said. She also said it's important to choose a team with a manager you can see yourself working with because you'll have to communicate with them regularly. When she first started her internship, she said she set unrealistic goals. Once she adjusted expectations, she started seeing more progress. Shan suggested seeking help if needed, adding that Google engineers tend to be friendly. Lydia Lam Lydia Lam graduated from college in 2024 and participated in three Google internships, beginning with a STEP internship in 2021. In her internship résumé, Lam included a seven-week Google program for high-school graduates called the Computer Science Summer Institute. She also had experience with a summer program for girls who code and a tech consulting student organization that she joined during her first semester of college. Lam also recommended applying early in the recruiting cycle and said programs geared toward first and second-year students tend to be more aligned with that experience level. Lam said "strong engineering practices" are highly valued at the company and mentioned feeling imposter syndrome and wanting to impress her internship host. However, she said asking questions sooner rather than later can help projects get done more quickly. "It's much more efficient to ask someone else who knows a lot more than you try to figure it out longer," Lam said. She also suggested "producing a lot of artifacts," whether designs or other "tangible pieces of work," that can help show your skill set and contributions. Tawfiq Mohammad Tawfiq Mohammad interned for two summers at Google before becoming a full-time software engineer at the tech giant. He said the summer after his first year in college, he didn't have any internships, so he took summer classes and did his own projects at home, like a gadget that read the license plate on his car and opened the garage without him having to press a button. Mohammad's biggest advice for incoming interns is to be prepared for imposter syndrome. Mohammad said the "biggest block" for him at first was being scared to do anything, and he suggested tuning out those negative feelings as much as possible. "You're going to feel very out of place initially," Mohammad told BI. "I honestly felt like I had no idea what I was doing." He said interns should set a goal to "learn as much as possible" from the more experienced employees and try to believe that they, too, felt like they didn't fully "know what they were doing" at one point. " They're really smart so you want to absorb as much information as you can from them," Mohammad said. He also suggested thinking "outside the box." " You're going to be given a project that summer and try to own that project. Try to own it from A to Z," Mohammad said. He also recommended networking with other interns and team members, adding that Google provides a number of opportunities to do so. "It's good to build up a good network of successful people and it's just good to network with people that are farther along the career path than you," Mohammad said. Zachary Weiss Zachary Weiss interned at Google for three summers before landing a full-time job as a software engineer in the Cloud department. He said he wasn't thinking about summer internships when he started as a freshman at the University of Michigan, but an older computer science major encouraged him to apply to Google's STEP program. Weiss said he was "ecstatic" to get the offer from Google a few months later. He went on to intern in multiple teams before returning full-time as a software engineer on the Cloud team. The Googler had two main takeaways from his internships, one of which was the importance of showing a "concerted effort" to management. Google interns are given a summer project, and Weiss said that being proactive and anticipating problems in advance is key to the job. He said a former internship manager complimented him for identifying an issue with a "one in a thousand" chance of occurring. He said interns should think about all the "weird edge cases" and speak up instead of waiting for a manager to say something. "You're given work that would have been going to a full-time employee," Weiss said, adding that employees value your opinion and voice. Weiss said communication was another key skill that he didn't anticipate would be so pivotal. He said that in school, students tend to focus on learning the principles, algorithms, and data structures involved in programming. In a workplace, though, verbal skills matter, too, Weiss said. "My day-to-day, I speak a lot more English. I read a lot more English. I read and write and talk and communicate a lot more than I am actually coding," Weiss said. "And I think communication is something that's really important." He said that at the University of Michigan, there were three courses about technical communications, like writing design memos, emails, and presentations. He said many students didn't take the class seriously, and it ended up teaching a crucial skill.
