Welcome back to our Sunday edition, a roundup of some of our top stories. Ford’s CEO took a different route to landing his most recent ride: flying it in from Shanghai. Here’s the lowdown on the Xiaomi Speed Ultra 7, the car Jim Farley doesn’t want to give up.
Check out tomorrow’s edition of Insider Today for the first in a series focused on what a Trump or Harris presidency would mean for your finances.
On the agenda today:
But first: A tech CEO puts an end to employees working remotely from Bali.
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The end of WFB (Work From Bali)
The CEO of European startup Bolt wants employees to get off the beach and back to the office.
In a memo to staff seen by Business Insider, Markus Villig said all staff would be required to work from the office 12 days a month starting January.
Bolt is far from the first tech company to call workers back to the office. (We’ve got a running list here.) Villig’s memo cited improved collaboration and idea generation as reasons for more IRL work, as others have done.
What made Villig’s memo especially eye-catching is that he went further, saying the policy would put an end to the “insanity of working remotely from places like Bali.”
“That is a vacation not what we hired them to do,” he said.
The United States of Automobiles
You are what you drive — and we’ve got the data to prove it. Business Insider combed through 1.7 million listings and analyzed thousands of makes and models to understand what drives America.
From our political affiliations to aesthetic preferences, our interactive data provides a comprehensive road map of America’s automotive psyche. No other choice we make as consumers conveys more information about how we see ourselves and how we wish to be seen.
Buckle up and take our data for a spin.
Also read:
Millennial money mistake
Thanks to the popularity of meme-stocks trading and zero-day options, young investors are often labeled as wild speculators. Data from the Federal Reserve paints a different story. As of June 30, millennials had 19% of their total financial assets in cash, the most of any generation.
Despite being in their prime investing years, the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic have made millennial investors risk-averse — and that could set them back in the long run.
Why millennials should stop playing it safe.
Also read:
The AI Power List
For the second year running, Business Insider released its list of the most powerful people in artificial intelligence and machine learning. The 2024 AI Power List honors people hoping to effect change and solve problems across the industry.
From Google to Groq, and OpenAI to xAI, the nominees are working on challenges and opportunities across AI: Making computing infrastructure more efficient, overcoming energy constraints, and guiding how this technology will change the world.
These are the most powerful people in AI.
Also read:
Convenient no more
Last week, Walgreens announced it would shutter 1,200 stores over the next three years, the latest casualty of a nationwide “retail apocalypse.”
A perfect storm of external factors — like the rise of e-commerce and the convoluted way Americans pay for healthcare — helped usher in the corner drugstore’s demise. It’s turning the country into a shopping wasteland.
RIP, OTC.
Also read:
This week’s quote:
“Microsoft has really disappointed so many of our customers.”
— Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff as competition between the two companies heats up.
More of this week’s top reads:
- More than 1,000 older Americans shared their biggest life regrets.
- To work at Google, you must embody “Googleyness.” Here’s what that means.
- Building more weird homes could help bring down housing prices.
- Americans are quitting their jobs at the lowest rate in years. It’s bad news for job seekers.
- Resume stalking on LinkedIn can help you reverse-engineer the career you want.
- More employers say they don’t care if you went to college, but most still seem to.
- Medicare coverage will change in 2025. Some boomers are already struggling to keep up with bills.
- Disney’s CEO plan sparks speculation around Bob Iger’s drawn-out succession.
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How The Wall Street Journal’s editor is remaking the paper.
The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Jordan Parker Erb, editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in Chicago. Amanda Yen, fellow, in New York.
