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After Dugher: Leadership Change and What It Means for Work in Britain’s Gambling Industry

By
Jackie Rowan
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0

After Dugher: Leadership Change and What It Means for Work in Britain’s Gambling Industry

Michael Dugher’s decision to step down after six years as chair of the Betting and Gaming Council is more than a boardroom shuffle. It is a moment that forces employers, HR leaders, and people working across the gambling sector to look up from daily targets and ask not just who will lead next, but how leadership change will shape work, culture, and careers.

A pivot point, not a punctuation mark

Leadership transitions in trade bodies often feel remote to employees on the shop floor. Yet when the chair of an industry-facing organisation leaves, the ripple effects are real: policy tone may shift, strategic priorities can be rebalanced, and public perceptions—so important to recruitment, retention, and brand—can recalibrate overnight.

For the workforce, the questions are practical: will the industry double down on consumer safety and compliance or pivot toward growth and deregulation? Will investment tilt toward technology, safer-play tools, or product innovation? Answers to these strategic choices will determine hiring needs, the skills that are prized, and the kind of workplace culture that becomes dominant.

Why this moment matters to the world of work

Three realities make this change consequential for workers and leaders alike.

  1. Regulation influences roles. The direction a trade body takes on regulation feeds straight into job descriptions. A tighter regulatory focus elevates compliance, legal, and safer-gambling roles. A push for growth and innovation creates demand for product managers, data scientists, and UX designers.
  2. Reputation shapes recruitment. The sector’s public narrative affects its employer brand. A long era under one public-facing chair builds an image. A change invites scrutiny and a chance to reframe how the industry presents itself to talent — especially to younger workers who weigh purpose alongside pay.
  3. Strategy affects investment in people. Boards and bodies decide where to allocate scarce resources. Will training and reskilling programmes be prioritised? Will wellbeing and safer-play initiatives receive funding? Those decisions determine whether the sector becomes more attractive and resilient.

What employers should be watching

For HR directors, managers, and team leads the next 12 months are a strategic early-warning period. Here are practical signals and steps to watch for and act on:

  • Signals from the trade body: public statements, consultation responses, and the list of priorities published by the BGC will indicate emphasis—whether on regulation, responsible gambling initiatives, or industry growth.
  • Shifts in hiring patterns: monitor whether the industry recruits more for compliance and safer-gambling roles or instead invests in product, data and marketing functions. Recruiting trends provide an early read on strategic direction.
  • Supplier and partner behaviour: technology and payment providers often adapt faster than employers. If partners pivot toward safer-play technologies and verification, employers will soon follow suit.

Leading through uncertainty: what organisations can do now

Change creates anxiety, but also opportunity. Organisations that treat this leadership moment as a catalyst will emerge stronger. Practical, people-centred actions include:

  • Revisit skills and workforce plans: map skills that will be needed under different regulatory and market scenarios. Prepare modular training and redeployment pathways so employees can transition as priorities shift.
  • Double down on internal communications: clarity calms. Explain how external changes might affect roles and what the organisation is doing to manage risk and opportunity. Transparency builds trust.
  • Embed ethical and wellbeing practices: a new chapter for the sector is a chance to mainstream safer-play principles, mental health support, and responsible marketing practices as core to the employer value proposition.
  • Formalise succession and contingency planning: if a trade body can change leadership, so can a company. Strengthen internal pipelines for leadership roles and rehearse contingencies so transitions are smoother.

The talent opportunity

For professionals working in or considering the gambling sector, this moment is a chance to be intentional about career direction.

  • Build hybrid skillsets: roles that combine technical ability (data analytics, ML, customer journey design) with an understanding of compliance and consumer protection will be highly prized.
  • Champion cross-functional learning: move between product, compliance, and customer-facing teams to develop the perspective that modern regulators and boards covet.
  • Be a steward of responsible practice: professionals who can demonstrate a track record of embedding safer-play or wellbeing initiatives will stand out in recruitment and promotion decisions.

Culture, credibility and the long view

High-profile leadership changes offer the industry an opportunity to align culture with credibility. That alignment matters because trust is a currency in regulated markets. Employers who act with humility and intent can convert public scrutiny into a competitive advantage by demonstrating that their workplaces are safe, inclusive, and forward-looking.

That means not only investing in external initiatives but embedding credibility internally: honest grievance processes, independent compliance checks, accessible wellbeing services, and recruitment practices that prioritize fairness and transparency.

Innovation isn’t just product — it’s people

Conversations about innovation often default to product roadmaps and new technology. But the innovation that will shape the next decade of work in the gambling sector is organisational. How companies structure teams, how they measure success, and how they integrate safety into design will determine resilience.

Examples of organisational innovation to watch for include:

  • Cross-disciplinary teams tasked with designing safer experiences from concept through launch.
  • Data governance frameworks that balance commercial intelligence with consumer protection.
  • Learning ecosystems that enable rapid reskilling as regulatory demands evolve.

A call to leaders and workers alike

For leaders: treat external leadership changes as a prompt to interrogate your own. Are your structures fit for a future where regulation, technology, and public expectation move in lockstep? Are you investing in the people who will operationalise safer and smarter services?

For workers: this is a moment to be proactive. Learn the language of regulation, get comfortable with data, and cultivate cross-functional experience. Industry pivots create new roles and opportunities for those who can bridge disciplines.

Conclusion: stewardship over headline

When a chair like Michael Dugher steps down, the headlines note a personnel change. The deeper story is the invitation it creates. It asks the industry to prove that it can manage a transition with responsibility, foresight, and an orientation toward the people who build its products and serve its customers.

For a sector that sits at the intersection of entertainment, technology, and regulation, leadership change should be interpreted as more than a momentary event. It is a test of stewardship — of whether employers, trade bodies, and workers can align to create workplaces that are safe, innovative, and worthy of public trust. In the coming months, the organisations that treat this moment as a strategic inflection point will not only weather change — they will shape the future of work in the industry.

For the Work community: watch the signals, prepare your people, and seize the opportunity to lead with both rigour and humanity.

When Workers, Not CEOs, Put Immigration Enforcement Under the Microscope

By
Emma Vaughn
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0

When Workers, Not CEOs, Put Immigration Enforcement Under the Microscope

How technology employees have converted quiet workplace unease into public pressure, while many executives maintain a cautious silence.

In the years since George Floyd’s killing, the contours of workplace activism have shifted. Discussions that once unfolded in staff Slack channels and private equity memos increasingly spill into public view. The locus of pressure around immigration enforcement — long an arena of public policy, law enforcement, and advocacy groups — now often begins inside product teams, legal departments and data centers. It flows outward from employees who see ties between the technologies they build and the lives those technologies affect.

This is not simply virtue signaling. It is a new form of workplace democracy: a decentralized insistence that companies reckon with the moral consequences of their contracts, tools and partnerships. The dynamic is striking because it flips the script on how policy influence is traditionally exerted. Instead of boardroom lobbying or executive endorsements, the impetus for scrutiny and change frequently originates with rank-and-file technologists demanding transparency and accountability from their employers.

From Cubicles to Campaigns

Technology companies have long occupied a peculiar place in civic life. Their products and infrastructure — cloud services, data analytics, identity systems — are used by governments and institutions of all kinds. Over the past decade, employees who build those tools have become more public and organized about the consequences.

What started as internal conversations about individual projects has matured into collective action. Workers circulate open letters, stage walkouts, and publish detailed reports explaining how particular services may be used by immigration authorities. They petition their companies to decline certain contracts, to adopt clearer ethical review processes, and to disclose vendor relationships that could affect vulnerable communities.

Because these concerns connect to core business decisions, they are also hard for leadership to ignore. Yet leadership responses have been uneven. Some executives meet resistance with commitments, policy changes and new oversight; others respond with piecemeal updates or silence. That silence matters: it signals a gap between public values proclaimed in mission statements and the real-world consequences of product deployment.

Why Employees Are Leading

The shift toward employee-driven pressure stems from several overlapping realities:

  • Familiarity with technology’s reach: Engineers and product managers understand, often in granular detail, how a system built for benign purposes can be repurposed. That technical literacy breeds both concern and the capacity to explain risk in operational terms.
  • Visibility of supply chains: Modern software is rarely monolithic. It depends on third-party APIs, cloud providers and data brokers. Employees who map these dependencies can show how their work sits within broader enforcement ecosystems.
  • Workplace organizing tools: Collaboration platforms and internal networks reduce the friction of collective action. Past successes — on topics ranging from diversity to contract refusals — have created templates employees now reuse.
  • Generational expectations: Younger professionals increasingly expect employers to align with ethical standards as part of organizational identity. For many, silence on consequential policy issues is itself a political choice worthy of critique.

The Cost of Silence

When executives remain publicly quiet, several dynamics unfold. Trust erodes between staff and leadership, external critics fill the narrative vacuum, and the company’s reputation becomes more difficult to manage. A lack of clarity on whether a firm will engage with certain agencies or accept certain contracts leaves internal stakeholders guessing — and often mobilizing in ways that are disruptive and public.

For companies, silence can be a strategic gamble: by not taking a stand, they hope to preserve optionality with customers and regulators. But that same silence can be interpreted as indifference or tacit approval, prompting employees to act as moral translators, explaining to the public and the press how a product or contract affects vulnerable people.

There is also a practical risk. Employees who feel unheard may leave, creating talent churn. They may leak documents, testify to oversight hearings, or amplify concerns through social media. The escalation from internal memos to public controversies often stems less from malice than from a breakdown in channels for responsible deliberation.

What Workers Are Asking For

The demands coming from employees are focused and often procedural rather than purely rhetorical. Common requests include:

  • Clear policies on what kinds of government contracts the company will accept.
  • Transparent disclosures about partnerships and data-sharing arrangements.
  • Ethical review processes that include employee representation and independent oversight.
  • Protections for whistleblowers and systems to escalate concerns without fear of retaliation.

These demands are not anti-business per se; they are attempts to align long-term enterprise sustainability with the values of people who build products and operate systems. When workers frame their concerns in operational language — citing edge cases, failure modes, and dependency graphs — they create a vocabulary that leadership can use to make decisions that are both ethical and pragmatic.

The Executive Dilemma

Executives face a difficult calculus. Publicly rejecting a government contract can invite regulatory scrutiny or the loss of lucrative business. Endorsing contracts without a clear framework invites reputational harm and internal dissent. The path between these poles is narrow and fraught.

For many senior leaders, the temptation is to delegate: create a review board, ask legal to handle compliance, or quietly limit exposure. But delegation without transparency fails to address the underlying moral questions and leaves employees and the public skeptical. When leadership chooses opacity, employees often feel they have no choice but to push publicly.

A New Balance of Power

The consequence of these dynamics is a recalibration of power within organizations. Employees are no longer just executors of strategy; they are active stakeholders shaping how strategy is defined. That shift changes what it means for a company to be accountable. Decision-making that once occurred behind closed doors now demands, at minimum, a credible narrative: a clear set of values, a documented process for decisions, and mechanisms for remediation when projects go wrong.

Companies that embrace this reality tend to fare better. Those that invest in robust, transparent governance can retain autonomy while making principled choices. Those that ignore employee concerns risk public flare-ups and the slow attrition of internal trust.

Beyond the Headlines

The public debates around immigration enforcement will continue to be fought in legislatures and courts. But the technical scaffolding that underpins enforcement will increasingly be shaped by workplace decisions. That is the quiet revolution: the people who build the systems are inserting themselves into the conversation about how those systems are used.

If leadership aims to weather this change, it will need to treat employee concerns as design constraints rather than noise. That means integrating those concerns early, documenting decisions transparently, and creating avenues for meaningful staff participation in governance. It also means acknowledging that silence is a choice with consequences — sometimes more costly than a carefully explained position.

Conclusion

The years since George Floyd’s killing did more than spark protests on the streets; they reframed questions of corporate responsibility. For many workers in technology, the work is inseparable from the world it shapes. Their insistence that companies account for the human outcomes of infrastructure, algorithms and contracts is not merely moralizing — it is a form of civic engagement born from proximity to power.

Executives who continue to shy away from transparent engagement risk not only reputational fallout but a widening rift with the people who deliver their products. The healthiest organizations will be those that convert moral unease into governance: clear principles, open processes, and a willingness to explain decisions publicly. In the end, accountability will look less like a press release and more like the hard, sustained work of designing companies that can stand up to scrutiny from both inside and outside.

Opportunity Over Size: What Buffett’s Last Hunt Means for Work and Leadership

By
Bella Hayes
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0

Opportunity Over Size: What Buffett’s Last Hunt Means for Work and Leadership

In the final months of his long tenure as chief executive, Warren Buffett returned to a theme he has long taught through deeds rather than slogans: constraints are not always limitations to be mourned. For Berkshire Hathaway, the constraint was not the absence of capital or the burden of being large. It was the absence, so far, of the right opportunity. That distinction — opportunity over size — is a quiet manifesto for leaders, managers and workers who navigate growth, careers and organizational change every day.

Beyond the Headline: Why the Hunt Matters to Work

The headlines about a potential ‘‘elephant’’ acquisition — one truly large, transformative deal — framed Buffett’s final months in a familiar way: a billionaire CEO scouting for a trophy company. But the deeper story matters more to people who build, run and work inside organizations. It’s about how a company with an enormous balance sheet chooses when and how to deploy capital, how it treats the managers and teams that would join it, and how it preserves an operating culture refined over decades.

For the work community, these are not abstract ideas. They determine whether a deal will create new jobs, preserve existing ones, reshape teams, or change the incentives that keep a culture functioning. They influence what a manager should prioritize in hiring, how a talent leader thinks about retention, and how individual contributors evaluate the long-term prospects of their roles.

A Different Take on Constraints

Often, leaders treat constraints as deficits. If we had more headcount, more budget, or more market share, we could move faster. Buffett reframed constraints as a signal: when a firm that can buy many things chooses to wait, it’s because the principle guiding capital allocation is expected return, not merely expansion. Size does not justify poor returns. Opportunity does.

This mindset ripples through an organization. It shapes hiring: are new roles created to chase growth metrics, or to secure durable economic returns? It shapes R&D: do teams chase every promising idea, or do they align projects to long-term optionality? It shapes leadership: do leaders prioritize short-term market applause or sustainable outcomes that compound over decades?

Lessons for Managers and Teams

  • Think like a capital allocator: Treat resources — budget, headcount, attention — as capital with an expected return. Ask whether each investment will compound value over time or simply inflate short-term metrics.
  • Value patience: Waiting for the right move can be an active strategy. Patience is not paralysis; it is choice. Leaders who can wait without losing discipline often secure opportunities that create durable advantage.
  • Protect culture in growth: When organizations acquire or merge, the most fragile assets are trust and shared norms. Plan for integration that respects the acquired team’s identity while aligning incentives to shared goals.
  • Work for optionality, not just scale: Small teams, when given autonomy and the right guardrails, can generate options that grow into much larger outcomes. Size alone is a poor proxy for potential.

What an Elephant Deal Means for People

A consummated ‘‘elephant’’ acquisition at Berkshire would have been more than a headline-making transaction. It would be a case study in how large companies fold in people, systems and values. For employees of a target company, outcomes vary: some roles are preserved and scaled, others are redundant, and new structures often appear. The key is clarity — about what will be retained, what will change, and why the move creates more durable, rewarding work.

Workers in acquiring organizations face parallel impacts. Integration demands new coordination, reporting lines shift, and leaders must prove they can steward both capital and human talent. The most successful integrations put people first: they map roles to long-term strategy, set clear expectations, and create incentives that link everyday work to the value the acquisition promises to unlock.

Concrete Practices for Leaders

Here are practical habits leaders can adopt to embody the ‘‘opportunity over size’’ ethic:

  • Define success by return, not growth: Replace vanity KPIs with measures that capture unit economics, retention, and the probability of compounding returns.
  • Build modular teams: Create units that can be stitched together with minimal cultural friction. Modularity makes integration easier and preserves employee autonomy.
  • Design for redundancy judiciously: Redundancy breeds resilience but also cost. Clarify which redundancies protect mission-critical functions and which mask inefficiency.
  • Institutionalize long horizons: Incentives and review cycles that reward multi-year thinking reduce the pressure to chase quarterly optics.

Hiring and Talent: The Quiet Capital

Buffett’s approach reminds us that talent is a form of capital whose returns compound when deployed in the right context. Hiring should be a capital allocation decision. Ask not only who can do the job today but whose skills and judgment will produce optionality years hence.

That implies a shift in recruitment and development: hire for judgment and adaptability, invest in onboarding that aligns with long-term values, and create career paths that reward stewardship over spectacle. When companies prioritize durable capability over momentary fit, they create teams capable of seizing the next right opportunity when it appears.

When Size Is an Asset — and When It Isn’t

Being big confers advantages: scale in distribution, the ability to fund long-term projects, and bargaining power. But size becomes a liability when it substitutes for discipline. The story of Berkshire’s search is a reminder that the mere capacity to act is not permission to act without selectivity.

Organizations should ask: are we using scale to deepen advantage, or to paper over strategic uncertainty? The most productive choices are those that use size to preserve optionality — investing in capabilities that remain valuable under many futures.

A Culture That Lets You Wait

Patience at scale requires a cultural architecture that tolerates uncertainty and rejects the reflex to fill every silence with action. That architecture is built from transparent decision criteria, a tolerance for asymmetrical bets, and leaders who can explain why waiting is the riskiest and most rational move at times.

For employees, working in such a culture offers a rarer kind of security: the sense that decisions are made for durable reasons, not fleeting headlines. It breeds a different rhythm to work — one that values craftsmanship, long-term learning and the compounding returns of steady progress.

Implications for Career Builders

What can individuals take from Buffett’s last months as CEO? First, cultivate an owner mindset. That does not mean buying stock; it means thinking about tradeoffs in a way that privileges sustainable value creation over short-term applause. Second, invest in transferable judgment. Skills that help you assess opportunity, integrate across functions, and steward resources are portable and deeply valued.

Finally, be patient with your own career moves. The best roles are often those that offer optionality: the chance to build capabilities that pay off in multiple futures. Choosing to wait for the right role can be as strategic as a company waiting for the right acquisition.

Conclusion: A Quiet Lesson for a Noisy Age

Buffett’s search for an ‘‘elephant’’ in his closing months as CEO was not just corporate theater. It was an instructional moment: size is neutral until an organization chooses how to use it. For the world of work, that choice matters. It defines how we hire, how we integrate, how we reward, and how we steward the human capital that makes businesses real.

Leaders who take that lesson to heart will treat constraints as clarity. They will ask better questions about what to build and why. They will hire and develop people not to fill boxes but to create options. And they will choose opportunity over size — not as a slogan, but as a practice that shapes every decision, from the boardroom to the team standup.

For those building careers and organizations today, the message is both simple and hard: cultivate patience, invest in durable capability, and let opportunity — not the mere promise of scale — guide your next move.

Citi’s Hard Reset: Jane Fraser’s Wake-Up Call for Workplaces Facing Tough Change

By
Jonah Hill
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0

Citi’s Hard Reset: Jane Fraser’s Wake-Up Call for Workplaces Facing Tough Change

When a CEO orders immediate cuts and promises more, the ripple effects move far beyond headcounts. Here is what leaders, managers and employees need to know — and do.

The moment

In a terse, unmistakable move, Citigroup’s CEO Jane Fraser announced immediate cuts of 1,000 jobs and warned that more reductions could follow. She framed the action as part of a broader campaign to demand higher performance and to end what she called the bank’s “old, bad habits.” For anyone who watches how work gets done, the announcement reads like a mission statement: decisive structural change, backed by a readiness to disrupt entrenched ways of operating.

What matters most about this moment isn’t the number itself, large though it is. It’s the set of choices it signals — about priorities, accountability, and the future shape of work in a major global institution. For the community of people who design, manage and live at work, that signal contains lessons, risks and opportunities.

Why this matters to the world of work

When a company as scaled as Citigroup undertakes visible cuts and promises more, it forces a reckoning across three dimensions:

  • Culture: Cutting jobs is not merely a cost exercise — it is a cultural demand for different behavior. It says certain patterns will no longer be tolerated.
  • Capability: Leaders must match the rhetoric with new ways to measure and improve performance: sharper metrics, clearer roles, faster decision cycles.
  • Human experience: The people who are laid off and those who remain will both be deeply affected. How the organization treats them will shape trust, engagement and talent flows for years.

What ‘ending old, bad habits’ can mean in practice

“Old, bad habits” is shorthand for patterns that accumulate in mature institutions: layers of approval that slow action, duplicated job scopes, a tolerance for marginal performance, and an appetite for complexity that masks inefficiency. Turning those off requires a blueprint, not just willpower. The blueprint has several interlocking parts:

  • Relentless clarity of purpose: What does the organization exist to do? When that is clear, every role, process and investment is easier to align or prune.
  • Ruthless prioritization: Not everything can be rescued. Establish a framework to decide what to double down on, what to mothball and what to jettison.
  • Transparent metrics: Replace vague mandates with measurable outcomes. Hold teams accountable to those outcomes on a fixed cadence.
  • Flattened decision-making: Push authority closer to where information lives. Slow top-down approval processes perpetuate inertia.
  • Renewed talent pathways: Invest in redeployment, reskilling and internal mobility so that capacity is recycled, not just eliminated.

For leaders: how to lead the reset without losing the people who matter

Bold moves require equally disciplined leadership. The headline cut conveys urgency — but durable change depends on how leaders manage the human dimensions that follow. Useful starting moves include:

  • Communicate the logic clearly and often: Silence breeds rumor. Explain the performance expectations, the criteria guiding any future moves, and the timeline for evaluation.
  • Pair accountability with support: If performance thresholds rise, make clear what support looks like — coaching, role redesign, training and objective performance feedback.
  • Design fair transition processes: For those impacted, provide timely severance, outplacement help, references and mental health resources. For those staying, create forums to ask questions and surface concerns without fear.
  • Create a rapid talent review: Identify critical roles and flight risks. Act fast to retain high performers: clarify their career paths and align incentives to new priorities.
  • Lead by example: If executives ask for higher performance, they must be visibly accountable to the same standards and cadence as the rest of the organization.

For managers: the immediate to-do list

Managers are the linchpin between corporate decisions and daily worklife. In the wake of a cut and the promise of more, their actions determine whether a team unravels or rallies. Practical steps:

  • Hold a candid team conversation: Acknowledge uncertainty. Share facts and next steps. Invite questions and commit to follow-ups.
  • Map critical outcomes: Revisit the team’s top 3 objectives and remove anything not materially contributing to them.
  • Run a skills inventory: Identify who has what skills, who needs upskilling, and where redeployment can be effective.
  • Set a 90-day plan: Short cycles create momentum. Define clear deliverables and checkpoints for the next quarter.
  • Monitor morale metrics: Attrition intent, meeting engagement and output quality are early warning signals of trouble.

For employees: agency in uncertainty

For individual contributors and professionals, headlines like these can provoke anxiety. Yet uncertainty also opens space for agency. How to act now:

  • Clarify your impact: Ask your manager what success looks like for your role in the coming quarter. Align your work to visible outcomes.
  • Invest in transferable skills: Focus on capabilities that travel across roles — data literacy, stakeholder management, problem structuring.
  • Build your external network: Strengthen professional relationships outside your immediate team. Networks are both a safety net and a source of opportunity.
  • Document and signal value: Keep a running log of accomplishments tied to measurable outcomes. Make your work visible in safe, substantive ways.
  • Take care of yourself: Change is a stressor. Use available mental-health and career services. Protect routines that sustain focus and wellbeing.

Design choices that reduce future shocks

Large organizations can lower future disruption risk by changing how they resource and run work:

  • Build internal marketplaces: Make it routine for roles and projects to be staffed from a shared talent pool rather than recreated locally every time.
  • Modularize work: Break initiatives into decoupled units with clear outcomes so pieces can be paused or accelerated without whole-system turmoil.
  • Institutionalize redeployment: Make reskilling and mobility standard budget items, not ad hoc afterthoughts.
  • Measure responsibly: Use performance metrics that reflect long-term value creation, not just short-term cost-cutting.

Risks to watch

There’s a razor-edge between the productive disruption Fraser demands and collateral damage that undermines the very performance gains sought. Watch for these hazards:

  • Hidden knowledge loss: When roles disappear, so can institutional memory and relationships that matter to customers.
  • Quiet quitting and disengagement: Remaining staff can withdraw effort if they fear arbitrary decisions or a mismatch between rhetoric and practice.
  • Reputational costs: Treatment of departing employees affects brand and future hiring.
  • Short-termism: Overemphasis on immediate cost metrics can starve future growth investments.

Turning a harsh moment into a generative one

Decisive restructuring is inherently disruptive. But disruption becomes generative when it is governed by clear principles: fairness, transparency, relentless focus on value, and investment in renewed capability. When leaders pair the hard edge of accountability with concrete support for people — from robust transition benefits to real pathways back into growth roles — the action is not only defensive but constructive.

For the broader work community, Citigroup’s announcement is a reminder: organizations will continue to face structural pressures that make change inevitable. How leaders navigate that turbulence — with clarity, compassion and operational rigor — determines whether the outcome is a weakened institution or a stronger, leaner one poised for the next cycle of growth.

Final thought

Cutting 1,000 roles and warning of more is a dramatic, painful lever. But it can also mark the start of a renewal — if the change is guided by a cogent strategy and human-centered execution. The challenge now is to move beyond slogans about ending “old, bad habits” to redesigning how work is organized, measured and rewarded. If done well, organizations — and their people — can emerge leaner, clearer and more purposeful. If done poorly, the damage can run deep.

For everyone engaged in the work of work: study the signals, learn the lessons, and bring the discipline and humanity that turn difficult transitions into durable transformation.

Unicorn in Uniform: How a $136M Raise Is Rewriting Military Software Delivery and What It Means for Work

By
Sophia Kane
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0

Unicorn in Uniform: How a $136M Raise Is Rewriting Military Software Delivery and What It Means for Work

The headline came like a punctuation mark in the long, complicated sentence of modern defense: Defense Unicorns closed a $136 million Series B and vaulted to unicorn status, a rapid infusion of capital for a company focused on one of the most consequential problems facing militaries today — how to deliver software updates securely, reliably, and at scale.

The moment and why it matters

In a world where the battlespace is increasingly digital, the ability to deploy software — to patch vulnerabilities, deliver new capabilities, or adapt to emergent threats — is no longer a technical detail. It is strategic infrastructure. This funding round signals that investors see more than a startup with a clever stack; they see the normalization of secure software delivery as a core part of defense readiness, and the market that supports it as a major new arena for private-sector innovation.

Why secure updates are a different kind of problem

Updating consumer apps is one thing. Updating weapons systems, sensors, and command-and-control software in theaters of operation is another. The constraints are acute: hardware diversity across platforms and vintages; intermittent and contested connectivity; strict certification and accreditation regimes; the need to avoid unintended mission impacts; and the imperative to ensure authenticity of code across a global supply chain.

That combination turns software delivery into a logistical and security challenge—an engineering problem tangled with policy, procurement, and human factors. It is not merely about writing better code; it is about embedding trust across an entire lifecycle.

What Defense Unicorns is scaling

With this Series B, the company can accelerate development of a platform that promises to orchestrate secure, end-to-end delivery of updates under the constraints of the defense environment. The architecture typically includes cryptographic signing and verification, tamper-resistant delivery channels, provenance tracking for all components, and the operational tooling to manage staged rollouts and rapid rollbacks in case of failure.

At its best, such a platform reduces the friction between discovery of a vulnerability and safe, accountable mitigation. For commanders and program managers, it means fewer dilemmas between leaving known risks unpatched and accepting the risk of an update that might interfere with mission-critical behavior.

Implications for the workforce

This shift is consequential for people who build, manage, and operate defense systems. Several ripple effects to watch:

  • New roles and skill sets: The work requires engineers who bridge embedded systems, secure supply chain practices, and operational reliability. Familiarity with cryptographic signing, secure boot chains, and resilient delivery pipelines becomes more valuable.
  • Cross-disciplinary teams: Successful deployments will be driven by groups that mix systems engineers, security-minded software engineers, program managers, and people versed in compliance and acquisition processes.
  • Continuous learning and certification: As tools and standards evolve, continuous training and formal accreditation will shape hiring and promotion, as organizations seek staff who can navigate both technical and regulatory landscapes.
  • Distributed and austere operations: Personnel working at the edge — on ships, forward bases, or airborne platforms — will need streamlined interfaces and clear operational playbooks to apply updates without jeopardizing missions.

Procurement, contracting, and industrial change

Defense procurement historically favors long cycles, heavy specification, and risk-averse acquisition. The economics of a modern secure delivery platform challenge that model. A scalable, interoperable update system can be offered as a platform or service across programs, reducing duplication and lowering long-term costs. That creates pressure to move from single-contract stovepipes toward modular procurement that rewards reusable, certifiable building blocks.

For traditional contractors, the rise of platform providers introduces both competition and opportunity. Integrators who align with secure delivery platforms can accelerate modernization efforts for their customers; those that do not may face stranded processes and growing friction during sustainment phases.

Policy, governance, and the norms of trust

Beyond tools, there is governance. Who signs what? Under what authority are updates pushed? How are rollback decisions made in a contested environment? The answers are seldom purely technical. They implicate rules of engagement, liability, and the transparency demanded by oversight bodies.

Public-private convergence will be crucial. Defense organizations will increasingly require contractual clarity about provenance, supply chain attestations, and the auditability of updates. Those requirements will shape how platforms are built and which companies gain traction.

Resilience in an era of contested networks

Military operations often take place in degraded communications environments. A secure update system has to be resilient to intermittent connectivity, jamming, and adversarial interference. That means edge-first approaches that allow local validation and staged distribution, as well as cryptographic techniques that enable secure verification even when central infrastructure is unreachable.

From a workforce standpoint, this raises the bar for operational readiness: technicians and operators must be prepared to execute updates under pressure, with constrained tooling and tight timelines, while preserving safety and mission integrity.

Career pathways and economic opportunities

The capital infusion carries signal value for talent markets. Startups and scaleups with defense-focused secure delivery solutions can attract engineers who want to work on mission-critical systems but also prefer a faster-paced, product-driven environment than traditional defense contractors offer.

At the same time, large defense firms will be investing in similar capabilities, producing demand for mid-career transitions and opportunities for reskilling programs. Expect partnerships between industry and academic institutions—more bootcamps, certificate programs, and continuing-education offerings focused on secure supply chains and embedded security.

Ethics, transparency, and public accountability

Developing and deploying capabilities that can touch weapons systems and national security platforms invites scrutiny. Civilian oversight, legislative inquiries, and public debate will shape the social license for these technologies. Clear reporting, strong audit trails, and transparent governance can help align commercial deployments with public expectations.

For workers in the sector, ethical literacy becomes part of professional competence: understanding the societal consequences of software decisions matters as much as understanding how to implement a secure pipeline.

What to watch next

  • Standards and interoperability: Which technical standards gain traction for update signing, supply chain attestations, and provenance tracking?
  • Procurement reforms: Will acquisition authorities place a premium on reusable secure delivery platforms, and how quickly will contracting mechanisms adapt?
  • Talent shifts: Will startups outcompete incumbents for specialized engineering talent, and how will incumbents respond?
  • Operational case studies: Early deployments and after-action reviews will reveal the real-world trade-offs between security, reliability, and agility.

Conclusion: a turning point for defense work

The $136 million Series B is more than a financing milestone. It is an inflection point in how the defense sector thinks about software as infrastructure. For people who design, build, and sustain defense systems, the moment demands attention: the tools, the contracts, the skill sets, and the governance models that once belonged to backrooms and lab notebooks are moving into operational fleets and command posts.

Work in defense is changing from a cadence of long procurement cycles and hardware-centric upgrades to a continuous, software-driven tempo. That change is full of promise: faster vulnerability mitigation, more adaptable capabilities, and potentially lower lifecycle costs. It is also full of friction: new responsibilities, stricter rules, and the need for new kinds of interoperability and oversight.

For the Work news community—HR leaders, program managers, engineers, and policy professionals—the task is to meet this transition with clarity and craft. That means investing in skills, rethinking hiring and contracting, demanding transparent governance, and building workflows that keep mission and safety at the center. The capital is flowing. The responsibility now is to turn that capital into systems and careers that are resilient, accountable, and aligned with national needs.

Thriving in the Future: Remote Work in 2026

By
Experts Desk
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0

The Future of Remote Work: What 2026 Holds

The landscape of work has undergone a massive transformation since the early 2020s. With the global pandemic serving as a catalyst, businesses and employees worldwide shifted to remote work models. As we look forward to 2026, remote work continues to evolve, promising exciting changes and opportunities. In this article, we’ll explore the future of remote work, the hybrid model, and how companies and individuals can thrive in this new era.

Remote Work: A Growing Trend

Remote work was initially a response to the necessity of social distancing, but its benefits soon became evident: flexibility, reduced commute times, and increased productivity. By 2026, remote work will be a well-established norm, with advancements in technology further solidifying its place in the workforce.

The Rise of Hybrid Work Models

The hybrid work model, a blend of remote and in-office work, is gaining traction. Many companies are adopting this approach to balance employee preferences for flexibility with the need for in-person collaboration. In 2026, the hybrid model is expected to dominate, with organizations tailoring their approaches to best suit their teams’ needs.

Advantages of Hybrid Work

Hybrid work provides flexibility, fostering a better work-life balance. It allows employees to work remotely when focusing on individual tasks while coming to the office for team meetings, brainstorming sessions, and collaborative projects. This model can boost job satisfaction and retention rates.

Challenges of Hybrid Work

Despite its benefits, hybrid work poses challenges, such as maintaining a cohesive company culture and ensuring effective communication among remote and in-office employees. To overcome these, companies must invest in robust digital tools and foster inclusive environments for all employees, regardless of location.

Advancements in Technology

By 2026, technology will have advanced significantly, supporting the remote and hybrid work models. Artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality will play critical roles in enhancing virtual meetings, training, and team-building activities. These technologies will bridge the gap between remote and in-person work experiences, offering new ways to interact and collaborate.

Impacts on Career Development

The future of work in a predominantly remote setting brings both challenges and opportunities for career development. Networking, traditionally an in-person activity, will evolve with digital platforms facilitating meaningful connections. Employees will need to adapt their skill sets, focusing on digital literacy and virtual communication skills.

Opportunities for Growth

Remote work opens up global job markets, allowing individuals to seek opportunities beyond geographical boundaries. It also encourages a results-oriented culture, where performance is measured by output rather than presence, offering a level playing field for career advancement.

Preparing for the Future

As we approach 2026, both employers and employees must prepare. Employers should focus on creating flexible policies, investing in technology, and cultivating an inclusive culture. Employees should embrace continuous learning, enhancing their digital skills, and adapting to new ways of working.

Conclusion

The future of remote work by 2026 is promising, driven by technological advancements and changing workplace dynamics. The hybrid model is poised to become the norm, offering flexibility, enhanced collaboration, and greater global opportunities. By preparing now, both companies and individuals can thrive in the future of work.

When Paychecks Fall Behind: Rethinking Affordability for America’s Workforce

By
Sophia Kane
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0

When Paychecks Fall Behind: Rethinking Affordability for America’s Workforce

For many Americans, the past decade has felt like running on a treadmill that slowly speeds up. Prices for essentials — housing, healthcare, childcare, transportation, and groceries — have climbed steadily, while paychecks have not kept pace. The result is a slow attrition of economic wellbeing: small sacrifices, postponed plans, and mounting stress that accumulates into eroded opportunity.

The stubborn gap between prices and pay

Inflation gets headlines when it surges, and policymakers and markets pivot quickly. But wage growth often operates on a different timeline. Even after markets shift and nominal wages rise, they frequently lag behind inflation-adjusted needs. That lag has real consequences: declining real wages translate into postponed home purchases, fewer savings, weakened retirement security, and less investment in education and health.

This is not only a matter of arithmetic. It is a structural characteristic of many modern labor markets. Productivity gains do not automatically translate into broad-based wage gains. The benefits of growth are often concentrated at the top, while the rest of the workforce absorbs the costs of rising prices and insecure work arrangements.

Why wages lag: forces at work

  • Bargaining power is uneven. When workers have limited ability to negotiate — whether because of weak union representation, fragmented workplaces, or concentrated employer power — wages are less responsive to rising costs.
  • Price hikes often reflect sectors with inelastic demand. Costs in housing or healthcare can surge without immediate labor-market corrections because these sectors have unique supply constraints and regulatory dynamics.
  • Globalization and automation reshape labor demand. The threat or reality of offshoring and technological substitution keeps wage pressure down in many routine jobs, even as other sectors thrive.
  • Corporate pricing and profit strategies matter. Firms with market power can pass higher input costs to consumers and protect margins, rather than distributing gains to workers.
  • Policy and institutional lags exist. Minimum wage laws, wage indexing, and social supports often trail economic changes, leaving workers out of sync with new price realities.

Everyday consequences for workers and workplaces

Consider a retail associate whose hours creep up and down with seasonal demand, whose healthcare options translate into higher out-of-pocket costs, and whose urban commute has grown more expensive. Even if the employer raises the hourly wage, irregular scheduling and rising living costs can negate those gains. The same dynamic plays out across industries: the nominal wage number is only part of the household math.

Declining economic wellbeing is not confined to a single demographic. It stretches across age groups and regions. Young workers entering the job market face higher rent and student debt. Mid-career employees may be balancing childcare and eldercare, both expensive and often under-supported. Older workers confronting health costs see savings dwindling faster than anticipated. The shared effect is less resilience, more financial fragility, and a workforce that is less able to invest in skills, move for opportunity, or take entrepreneurial risks.

Rethinking affordability: beyond single-policy fixes

Addressing this gap requires moving beyond isolated measures toward a holistic affordability framework that recognizes the interplay among wages, prices, and non-wage costs. This is not merely a policy conversation but a workplace and societal one — aligning business practice, public policy, and community supports so that work delivers real economic progress.

The aim should be simple: ensure that when prices rise, the stability and purchasing power of households do not automatically decline. Several lines of action can be combined to create that buffer.

Practical workplace strategies that can make an immediate difference

  • Pay practices shaped by predictability. Predictable scheduling, minimum guaranteed hours, and compensation for on-call time reduce income volatility, often more effective for household stability than marginal wage hikes.
  • Transparent compensation and career ladders. Clear pathways for raises and promotions align worker expectations with employer incentives and reduce turnover costs that depress wage competition.
  • Profit-sharing and employee ownership. When workers share in firm success, compensation becomes more responsive to productivity gains, supporting broader prosperity.
  • Benefits redesign to cut non-wage costs. Employer-provided childcare stipends, commuter benefits, and more accessible health plans can blunt the most inflation-sensitive household expenses.
  • Investment in training and skill portability. Upskilling tied to recognized credentials can increase bargaining leverage and mobility, making wages more responsive to market demand.

Policy levers that strengthen the wage-price link

Public policy can bring systemic balance by addressing both the supply side of critical goods and the institutional levers that shape wage dynamics.

  • Index wages or tax credits to cost-of-living measures. Automatic adjustments — whether for minimum wages, tax credits, or social transfers — can reduce the gap between price surges and household income.
  • Invest in the supply of essentials. Building affordable housing, expanding childcare capacity, and containing healthcare costs can lower the most volatile budget items.
  • Support collective bargaining and sectoral solutions. Policies that encourage industry-wide bargaining or wage boards can compress lag times between price shifts and wage responses, particularly in concentrated sectors.
  • Antitrust and market competition enforcement. Tackling monopoly power that allows firms to inflate prices and hoard profits can help reset the relationship between corporate gains and worker compensation.
  • Portable benefits and social insurance for modern work. Decoupling benefits from single-employer relationships — portable health, retirement, and training accounts — protects workers in fluid labor markets.

Design choices matter

Not all interventions are equally effective in every context. Indexing wages to narrow price measures can create problems if applied too rigidly; a careful balance is required so that adjustments reflect lived costs without fueling instability. Similarly, incentivizing employer-provided benefits is powerful but must be designed to prevent loopholes that leave workers worse off.

What matters is a combination of short-term relief and long-term structural reform: immediate protections that reduce household fragility alongside investments that lower the cost curve of essentials and strengthen worker bargaining positions.

What the future could look like

Imagine a labor market where wage growth is not a delayed afterthought but a planned part of economic progress. Employers offer stable schedules, clear advancement pathways, and a share of profits. Cities and states build housing and childcare at scale, reducing the hardest hits to household budgets. Social safety nets provide automatic, indexed support during price shocks, while antitrust policy ensures markets remain competitive.

In that world, rising prices still matter, but they do not systematically erode living standards. Work is not just a paycheck; it is a reliable springboard to a life with security and dignity.

A call to the Work community

For the Work news community — editors, journalists, managers, HR leaders, and engaged citizens — the payoff of rethinking affordability is both practical and profound. Reporting that connects prices to household choices, policies that recognize the full cost of living, and workplace experiments that demonstrate better models can shift the narrative from reaction to design.

There is an opportunity to reconstruct the terms of economic progress so growth is measured not only by GDP or profits but by how many households can meet their basic needs and invest in their futures. The path forward will not be simple, and trade-offs are inevitable. But the stakes are clear: if wages continue to lag while prices rise, the slow erosion of economic wellbeing will become the persistent condition of too many lives.

Closing: toward a new social compact

Rethinking affordability is an invitation to create a new compact between employers, communities, and policymakers. It asks for imagination in policy design, humility in recognizing where past approaches fell short, and courage to pilot solutions that align incentives across society. For millions of workers, that rethinking could mean the difference between grinding survival and genuine prosperity.

As the conversation moves from headlines to action, the work of rebuilding economic stability will require experiments at every level: from the shop floor and the corporate boardroom to city hall and the halls of government. When paychecks and prices move together in ways that preserve living standards, work will again become the dependable foundation it was meant to be.

Skyline Shift: Allegiant’s $1.5B Acquisition of Sun Country — Jobs, Routes and the Future of Budget Air

By
Nathan Cole
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0

Skyline Shift: Allegiant’s $1.5B Acquisition of Sun Country — Jobs, Routes and the Future of Budget Air

When two lean, market-focused carriers agree to merge, the headline numbers—$1.5 billion, cash-and-stock—are only the beginning. For the worknews community, which watches labor markets, regional economies, and workplace change with an eye for the practical, the real story is how this consolidation will reshape jobs, operational DNA, and opportunity across the network.

Why consolidation now?

The pandemic rewired passenger demand, accelerated digital adoption, and left many carriers managing uneven demand across routes. Budget carriers like Allegiant and Sun Country built their businesses on tight operations, high ancillary revenue, and nimble route choices. But efficiency alone doesn’t inoculate airlines from macro shocks. Post-pandemic, capacity discipline has been a watchword—too much capacity and fares collapse; too little and communities lose service. In that environment, consolidation can be both a defensive move against volatility and an offensive strategy to expand reach without re-creating expensive capabilities from scratch.

What this means for routes and customers

At the route level, the combination gives the merged carrier a chance to rationalize overlapping service, stitch together complementary leisure networks, and offer more one-stop leisure connections that previously required alliances with larger carriers. For passengers, this could produce more convenient itineraries to underserved mid-sized markets, improved schedule reliability through better fleet and crew utilization, and the potential for more bundled fare and loyalty options.

At the same time, consolidation carries the risk of reduced frequency on certain thin routes. The negotiating leverage of a combined carrier may put pressure on smaller airports and communities to accept revised terms for service. Policymakers and airports will need to weigh the benefit of sustained service by a stronger single operator against the value of maintaining multiple carriers serving the same community. For travelers, the net effect on fares is not predetermined: efficiency gains can lower costs, but reduced competition on specific routes can push some fares up.

Workforce implications: disruption and opportunity

For employees—from crew and mechanics to reservation agents and ground staff—the acquisition is a pivot point. Consolidations typically bring overlapping roles, so there will be a short-term period of uncertainty. But there is also a chance to build a stronger, more resilient workforce.

  • Job stability vs. rationalization: Some redundant roles may be consolidated. But a financially stronger, larger carrier can also be better positioned to invest in training, safety programs, and longer-term hiring when demand returns.
  • Skill development: Integration requires new proficiencies—systems harmonization, unified operating procedures, and cross-training. Employees who gain these skills increase their mobility within the airline industry and the broader transportation sector.
  • Career pathways: A larger network creates more internal transfer and advancement opportunities, especially for operations personnel and pilots who benefit from a bigger route map and more seasonal rotations.

Leaders of the combined carrier will shape outcomes. Prioritizing transparent communication, fair processes for role changes, and robust retraining programs will determine whether this transition is seen as a time of loss or a moment of renewal.

Operational playbook: how efficiency meets resilience

Operational consolidation is a puzzle of many pieces: fleet alignment, maintenance operations, crew bases, reservation technology, and airport partnerships. The faster and cleaner those pieces fit together, the sooner the carrier realizes cost synergies without eroding service quality.

  • Fleet strategy: Where fleets are heterogeneous, integration often focuses on maximizing commonality for maintenance and crew training. Even incremental moves toward parts standardization and pooled MRO (maintenance, repair, and overhaul) contracts can reduce costs and improve dispatch reliability.
  • Network optimization: Combining route maps allows for network redesign—reducing redundant short-haul duplications while creating more point-to-point leisure flights that leverage the strengths of both carriers.
  • Digital integration: A single reservations platform, unified loyalty program, and consolidated customer data enable smarter pricing, targeted offers, and smoother customer service. For frontline workers in reservations and customer care, cohesive systems reduce friction and empower problem-solving.

Labor relations and the bargaining table

Labor dynamics will be central. This is a moment for the merged carrier to create a modern labor strategy that balances cost discipline with investment in people. That requires honest bargaining, proactive workforce planning, and designing transitions that honor existing work practices where possible.

Failure to invest in fair negotiations can result in strikes, safety concerns, and reputational damage that undercut any financial gains. Conversely, constructive labor-management engagement can become a competitive advantage: a more engaged and fairly treated workforce is more reliable, safer, and better at delivering the frictionless, low-cost experience leisure travelers expect.

Communities and regional economies: winners and the watchful

Local economies that depend on air service—tourism towns, second-tier business centers, and airport-dependent jobs—will watch this deal closely. For many smaller airports, a combined Allegiant-Sun Country can bring more stable, year-round service than two smaller, financially stretched carriers fighting for the same travelers.

But local leaders should be vigilant. Contractual details around airport fees, gate access, and ground-handling can change. Community stakeholders should negotiate with the carrier to protect connectivity and guard against abrupt route withdrawals that can harm regional economies.

Competition and regulation: a delicate balance

Regulators will evaluate the transaction for competitive harms—particularly on routes where both carriers overlapped. The assessment will hinge on market concentration in targeted leisure markets rather than global market share. The public interest calculus includes consumer fares, service reliability, and worker protections. Expect regulators to probe(s) the certain routes and require commitments or divestitures in some cases.

Environmental and sustainability considerations

Budget carriers have historically competed on price more than sustainability. Yet consolidation offers an opportunity to accelerate environmental improvements: optimized networks can reduce empty legs, fleet harmonization can improve fuel efficiency, and investment in newer aircraft and sustainable aviation fuels can be coordinated across a larger system. For the worknews community, this means future jobs may increasingly require sustainability literacy—fuel-efficiency monitoring, operations planning for lower emissions, and compliance roles.

Leadership, culture, and the human dimension

Mergers are as much cultural integrations as mechanical ones. Maintaining morale, preserving core values that made each airline successful, and building a unified identity will influence retention and customer perception. Leadership choices—who stays, how decisions are communicated, what commitments are made to employees and communities—will echo for years.

Actionable takeaways for the worknews community

  • For employees: document your contributions, pursue cross-training, and seek clarity about role changes. Upskilling in digital operations, safety compliance, and customer experience will pay dividends.
  • For managers and HR: invest early in transparent communication, fair severance or redeployment policies, and comprehensive retraining programs to minimize churn and preserve institutional knowledge.
  • For local leaders: negotiate service guarantees and monitor contractual changes to protect connectivity and jobs. Collaborate with the carrier to promote demand through tourism and business initiatives.
  • For policymakers: evaluate competition impacts route-by-route, and consider conditions that protect small-market service and worker protections while allowing airlines to realize efficiency gains.

What success looks like

Success for this merger isn’t just a tidy S&P announcement or a short-term bump in margins. It looks like a stronger carrier that operates safely, serves more communities reliably, invests in people, and innovates in service delivery. It looks like frontline employees who see clear pathways into new roles, airports that retain and even expand connectivity, and travelers who benefit from better schedules and consistent low fares.

Change of this scale is never painless. But in aviation, where margins are slim and the margin for operational error is small, thoughtful consolidation can create the breathing room required to invest in people, technology, and sustainability. That is the window of possibility for the worknews community to watch: a transformation that can renew jobs, stabilize regional connectivity, and set a new standard for what low-cost air travel can deliver.

In a world that demands both efficiency and resilience, the Allegiant–Sun Country deal is a turning point. How it is managed will shape not only routes on a map, but careers, communities, and the lived experience of work in aviation for years to come.

Cut Tariffs, Reignite Work: How Removing Trade Barricades Would Quickly Restore Jobs

By
Emma Vaughn
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0

Cut Tariffs, Reignite Work: How Removing Trade Barricades Would Quickly Restore Jobs

It is tempting to think of labor market recovery as a slow trudge—policy by policy, training program by training program, waiting for demand to trickle back. But there is a faster highway out of stagnation: removing the layer of protectionist tariffs that has been driving up costs, hollowing out supply chains, and strangling hiring in trade‑exposed industries. A decisive legal removal of those tariffs, whether through a Supreme Court ruling or prompt legislative action, would not only clear uncertainty; it would immediately lower input costs and create room for employers to rehire at scale.

The human stakes behind the headline numbers

Walk into a factory town and the statistics become faces: workers laid off because a parts supplier shifted production overseas after prices spiked; small plants that could have bid on a contract but lost it to cheaper inputs; service jobs evaporating as families tighten belts. Manufacturing, construction, and other trade‑sensitive sectors often act as labor market multipliers—each factory job supports several positions in logistics, retail, and local services. When tariffs raise costs and invite retaliatory measures, the ripple is felt far beyond the shipping docks.

For communities that built their livelihoods on supply chains, tariffs can be the match that ignites decline: input costs jump, margins thin, investment stalls, and hiring freezes follow. The result is not just fewer paychecks but diminished demand—fewer lunches out, fewer school supplies purchased, fewer small business customers. Restoring jobs in these communities requires a lever that operates across the entire cost structure, not just targeted retraining or incentives. Removing tariffs is such a lever.

How tariffs transmit to job losses

  • Higher production costs: Tariffs act like a tax on imported inputs. Domestic firms using such inputs face immediate higher costs, which they either absorb, cutting investment and hiring, or pass on, reducing demand for their final goods.
  • Supply chain disruption: Tariffs encourage rerouting, reshoring, or delays as firms search for tariff‑free suppliers. Transition costs are real and often destroy jobs in the short term.
  • Retaliation and export losses: Targeted countries often respond with their own tariffs, reducing exports from industries that had been hiring to meet global demand.
  • Uncertainty and postponed investment: When trade policy becomes unpredictable, firms defer capital expenditures and hiring until the rules of the game stabilize.

Why legal removal of tariffs is uniquely powerful—and swift

A court decision that invalidates or restricts tariff authority would have an immediate, economywide effect. Unlike legislation that requires negotiation and phased implementation, a judicial ruling takes effect quickly and removes uncertainty overnight. Markets respond fast: input prices would fall as importers stop factoring tariffs into purchase decisions; contracts would be renegotiated; procurement strategies would shift back to cost efficiency rather than tariff avoidance.

Reduced input costs translate rapidly into hiring potential. For manufacturers operating on thin margins, even a modest drop in the price of steel, aluminum, electronic components, or chemicals can free funds for overtime, rehiring, or renewing stalled investments. For distributors and retailers, lower wholesale prices can justify expanding inventories and staff. The acceleration is not theoretical—businesses plan around cost structures, and when those structures change decisively, staffing plans adjust in short order.

Where job gains would be felt first

Not all sectors would recover at the same pace. The most immediate rebounds would likely appear in:

  • Manufacturing: Machinery, electronics, and parts producers who rely on cross‑border inputs would be first in line to hire as margins improve.
  • Construction and building materials: Lower costs for metals and specialty inputs would spur projects and restore demand for skilled trades.
  • Logistics and distribution: Reduced trade frictions normalize freight flows and warehousing demand.
  • Small and medium enterprises: Suppliers and subcontractors that were squeezed out or deferred projects can reenter the market.

Beyond the immediate uptick: the multiplier effect

Job recovery is not a one‑for‑one relationship with policy change. When manufacturers hire, their workers spend locally—restaurants, childcare, healthcare, repairs—fueling secondary hiring that broadens the recovery. Economists often use multipliers to capture this dynamic: a single manufacturing job can generate more than one additional job in the local economy. Removing tariffs restores not just direct employment but the local demand that sustains communities.

Addressing the counterarguments

There are reasonable concerns. Opponents warn about surges in imports harming nascent domestic industries and argue for targeted protection. Those points deserve attention. But the choice need not be binary. The objective must be to optimize for jobs and economic vitality while preserving capacity for national security and core industries. Targeted, transparent measures—narrow exemptions, temporary safeguards, coupled with clear criteria—can address legitimate vulnerabilities without imposing economywide costs that suppress hiring.

Another concern is political: trade policy is a lever of negotiation. But when tariffs function as blunt instruments that raise consumer costs and deter hiring, their net social payoff is questionable. Replacing broad, permanent tariffs with smarter, temporary, and narrowly tailored tools preserves negotiating power without the drag on employment.

A plan to convert tariff rollback into durable job growth

Getting back to full employment requires more than the legal removal of tariffs. It requires a policy package that amplifies the immediate gains and shares them widely:

  1. Immediate relief: Remove tariffs to lower input costs and restore procurement plans. Pair this with short‑term tax credits or subsidized wage support for rehiring in severely impacted counties.
  2. Rapid retooling funding: Support factories in updating equipment to compete on quality and speed, not price alone. Investment incentives should be tied to rehiring and upskilling commitments.
  3. Targeted training: Expand apprenticeship and transition programs in trade‑exposed regions to connect newly available jobs with qualified workers.
  4. Supply chain resilience: Encourage diversification of suppliers through grants and public–private partnerships, reducing the future shock from single‑country exposure without imposing tariffs on all imports.
  5. Trade diplomacy: Use negotiation and reciprocal agreements to protect strategic interests while relying on market mechanisms to foster competitive industries.

What communities can do now

Local leaders and businesses should prepare to seize the moment. Economic development offices can map which employers would expand with reduced input costs, update procurement policies, and connect displaced workers with rehiring pipelines. Chambers of commerce and community colleges can pre‑position training slots and capitalize on employer demand when it returns.

For workers, clarity matters. Rapid public communication from policymakers about potential tariff changes, anticipated timelines, and available support programs will reduce the paralysis of uncertainty and speed the matching of labor to jobs as they reappear.

Conclusion: speed and scale matter

Recovering a slumping job market is not only about the destination but about how quickly and equitably we arrive. Removing broad tariffs is not a panacea, but it is a powerful accelerator: it cuts costs deeply, reduces uncertainty immediately, and creates room for employers to hire. Combined with targeted investments in skills and resilience, it can turn a fragile, jobless recovery into a broad, sustained upturn.

In the months after a legal rollback, expect to see renewed bidding for contracts, reopened factory shifts, and a tangible rebound in community commerce. Those are not abstractions—they are the pathways by which paychecks return to kitchen tables, schools regain enrollment, and towns begin to hum again. If the goal is to revive work quickly and at scale, clearing the tariff fog should be the first act.

From Side Gigs to Skyline Sales: The Work Ethic Behind Ryan Serhant’s Rise

By
Jonah Hill
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0

From Side Gigs to Skyline Sales: The Work Ethic Behind Ryan Serhant’s Rise

In cities where ambition and opportunity collide, stories of meteoric success are often more myth than map. The truth is usually slower, messier, and built on incremental bets that compound over years. Ryan Serhant’s path from odd jobs to multimillion-dollar listings is one of those incremental, improbable accumulations — a case study in how relentless experimentation, disciplined networking, and a willingness to embrace small hustles can produce outsized results.

The unglamorous first act

It is easy to look at a high-gloss listing and assume the journey began with one big break. It rarely does. Before his name became synonymous with luxury listings, the early chapters were practical and opportunistic. Hand modeling gigs, acting roles, and a patchwork of freelance work were not detours; they were capital-raising strategies. For many in the modern workforce, those first gigs do more than pay rent — they buy time, give freedom to learn a trade, and seed relationships that matter later.

What matters in these beginnings is intentionality. The odd jobs serve a purpose beyond income when they are paired with a plan: learn a market, practice sales craft, and invest any extra hours into pipeline building. That discipline — treating temporary work as a funding tool rather than an identity — is a recurring motif in entrepreneurial careers.

Networking that looks like work

Networking is often packaged as charming cocktail conversations and exchanged business cards. In practice it can be far more grind-oriented: persistent follow-ups, hosting modest events, helping others make introductions, and showing up to a hundred conversations with no immediate payoff. The underlying pattern is simple: relationship equity compounds in the same way financial capital does, but on a longer timeline and with higher volatility.

For Serhant, the network built in those early years became a currency. Agents, clients, stylists, contractors, and even competitors all formed a lattice of opportunities. Instead of asking what his network could do for him in the moment, he invested in making connections useful and memorable. That ethos — creating value first — matters in any profession where reputation is a primary asset.

Betting on New York, strategically

A career choice is often a location choice. Betting on a market like New York is not a naive leap but a deliberate alignment of skills, timing, and appetite for competition. High-density, high-transparency markets accelerate learning: you see more transactions, more price discovery, and more feedback loops. That intensity can burn people out, but it also accelerates skill acquisition for those who can absorb and adapt.

Choosing such a market requires humility — an acceptance that you will be small for a while — and audacity: the willingness to compete against established players. It is a trade-off that many professionals wrestle with: the safety of a slower market versus the steep learning curve and opportunity density of a major center.

Crafting a brand out of everything

Long before social platforms normalized personal branding, success in sales-intensive fields depended on being memorable for the right reasons. The ability to tell a story about properties, and to position oneself as someone who could move those properties, is as much marketing as it is service. For people starting out, the lesson is practical: every interaction is content, and every quality interaction can be multiplied into reputation capital.

Branding here is not about crafting illusions; it is about consistency. Consistency of voice, of follow-through, and of aesthetic signals that communicate competence. Over time, those signals compound into a recognizable presence. For the modern worker, investing in clear communication — both in person and online — is a lever that pays dividends beyond immediate transactions.

Systems over heroics

When careers scale, heroics fail. One-off deals close because of late-night effort or person-to-person favor, but scaling a practice requires systems. Building a team, documenting processes, and creating repeatable marketing plays are the transition points between being a producer and being a business owner.

That transition is perilous. It demands patience to tolerate short-term inefficiencies and discipline to maintain quality as volume increases. For professionals with growth goals, learning to codify knowledge and delegate effectively is the difference between plateauing and breaking through.

Failure as curriculum

There is a myth that people who reach the top avoid failure. In reality, they treat failure as data. Missed deals, lost clients, and campaigns that underperform are not primarily emotional setbacks but information about what to change next. Adopting an experimental mindset — where hypotheses are tested in market-sized increments — turns failure into a curriculum for improvement.

This mindset is particularly useful in volatile industries. When conditions shift, the capacity to learn quickly and iterate is more valuable than static knowledge. For workers, embracing small-scale failures as lessons accelerates competence and reduces the fear that can paralyze risk-taking.

Lessons for the wider Work community

  • Treat side income as strategic capital. Temporary gigs can fund a pivot, buy runway, and subsidize skill development.
  • Invest in relationships as a long-game asset. Practical, consistent help yields exponential returns over years.
  • Choose your market intentionally. Aggressive markets teach fast, but only if you can endure the grind.
  • Build repeatable processes early. Systems unlock scale and protect quality as you grow.
  • Make failure legible. Extract lessons, test new approaches, and iterate quickly.

Why hustle stories matter now

We are in an era where traditional career trajectories are fragmenting. Portfolios of gigs, hybrid roles, and public personal brands are the norm rather than the exception. Stories of people who turned disparate pieces of work into coherent careers show a viable path forward: not through a single defining break but through cumulative, intentional effort.

They also remind us that visibility often arrives after decades of invisible work. The visible finish line — a headline listing, a TV appearance, or a viral post — is rarely the true start of success. It is a byproduct of years of disciplined, sometimes mundane, labor.

Final reflection

Ryan Serhant’s arc, like many modern career narratives, is not prescriptive but instructive. It shows that resourcefulness matters as much as raw talent: funding your ambition with side work, networking as a daily habit, and choosing a market that matches your appetite for growth are choices any professional can make. The more important takeaway for the Work community is the rhythm — the steady accumulation of small, deliberate actions that create leverage over time.

For anyone navigating a career pivot or building a business from scratch, the playbook is clear: find ways to fund the runway, show up to the relationships that compound, and treat each failure as a lesson worth keeping. Fame and high-value outcomes may glitter, but they are usually the polished surface of a long process of craft and tenacity.

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