What's on Your Mind?

On the northern outskirts of Beijing, massive holes in the earth bear the scars of what it’s taken to fuel the Chinese capital’s growth into a sprawling megacity that more than 22 million people call home. The site was a quarry that from 1990 to 2015 provided the raw material to help Beijing grow at hyperspeed, supplying everything from skyscrapers to roads to the main stadium built for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Last operated by Beijing Xingfa Cement Co., its closure left behind a negative space that is the inverse of the vertical urbanity of Beijing. Now, after nearly a decade of planning and design, the quarry’s rehabilitation into a striking and surreal 265-acre p…

The job market is tough right now: AI résumé filters, the rise of ghost jobs, and waves of industry-wide layoffs. Many workers cling tightly to their jobs in this environment, a phenomenon known as “job hugging.” But a surprising number of mid-career millennials aren’t scrambling to avoid redundancy. Instead, they admit they’d prefer an external push out the door because the alternative—voluntarily navigating a chaotic job market—feels far too risky. And experts say it’s a trend that should leave the cohort right below millennials worried. A recent survey of 2,000 Gen Z and millennial workers in the US by online education platform ELVTR found that 37% of mill…

Last week, Block CEO Jack Dorsey shared that his fintech company would be cutting 40% of its workforce, arguing that AI would allow them to do more with smaller teams. Many observers wondered if the large-scale layoffs reflected the new reality amid rapid AI adoption, and whether it was just a matter of time before other companies followed suit. But not everyone is buying it. In a post on X, Whoop CEO Will Ahmed shared that his company—which makes health and fitness wearables—would be nearly doubling its 800-employee headcount this year, drawing a contrast with employers that have been slashing jobs over the last year. He then weighed in on the growing trend of compa…

Grocery Outlet is joining the ranks of retailers planning to shutter storefronts this year. The discount grocery store chain announced its fourth-quarter and full 2025 fiscal year results on Wednesday, along with a plan to close 36 stores. This move to close stores follows a previous restructuring plan concluded in the second quarter of fiscal 2025, another attempt to “improve long-term profitability” and optimize growth. The company reported an increase in net sales, but an operating loss of $234.8 million and a net loss of $218.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. The optimization plan, which is expected to be largely completed during fiscal year 20…

For the past few years, leaders have been trying to decode what’s happening to attention at work. We’ve debated burnout, quiet quitting, and whether younger employees simply approach productivity differently than previous generations. But new workplace data suggests something far more basic may be happening: many employees aren’t disengaged—they’re visually exhausted. New research from VSP Vision Care and Workplace Intelligence found that desk workers now spend nearly 100 hours each week looking at screens, with most reporting that digital eye strain is directly affecting their productivity. Workers experiencing visual discomfort say it reduces their output by nearly …

Groceries are a little harder to come by in dozens of neighborhoods this year in the wake of an ongoing retreat from The Kroger Co. The Cincinnati-based supermarket company has been shuttering locations since June of last year, when it announced a footprint optimization plan that would result in the closure of about 60 stores. According to a Fast Company review of local media reports and online review platforms like Yelp, Kroger could be more than halfway through that process. Some 33 stores have already closed, with at least three more confirmed so far this year. Closures in the months since the announcement largely impact stores under the flagship Kroger ba…

Shares in Hims & Hers Health (NYSE: HIMS) are soaring this morning after an unconfirmed report that the telehealth company is entering into a deal with Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE: NVO) to sell its popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, including Wegovy. The rumored deal is as surprising as Hims & Hers’s surging stock price this morning, especially considering that just last month, Novo was threatening to sue the telehealth provider. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Late on Friday, Bloomberg reported that Hims & Hers has reached an agreement with the Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk to sell Novo’s weight-loss drugs, including the popular GLP-1 pill…

The list of Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus store locations set to close continues to grow. On March 6, 2026, parent company Saks Global announced it would close 15 additional retail locations. This is part of a broader restructuring plan following the luxury retailer’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in January. Here’s what you need to know: What’s happening? According to a court document filed last Friday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, Saks Global will close an additional 15 store locations. The Saks Fifth Avenue on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile is included on the list. Most of the locations are …

The deadline to claim the Super Early rate for Fast Company’s Brands That Matter is this Friday. Rates go up March 13 at 11:59 p.m. ET. This is the sixth year that Fast Company will be honoring brands that have turned their marketing and branding strategies into cultural relevance for their core audience. It will also mark the third year that Brands That Matter will recognize CMOs of the Year—the marketers who are propelling their organizations to new heights through their ambitious, effective leadership, thoughtful and creative executives who are finding effective ways to keep their brands top of mind for consumers. For 2026, there are two exciting new recognit…

Most organisations are no longer made up of one homogenous group of full-time employees. Instead, they’re becoming ecosystems. A mix of permanent employees, fractional leaders, freelancers, contractors, project specialists, and increasingly, technology and AI are doing part of the work too. In fact, the workforce of 2026 is predicted to become “agentic”, whereby AI agents are expected to displace or reshape tasks and roles. This makes collaboration with AI a necessity, not for the future of work, but now. This emerging blended workforce gives organisations access to a wider range of skills, faster. It allows them to scale up and down as demand changes. It creates …

The hits keep coming for fans of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. According to a new court filing from a major franchisee, three additional Popeyes restaurants have permanently shut their doors, bringing the total number of store closures associated with the franchisee’s ongoing bankruptcy proceedings to at least 20. The franchisee, Sailormen Inc. of Miami, Florida, sought Chapter 11 protection earlier this year, citing diminished foot traffic and high inflation. In January, it closed 17 Popeyes restaurants in Florida and Georgia as part of the bankruptcy process, Fast Company previously reported. The additional three restaurants disclosed this week are all based…

In 1960, 72% of adults were married, and over 90% would go on to marry. HR policies and management practices back then catered to nuclear families with a lone, male breadwinner. Today, dual-career couples and working mothers are common, largely due to the growth of women in the workforce in the second half of the 20th century. To recruit and retain talent, businesses have expanded family-friendly policies by offering flexible work hours, paid parental leave and subsidized child care. These are much-needed improvements, though many employers still lag in offering them. Today, another demographic shift also demands employers’ attention: the growing share of the …

The ancient world understood that leaders who act without self-knowledge create chaos. Consider that at the entrance to the Oracle of Delphi was the following inscription: “Know thyself.” Socrates further imbued meaning into this tenet by declaring that his wisdom came from knowing that he knew nothing. Later, Stoics like Marcus Aurelius argued that self-knowledge meant acknowledging what was actually within your control. The throughline across millennia is clear: cultivating inner clarity helps us navigate external uncertainty. But here’s what the ancients also understood: self-knowledge isn’t a solitary pursuit. We come to know ourselves through relationships, and w…

Shares in the preeminent graphics software company Adobe Inc. (Nasdaq: ADBE) are dropping significantly in premarket trading this morning following the company’s Q1 2026 earnings results. Yet it’s not the earnings themselves that are driving ADBE stock lower. It’s an announcement from the company’s CEO, Shantanu Narayen, who said he plans to exit the role he has held for over 18 years. Here’s what you need to know: What’s happened? On Thursday, Adobe announced the results of its first quarter for fiscal 2026. And for all intents and purposes, the results were of the caliber that would normally make investors happy: Total revenue of $6.4 billion (up 12% ye…

Nearly every part of the United States is getting walloped by wild weather or just about to be. Days of downpours have begun in Hawaii. The Southwest will soon bake with day after day of record 100-degree-plus (38 Celsius-plus) heat. Two storms will dump snow by the foot over northern Great Lakes states. And the dreaded polar vortex will again invade the Midwest and East with soul-crushing Arctic chill. This forecast of extremes comes as weather whiplash already hit much of the East. On Wednesday, Washington, D.C. residents walked around in shorts in record-breaking 86 degrees Fahrenheit (about 30 Celsius). On Thursday, it snowed. “All of the country, even if you’re no…

A few meters below the former site of Seville’s 1992 World Expo, a promising climate experiment blending ancient technology and modern science is underway. Rows of black pipes run along the ceiling and down the bare concrete walls. These, in turn, connect to bright blue and green tubes and enormous silver pumps. In a control room to the side, an array of monitors display the heat, humidity and wind speed above. “We have deployed several types of cooling systems here, each one used depending on climatic conditions,” says Maria de la Paz Montero Gutiérrez, a researcher at the University of Seville, from down in the building’s bowels where she is helping supervise th…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. While active listings are rising year-over-year in most regional housing markets, a slight majority of markets are still below pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels. Generally speaking, housing markets where inventory (i.e., active listings) has returned to pre-pandemic 2019 levels have experienced weaker home price growth (or outright declines) over the past 42 months. Conversely, housing markets where inventory remains far below pre-pandemic 2019 levels have, generally speaking, experienced more resilient home price growth over the past 42 months. …

Coleman just invented a hard cooler that can collapse in on itself like an accordion, shrink to one-third of its full size, and slot neatly onto a storage shelf. The cooler, called the Snap ’N Go, officially launched on March 17 in three sizes, with prices ranging from $199.99 to $239.99. It’s a first of its kind in the world of food and beverage insulation: While companies like REI, Yeti, and Coleman itself have created large soft cooler bags that can be compressed for storage, no one has ever manufactured a collapsible hard-sided cooler. That’s somewhat surprising, given that hard coolers are often more durable, more insulated, and easier to clean than their soft co…

Whether you’re a devoted college basketball junkie or you just pay attention for a few weeks each spring, you’ll get a lot more out of the Division I men’s tournament if you know the storylines behind the matchups. Here are some of the biggest narratives to follow from work, home, and wherever you watch the games. The year of the freshmen From February 2021 until the start of the 2025-26 college basketball season, there were exactly three 40-point games by freshmen. On January 24, 2026, three freshmen achieved that milestone on a single day. Two of them were playing against then-top-12-ranked teams, on the road. Kingston Flemings of Houston scored 42 point…

Nearly every major policy paper, and the wannabe thought leaders that quote them, says that university enrollment and programming skills are the winning combination for the next Industrial Revolution. My analysis of 11 million professional programmers at Gild completely disagreed. This is not the Industrial Revolution. Don’t believe me? Try this thought experiment . . . and be honest. You are the CEO of a multinational company with 100,000 employees. Rate all of their jobs on a scale from ‘lowest’ to ‘highest’ skill. Now consider a near future in which AI and automation have disrupted the bottom 80% of those jobs by skill-level. Those 80,000 jobs are not needed anymor…

Marcus Hoed, a Dutch immigrant who founded the New York-based shipping company DutchX in 2013, was always intrigued by the possibilities of biking—specifically cargo bikes—to fill in the same-day shipping gap in urban logistics. For the last few years, the company has billed itself as a zero-emissions shipper: a fleet of electric-powered vans that traverse roadways and bridges while cargo bikes handle the last few miles of a package’s journey. But starting last December, DutchX found a way to dramatically cut delivery times. Typically, shipping from its Brooklyn Marine Terminal sorting facility to Midtown West would take about 75 minutes, after navigating over a brid…