What's on Your Mind?

Warren Buffett is likely the best-known, most successful investor in the world today. The philanthropist and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway has an estimated net worth of $158 billion and is known as the Oracle of Omaha for his ability to pick long-term investments. He’s also dedicated to sharing his wisdom with everyday investors, including beginners. Here are Buffett’s top three tips: Principle No. 1: Invest Only in What You Understand Buffett has famously advised, “Never invest in a business you cannot understand.” In a letter to Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders in 1996, Buffett explained the concept of a “circle of competence”: Basically, these are the field…

Letting go of a struggling employee or deciding to coach them is one of the toughest calls a leader has to make. It’s rarely a black-and-white decision, and the stakes are high—not just for the individual but for the whole team and company. Every leader faces this dilemma multiple times in their career, and making a fair, timely decision isn’t always easy. That’s why I created the CORVETT framework—a simple, structured set of questions designed to cut through the noise and help leaders make these tough calls with clarity and intention. Instead of reacting emotionally or making hasty decisions, this approach ensures consistency and fairness. I also teach this frame…

A software application called Interview Coder promises to help software developers succeed at technical job interviews—by surreptitiously feeding them answers to programming questions via AI. Interview Coder’s 21-year-old cofounder and CEO Roy Lee says he and Neel Shanmugam, the company’s cofounder and COO, created the tool partly as a protest against longstanding industry practices that require job candidates to solve programming puzzles during interviews. Lee, who until recently was a sophomore at Columbia University, says he spent hundreds of hours practicing such problems—time that could have been spent on actual coding projects. “This kind of killed a lot of …

A bold new building at Spelman College in Atlanta is all about breaking down barriers. Designed by the architecture firm Studio Gang, the Center for Innovation and the Arts is the new home for collaboration between students of science, technology, art, and performance at the historically Black women’s liberal arts college. It will provide a new space where Spelman’s programs in dance, documentary filmmaking, photography, theater and performance, and music can tap into emerging technologies from the worlds of science and computer science. Studio Gang founder, Jeanne Gang, says the primary goals of the project were to help the college better connect its programs and eve…

It was perhaps the worst kept secret in Silicon Valley. When he wasn’t running his design firm LoveFrom, Jony Ive was building another new company, just around the corner in San Francisco’s Jackson Square, called io. Focused on the future of AI hardware—what some have oversimplified as the iPhone of AI—io was rumored to be the physical side of OpenAI’s groundbreaking software. Now, the rumors are reality. OpenAI is acquiring io for $6.5 billion. From a news release: The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco. …

The last two years have been one of the toughest job markets I’ve seen in decades. This isn’t like 2020 or 2021, where after the initial phase of the pandemic receded, jobs quickly reappeared. This one has been slow and unrelenting—market volatility causing uncertainty, and digital transformation of workplaces, and AI taking over jobs faster than you can read the headlines. These days, it feels like you’re sending your resume into the abyss. Sound familiar? I see it every day as a recruiter and career coach: talented job-seekers submitting application after application into what feels like a black hole. Weeks turn into months. The silence is deafening. Each passing da…

Sometimes, you need to shake things up in your career. Maybe the job isn’t as fulfilling anymore. Maybe changing circumstances are pushing you toward a new path. Either way, figuring out what to do next can be a challenge. Increasingly, artificial intelligence is helping people explore their next steps—even when they’re unsure themselves. Chatbots like ChatGPT can offer some guidance, provided you know how to phrase your questions. But several companies have developed specialized tools that focus specifically on this issue. Google is leading the pack with its Career Dreamer. Described as “a playful way to explore career possibilities with AI,” it’s a tool that any…

A few years ago, if you turned on the heat in an apartment in Helsinki, the energy typically came from coal. But the city’s power company shut down one coal plant in 2023, and the remaining one closed this week—four years earlier than a target set by the national government. “Within two years, we have completely phased out coal,” says Olli Sirkka, CEO of Helen, the power company, which is a subsidiary of the city. The city has one of the world’s biggest district heating systems, with a network of underground pipes filled with hot water that deliver heat to buildings. It takes a huge amount of energy to run. One large chunk of that now comes from wind power, which …

The van makes its way slowly but surely through the city streets, braking gently when a car swerves into its lane. But its steering wheel is turning on its own, and there’s no one in the driver’s seat. The driverless technology from Nissan Motor Corp., which uses 14 cameras, nine radars, and six LiDar sensors installed in and around the vehicle, highlights Japan’s eagerness to catch up with players like Google’s Waymo that have taken the lead in the U.S. Japan, home to the world’s top automakers, has not kept pace with the global shift to autonomous driving, so far led by China and the U.S. But momentum is building. Waymo is going to land in Japan this year. Details ha…

A lot goes through our heads during company restructurings: Will I get laid off? Will my coworkers lose their jobs? What will happen to my workload if my team is affected? But in the wake of such events, if we don’t get laid off, we often ignore or dismiss the emotions that linger because we don’t feel we deserve to experience them. After all, we kept our jobs, we’re the lucky ones. Why should we complain or feel upset? However experts say that not addressing this so-called survivor’s guilt can negatively impact your confidence and productivity moving forward. “Those employees who remain, they feel either undeserving of being able to stay, or they feel respons…

There’s a focus on protecting our personal data now, perhaps more so than ever before, be it from foreign powers, Big Tech, or Elon Musk’s DOGE. Consumers are wary about where their data is going, what it’s being used for, and how, or if, they can put up safeguards, especially while using tech tools like search engines or AI assistants. With several AI tools and assistants hitting the market over the past couple of years—Microsoft’s Copilot and Meta’s Llama, among many others—much of our data, queries, and summaries are being fed to large tech companies, used to train their artificial intelligence models. While some users may not mind, it could turn others off, w…

U.S. TikTok Shop employees received a memo on Tuesday, recommending staff to work from home Wednesday ahead of “difficult decisions.” The memo, which was earlier reported by Bloomberg, told staff they would be updated on “organizational and personnel changes” via email, followed by HR outreach, suggesting possible layoffs. TikTok Shop, the Chinese-owned company’s marketplace feature launched in 2023 in the U.S., allowing users to shop for products in the app. The marketplace—which hosts everything from popular US brands like Crocs, to third-party merchandise in the likes of Temu and Shein— hit $100 million in single day sales on Black Friday alone. “TikTok Sh…

We live in a world that seems to get busier and busier! Not only do we have our daily work tasks but we also have more meetings, longer commutes, and more interactions with more people in more locations than at any time in the history of work. In addition to the many real and present external distractions, there are also internal obstacles to great listening. Our internal worlds can be loud. At times, they are a blaring noise of emotion, attitude, and motives that can make it impossible for us to give others our full attention. As two positive psychology experts, we’ve identified six of the most common internal barriers that can interfere with your ability to l…

It’s fair to say that 2025 continues to fly out the blocks on a wild mission to bring even higher levels of change, unpredictability, and flux shaping our world. But, as I started writing this on Blue Monday in January, apparently the saddest day of the year, this is not intended as an article lamenting the cultural whiplash we are experiencing within our daily feeds. Instead, it is a more positive perspective on how as businesses and brands, we can not just survive but supercharge in this era of incredible unpredictability. The only constant in a changing world is change itself According to an article by GlobeScan, at the end of 2023, nearly 8 out of 10 people…

Disability rights could be under threat. People with disabilities are protected from discrimination and given equal access to education, healthcare, employment, and public services under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. However, Republican attorneys general in 17 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia) have sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), asking courts to declare Section 504 unconstitutional. Last May, HHS required that 504 services be provided to people experiencing gender dysphoria. T…

Fast Company is the official media partner of Summit Detroit. For the past 17 years, Summit, an organization hosting conferences and immersive experiences around the world, has brought together entrepreneurs and creatives in lush settings that double as vacation destinations—think Tulum, Mexico; Palm Desert, Calif.; Powder Mountain, Utah; and even out on the open sea. This year marks the end of Summit’s larger-scale events as the company pivots toward more intimate gatherings. So it’s little surprise that more than a few eyebrows were raised when Summit announced Detroit as its last big hurrah this June 5-8. [Illustration: Summit] “We came together and decided…

Ren Barrus was just an intern at Cotopaxi, an outdoor gear and apparel company, when he noticed piles of used backpacks and jackets sitting in boxes at the warehouse. The company was only 3 years old—still a startup—but already, customers were eagerly using its 61-year warranty. One broken zipper and the brand would send a completely new backpack, no questions asked. It wasn’t that consumers were gaming the system; they just expected durability. Two years later, by then a team lead, Barrus launched a guerrilla repair program: When customers sent in their broken gear, he’d drive it to his mom’s house in Utah where she would fix it up on her sewing machine, and ship it…