Eric Bates

3 weeks ago | businessinsider.com | Eric Bates |Adam Rogers |Henry Blodget

The social network Blind had real juice when I wrote about it in June 2022. It gave 5 million tech workers a place to anonymously talk smack about their employers. Identified only by their workplaces, Blinders traded office gossip, swapped tips on acing technical interviews at places like Apple and Google, and voluntarily shared their Total Compensation — "TC," in the site's argot. Blind served as a giant, freewheeling water cooler for Silicon Valley.

3 weeks ago | businessinsider.com | Eric Bates |Aki Ito |Henry Blodget

In March, Shopify's CEO told his managers he was implementing a new rule: Before asking for more head count, they had to prove that AI couldn't do the job as well as a human would. A few weeks later, Duolingo's CEO announced a similar decree and went even further — saying the company would gradually phase out contractors and replace them with AI. The announcements matched what I've been hearing in my own conversations with employers: Because of AI, they are hiring less than before.

1 month ago | businessinsider.com | Eric Bates |Aki Ito |Henry Blodget

Are return-to-office mandates actually a stealth tactic to get employees to quit? It's a suspicion I've heard from a lot of people since RTO efforts started in earnest in 2022. For years I didn't take the theory seriously: It struck me as incredibly cynical. Besides, it didn't make any sense from a business perspective. What company in its right mind would risk a mass exodus just to save a few dollars on severance packages? But over the past year I've started to wonder if the cynics are right.

1 month ago | businessinsider.com | Eric Bates |Adam Rogers |Henry Blodget

If you're an American who buys things or sells things, you're going to take a financial hit from President Donald Trump's tariffs. The science of economics might be dismal, but it's good enough to tell you that when the government increases the price of imported goods by anywhere from 10% to 145%, someone has to pay — be they importer, buyer, manufacturer, seller, or consumer. That's just the way the Great Material Continuum works.

1 month ago | businessinsider.com | Eric Bates |Bethany McLean |Henry Blodget

Last November, only six days after his father was elected president, Donald Trump Jr. made a career move that, on the surface at least, seemed a bit odd. He became a partner in a small investment startup called 1789 Capital, which is based in Palm Beach, Florida, 2 miles from Mar-a-Lago. At that point, 1789 was a microscopic player in the world of venture capital.