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☆ What Guns Did to My Childhood
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Mitchell S. Jackson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +10 min

Isn’t a part of childhood feeling insecure and divining ways to resolve those feelings or else abide them? From Mitchell S. JacksonThe presence of gangs — mind you, a predictable symptom of poverty and neglect — led to the prevalence of guns that shaped much of the normal childhood maturing around me as a kid. It surprises me little to none that Black boys are the likeliest to die by guns. These guns alter their lives in significant ways, not in the least by nullifying the childhood grace of feeling the greatest distance from death. Amen, I’ve never had to sit him down for a stern talk on guns or the violence and grieving they reap.

☆ Private equity is starting to bet big on the cloud. Here's why firms like Blackstone are making the move.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Like other Wall Street firms upended by the technology, PE firms' motivation to make the move is tied to harnessing the copious amounts of data they manage. GFT works with more than 20 private-equity firms for digital transformation, including a handful of tier-one PE companies, he said. Some PE firms have tried to leverage their scale for pricing discounts among cloud providers, Mahenthiran said. Major cloud providers, like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, have been hungry for more Wall Street market share. That hasn't stopped PE firms from trying to hire out data-science and cloud teams to help front-office researchers find new opportunities and oversee internal cloud infrastructure, Vyas said.

☆ 6 red flags a company isn't what it seems — and you probably shouldn't take the job
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-26 | by ( Susan Johnston Taylor | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Several experts told Insider what red flags indicate a company may not be great to work for. No matter how appealing a job sounds on paper, if you come across these six red flags when interviewing at a company, it might be best to pass it over for a better opportunity. The job description is vagueEven for a brand-new role, the hiring manager should have a clear picture of what it entails. They're being cagey or defensive around compensationThe last thing any job seeker wants is to interview multiple times for a job without knowing if the pay meets their expectations. "If a company won't accommodate, that's also a red flag," Monaghan said.

☆ Criteo has bet big that e-commerce ads will contribute to $1 billion in revenue by 2025. But a new crop of startups are also coming for those dollars.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-25 | by ( Lauren Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Adtech firm Criteo is battling for retailers' ad businesses with new competitors like CitrusAd. E-commerce advertising is driving much of Criteo's growth, with the firm hoping to hit $1 billion in revenue from retail media by 2025. Criteo's technology has moved beyond search ads to include display ads and ads that appear off the retailer's site. Not all retailers outsource their ad businesses, creating more competition with CriteoCriteo also faces competition from retailers themselves. Some retailers don't want Criteo or CitrusAd managing their ad businesses and license technology to build ad businesses that they manage themselves.

☆ Private equity is opening up to the public cloud, setting up a new battleground for AWS, Microsoft, and Google to win over Wall Street
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Like other Wall Street firms upended by the technology, PE firms' motivation to make the move is tied to harnessing the copious amounts of data they manage. GFT works with more than 20 private-equity firms for digital transformation, including a handful of tier-one PE companies, he said. Some PE firms have tried to leverage their scale for pricing discounts among cloud providers, Mahenthiran said. Major cloud providers, like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, have been hungry for more Wall Street market share. But the wait-and-see approach has put PE companies far behind their Wall Street peers.

When you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Amazon is well-known for its vast product offerings and therefore, has become a one-stop shop for everyday items from cookware to tech gadgets. With an ever-expanding inventory, it's easy to get lost in the sea of product pages on Amazon and suss out what's actually worth adding to your cart. Luckily, our colleagues at Insider Reviews research and test thousands of products to recommend to you, and we've asked them to provide their top Amazon picks under $25. The resulting list features everything from TikTok-viral beauty products to handy kitchen tools, so there's something for everyone in your life — including yourself.

☆ I’ve been following a woman around the internet. Turns out she was created by artificial intelligence.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-16 | by ( Evan Ratliff | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +31 min

Even in their first efforts, the GAN images were quickly on par with those made by any other, less intelligent software. You can find the results on the Generated Photos site, where you can filter by ethnicity, age, sex, eye color, and other attributes. Generated Photos' GANs tend to match conventional beauty standards, a product of the models that have been fed to the software. I'm not sure anyone would be surprised to find fake images accompanying testimonials on an Estonian bitcoin exchange or an online CBD seller. Are they real people deploying fake images, or fake people deploying fake images?

☆ Equifax fired at least two dozen employees after it used its own tool to suss out if workers had a second job
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-14 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Four of the big six US banks (JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo) all report their Q3 earnings today. Our friends over at Markets Insider will have the immediate reaction to all the revenue numbers as they're posted. That's clearly the message at Equifax, which fired at least 24 workers for secretly having second jobs, Insider reported Thursday. "I'm not sure how Equifax can be trusted with data when it uses it to spy on its own employees," an Equifax employee told Insider. Read our full story on how Equifax used its own tool to figure out if employees were working second jobs.

☆ How Equifax used employment records it collects from 2.5 million companies to fire dozens of its own employees for working second jobs
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-13 | by ( Kate Taylor | Jack Newsham | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

The crackdown was the result of an investigation that unfolded in recent months conducted by Equifax employees, including HR and cybersecurity, according to a document seen by Insider. The product has employment records, including weekly pay, of 105 million US workers, according to the company's last annual report. At one point, 25 employees were interviewed on the investigation's findings, and 24 were terminated, resulting in savings of $3.2 million, according to a document. In one author's case, this included all salaried positions since graduating college in 2013, as well as a job working in the college library as a student. "With predictions of more than 36 million employees working remotely by the year 2025, the need to monitor an employee's employment status will continue to grow," the company says in marketing material.

☆ The first-time founder's ultimate guide to hiring top talent, from a Greylock partner, a former Googler, a Stanford lecturer, and a consultant to Spotify and JPMorgan
▼ + stars: | 2022-08-19 | by ( Shana Lebowitz | Jennifer Ortakales Dawkins | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +16 min

We asked a series of entrepreneurship experts — including founders, investors, and business professors — to outline some best hiring practices. Read more: The first-time founder's ultimate guide to pitching a VCNow, your goal in hiring the company's first few employees is to get the product or service to market. Patty McCord, former chief talent officer at Netflix, previously told Business Insider that managers should regularly evaluate whether their current team is equipped to tackle the next big challenge. Break down your organization into different levels: the senior management team, director-level managers, key employees, and employees in non-critical functions. As Sophie Kahn, cofounder of the sustainable jewelry company AUrate, told Business Insider, you can also consider your employees' personal preferences.

To help a client decide whether or not a purchase is worth the money, I start with the financial facts. Start with the financial factsThe first step to making a good spending decision is to understand your financial reality. If you find yourself in the last camp, you can evaluate what your finances might look like if you move forward with the spending decision you're considering. That doesn't mean this is an automatic "yes, it's worth it" or a good spending decision. Any spending decision can seem worth the money when you make it in a vacuum.

☆ A CEO's guide to crafting a message that reassures and inspires staff during a crisis
▼ + stars: | 2021-02-09 | by ( Shana Lebowitz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

This article is part of a series called "IQ to EQ," which explores the management styles of inspiring business leaders. The CEO's role here is to be as transparent as possible, and to remind employees that their contributions are valued — in general, but especially right now. Insider asked a communications consultancy and a Harvard Business School professor how CEOs should craft a message to employees that both inspires and assuages fear. Remind employees why they come to work every dayPurpose is a powerful way to motivate employees — especially during periods of uncertainty. "People don't come to work just because they earn a wage," said Sunil Gupta, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.

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