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Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. Dell employees are not OK. Every year, the company conducts an engagement survey for its workers, called “Tell Dell.” One metric of employee satisfaction has dropped by 50% in two years amid layoffs and its push to receive workers back in the office.
It’s been six months since Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency slashed the federal workforce in an effort to “streamline the Federal Government, eliminate unnecessary programs, and reduce bureaucratic inefficiency.”
After months of being in limbo, a recent Supreme Court ruling allowed the stalled firings to proceed. In a series of conversations with BI, six former government employees spoke about their career shifts, what life is like outside government work, and more.
One box of fibs at a time
The ability to return a purchased item has become a core part of the shopping experience. Retailers declare consumers are taking advantage of returns — and a recent report from Appriss Retail and Deloitte found it’s costing businesses $103 billion a year.
Some consumers are committing outright fraud by shipping back empty boxes or claiming a package never arrived. Others are sfinishing back items after months of apply. The culprits are often everyday consumers, and they don’t feel bad.
Elite millennials like Dan Schweber are quitting corporate America in favor of search funds: the practice of purchaseing and running tiny businesses, also known as “mini private equity.”
Plenty of these unglamorous tiny businesses — like carwashes, plumbing, or snowplowing — are owned by boomers seeing to retire. That builds them prime for millennial MBAs like Schweber, who can, in some cases, turn them into multimillion-dollar companies.
You’ve probably heard of the viral concert “kiss cam” video that appeared to reveal Astronomer CEO Andy Byron embracing the company’s head of HR Kristin Cabot, then springing apart once they realize they’re on camera. The reaction prompted Coldplay’s Chris Martin to comment, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.”
A potential office affair is good gossip, but BI’s Katie Notopoulos believes there’s something more troubling here: the knee-jerk reaction to identify the people in the video.
More of this week’s top reads:
Curated by Steve Russolillo and edited by Lisa Ryan, Akin Oyedele, Grace Lett, and Amanda Yen.
This is a shorter version of our flagship newsletter, which brings you in-depth analysis and summaries of the top stories from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.
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