Good morning. The wave of layoff announcements over the past few weeks is telling us something, most importantly something that isn’t as easily measured as the number of jobs eliminated. It’s a change in the business environment. We can see it especially in big-company culture, a shift in what is OK and even virtuous to say out loud. Just maybe it’s signaling a new norm for employment and leadership. At its foundation, of course, is AI, regardless of whether companies say so directly.
Over the past two weeks we’ve learned that Amazon will eliminate 14,000 jobs with plans to eliminate more. Target will cut 1,800 corporate jobs, the company’s biggest layoff in a decade. United Parcel Service reported it had eliminated a staggering 48,000 jobs so far this year. Verizon will lay off 15,000. Nestle said it will cut 16,000 jobs, mostly white-collar, in the next two years. Why all those mega-layoff announcements in just a few weeks? The usual reasons don’t explain it. The economy hasn’t suddenly changed significantly. Companies could conceivably be bracing for a recession, though it’s far from clear when or if that might arrive; the Wall Street Journal’s October survey of economists shows growth increasing next year. The traditional season for general “slimming-down” layoffs is December and January.
The obvious explanation is AI. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had already warned employees what was coming: “In the next few years,” he announced in June, Amazon “will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.” The recent announcement emphasized “removing layers.” Target COO Michael Fiddelke (becoming CEO in February) didn’t say “AI,” but he said the company had “too many layers and overlapping work” and would “accelerate technology.” JPMorgan Chase isn’t announcing layoffs but is taking a stance to avoid hiring even as the company expects to grow. The company has “a very strong bias against having the reflexive response to any given need to hire more people,” CFO Jeremy Barnum told analysts recently. “There are definitely productivity tailwinds from AI.”
Note the language. It isn’t defensive or apologetic. Just the opposite—it’s direct and confident. Among Fortune 500 CEOs, having fewer employees is becoming a badge of honor. Call the new model Human Capital Lite, or from employees’ perspective, Right Sizing, Left Standing.
In January 2024, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, “In my little group chat with my tech CEO friends, there’s this betting pool for the first year when there’s a one-person billion-dollar company—which would have been unimaginable without AI and now will happen.”We’re not there yet, and we may never go there. But we’re getting closer.—Geoff Colvin
White House considers reducing tariffs on food imports
Following a series of losses to Democrats in midterm elections—whose candidates often highlighted cost-of-living issues—the White House is considering reducing tariffs on various food imports, including beef, bananas, coffee, and fruit.
Trump receives BBC apology over January 6 speech
The BBC has formally apologized for editing footage of President Trump’s speech on January 6 to make it look like he had urged his supporters to immediately invade the Capitol building. In fact, the edit spliced together remarks in the president’s speech that were far apart from each other and out of context. The BBC is hoping that Trump won’t now sue the corporation for defamation.
No silver bullet for New York
In the latest Fortune Leadership Next podcast, JLL CEO Christian Ulbrich tells Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller that most global cities are grappling with affordability issues. “New York is a global capital, but it comes at a price,” he said, citing Vienna as a city that’s doing well but weaponizing affordability as a political tool while London is “dark and it’s not lively anymore” because too many wealthy buyers have bought second, third and fourth homes in the city center.
AI bubble fear hurts stock markets
Stocks markets fell dramatically yesterday—and the selling looks set to continue today, according to the futures markets—led by investors expressing their disapproval over spending on AI. Oracle shares are down almost 30% over the last month as investors flee Larry Ellison’s debt-fuelled pivot to AI.
“The Big Short” investor closes investment firm, maintains AI bubble stance
Investor Michael Burry, famous for predicting the 2008 housing bubble and dramatized in the film “The Big Short,” closed his investment firm on Wednesday and quickly took to X to continue his warnings about an AI bubble. Burry, who has already bet $1 billion against an AI bubble, explained how companies like Meta and Oracle are understating the depreciation of their AI investments to inflate profits and play down their massive capital expenditure programs.
Microsoft and Amazon want restrictions on Nvidia sales to China
The two AI hyperscalers have been lobbying for a change in the law that would keep Nvidia’s best chips in the U.S. market and curb its access to Chinese customers.
Delta CEO criticizes government shutdown
Delta CEO Ed Bastian blasted the U.S. government for expecting employees to work without pay during the government shutdown, which he described as “disruptive both for his business and its customers. “It was completely unnecessary,” Bastian said in conversation with Yahoo!Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi, and customers had to “bear the brunt of the dysfunction.”
OnlyFans CEO has no middle management at her company
OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair decried “that squidgy layer of middle management in the middle” during an appearance at Web Summit in Lisbon on Thursday, arguing that “nobody’s ever had a really good middle manager in my experience.” Instead, at her company, they hire only “incredibly senior talent” and “incredibly hungry junior talent.”
The markets
S&P 500 futures are down 0.21% this morning. The last session closed down 1.66%. STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.79% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 1.18% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 1.77%. China’s CSI 300 was down 1.57%. The South Korea KOSPI was down 3.81%. India’s NIFTY 50 is down 0.45%. Bitcoin was down to $97K.
CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Claire Zillman.
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After two decades of climbing the corporate ladder at companies ranging from ABC, ESPN, and Charter Communications (commonly known as Spectrum), Timm Chiusano quit it all to become a content creator.
He wasn’t just walking away from high titles, but a high salary, too. In his peak years, Chiusano made $600,000 to $800,000 annually. But in June of 2024, after giving a 12-week notice, he “responsibility fired himself” from his corporate job as VP of production and creative services at Charter.
He did it all to help others navigate the challenges of a workplace, and appreciate the most mundane parts of life on TikTok.
most people are posting their 2024 recaps; these are a few of my favorite moments from the year that was, but i need to start reintroducing myself too i dont have a college degree, no one in my life knew that until i was 35 when i eventually got my foot in the door in my early 20’s after a few years of substitute teaching and part time jobs, i thought for sure i had found the career path of my dreams in live sports production i didn’t think i had a chance of surviving that first college football season but i busted my ass, stuck around and got promoted 5 times in 5 years then i met a girl in Las Vegas, got married in 7 months, and freaked out about my career that had me travelling 36 weeks a year i had to find a more stable “desk job”, i was scared shitless that i was pigeonholed and the travel would eventually destroy my marriage i crafted a narative for espn arguing they needed me on their marketing team because of my unique perspective coming from the production side i got rejected, but kept trying and a year i got that job the 7 years with espn were incredible, but also exhausting and raised all kinds of questions about corporate america, toxic situations, and capitalism in general why was i borderline heart attack stressed so often when i could see that my ideas were literally generating 2,000 times the money that i was getting paid? in 2012 i had a kid and in 2013 i got the biggest job of my career to reinvent how to produce 20,000 commercials a year for small business it took 12 rounds of interviews, a drug test i somehow passed, and a background check that finally made me tell my wife of 8 years that i didnt have a college degree they brought me in the thursday before my first day and told me what i told grace in that clip the next decade was an insane blur; i saw everything one would ever see in their career from the perspective of an executive at a fortune 100 i started making tiktoks, kinda blacked out at some point in 2019 and responsibly fired myself in 2024 to see what i might be capable of on my own with all the skills i picked up along my career journey now the mission is pay what i know forward, and see if i can become the mr rogers of corporate america cc: @grace beverley @Ryan Holiday @Subway Oracle
What started as short-video vlogs on just about anything in 2020 (reviews on protein bars, sushi, and sneakers) later transitioned to videos on growing up, and dealing with life’s challenges, like coming to terms when you have a toxic boss. Today, his platform on TikTok has over 1 million followers.
With the help of going viral from his “loop” format where videos end and seamlessly circle back to the beginning, he began making more videos as a side-hustle on top of his day-to-day tasks in the office.
“How can I get people to be smarter and more comfortable about their careers in ways that are gonna help on a day-to-day basis?” Chiusano told Fortune.
Today, he could go by many titles: former vice president at a Fortune 100 company, motivational speaker, dad, content creator, or as he labels himself, the Mister Rogers of Corporate America.
Just as the late public television icon helped kids navigate the complexities of childhood, Chiusano wants to help young adults think about how to approach their careers and their potential to make an impact.
“Mister Rogers is the greatest of all time in his space. I will never get to that level of impact. But it’s an easy way to describe what I’m trying to do, and it consistently gives me a goal to strive for,” he said. “There are some parallels here with the quirkiness.”
Firing himself after 25 years in the corporate world
Even with years in corporate, Chiusano doesn’t resemble the look of a typical buttoned-up executive. Today, he has more of a relaxed Brooklyn dad attire, with a sleeve of tattoos and a confidence to blend in with any trendy middle aged man in Soho. During our interview, he showed off one of the first tattoos he got: two businessmen shaking hands, a reference to Radiohead’s OK Computer album.
“This is a dope ass Monday in your 40s,” began one of his videos.
It consisted of Chiusano doing everyday things such as eating leftovers, going to the gym, training for the NYC marathon, taking out the trash, dropping his daughter off at school, a rehearsal for a Ted Talk, eating lunch with his wife, and brand deal meetings. Though the content sounds pretty normal, that’s the point.
“The reason why I fired myself in the first place was to be here,” he says in the video while picking his daughter up from school.
Today, Chiusano spends his days making content on navigating workplace culture, public speaking, brand deals, brand partnerships, executive coaching, writing a book, and the most important job: being a dad to his 13-year-old daughter Evelyn.
“I’m basically flat [in salary] to where I was, and this is everything I could ever want in the world,” he said. “The ability to send my kid to the school she’s been going to, eat sushi takeout almost as much as I’d like, and do nice things for my wife.”
In fact, when sitting inside one of his favorite New York City spots, Lure Fishbar, he keeps getting stopped by regulars who know him by name. He points out that one of his favorite interviews he filmed here was with legendary filmmaker Ken Burns.
Advice to Gen Z
In a time where Gen Z has been steering to more unconventional paths, like content creation or skill trades rather than just a 9-to-5 office job, Chiusano opens up a lens to what life looks like when deciding to be present rather than always looking for what’s next—a mistake he said he made in his 20s.
Instead, he wants to teach the younger generation to build skills for as long as you can, but “if you are unhappy, that’s a very different conversation.”
“I think some people will make themselves more unhappy because they feel like that’s what’s expected of a situation,” he said.
“I would love to be able to empower your generation more, to be like somebody’s gonna have to be the head of HR at that super random company to put cool standards and practices in place for better work-life balance for the employees.”
For Mark Zuckerberg, the most significant creation from his two years at Harvard University wasn’t the precursor to a global social network, but a prank website that nearly got him expelled.
The Meta CEO said in a 2017 commencement address at his alma mater that the controversial site, Facemash, was “the most important thing I built in my time here” for one simple reason: it led him to his wife, Priscilla Chan.
“Without Facemash I wouldn’t have met Priscilla, and she’s the most important person in my life,” Zuckerberg said during the speech.
In 2003, Zuckerberg, then a sophomore, created Facemash by hacking into Harvard’s online student directories and using the photos to create a site where users could rank students’ attractiveness. The site went viral, but it was quickly shut down by the university. Zuckerberg was called before Harvard’s Administrative Board, facing accusations of breaching security, violating copyrights, and infringing on individual privacy.
“Everyone thought I was going to get kicked out,” Zuckerberg recalled in his speech. “My parents came to help me pack. My friends threw me a going-away party.”
It was at this party, thrown by friends who believed his expulsion was imminent, where he met Chan, another Harvard undergraduate. “We met in line for the bathroom in the Pfoho Belltower, and in what must be one of the all time romantic lines, I said: ‘I’m going to get kicked out in three days, so we need to go on a date quickly,’” Zuckerberg said.
Chan, who described her now-husband to The New Yorker as “this nerdy guy who was just a little bit out there,” went on the date with him. Zuckerberg did not get expelled from Harvard after all, but he did famously drop out the following year to focus on building Facebook.
While the 2010 film The Social Network portrayed Facemash as a critical stepping stone to the creation of Facebook, Zuckerberg himself has downplayed its technical or conceptual importance.
“And, you know, that movie made it seem like Facemash was so important to creating Facebook. It wasn’t,” he said during his commencement speech. But he did confirm that the series of events it set in motion—the administrative hearing, the “going-away” party, the line for the bathroom—ultimately connected him with the mother of his three children.
Chan, for her part, went on to graduate from Harvard in 2007, taught science, and then attended medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, becoming a pediatrician.
She and Zuckerberg got married in 2012, and in 2015, they co-founded the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization focused on leveraging technology to address major world challenges in health, education, and science. Chan serves as co-CEO of the initiative, which has pledged to give away 99% of the couple’s shares in Meta Platforms to fund its work.
You can watch the entirety of Zuckerberg’s Harvard commencement speech below:
For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) is a nonpartisan watchdog that regularly estimates how much the U.S. Congress is adding to the $38 trillion national debt.
With enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies due to expire within days, some Senate Democrats are scrambling to protect millions of Americans from getting the unpleasant holiday gift of spiking health insurance premiums. The CRFB says there’s just one problem with the plan: It’s not funded.
“With the national debt as large as the economy and interest payments costing $1 trillion annually, it is absurd to suggest adding hundreds of billions more to the debt,” CRFB President Maya MacGuineas wrote in a statement on Friday afternoon.
The proposal, backed by members of the Senate Democratic caucus, would fully extend the enhanced ACA subsidies for three years, from 2026 through 2028, with no additional income limits on who can qualify. Those subsidies, originally boosted during the pandemic and later renewed, were designed to lower premiums and prevent coverage losses for middle‑ and lower‑income households purchasing insurance on the ACA exchanges.
CRFB estimated that even this three‑year extension alone would add roughly $300 billion to federal deficits over the next decade, largely because the federal government would continue to shoulder a larger share of premium costs while enrollment and subsidy amounts remain elevated. If Congress ultimately moves to make the enhanced subsidies permanent—as many advocates have urged—the total cost could swell to nearly $550 billion in additional borrowing over the next decade.
Reversing recent guardrails
MacGuineas called the Senate bill “far worse than even a debt-financed extension” as it would roll back several “program integrity” measures that were enacted as part of a 2025 reconciliation law and were intended to tighten oversight of ACA subsidies. On top of that, it would be funded by borrowing even more. “This is a bad idea made worse,” MacGuineas added.
The watchdog group’s central critique is that the new Senate plan does not attempt to offset its costs through spending cuts or new revenue and, in their view, goes beyond a simple extension by expanding the underlying subsidy structure.
The legislation would permanently repeal restrictions that eliminated subsidies for certain groups enrolling during special enrollment periods and would scrap rules requiring full repayment of excess advance subsidies and stricter verification of eligibility and tax reconciliation. The bill would also nullify portions of a 2025 federal regulation that loosened limits on the actuarial value of exchange plans and altered how subsidies are calculated, effectively reshaping how generous plans can be and how federal support is determined. CRFB warned these reversals would increase costs further while weakening safeguards designed to reduce misuse and error in the subsidy system.
MacGuineas said that any subsidy extension should be paired with broader reforms to curb health spending and reduce overall borrowing. In her view, lawmakers are missing a chance to redesign ACA support in a way that lowers premiums while also improving the long‑term budget outlook.
The debate over ACA subsidies recently contributed to a government funding standoff, and CRFB argued that the new Senate bill reflects a political compromise that prioritizes short‑term relief over long‑term fiscal responsibility.
“After a pointless government shutdown over this issue, it is beyond disappointing that this is the preferred solution to such an important issue,” MacGuineas wrote.
The off-year elections cast the government shutdown and cost-of-living arguments in a different light. Democrats made stunning gains and almost flipped a deep-red district in Tennessee as politicians from the far left and center coalesced around “affordability.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is reportedly smelling blood in the water and doubling down on the theme heading into the pivotal midterm elections of 2026. President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Pennsylvania soon to discuss pocketbook anxieties. But he is repeating predecessor Joe Biden’s habit of dismissing inflation, despite widespread evidence to the contrary.
“We fixed inflation, and we fixed almost everything,” Trump said in a Tuesday cabinet meeting, in which he also dismissed affordability as a “hoax” pushed by Democrats.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle now face a politically fraught choice: allow premiums to jump sharply—including in swing states like Pennsylvania where ACA enrollees face double‑digit increases—or pass an expensive subsidy extension that would, as CRFB calculates, explode the deficit without addressing underlying health care costs.
Politics8 years ago