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NYU professor says traditional networking is ‘nonsense’—instead real friendships are key to success

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3 months ago

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Gen Z is facing a dire labor market—and it’s forced young professionals on the job hunt to stealthily promote their resumes with boxes of donuts, or to take up waitressing gigs at conferences just to get a foot in the door. But Suzy Welch, professor of management practice at New York University, believes the key to success is a lot simpler than that. 

“Students in college are told by their parents and their professors: network, network, network. And I just think it’s nonsense,” Welch said in a recent video on TikTok. “I think it’s nonsense because I’ve watched business for the past 40 years of my life, and I see how it works. And it works because of friendships, not networking.”

When Gen Xers and baby boomers were on the prowl for jobs in their 20s, walking into an office building and handing over their resumes wasn’t out of the ordinary. Hitting the streets and hopping from offices to industry events could even potentially land them a job.

But unlocking a career opportunity today may take more depth than simply sharing a business card. And Welch would know; the seasoned consultant, business columnist, and news contributor has witnessed what has worked over the past four decades. 

“This idea that you’re going to stand in a vast hotel conference room and hand somebody your card, and it’s going to result in a great career is completely crazy,” Welch continued. “You should take the time that you waste networking and commit to learning how to be a friend to people.”

In actuality, she explained that building deep connections over many years could help professionals climb the corporate totem pole in the long run. Success might not be instant, but it’s a foolproof way to keep opportunities flowing. 

“It works because over the course of your life, you have become friends with somebody. You have done favors for them without any expectation of return, and then over time, one day, there’s a piece of business, and they’re the ones who help you get it,” Welch said. “And this is how businesses actually run: friendship on top of friendship, on top of friendship.”

How leaders leverage friendship in their professional lives

Welch isn’t the only business leader who leans on their pals to enrich their careers.  

Billionaire philanthropist and early Microsoft employee Melinda French Gates is booked out every Monday morning for a walk with her three closest female friends, with whom she’s been connected for more than 30 years. Those routine strolls are a time for her to seek wisdom from her closest confidants, which has proved to be essential in getting through the highs and lows of her personal and professional lives. A business partner or distant acquaintance might not be so honest in giving advice—but lifelong friends aren’t afraid to give real feedback. 

“They are my truth council. Whenever I’m going to make a really hard decision or make a big transition, I know I have to have the courage to tell them…and they’re honest with me,” French Gates told Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King in an interview last year. “You actually need a friend who will tell you the truth even when you don’t want to hear it. I’ll say about my friends, they have a perspective on me, and I have a perspective on them.”

In that same conversation, Winfrey and King opened up about what they’ve gained from their nearly five-decades-long relationship. The media icon and TV host first met back in 1976 at a Baltimore news station, when 22-year-old Winfrey was just getting her career off the ground as an anchor. She offered 21-year-old King a job as a production assistant, and the rest is history. That initial moment of support—and the ways they’ve championed each other over the past 49 years—have been essential in moments of professional change. 

For example, when Winfrey wanted to head to Chicago, where competing daytime talk-show host Phil Donahue was also based, people discouraged her from making the jump and potentially losing viewers. But King encouraged her to take the leap—something a surface-level networking connection might not advise. Moments like these were critical in building her media empire. 

“Had I not had somebody who believed that me moving to Chicago could be successful, I might have not made the move,” said Winfrey in the 2024 video interview.

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Coupang CEO resigns over historic South Korean data breach

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December 10, 2025

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Coupang chief executive officer Park Dae-jun resigned over his failure to prevent South Korea’s largest-ever data breach, which set off a regulatory and political backlash against the country’s dominant online retailer.

The company said in a statement on Wednesday that Park had stepped down over his role in the breach. It appointed Harold Rogers, chief administrative officer for the retailer’s U.S.-based parent company Coupang Inc., as interim head.

Park becomes the highest-profile casualty of a crisis that’s prompted a government investigation and disrupted the lives of millions across Korea. Nearly two-thirds of people in the country were affected by the breach, which granted unauthorized access to their shipping addresses and phone numbers.

Police raided Coupang’s headquarters this week in search of evidence that could help them determine how the breach took place as well as the identity of the hacker, Yonhap News reported, citing officials.

Officials have said the breach was carried out over five months in which the company’s cybersecurity systems were bypassed. Last week President Lee Jae Myung said it was “truly astonishing” that Coupang had failed to detect unauthorized access of its systems for such a long time.

Park squared off with lawmakers this month during an hours-long grilling. Responding to questions about media reports that claimed the attack had been carried out by a former employee who had since returned to China, he said a Chinese national who left the company and had been a “developer working on the authentication system” was involved.

The company faces a potential fine of up to 1 trillion won ($681 million) over the incident, lawmakers said.

Coupang founder Bom Kim has been summoned to appear before a parliamentary hearing on Dec. 17, with lawmakers warning of consequences if the billionaire fails to show.

Park’s departure adds fresh uncertainty to Coupang’s leadership less than seven months after the company revamped its internal structure to make him sole CEO of its Korean operations. In his new role, Rogers will focus on addressing customer concerns and stabilizing the company, Coupang said.

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Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi says company will be worth $1 trillion by doing these three things

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7 hours ago

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December 9, 2025

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Ali Ghodsi, the CEO and cofounder of data intelligence company Databricks, is betting his privately held startup can be the latest addition to the trillion-dollar valuation club.

In August, Ghodsi told the Wall Street Journalthat he believed Databricks, which is reportedly in talks toraise funding at a $134 billion valuation, had “a shot to be a trillion-dollar company.” At Fortune’s Brainstorm AI conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, he explained how it would happen, laying out a “trifecta” of growth areas to ignite the company’s next leg of growth.

The first is entering the transactional database market, the traditional territory of large enterprise players like Oracle, which Ghodsi said has remained largely “the same for 40 years.” Earlier this year, Databricks launched a link-based offering called Lakehouse, which aims to combine the capabilities of traditional databases with modern data lake storage, in an attempt to capture some of this market.

The company is also seeing growth driven by the rise of AI-powered coding. “Over 80% of the databases that are being launched on Databricks are not being launched by humans, but by AI agents,” Ghodsi said. As developers use AI tools for “vibe coding”—rapidly building software with natural language commands—those applications automatically need databases, and Ghodsi they’re defaulting to Databricks’ platform.

“That’s just a huge growth factor for us. I think if we just did that, we could maybe get all the way to a trillion,” he said.

The second growth area is Agentbricks, Databricks’ platform for building AI agents that work with proprietary enterprise data.

“It’s a commodity now to have AI that has general knowledge,” Ghodsi said, but “it’s very elusive to get AI that really works and understands that proprietary data that’s inside enterprise.” He pointed to the Royal Bank of Canada, which built AI agents for equity research analysts, as an example. Ghodsi said these agents were able to automatically gather earnings calls and company information to assemble research reports, reducing “many days’ worth of work down to minutes.”

And finally, the third piece to Ghodsi’s puzzle involves building applications on top of this infrastructure, with developers using AI tools to quickly build applications that run on Lakehouse and which are then powered by AI agents. “To get the trifecta is also to have apps on top of this. Now you have apps that are vibe coded with the database, Lakehouse, and with agents,” Ghodsi said. “Those are three new vectors for us.”

Ghodsi did not provide a timeframe for attaining the trillion-dollar goal. Currently, only a handful of companies have achieved the milestone, all of them as publicly traded companies. In the tech industry, only big tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta have managed to cross the trillion-dollar threshold.

To reach this level would require Databricks, which is widely expected to go public sometime in early 2026, to grow its valuation roughly sevenfold from its current reported level. Part of this journey will likely also include the expected IPO, Ghodsi said.

“There are huge advantages and pros and cons. That’s why we’re not super religious about it,” Ghodsi said when asked about a potential IPO. “We will go public at some point. But to us, it’s not a really big deal.”

Could the company IPO next year? Maybe, replied Ghodsi.



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New contract shows Palantir working on tech platform for another federal agency that works with ICE

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8 hours ago

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December 9, 2025

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Palantir, the artificial intelligence and data analytics company, has quietly started working on a tech platform for a federal immigration agency that has referred dozens of individuals to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for potential enforcement since September.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency—which handles services including citizenship applications, family immigration, adoptions, and work permits for non-citizens—started the contract with Palantir at the end of October, and is paying the data analytics company to implement “Phase 0” of a “vetting of wedding-based schemes,” or “VOWS” platform, according to the federal contract, which was posted to the U.S. government website and reviewed by Fortune.

The contract is small—less than $100,000—and details of what exactly the new platform entails are thin. The contract itself offers few details, apart from the general description of the platform (“vetting of wedding-based schemes”) and an estimate that the completion of the contract would be Dec. 9.Palantir declined to comment on the contract or nature of the work, and USCIS did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

But the contract is notable, nonetheless, as it marks the beginning of a new relationship between USCIS and Palantir, which has had longstanding contracts with ICE, another agency of the Department of Homeland Security, since at least 2011. The description of the contract suggests that the “VOWS” platform may very well be focused on marriage fraud and related to USCIS’ recent stated effort to drill down on duplicity in applications for marriage and family-based petitions, employment authorizations, and parole-related requests.

USCIS has been outspoken about its recent collaboration with ICE. Over nine days in September, USCIS announced that it worked with ICE and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to conduct what it called “Operation Twin Shield” in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, where immigration officials investigated potential cases of fraud in immigration benefit applications the agency had received. The agency reported that its officers referred 42 cases to ICE over the period. In a statement published to the USCIS website shortly after the operation, USCIS director Joseph Edlow said his agency was “declaring an all-out war on immigration fraud” and that it would “relentlessly pursue everyone involved in undermining the integrity of our immigration system and laws.” 

“Under President Trump, we will leave no stone unturned,” he said.

Earlier this year, USCIS rolled out updates to its policy requirements for marriage-based green cards, which have included more details of relationship evidence and stricter interview requirements.

While Palantir has always been a controversial company—and one that tends to lean into that reputation no less—the new contract with USCIS is likely to lead to more public scrutiny. Backlash over Palantir’s contracts with ICE have intensified this year amid the Trump Administration’s crackdown on immigration and aggressive tactics used by ICE to detain immigrants that have gone viral on social media. Not to mention, Palantir inked a $30 million contract with ICE earlier this year to pilot a system that will track individuals who have elected to self-deport and help ICE with targeting and enforcement prioritization. There has been pushback from current and former employees of the company alike over contracts the company has with ICE and Israel.

In a recent interview at the New York Times DealBook Summit, Karp was asked on stage about Palantir’s work with ICE and later what Karp thought, from a moral standpoint, about families getting separated by ICE. “Of course I don’t like that, right? No one likes that. No American. This is the fairest, least bigoted, most open-minded culture in the world,” Karp said. But he said he cared about two issues politically: immigration and “re-establishing the deterrent capacity of America without being a colonialist neocon view. On those two issues, this president has performed.”



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