• I left my career at 38 to stay home with my child.
• I struggled with guilt, identity loss, and my changing relationship with money.
• Over time, I found purpose and connection through shared experiences.

At 38, I faced the toughest decision of my career: whether I wanted to continue working.

I had been working since I was a teenager and had never considered not doing so.

When my husband and I got married, we discussed what our future would look like with children, and I naively thought it would all work out seamlessly. That I would balance my career and motherhood with ease.

Then reality hit.

I decided to stay home

As first-time parents, it was soon evident that the balancing act was an illusion. We decided that I would stay at home with our son during his early years, a decision that left me grappling with a weight I never saw coming.

The sleepless nights and endless diapers, those topics get talked about. What blindsided me were the invisible battles.

On paper, we could make it on my husband’s income alone, but life isn’t as tidy as a piece of paper. I went in knowing that our lifestyle would change, becoming a one-car family, thrifting more, and eating out less, but what I didn’t anticipate was the way my relationship with money would change.

I felt guilty when I spent money

After two decades of working, I was used to making and spending my own money. I never felt bad about my monthly manicures, grabbing dinner with friends, or buying my husband a birthday gift.

Now, every time I wanted to purchase something a wave of guilt swept over me and I felt as though I was spending someone else’s money.

While my husband constantly assured me that it was our money, memories of my mom and step-dad arguing over who made more and therefore who was more “valuable” haunted me.

Eventually, I found ways to earn a small income outside a traditional 9-to-5, from freelance writing to mystery shopping, until I took on a part-time work-from-home job, which gave me a sense of financial autonomy.

My résumé didn’t matter anymore

Over the course of my career, I had built up an impressive résumé of experience, industry certifications, and specialized knowledge. When I became a stay-at-home mom, none of it mattered.

My days were filled with changing diapers, cleaning up spit-up from the oddest places, and all the other day-to-day responsibilities that come with parenting. I was left wondering if I was wasting everything I had worked so hard for.

What I wish I could have told myself back then was that my time in the professional world, combined with my time as the primary caregiver, would provide me with the insights and opportunities I now have.

But in the moment, I was too far in the trenches and simply felt as though I had let myself down. And the loss I felt went beyond my career. It was about who I was becoming.

My identity shifted

When I became a mom, I knew my identity would shift, but I didn’t fully appreciate how much it would impact me and how others would view me.

No longer was I greeted with, “How are you doing, Laura?” Now it was “How are you doing, mama?”

The identity of being a mom overshadowed all the other components of me.

Who was I now that I didn’t have an official title, now that I wasn’t receiving recognition for my contributions, and now that my biggest accomplishment was reaching the end of the day wearing the same shirt I started with?

I felt untethered. The old me no longer existed, the new me was in survival mode, and the future me was still being formed.

I felt so guilty

During my career break, there was a faithful companion by my side: guilt.

The guilt took many forms, from feeling guilty that I didn’t enjoy every moment to feeling guilty that I wished I worked outside the house.

I grappled with it alone until I found a group of women who understood. Some had taken a career break because they had always wanted to; others because it made financial sense.

When I finally said my feelings out loud, I felt understood, supported, and most importantly, seen. While it didn’t erase the guilt or my struggles, I was reminded I wasn’t alone.

Today, I have the privilege of working with women as they wrestle with these same emotions.

It turns out the journey that once felt like losing myself became the path to finding my purpose.

Imam Cagdas has been making baklava the same way since 1887: entirely by hand, without any automation. The Gaziantep shop is now in its fifth generation of ownership, with Burhan Cagdas carrying on the craft his forefathers passed down to him. As food influencers and culinary tourists from around the world make the pilgrimage to try the famous baklava, the family isn’t changing a thing. We visited the kitchen to see how this legendary shop keeps a 139-year-old tradition alive.

• A version of this story originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter.
• Sign up for the weekly BI Tech Memo newsletter here.

The US jobs report on Friday was surprisingly strong. That’s not the only part of the job market that’s doing better than expected.

Tech job openings have rebounded sharply in 2026, challenging the popular narrative that AI is wiping out engineering roles.

Data from TrueUp, a tech hiring analytics firm, shows more than 67,000 software engineering job openings, the highest level in over three years. Listings have roughly doubled since a trough in mid-2023.

The most striking number for me: So far this year, the number of open roles has jumped about 30%. TrueUp tracks jobs at tech companies (rather than all types of businesses that may need tech workers), so the impact of AI should be felt even more strongly in this data.

“A lot of the ‘AI is replacing engineers’ narrative isn’t grounded in job posting data — at least not so far,” Amit Taylor, founder of TrueUp, told me this week.

Check out this chart, which shows open software engineering roles globally. The chart starts in late 2022, when ChatGPT emerged and started the generative AI revolution. The line goes the opposite way you would expect, given all the hand-wringing over AI lately.

The recovery follows a steep correction in 2022 and early 2023, when tech companies slashed hiring after over-expanding during the pandemic boom. Rising interest rates and a shift toward profitability forced companies to freeze hiring and cut staff. Now, hiring is rebounding as firms invest heavily in AI, which, ironically, requires large numbers of engineers.

TrueUp’s dataset tracks more than 260,000 open roles across 9,000 tech companies, focusing on startups and public tech firms rather than the broader economy. Within that universe, demand for software engineers remains strong, while AI-related roles are “exploding,” Taylor said.

So why does the situation feel so dire for some candidates, especially recent graduates? There are still entry-level tech jobs, but the pool of available talent is much bigger now.

“Way more people have pursued computer science,” TrueUp founder Amit Taylor told me this week. “The jobs haven’t disappeared, but competition for them is dramatically higher than it was even five years ago.”

How might the tech job market evolve, as AI weaves itself through the economy?

“Maybe AI compresses some roles entirely. Or maybe it makes great engineers so leveraged that companies fight even harder over them,” Taylor said. “Right now, the demand for top talent is strong, but maybe that continues for a while until things suddenly flip.”

Sign up for BI’s Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

• Meta is expanding its AI hardware effort and tapped veteran engineer Rui Xu to lead it.
• It hints that Meta’s Superintelligence Labs is exploring new AI device types beyond smart glasses.
• MSL chief Alexandr Wang said he aims to create a personalized AI agent across multiple devices.

Meta’s superintelligence division is building a dedicated hardware team — and hiring a veteran engineer to lead it — as the company pushes deeper into AI-powered devices.

Meta is already known for the smart glasses and virtual reality headsets made by its Reality Labs division. This newer effort is part of Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), the high-profile AI division announced last year, which hints that Meta is mulling other types of AI devices.

The effort, which has not yet been reported, has seen some Reality Labs engineers transition to MSL to prototype the AI division’s software on Reality Labs hardware, with the two divisions working closely together, a source familiar with the matter said.

The tech giant is hiring Rui Xu, who headed hardware at Dreamer, an AI agent startup whose founding team Meta acqui-hired last month, to lead hardware at MSL, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Prior to Dreamer, Xu served as the chief operating officer of K-Scale, a robotics startup that shut down last year, The Information reported. Nat Friedman, who leads the products and applied research division at MSL, had invested in K-Scale through the AI Grant program he co-founded.

Xu previously worked on smart devices at TikTok owner ByteDance, leading a lab that shipped millions of units in China, according to his LinkedIn. He also has management experience at smartphone maker Xiaomi, laptop manufacturer Lenovo, and internet giant Tencent.

Meta declined to comment. Xu did not respond to an email requesting comment.

Tech giants like OpenAI are racing to build an AI-native personal device that isn’t just a smartphone.

In a February podcast appearance, MSL chief Alexandr Wang said that Meta wants to expand beyond phones into a world where everyone has a personalized AI agent that lives across a “constellation” of devices.

“You’re going to want your personal agent to be with you in a bunch of different ways that will always be on, see what you see, hear what you hear,” Wang said on the podcast.

“Over the coming months, you’re going to see incredible velocity coming from us,” he added.

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• Business Insider spoke to auto executives at the New York Auto Show. They all talked about AI.
• Top bosses also chatted about company collaborations, the future of sedans, and product launches.
• I asked six executives to choose a car from a competing automaker. There was a clear winner.

The auto industry is under siege on multiple fronts — tariffs, supply chain shocks, the associated rising costs, competition from China, and uneven demand for EVs.

So when I walked into the New York Auto Show this week — my third consecutive year at the expo — I expected executives to have a wide array of answers to the industry’s myriad challenges.

Instead, they all said the same thing: They’re responding to these pressures with a trunk full of AI.

That bet could dramatically change how automakers design, build, and sell vehicles. Most importantly, it could collapse a product’s development timeline and make companies more agile.

For decades, developing a new vehicle typically took four to six years from design to production. That timeline is now too slow as companies try to respond more quickly to fickle demand and global disruptions.

Nissan executives, for example, said they’re aiming to cut development time dramatically — targeting 36 months for a new powertrain and about 30 months for vehicles built on the same platform.

“Lead time to development time, all said and told, is a couple of years,” Eric Ledieu, the vice president of Infiniti America, Nissan’s luxury arm, told Business Insider. “Trying to get that cycle shortened is really our ambition.”

Executives from Hyundai said it’s doing the same, though it declined to share an exact timeline.

“The people that are using AI today, it will make them more efficient and effective,” Randy Parker, CEO of Hyundai Motor North America, told me. “The quicker that you lean in, the quicker you can embrace it. I think it will help you be more efficient and get to market a lot faster.”

Toyota, Ford, and GM executives are all humming a similar tune. Behind the show’s flashy product launches — a sleek Corvette concept from Chevy, a rugged new Hyundai SUV, EVs from Kia and Subaru — the executives all discussed their desire to find ways to move more efficiently.

Everything on the Javitz Center’s showroom floor, it seemed, flowed from that effort.

So many collabs

One way to move faster is to work together.

It typically costs $1 billion or more to bring a new car to market. Increasingly, automakers are deciding they won’t do it alone.

Toyota and Subaru have partnered on EVs and now sell — or are preparing to launch — four closely related models. Nissan’s Rogue Plug-In Hybrid is a rebadged version of the Mitsubishi Outlander. Ram’s ProMaster City cargo van shares key components with the Fiat Scudo sold in Europe.

“The other big trend I see that’s a huge shock to this industry is a need for consolidation,” Ponz Pandikuthira, Nissan and Infiniti’s chief product and planning officer, said.

Pandikuthira said the Rogue Hybrid’s ties to Mitsubishi were partly due to the new compressed timelines.

“The costs are going up so much,” he added. “It doesn’t have to be a merger or some giant partner. We just have to do joint projects.”

He added that automakers producing fewer than 5 million to 8 million vehicles a year may struggle to survive on their own.

The return of the sedan

For years, US automakers have steadily walked away from sedans, betting instead on higher-margin SUVs and trucks. Now, that calculus may be shifting.

With consumer costs still rising, several executives said they’re reconsidering smaller, more affordable vehicles — including sedans — to reach buyers who have been priced out of the market.

There are also practical reasons. Sedans tend to be more aerodynamic than SUVs, making them a better fit for EVs, for which efficiency is critical.

And there may be a cultural shift, too.

“I think the younger generation wants a little bit of differentiation,” Ledieu said, adding that SUVs and crossovers are “what mom and dad drive.”

So. Many. Light. Bars.

One of the most visible design trends at the auto show was the rise of LED light bars — thin strips of light stretching across the front or rear of a vehicle.

And now, some new cars (including the Genesis G90 Winback concept and the redesigned VW Atlas) have two.

They’ve been around for a few years, but they’re no longer just a concept-car gimmick. They’re showing up across entire lineups.

Lincoln and Lucid feature them on nearly every model. Hyundai, Ford, GM, and Toyota have adopted them widely as well.

What was once a futuristic flourish is quickly becoming standard.

Showing up is expensive

Presenting at the New York Auto Show doesn’t come cheap. Multiple executives told Business Insider they’re spending seven (and sometimes eight) figures to exhibit at the event.

That cost is changing how and where automakers choose to reveal their biggest vehicles.

Infiniti unveiled its coming 2027 QX65 SUV at a stand-alone event with former NFL stars Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski days before media previews began. Volkswagen showed off its redesigned 2027 Atlas at a warehouse a day before the Javitz Center opened to the press.

Even newcomers are opting out. Slate, the EV truck startup backed by Jeff Bezos, showed off its vehicle at a small shop about a mile from the convention center.

“Auto shows used to be the only place you reveal a car,” Ledieu said. “Now, you’re revealing them in all kinds of different places.”

Other executives said they still see a payoff from the show, even after complaining about the cost.

A clear winner

Amid all the talk of supply chains, geopolitical risk, and the industry’s uncertain future, I slipped in one lighter question during six of my interviews:

If you could take home any car from the show floor — and not one from your company — what would it be?

Bentley was the clear favorite. Four executives picked the luxury brand, including two who singled out the Flying Spur sedan.

All asked for anonymity when naming a rival.

A few other standouts made the cut, too: Chevy’s mid-engine Corvette and Hyundai’s body-on-frame Boulder concept each earned a nod.

• My family faced years of financial instability and unpredictable income streams.
• We relied on Airbnb income, credit cards, and even retirement savings to get by.
• Despite everything, we found a way to buy a home we loved and make it work.

“It’s got good bones,” the seller said, as if he had to sell it to me.

He didn’t. We both knew I was already in love with the house.

For some, a kitchen that hasn’t been touched since 1948 would be a total gut renovation, but I’m enamored by the pale green cabinetry, original wallpaper still intact, and hardwood floors that need little more than a good waxing. The seller and I stood in the living room while my husband refereed the kids’ fight over bedrooms, and I pictured mornings with coffee on the sunporch. It’s a forever home material, and we can almost afford it.

Almost.

When the seller accepted my verbal offer, my heart leaped into my throat. I looked him in the eye and said, with complete confidence, “We’ll make it happen.”

The truth was, I had absolutely no idea how we’d pay for it.

From the outside, our life probably looked stable enough — and at the start, it was

Early in our marriage, my husband had a stable career making six figures, with benefits and health insurance. His income gave me the freedom to build a life as a freelance writer and writing coach. A generous gift from his father helped us buy our first home.

Then, almost at the same time I sold a book, my husband was let go from his job, and our roles reversed overnight. He picked up consulting projects when they came along, but for the most part, we survived on my earnings. Some months worked beautifully. Others, we waited anxiously for invoices to clear while maxing out credit cards on groceries and gas.

Years of financial insecurity have been taxing on our marriage

Financial insecurity chips away at the image I have of us: educated adults who know how to pay bills, file taxes, and make responsible choices. When the numbers stop working, I’m thrust back into childhood — years of food scarcity and housing instability, living in my grandmother’s basement, dreaming of a real home that never materialized.

About a year ago, we made a move that seemed, at least temporarily, like a solution. We relocated to Nyack to be closer to my son’s private school. Instead of selling our family home, we turned it into an Airbnb. It was a surprisingly good financial decision. Over the course of the year, we earned about $50,000 — enough to cover our bills and keep everything moving forward.

Sometimes life throws a curveball

Living in temporary housing took a toll on us, and Airbnb income was unpredictable. This past winter, bookings were slow. Once again, our credit cards were approaching their limits. We decided to sell our family home and downsize.

Around this same time, our town began cracking down on short-term rentals, shutting down the business that had kept us afloat. That’s when we dipped into our retirement account. We pulled $20,000 from our IRA — something we had somehow managed to avoid until then.

We used the money to pay off the credit cards and catch up on the mortgage.

Borrowing from our retirement felt both terrifying and inevitable

My biggest fear is letting our children down and putting them through what I experienced as a kid. When financial troubles arise, a quiet panic creeps in. A voice whispers, you’re not doing life right. You’re supposed to be more stable by now. Retirement savings are supposed to be sacred. The adult thing to do is leave them alone and let them grow.

But the adult thing is also keeping oneself and one’s children housed and fed.

Having an IRA to draw from feels both humbling and miraculous. Like the second financial gift from my father-in-law, or the winter I was awarded a generous grant for writers with medical expenses, it reminds me that survival is always a mix of luck, strategy, and stubborn work.

I thought stability meant not needing help

I didn’t doubt our house would sell quickly. But even with that equity, the best we could afford in Nyack was at the bottom of the market. Our sublet was up June 1, and we didn’t have money to throw away on another rental. We were searching for the cheapest house in a competitive town, on a tight timeline. Sitting down with a real estate agent, going over our numbers, I realized the math wasn’t mathing. Fighting back tears, I said, “I feel like my luck has run out.”

The real estate agent listened quietly and said something simple: “I don’t think luck runs out.”

I decided to believe her.

Then this house appeared.

For years, I thought stability meant never needing help, never touching retirement, never falling behind. But that’s not how most lives work. Stability, it turns out, is patched together from whatever holds: a gift from a parent, a well-paying freelance assignment, a house that “has good bones,” a sentimental seller more interested in finding someone to love it than taking the highest offer.

By the grace of something—timing, stubbornness, creative accounting—we managed to qualify for a mortgage. Our neighbors generously offered us a bridge loan to use as the deposit. When the seller wouldn’t accept an offer contingent on the sale of our house, our IRA came to the rescue: in real estate, an IRA or 401(k) counts as “liquid assets” if you’re willing to liquidate them, and so we were able to use those funds toward the down payment.

By the time you read this, I hope to be in contract. But if this house doesn’t work out, something else will. I don’t know how, but we always find a way.