Fortune

Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp is famously unorthodox—and that applies to everything from his fitness regimen to his hiring strategy. The CEO enjoys meeting prospective employees personally, and reportedly prides himself on hiring or discarding a candidate within two minutes of meeting them. “If you ask the question that the Stanford, Harvard, Yale person has answered a thousand times, all you’re learning is that the Stanford, Harvard, Yale person has learned to play the game,” he told the New York Times. Instead, Karp looks for something less obvious. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eqQSXWtY

Companies are sweetening the pot for incoming executives: No move to company headquarters? No problem. Starbucks’ incoming CEO Brian Niccol, who lives in California, will not be required to relocate to the coffee chain’s headquarters in Seattle. Hillary Super, Victoria Secret’s incoming chief executive, will also be permitted to work remotely, pioneering an apparent trend of a company’s top brass working from afar. It’s a mouth-watering prospect for executives wanting to retain some day-to-day flexibility and spend some extra time at home with family. But some remote CEOs could get a massive wake-up call, some future of work experts say: Not only will their employees resent their boss’s absence from the office, it could be hurting the company itself. Read more: https://lnkd.in/esrZ9MXk

To rent comfortably in New York, you need to make more than $135,000, according to Moody's’s. In 2019, the necessary income was around $111,000, so there’s been about a 22% increase in only five years. Renting comfortably is defined as spending no more than 30% of your earnings on housing, and that’s becoming much more difficult across the country because rents are high and incomes haven’t always kept up. For instance, in Massachusetts, you need to make more than $113,000 to afford your rent. But the “median household income in the state of New York and Massachusetts do not support living in an average priced apartment without burden,” a Moody’s analysis read. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eS6KSBhB

Beijing is hoping that foreign visitors can help lift the economy out of its slump. Since removing its COVID quarantine controls in early 2023, Chinese officials have tried to make it easier for tourists to come to the country and spend money. Around 17.3 million foreign visitors entered China between January and July, the National Immigration Administration said Monday, a 130% year-on-year increase. Foreign tourists are expected to contribute about 100 billion yuan ($14 billion) in direct spending this year, based on the amount foreign tourists spent per day last year (3,459 yuan, or $483). Read more here: bit.ly/3YW7JUX

A Southern California woman fed up with her packages getting stolen out of her post office box sent an Apple AirTag to the address and cleverly tracked down the suspected thief, police said. The woman had had several items stolen from her mailbox at the Los Alamos Post Office, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday. If her mail was stolen again, she hoped the AirTag would help to track the thieves down. Read more: https://lnkd.in/esGXZhZT

After being stranded on the International Space Station since June, two astronaut castaways may still be months away from returning to Earth—in part because of incompatible space suits. The two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, have had to extend what was supposed to be an eight-day trip on the ISS, because of a helium leak and thruster malfunctions on their Boeing-made Starliner spacecraft. NASA and Boeing are testing to see if it’s safe for the astronauts to return on the Boeing Starliner, but are also considering alternatives given the possible risks. NASA has yet to make a decision, but one of those alternatives includes sending the astronauts home on a Dragon spacecraft, manufactured by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, that is already docked at the station. Yet, that approach comes with complications. Read more: https://lnkd.in/ePh6argM

Millionaires and million-dollar homes are on the rise. Almost one in 10 homes in the country is valued at $1 million dollars or more. It’s the greatest share on record in history, higher than last year, and more than double than before the pandemic, according to an analysis from Redfin. So which state holds the most million-dollar homes? None other than California. And “pricey California metros are gaining million-dollar homes faster than anywhere else in the U.S.,” the analysis states. So not only does California already have more seven-figure homes than anywhere else in the country, it’s seeing them proliferate faster. Read more here: bit.ly/3WOCjgA

Employers are increasingly listening in on their workers, and a surprising number of employees don’t have a problem with it. When asked whether they would voluntarily give their company access to work-related instant messages and email text data to help identify and address employee experience issues, 43% of respondents said “probably yes” or “definitely yes,” according to a survey of 1,000 office workers conducted by experience management company Qualtrics. The number of people who were OK with their company listening in on their work activity was significantly higher than what HR leaders predicted, said the company’s chief workplace psychologist Benjamin Granger. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eWJ2SmFG

Since early last year, the cars rolling off Tesla’s California assembly lines have been selling for steadily lower prices. This has had a happy knock-on effect on a car lot just across the freeway from the company’s San Francisco Bay area factory. CarMax’s superstore in Fremont, California, has seen a stream of shoppers more willing than ever to kick the tires on an electric vehicle. While Tesla’s price cuts aren’t all that’s driving the foot traffic — the range of pre-owned plug-in models to choose from is steadily broadening — Elon Musk’s early dominance of the market for new EVs has translated to serious sway over used-car dynamics. “We’ve seen a really good amount of interest,” CarMax's general manager said. Customers have told him they wanted to seize on incentives and falling prices. Read more: https://lnkd.in/g3Bdz5u3

Acknowledging the growing number of Americans fed up with yawning income inequality, billionaire investor Bill Ackman has come up with a way to get the ultrawealthy to pay their fair share. The founder of Pershing Square Capital Management suggested a tailored approach to ensure people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos shoulder more of the burden, arguing against the blunt instrument of a proposed federal tax levied on unrealized capital gains. Read more: https://lnkd.in/ew4QNEMX