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In the past, women’s work bags were designed to assert power. Women marched into the boardroom with hyper-structured “girlboss” totes or aggressively minimalist tech clutches. But there’s a shift taking place. Many worklife bags today are softer, both visually and physically. They’re lighter. They collapse. They transition seamlessly from the office to the many other things that fill your life: The mid-day grocery run, a coffee meeting that turns into school pickup, dinner with friends straight from the office. Every year, I test dozens of bags in search of the ones that best capture how were actually living and working right now. It’s clear that work bags are slowly shedding their armor. Rigidity and structure have given way to something more fluid. And perhaps they say something about our identity as working women. We’re not longer looking for a bag that assert power and competence, but rather one that reflects how work is just one part of our lives. This years standout bags share a clear through line: Theyre soft without being sloppy. Structured enough to carry a laptop securelybut relaxed enough to collapse into something chic and compact once the tech is removed. Theyre built for a hybrid life. After months of testing, here are the five bags that rose to the top. [Photo: Strathberry] Barra Tote Strathberry, $895 At first glance, the Barra Totemade by the fast-growing Scottish startup Strathberrylooks like a classic, polished work bag. It’s made with 100% grain calf leather in a family-owned factory in Spain. The clean lines and signature gold bar detail give it a distinctly elevated feelone that would be perfectly at home in a boardroom. But once you start carrying it, you realize its more versatile than it appears. The leather has structure but isnt stiff. With my 14-inch laptop inside, the bag feels balanced and intentionalnot boxy or overstuffed. Theres enough organization to keep everything upright and easy to access, but not so much that it feels over-engineered. What surprised me most is how the bag transforms when you remove the laptop. It relaxes slightly, softening into a sleek everyday tote. Add the crossbody strap and it becomes commuter-friendly, freeing up your hands for coffee, phone, or a childs hand on a busy sidewalk. Its the rare bag that signals professionalism without locking you into it. [Photo: Cuyana] Forma Satchel Cuyana, $698 Cuyana has built its reputation on the idea of fewer, better things, and the Forma Satchel embodies that philosophy. This bag has two distinct silhouettes, an architectural hexagonal satchel that transforms thanks to hidden magnetic side panels into a spacious tote bag. With it’s rounded edges, it feels refined rather than rigid. The pebbled Italian leatherwhich has been environmentally certified by the Leather Working Groupfeels substantial but not heavy, and the bag holds its shape beautifully when a laptop is inside. Thanks to metal feet at the base, my computer sits upright, making it easy to slide in and out during meetings. Yet once the laptop is removed, the Forma doesnt collapse awkwardly or gape open. It simply becomes a polished everyday satchelsleek enough for work, understated enough for weekend errands. It pairs just as well with tailored trousers as it does with denim and sneakers. It doesnt demand attention, but it quietly pulls an outfit together. This is the bag for someone who wants versatility without visual clutter. [Photo: Vestirsi] Bella 2-in-1 Convertible Backpack Tote Vestirsi, $679If any bag on this list fully embraces the fluidity of modern life, its this one. The Bella can be worn as a tote or converted into a backpacka feature that genuinely changes how you move through your day. In tote mode, it reads polished and office-ready. In backpack mode, it becomes a practical companion for commuting, travel, or long days on your feet. The bag is made by the Australian startup Vestirsi, which makes all of its products in Italian factories. The leather, now in a chic woven design, gives the bag visual softness and texture, which helps it avoid the overly technical look of many laptop backpacks. Even with my computer inside, it doesnt scream tech bag. Instead, it feels artisanal and thoughtfully designed. When worn as a backpack, the weight distribution is noticeably more comfortable, especially during longer walks. And when th laptop comes out, the bag slouches just enough to feel relaxed and lifestyle-oriented. Its a reminder that functionality doesnt have to sacrifice aesthetics. [Photo: MZ Wallace] Medium Park Satchel MZ Wallace, $325 MZ Wallace has long mastered the art of the ultra-lightweight bag, and the Medium Park Satchel is a standout example. Before you put anything inside, it feels almost featherlight. Even with a laptop, charger, and daily essentials, it never crosses into shoulder-aching territory. The quilted nylon construction makes it durable and practical, but the shape remains feminine and refined. It’s the little details that made it feel refined: The Italian leather trim, the gold hardware, the straps that come down the front, adding visual interest. The color options this yearespecially the bold apple pinksignal a shift away from the traditional black-and-brown work bag palette. Work bags dont have to be neutral to be professional. When I remove my laptop, the Park Satchel instantly feels like a playful everyday carryall. The crossbody strap makes it easy to navigate crowded sidewalks or public transportation without feeling weighed down. Its the most low-maintenance bag of the groupand thats precisely its appeal. [Photo: Jorja] Jorja Puffy Tote Jorja, $625 The Puffy Tote represents perhaps the clearest aesthetic shift of all: toward softness. Made by Jorja, a startup that uses the same nylon and factories as luxury brands like Prada, the padded body feels almost cloud-like against the shoulder. Its protective without appearing corporate, and theres something inherently comforting about carrying it. With a laptop inside, the cushioning adds a sense of security. Without one, the bag gently slouches into a fashion-forward tote. Unlike traditional structured work bags, this one feels casualbut not careless. It works with tailored outfits and athleisure alike, making it especially well-suited for days that move between multiple settings. It doesnt look like a laptop bag. And thats the point.
Category:
E-Commerce
When looking for an apartment in San Francisco today, artificial intelligence can seem inescapable; and thats not just because every rental building seems to have an AI bot answering calls. In San Francisco, the technologys ascendencyand the subsequent skyrocketing job growth has helped make the apartment market one of the tightest in the nation, with the fastest growing rent in the U.S. Lisa McCarrel, Managing Partner of Move Bay Area, a relocation and rental housing service, has seen the rental market become frenzied in recent months due in part to the increase in AI and AI-adjacent jobs. With units harder to come by, shes seen some potential tenants offer a years rent in cash upfront. I just had a meeting with my team because spring time is typically when the rental market here starts to get crazy, says McCarrel. But its already crazy. Ive been running this business for 11 years, and this is the first time Ive had to hold a meeting to prepare staff for what will be a hyper-competitive market. Between 2024 and 2025, job postings for AI roles in the Bay Area, many extremely high-paying, grew 72%, from roughly 57,000 to 99,000, according to an analysis by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. That influx of new, highly paid workerswho may be renting until a post-IPO windfallhas helped rents in the city of San Francisco jump 13% year-over-year, according to data from Apartment List. The market currently has a 3.5% vacancy rate, roughly half the national average (nearly even with the citys pre-Covid 2019 vacancy rate of 3.4%). Jackie Tom, founder and broker of the agency Rentals in SF, said the market is now very busy and well past pre-pandemic pricing. A different kind of tech boom But not all tech booms are created equal. AIs outsized impact on San Francisco differs today significantly from the impact of the 2010s tech expansion, when it felt like tech hiring had a wider impact on other economic sectors. In part, thats because of both where AI firms are located and their workforce cultures, as well as the overall state of the economy. That same job posting analysis found non-AI jobs in the region declined 1% over the same period. Ten years ago, you had tech workers flocking to San Francisco, but a lot of them moved to the South Bay or the Peninsula, or lived across the city and took buses to Menlo Park, Mountain View or Cupertino, says Apartment List economist Chris Salviati, referencing the Silicon Valley HQs of Meta, Alphabet, and Apple, respectively. Right now, the neighborhoods where AI companies are based are seeing an influx of apartment demand. San Francisco neighborhoods such as SoMa, where Anthropic recently took over a 430,000 square-foot office, and Mission Bay, where OpenAI expanded its office footprint to encompass more than 1 million square feet, have seen skyrocketing demand for rental units, says Salviati. RentCafe data shows one-bedroom units in these neighborhoods at $4,700 and $3,800. Anna Squires Levine, president of coworking firm Industrious, said demand for their San Francisco locations has been off the charts due to AI. AI firms have embraced 9-9-6 culture, a concept pushing workers to grind from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. With that kind of schedule, and offices and startups clustered in a handful of neighborhoods, the new AI workforce wants to live as close as possible, ideally walking distance, to eliminate long commutes. One firm, Cluey, even gives its employees rental subsidies. Thats a sea change from the 2010s boom that reshaped San Francisco, where many workers either lived in the city, as well as Oakland, and commuted to Silicon Valley offices. In fact, whereas Oakland was seen as a battleground against gentrification during the last tech wave a decade ago, dealing with dramatic rent increases, today, its apartment market has flatlined, as a lack of demand and a surplus of new apartment supply has pushed rents down 20% compared to 2020. AIs growth, in terms of its office leasing footprint, remains ravenous, says Colin Yasukochi, executive director of the Tech Insights Center at CBRE, a massive international real estate brokerage and services firm. Last year, nearly a third of the 10.5 million square feet of office leases were for AI companies. Yasukochi says that if you add up all the total space requirements for AI firms looking for new offices right now, it would total 3.3 million square feet. McCarrel of Move Bay Area says shes seeing industry growth move in phases; last year, she was helping AI startup founders find places to live, and now shes working with more of the employees theyre starting to hire. For AI firms, says Yasukochi, the most important factor is time, as they race each other to deliver the newest model or breakthrough; leases have mostly been for massive blocks of move-in ready space they can immediately occupy and get to work (typically, high-end office tenants would spend lots of time and money refurbishing their trophy offices). Keeping pressure on a crowded rental market The influx of thousands of new tech jobs doesnt offset area job losses in other sectors, as well as the tech industry at large, says Abby Raisz, Vice President of Research at the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. But it is concentrating pressure on the high end of the rental market. The citys long-time shortage of new housing, as well as stubbornly high interest rates pushing more high-income renters into the rental market instead of buying, has made that segment of the market especially crowded in 2026. McCarrel says that its a full-time job for someone seeking a place to have to continuously call leads and monitor what is and isnt available; she doubts even an AI program made by some of these new arrivals would help someone figure out a new living arrangement. Theres too many barriers, she says. You have to be very careful the way you communicate with brokers and owners; theres a lot of competition. Most forecasts see AI companies continuing to expand, which will bring more jobs, and increase competition among San Francisco apartment seekers. Enrico Moretti, an economist at UC Berkeley, says as firms start commercializing AI, there will be an explosion in hiring as investment in training leads to more monetization. But the contours of this boom remain uncertain; if AI tools can make workers more efficient and therefore shrink office space and headcount, the companies most impacted by this effect will be those creating the AI in the first place. We have to throw out the ideas about the way companies grow right now, says Raisz. AI companies will be the best at using their tech to be efficient, and theyll be really good about being efficient and not overhiring. Is AI a new job creator o destroyer? Its still a question mark. McCarrel says the market is so tough, shell probably be handing out copies of articles like this one to potential renters she works with; the process of finding an apartment can be like a marathon, so best to set expectations right away.
Category:
E-Commerce
U.S. Army personnel may be training for cyberwar, but their own web browsing is quietly feeding the surveillance economy. According to a recent study by the Army Cyber Institute at West Point, corporate surveillance has deeply infiltrated the U.S. Armys unclassified IT infrastructure in the continental United States. The researcherswho declined an interview request, citing increased scrutiny of external engagements by the Department of Defenseanalyzed the 1,000 most frequently requested internet resources on Army networks over a two-month period and found that 21.2% were “tracker domains. Those domains exist solely to harvest user data and analytics. A follow-up dataset showed that while trackers made up roughly 19% of the top domains, they accounted for nearly 42% of actual web requests. Another 10.4% of the original sample consisted of standard websites embedded with tracking code. For several years there have been concerns about the use of the open internet from military locations and by military and government personnel, says Alan Woodward, professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey in the U.K. (who was not involved in the research). This paper makes the alarming point that many domains commonly visited from those using military or government networks are tracking domains. The companies operating those domains include Adobe, Microsoft, and Akamaibut also TikTok, which was ostensibly banned on federal devices due to its Chinese ownership, as well as Google China and a defunct gambling site. Those three were singled out by the authors as domains that warrant further investigation. The data hoovered up by these adtech trackersincluding geolocation, email addresses, and browsing preferencesis routinely aggregated and sold by data brokers as commercially available information (CAI). From there, adversaries could potentially purchase that data and use it to identify and analyze how servicemen and women interact online. Woodward said the findings suggest lessons still havent been learned from past incidents involving commercial products exposing sensitive military data, such as when fitness app Stravas public heat map revealed the locations and patrol routes of military bases around the world in 2018. It sounds like simple operational security, Woodward says, but still many systems administrators havent learned that old lesson that on the internet, if youre not a paying customer you are the product.
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E-Commerce
Hiring well is one of a leaders most important jobs. Having talented employees is a strong competitive advantage and allows your organization to produce results and create a productive and positive culture. Its hard to do well, especially at senior levels where judgment and character become increasingly important, and theres a high cost of recruiting or replacing someone. Substantive questions help assess a candidates skills and readiness for a job, and behavioral questions provide the opportunity to understand how they think and handle themselves. But ultimately, once youve established their competency, its time to decide whether a candidates character is the right fit for your team and company cultural. I asked several experienced hiring managers from different fields what secret weapon questions help them evaluate key intangible qualities that indicate a trustworthy team member’s character. They all have one thing in common. Though each interviewer approaches their inquiry from a different angle, they all ask questions that invite vulnerability and connection. 1. Whats a time in your life or work when someone helped you? An executive director of a nonprofit organization that works with inner-city kids swears by this question. His team needs to work together under stressful conditions, so anyone who works there needs to be able to offer and ask for help when necessary. I go firstI share my own story of a time when I hit my limit caring for two special needs children as a single parent and finally told my friends that I was at a breaking point and needed help. This opens them up to share their own vulnerable stories, and I learn so much about them. Only once did someone tell me that they had never needed help. I didnt hire them. This persons team has enviable retention in a field with high turnover. He credits hiring team players, rather than heroes. 2. Tell me about a mistake you madewhat happened, how did you react, and what did you do differently after that? A CFO I spoke to says her team members need to have a high baseline of skills. However, she also knows that no one is perfect. She employs this question to assess a candidates willingness to take accountability, apologize (she usually asks this directly if they dont volunteer it), and change their behavior. I appreciate working with people who are smart but also humble, who know the value of saying Im sorry in an authentic wayand who know theres always room to grow. 3. When have you changed your mind on a difference of opinion with a colleague? A CTO I spoke to prides himself on building engineering teams with both a positive culture and a high-quality standard. He likes this question because it gives him insight into how a candidate handles a conflict and whether they can be flexible and get out of the Im-right-youre-wrong mindset to collaborate and solve problems. Having an open mind and being willing to change your view of an issue promotes cooperation and innovation on a team, and is key to building trusting relationships. Each of these questions gets at the interdependent nature of working on a team and invites the candidate to demonstrate humility versus ego, flexibility versus rigidity, and team orientation versus self-orientation. Other hiring managers I talked to have used a different approach. One deliberately has pictures of his children, a travel photo, and a guitar displayed behind him, hoping the candidate asks him about himself, his family, or his hobbies. One exec who has interviewed hundreds of candidates scours the often-ignored Interests section of the résumé or picks out a project from their portfolio. It takes a little preparation, but asking them about their experience as a competitive swimmer or their record collection, or showing interest in a piece of work that they are proud of gives me a chance to see their enthusiasm sparkle, she says. The importance of going deeper Whatever approach you take, remember that the best questions lead to a conversation that goes beyond the surface level. As the interviewer, dont just accept an answer and move on to the next question. Instead, dial up your curiosity to ask follow-up questions. Youll want to probe what they learned from the experience, how it changed their relationships or perspective, and how they balanced trade-offs in a decision. Questions that ask a candidate to go a layer deeper often reveal more about their values and motives, beyond their specific behavior. Ultimately, this helps you predict how they would respond and fit in your environment.
Category:
E-Commerce
In 2001, Antoni was working at a business that was underperforming and facing layoffs. People didnt know who would be cut or when. You could tell by peoples behavior that anxiety was at an all-time high. Managers were networking in the right corridors, colleagues started to crowd meetings to look indispensable, and teams were slowing down because nobody wanted to make the wrong move. One leader chose a different tactic. Every day, at the same time, he stood in the same spot where anyone could walk up to him. He shared what he actually knew (not what he guessed), answered questions without theater, and ended with a concrete direction for today. People still didnt like the situation, but the atmosphere changed. Not because he shared more information than everyone else. Because he paired transparency with clarity. That pairing is the point. Leaders talk about being transparent as if its the whole job, but it isnt. Transparency and clarity are different muscles. Transparency builds trust, while clarity builds focus. When you confuse them, you end up paying twice in lost time and diminished credibility. The myth: more transparency automatically creates clarity Transparency in a company setting typically means more dashboards, more all-hands, and more context. It feels responsibleespecially in uncertain momentsbecause it signals you arent hiding anything. But facts dont organize themselves. People still have to decide what matters, what they need to ignore, and what to do next. When leaders dont provide that structure, they leave teams confused, and teams will fill in the blanks with rumor and gossip. In the end, this leads to more insecurity and more internal politics. How transparency can coexist with confusion This is why radical transparency can coexist with mass confusion. You can be open and still leave people directionless. In some instances, transparency can even backfire. David De Cremer summarizes research showing that complete transparency can trigger predictable side effects: blame cultures (because you see who erred without understanding why), distrust (because being constantly monitored feels like suspicion), and even resistance and reduced creativity in highly exposed environments. In our decades of experience working with leaders and organizations, this oversharing is one of two extreme communication modes that companies can slip into. Its worth taking a closer look at these two and their costs before we examine how leaders can avoid them. The following are two traps that many leaders often fall into (but should stop doing). 1. Transparent but unclear: the ‘information dump’ organization This is the leader who shares everything: forecasts, board slides, Slack threads, meeting notes. They hide nothing, but execution continues to drift. Thats because you highlight nothing when you share everything. People dont know which metrics are heads up versus background. They dont know which risks are actionable. The natural response among workers in this scenario is to hedge and wait. Worse yet, when incoming data exceeds what people can process, information overload is the inevitable result. And according to research, this overload can lead to worse decision-making, higher stress, and lower productivity. Yet productivity isnt the only area that suffers. Ambiguity has measurable psychological and performance costs. Meta-analytic research on role ambiguitya close cousin of organizational unclear-nessfinds it too is associated with worse outcomes, including strain and reduced performance. Transparent-but-unclear leaders often misread the feedback from their workers. They hear, Were confused, and respond by adding more information. But in doing so, theyre trying to fix traffic jam by pouring more cars onto the road. 2. Clear but opaque: the ‘because-I-said-so’ organization The second mistake looks better on paper but is just as costly. Leaders succinctly present things, set firm deadlines, and outline whos accountable for what. As a result, everyone knows what to do. But (and this is the critical bit) the why is missing. This is important. As Nancy Duarte points out in a Harvard Business Review article, when you ask people to change behavior, their first question is rarely how. Its why. If people dont recognize the why, they can become suspicious of a leaders motives. What leaders should do instead So how do you know if youre missing transparency or clarity? Start by listening to the reactions you already get. If people say, What are we supposed to do with this?, Why are we doing these tasks? or Whats the point? you are not being clear. If people say, We feel out of the loop, or Decisions come out of nowhere, you are not being transparent. By paying attention and listening to what they express, you dont even need a survey to detect the gap. Your people are already telling you what your company needs to do. From there, we recommend a three-step process that weve seen numerous successful leaders intuitively adapt, as a way of ensuring the proper balance of transparency and clarity: Start with transparency. This is what we know, and what information we still miss. Add clarity. This is why you need to know. End with direction. These are the short-term goals we pursue, the reasons for them, and how we follow up. This is a simple yet impactful framework that brings transparency and clarity together. It eliminates unnecessary confusion and frustration, so that your people can be more productive and generate better results. And thats exactly what Antonis boss in the hallway was doing.
Category:
E-Commerce
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