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Most people never change careers, which is remarkable when you consider how little evidence most of us had when we chose our first one. For many professionals, early career decisions are shaped less by talent or long-term fit than by convenience and coincidence. We follow friends into certain degrees, accept the first decent offer, listen to family advice, or pursue interests that feel meaningful at 18 but prove less durable at 38. These choices are understandable, but they are weak predictors of where our strengths will compound over time, or of what will sustain both performance and satisfaction across decades of work. In essence, we follow our own or other peoples intuition rather than facts or data, which is rarely a recipe for success. The problem is further compounded by how fast the ground has shifted, especially over the past decades. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} Even before the rise of generative AI, career predictability had been steadily eroding. Globalization, repeated economic shocks, declining job tenure, the collapse of clear promotion ladders, and the shift from stable organizational careers to project-based and boundary-less work all contributed to rising uncertainty. Longitudinal labor data shows that occupational half-lives were shrinking well before automation became a mainstream concern, with entire roles emerging and disappearing within a decade. In parallel, individuals were expected to manage their own employability, continuously update skills, and absorb risks once carried by employers or institutions. AI has not created this uncertainty so much as amplified it, accelerating the obsolescence of skills, compressing career ladders, and blurring professional boundaries. Knowledge and technical expertise, once reliable sources of differentiation, are increasingly commoditized. At the same time, employers place growing value on judgment, learning agility, influence, and curiosity, capabilities that universities still struggle to measure or systematically develop. The result is a widening gap between what people trained for, what they are good at, and what the labor market actually rewards. It is therefore no surprise that career anxiety is rising, even among people who appear successful on paper. Gallup data shows that roughly 60% of employees feel emotionally detached at work, while fewer than one in four strongly believe their job aligns with their strengths. LinkedIn data consistently finds that the average worker will change roles every three to four years, yet meaningful career pivots remain rare and often delayed until dissatisfaction becomes acute. At the same time, mobility has slowed. After the Great Resignation came what economists now call the Big Stay: people feel stuck rather than settled. They are rethinking their careers cognitively, but postponing action behaviorally. In other words, job hugging has replaced job hopping. So how can you tell whether you are merely going through a rough patch or whether it is genuinely time for a career pivot? Decades of research on career development, identity, and motivation point to four reliable signals. 1. Your learning has stalled, not just your motivation One of the most robust predictors of engagement and career satisfaction is perceived progress. When people feel they are learning, they tolerate stress and uncertainty better. When learning stops, even high performers disengage. Professor Herminia Ibarras research on career transitions shows that people rarely pivot successfully through introspection alone. Clarity follows action, not the other way around. If your role no longer exposes you to new skills, perspectives, or problems, that is not a temporary slump but a structural constraint. Before quitting outright, experiment: Be ready to fail smart, in the sense of learning from your experience and becoming wiser as a consequence. As the saying goes, experience is what you get when you didnt get what you wanted to get. For example, take on side projects, advisory roles, or temporary assignments that test alternative identities. Stagnation becomes dangerous only when experimentation stops. 2. Your strengths no longer translate into value Many careers falter not because people lose competence, but because the market stops rewarding what they are good at. Technological change makes this especially common. Skills that once differentiated professionals are automated, standardized, or absorbed into platforms. As I have illustrated in one of my previous books, AI is far more likely to automate tasks within jobschanging the skills constellation needed to perform themthan actual jobs. Research on personjob fit shows that sustained misalignment between strengths and role predicts burnout and underperformance, even among conscientious high achievers. A useful diagnostic question is whether your best contributions still feel essential or merely adequate. Successful pivots rarely involve abandoning strengths. They involve redeploying them where they matter more. 3. Your career identity has become rigid Ibarras work highlights that career change is as much an identity transition as a skills transition. People delay pivots not because they lack optios, but because they are overly attached to who they think they are supposed to be. This is also why authenticity is overrated: Why limit yourself to your past and present self when you can instead create or sculpt a broader, more diverse, and richer version of yourself? This is where the squiggly careers concept, popularized by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis of Amazing If, is especially useful. Modern careers are no longer linear ladders but adaptive paths, shaped by lateral moves, pauses, reinventions, and redefinitions of success. If you feel compelled to defend your current title, industry, or trajectory rather than evolve it, you may be protecting a legacy identity rather than building a future one. Indeed, progress is not a straight line! 4. You are succeeding externally but disengaging internally One of the most overlooked signals is sustained performance paired with declining well-being. Longitudinal studies show that people can maintain output for years after motivation erodes, but at a cost to health, creativity, and long-term employability. If your reputation is strong but your curiosity, energy, or sense of meaning is steadily diminishing, that is not ingratitude. It is misalignment. Career satisfaction is not a soft outcome. It is a leading indicator of future performance and adaptability. In short, we tend to romanticize career pivots as bold acts of reinvention. But the evidence suggests the opposite. Successful pivots usually happen through small, low-risk experiments that reshape identity over time, guided less by passion than by a disciplined willingness to revise assumptions in response to reality. In an era where work will change repeatedly, the real risk is not changing direction too often, but staying in place long after the signals suggest you should move. The most resilient professionals are not those with fixed plans, but those who know when the cost of standing still has quietly begun to exceed the cost of change. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
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E-Commerce
The geopolitical implications of President Trumps controversial weekend attack on Venezuela and the capture and extradition of its president, Nicolás Maduro, are still being digested by legal and security experts in the two days following the shocking announcement. What is more certain is the immediate market reaction from a select number of publicly traded stocks that have the potential to be impacted by the military action. Heres how Americas top energy, defense, and tech stocks are moving on the first trading day after the U.S. intervened in the affairs of its South American neighbor. Americas oil and energy stocks soar Some of the most closely watched stocks today will be those of oil and energy giants traded on U.S. exchanges, particularly Chevron Corporation. The Texas-based oil company is the American energy giant with the biggest footprint in the region, notes CNBC, and thus the one primed to benefit the most from Trumps stated desire to start making money for the country. But Chevron isnt the only one that stands to benefit. In a Saturday press conference addressing Americas military intervention, Trump said, Were going to have our very large United States oil companiesthe biggest anywhere in the worldgo in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure. While the president did not name any specific companies, based on premarket trading this morning, investors seem to think that the following oil and energy giants stand to benefit from the intervention: Chevron (NYSE: CVX): up 7.3% ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM): up 4.5% ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP): up 7.3% Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL): up 10.3% One interesting thing to note: Two prominent oil companies that trade on the New York Stock Exchange are currently down slightly in premarket trading. Those companies are Shell (NYSE: SHEL), down 0.7%, and BP (NYSE: BP), down 0.7%. Shell is a British-Dutch company and BP is a British company. Investors may believe that Trump is unlikely to allow foreign oil companieseven those of its alliesto profit from Americas intervention in Venezuela. But investors are cautious about defense stocks Americas military intervention in Venezuela suggests that under Trumps second term, the U.S. may engage in a new expansionist hard power policy, directly using its military might to enforce changes around the globe. Indeed, as noted by Reuters, Trump has already threatened another military operation against a southern neighborthis time in Colombia. While the moral and legal aspects of such action are debatable, it’s undeniable that an expansion of Americas military action is good for the bottom lines of the countrys most prominent defense companies. However, investors so far seem to be taking a cautious approach to U.S. companies operating in the defense space, with many companies up only slightly in premarket trading on Monday: Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT): up 1% RTX (NYSE: RTX): up 0.7% Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC): up 1% General Dynamics (NYSE: GD): up 1% The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA): up 0.2% Defense-adjacent tech stocks are also up While many of Americas tech giants, including Google and Microsoft, have defense contracts, some smaller tech firms almost exclusively cater to the countrys military and security apparatus. Such companies likewise stand to benefit from increased U.S. military operations. Yet as of the time of this writing, investors also seem to be taking a more cautious approach to these stocks, which include: Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ:PLTR): up 3.8% Honeywell International (NASDAQ:HON): up 0.2% L3Harris Technologies (NYSE:LHX): up 0.7%
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E-Commerce
2026 will be a year of architectural showstoppers. Major projects, from corporate headquarters to sports stadiums and museums, will wrap construction and open to the public in 2026, bringing bold, sometimes audacious buildings to cities around the world. Here are nine buildings opening in 2026 to watch for. [Photo: Vincenzo Lombardo/Getty Images] Arena Milanoopening in FebruaryMilanDavid Chipperfield Architects Built partly to host ice hockey games during the 2026 Winter Olympics, Arena Milano is a 16,000-seat multipurpose arena that’s expected to become a new center for sports and concerts in Milan. Pritzker Prize-winning David Chipperfield Architects’ design, done in conjunction with Arup, is the standout venue for this edition of the Olympics. An inverted triple-decker layer cake that calls to mind Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York, the building is intended to evoke the elliptical form of the city’s former Roman amphitheater. Guests attend the LACMA First Look Reception on June 26, 2025 in Los Angeles. [Photo: Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for LACMA] Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s David Geffen Galleriesopening in AprilLos AngelesPeter Zumthor Inherently controversial, architect Peter Zumthor’s Wilshire Boulevard-spanning blob-like replacement of Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA’s) main gallery buildings has been more than a decade in the making, with no shortage of hand-wringing about its shape, cost, and necessity. The concrete building’s ink blot form spreads across a single elevated floor, marking a hard departure from the museum’s mid-century campus design. One early reviewahead of a slightly odd three-day preview in June 2025 of what was essentially an empty buildingfound the execution of Zumthor’s vision flawed, but also calls the building a refreshingly risk-taking piece of architecture. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Studio Gang (@studiogang) Hudson Valley Shakespeare Theateropening in JuneGarrison, New YorkStudio Gang The Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center is the first permanent, purpose-built stage for Hudson Valley Shakespeare, an open air theater company that has been performing under a glorified tent since 1987. Tucked under a swoopy timber tortoise shell of a canopy, the new theater was designed by Studio Gang to shield performers and audience members from the elements and the sun’s glare during dusk performances. It’s also a picture frame for the site’s epic view, opening fully behind the stage to provide audiences a panorama of the ridgelines of the Hudson Valley. [Photo: Edward C. Robison III/courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of Art] Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Expansionopening in JuneBentonville, ArkansasSafdie Architects The 2011 opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Northwest Arkansas was a bold investment by Walmart heir Alice L. Walton in broadening access to world class art beyond the typical metropolitan centers of the U.S. Now, 15 years later, Safdie Architects has returned to broaden the museum’s reach even further. The project expands the museum’s space by 50% while extending the aesthetics of the original design. Future visitors may be unable to tell where the expansion begins, or that there ever even was one. [Image: Snhetta/Theodore Roosevelt Library] Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Libraryopening in JulyMedora, North DakotaSnhetta Set in the wide openness of North Dakota where Theodore Roosevelt ranched for years before becoming the 26th president of the United States, the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is a stunning earthship of rammed earth, mass timber, and a nearly camouflaged roofline. Designed by Snhetta to physically blend into the landscape, the building is meant to reflect Roosevelt’s environmental stewardship and deep connection to the landscape of the North Dakota Badlands. [Photo: Al Bello/Getty Images] Buffalo Bills’ Highmark Stadiumopening in summer 2026Orchard Park, New YorkPopulous The Buffalo Bills NFL team is moving on from its previous home of more than 50 years into a brand new 60,000-seat stadium. Despiteor possibly because ofBuffalo’s snowy winters, the stadium was designed to be an open bowl, welcoming the elements onto the field and all but the uppermost stadium seats. The stadium’s designer, sports architecture specialists Populous, calls it “one of the most intimidating home field environments in the league.” [Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images] Lucas Museum of Narrative Artopening in SeptemberLos AngelesMAD One of the most anticipated new cultural institutions in recent years, George Lucas’s $1 billion museum is hotly awaited both for its extensive art collection and its far-out architecture. Designed by MAD Architects with an integrated landscape by Studio-MLA, the spaceship-shaped building is a curvaceous modern behemoth in Los Angeles history-laden Exposition Park. Though his firm has built dozens of shapely museums and opera houses across China, this will be lead architect Ma Yansong’s first major cultural institution in the U.S. View this post on Instagram Atlassian Centralopening in NovemberSydneySHoP Architects When software giant Atlassian’s new headquarters building opens in 2026, this 39-story skyscraper will be the world’s tallest hybrid timber building. Made up primarily of six mass timber four-level buildings-within-the-building, the tower encases everything in a criss-crossing steel exoskeleton wrapped in operable glass windows. Designed by SHoP Architects, the tower is also a hybrid at ground level, preserving a historic train shed and converting part of it into the tower’s new lobby. [Photo: Sadak Souici/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock] Guggenheim Abu Dhabiopening TBDAbu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Gehry Partners Possibly the last major project to be designed by architect Frank Gehry before his death in December 2025, the long-awaited Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is expected to open to the public sometime in 2026, 20 years after it was first announced. Appearing to be a jumble of funnels, tubes, and cubes, the museum fully embodies Gehry’s signature style. Its government backers hope the museum also taps into the energy of previous Gehry projects, like its counterpart museum in Bilbao, Spain. One official recently told a local newspaper the museum aspired to be “a civic space.”
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