Henry Blodget

US economic activity is starting to recover already and it seems “reopening” actually doesn’t matter much difference.

Like millions of Americans and people around the world, I was appalled — but unfortunately not altogether surprised — by the disgrace of Trump’s mob storming the US Capitol building.I was also dismayed by the difference between the police presence and response to this attack and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations last summer. (I don’t necessarily blame the officers on the scene, who seemed overwhelmed, but there are still many unanswered questions about why they were so unprepared and why hel…

I had a front-row seat for the dot-com bubble, and learned a few crucial lessons that I’m applying to the current market cycle.

Hello! I’m writing a series about how to succeed in the world of work. It’s especially for those who are early in their careers, but I hope it will help others, too. See an intro to the series and my background here.If you remember only one piece of career advice, I would suggest it be this: Be the CEO of your career.What does that mean?It means:Take responsibility for the direction and progress of your career — for where you are, what you are doing, and where you are headed.When people enter th…

I gather that some Gen Zers are appalled by traditional 9-to-5 hours, “corporate soullessness,” and other aspects of modern work.I sympathize!Over my ~35 years in the workforce, I’ve felt and heard some of the same frustrations. I’ve also talked with hundreds of colleagues and friends over the years, and I’ve seen these and other work-related questions and challenges come up again and again.So I’m going to write a series on modern work — specifically, how to navigate it, how to figure what kind…

I’m writing a series about how to succeed in the world of work. It’s especially for those who are early in their careers, but I hope it will help others, too. See an intro to the series and my background here.Some members of Gen Z have gone viral recently for their frustrations with 9-to-5 hours and “soulless” corporate work. I get where they’re coming from!When I started my first real corporate job, in an investment-banking training program in the early 1990s, I was initially so depressed by th…

Over the past 35 years, I’ve been the lucky and grateful recipient of some excellent career advice.Such as:“Ride your strengths.” Bad bosses and career advisers will often tell you that, to succeed, you should “improve your weaknesses.” This is crap. Instead, you should improve your strengths — what you are naturally good at relative to others — and work your way into jobs and careers that take advantage of them. Jobs and careers are competitive. You need every edge you can get.“Be the CEO of yo…

At the New York Times DealBook conference on Wednesday, host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon why the company works with TikTok owner ByteDance, a company that some people believe is effectively an arm of the Chinese government and therefore a national security risk.Dimon said he would not talk about specific clients, but “you can imagine the due diligence and work we do to figure out the truth about those things.”“If some of those people are doing things that we think are truly…

I’m late to the coffee game.After drinking tea most of my life, I didn’t have a coffee until I was late in my fifth decade.But then I had one. And now I’m hooked. Now my craving has intensified to where, each evening, I get stoked about the next morning, when I can press the Nespresso button and get my fix.I love the simplicity and speed of my Nespresso machine. And the coffee tastes pretty good! But the pods are startlingly expensive. And it’s a bummer to dump the used pods in the recycling bin…

Hello! I’m Henry Blodget.I’m the cofounder and executive chair of Business Insider. I’ve worked here for 16 years. I was CEO and editor in chief for the first eight and just CEO for the second eight. I also did a bunch of stuff before that, which you can read about here.I’m writing a series of articles about success (and failure) at work. It’s called:MAKE IT HAPPEN! A field guide to the working world for Gen Z and beyond.A list of the individual stories is below.In the series, I am addressing qu…

Everyone has theories about why Elon Musk publicly insulted and threatened Twitter/X advertisers last week.My colleague Katie Notopoulos describes one of those theories, which is that he’s trying to tank the value of the company so the banks that loaned him money to buy it will be forced to settle for less.Katie doesn’t believe that theory.I don’t either.I also don’t believe the theory that Elon is just stupid or clueless about how to run an ad-supported media business. Whatever “stupid” is, Elo…

Early in my career, I made an embarrassing mistake.I’m not proud of it. In fact, I still shudder when I think of my arrogance and cluelessness. But, like most mistakes and wrong turns, it taught me lessons that have helped ever since.It happened more than 30 years ago, when I was in my mid-20s. As part of my work-advice series, I’ll tell you about it.It began when I realized that the “adventurous” career path I had chosen after school was no longer working for me and that I needed to look farthe…

I gather that some Gen Zers are so appalled by the working woes of millennials that they’ve sworn off working for “The Man” and, instead, plan to go into business for themselves.That can, in fact, be an excellent career decision!But it can also be a stressful, disappointing, and difficult one — and one that may be significantly less financially rewarding than working for an existing organization.And working for yourself does not actually come with one big benefit that most people assume it does…

Business Insider just did a cool survey of 1,800 18-26 year-old members of Gen Z.Among many other interesting findings, the survey revealed that a minority of this group (38%) think that, in America, people should have to work fewer than 40 hours a week to earn middle-class wages.This percentage was higher than the percentage of other generations who answered the same question.For example, 35% of Millennials (age 27-42), think Americans should have to work fewer than 40 hours a week to earn midd…

Given that I’m writing a series about “succeeding at work,” I realize I should have started with a simple question:What is success?Here’s my answer:“Success” is doing work you like that allows you to live a life you want.That’s it.It’s not “climbing the corporate ladder.” Or “achieving X by X date or X age.” Or “making X amount of money.“Those and other goals can be part of success for you, if you want.But the definition of “success” is and should be different for each of us. And one of the hard…

Some members of Gen Z have decided that the future is so bleak that they’ll never have kids.Please keep an open mind, Gen Z!If you don’t want to have kids because you don’t want to have kids, of course that’s fine. Despite the conviction of many parents, having kids obviously isn’t the only way to live a full, meaningful, and valuable life.But please don’t write off having kids because of “climate change” or “the economy” or some other temporal concern.Our future (and present) do, of course, inc…

A smart reader asked me to talk about an important element of career success — luck.He also sent me a fascinating paper on the topic.The paper’s conclusion — one I agree with — is that luck plays a much bigger role in success than most people think.I’ve often been startled by the extent to which some successful people appear to believe their success is solely (or at least mostly) the result of their own talent and effort. This seems particularly true for people who equate success with money.I ge…

At some point in your life and career journey, you will probably want to think about money — specifically, how important money is to you, how much of it you think you might want or need, and what you are willing and able to do to get it.Importantly, you’ll want to answer these questions for yourself. Money means different things to different people. And although research suggests that, up to a certain income level ($75,000 a year, in one study), money does increase happiness — beyond that, it of…

Billionaires are controversial these days. Some people admire them. Others blame them for society’s ills. But, according to one friendly billionaire, Mark Cuban, there’s no downside to being one.So, how does one become one?There are three legal ways.The first is inheritance. According to last year’s Forbes 400 list, about 30% of the 400 richest people in the US got their billions that way. So if you don’t think you’re up for making a billion yourself, just cheer on your parents.Marrying billions…

The House has passed a bill that might force TikTok’s owner, the Chinese company ByteDance, to sell the app — or else risk having it banned in America by the US government.First, let’s acknowledge that this is a smart solution to the TikTok problem — namely, that an estimated 170 million Americans are addicted to an app that critics say is capable of gathering sensitive data about each of them and sharing it with an authoritarian and potentially hostile foreign government and/or brainwashing the…