Author: Mike Nova

• Being well-liked is an asset at work. When cutbacks become routine, it can make a difference.
• That’s especially true in industries like tech, where layoffs and AI-driven change have made likability extra valuable.
• Likability matters most in roles requiring collaboration, but technical skills remain essential.

Survival for some tech workers could come down to something more than code quality or shipping speed: likability.

There is an increased focus in the industry on pleasing the boss as well as “upper upper management,” said Soubhik Dawn, who has worked in tech for nearly two decades.

Of course, being well-liked is important if you want to get ahead in any career, but it’s become an especially relevant topic in tech as layoffs and AI transform the industry.

“There is a little bit of showmanship that is going on. That’s what I’m hearing from my circle,” said Dawn, founder of Upplai, which uses AI to help job seekers with résumés and cover letters.

Competence still matters, yet at a time when some tech companies are demanding more of workers, being well-liked can be the thing that keeps you in your job.

‘The most important skill’

Being likable is a “more important skill than computer programming, or system design, or algorithms,” said another tech worker who spoke to Business Insider on the condition of anonymity because his employer doesn’t permit staffers to speak to the press.

Getting along well, especially with the higher-ups, has become “the most important skill to survive,” he said.

It’s a lesson that’s taken him a little while to learn, he said. He once tried to take on too many tasks to try to please his boss and skip-level managers. That led to him falling behind. Instead, he said that he should have spent more time cultivating relationships with those in management.

Dawn, from Upplai, said he had seen likability at work take several forms. Over the years, he’s watched as some colleagues seemed to prioritize hanging out with VPs or senior VPs and offered to add a bit of polish to a slide deck or run errands.

Those workers, Dawn said, could then go on to complete some small project and “get recognition like crazy.”

In some cases, becoming likable in the eyes of the boss comes from simply getting a lot done or doing what you say you’ll do — and flagging any issues before they balloon into bigger problems.

“That kind of leads to likability,” Dawn said. “Likability is more like dependability.”

Warmth before competence

In the workplace and elsewhere, we often judge people first on warmth — which includes traits like trustworthiness — and only afterward on competence or skill, said Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist and former professor at Harvard Business School.

In moments of uncertainty, warmth dominates, she told Business Insider. Cuddy has researched perceptions of warmth versus competence in the workplace for more than two decades.

“What people are calling likability right now is actually a proxy for trustworthiness, and trust is historically low,” she said.

Cuddy said that when people feel uncertain, they start to read each other differently. When trust is low, people tend to rely heavily on trust cues as the most effective way to assess someone, she said.

So, while being capable is still important, if your colleagues don’t like you, it can hold you back. Your competence can even become a threat if you’re not trustworthy, Cuddy said.

She said that the desire for trust is why “likability suddenly sounds more important than the technical skill.”

It’s less about whether your colleague wants to have a beer with you after work, Cuddy said. “It’s about feeling safe,” she said.

“Trust is the conduit of influence,” Cuddy said. “You could have a million great ideas, but if you don’t have a medium through which those ideas can travel, it doesn’t matter.”

Likability matters more in some roles

Still, pure likability has its limits, said Tom Chi, who has worked at Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, and who is a founding partner of At One Ventures, a Silicon Valley VC firm.

That’s because, for many roles, there are “real, quantitative performance metrics” — things like how many lines of code someone has checked in, he said.

“It’s actually relatively straightforward to tell whether you’re adding a lot to the team,” Chi said.

The tech world has plenty of examples of the “brilliant jerk” — that talented colleague who rubs others the wrong way, but gets away with it because of their skills or smarts.

“That’s a deep part of tech culture,” he said.

Where likability might play a more significant role, Chi said, is in roles such as product management or design, which center on coordinating with colleagues, building consensus, or working with customers. In those cases, he said, likability and friendliness tend to matter more, he said. Because amiable traits are ultimately demonstrations of competence.

“That’s what merit looks like in that type of role,” he said.

At the same time, Chi said, workers who focus too much on being likable are at risk.

“If one wanted to prioritize that over developing merit, then I think you’re in for a bad ride,” he said.

That hasn’t deterred the anonymous coder.

“Does everyone like you?” he said. “That’s how you survive in Big Tech right now.”

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• Ghislaine Maxwell, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and Luigi Mangione all have different Thanksgiving day menus.
• Only one of these newsworthy inmates will be served a drumstick, considered a potential weapon.
• The other two must eat warmed-over, pre-cut turkey slices — with a spork.

Ghislaine Maxwell, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and Luigi Mangione are all spending Thanksgiving in federal lockup this year.

It’s the fifth Turkey Day behind bars for Maxwell, who’s serving a 20-year sentence for trafficking women and girls to Jeffrey Epstein. It’s the second year behind bars for music mogul Combs, who’s serving four years for transporting sex workers, and the first for Mangione, accused in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Each will eat their prison poultry at the ungodly hour of 11 a.m., the universal time across the federal system for the main hot meal of the day. Talk about an Early Bird special.

But because these newsworthy inmates are housed at three different federal facilities, they’ll each experience different menus and table settings.

These differences are nothing to shake a spork at.

Thanks to her surprise move this summer to a Texas “Club Fed,” Maxwell will enjoy for the first time this year the privilege of eating her holiday turkey with the full complement of prison cutlery: a plastic fork, knife, and spoon.

The same goes for Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and former “Real Housewives” star Jen Shah, who are also housed at the same facility, and anyone else at one of the country’s more than 70 federal prison camps, which feature the lowest level of security.

Everyone else in a federal lockup? Sporks.

“Anybody who’s not in a camp is not going to get a plastic knife,” prison consultant Sam Mangel told Business Insider. “They’re going to get a spork, something that can’t be used as a weapon.”

Here’s another special privilege for camp residents, if one can call it that: Thanksgiving drumsticks to go with the standard prison fare of mashed potatoes with gravy and mixed vegetables.

Only at the camps do they trust inmates with what Mangel called “turkey on the bone.” Everywhere else, it’s “turkey roast,” which Mangel says is a euphemism for warmed-over pre-sliced turkey.

“The bones can be fashioned into weapons,” he explained of the drumstick disparity.

The drumsticks are “a step up in the trust level,” said Mangel, a former federal camp inmate himself.

Also, they’re sizeable — “six to nine inches long,” he said. And the prison ovens do crisp up the skin quite nicely, he said.

There’s a drawback, though.

“The drumsticks, I can tell you from experience, tended to be filled with, you know, tendons,” Mangel said. “While they looked good, there was just a nominal amount of meat on them.”

“It’s not top grade by any means,” he added, speaking of all the turkey options.

• Morgan Stanley predicts AI shopping agents will add $115 billion in US e-commerce by 2030.
• Nearly half of US online shoppers are expected to use AI-powered agents by 2030.
• Retailers like Amazon and Walmart have launched AI tools to boost online shopping growth.

AI-powered agents are poised to shake up online shopping. They could also meaningfully expand the US e-commerce market.

Morgan Stanley wrote in a note last week that AI shopping agents will transform the online retail landscape over the next few years, predicting that nearly half of all US e-commerce shoppers will use AI agents by 2030.

These “agentic commerce” tools that can make product recommendations, run price comparisons, and manage orders could add as much as $115 billion to US online spending, the firm wrote in the note.

“We believe agentic commerce — in effect the ability to have a personal digital interactive shopper — is set to be the best next substantial GenAI-enabled unlock,” the note stated. “With greater digitization of consumers’ wallets, agentic could add up to $115 billion to our ’30 e-comm forecast and shake up the e-comm funnel with implications across retailers and digital ad players.”

That bullish outlook underscores why retailers have been scrambling to launch their own AI shopping assistants, including Amazon’s Rufus, Walmart’s Sparky, and Target’s ChatGPT-powered app.

OpenAI deepened ChatGPT’s agentic AI-powered shopping capabilities this week, adding a “shopping research” feature to help users find the best products for their needs. Google has also enhanced its AI shopping tools ahead of the holiday season, debuting an AI assistant that can call local stores on a user’s behalf.

Morgan Stanley wrote in the note that personalized grocery shopping could become a “key unlock” for agentic commerce growth. After groceries, Morgan Stanley predicts household products, personal care, and apparel categories to benefit from AI shopping agents.

Amazon has been an early mover in AI shopping assistants with its Rufus tool. Rufus is expected to indirectly contribute over $700 million in operating profit this year, Business Insider previously reported. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in October that Rufus was on pace to drive $10 billion in “incremental annualized sales,” although he pointed out that the customer experience still needs improvement.

“We’re very excited about the long-term prospect of agentic commerce,” Jassy said during an October call with analysts. “The promise is that AI and agentic commerce solutions are going to expand the amount of shopping that happens online.”

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• Defense officials are signaling a shift away from traditional contracting and toward startups.
• VC funding for the space has hit $19 billion, up from $10 billion last year, per PitchBook.
• Business Insider has compiled its coverage of the top defense funding rounds of 2025.

Defense and aerospace startups have already raised more than $19 billion in 2025, according to data firm PitchBook.

This comes as the Pentagon, under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, calls for a total overhaul of the military’s acquisition system to “focus on speed and volume,” he said in a speech earlier this month. The military’s push towards faster and cheaper innovation is resonating in Silicon Valley, with investors pouring record amounts of cash into AI-powered weapons, drones, and other defense-focused startups.

The “objective is simple,” Hegseth continued. “Transform the entire acquisition system to operate on a wartime footing.”

Last year, global venture capital investments in defense and aerospace companies totaled over $10 billion. All signs point to this year nearly doubling last: As of late November, global defense and aerospace funding has surpassed $19 billion, per PitchBook.

As if Silicon Valley needed any more reassurance from the military’s top brass of its bet on defense tech, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll recently said the Army aims to work less with traditional defense businesses and procure more weapons from startups.

These proclamations highlight the Trump administration’s push to modernize the Defense Department and its armaments with Silicon Valley’s best and brightest.

The enthusiasm has spurred something of an arms race on the opposite coast. In El Segundo, Calif., where a handful of traditional defense contractors are headquartered, startups are setting up shop in warehouses adorned with American flags and squat racks and racing to build battlefield-ready tech. They’ve constructed FPV drones, used AI to automate factory floors, and sent capsules to space. Last week, an El Segundo-based nuclear startup said it split the atom.

It’s also led to mega rounds and soaring valuations. In February, Saronic, which makes autonomous ships, raised $600 million at a $4 billion valuation led by solo capitalist Elad Gil. Anduril Industries, Palmer Luckey’s autonomous weapons startup, raised $2.5 billion at a $30.5 billion valuation in June; Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund led the round with a $1 billion check. In mid November, Chaos Industries, a startup building radar tech to help militaries detect autonomous threats, raised $510 million led by Valor Equity Partners at a $4.5 billion valuation.

Business Insider has covered a handful of this year’s notable defense tech deals. Here are a few:

Onebrief raises $20 million at a $1.1 billion valuation

The Honolulu-based startup raised a $20 million Series C extension in June, led by Battery Ventures, bringing its total funding to over $120 million and pushing its valuation past $1 billion. That’s an over $400 million increase in valuation since January, when General Catalyst led a $50 million Series C round that valued Onebrief at $650 million.

Palantir alums raise $15 million to cut through red tape

Former Palantir employees Zachary Long, Eric Schwartz, and Ben Fichter founded Conductor AI in 2023. The startup uses artificial intelligence to help those in large organizations — like the US government — fill out paperwork and effectively resolve compliance issues, and has raised around $15 million for its Series A round led by Lux Capital.

Dirac secures $11 million to take the guesswork out of complex machinery assembly

Fil Aronshtein, Dirac’s cofounder and CEO, says BuildOS, the company’s main product, is a software tool that uses AI to generate assembly instructions for manufacturers. The startup raised nearly $11 million from Founders Fund and Coatue Management — and struck a new partnership with industrial manufacturing giant Siemens.

A former SpaceX engineer raised $10 million in 36 hours

AndrenaM’s rapid fundraise signals just how eager investors are about the new wave of defense tech. The startup, cofounded by Matej Cernosek and Alex Chu, uses AI to analyze sonar data and deliver real-time insights, aiming to give this legacy defense tool a high-tech upgrade.

A 21-year-old founder who cut open his leg to demo his biotech raises $4.3 million

Jake Adler poured his actual blood into his startup. Adler, the founder of Pilgrim, a biotech and defense startup building medical devices for the battlefield, filmed himself testing his flagship product — a hemostatic dressing he calls Kingsfoil — by cutting open both of his thighs. Following the video, the Redwood, Calif.-based startup raised $4.3 million in seed funding.