Well, well, well, who would’ve thought the brand that did this, would suddenly be partnering with nonprofits to better understand the challenges men face as the result of masculine stereotypes? It feels a bit like finding out the jock who bullied you in high school is now a social worker.

The brands newest ad illustrates real Google searches guys make, to draw attention to issues surrounding what it calls “toxic masculinity.” It’s part of Axe’s ongoing “Find Your Magic” campaign that launched last year and significantly toned down the brand’s over-the-top bro vibe. At that time, Axe senior marketing director Matthew McCarthy told me the shift reflects a larger cultural attitude change. “Guys today, particularly young guys, are calling bullshit on those archetypes and saying they won’t be constricted or defined by what it meant to be a guy in past generations.” Here, they take things a step further from simply applauding the concept of individuality to actively trying to help guys figure it out. Onward!

Axe “Is It OK For Guys . . .”

What: Newest ad in Axe’s “Find Your Magic” campaign that asks tough questions about masculinity.

Who: Axe, 72andSunny Amsterdam

Why We Care: According to research from Axe and nonprofit Ditch the Label, 72% of young men have been told how a “real man” should behave. By bringing real Google searches to life, the spot helps hit the issue of identity in a way that’s both thought-provoking and challenging.

Lululemon “This Is Yoga”

What: The first global ad film from the athletic/leisure giant aiming to redefine itself beyond yoga pants.

Who: Lululemon, Virtue Worldwide

Why We Care: This was a bit of a tough call. It’s as well done and stylish as you’d expect from Vice’s in-house agency, yet has that familiar Vice vibe that makes it seem like it could work just as well as a promo for a new Vice show. And yet, it’s also an interesting departure for a brand that’s pushing to get beyond its core audience.

Apple “Designed For Everyone”

What: A new campaign to mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day on May 18.

Who: Apple

Why We Care: I picked the Carlos V. spot, but really, this pick is about the entire campaign because, as a whole, it really brings together a fuller picture of the impact of accessible tech. These individual stories put faces, names, and lives being lived to the various apps and features on a device.

Adult Swim “Alien: Covenant–Rick And Morty”

What: Rick and Morty stumble upon an abandoned ship in this mash-up between Adult Swim weirdness and Ridley Scott’s horrorscape.

Who: Adult Swim, 20th Century Fox

Why We Care: Well, 20th Century Fox keeps on keepin’ on with the kind of movie marketing that landed it on my ad/marketing picks for Fast Company‘s 2017 Most Innovative Companies list. As my colleague Joe Berkowitz wrote earlier this week, this promo actually captures the essence of the hilariously insane Adult Swim show. The odd couple of cult fandom–Rick and Morty, and the Alien film franchise–actually fit perfectly together, in what is by far the greatest piece of sponsored content so far this year.

Brooklyn Film Festival “Because We Can”

What: A new campaign for the Brooklyn Film Festival that flaunts a certain giving-zero-f**ks attitude often associated with the borough.

Who: Brooklyn Film Festival, TBWA\Chiat\Day New York

Why We Care: Hands down (heyooh!) the most creative masturbation joke used in advertising that I can remember. If you’re selling creativity, isn’t that enough?

The next time you apply for a job, you may have to play a game on your phone.

Gamifying the hiring process is a relatively new trend in the way companies find talented candidates, but it’s gaining traction, according to Finn Hill, business analyst at GreatRok, a seed fund for early-stage startups in the recruitment industry.

Why Testing Job Candidates Is So Valuable

In a report for Tech Talent Labs, Finn asserts, “2017 is the year of assessment.” He’s referring to the short tests that give potential employers a profile of the candidate to help them determine if they’d be a good fit for the position. There’s been little innovation in these assessments for the past decade, but that seems to be changing now. “This technique is open to an awful lot of human error and is affected heavily by inherent biases in the employer,” Finn points out.

In fact, 95% of companies admit to making bad hires each year because communication channels aren’t used effectively and employers invest resources in less efficient ways to attract talent. According to Talent Board, as many as 88% of employers are allowing more candidates to complete their applications even after they fail screening questions. While over 80% of candidates answer general screening questions during the application process, only 50% are asked for job-specific skills, and less than one-third are asked to take assessments.

But as Josh Millet, founder and CEO of Criteria Corp, is quick to point out, “Research shows that aptitude tests are consistently one of the most predictive factors of job success.” He cites a meta-analysis summarizing 85 years of research from the University of Iowa and Michigan State that finds cognitive aptitude beats out interviews, experience, and education. “The research shows cognitive aptitude to be about twice as predictive as job interviews, three times as predictive as job experience, and four times as predictive as education level,” Millet says.

Making Assessment More Fun (And Effective)

However, Finn notes that assessments can be part of a “bland phase” of a process that could stand to be more engaging.

Taking advantage of data analytics is one way to boost the predictive power of assessments, but gaming is becoming a way to capture another segment of candidates–right on their smartphones. Research from the Boston Consulting Group and Recruit Works Institute reveals that 55% of searches globally happened through internet job sites and 35% via a smartphone. 

Fast Company has reported on CodeFight’s Company Bots, which pit applicants against an employer’s bot to solve coding challenges and therefore assess their skill level. Others, like Ketchum, a global marketing and public relations firm, uses an app called LaunchPad to gamify the recruiting process and then measures on creative, digital, written, and visual communications skills.

Beyond specific skills, Finn notes that companies such as Arctic Shores and Debut have jobseekers play video games within the application process to test key traits important to the employers. “Arctic Shores use games to test behaviors and form a psychometric profile of the candidate, whilst Debut test basic skills in-play to help employers pick out the strongest applicants,” Finn writes.

Millet’s Criteria Corp. just launched JobFlare, an iOS brain games app, to take the gamification one step further. Playing six games for 90 seconds is meant to test cognitive abilities, but jobseekers play even before they apply for any position. They sign up, enter their basic job interests and location, and play games like Robot Inspector and Mumble Jumble. “Verbal communication, quantitative ability, attention to detail, and other skills have long been identified as traits associated with job success,” says Millet. “JobFlare lets users demonstrate these traits through fun games, showing off their potential to employers regardless of their job experience or educational background.”

The app then takes their results and crunches them with data from their profile to generate a set of relevant job postings that are sent via email. “For the highest-performing jobseekers, our team may reach out to them directly with customized job opportunities at premium employers,” says Millet.

Millet says that while Criteria has been in the business of assessments for over a decade, JobFlare was only just released this month, so there are no successful placements yet and there are no employers within the app. Lists of job openings are generated through a partnership with job board ZipRecruiter.

Millet maintains that JobFlare’s gamification is a great motivator even before a jobseeker knows where to apply because “it will appeal to the competitive/geeky side of us.” He points out that users can see how they rank against all other users, and can also compare scores versus others in their chosen fields. “There is also practice effect for most of the games,” Millet explains, meaning scores generally improve over time, so that also creates a drive to beat one’s own score and continue to advance in the overall rankings.   

Tom Schoenfelder is the senior vice president of Research and Development at another employee assessment and talent development firm, Caliper. He believes that overall, games promise to improve the candidate experience even in this “somewhat primitive” stage.

“Application right now tends to focus more on the cognitive ability constructs, but application in other constructs such as situational judgment and decision making are emerging,” Schoenfelder observes. “The big hurdle right now is that there is not a lot of validity evidence for the methodology, but that will come with time.”

What if there were a way to earn hundreds, or even thousands, of extra dollars at work with no need to reach a certain quota, exercise stock options, or get a promotion? Well, good news–there is. Offering referral bonuses–monetary rewards given to employees who recommend a successfully hired job candidate–has become commonplace in the corporate world.

Companies often find their best hires from internal referrals, so it’s in their best interest to incentivize employees to tap their networks for top talent–and that often means hefty paychecks for employees who are successful in doing so. So if your company has a program like this and you’re not taking advantage of it already, it’s high time that you did. After all, it’s a win-win-win situation: Your recruiter fills their requisition, your friend or former colleague gets a great new job, and you get some extra cash and the chance to work with an amazing new colleague.

Related:4 Steps To Landing A Job Referral Without Any Insider Connections 

But there’s an art to referring candidates to open positions at your company. You can’t just send dozens of recommendations for everyone you’ve ever met–that’s both an inefficient use of your time and a good way to get on a recruiter’s bad side. If you truly want to succeed, there are a few things you need to know first. We recently sat down with Glassdoor senior talent acquisition partner Jamie Hichens, who shared some of her top tips for making your company’s referral program work for you–here’s what she recommends.

1. Get The Word Out

In order to get people interested in a job, you, of course, have to let them know about the opportunity in the first place. Hichens recommends a few sources in particular to advertise open positions at your company. “Sending an email to friends is a good way to start,” she advises. Describing what type of person you’re looking for and then asking if they know anyone who would be a good fit is a good move since friends or former colleagues will often “be thoughtful if you’ve worked with them in the past… they’ll know your industry and what you’re targeting.”

Beyond that, “I think it’s definitely smart to post to alumni pages. I see that a lot [at Glassdoor], and we get really great people that way,” Hichens says. You can also post to your personal networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, “although you should expect that [some] unqualified people will reach out–so it’s up to you to weed through those.”

If you’re really hungry to make some successful referrals, you may even consider scouring LinkedIn to find people with the experience and skill set needed for the roles, but before doing so, Hichens recommends getting in contact with the recruiter first. “Check with a recruiter before you do anything,” she says. “If you haven’t checked with them to find out the exact specs that they’re looking for, it can come across as stepping on their toes. Recruiters love help, but that’s their job.”

2. Screen Your Candidates

No matter how bad you want to score a referral bonus, you shouldn’t take an approach of “throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks,” Hichens says. If you do, you might earn a reputation as someone whose referrals can’t be trusted–so when you finally do have a great candidate in the pipeline, recruiters won’t be as inclined to take your word for it. Before officially referring someone, look at their resume first to make sure they’re qualified on at least a basic level. If you really want to go the extra mile, try chatting with them on the phone.

“You’ll get more credibility if you are actually sending people you’ve at least spoken with,” Hichens says. “Look for: 1) Why they’re interested in the company 2) Why they’re interested in the position 3) Why they think they are a fit and 4) [Whether] they sound like they’d be a culture add.”

3. Pitch Your Candidates

If you want a recruiter to take a serious look at a candidate you’re referring, it definitely helps to sell them a little bit. An email with “Take a look at this person I’ve never met or talked to before” is much less compelling to a recruiter than a thoughtfully crafted recommendation.

“The [notes] that I really like seeing are ‘This is a former colleague of mine. I’ve seen them in action–these are their strengths. I think they’d be a fit for our company because of XYZ.’ A lot of times we get something like ‘This is my friend’s friend so I don’t really know them,’ but if we have some context and you’ve seen them in action in the workplace, that carries more weight,” Hichens says.

If you haven’t worked with them before, however, just do the best that you can to describe the impression that you’ve gotten so far. “[You can say] I don’t actually know this person personally, but I got on a five-minute call with them and they sound interested and like they’d be a fit from what I can tell, but I’ll let you take it from here,” Hichens suggests.

4. Be Helpful, But Balanced

It’s natural to want to set up the candidate that you’re bringing in for success, but you need to make sure that you’re not giving them an unfair advantage or sharing insider information. “You as the employee can give insight into what it’s like working there and a little bit about what you know (if anything) about the team and hiring manager, but [candidates] should defer to the recruiter to give them interview prep tips,” Hichens advises.

“Another thing that’s a nice touch is if they do come in to interview, offer to say ‘Hi’ to them while they’re here so they can see a familiar face. But be communicative [with the recruiter and hiring team] that you’re planning to do that,” Hichens adds.

5. Don’t Be Too Pushy

Getting a referral bonus is great, but it’s important not to unfairly pressure either the recruiter or the candidate — you need to make sure it’s truly a good fit for all parties involved. When it comes to dealing with the recruiting team, that means not pestering them constantly.

“Don’t be too hands-on–let the process happen,” Hichens says.

Similarly, you don’t want to push the candidate to accept a position too much. Starting a new job is a major decision, and is ultimately up to them.

“Be mindful, because at the end of the day… convincing someone to take a role at a company that’s not a fit for them will bite you harder than a referral bonus is worth.”

This article originally appeared on Glassdoor and is reprinted with permission 

Remember your seventh-grade Spanish class? Of course you do. But do you remember anything from it? You might’ve left off language-learning with decent proficiency at some point in your educational career, only to forget most of it with disuse in the years since. But picking up where you left off–or backtracking to the very beginning–isn’t a bad idea as an adult. In fact, trying to learn (or relearn) a language as an adult can help your brain in ways that spill over into the rest of your working life–even if you never actually become fluent. Here’s how.

Related:Can Learning Another Language Boost Your Empathy?

1. You’ll Become A More Intuitive Problem-Solver

The brain matures starting in early adolescence, and once that process gets underway, we become more analytical in the way we approach problems. Adults tend to look for solutions by breaking challenges down to their component parts. That isn’t a bad thing, of course, but analysis isn’t the only way to solve a problem.

When we learn a language, we don’t just absorb all the explicit grammatical rules, then consciously apply them every time we want to say something. Picking up a new language depends much more on exposing ourselves to lots of examples of the language being used in one situation after the other. You get a feel for linguistic patterns contextually, and then learn its structures implicitly. Think of it this way: You may speak and write excellent sentences in English without being able to diagram them or explain what the “pluperfect” verb form is.

The more comfortable you get practicing a new language, the less reliant you become on its grammatical rules. You get more comfortable with the unfamiliar. At the same time, your brain stops reflexively searching for analytical solutions and gets better at reaching for more intuitive ones.

Related:Your Hunch Was Wrong–Intuition Isn’t Inborn After All

2. You’ll Get Better At Messing Up

A key reason it’s so hard to learn a new language in adulthood is simply because we hate feeling incompetent. When you speak in your native language, you can easily put your thoughts into words and be understood without much effort. But when you try to communicate in a language you’re just starting to pick up, you stumble over ideas that you’d otherwise get across easily.

Frustrating as that may be, it’s great training for your brain. Anytime you try to learn a new skill, you’ll find yourself in this phase. And the unpleasant experience of not being proficient in something is often cause enough to quit. That’s exactly why your brain needs to have this experience more often; the less rare it is, the less infuriating it’ll feel–and subsequently the more new skills you’ll be able to learn.

After all, the only way to learn anything new is to actually do things, which always means doing them badly at first. You can’t learn to shoot a free throw without actually picking up a basketball and shooting (and missing, and missing again). You can’t learn to speak a language without conversing (haltingly, and sounding ridiculous). And you can’t learn to program a computer without doing some programming (and messing up those tags time and time again).

If you aren’t willing to show your mess-ups and fumbles to anyone as you learn something, you’ll never get the feedback you need to do better, and you won’t expand your skill set. Learning a new language creates opportunities to get more comfortable struggling in front of others.

3. You’ll Start Seeing Things From Fresh Angles

Finally, new languages give you opportunities to shift your perspective on the world–and not just in the obvious ways. To be sure, if you do get fluent, you’ll be able to communicate with many more people. That can expand your network and expose you to a whole range of cultures and experiences that wouldn’t be available to you otherwise.

But less obviously, you’ll also start to realize that some of your ways of seeing the world aren’t as clear and unambiguous as you might’ve assumed. A few of the ideas you might never have thought to question will begin to seem open to interpretation. To take one really concrete example, if you walk into your kitchen, you could easily divide your cabinets up into cups, glasses, bowls, plates, and saucers. But if you took the same set of objects and gave them to a native speaker of Cantonese or French, they might organize them differently.

One language might encode certain associations among ideas and objects differently than another–all before individuals’ own personal, subjective interpretations come into play. Many new language-learners find that picking up a new vocabulary for familiar things in their native language shifts their perspective on them. You’ll begin to see that some of the implicit distinctions we make are totally arbitrary. No language is a transparent reflection of real categories that exist out there in the world–it’s the reverse: What we say makes sense only because other people who speak the same language have learned to apply more or less the same terms to the same things.

Once you reach this insight, your brain can start to shake off some of the ways it habitually sees things, and you’ll start to look at everything in new ways. You’ll start to grasp that the familiar ways you’re used to categorizing things–from the furniture in your bedroom to the conceptual challenges you’re facing at work–may not be obligatory. In fact, there’s a growing body of evidence that multicultural experiences can lead to more creativity.

So no, you may never get totally fluent in Arabic or Bengali or Tagalog. But it’s not a wasted effort. Just practicing a new language has benefits that can improve your cognitive functioning in lots of other ways. The main thing is to get started–and get comfortable mangling those conjugations for a while. It’ll all be worth it.

In terms of the numbers, the legal marijuana industry is making strides: The market was valued at $7.2 billion in 2016, and projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 17%. Recreational sales are expected to quadruple by 2020–recreational marijuana is legal in eight states and D.C., and that number is predicted to rise to 18 states by 2020. In that same time frame, the industry could grow to employ more people than the manufacturing sector.

But for all these advancements, the growing techniques, by and large, remain mired in outdated agricultural practices. Marijuana is a thirsty crop: A single plant requires up to six gallons of water per day to grow. Outdoor farming practices degrade the land by clearing forests for growing space and deplete water reserves–a cause for concern in states like California, which is prone to droughts–and indoor growing operations are not much more sustainable: A typical indoor farm uses more energy per square foot to create lighting conditions and regulate the humidity and temperature than a data center, and the same substantial amount of water as an outdoor farm.

Given that demand for the crop shows no sign of slowing, the industry has to innovate. Companies like Green Life Productions have leveraged new LED lighting technology to reduce energy use in indoor operations, and now, a new startup called GrowX is using aeroponics–a system that GrowX founder JP Martin calls the “magical unicorn” of agriculture–to cultivate cannabis in controlled, indoor environments.

“But despite the obvious benefits, it’s been largely uncommercialized,” Martin tells Fast Company, though AeroFarms, a non-marijuana vertical farm in Newark, New Jersey, is using the technology as the backbone of its operation. Aeroponics is inherently challenging for a number of reasons. Plant roots are hypersensitive, and the success of the technology depends on meticulously regulating the size and speed of the water droplets used to mist the roots, as well as the temperature in the “root chamber” from which the plant grows. Water the roots too little, and you’ll kill the plant; water them too frequently, Martin says, and you’ll inhibit their ability to absorb oxygen from the air, which is the key to aeroponics.

Martin, who has a background in data security, was working for Elon Musk at SpaceX during the height of the California drought about four years ago. Looking for ways to grow his own crops while not straining the state’s overtaxed water supply, Martin came across aeroponics. “I thought, this is the holy grail of farming, why isn’t everyone using this technology?” he says. Drawing on his skills as a software engineer, Martin began to build his own systems, figuring that if he could develop a solid platform for this technology, he could bring it to the market as a commercially viable agriculture alternative.

Two years later, Martin had left SpaceX and was focused on developing his own technology, GrowX, full-time. He brought on co-founder and financial industry veteran Darwin Hunt to run operations and ironed out a prototype system. While GrowX’s tech is still too new to have measurable outcomes, Martin is confident the startup will be able to deliver metrics in line with, or better than, those from the NASA study.

Though aeroponics can be used to grow a variety of crops, GrowX is piloting with the cannabis industry because it is one that has largely been left out of the agriculture innovation conversation. While leafy-greens-producing vertical farms and indoor growing operations are proliferating across the country and consistently improving upon existing technology, cannabis, having been hovering on the edge of legality until recent years, has a lot of ground to cover.

An incubator that launched in Oakland at the end of 2015 is looking to close that gap. Gateway is the first cannabis-specific startup incubator, and GrowX was one of its first graduates; after finessing his pitch during his time working with Gateway, Martin is rolling out GrowX’s technology to a client in San Francisco, as well as the tenth-largest cannabis producer in Denver, which has a 40,000 square-foot grow and is looking to expand its output sustainably. While pricing will likely adjust once GrowX moves beyond the early stages, each aeroponic unit now retails to clients for $1,000.

The cofounders of Gateway, Ben Larson and Carter Laren, have backgrounds in coaching Silicon Valley startups; they came up with the idea for a cannabis incubator after working with a group of new startups at the San Francisco-based Runway incubator, all of whom happened to be cannabis-focused, and also entirely unprepared to enter the high-stakes world of tech startups. Their pitches’ lack of cohesiveness caused investors to close their checkbooks, Larson says, but what was noticeable was the interest in the ideas themselves. Larson and Laren saw an opportunity to develop an incubator devoted to the specific challenges at the intersection of weed and tech–namely, that that intersection is very little trodden.

“While cannabis has been commoditized in the tech industry, tech is sort of missing from the cannabis industry,” Larson says. Through Gateway, he and Laren have recruited Silicon Valley mentors and local cannabis-industry pioneers like Dale Sky Jones of Oaksterdam University, who are united around the idea of modernizing and growing the industry in a sustainable way.

GrowX’s forward-thinking approach to an industry plagued by a lack of regulation and sustainable practices signals that more innovation is on the way for the cannabis industry. “One of our long-term goals is to pull the cannabis industry into the mainstream, and pull the mainstream into the cannabis industry,” Laren says. “Cannabis has long been looked at as this isolated, weird industry–we’re trying to show that it can be treated like a normal, everyday thing.”

We all know that Google, Facebook, and Apple are ramping up their efforts to fight the phenomenon of fake news. But for the recent French presidential election, one newspaper took a decidedly lo-fi approach to creating a new search engine.

Libération worked with ad agency JWT Paris to launch CheckNews.fr, not run on algorithms but with real journalists researching real questions. If you sent in a question, a journalist would track down the truth behind the answer, with each query taking an average of 2.5 hours. It may have been “the slowest search engine on earth,” but the paper also boasted it was the most reliable.

According to JWT Paris, during the campaign that eventually saw moderate Emmanuel Macron elected, #CheckNews became the most trending term on French social media, with 128 million media impressions generated in three days. The paper managed to cover and fact check 872 topics, and the respone was so good, Libération has decided to turn it into a permanent tool for its readers.

Family isn’t politics–or at least it probably shouldn’t be. For most politicians, however, everything is politics, and family is in constant danger of becoming just another detail considered according to optics.

“I remember being on set when we were shooting about a year ago,” Moverman says. “I could not imagine where things were going, much to my shame.”

The film now exists in a world where consequences seem more removed from their actions than ever. Up is down. Black is white. The president ordered a unilateral missile strike against Syria while enjoying “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake you’ve ever seen.” He’s not the only one around with a shaky understanding of cause and effect, though; the president may just be a reflection of a broader class of people who use their race and socioeconomic privilege to shield themselves from consequences.

“[The Dinner] is really about where humanity is at this point,” Moverman says. “How do we look at other people? How do we feel about protecting our little tribe? Sometimes the way we do that entails dehumanizing whoever’s not a part of that tribe. And that’s harmful for all of us.”

As the title suggests, the film unfolds over the course of a dinner between Lohman, his brother, played by Steve Coogan, and their wives, Rebecca Hall and Laura Linney, respectively. It takes place inside a ludicrously, almost satirically fancy restaurant, whose avant-cuisine and ornate atmosphere underscore the incivility of the crime Lohman’s son is implicated in. As the two couples dredge up the recent past and mull over options for the future, the tension escalates as they tear through their food. (It’s a playful structural conceit. Indeed, the meat of the film takes place during the main course.) By the end of the meal, the intentions of each member of the two couples seems clear.

“I think most of us buy into the politics of family,” Moverman says. “I think what that creates, like any political system, when you are entrenched in the inner workings of your own world, it makes you oblivious to the rest of the world and uncaring to the rest of the world, and your compassion falls by the wayside so your ability to assess our humanity is greatly diminished.”

The novel that The Dinner is based on was written in 2009, years before the most contentious election of the modern era had Americans retreating further than ever into their own microworlds. Some of the political issues in the film are just as relevant now as they were then, though. Throughout the film, Richard Gere’s character is trying to pass a bill that would help insurance cover mental health issues on the same level as other health issues. It’s a real-life special interest of Moverman’s, and one of the things that drew him to the film.

“Right now, as we’re debating the repeal of ACA, there’s really very little attention being paid to mental health–something that’s a part of everyone’s family, everyone’s life, something that is not talked about,” the director says. “The idea of destigmatizing the conversation around mental health is something else at the core of this movie.”

Mainly, however, The Dinner presents a world where all interactions are political, but the issues of one politician’s family spill over into the real world, and have real world consequences. Depending on how Congressman Lohman deals with his family issue, his healthcare bill may or may not get passed. Many lives hang in the balance of his family drama. When viewers leave the theater, they will walk out into a world where the president’s daughter and son-in-law hold a degree of influence in the White House and beyond–and it will be jarring.

If you see the tech world as a competition between major platforms like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung–as I do–Google made several announcements at its I/O developer conference on Wednesday that could affect the balance of power.

As the maker of the second biggest mobile operating system in the world, Apple may be the company Google’s AI advancements impact the most. Many will be watching to see what sorts of AI capabilities Apple announces at its WWDC developer conference coming up June 5.

In this season of developer conferences (Microsoft’s Build was just last week), it’s become clear that all the companies that make up Big Tech have been working hard to leverage artificial intelligence in their products. More specifically, scientists and engineers at these companies are teaching computers to talk and see, through technologies such as natural-language processing and machine vision.

Many of the things announced here at Google’s conference hit on these dominant AI themes in some way.

Google Lens, for example, brings sight to the Google Assistant service, identifying and analyzing images you snap with a smartphone so that the Assistant can act on the data. Lens can read a restaurant menu written in another language and translate it; the Assistant might then provide example pictures of the food choices. There could be a business here as well as a useful tool: For instance, a restaurant might pay Google for the right to display marketing language around the image of its storefront as seen by Lens. I expect the computer-vision aspect of the Assistant to get far more interesting over time.

Above Avalon analyst Neil Cybart likes the concept but not the use cases Google chose to showcase it. “It’s not enough to just say you can walk around taking pictures of storefronts to get Yelp ratings,” he says. “It’s fair to assume Apple will be playing in this area going forward.”

Google’s Photos app uses AI to pick your best shots, label them, and even suggest people you could share the photos with based on the people it’s recognized in the shots. Another feature makes whole albums full of photos show up in someone else’s Photos app, again based on the people detected in the photos.

For many users the new features in Photos might be useful in combating the common problem of having hundreds of memory-using photos on one’s phone and never really using them for anything.

Apple is very likely to talk about how its bringing it AI further into its own Photos app to fix some of the same problems Google fixed, says Global Data analyst Avi Greengart.

Apples And Apples?

Right now Google appears to be well ahead of Apple in delivering useful AI-powered experiences.

Comparing Google AI and Apple AI is relevant because both companies want their apps and services to get as much phone screen time every day as possible. The screens of the more than one billion iOS devices is a big battleground for both companies. Apple wants these devices to spur consumption for its digital services business, which it wants to double in the next four years.

It might hurt Apple if Google could leverage superior AI to create more compelling apps and services, says Tech Knowledge analyst Carolina Milanesi. That might cause significant numbers of iPhone users to adopt them, displacing Apple apps. Apple abhors the idea of being just a hardware company; it wants to supply the whole experience, including software and services.

And iPhone users do have a choice. Google also announced Wednesday that its Assistant is now available on iOS, as is its Allo messaging app and lots of other Google ware. People who prefer Google’s assistant over Siri can easily use it–although the fact that it’s not built into the operating system means that you can’t wake it by saying “OK Google” as you can on an Android handset.

Apples And Oranges

Siri is clearly behind other assistants, both in her ability to comprehend and in her ability to act on information she hears from the user. But Siri is just one end point for AI (albeit a big one). To say Apple is “behind” in AI doesn’t quite capture the nuance of the situation.

At WWDC, Apple might announce enhancements to the AI behind things like Photos, Maps, and Messages in ways that solve real problems. They might be different than the ones Google and others have used AI to solve.

As Moor Insights & Strategy analyst Patrick Moorhead points out, Apple doesn’t like to be forced into pushing out new products or services purely because of competitive pressure, and it has rarely done so. It has lots of people working on AI, but is being very thoughtful about where and how it exposes it.

Apple also isn’t likely to talk as loudly about AI as Google does. Google, after all, is a software and services company–you’d expect it to focus on AI. Apple is mainly a hardware company (and, yes, increasingly a services company). It’s more likely to focus on functionality that AI helps improve, rather than dwelling much on technical underpinnings.

Apple Vs. Google

One clear advantage Google enjoys in AI is access to lots of personal user data that it pulls from services such as Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Calendar. Google will leverage as much user data as privacy concerns permit to help the Google Assistant become an expert on the user’s life, something like the way human assistants become more valuable as they learn more and more.

For example, the Assistant running on the Google Home smart speaker could notify you that traffic on the way to your next appointment is bad, and to allot extra time. It might know that a flight listed in an email has been delayed and alert the user to that.

Apple, by contrast, has shunned collecting personal data because of privacy and security concerns. There’s no doubting that’s a good thing from a privacy perspective, but it might hinder the company from arming Siri with the information she needs to be an expert on the user’s life.

Apple, however, has more control over the chips running the on-device AI computations on its gadgets than Google does. Apple is highly competent in optimizing chips–which it designes itself–for the needs of its own software. Apple may simply be able to leverage more computing power in its devices than Google can in third-party Android devices. Some AI computation can happen in the cloud, but that costs milliseconds and could raise security risks.

After watching this week’s announcements about the new AI powers in Google’s assistant, I’m reminded that there’s far more to releasing winning apps and services than sheer technological prowess. Google has on numerous occasions released products that were technically impressive but betrayed a woeful misunderstanding of what people might find useful (Google Wave, Google Glass, etc.).

Apple doesn’t need to demonstrate superiority over Google in the pure science part of artificial intelligence. It can win by coupling its AI chops with a superior understanding of how people will best benefit from AI in day-to-day life.

This week, we learned all about the unspoken rules of the workplace that new grads need to tune into, what catches recruiters’ eyes during hours spent poring over resumes, and why quitting things earlier might be the best productivity habit you haven’t tried.

These are the stories you loved in Leadership for the week of May 15:

1. New Graduates: These Are The Unspoken Rules Of The Workplace No One Tells You

The transition from college to the workplace can be confusing. Gone are the days of advance notice about assignments, due dates that don’t tend to change, and regular feedback. Suddenly, you’re expected to pick up things that nobody taught you, and you might not have any idea whether that last assignment was a disaster or a masterpiece. Welcome to the real world, college grads! Here are some common norms of the workplace that no one’s probably going to clue you in on.

2. I Review Thousands Of Resumes–Here’s What I’m Really Looking For

Just what catches a recruiter’s eye when they’re sifting through thousands and thousands of resumes? A former investment banking recruiter admits there’s no hard and fast rule, but there are a few key things she always keeps on her checklist. Some tips are pretty simple, like keeping your resume to one page. Others you might not have thought of, like only including work experience that you can really talk about in-depth.

3. The Counterintuitive Reason You Need To Quit More Things Earlier

Many successful people chalk up their achievements to grit and perseverance–the idea that you need to keep pushing through no matter what. But what’s often missing from those narrative is what they don’t do anymore–the projects they’ve abandoned, the goals they’ve stopped chasing, and the books they’ve put down. Often, knowing which things to quit that aren’t crucial to our goals–and when to quit them–is just as important as enduring the things that are.

4. Three Job Interview Mistakes You Think You Avoided But Actually Didn’t

Ever been in a job interview that you were extremely sure had gone well, only to never hear back from the hiring manager? It might’ve been thanks to the steep competition, or it could’ve been some small slip-ups you didn’t think were a big deal–or didn’t notice at all. This week we learned how to avoid the most common late-in-the-game errors, from taking too long to organize your references to sounding unintentionally lukewarm in your thank-you note.

5. Exactly What To Put In Your LinkedIn Profile To Get A Promotion

You’re a star in your organization, and everyone tells you that you’re management material. But for some reason, you still haven’t landed that promotion and now you’re starting to look elsewhere. It’s time to update your LinkedIn profile to catch recruiters’ attention, and maybe even to remind your current employer to consider you for that manager role. When you’re aiming for a higher position, here’s what to tweak, what language to use, and the key achievements you’ll want to highlight.

As retailers install self-checkout systems, proximity beacons that flash offers to shoppers’ phones, and invest in robots that replenish shelves, they’re likely to need fewer and fewer workers in the coming decade. A new analysis finds that up to 7.5 million jobs are at risk in U.S. retail, with women and rural areas particularly affected.

The last two years has seen a string of retail bankruptcies and store closures, with once storied names like J.C. Penney, RadioShack, Macy’s, and Sears under pressure as never before. Now analysts say retailers are likely to turn to automation as they try to end the so-called “Great Retail Apocalypse.”

The research was commissioned by Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute, a nonprofit group, and prepared by Cornerstone Capital. The job loss estimates are based on well-known research from Oxford University and figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The U.S. retail industry employs about 10% of the total workforce.

Wilson says cashiers–74% of whom are women–are likely to the first overtaken by the automation wave. Also likely to be affected are retail salespeople, who may not be needed as shoppers increasingly consult their phones for information about sizes, colors, and availability. “Smartphones have all kinds of information about the products you want to buy, so the need for salespeople is considerably less,” he says.

For example, Bloomingdale’s has tested smart fitting rooms with wall-mounted tablets allowing customers to scan items and view other colors and sizes and receive recommendations to “complete the look.” Home Depot says four self-checkout systems occupy the space of three normal aisles and obviate the need for two human cashiers. Amazon’s Go concept stores have no cashiers at all, enabling shoppers to pay for everything through their phones.

Worryingly, the report says automation could affect areas where unemployment is already higher than the national average. “WalMart and other large retailers have greater market share in communities with less than 500,000 people,” it says. “If employment trends correlate to market share location, retail automation by retailers could disproportionately impact these smaller communities.”

Wilson cautions retailers against going all in for convenience at the expense of retail experience, lest they simply become higher cost versions of online stores. “If the technology simply allows you to reduce costs by reducing the number of employees, that may not be a winning strategy,” he says. “They [may need] to create an experience. You go into the store and it’s fun. You have a relationship with the people who work there and you’re discovering new products. Most companies are headed in that direction and that requires an investment in both labor and technology.”

What if we’ve been thinking about our brains in the wrong way? What if traits like ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and others weren’t thought of as “disorders,” but as brain makeups that are not only natural but also contain unique gifts and contributions?

That’s the thinking behind the concept of neurodiversity, a framework that embraces the variety of brain makeups found in the human species. Neurodiversity is also a categorization of identity that is overlooked and underserved in the workplace. From the interview processes to decision making, most of our workplace environments are built around things like eye contact, noisy group work, and generally overstimulating settings–in other words, they are built for more”neurotypical” people.

How Businesses Benefit From A Neurodivergent Workforce

A few companies have embraced neurodiversity. Earlier this month, Yahoo announced its new Neurodiversity Employee Resource Group (ERG) intended to help neurodivergent individuals be open about their strengths and challenges and get their needs accommodated in the workplace. The ERG was spearheaded by Margaux Joffe, Yahoo’s head of production, global marketing department, who also has ADHD and founded The Kaleidoscope Society for women with ADHD.

“This goes way beyond the personal, and there is absolutely a business case for embracing neurodiversity at work,” Joffe tells Fast Company. She explains that what often stands in the way is a lack of knowledge at a company for how to approach subjects such as neurodivergence. “This is especially true for women and people of color who already feel like they have to work harder to overcome unconscious bias.

“It took me one year to disclose my condition, as I wanted to be able to prove myself free of any additional bias. Once I came out to my boss [about having ADHD] and told him I wanted to launch an employee resource group for neurodiversity, he supported it 100%,” says Joffe. “Many times, the only thing holding us back is thinking we need to work like others. Build on your strengths and be fearless. This goes for everyone.”

Bay Area aikido entrepreneur and writer Nick Walker agrees about the importance of embracing differences at work. As he shares in his blog about being autistic, “The greater the diversity of the pool of available minds, the greater the diversity of perspectives, talents, and ways of thinking–and thus the greater the probability of generating an original insight, solution, or creative contribution.”

Indeed, many of the world’s great scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs have dyslexia or ADHD or other traits. As Walker explains, “In any given sphere of society, we only get the benefit of the contributions of those individuals who are empowered to participate. And we only get the full benefit of a given individual’s unique potential if that individual is empowered to participate without being forced to suppress their differences.”

It’s Not About Altruism

The point is not to hire neurodivergent people as part of corporate social responsibility or to wave the diversity flag. The point is to actually value minds of all types. And indeed, Silicon Valley has benefitted enormously from the autistic mind, as Steve Silberman notes in his book, Neurotribes. One mother of an autistic son shared with Fast Company, “It’s not about giving them simple jobs because they feel sorry for them or to meet some diversity goal. It’s about hiring them because they truly meet a need in their business and possess the skills needed to excel in their job.”

How To Reframe Your Office For Neurodivergence

Practical suggestions for implementing the neurodiversity paradigm at work include:

• Introduce the term “neurodiversity” at all welcome orientations for new hires, making neurodivergent individuals comfortable to “come out” later down the road.
• Give people choices about open office spaces versus quieter, private working space.
• Carve out roles that rely less on linear thinking. These roles can produce better results for the company and the employee.
• Make mental health challenges less taboo by holding regular support circles on burnout, self-esteem, sleep, boundaries, and communication.
• Encourage nature walks at lunch time, and maybe even make the lunch hour 15 minutes longer on Fridays so that employees don’t feel rushed while strolling in the nearby park.

Supporting individuals with logistical challenges is also welcome. As Joffe points out, many of the large tech companies provide free food and transport. “My advice to neurodivergent employees is to learn as much as you can about how your mind works in order to design your daily life accordingly and be able to effectively communicate what you need at work and at home. I lived with undiagnosed ADHD for 29 years, so the diagnosis alone has helped me tremendously in my career. Simply understanding how my mind works differently, I’ve been able to let go of how I thought I should do things and accept myself for who I am.”

It’s also necessary to embrace the range of neurodivergence. While autism and ADHD are better known by the public and in popular culture, traits like bipolar disorder, severe anxiety, dyspraxia, or highly sensitive personality (HSP) are less commonly understood.

So just as companies have come around to embrace identity along a spectrum of gender, sexuality, and introversion, the neurodiversity movement says the same understanding should be extended to diversity of mind. What Yahoo and other companies are piloting seems like a useful start. What really matters in the end is that people who do identify as neurodivergent feel secure in having a workplace that accepts them and allows them to thrive.

Jenara Nerenberg is a neurodivergent writer, speaker, activist, and author of the forthcoming book, Divergent Mind. She is an alum of Harvard, UC Berkeley, CNN, and Healthline, and you can follow her on Twitter here.

How we use email has changed a lot since the ’90s, but the way we receive it hasn’t changed much at all. Sure, our mailboxes are bigger, and the messages look a little fancier, but by and large email’s still just an ever-growing list of messages, trailing off toward infinity in reverse chronological order.

But if an experimental mail program design from Yahoo takes off, the inbox itself could become a thing of the past. At the Association for Computing Machinery‘s recent conference on human-computer interaction, the Sunnyvale, Calif. tech giant unveiled a prototype design called CardMail that replaces the venerable inbox view with a set of lists in categories like travel, deals, events, and receipts.

Within each category, CardMail messages are sorted in an order that makes sense rather than simply the order they came in. Airlines could be sorted by flight times, for instance, and information about an event or deal is displayed in a newsfeed-style post, rather than simply showing the first few words from the message.

“The way I think about it is, if someone had come to you with a design problem today, and said we’re building this system that’s going to manage all your receipts, all your deals, all your tickets to events, all your travel information, would you design a system that’s a reverse chronological list of senders and subject?” asks Frank Bentley, a senior principal researcher at Yahoo. “Probably not.”

At the conference, Bentley and a team of researchers presented results of a personal email use study that led them to test ideas for new kinds of interfaces designed for how email is used today.

When the researchers asked survey participants–who included Yahoo users along with those loyal to rival mail products from companies like Google and Microsoft–to check when they had last sent an email from a personal account, the median participant hadn’t sent one in two days–and 25% of those surveyed hadn’t sent an email in 10 days or more. It’s not that people aren’t talking to each other online, of course, it’s just that social media has taken over. People are more likely to send quick messages to friends and family through texting apps like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, share photos through Instagram or Snapchat, or share broad life updates on their Facebook feeds.

And it’s not that the people surveyed weren’t active email users–many of them still checked their email multiple times a day, looking for the latest deals and other updates from companies they did business with, even without sending out personal letters.

“One of the main findings in the paper is sort of this redefinition of what email overload is,” says Bentley. “Back in the ’90s, people were talking about email overload in terms of having too much email to respond to.”

Now, at least when it comes to personal accounts, they’re more likely to be referring to a deluge of coupons, purchase confirmations, and other business correspondence that makes it difficult to find messages they’re looking for. Even with good text search tools in modern email clients, plane tickets can still get lost in a sea of coupons and frequent-flyer program updates from the same airline, Bentley says.

“They’re really trying to get through all of the commercial mail they receive–and they love,” says Bentley.

And users take advantage of the messages they’re getting–46% of survey respondents telling Yahoo they had used a coupon or deal from an email within the past week. And they weren’t reluctant to unsubscribe from lists they were no longer interested in–20% of respondents in one survey had done so in the previous week. Still, the sheer volume of commercial messages had led many participants to abandon old accounts to start over anew, and many had given up any attempt at organizing their inboxes or even opening every message.

“People are treating their email much more like a Facebook feed,” Bentley says, scrolling through, clicking on interesting messages and simply ignoring others.

That led Bentley and his coauthors to put together the CardMail design, which Yahoo is still tinkering with–there is no timeline for a public release.

Attempts to declutter our inboxes are not new: Yahoo already offers what it calls Smart Views, letting users filter their emails into categories like travel and shopping, and rivals like Google offer similar groupings. And email services from Google and Microsoft can automatically pull event and ticket information from email messages into their calendar apps. The CardMail concept goes further, doing away with the traditional inbox view altogether.

“We have done some studies where we’ve had people log in and use (CardMail) with their own emails,” he says. “People like that it’s surfacing what’s relevant to them right now.”

If you have ever worked for a manager who is quick to change their mind or are hard to pin down, you probably weren’t too surprised to learn that former FBI director James Comey had been writing notes after his discussions with President Donald Trump.

“If you suspect something might be up with your company or if you have a bumpy relationship with your boss, it’s a good idea to take notes during meetings,” says Nancy Halpern, principal at KNH Associates. And, if it’s awkward to take notes because the meeting was a hallway discussion or a one-on-one over lunch, spend a few minutes afterward writing down what happened. Then send those notes to your home email address because, if you’re let go from your job, you probably won’t have access to your office or work email to collect your files, Halpern says.

Related: How to Finally Stop Taking Useless Notes At Work

While most employees think of contemporaneous notes as a means for covering your tracks with management, they can also help improve your performance by keeping you focused and accountable. Here, six job coaches outline how to use notes to advance your career.

State The Facts

Your notes should include the date and time of the meeting and whether it was the weekly staff meeting, a one-on-one meeting, or a hallway conversation, Halpern says. Simply state what was agreed to, next steps, and who is accountable for each action item. You don’t need to include a minute-by-minute account of who said what. “If you just include facts, it’s much harder to refute it,” she says.

Get Buy-In From Your Boss

Employees with challenging bosses should make it a habit to email their manager a recap of their meeting to confirm assignments and deadlines. “You want to make sure the points you think are important, and your boss also thinks are important,” says Tracey Gritz, productivity expert and owner of The Efficient Office.

Because managers don’t always respond to email, consider sharing your notes at the end of your meeting. “I will turn around my notepad and show my boss what I heard,” says Melissa Hook Shahbazian, an innovation coach and graphic facilitator at Lime. Point to your notes and ask, “Did I hear this correctly? Is this the amount of detail you want me to include in the report?” she says. “This acknowledges that you heard that person and it shows that person you are dedicated to understanding his or her meaning.”

Gain Clarity When Priorities Shift

When your boss moves up a deadline or changes his mind about what to include in a report, it’s tempting to pull out your notes and exclaim, “But that’s not what you said on January 3.” Job coaches agree that’s not a wise career move. The purpose of the notes isn’t to prove that your boss likes to contradict himself but to gain clarity about an assignment without sounding defensive. “It’s not about playing gotcha,” says Caroline Stokes, a certified executive coach and founder of Forward.

Don’t take the change in direction personally or look at it as criticism, Gritz says. Instead ask questions to get a deeper understanding about why your boss changed her mind but be careful not to sound defensive or angry. Stokes recommends asking, “Do you remember when we spoke on May 1? Can you help me understand how we got from that point to this point?”

Another way to approach your boss about a change in direction is to acknowledge there has been a shift, confirm the change, and then add that you will need to realign your priorities to meet the new deadline, Halpern says. She suggests telling your boss, “If you’re saying the deadline is now June 5, I understand that the priority has changed, but, if I’m going to meet that deadline, I will need to let the due date for one of my other assignments shift.”

Remind Others Of Their Commitment

If you’re waiting for your boss or a coworker to provide critical information for your report and the deadline is fast approaching, you can use your notes as a gentle reminder, says Tracey Adams, founder of ThriveOn Seminars. Email them your meeting notes with a message stating, “I want to recap what we agreed to at our meeting and make sure we’re still on the same page.”

Provide Context

 Contemporaneous notes can keep an entire team on track by reminding staff about the history and evolution of a project, says executive coach Danielle Beauparlant Moser, principal and practice leader at BLT Careers. Being able to provide context about a long-term assignment is great way to increase your perceived power at work, Halpern says. “You will know what happened while everyone else will just remember it.”

WHAT: A new ad from French grocery and department store Monoprix that tells a sweet little love story using the brand’s creative package design.

WHO: Monoprix, Rosapark

WHY WE CARE: OK, obviously this is an early teen love story aimed right at that tender piece of your heart that still gets goosebumps the same way your 13-year-old self did, even though most of it is now obstructed by a thick layer of cynicism, adult responsibility, and Tinder fatigue.

Set to Big Star’s “Thirteen,” it’s an adorable story well told, but most impressive is how Monoprix is able to seamlessly integrate itself into the narrative without feeling completely phoney. Did you think you’d be reminiscing about a junior high crush today thanks to a grocery store? Me neither.

When the cocktail bar Coup–short for coup d’etat–opened in New York’s East Village in mid-April, promising to donate 100% of all profits to charities whose missions might be affected by the Trump Administration, it joined the rank of a growing number of companies with a fairly nontraditional business plan: Rather than simply make a profit, these places are experimenting radical form of conscious capitalism: Cover costs, pay fair wages, and then donate rest in a way that’ll improve society.

The list of companies employing this type of business arrangement now includes Fetch eyewear in Portland, Oregon, which puts all proceeds toward animal rescue, and the Ex Novo brewpub, also in that city, which gives to a rotating menu of local charities addressing things like teenage homeless, or urban farming operations. There’s Finnegan’s, a brewery in Minneapolis with its own community fund to feed the hungry, and Impact Makers, a management and technology consulting firm in Virginia, which is working to fund health clinics and programs addressing child poverty.

“We’re a group of middle-class professionals doing the same work we’ve always done, but structuring it differently and collectively making the same impact in the community as foundations,” says Michael Pirron, the founder and CEO of Impact Makers. “Rather than having to use the traditional model of being an Attila the Hun businessman or businesswoman”–in other words hoarding cash for years until you feel well-off enough to give more away–“it’s democratizing philanthropy for employees.”

There’s no typical corporate structure or preferential tax treatment for this kind of company, meaning that profits, regardless of where they are directed, are still subject to business income tax–and questions about how to manage and grow a business while still giving money away abound.

To help answer those questions, the company that originated this model 35 years ago has launched something of a support group. The Newman’s Own Foundation, backed by the same-named salad dressing company (which since moved into lines of pasta sauces, lemonade, popcorn and frozen pizza, among other many things) hosts its own “philanthropic enterprise program,” a network of about two dozen similarly-minded entrepreneurs.

Late actor Paul Newman and his friend A.E Hotcher may have started their company on a whim, but Newman could afford to do so because he was already rich and famous. (“If I had a plan, I would have been screwed,” reads a sign that once hung in his office and is now in the Newman’s Own Foundation’s boardroom.) The group has continued to thrive through careful planning, a competitive notion that executive chairman Bob Forrester admits he still loses sleep over. “Everyday our team has to go out and win the American way, which is as a business that just still puts out a good product,” says Forrester, who is also CEO and president of Newman’s Own Foundation, the philanthropic venue which distributes the donations from the food company.

In essence, philanthropic enterprises operate differently than just plain equality-focused companies or benefit corporations, which prioritize their social missions–with attendant corporate bylines and boards to keep them accountable–but don’t necessarily have to dispense with every last dollar they make.

Creating a buy-one-give-one model (say, Toms Shoes) or infusing your culture with strong pro bono initiatives (Salesforce) is not the same as putting all proceeds toward change making because those models rely on making a difference through scale: Toms donates a lot of shoes because it has a lot of customers buying them. Salesforce can offer free expertise to mission-driven groups because it has the employee power to do so. Acting as a philanthropic enterprise is simpler because it allows small groups to make as large an impact as possible immediately: Whatever extra money is coming in must go back out to help people, end of story.

The giveaway groups began meeting in the summer of 2014. Without a formal consultancy or think tank keeping tabs on this community, the Newman’s Own Foundation and its 25 enterprise members track down other company founders to join the group on their own, largely through word of mouth. Together, these companies share emerging lessons and strategies around everything from offering free services to growing responsibly, effective grant-making techniques, and how to maximize equity at the point of a sale.

Dressed For Success

Paul Newman made his fortune starring in late-60s classics like Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Behind the scenes, he was fresh food lover who enjoyed making his own salad dressing. The pursuit went from odd pastime to half-serious business idea, after Newman jarred some of his creation and began handing it out to friends around the holidays–only to be hit up with refill requests.

The best way to hawk the product was to put Newman’s face on the bottle, but Newman, who was humble, didn’t love that idea, Forrester says. His compromise–fine, but you better give all the proceeds to charity–begot the company’s slogan: “Shameless exploitation for the common good.”

Newman’s Own doesn’t release sales figures, but since the early ’80s, it has generated nearly $500 million for charitable works, almost half of that since Newman’s death in 2008. It now gives about $30 million annually to 600 different organizations in areas like improved nutrition, empowerment for veterans and others, and aiding children with life-limiting conditions, along with funding fellowships and programs that encourage more philanthropic work.

Part of the reason for the philanthropic enterprise program is because, even with a rich benefactor, growing a company that tries to donate most of what it makes can be a pretty confusing process. Today, despite its size, the company still follows some lean practices like outsourcing manufacturing to avoid heavy overhead costs. It doesn’t retain any earnings, using a revolving bank loan to cover expenses.

Perhaps the biggest issue, which many new ventures may eventually face, is that Newman’s Own became successful enough to live on past its founder. Early on, Newman personally owned all of the company’s intellectual property, which meant he had ultimate control over where all profits were deposited. That didn’t necessarily mean that whoever succeeded him would choose to run the company the same way.

A few years before his death, Newman created the foundation and turned his company into a proper LLC, allowing him to gradually transfer his ownership stake to the foundation. When he died, the foundation became the sole owner of the operating company, ensuring that it received all profits to distribute in the sort of value-directed approach Newman intended.

While the company is run separately, its new owner has a seat on the board to ensure that actual money making feels appropriately Newman-like. (The business has mostly expanded popular lines, including launching an “Organics” label.) “I said to Paul, ‘If you kick off before I do and you come back 10 years later, you may not know the people in the room, but it will feel right to you,” Forrester says.

A Taste Of The Future

In many ways, these profit-passing companies are still shaping how the industry may work. For instance, as a philanthropic group in charge of an operating company, the Newman’s Own Foundation is now subject to 200% excess business holding tax, which would wipe out its ability to continue doing charity work.

The issue stems from the 1969 Tax Reform Act, which was originally intended to ensure that wealthy individuals don’t set up charities for their own gain. Along with many other regulations, the law stipulates that company owners aren’t allowed to have more than a 20% ownership stake in foundations they support, ensuring those groups will operate independently. It appears that no one considered the possibility of a foundation eventually owning a company that was already operating independently.

The group has until 2018 to convince Congress to pass a new law, which would legalize its business structure, or it must sell 80% of the company to avoid taxes so high they would essentially wipe out the revenue going to charity. Its answer, the Philanthropic Enterprise Act, was written in cooperation with the Joint Committee on Taxation, would keep the current charitable abuse standards intact while formalizing the foundation’s existing way to earn money solely for charitable good.

Now lawmakers must now decide whether to  “break up the model” as Forrester puts it, or legitimize it for future companies when dealing with succession.

At least one company within Newman’s idea-sharing network has another concept: Pirron, at Impact Makers, started the financial services company as a for-profit benefit corporation in 2006, dividing its equity between two public charities, a community foundation in central Virginia, and nonprofit that owns a community development bank. The company, a certified B Corp, has since grown from one employee with a laptop to 130 employees generating more than $20 million annually, which gets donated to various health and child safety net groups the business supports.

Pirron, whose company competes with Deloitte, Accenture, and Price Waterhouse Cooper, expects Impact Makers to reach a valuation of $100 million within seven to 10 years, at which point, he’ll sell the company, creating generous endowments for the philanthropic stakeholders who already hold interest. In the meantime, he says employees are paid market rate salaries and will receive a “change of control” bonus at the time of sale.

The business model itself doesn’t really attract business. “Our clients are corporate clients and they buy on capabilities and price, which just means be the best quality and deliver like any other consulting firm,” he says, noting that the commitment to give-it-all-away is at best a potential “tiebreaker” if they ever offered a matching bid for work.

What it does attract are employees who want to be there because they believe in the bigger goal. Over the last 10 years, Impact Makers has had about a 3% turnover rate in an industry where double-digit quit rates are common. “We have an unbelievably high retention rate and that’s really helped us grow because our clients see the value of our consultants staying on projects,” Pirron says.

He believes his team performs better than others because the stakes are larger than the next payday, a concept that’s supported by and body of research around how shared values within workplaces can increase company performance. That’s an idea that more companies seem interested in bottling and selling.

Google was working on a natural language device similar to Amazon’s Echo back in 2013, more than a year before Amazon’s breakthrough device was released.

During a meeting Wednesday at the Google I/O developer conference, two Google execs–VP of Google Assistant Scott Huffman and VP/GM of Home Products Rishi Chandra–told me that back in 2013 Google had already built prototypes of such a device. In one, some additional microphones were added to a tablet device, which was outfitted with natural language software.

The device was designed to sit in a room and listen for a trigger word (“Hey Google”) from a user in the room, then deliver information via a speaker. Not that it worked very well. “I remember waking up one morning and hearing my kids screaming at it ‘Hey Google! Hey Google!’ and it wasn’t responding,” Huffman joked.

Chandra told me Google even had a joke prototype of a voice assistant device, which was the shape of a large hockey puck, and when you lifted its lid off there was just a phone inside talking through its speaker.

The story of the prototypes came after I asked the two men if Google had been influenced by the success of Amazon’s Echo to release its own smart speaker (Google Home in 2016). “Definitely,” said Chandra. “Amazon made a huge bet on ambient voice and it paid off,” he said.

But Huffman and Chandra don’t credit Amazon for the idea of a smart natural language speaker. Google’s own smart speaker device–Google Home–was announced a year ago at Google’s developer event, and only went on sale six months ago.

You can look at Google Home as the second major step in Google’s vision for search, and search-powered assistant features.

The first step came to life in 2013 when Google started making text search more contextual and conversational. Google began supporting nested searches where people could make a series of requests to zero in on the desired search result. The search engine, for the first time, would understand that all these queries were related to the same subject matter. It was the beginning of natural language search.

With Home, Google allowed users to speak, not just type, requests in the back-and-forth fashion of natural language.

In fact, as my colleague Harry McCracken wrote for Time back in 2013, Google’s vision for search is to make it something like the computer in Star Trek or 2001. That is, the computer is always listening, always there to assist.

Here’s Google’s then SVP of search Amit Singhal talking to Harry back in 2013:

“As a little child growing up in India, I watched way too much Star Trek. That’s the vision that stuck with me. You can talk to it naturally, you can ask it whatever you need to. It fades into the background. It’s just there for you,” Singhal said.

It looks like that vision is still alive at Google today, as it continues to sink lots of research and development dollars into natural language and machine learning technology. And it points directly at what may be a third major step for natural language search at the company: The smart speaker device might disappear into the walls. It might be a series of tiny microphones distributed around the house, each reporting back (wirelessly) to the Google Assistant’s brain.

Google, Samsung, and Microsoft have each followed Amazon with their own smart speaker products. Apple may join in the fun, too. For now however, Amazon leads the pack with Echo, and shows no signs of giving ground. A research report earlier this month said Amazon has sold an estimated 10.7 million Echos since the device began shipping in June 2015. An eMarketer report says Amazon controls 70% of the smart speaker market while Google has already grabbed a quarter of it in the six months since Home appeared on the shelves.

LONDON–For such a plain-looking room, it sure carries a massive, almost eerie, historic weight. Studio 2 at Abbey Road Studios in London is nearly empty, except for some old tape-recording machines and a few pianos. “This is the one they played on Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” producer Giles Martin tells me, striking a few high-pitched notes. Fifty years ago, his father, Sir George Martin, recorded The Beatles’ most ambitious album in this very room–an album that pushed the limits of recording technology and, few would disagree, helped alter popular music as we know it.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was recorded and mixed over the course of 24 sessions here in early 1967. The finished product, a surprising sonic and stylistic departure from the band’s previous work, became one of the highest-selling and most critically acclaimed records of all time. On May 26, the album is being reissued and given the “deluxe” expanded treatment music fans have come to expect from special anniversary editions like this: A six-disc boxed set featuring dozens of extra tracks of outtakes and alternate versions of songs, a 5.1 surround sound mix, short documentary film, and full-color book.

Anchoring this cornucopia of fan bait is the album’s core 13 songs, which have been completely remixed from the original tapes found in the vaults here at Abbey Road. Using a blend of vintage machines and modern tricks, the new mixes give a fresh sound to one of the most revered albums in rock’n’roll history.

“We haven’t added anything to it,” says Martin, who led the four-month project to remix the album. “We’re not adding any instruments. We’re not adding any voices. If anything, we’re taking layers off of it.”

Rather than a simple, surface-level remastering of the album’s sound, the 2017 mixes of Sgt. Pepper were made by digging back into the original four-track tapes and trying to recreate the album in a way that honors the artistic wishes of the band, while allowing for creative decisions by Martin and his fellow engineers. Unlike previous versions of the album–like the original vinyl, the CD version remastered in the 1980s, or the 2009 remaster you hear on Spotify and vinyl today–this mix was made from the first generation of studio tapes, rather than subsequent, overdubbed copies. As a result, the sounds on the new record are more crisp and detailed than they’ve ever been heard before.

“It sounds much more vibrant, because we’re mixing from tapes they’ve never mixed from before,” Martin explains. “You feel like there are less layers in between you and them. That’s what I think it feels like.”

To demonstrate, Martin opens up Pro Tools on his computer and starts playing a clip of the new version of “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.” The opening notes, played on an organ by Paul McCartney, cascade subtly across the speaker (a stereo trick inserted by Martin) while John Lennon’s voice starts singing with a double-tracked, slighted phased effect. It already sounds different from the version I grew up with–Lennon’s voice is clean in the traditional stereo mix, and those opening notes stayed crammed in the left speaker rather than dancing from ear to ear. By the time the bass on the 2017 version, guitars and drums join in for the chorus, everything sounds clearer and a bit more bassy than I’m used to hearing it.

This sense of clarity and boldness is consistent throughout the new album; voices are clearer, instruments are slightly more detailed and sometimes louder. The mix feels fuller and more spacious; the instruments and voices of John, Paul, George, and Ringo often feel like they have more room to breathe amidst the album’s many layers of sound.

Longtime listeners will likely notice small details in some songs that they haven’t heard before. Some of this is because of the newfound clarity–you can hear minor subtleties like fingers moving across guitar strings, for instance. And some of it is because of deliberate decisions made by Martin and engineers like Sam Okell, who Martin turns to on Beatles projects because “he knows the skeletons in every closet” of the recordings.

Wherever possible, Martin and his team honored the sound and feel of the original mono mix, as opposed to the stereo version with which most younger listeners are now familiar. Lennon’s double-tracked voice on “Lucy and the Sky With Diamonds,” for example, isn’t a new effect. It’s what Lennon wanted when they mixed down the original mono version–the one fans rushed out to buy in 1967. Back then, Martin explains, the stereo mix was an afterthought for which the band wouldn’t even bother to show up to the studio. It just so happens that stereo wound up becoming the dominant format.

“The band, my dad, and the engineer spent hours and hours over the mono mix,” Martin says. “There are different rules that happen in sound when you go from mono to stereo. There’s an intensity to just one block of sound hitting you in the face that you can’t get with stereo.”

Rather than remixing the album in mono–a remastered mono version was just released in 2009–Martin and the engineers tried to retain as many qualities as they could from the mono version, while still mixing it in stereo. Martin used a combination of institutional knowledge (it undoubtedly helps to be George Martin’s son), notes written on tape boxes 50 years ago, and attentive listening to infer the band’s wishes.

“You think, what would they like if they were here?” Martin says. “That’s the kind of thing you have to judge.”

Some of it is obvious from listening back to the original mix. “If John Lennon was holding onto a fader and pulling the fader down because he wanted a certain thing, then we should probably respect that to a certain degree,” Martin says.

Just to be sure, Martin always runs these types of projects by the surviving members of the band and their families. Olivia Harrison, widow of guitarist George Harrison, heard the new version of her husband’s song “Within You Without You” and offered her feedback, for instance. And, of course, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney were given a chance to do the same. Getting input from McCartney helped Martin iron out the final sound of the song “A Day In The Life,” which was proving to be difficult.

“You realize you’re playing the new Sgt. Pepper for Paul McCartney,” says Martin. “It’s kind of nerve-wracking, because it’s his music, you know. Generally, there’s a trust.”

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band was conceived and recorded at a famously pivotal time in the band’s career. Worn out by the demands of constantly touring the world, The Beatles decided to stop performing live, take some rare time off, and return to the recording studio with a different mind-set–aided only somewhat by their recent discovery of LSD. The “Sgt. Pepper” concept, hatched by McCartney, allowed the most famous band on the planet to start over and pretend to be something completely different.

Since the band had no intention of trying to play their new songs live, a major creative constraint was lifted. With George Martin’s help, they crafted an album that made full use of the recording studio and its technology, sometimes stretching its limits. Having already dabbled with sonic experimentation on Revolver the previous year, The Beatles tossed aside any remaining inhibitions for Sgt. Pepper, bringing in an orchestra, unusual organs like the Mellotron, and seemingly whatever other instrumentation their budget could afford.

“The feedback we got back is that you can suddenly hear everything,” says Martin. “And the album is so well-made that if you can hear everything, it’s actually a better experience. I mix certain records and you think, God, you want to hide things under the covers.”

The end result–starting with a double-sided single in early 1967 featuring “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane”–took many by surprise at the time with its more complex, eclectic sound that ranged from the psychedelic to the orchestral with bits of pop, balladry, big band, and circus music sprinkled throughout.

Fifty years later, the experimental DNA of the album and its wide, multi-layered range of sounds make it an interesting–if not risky–record to revisit and tinker with.

While Martin brings modern mixing techniques and software like Pro Tools to the recording booth, he relies nearly as much on vintage technology and ideas that are a half-century old. Tape machines and effects used during the original sessions were wheeled out when useful, but there was no philosophical devotion to analog tech.

But as much as the retooled album pays homage to its own past, the finished product wouldn’t be possible without today’s music production tools. Recreating the multi-tape layering effect would be incredibly cumbersome if done solely on Abbey Road’s original machines. Even something as simple as adjusting the equalization–or EQ in more common parlance–on the drums is much easier to do today than it was back then. And it shows: Ringo Starr’s drums, especially the low-end of the kick drum, are louder and sometimes more central in the mix on this record.

To check his gut one last time, Martin played the remixed songs for a group of what he calls “Beatles obsessives”–hardcore fans who know the material inside and out and will likely be its loudest critics if Martin misses the mark on anything. For Martin, the goal is to strike a balance between people like this and a new generation of listeners.

“We live in this modern world of streaming, where a kid is going to put this next to Kendrick Lamar and it should bump onto the speakers,” Martin says, acknowledging how dramatically music consumption has changed since the days when kids lined up at brick-and-mortar stores to buy new LPs. Somehow, he must appeal to the modern-day equivalent of those kids, while keeping an older generation of fans satisfied enough to plunk down their money one more time.

“George Harrison was 24 when they did Sgt. Pepper,” Martin says. “If we can get the youth and the energy to burst through the speakers as they did when they recorded it, that will always be there. Even if it is 50 years old.”

The sheer volume of new and worthy music coming out right now is giving us a certain amount of decision fatigue here at Fast Company. Last week alone saw HAIM push out the recorded verison of the Right Now track; Paramore dropped a new album, their first record since 2013; Harry Styles took on the Classic Rock genre with his gem; and there was so much more from Miley Cyrus, Swet Shop Boys, Snoop Dogg, J Hus, Calvin Harris/Future/Khalid, Bryson Tiller with Young Thug. We even got to experience Justin Bieber speaking in Spanish.

What’s in store for this week? Here are our playlist recommendations to get you through the week ahead.

Track 1. Anderson .Paak, Ty Dolla $ign, and Schoolboy Q – Come Down (Remix)

This is the sound of summer seventeen–everything old is new again, when James Brown-style vocals meld with hip-hop in Anderson Paak’s latest. This outstanding track is originally from his 2016 full length album, Malibu, and he remixed it for 2017.

Track 2. Francis and the Lights, and Chance the Rapper – May I Have This Dance (Remix)

Most Creative Person Chance the Rapper shows off his dance moves along with guest vocals from–is that Phil Collins? Strike that… Francis Farewell Starlite of Francis and the Lights. Looks like Chance was born with two right feet.

Track 3. Selena Gomez – Bad Liar

This track, from the executive producer of the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why (oh and she’s also a pop star), is good because it’s a pop departure, more reminiscent of Talking Heads and classic rock than early Katy Perry. While we are on the topic, I’m wondering what Selena Gomez and Chance the Rapper have in common? I have no clue but Petra Collins has been cranking out photo series with the two of them lately. The photographs are a must see.

Track 4. Xxxtentacion – Looking for a Star

The debut track from Xxxtentacion, 19, was an angry club smash with ego, titled “Look at me.” This week we got a preview of the range he is capable of with this emotional jam off Xxxtentacion’s 18 minute EP “Revenge“.

Track 5. Katy Perry, and Nicki Minaj – Swish Swish

The production on this Katy Perry track was haunting me. Every write up mentioned the Fatboy Slim “Star 69” sample, which is a “I Get Deep” sample in itself. Something else was going unmentioned, then when Nicki Minaj came on the track it hit me… “Truffle Butter“, which samples “What They Say“. This track is a beauty Frankensteinesque creation.

Track 6. Liam Payne, Quavo – Strip that Down

The One Direction fellas went all over the musical map. Zayn went RnB, Harry went classic rock, Niall went Folk, and now Liam is here with Trap. Its lovely. Curious to see if Louis puts anything out, and what genre it may fall under.

Track 7. Frank Ocean – Biking (Solo)

Frank Ocean is a mysterious poet, that we are all grateful just to have. Lately he has been dropping tracks like Beyoncé–completely unannounced. On May 15, surprise, there was a new track listed under Ocean, “Biking (Solo)” which is not to be confused with his other track Biking, and Solo… and (Solo Reprise). How do the lyrics to Seigfried go again… “Dreaming a thought that could dream about a thought That could think of the dreamer that thought.”

Track 8. Lil Yachty, and Evander Griiim – X Men

Lil Yatchy is just a consistently good addition to the party playlist, this track is all fun.

Bonus Track. Katy Perry, and Migos – Bon Appétit

“Bon Appétit” is such an earworm.

We went ahead and added all these new music standouts into a neat playlist below. Be advised we will be updating this Spotify listing every Friday, so it may not be evergreen. Follow the playlist on Spotify, and come back to Fast Company every Friday for our weekly updates.

Some people dip their toes into self-employment slowly. They take their time. They plan it out–for years, even–before finally quitting their day jobs to work for themselves. But while steadily, deliberately building your solo portfolio or startup idea on the side can make the transition easier, some people do it much more abruptly. Many first-time “solopreneurs” are simply people who’ve been fired, laid off, or have to deal with an illness–whether their own or in their families–and that can sharply dial up the pressure on learning how to support yourself.

After getting fired, Jen Remsik spent eight months hunting for a job. Finally, she decided to start her own event-planning business, but it felt like her hand was forced. While bootstrapping the company, Remsik struggled with imposter syndrome, feeling like a risk-averse newbie who had to prove herself. Ultimately, she overcame these hurdles and got her new company on firm footing–where it still is today. But Remsik isn’t alone. One recent study by Upwork estimates that 37% of freelance workers feel they don’t have a choice when they start working for themselves.

Here’s how many figure out how to make it work anyway.

Related:Why These Freelancers Ditched Cities For Rural America

Cherrypick From Your Existing Skill Set

Adam Calihman found himself unemployed after his startup foundered. The company’s biggest client pulled out, so Calihman had to lay off most of his staff and eventually wound the business down. Then he hit the job market.

Having spent years as a generalist and product manager as his startup’s COO, Calihman struggled to find jobs that fit his broad skills. He’d poured his life savings and a good deal of credit into the startup, so he needed income fast. While Calihman was a skilled business strategist, he knew he’d need more focus; picking a tangible skill would help him make money fast as a freelancer.

Web development was just one area Calihman had had a hand in with his startup, but he’d never formally learned to code. But as he puts it, “Necessity is the mother of income.” So night after night, he sat at his kitchen table hacking away on websites. Just a few months later, while discussing his fate over a beer with a friend, he landed his first web-development client, and before long a new business was born.

Looking back, he says, being “open-minded, receptive, and not afraid to be uncomfortable” were what saved him after getting pushed into working for himself.

Dig Into Whatever You’re Doing To Distract Yourself

Unhappy and questioning his career, digital designer and writer James Greig found himself sinking into depression. He drained his savings account and took a trip around the world, hoping it would give him some clarity and shift his perspective. It didn’t.

Instead, things got worse. He ran out of money and had to move back in with his parents. Greig felt totally destroyed. To distract himself, he started taking photos of people with their bikes, then posting them on Instagram. Before long, it turned into a full-blown project, called CycleLove, a popular blog and newsletter celebrating cycling culture.

Yoga + cycling (+magic) = YoGoGirls. Click our profile link for an exclusive interview with Debby and Michelle whose #yogokickstand pose has been causing a bit of a stir here on Instagram. #cyclelove #yogaforlife #yogaforcyclists

A post shared by CycleLove — James Greig (@cyclelove) on Sep 1, 2016 at 7:33am PDT

Creating something on his own terms instead helped Greig come out of his shell. Before long, he started picking up graphic design projects, and somewhere along the way, the depression lifted. Five years later, Greig still works for himself and sees this difficult period as an important career shift.

If you’re facing burnout or a mental health challenge, James says, “Don’t pressure yourself, it’s going to be a slow process of rebuilding your life. It’s exciting when you have complete freedom,” he adds, “but you’ve got to be patient. Explore all the things you can be. Explore different avenues for yourself.”

Related:How My Cycling Obsession Has Made Me A Better Entrepreneur

Focus On Your Future, Not The Past

Lizz Spano had a similar experience to Greig’s. Before being laid off, she’d been in the habit of posting photos on Instagram from restaurants she liked–something lots of people do just for fun. For Spano, too, it just felt like a hobby, and she worried whether she had enough valuable skills to reset her career path.

Like Greig, Spano turned to her Instagram feed to distract herself in the meantime. She started learning how to take higher-quality shots and picked up some baseline knowledge about influencer marketing on social media. Soon her Instagram feed had over 25,000 followers, and brands like Postmates and Business Insider took notice; Spano started landing new clients, eventually starting a company that offers social media management, food photography, and influencer marketing services as well as restaurant consulting.

little miss, little miss, little miss can't be wrong. ???? #hungryhippie

A post shared by Hungry Hippie (@hungryhippie_) on Feb 27, 2017 at 8:42pm PST

Her advice in retrospect? Keep looking forward. “Don’t let a job loss or any other failure set you back for too long. You can always change your career and start a business with next to nothing,” she says. Her experience is proof that “it doesn’t take a ton of money, it takes knowing you can do it.”

But Spano would always have doubted that if circumstances hadn’t pushed her to try. “I never would have pursued building my Instagram feed if I hadn’t lost my job. Instead, losing my job led me to find the right market and build my business.”

Look For Opportunity In Loss

Erin Pickard was ending a long-term relationship and feeling uncertain about her career when her father suddenly died, leaving her a 2,500 acre farm. Despite her grief and knowing nothing about either farming or running a business, she decided to keep the land, becoming a business owner overnight. Out of sheer necessity, Pickard channeled her grief into learning on the fly. She dug into the minutiae of crop insurance and managing tenants, figuring out how to tend the property her father had left her, and allowing it to transform her in the process.

Working for herself expanded what Pickard thought she could do and gave her confidence she didn’t have before. The first time she wrote a big check, she says, her hand shook and the room started spinning, but it got easier with time. When facing an unplanned–and probably frightening–career shift, Pickard says, “You just have to buckle down and get through it. There’s opportunity in hard places.”

In some ways, these accidental solopreneurs were lucky. They each figured out how to handle an unexpected career change without it letting it get the better of them. As their experiences show, it’s not always easy to let go of the past, but once you’ve managed to look ahead, you can usually find a foothold to steady you, then another, and another–even if you didn’t choose this path yourself, or when to start running down it.

Jim Roach never expected to be struggling with student debt in his 50s. When his daughter Lauren got accepted to Northwestern University, the Dallas-based serial entrepreneur and father of six was making too much money to qualify for certain kinds of loans. So he made the seemingly logical decision to take out a loan directly from the university. By the time Lauren graduated in 2006, the principal balance was down to $40,000–steep but manageable.

That’s when a series of unfortunate events struck: cancer, an expensive divorce, a new child born with a severe hearing impairment, a business going belly-up. Years of wrangling over payment ensued, with the end result of the school demanding the principal and an additional $27,000 in fees and interest.

“They were acting like a loan shark,” Roach tells Fast Company. He was eventually allowed–yes, allowed–to fork over the $40,000 principal, but he had to cut bait and leave his daughter on the hook for the rest.

Roach didn’t know it at the time, but he was part of a microeconomic wave, one that could easily turn into a macroeconomic tsunami. The baby boom generation is increasingly being sucked into America’s student debt crisis, and no one seems to know what effect it will have on the economy.

Student loans are generally thought to be a concern for young people. And they are: As of the end of 2015, per the latest available data from the New York Fed, Americans aged 18-34 held a massive $601.53 billion tab for higher education. But that same data also indicates that mom and dad (or grandma and grandpa in some cases) are shouldering more and more of these debts. From 2005 to 2015, the amount of student loan debt held by those ages 60-64 has increased eightfold, from $4.85 billion to $38.35 billion. For those aged 55-59, the increase is about fivefold, from $13.9 billion to $65.47 billion. And these older debtors are not exactly paying those loans off: 12.6% of debt held by 60- to 64-year-olds was in default at the end of 2015, a higher default rate than anyone under 40.

To make matters worse, the Trump era is not shaping up to be particularly friendly toward people struggling to pay off their educations. His education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has already scrapped an Obama-era plan to streamline the government’s system for servicing student loans. And just this week, a leaked education budget obtained by the Washington Post revealed a proposal to end a student loan-forgiveness program for public servants, creating uncertainty for some 400,000 borrowers.

The decisions driving the rising tide of boomer student loans are varied. Sometimes it’s parents like Roach who take out loans to pay for their kids’ tuition. Other times, it’s older workers who want to get a higher degree so they can be more attractive to employers. That was the case with 64-year-old Shelley Placito-Leaser, who had 20 years of counseling experience when she left the Air Force in the mid-’90s, but who wanted to continue her work in the civilian world–and be well compensated for it–something that required a higher degree. She went back to school in her 40s to get her Master of Social Work, starting at Barry University in Miami and finishing it up at Tulane University in New Orleans.

That degree ended up costing Placito-Leaser $50,000 on its face, and like many students, she borrowed money to cover the costs. She finally paid off the last of her loans in 2006, more than a decade after graduating–but that was only thanks to a windfall the family received. “The system is not designed to behave kindly toward people who are trying better themselves,” Placito-Leaser says. “If I hadn’t re-married, I would have been a single mother trying to balance school and parenting and work. I can’t imagine having been a single mother and being able to do this.”

Who’s Paying Attention?

Research on student debt and its potential effects on the economy abounds, but it tends to focus on millennials. “Students in Distress,” an excellent study on default-related labor market shocks from NYU Stern’s Holger Mueller and Constantine Yanellis, is one recent example. On the flip side, discussions about baby boomers in debt tend to underplay or even ignore the student loan problem, even though student-loan delinquencies are rising for that age group. The New York Fed collects data on student debt levels for different age groups–as do other organizations–but no one’s really crunched the numbers in a way that would predict what the rising tide of student-loan debt among older Americans might mean for the economy at large.

One of the more obvious potential effects would involve the real estate market. “We mostly see the impact of situations like that with studies on millennials and homeownership,” says Paul Weinstein, director of the MA in Public Management program at Johns Hopkins and a researcher frequently cited by the Public Policy Institute.

It’s long been known that buying a house is increasingly out of reach for younger adults, but millennials aren’t the only ones losing their grip on this core aspect of the American Dream. “About five years ago we started hearing from our members they’re running into buyers with too much debt,” says Jessica Lautz, managing director of survey research and communications for the National Association of Realtors.

The observation inspired some hard research revealing that about 70% of homebuyers with student-loan debt aged 52 to 61 said their loans were $10,000 or more, with a median burden of $18,000. That’s only $7,000 less than the median amount owed by those 36 and younger.

There’s also the possibility, Weinstein and Lautz agree, that the burden of higher education debt is being masked some by parents taking out second mortgages on their homes to pay for their kids’ college tuition, since such mortgages aren’t counted in the student loan pile. But that possibility is difficult to track using just numbers.

“Homeownership is the traditional way middle-income families have built on wealth, and if parents are taking out equity on their home, that’s a wonderful thing to do for their children,” Lautz says. “But the problem is if you’re taking on that debt later in life, that will hit you. It could hit retirement savings.”

Researchers are understandably reluctant to hypothesize on broader macroeconomic effects, given the dearth of research around this specific question. “Truthfully there is no good research out there,” Lautz says. “We know it’s the second largest sector of debt after mortgages. But many researchers tend to focus on crises that have already happened, and it is hard to get the data. If you’re looking at whether people are putting off retirement, the only way to do that is to actually ask them.”

One approximation comes from NAR, which did a survey of homeowners currently repaying student loans. The group found that 60% of boomers in that position expect to delay buying a new home by three to five years. Those who do buy homes tend to be buying for multigenerational living, which typically means they’re taking care of older parents in addition to possibly playing host to grown children.

The Bitter End

Placito-Leaser got free of her debt after making payments of $500 to $700 a month for nearly a decade. “Certainly it made a difference with what we could do with our lives,” she says. “There were vacations we didn’t take, that sort of thing.” Though she’s now retired, it was a tough row to hoe. The same goes for Roach, who started another business a couple years ago but was left with no savings–not exactly a position a 59-year-old wants to find himself in.

The AARP has studied its members’ attitudes toward debt, using data from the Employee Benefits Research Institute, but not with a specific focus on student loans. Its analysis of a 2016 survey of Americans 50 and older paints a picture of workers and retirees worried about debt in general: Half of the workers reported having a problem with debt, while a third of the retirees reported the same. One in nine said debt was a “major problem.”

And the problem is only going to get worse, with older members of Generation X now footing the bill for their children’s increasingly expensive educations, which are widely viewed as requisites for employment.

Roach offers a hint at what we might be seeing more of in the coming years. “I work with guys in their 70s and they’re out there swinging,” Roach says. “College is the reason a lot of people are still out there–we’ve got educations to pay for.”