London Business School Wins Prestigious Gold Brandon Hall Award in Saudi Arabia

But recall that during the “great resignation,” a lot of quitters weren’t leaving for different jobs. Plenty stepped away to travel, start a business or focus on family. And they did it with confidence that they could boomerang back to the same, or similar, roles they left.

Today, that confidence is badly shaken. The disappearing belief that you can return to your previous rung on the career ladder is the other cause of workers’ paralysis.

But some are bold enough to walk away from a plum position, and there is an art to leaving the door open for a career comeback. Some of it is mental, some tactical. If you’re contemplating a break or change, there are strategies to overcome the natural fear you are feeling.

I’ve gone through it myself. I am sweating my way through a version of this concern as I write what is my final “On the Clock” column. I plan to work less and parent more as my wife returns to a full-time office job. After 11 years—and 11 children birthed, adopted or fostered—it’s her turn to come first professionally.

I’m excited for both of us, in no small part because I get to stay at The Wall Street Journal in a different role. I’ll anchor a revamped Careers & Leadership newsletter, coming soon to an email inbox near you. (You can sign up for the newsletter here in advance of the switch.) Still, it isn’t lost on me that the columnist’s role I am leaving is the kind of job that might come along only once in a career.

Many of you have faced something similar.

“There’s the fear of the musical chairs problem, which is really acute in our culture,” says Sabra Meretab, who was chief of staff of Stripe’s payments engineering division when she quit to travel and write a memoir in 2024. “It’s a really legitimate concern that, if I leave, what are the odds that there is still a chair for me when I return?”

In Meretab’s case, there was. She returned to her former company 18 months later.

Weigh the risk of regret

Not everyone will be so lucky. But the thought of picking up where you left off shouldn’t be top of mind. Instead, think of this: The role you’re in could be a once-in-a-career kind of job. What if the thing tempting you to leave is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?

“We fear the irreversibility of leaving and the opportunity cost of that, but we completely overlook the irreversibility of staying and the opportunity costs that are associated with that,” Meretab says.

Entering her 30s, she worried that the window to globe-trot as a freewheeling single might be closing. A career sabbatical would be harder to pull off later if she had a partner and children.

She concluded that she would regret missing her shot at adventure more than she would regret forfeiting a great job, even if she couldn’t get it back.

Understand you’re a catch

It’s hubris to think you are irreplaceable. At the same time, high performers don’t grow on trees.

Jawad Mourabet tries to keep this in mind as he runs his fledgling business, Velto Pickleball Club in Brooklyn, after leaving McKinsey & Co. earlier this year. He told me in March that he was giving himself two years to make it work when we spoke for a column about entrepreneurship.

He reports Velto is profitable, so he isn’t thinking about how to get his old job back. But could he, if he needed or wanted to?

“I actually think I’d be in a better position now to become a partner at McKinsey than if I had stayed,” he says.

This self-assurance is the result of a mindset shift. Like many who vied for and landed a competitive position, Mourabet internalized the sense that he was lucky to be there. Over time, though, he came to recognize his value. Maybe McKinsey was lucky to have him.

He reasons that if he was good enough the first time, he’d likely be good enough a second time—possibly even more so, with firsthand experience running a business.

Meanwhile, his pickleball club is a popular destination for some of his former colleagues. That helps keep those relationships warm.

Keep in touch

And networking, post-exit, is key to keeping your options open, says digital sales executive Shannon Leiro. She met regularly with a mentor when she stepped away for two years to start a family. She also monitored industry trends closely and, when she noticed a major shift, determined she couldn’t afford to prolong her hiatus.

“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I better get back in before I become obsolete,’ ” Leiro says.

Chika Uwazie, former chief executive of a technical recruiting startup, thinks she has more runway. She has spent the past few years creating content, including a podcast, newsletter and forthcoming book, “Timeline Grief,” about failing to hit milestones on schedule.

Still, whenever someone reaches out to gauge her interest in returning to the recruiting industry, she makes time for a conversation, even if she doesn’t expect it to go anywhere.

“I always take calls,” Uwazie says. “I think if you’re building your contacts, you can go back. I think the issue is when you are so focused on the new thing that you become disconnected.”

One caution: You don’t want to earn a reputation as someone who leads people on or wastes their time.

But if you are honest about your intentions, peeking back through the door you left open can help ensure it doesn’t slam shut forever.

The 36-year-old tower crane operator in Nashville, Tenn., who works 12-hour shifts, helps lift and move rebar and buckets of concrete from a perch often hundreds of feet in the air. This isn’t what she envisioned when she received a liberal arts associate degree more than a decade ago, but after nearly a decade on the job, she feels at home in her crane.

“I’m out in the sun, making my mark on the world,” said Cossairt, who makes $120,000 a year. “I think more women would love to get in and make men’s money doing this work, if they only knew.”

The skilled trades have long been a boy’s club. But more women are breaking in, drawn by well-paying jobs that are in high demand. To keep them coming, many companies are courting women like Cossairt through new benefits and perks, including paid maternity leave and more flexibility. They are also trying to create a more welcoming work environment while cracking down on off-color jokes and catcalls on male-dominated jobsites.

The federal government tracks female participation in fields such as construction, and installation and repair, which includes jobs such as plumbers, carpenters and auto technicians. As of last year, women made up about 4.4% of those workers. But they have made mostly steady gains, with that figure rising from 2.9% a decade earlier.

At Universal Technical Institute’s campus in Exton, Pa., career services director Katie Yurick said women are enrolling partly because the industry has grown more tech-infused. Automotive technicians can hook up cars to computers for diagnosis, and plenty of in-demand jobs—such as welding and electrical work—can trade as much on brains and attention to detail as brawn.

“These jobs aren’t even dirty jobs anymore,” said Yurick, adding that she has also heard from employers who say they are trying to hire women, believing they possess high maturity levels and are detail-oriented.

UTI’s student body, which spans 17 campuses across the U.S., is now 8% female, quadruple what it was five years ago. In some areas, such as collision repair and auto refinishing, that figure is even higher, at 19%.

“Our industry needs this workforce,” said Maja Ericksen, executive vice president at construction company Mortenson, which in 2024 began offering 12 weeks of paid leave for birth mothers in its skilled workforce. More than 10% of Mortenson’s skilled workforce is now female, up from 7% a decade ago.

“There aren’t too many careers you feel are AI-proof, and being in the skilled trades is one that isn’t going away,” Ericksen said.

Women have broadly outperformed men in the labor market in recent years. This partly reflects booming growth in fields that traditionally employ more women, such as healthcare and social assistance, while women also are making inroads in traditionally male-dominated jobs.

Kym Gardner, 39, a project engineer in Charlotte, N.C., said that as a child, she never thought about working in the field. Her mother was a teacher, her father a computer analyst. “No one really talked about it, it wasn’t considered to be a career,” she said. “The expectation was to go to college.”

But in high school, she grew interested in architecture, found a construction mentorship program and quickly fell in love with seeing buildings rise from the ground up. Now the mother of three children, including a 5-month-old, starts her days on site and works remotely in the afternoons—flexibility she said helps give her peace of mind and ensures she doesn’t have to sacrifice her caregiving duties.

Her company, Turner Construction, is growing fast and needs all the workers it can get, said president Abrar Sheriff. The company hit $29 billion in revenue last year and expects around $35 billion this year, fueled in part by work on data centers. More worker flexibility, including creature comforts such as heated and cooled bathrooms with running water on worksites, or regularly cleaned breakrooms, are part of the pitch.

“We need more people to come into our industry,” Sheriff said.

Elsewhere, construction company Skanska has taken steps such as ensuring female employees have correctly sized gloves, helmets and work boots, rather than forcing them to make do with male-sized gear. Deila Ray, who spent a decade as a pipe welder and now teaches the trade in high school, said she had to shrink her own gloves with fire when she started in the industry.

Skanska this year also started mandating inclusivity for all its team leaders, encouraging them to be more aware of different workers’ needs, said Ayesha Adams, who joined Skanska in 2023 as its inaugural director of culture and engagement.

“You can get people all day, but how do you keep them here?” Adams said.

Some states are trying to make work in the trades more accommodating for women. Both Washington and Illinois, for example, have in the last few years passed laws requiring nursing rooms for mothers on construction sites, as well as refrigerators to store breast milk, flexible break schedules and access to water for cleaning.

Construction companies are also tackling another issue: workplace harassment. At Turner, senior leaders there get on a call within four hours of any incident being reported. In one recent case in Texas, a subcontractor’s entire project crew of around a dozen men were replaced when that company couldn’t identify who had written derogatory graffiti about female employees, said Sheriff, Turner’s president.

Part of the challenge is that it doesn’t take aggressive comments to make a jobsite feel hostile, said Rebecca Heustess, 42, a tile foreman who makes $65,000 a year in Henry, S.D. Even after 20 years in the trades, she said she regularly encounters men who patronize her or ignore her instructions.

Still, she said she has thick skin and that the jobsite culture has slowly improved. She also loves the work.

“When I leave a job, it’s this beautiful shiny sparkly project that I know will be there for years to come,” Heustess said. “It’s super fulfilling.”

Nelson kept the broken pieces of his iPod, the first Apple device to use flash. They sit on his desk and hold a special reverence now that the tables have turned.

In the past year, demand by AI hyperscalers has quintupled prices for flash, according to research firm TechInsights, opening a new era for Kioxia and other suppliers. Two years ago, Apple bought nearly twice the flash storage of Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Google combined, according to TechInsights estimates. Hyperscalers are now buying double Apple’s share.

Flash memory suppliers and their sales teams privately expressed their glee at Apple’s comeuppance during chitchat at the industry’s largest conference this summer in Santa Clara, Calif. AI deals have given Kioxia sales executives and other flash suppliers new leverage to charge Apple higher prices.

Meta, Microsoft and Amazon signed contracts with Kioxia this year to secure long-term supply by committing to higher prices. The contracts protect Kioxia’s profits if the market turns. The company declined to comment.

Hyperscalers can afford to pay more. Flash storage is a smaller part of building a data center than making an iPhone, and accounting rules allow companies to spread the cost over years.

Apple is expected to spend $25 billion on flash storage this year for about the same amount it bought for $6 billion in 2025, according to estimates by TechInsights. Tim Cook, Apple’s executive chairman, compared escalating memory chip prices to a “100-year flood.”

Yet Apple had ignored analysts’ warnings and was caught off guard, said people familiar with the company’s procurement practices.

Company executives believed they knew the market better than anyone else, the people said. Flash that cost $68 a gigabyte in 2005 had fallen to a nickel by 2023. Now, demand by the AI industry has lifted the price to more than 30 cents a gigabyte, a 550% jump, threatening Apple’s steep profit margins from selling extra storage.

Buyers of the iPhone 17 Pro paid Apple $200 last year for double the storage of its 256-gigabyte base model. The extra storage at the time cost Apple $15 and has since shot up to $66, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.

“Apple has historically driven a very hard bargain with memory suppliers,” said Walt Coon, an analyst at TechInsights. “And there’s no shortage of satisfaction among suppliers now that the balance of power is shifting.”

“We’ve worked with many of our suppliers for decades, and we deeply value their partnership over the years,” Apple said in statement. “We look forward to continuing our important work together.”

Apple recorded an average gross profit of more than 80 cents for every dollar it charged iPhone and iPad buyers for extra storage since it first released those devices through 2025, the Journal found. For Mac computers sold since 2010, it averaged nearly 80 cents.

In recent months, Apple raised prices for nearly all of its products. Prices rose an average of 13% for iPhones, an increase that included older models which typically get a price cut.

The question for Apple is whether consumers will react to the higher prices by keeping their iPhones longer or whether they will continue to buy at their usual pace. For flash-storage makers, the question is when—or if—Apple will regain its flash-market leverage.

“It’s been a love-hate relationship between Apple and the flash industry,” said Mark Newman, an analyst with Bernstein Research. Apple has sustained the manufacturers for years, he said, but its power to cap prices, while beneficial to shareholders, left suppliers feeling “screwed.”

Commitment-phobe

In 2001, engineers at Kioxia, then called Toshiba, showed two Apple executives a 1.8-inch-diameter, 5-gigabyte hard drive they had developed but didn’t yet know what to do with.

Around 60,000 employees are eligible for the program, according to a person familiar with the matter. The offer is available to select employees in Canada, India, the U.K. and the U.S.

“The Voluntary Exit Offer reflects an important part of how we’re evolving our approach to change: creating greater flexibility and, where possible, more ways for employees to shape their next chapter,” Amy Coleman, Microsoft’s chief people officer, said in a message sent to employees.

Microsoft said the program was “time-limited” and would provide eligible employees with financial support and career planning resources. Coleman said eligible employees would receive an email link with their offer details in the next few hours.

Microsoft in April announced a voluntary retirement program, which offered around 8,600 employees buyouts, the person familiar with the matter said, and more than 30% accepted the offer. The company expects a far lower percentage to accept the latest buyouts, the person said. Microsoft employed 223,000 employees as of the end of June.

The voluntary retirement program was part of a broader shift by Microsoft to alter its performance system and how it awards bonuses and stock options, according to a memo to employees from Coleman viewed by The Wall Street Journal at the time.

Microsoft earlier this year announced 3,200 job cuts in its Xbox videogames division.

Candy Corn

One of the most inescapable Halloween treats—Candy Corn—wasn’t marketed as a Halloween goody at first. In fact, it was marketed as a whimsical candy version of chicken feed.

It was created back in the 1880s in Philadelphia, which was then a candy-making hub. One popular trend among candy companies was nature: treats inspired by the agricultural world, like pumpkins, leaves and chestnuts.

Among those businesses was Wunderle Candy, owned by a family of German immigrants. (Milton Hershey worked there before he founded his chocolate business.) One Wunderle employee, George Renninger, came up with the idea of a candy shaped like corn kernels—but also took the innovative step of applying different layers of colors to the treats.

The process involved pouring layers of hot liquid sugar into tiny molds by hand. “It was laborious,” says Beth Kimmerle, founder and chief executive of Attribute Analytics and author of three books about candy.

The unusual color scheme gave the candy instant appeal. And, yes, it was marketed as faux chicken feed at the start: “an agricultural-themed novelty and penny candy that appeared throughout the year,” Kimmerle says.

How did the corn get associated with Halloween? At the turn of the last century, another candy company, Goelitz Confectionery, also began selling the treat. Kimmerle says it isn’t clear what kind of arrangement—if any—the two companies had about the rights to the candy. But, in the end, Goelitz usually gets the credit for scaling the candy and branding it as a Halloween product.

As for Wunderle, Kimmerle says, the business wound down in the 1980s, while Goelitz was eventually renamed Jelly Belly in 2001, and acquired by Ferrara Candy in 2023. (Another Ferrara brand, Brach’s, has also been selling candy-corn treats since the 1920s; Ferrara says that it doesn’t have information showing a licensing agreement between the companies.)

Candy Corn has not only become immensely popular in itself, but also has lent its colors and flavors to countless other products. This year, Brach’s launched a limited-edition fragrance, Ode to Candy Corn, which “smells exactly like how candy corn tastes,” according to the company.

Licensed costumes

Dressing up as your favorite fictional figure is a Halloween tradition. Entrepreneur Ben Cooper made it a lot easier for people to get into character—by making licensed costumes a big business.

In the 1930s, Cooper sold costumes for vaudeville, says Rob Caprilozzi, founder of the Horror News Network website, who recently made a documentary about Cooper. In 1937, the entrepreneur—whose company was simply called Ben Cooper Inc.—bought another company, A.S. Fishbach, which had the license to manufacture costumes of Disney characters.

Cooper added more costumes as new Disney movies came out, as well as updating the old ones, Caprilozzi says. In the 1960s, he expanded his line to superheroes—including Spider-Man and Batman—and then turned to “Sesame Street” and “Star Wars” characters in the 1970s.

“At its height, the company controlled 80% of the licensed custom characters,” says Caprilozzi.

And it wasn’t just fictional heroes, either: Cooper had a line of costumes based on U.S. presidents. (The company destroyed its JFK inventory after the assassination, says Caprilozzi.)

One of the selling points of Cooper’s costumes was simplicity. The costumes were just plastic masks and tarps costing a few dollars apiece, and you could toss them out after the big night—no need to hang onto them year-round.

The company lasted until 1992, when it filed for bankruptcy and was then acquired by competitor Rubie’s Costume. (The company, now known as Rubies, didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

Halloween pop-up shops

Joseph Marver didn’t change what we wear for Halloween, the candy we eat or the type of decorations we put up. But he revolutionized where we buy all that stuff.

Marver was running an apparel store called Spirit Women’s Discount Apparel in Castro Valley, Calif. October sales were historically slow, but he noticed sales booming at a costume shop across the street. According to media accounts, the other store changed locations, and Marver in 1983 decided to get into the Halloween business himself. He put his usual wares into storage and turned his store into an emporium for Halloween merchandise.

“I went to a trade show in Chicago, picked up everything I could that had to do with Halloween, and put it in my store, and it was amazing,” Marver told San Francisco Bay Area radio station KQED in July 2024. (He died in 2025.)

“His sales went through the roof,” says Lisa Morton, author of “Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween” and “The Halloween Encyclopedia.”

Marver doubled down on the gambit the following year—renting out a temporary space in a local mall to sell all types of Halloween products for eight to 10 weeks, from costumes to decorations to face paint. At the time, retail leases typically lasted a decade, and it was difficult for newcomers to land a lease, let alone a temporary one, says Barbara Kahn, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

In the interview with KQED, Marver described his initial difficulties. “Some of the people in the strip centers wanted to have the big boxes come in, but then, some of them realized it [was] not going to happen,” he said. So the malls agreed to take on the pop-ups, figuring, “‘Let’s do Halloween. Let’s get something going. Maybe it’ll bring business to the other tenants.’”

Over the next 16 years, Marver grew his business to 60 temporary retail outlets and changed its name to Spirit Halloween. His company spent the rest of the year preparing for the season, handling jobs like sourcing costumes and identifying potential real estate.

In 1999, Spencer Gifts bought the company; Marver stayed on as a consultant, then opened a hotel. Today, Spirit Halloween operates about 1,500 seasonal stores across the U.S. and Canada.

“I didn’t invent temporary sales,” Marver told the Seattle Times in October 2022, “but I feel like I invented temporary Halloween.”

Haunted houses

Walter Knott became famous as the founder of amusement park Knott’s Berry Farm, which has been in operation for about 80 years. But he and his marketing team also invented the large-scale, commercial haunted house.

People had been putting up private, informal haunted houses for years. Charitable organizations also set up the houses to raise funds, says Benjamin Gagne, president of the Haunted Attraction Association and owner of the Thirteenth Hour haunted attraction in Indianapolis.

But Knott’s Scary Farm Halloween event in 1973 was a first, a large-scale commercial setup designed to boost ticket sales during an otherwise slow season, says M. Stang, Ainsworth Visiting Scholar of American Culture at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Va.

Full-page advertisements flooded Orange County and Los Angeles County newspapers, promising entry to the “spookiest, ghouliest place in Southern California” for just $4. The print ads promised “bizarre, spooky antics,” a “fun-tingling plunge through Satan’s sawmill,” and “LIVE MONSTERS,” Stang wrote in a paper about the attraction.

The park also distinguished itself by having people in costumes provide the scares, says Gagne. Previously, amusement parks, including Disney, had what Gagne calls “dark carny rides,” where patrons rode around in carts, and mirrors and lighting created the mood.

The Scary Farm turned into an annual tradition. Knott’s is still running the Halloween attraction—which is open for 26 nights this season.

Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.

The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.

And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.

The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.

The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.

“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.

For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.

Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.

SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.

Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.

Blurred lines

The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.

In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.

The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.

Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.

Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.

It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.

The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.

“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”

On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.

Musk at the wheel

For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.

Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.

The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.

As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.

As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.

The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.

If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.