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Tiny homes are a popular option with minimalists, aspiring homeowners who can't afford a giant house, and people who want a home on wheels. They've even inspired multiple HGTV shows. When choosing a tiny home, the options can be overwhelming. Here are a few of the questions potential tiny homeowners should ask. 

What kind of tiny home are you looking for?

Tiny homes come in about as many configurations as regular-sized homes, but before picking an architectural style, there are more basic decisions to be made. Tiny houses come in two broad categories: tiny homes on wheels, which are legally considered RVs, and tiny homes without wheels, or accessory dwelling units (ADUs), according to Curbed.

Deciding on which type of tiny home to buy depends on a few factors. For someone drawn to tiny homes for their mobility and travel potential, a home on wheels, registered as an RV, is the way to go. It's also important to consider where the tiny home will reside. RVs will probably be restricted to RV parks and campgrounds, or on privately owned property, but zoning requirements will ultimately determine this. Finding somewhere to build an ADU can be a bit more complicated, again depending on local zoning laws. Some locales are working to make the permitting process faster and easier, like the preapproved Abodu ADU in San Jose, where paperwork can be turned around in just one day.

Who sells them?

You can buy just about anything on Amazon, including dozens of tiny homes delivered right to your door. The e-commerce site sells kits for houses buyers put together on their own, along with prefabricated tiny homes, some of which are made out of repurposed shipping containers or other unusual materials.

Even though Sweden has chosen to avoid an official lockdown, keeping bars and restaurants open — and suffering a higher death toll than in neighboring countries — the country is unlikely to avoid the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, analysts told the Financial Times. 

"It is too early to say that we would do better than others," Christina Nyman, a former official at Riksbank, Sweden's national bank, told the Financial Times. "In the end, we think Sweden will end up more or less the same." 

David Oxley, a senior economist at Capital Economics, told the newspaper that economic "activity in Sweden is grim, maybe not as grim as elsewhere, but it is still unprecedented declines." 

Sweden has reported more than 3,500 deaths from the coronavirus. That number pales in comparison to the tens of thousands of deaths in the US, but Sweden's smaller population of just over 10 million makes the country's death rate one of the highest.

While companies in Sweden, like the automotive manufacturer Volvo, have been hit hard as their global supply chains are disrupted, the economic impact of the pandemic in Sweden, with its robust welfare system, will likely look differently than in countries like the US.

Sweden's lead epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said last week that he didn't anticipate the high death rate. 

"We never really calculated with a high death toll initially, I must say," he said. "We calculated on more people being sick, but the death toll really came as a surprise to us."

The owner of a record shop in Stockholm told the Financial Times that while his store remained open, business dropped quickly by 30%. "For a couple of months, it will work. But after that it will be very, very tough," the owner, Micke Englund, told the paper.

Read the full report over at the Financial Times.

Elon Musk's streak of strange tweets continued, with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeting "Take the red pill" to his 34 million followers on Sunday.

At its most basic level, the tweet is a reference to a scene from the 1999 movie 'The Matrix,' in which the character Morpheus tells the protagonist Neo that he has been living in a computer simulation and is given the choice of taking a red or blue pill. "You take the blue pill,  the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." (It's worth noting that Musk does seem to believe there's a good chance we're living in a computer simulation.)

But taking the red pill, or being "red-pilled," is much more commonly used on the internet to denote a right-wing political awakening. It's often used in forums dedicated to topics like Donald Trump or "men's rights" organizations.

It grew in popularity thanks to a subreddit called TheRedPill, which is openly misogynistic. Writing about in 2013, Business Insider described the subreddit's views:

Welcome to The Red Pill, an Internet community on Reddit founded on the general belief that women have it better than men. Red Pill is not a dating advice bulletin, but rather a forum for people — men, mostly — exploring an ideology that revolves almost exclusively around gender. Those who "swallow the pill" maintain that it's men not women, who have been socially disenfranchised. Feminism is considered a damaging ideology and Red Pillers are quick to cite examples that bolster their points, some going so far as to argue that society is outright anti-male.

The tweet comes as Musk, who once tweeted he is "openly moderate," has taken increasingly anti-regulatory tone as coronavirus has forced the shutdown of his Fremont factory. He has called stay-at-home orders "fascist," and last Monday said he was reopening his Fremont factory and was willing to be arrested to do so. 

Already conservative voices are hailing the tweet as a sign that Musk, who tweeted that he supported Democratic candidate Andrew Yang in 2019, is joining their side. Ivanka Trump quickly retweeted Musk's tweet herself, responding, "Taken!"

 

Uber is expected to begin another round of layoffs on Monday, a source with knowledge of the situation tells Business Insider. 

Business Insider could not confirm the number of people that will be let go, although this person said that Uber plans to cut thousands from its workforce. We cannot confirm that those cuts will all happen on Monday however, as Business Insider previously reported, at the global all-hands meeting about two weeks ago, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told employees that it was finalizing layoff plans and staff would know about them within two weeks. The next day, it cut 3,700 employees. 

Uber employed 28,600 global employees — 16,200 outside the United States — as of March 31, it said in an its last quarterly report filed to the SEC on May 8. The 3,700 jobs cut earlier this month accounted for about 14% of its total workforce, the company said.

When asked about the next round of layoff a company spokesperson said, "As you would expect, the company is looking at every possible scenario to ensure we get to the other side of this crisis in a stronger position than ever."

If Khosrowshahi and team are not considering more layoffs at this time, then that two week-time frame that he warned about would be complete. However, sources at Uber that Business Insider has talked to are not convinced the layoffs are over, particularly if the reported acquisition of Grubhub occurs. In that case, Uber will almost certainly cut jobs as it consolidates overlapping roles within Uber Eats and Grubhub.

At the last all-hands meeting, Uber discussed the severance package being offered to the current crop of laid off employees: 10 weeks of pay and healthcare paid until the end of 2020, the source familiar said.

Units expected to be cutting employees include freight and the self-driving car unit, Advanced Technologies Group, this person believes. Business Insider learned that the leader of the Freight unit, Lior Ron, did warn employees that there would be layoffs. The CEO of the self-driving car unit, Eric Meyhofer, also did not answer any questions about layoffs at the all-hands meeting last week.

But, the atmosphere at the all-hands was not all gloom and doom. Employees submit questions for the all-hands meetings in advance and vote on them. And one question that received many votes was asking senior leadership to name their "guilty pleasure" songs.  So, at the all-hands meeting, Meyhofer enjoyed a discussion on that. While some people found a discussion about songs while some people are worried about their jobs to be "tone deaf" as one person told us, others enjoyed it.

Uber laid off 3,700 people about two weeks ago, on top of the cuts made when it shuttered certain international Uber Eats organizations, transferring others to its Middle East subsidiary Careem and laying off a third of Careem's employees. It also had multiple rounds of layoffs in 2019, cutting about 1,100 people. Should this next round of layoffs be as large as the one earlier this month, at around 4,000, Uber will have cut about 10,000 jobs from its payroll over the past year.

Are you an Uber insider with insight to share? Contact Julie Bort via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or on encrypted chat app Signal at (970) 430-6112 (no PR inquiries, please). Open DMs on Twitter @Julie188.  

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The coronavirus pandemic has sparked a public health crisis, the effects of which are now rippling throughout the global economy.

Cities have been shut down, travel is limited, and major central banks have begun to intervene in financial markets at levels unseen since the 2008 recession.

To find out how industry leaders think COVID-19 and related containment efforts will impact their companies and the economy as a whole, we surveyed executive decision makers from around the world.

Simply enter your email for a FREE download of our executive survey results.

The longevity of COVID-19 is murky, but one thing is clear: The virus forced industries nationwide to pivot in an effort to remain profitable in a world where human contact is inadvisable. 

Outdoor Retailer (OR), the largest biannual trade show for the outdoor industry, fell prey to the coronavirus in early April when it canceled its summer exposition. This temporary loss of the biggest trade show of the year sharply stung known brands like Patagonia and Mountain Hardwear — but all is not yet lost. Thanks to the team at Gearmunk, a rewards-based, democratized gear review platform, the outdoor industry is about to meet the Thin Air Outdoor Media Show, a potential trade show solution that may overcome the realities of our antisocial new normal.

Thin Air, running from June 24 to June 26, is being called the first truly digital trade show for the outdoor industry. While its inception feels like impeccably good timing, CEO and founder of Gearmunk Erik Boles — who spent a decade in the tech startup world before launching into the outdoor industry as a consultant for big and small retailers — shared with Business Insider that the digital concept has been swirling around at Gearmunk for a few years.

The idea for a virtual trade show is born 5 years too soon

In 2015, Boles and his business partner attended the summer OR Show as vendors. During a late-afternoon happy hour, the conversation topic switched to sustainability. As surrounding individuals chattered about carbon footprints and eco-friendly alternatives, Boles looked around the room at the monstrously glitzy booths, trash cans filled with waste, and thousands of folks who had hopped on an airplane in order to attend the event in Salt Lake City.

"Hell yeah, let's hear it for sustainability," his business partner sarcastically commented.

In that moment, Boles made the decision: He would bring a virtual trade show to life. But, he and his team needed to wait for technology to grow into their vision first.

"Back then, it would've been a website and a Webex with video and all that, but that's not a conference — that's a webinar," Boles explained. "In the business world, we've all heard of death by webinar, so we knew that didn't make any sense."

While still in its nascent stages, virtual reality (VR) was clearly the solution. However, in 2015 the world still tiptoed around VR technology. Innovations like Google's recently announced Google Cardboard headset and Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR Inc. and their accompanying Oculus Rift headset dominated the headlines. Boles knew he didn't want to create a trade show where everyone needed headsets at their desks back home, so he and his team bided their time until virtual reality caught up with the real world.

In the meantime, Boles began creating the messaging of the future event. With experience in three successful exits, including the sale of MX Logic to McAfee/Intel, Boles understands technology. As a result, he knew the trade show needed an "ecommerce play" that empowered consumers to advocate for their brands.

Trade shows like OR Show are mainly buying shows where retailers come to see new products from brands and place orders for their store. Media is a distant second priority. While successful, Boles believes that this process allows retailers to passively influence consumer spending.

"If you walked into a retailer and asked for a water bottle, the sales guy is going to show you his favorite from the options the store has already decided to carry," Boles explained. "But what if we can help brands by spreading their message directly to the public so you walk back into that store and specifically ask for a Liberty Works water bottle?"

The Thin Air solution is to invite more people to the initial round table. At present, any type of content creator can apply for one of the 1,000 free media badges to attend the event (although not everyone will be accepted). While this includes traditional media journalists, the show is also open to folks like Instagrammers, YouTubers, bloggers, and TikTok personalities. 

This policy stands in stark contrast to OR Show, which has strict qualification standards regarding what's considered media, along with minimum traffic requirements for digital platforms. Bloggers with enough monthly pageviews can attend OR, but the guidelines exclude other social media personalities. To Boles, this is a big miss that Thin Air wants to change.

"Consumers don't trust brand voice anymore, and they haven't for a very long time," he said. "It's not 1986, and consumers know that pro athletes are paid to deliver a specific message about a product. Immediately, our BS detector goes off."

In inviting a broader range of content creators, Thin Air is doubling down on the notion that the general public knows, likes, and trusts their favorite social media personalities just as much (if not more) as they believe mainstream media or branding messaging.

Plus, Boles believes the direct-to-consumer mentality of social media is powerful. A YouTuber can sit down at their laptop immediately after the trade show and create a video about the best product they discovered, whereas print media typically has a three or four month lead time. In those months before magazines hit newsstands, Boles thinks social media can create a surge of brand loyalty that empowers consumers to publicly champion for their favorite brands — and help those who may be struggling during the current pandemic. 

At present, there's space for 400 brands to attend the show, but retailers and buyers are not allowed in an effort to continue the empowerment of the direct-to-consumer messaging.

COVID-19 presents an opportunity and need for virtual experiences

The team at Gearmunk has worked through these intricacies over the past few years. But when COVID-19 effectively closed down the country in March 2020, Boles and his team paid close attention. While he's quick to say that Thin Air is not a replacement for OR, Boles knew that brands were left in a compromising position with retailers shutting their doors. Once OR announced their cancelation, his team jumped into action in an effort to fill a need in the channel.

The Gearmunk team began true code development in early March. The company's engineers leveraged existing digital infrastructures and their working knowledge of application programming interfaces (APIs) to make Thin Air possible on a pre-existing tech platform. Who the team is leveraging remains a mystery; Gearmunk is keeping that information white labeled. But, Boles did disclose that it's a company with decades of history in the video-gaming space.

How does the virtual trade show work for attendees?

Using a customized avatar, content creators will move through the virtual convention hall by using the mouse or trackpad on their computer at home — no special gear needed. Gearmunk helps brands build out digital assets and videos for their booth, so media attendees can view the products while virtually meeting with the brand rep. 

If they find something interesting, media can click on the digital asset to store it inside the avatar's backpack, which they can then access at home.

Thin Air is using three-dimensional spatial audio, which basically provides the same auditory environment as real life. For example, attendees will hear snippets of conversation as they pass by other avatars, but the sound will fade as they put distance between themselves and others — just like in everyday life. This audio also allows for networking as attendees can chat with others they encounter while perusing aisles. 

The entire event exists in real time, too: If a vendor steps away from their computer to use the restroom, their avatar will not be available at the brand's virtual booth.  

Thanks to the initial number of registrants, Gearmunk is already planning on hosting a winter show for the 2020-21 season. But until then, the team has their work cut out for them in the coming weeks. 

"In these times of economic uncertainty, we know we need to leave these brands in a better position than they were prior to the show," Boles said. "At this point, everything we're doing comes back to that so they know Thin Air is a good move."

Former Harley-Davidson CEO Matt Levatich had an impossible job — and now no longer does, replaced earlier this year by Jochen Zeitz, onetime CEO of Puma and longtime Harley board member.

He wasted no time first as interim CEO, when on a first-quarter earnings conference call with analysts, he abruptly reversed course on Levatich's "More Roads" transformation plan.

"We've continued to move forward with the highest potential elements of More Roads, but our strategy must be reassessed," Zeitz said.

"As a result of my observations and assessment, I've concluded that we need to take significant actions and rewire the company now in terms of priorities, execution, operating model and strategy to drive sustained profit and long term growth. We're calling it The Rewire and it is our playbook for the next few months, leading to a new five-year strategic plan which we'll share when visibility to the future returns."

Soon after, the Harley board made Zeitz's appointment permanent. 

Here's what Harley's new direction means for the American icon:

Hello!

The coronavirus has affected everything, from how we work and take care of one another, to how we shop, pay, and entertain ourselves.

To understand how the pandemic is transforming business, we recently asked 200 CEOs from a variety of industries in the US and beyond a three-part question:

How will the way you operate change because of the coronavirus? How will your industry change? And how will the world change?

You can read responses from the CEOs of companies like Walmart, AB InBev, Duke Energy, ViacomCBS, Sanofi, Zoom, PayPal, and more.

WHAT'S NEXT: 200 CEOs look into the future of business

I want to highlight three themes that appeared in many of the answer we received.

The future of work

Chief executives say the pandemic has pointed the way toward a near future of flexible work, a more relaxed work-life balance, and more inclusive cultures, Allana Akhtar reported. 

"It's difficult to draw many positives from a crisis that has had such a significant human cost and that has created such dire economic circumstances for so many families," Lee Olesky, CEO of the financial-services company Tradeweb, told Business Insider. "I hope we'll use it as an opportunity to ask some tough questions: Do we need to adjust the work-life balance? How can we make sure the most vulnerable are better protected? Are we really getting healthcare right?"

From her story:

Aaron Levie, CEO of the cloud-content-management company Box, said the company would "absolutely" shift to a more "dynamic, real-time" work style, defined by working from home and flexible work hours. Todd McKinnon, the CEO of the software company Okta, said the future of work would likely enable employees to work anywhere without sacrificing benefits like healthcare and volunteer opportunities.

You can read the full story here:

Your job is never going to be the same again

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In 1915, W. R. Hotchkiss took out a $300 loan and started a company called Deluxe which created the first flat checkbook. About 105 years later, the Shoreview, Minnesota-based company now sells many more products and is in the process of modernizing its business for the 21st century. 

While it still prints checks, Deluxe expanded its business to include web hosting, marketing services, promotional items, payroll management tools and more, an empire its built through more than 50 acquisitions over the past decade.

The problem was, each time Deluxe bought another company it neglected to meaningfully integrate it with the rest of the company. When Barry McCarthy took the reins as CEO in late 2018, he realized that he had quite a dilemma on his hands. 

"The company was operating as a company of companies, not as a company of products," McCarthy told Business Insider. "No one really understood the company. There was no integrated strategy — none of these 50 different companies were ever integrated." 

Each company used its own software tools: There were 50 different customer relationship management systems, 52 resource planning software systems, and multiple HR systems, too, McCarthy said.

Sales teams in one unit had no idea if their customers were using other Deluxe products and there was no easy way to quickly access that information. That was particularly ironic because the only thing all the entities had in common was that they were all going after the same type of customers: small businesses and financial institutions.

McCarthy knew that he had try to fix these issues, believing that if he was successful all the different units would benefit. So, over the last year and half, he's guided Deluxe through a massive transformation, upgrading its technology and revamping the culture with the aim of unification.

While the recent coronavirus crisis has hit the company hard and many of Deluxe's changes are still underway, McCarthy has reason to be optimistic that his changes are having concrete benefits: The company's revenue grew 6% between the first quarter 2018 and Q4 2019 (before the effects of the coronavirus hit), and the company is "cross-selling to our customers in a way we weren't doing before."

Partnering with Salesforce to get a "360-degree" view of customers 

McCarthy got a major wake-up call about Deluxe's disjointed customer strategy soon after he joined the company. During a meeting with one of Deluxe's largest customers — a financial institution — the CEO of that company asked him which part of Deluxe he was in charge of. It came out that the customer had a meeting planned with a sales rep for one of Deluxe's products right after McCarthy's meeting and wasn't even aware that they worked at the same company. Similarly, McCarthy and that sales rep also had no idea that they were both meeting the same customer that day. 

"The customer is telling me about business they do with my companies that I have no idea about because I'm running so many different systems," McCarthy said. "I'm blind."

This huge red flag prompted McCarthy to decide that one of his first steps would be to make sure the company had a clear picture of who its customers were and which Deluxe products they were each using. That led Deluxe to Salesforce, which touts its software's ability to give businesses a "360 degree" view of their customers.

Last July, Deluxe signed a deal with Salesforce to implement its CRM software across the entire company, which would create one massive database of all its customers instead of a bunch of separate ones. This gave Deluxe employees a single hub for customer service, direct and indirect sales, digital commerce, and marketing. 

McCarthy also hired Chris Thomas as the company's first ever chief revenue officer, tasking him with creating a new sales culture within the entire organization to go along with the back-end technology upgrades. 

That included making sure every employee had a customer-focused sales mindset. During Thomas' second week at the company, his team launched a Salesforce-connected portal where anyone from across the company could submit new customers leads. Within 24 hours, they had 72 new leads come in. 

Previously, sales reps didn't have a plan for how to convince existing customers to use additional Deluxe products, but it was much easier to plan around using its new tools. He also created a forward planning culture within the sales organization. Previously, sales reps didn't have a plan for how to bring more products to existing customers (which, typically, were only using one or two of its products). 

"[It] gives us the visibility to figure out how we can help [reps] more, which we didn't have before," Thomas said.

It seems to be paying off: In the fourth quarter of last year, just four months after implementing Salesforce, Deluxe closed four of its ten largest deals in the last decade. 

The deal didn't just benefit Deluxe, either. The company become a reseller for Salesforce Essentials — a set of tools targeted towards small business — which opens up about 4.8 million small business customers of Deluxe to potentially start buying the product. Salesforce invited McCarthy to speak at its investor day and annual Dreamforce conference last year. 

Modernizing IT and navigating the coronavirus crisis 

Deluxe's technology upgrades go beyond its partnership with Salesforce though. To standardize all its different businesses, it's revamped almost every single piece of technology that it was previously using in what's become a whopping $120 million investment in its own infrastructure. 

Deluxe CIO Mike Mathews reflects that when McCarthy joined Deluxe the company became laser-focused on using technology to achieve its end goal. 

There are six areas of the company that Mathews' team has implemented new technology for: customer relationship management through Salesforce, communication through Microsoft Teams, financial planning through Anaplan, human resources through Workday, resource planning through SAP, and data management through Cloudera. 

Not all of the tools are completely new — some teams were already using older iterations — but it was key for his team to upgrade everyone to the same cloud-based versions. The company initiated all the partnerships last year and its shift to Microsoft and Workday are complete, while others are still underway.

The SAP project is the only one that's still in its very early stages: It was about 25% complete before the economic downturn spurred by the coronavirus crisis prompted Deluxe to slow down as it tries to conserve money. What was originally a 25-month process might now take between 28 and 30 months, the company expects, because some of the implementation requires consultants to work in the office, which can't be done right now due to shelter-in-place mandates. 

While Deluxe is now facing lots of uncertainty — it suspended its second-quarter and full-year guidance and warns its revenue this year may be significantly lower than previously expected — McCarthy said that its transformation plans haven't stopped. They've just slowed down. In fact, McCarthy said on the company's earnings call in early May that he believes that the new technology will help the company survive the crisis better than its older systems would have. For example, he doesn't think the company would have been able to transition to remote work as easily without tools like Teams.

It would previously have been a "herculean" effort to have the company operating remotely, CIO Mathews added: "In this moment of the COVID-19 crisis, having these robust, scalable platforms that help operate and run the company are really nice because they allow us to work from wherever we are located." 

For the sales organization in particular, using Microsoft Teams allowed CRO Thomas to send all sales reps to work remotely without "any hiccups." 

Changing the company culture

The shift to more modern technology also required a culture shift in the company, too. McCarthy wants Deluxe to operate more like a tech company, with faster decisions and processes he said.

Part of that was "flattening" the organization and getting rid of layers of bureaucracy. Initially, there were seven layers of management between McCarthy and entry level staff in offices as well as manufacturing managers and now there are only four.

McCarthy also wanted to make that every employee felt invested in the success of the overall company, rather than only the success of their own unit. Deluxe reorganized into four divisions centered around products: payments, cloud, promotional, and checks. As an added incentive to think as one team, McCarthy also gave all of Deluxe's North American employees shares of the company. 

"It changes employees from being 'just' an employee that goes to work [to], now, owners: They have a stake in the success of the company," he said. "That fundamentally changes the story and the trajectory of how people interact with the company. And, honestly, that's exactly how tech companies work."

Finally, McCarthy also reads and replies to every single email he gets from employees — though, he admits, not always on the day he gets them. 

"People think of us as the sleepy check company," McCarthy said. "Yeah we sell checks, but we are so much more than checks and so different than the check company you think we are." 

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or Signal at 925-364-4258. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Google's weekly TGIF meetings were once a safe haven where employees would come together to hash out ideas, boast about their week's achievements, and air concerns about the company without fear of retaliation.

But those weekly town halls were also emblematic of a company that no longer exists, according to several current and former employees speaking to Business Insider who bemoan what has become a more "corporate" and closed company.

In November last year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the weekly TGIF meetings would be pushed back to once a month. "TGIF has traditionally provided a place to come together, share progress, and ask questions, but it's not working in its current form," he wrote in an email to employees.

The decision followed many months of growing tensions inside the company, with employees voicing grievances with leadership over issues ranging from the company's controversial military AI contract to its handling of sexual misconduct allegations.

Google's transparent workplace and endless supply of free meals were once held up as the gold standard of Silicon Valley's enviable corporate culture. Now, employees say that transparency has vanished along with TGIF, and many long for a time where Google operated much differently.

"There was this sense we were all on the same team," said one veteran employee. "I'm not saying we don't feel that way now, but it's really hard to do with more than 100,000 people."

There are 123,048 employees on the Alphabet payroll as per the company's most recent numbers. 10 years ago, it had just over 24,000.

"We know that things that worked for Google when it was a smaller company have stopped working," said another employee who has been at the company for many years, including several working under cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. "Even when the company had like 30,000 or 40,000 people it was super impressive how much trust it had in every single employee. As that grew there were instances where the trust was unwarranted"

Since going monthly, Google's TGIF meetings have also become much more formal and focused on essential business. In its most recent TGIF, held on May 7, Google CFO Ruth Porat made a rare appearance to discuss the company's Q1 earnings, but insiders say most of the focus was on updates to Google Shopping. Many employees don't tune into the sessions anymore, or choose to watch a recording at a later date.

"I think they used to work a long time ago, but I think the culture of openness and people feeling empowered to talk on what they want to, I think that hasn't been able to work as well as a large company," said one employee.

Insiders now describe a more "corporate" culture that has taken over the company that was once held up as a paradigm of creativity and transparency in Silicon Valley.

"We'd have a fairly open and transparent conversation. People would write memes, blow off a little steam, and then everyone would find a way to come together," said another insider.

"Larry and Sergey could share very confidential things. But now, people are concerned that if something is visible very widely across the company it's going to get out."

'We were waking up each morning expecting someone to have written about it'

When Sundar Pichai announced the end of weekly TGIFs, he als0 mentioned a "coordinated effort" to leak the contents of the meetings, which was happening more frequently. The most significant leak came in 2018 where an employee sent the conservative news site Breitbart a video of an all-hands meeting held shortly after the 2016 election.

Breitbart used the leaked footage of the meeting, which featured Brin, Page, Porat, and Pichai, to try to demonstrate political bias among Google's top brass. Plans for Google to supply the military with AI technology (Project Maven) and re-enter the Chinese search market (Project Dragonfly), both of which were abandoned, were also leaked, and in 2018 the cracks in Google's culture were showing.

The situation reflects the deeply politicized society that now Google operates in, and the increasingly central role its technology occupies in some of the most divisive issues.

Even as details about the internal military and China search projects were leaking, Google employees continued to keep less politically-charged but equally sensational projects under wraps. 

In the months before Google revealed its showstopping Duplex AI project at I/O in May 2018 for example, insiders say that employees throughout the company were using the program's voice-based restaurant reservation abilities. The Googlers were "dogfooding" the Duplex technology – a common practice where employees test a feature before it's made public.

"We were waking up each morning expecting someone to have written about it, and they hadn't," said one employee who was testing the software. "It was exposed to every employee, and yet it didn't get out."

Google has slowly drifted away from its previous cultural touchstones, such as its "Don't Be Evil" motto and the once ubiquitous 20% time for employee pet projects, which insiders say still exists but in a different form where employees will usually help out on other existing projects rather than starting something from scratch.

But sources say 2018 was the tipping point when Google's culture changed irrevocably. 

Google grappled with several major controversies and a company-wide employee walkout that year. In 2019 Sergey and Larry stopped attending TGIF sessions altogether, which employees say was an obvious sign that 2018 had shifted the company's culture.

"Sundar is much more careful with his words"

Under Pichai, there's less room for the candid and freewheeling internal culture of old, a change that some insiders acknowledge was not unreasonable for a company of Google's size.

"Sundar is much more careful with his words than Larry, Sergey or Eric were," said another Google employee. "I saw my fair share of events where Larry, Sergey or Eric would say say something that would give Kent [Walker, Google's chief legal officer] heartburn."

The TGIF meetings are just one of the ways Google communicates with employees. Right now, a lot of the internal messaging comes through emails or posts on Google's internal network, Moma.

One tool inside Moma is Memegen, a meme generator where employees anonymously create funny pictures often skewering the company and leadership. When everything else inside the company can feel in flux, Memegen is the one constant that employees still turn to in order to blow off steam.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are now essentially checked out of Google, although they are still directors on the Alphabet board. As for Google's TGIF sessions, employees now post questions ahead of time and others can vote on the ones they want to prioritize. 

But employees say the breakdown in regular face-to-face meetings has created a distance between leadership and employees that some are unhappy about. "I think the TGIF change was bad for the company," said one insider. "It really silences calls for accountability at the top. Leaders need to take the hard questions."

Weekly meetings are still held for certain regions and parts of the organization, but employees who have been at the company for many years say they miss the weekly rough-and-tumble sessions that gave Google its identity.

"Sergey and Larry were the beating heart of TGIF for a long time," said one long-time employee. "In hindsight, it's obvious to see that once they stopped attending, TGIF would slowly wither away."

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The highly anticipated Tesla Cybertruck isn't set to go into production until late 2021, but in the meantime, artists have been reimagining the electric truck in different and creative ways.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed the highly anticipated truck in November, saying the Cybertruck could be "completely adaptable for your needs."

In line with this adaptability, Tesla also teased its own rendering of the Cybertruck as a "Cybercamper" with a pull-out kitchen and pop-top roof, a popular campervan feature.

Now, artists and designers who are not affiliated with the electric vehicle maker have capitalized on the infamous geometric look to create their own renderings of the Cybertruck in different iterations, such as an RV-base, racecar, and military transport.

Keep scrolling to see the Cybertruck dreamed into different uses: