Ethan Evans, a former Amazon VP, explained why "mutiny" is the best way to get a bad manager removed during an appearance on The Peterman Pod.
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A former Amazon VP said "mutiny" is the best way to get a bad manager removed from their job.
Speaking on The Peterman Pod, Ethan Evans said it's key to have more than one person speak up.
A single complaint can be written off, but multiple voices can't be ignored, Evans said.
A former Amazon vice president says getting a bad manager removed is rarely as simple as escalating complaints — and doing so the wrong way can backfire.
Speaking on "The Peterman Pod," Ethan Evans said employees often assume that raising concerns to their boss's manager will automatically trigger action. In reality, he said, higher-ups face incentives to dismiss or downplay those complaints.
"If you come to me with a weakness in one of my employees," Evans said, there's a "subconsciously" calculated choice: assume the report is overly sensitive, or accept it and create a much bigger problem. If the concern is valid, that forces a leader to potentially "manage them out," hire a replacement, and absorb the extra workload in the meantime.
"So you can see why, even if it's subconscious, I have a lot of reasons not to listen or not to believe very easily," he said.
Instead of having employees escalate concerns on their own, Evans recommends a coordinated approach.
"Never mutiny alone," he said. Employees should compare experiences with coworkers to "sanity check" whether an issue is widespread or a matter of personal style. If multiple people share the same concerns, they should raise them together — or at least signal that others are willing to corroborate.
When recalling a situation involving a problematic leader, Evans said he "probably wouldn't have listened" to a single complaint, but when "several of those reports came up," it became clear action was needed.
In a follow-up email to Business Insider, Evans said the most effective version of this approach includes solid documentation. Employees should gather at least three clear examples, ideally backed by multiple people, and present concerns "dispassionately" as what's best for the team — not as an emotional complaint.
That's where many workers go wrong. The biggest mistake, Evans said, is "complaining bitterly and emotionally," without acknowledging what the manager does well. A more effective approach is to first recognize the manager's strengths, then clearly outline the impact of their shortcomings.
Evans added that skip-level managers are most likely to act when they believe a bad manager is driving away strong performers or creating legal or ethical risks. Otherwise, he said, complaints are easy to dismiss.
Play chess, not checkers
For employees hesitant to confront leadership directly, Evans suggested another strategy: avoid criticizing the manager altogether. Instead, make a business case for transferring teams. "Don't even bring up the manager," he said. "Just say, 'hey, I was looking at this other role, and I think I could do so much more for you and the org over here because of A, B, and C.'"
Ultimately, Evans said navigating these situations requires careful strategy: "You've gotta play chess, not checkers."
Many "bad" managers aren't inherently bad, merely untrained, Evans said, adding that truly problematic managers often share a different trait — they "cannot tolerate any questioning of their authority," defaulting to top-down leadership styles that can worsen under pressure.
His view aligns with a broader workplace reality: ineffective managers are common because organizations routinely promote high performers into management roles without preparing them to lead. Experts like economist Steve Tadelis, in a 2024 episode of "Freakonomics," have similarly said there's little reason to assume top individual contributors will make good managers.
At the same time, companies are flattening management layers and increasing the number of direct reports per boss, leaving many managers overstretched. Some executives acknowledge the learning curve — Figma CEO Dylan Field has said he was initially a "bad manager" because he lacked core skills like relationship-building and consistent one-on-ones.
Success isn't guaranteed: Efforts can fail in what Evans calls "stacked flaws," where higher-level leaders share the same blind spots as the manager in question, making them less likely to recognize a problem.
In those cases — especially when coworkers won't speak up, or the company culture suppresses dissent — Evans said the best move may be to leave and "find a company with a culture that fits you."
On Tuesday, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened US-owned companies with Middle East footprints.
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Iran's Revolutionary Guard on Tuesday threatened US-owned companies with a presence in the Middle East.
The companies include Tesla, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Apple, and others.
The statement warned that the companies could be targeted as early as 8 p.m. in Iran on Wednesday.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Tuesday threatened US-owned companies with a presence in the Middle East, including Meta, Tesla, and Boeing.
The statement, which was published by the IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency, warned that the 18 companies listed could be targeted as early as 8 p.m. in Iran on Wednesday.
The Pentagon, White House, and the majority of companies listed, including Dell, Cisco, Intel, and HP, did not respond to requests for comment. JPMorgan and Microsoft declined to comment.
The IRGC statement advised workers to avoid their workplaces and the area within a one-kilometer radius of the locations.
It's unclear how serious a threat it was. The IRGC made a similar threat regarding US-owned companies' infrastructure in Israel.
The US has urged its citizens to reconsider travel to much of the Middle East, including the United Arab Emirates, "due to the threat of armed conflict and terrorism."
The US and Israel began their joint operation against Iran on February 28. The strikes and retaliation from Iran have continued throughout the month, though there have been overtures to turn down the temperature and end the conflict.
Jamie Phillis faced a surprise $1,200 dental bill after visiting a new dentist closer to home.
AI tools like ChatGPT helped her identify billing issues and submit an appeal to her insurance.
Her appeal was denied, but she never had to pay the bill.
I've always enjoyed good dental health, having just one cavity in my 33 years. Some of this I attribute to having the same dentist since I was 4.
Throughout my adulthood, my dental office felt like the only medical environment where I never had to worry about coverage through my ever-changing insurance providers or getting a massive bill in the mail.
That changed when my well-meaning husband recently suggested I find a dental office closer to our new house. It made sense to forgo a 45-minute commute to my appointments, and I was intrigued by the promises of more modern practices equipped with sleek offices and luxuries like ceiling-mounted TVs.
It was a pleasant experience until I was hit with a massive bill I didn't expect. I turned to AI for help fighting it.
After my first appointment at a new office, I was presented with a $3,320.49 bill
I'd only gone in for a cleaning. To the provider's benefit, I'm an easy upsell, especially for anything health-related. When they recommended an at-home treatment for gum disease, a retainer for my teeth grinding, and a 'full mouth irrigation' for gum health, I agreed, despite them not being covered by insurance and requiring high out-of-pocket costs.
It added up quickly, and before leaving the office, I regretfully paid the $2,111.29 I owed for the items not covered by insurance, which included tax and a credit card fee. I wished I had waited before agreeing to the extra services and done more research before moving forward; however, I naively had no concerns about the remaining balance that would be sent to my insurance company.
A few weeks later, I was floored when my dental insurance informed me that my responsibility was $1,201.80
The primary issue was that, despite finding the dental office on my insurance site, I was paired with the only doctor at the practice who didn't accept my insurance — even after I provided my insurance information both by phone and via an electronic form prior to my appointment.
In my panic, I decided to look over the bill more closely and used ChatGPT to get insights into what I was actually being billed for.
I quickly found multiple instances of bad-faith billing
The first offender was an oral cancer screening test that I didn't consent to, and that isn't recommended or covered by insurance for patients in my age group.
I was also billed for both a periodontal evaluation and a comprehensive oral evaluation — two services that my insurance would not allow to be billed on the same day because they are so similar. Using AI even helped me by flagging that my 'facial photographic images' were charged at seven times my insurance's allowed rate.
ChatGPT also assured me that it's not standard practice to charge a 32-year-old woman $35 for 'oral hygiene instruction' just because the dental assistant reminded me to brush with my toothbrush at a 45-degree angle.
At first, I addressed my grievances the old school way
I called my insurance company, and the representative validated some of my findings but could only direct me to submit an appeal.
I used Otter.ai to transcribe my calls, then uploaded the transcripts of my calls with the insurance company, the receipt from my appointment, my explanation of benefits, and instructions on how to file an appeal into ChatGPT. In under a minute, it had my appeal letter written.
I did go through five revisions — a couple due to me clarifying certain elements of the experience, one because I didn't like how a sentence was worded, and a couple more because I thought of more information I hadn't previously considered including.
Using AI made the whole process feel less daunting
AI was especially helpful when doing the math on things like co-insurance based on allowable amounts. ChatGPT helped me speak the language of insurance companies and convey my thoughts in an industry-appropriate way.
Plus, it formatted everything according to my insurance company's strict instructions and even provided mailing instructions so I could use as little brainpower as possible.
My first appeal was denied
When my insurance company denied my appeal — because the provider scheduled my appointment with an out-of-network dentist — I wasn't happy, but I did feel more confident in dealing with the issue thanks to ChatGPT. I took pictures of the four-page letter and uploaded them into my previous chat conversation.
ChatGPT summarized the letter and suggested I submit a formal second-level appeal and a complaint to the Arizona Department of Insurance. It also advised that I could contact the dental board for my state, as well as my insurance company's grievance department.
I prompted ChatGPT to draft both the second-level appeal and complaint for me, and I submitted them.
After my second-level appeal, my case was never formally resolved, but the dental office never sent me a bill for what wasn't covered. I believe this is because the office had been contacted by my insurance about the billing issues, and they were aware of my appeals and my complaint to the Arizona Department of Insurance.
Ultimately, I never paid the $1,200.
Using AI made the whole process a lot easier
There's a lot of criticism of outsourcing tasks to AI, and I can understand the argument that the instant fixes it provides can make us less equipped to think critically about our problems. However, I think we've all experienced the dread of opening a piece of mail after a long day and finding purposely confusing language that delivers bad news, a big bill, or both.
I don't see the glory in wasting time and mental energy on tasks like researching dental codes or laboring over formatting. I'd rather save my energy for the things I enjoy, or driving the 45 minutes back to my childhood dental office, where I'm now happily receiving dental services again.
When Mirav Steckel opened each of her 15 credit cards, she thought the discounts and rewards they offered would save her money. Instead, her plastic portfolio pushed her into impulse purchases and forced her to reevaluate her spending habits.
"If it was a really bad day at work, my first thought wasn't, 'Oh, let me go home and chill.' It was, 'I'm going to go treat myself to something that's going to make me feel better,' but it got to a point where I was asking people around me for money to pay my cards off," Steckel tells me. "That's not the type of life that I wanted to live."
Steckel chalked it up to financial illiteracy — she was 18, she didn't know the crushing consequences of debt, and signing up for the cards was deceptively easy. Now 21, she has a new trick to follow her monthly budget: use cash. Seeing the physical money rather than making a seamless digital transaction has been instrumental to curbing her spending.
Steckel's frictionless financial experience is an example of the cascade of credit card deals, Buy-Now-Pay-Later plans, and digital personal loans designed to grease the wheels of your spending and make it easy to obscure — or ignore — the purchases you're on the hook for. Consumer spending gurus told me that while these products can benefit those who truly need a financial reprieve, they can also trap people in an endless debt cycle that is difficult to escape. And with the risk of renewed inflation and heightened economic uncertainty, some consumers are more willing to enter payment plans, putting less money down up front in the hope that conditions will improve in the future. The Federal Reserve found that 15% of Americans used BNPL in 2025, up from 10% in 2021. That's coupled with 81% of Americans holding a credit card in 2025.
"If I make you wait or if I make you click through a bunch of things or physically pull out a wallet or, God forbid, cash, that will give you all these moments to pause and rethink things," Scott Rick, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, tells me. "I just want to be a hot knife through butter here. I want to make it as easy and frictionless as humanly possible."
Welcome to the funny money economy, where credit is king and companies excel at making their products so easy to access that you don't stop to think about whether you can actually afford to pay for them.
'It's gotten so easy to spend'
Maybe you know the feeling: You're online shopping, and you only need that sweatshirt, but when you go to check out, there's a $9.99 shipping fee. If you spend $15 more, though, shipping will be free. You don't really need that jacket that you've been eyeing, but if you buy it, shipping is free. It's a steal. Sure, it's a little more than you'd expected to pay, but if you use a BNPL plan, the first installment fits snugly in your budget, and you can manage the other payments down the line. Congrats, you've been sucked into the funny money economy — fueled by the ease of technology and artful tools to prevent consumers from getting a full grasp on their financial situations.
The modern shopping experience is drastically different from what it was even just a decade ago, Abigail Sussman, a marketing professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, tells me. It's not only the switch from cash to credit cards, she says, it's also the ability to store your card information on the web and automatically fill it in when prompted. Other forms of payment like Apple Pay make it easy "to spend without even looking at the price, frankly, without even really pausing to internalize it," says Sussman. And even if you consider the number on your screen, it may not be the final final cost.
"I don't think consumers are doing anything wrong. I think it's just that the systems that are in place are really designed to make spending frictionless," she says.
These changes also prey on our brain's desire for instant gratification, says Kristina Durante, a social psychologist at Rutgers' business school. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, humans were solely focused on survival — they weren't thinking about what meal they'd have in two weeks. Our brains are still in that mindset, Durante says. While we can think about the future in an abstract way, the human brain doesn't excel at accounting for the future.
"The part of our brain that wants what it wants when it wants it is so much stronger than the part of our brain that's a brake system that says, 'Wait, hold on, can we really afford this?'" Durante says.
Rick, the University of Michigan professor, says that in addition to the ease of shopping, some companies are using entertainment to pull consumers in. He referenced the TikTok shop, where ads for various products pop up in a user's feed while they're watching videos, and people can purchase them with one click. Or take Disney resorts, where a visitor can tap their wristband or use Disney dollars to make a purchase, leading the consumer to feel like they're using "play money" even as their accounts are slowly drained.
'It's hard to keep track'
The mechanisms that make it so easy to spend also make it easy to get access to debt to spend even more. New technology allows companies to instantly approve new customers for credit cards, and there's an expanded availability of specialized cards, like those intended for people with low credit or ones geared toward students with limited credit histories. These lower barriers are helping fuel a record amount of debt. The latest figures from the New York Federal Reserve show Americans' outstanding credit card balances are at a record high of $1.28 trillion, up nearly 6% from one year ago. Over the same time period, the usage of alternative spending, like Buy Now, Pay Later products, has grown — a December 2025 report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said that the six firms in its sample reported a combined 53.6 million consumers who took out a BNPL loan in 2023, a 12% increase from 2022, at an average amount of $848, up from $725.
When it comes time to settle up your accounts, companies are making it confusing to get a handle on where you stand. Credit cards have variable interest rates that can go up or down depending on a range of factors, including credit score. By offering rewards, points, and limited-time low-interest rates, a consumer might not realize what they're signing up for until it's too late, Ayelet Fishbach, a behavior science professor at the University of Chicago, tells me.
"Points don't feel like much," Fishbach says. "And so if you can convince me that I'm not paying with money, but with some monopoly money such as credit card points, that will obscure the price."
BNPL products similarly use smart marketing and our own mental biases against us. Ying Lei Toh, a senior economist at the Kansas City Federal Reserve, says that while they could help some consumers responsibly make big purchases, they are structured to make people feel "less financially constrained" by breaking the cost into installments.
"It could really worsen the overspending problem and the indebtedness, and the possibility that people would really be spending way beyond their means," Toh says. A CFPB report from 2025 found that Americans are taking on BNPL debt more frequently, and at larger amounts, with the average annual loan increasing from $745 in 2022 to $848 in 2023, up 14%. For credit card companies and BNPL providers, allowing consumers the option to split up payments could generate profit because some afterpay plans come with hefty interest rates and late fees. At the same time, the increased availability of these plans helps companies reach a demographic that might not have traditional credit cards or prefers to make payments in smaller installments.
Stephanie Blanks, 35, managed to escape the BNPL trap — but it wasn't easy. When she had her first child about five years ago, she underestimated how much savings she needed. She ended up maxing out her credit cards and turned to BNPL to buy diapers, groceries, and clothes for her baby. Those small, twice-monthly payments turned into about $3,700 in debt.
"You're like, 'Oh, $10 every two weeks doesn't sound bad at all. I can totally afford that,' until you get 25 or 26 loans in and you're drowning in them," Blanks says. She started paying off that balance at the beginning of September 2025 and hasn't used a BNPL product since. "It was just extremely overwhelming, and I felt like I couldn't get out of the hole," Blanks says.
BNPL plans aren't all bad. When Gabby Raines, 29, moved in with her husband about 10 years ago, they needed a new mattress but couldn't afford it all at once, so they turned to a BNPL plan. "It was a total lifesaver," she says. She has since used BNPL to buy a treadmill and clothes, but even as a savvy, experienced buyer, the ease of signing up sometimes causes her to spend more than she intended.
"We live in a world of such instant gratification and overconsumption, which as Americans we are all guilty of, so sometimes we all should take a step back and really look at the consequences of what we feel like we need right now," Raines said.
The serious consequences of the funny money
While being able to push off or spread out purchases can give you freedom in the moment, the expenses can pile up, and you might find yourself months later with dozens of loans and thousands of dollars in debt that you didn't anticipate.
For some consumers, alternative forms of financing are a means of survival. When the pandemic hit, and she lost her job, Susan Cannon, now 73, used her credit cards to pay for groceries, bills, and complete needed home repairs. While it was necessary, it's also come at a steep cost: Cannon is nearly $40,000 in credit card debt and struggling with sky-high interest rates. "I've always tried to put some in savings, but it's gotten to where it's all going toward interest," Cannon says. "So it's like I cannot get ahead."
For many Americans, though, the funny money economy is a means to fuel nonessential consumption. The Bureau of Economic Analysis's measure of personal expenditures, which includes spending on products like apparel and household appliances, stood at $21.4 billion in the last quarter of 2025, up from $19.2 billion in the last quarter of 2023. The keeping-up-with-the-Joneses culture ingrained in American society has fueled overspending, Sussman says. Your neighbors can only see what you're spending — not the giant debt bill on the backend — which can aggravate the tendency to buy more than you can afford when you're constantly comparing yourself to others.
The rise of social media has made that constant comparison a lot easier, Durante says, because instead of comparing our lives with our neighbors, we can compare ourselves with someone who lives across the country, or the world. "Your brain is categorizing someone far away as someone who is a competitor," Durante says. Social media has also turned spending into a joke, with trends like "girl math," a type of mental gymnastics in which someone might justify using a gift card as free money or consider returning an item as a way to make money. But girl math is really just "human math," Durante says, because it's another way that our brain is thinking about the present without accounting for the future.
"We have a brain built for scarcity living in a world of abundance. And there's going to be a lot of poor decision-making that's made because of that," Durante says.
In the worst cases, funny money can lead to long-term strain. Consumers who fall behind on loans could find themselves facing wage garnishment, and their credit scores could take a hit, making it difficult to rent a home or get an auto loan. Bankruptcy filings increased 11% in 2025, indicating that more Americans are turning to the courts as a last-ditch effort to be absolved of their debt. Higher debt loads slow economic growth, as consumers put less money into the economy and more toward paying back what they owe.
The very nature of funny money, though, is that these tough consequences can be under wraps until they come crashing down all at once. And it's unlikely these trends will reverse anytime soon, given pervasive economic uncertainty, Fishbach says. High inflation might lead a consumer to think that it makes economic sense to purchase something now even if they cannot fully afford it, "because the price might be higher later, tariffs might make it higher," Fishbach says. And the existence of mechanisms like debt forgiveness, bankruptcy, and Buy Now, Pay Later products all feed into the funny money mindset, where it's nearly impossible to predict your financial situation a year or even a month from now, making it easier for consumers to put off payments.
"People are smart, but they are busy, and you are not required to get a master's degree in economics before you go to the grocery store," Fishbach says. "We created a system that makes it very hard to make good financial decisions. "
Ayelet Sheffeyis a senior reporter on Business Insider's economy team, covering education, student loans, and the federal workforce.
Kinetic services cars attached with sensors that will be critical for an autonomous future.
Courtesy Kinetic
Modern cars are equipped with sensors to support driver assistance systems and safety features.
Kinetic is a startup that provides sensor calibration after a car is involved in a collision.
Kinetic CEO Nikhil Naikal said his company aims to service autonomous vehicle fleets.
Human drivers aren't the only ones who need to have eyes on the road.
Many cars on the road today are equipped with at least half a dozen sensors, from cameras to radars, to support safety features and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) that are now ubiquitous in the modern automotive industry. And as automakers continue to offload the task of driving from humans, cars will become even more sensorized.
Kinetic, a Southern California-based startup, wants to scale a service that will fix those sensors if a car ever gets into a collision. The CEO analogizes it to the modern car's optometrist.
"We have eyes, and when we need to correct vision, we go to an optometrist who places all these letters at 20 feet, measures our vision and prescription, and then gives us the glasses to correct our defect," CEO Nikhil Naikal told Business Insider. "In the same way, this is a digital prescription to correct the errors of the car's understanding of the world around it."
No car is the same as it once was after its first fender bender.
Panels get bent, parts are replaced, and the paint won't match the original exactly.
The same principle goes for the sensors on a car, Naikal said. Sensors are highly sensitive to alignment, and a fraction of a degree can significantly affect the effectiveness of an ADAS or self-driving feature.
Once a vehicle is in a front-end collision or rear-ended, those sensors could be thrown out of position. Mechanics can put the sensors back in place, but they won't be re-mounted in a spot perfectly identical to their factory placement.
That's where Kinetic's robotics platform and software come in to calibrate the sensors — or, as Naikal put it, give them a "digital prescription."
The auto shop of the future
An 8,000-square-foot facility in San Francisco's Dogpatch neighborhood is one of eight Kinetic hubs on the West Coast.
The inside is unlike loud, messy auto body shops. A Kinetic facility is quiet and mostly empty save for a rotating platform and a robotic arm attached to a short track. A typical location is staffed with up to two technicians, Naikal said.
On a Wednesday afternoon, Kinetic was servicing a 2022 Toyota Camry Hybrid LE that had been repaired at a local body shop after a front-end collision.
Kinetic uses robotics to calibrate sensors on a car, post-repair.
Lloyd Lee/BI
The car was driven onto the platform, where Kinetic's camera package takes detailed photos of the car, and a robotic arm points a laser at the radar sensor embedded in the Toyota's grill.
Kinetic's software then puts the car and the sensors back in sync.
"What the car thinks it's going to do and what the sensors think the car is going to do needs to be aligned," Naikal said. "The sensor thinks that the car is going to go right, whereas the car actually needs to go left — that's a problem. It causes unstable things like ghost braking and jerking."
The entire process takes about 10 minutes. Naikal said a single Kinetic hub can service about 80 cars a day.
Some repair shops might rely on a mobile service, in which a specialized technician comes to calibrate the sensors. Naikal said a lot of body shops don't have the space, lighting, equipment, or trained technicians that can accommodate an in-house service. Local body shops can either choose to send cars to Kinetic's hub or, if they have space, lease the company's equipment.
By the end of 2026, Naikal said he aims to have 20 hubs in the US.
Kinetic's platform can also perform damage inspections and develop repair plans, but Naikal envisions servicing autonomous vehicle fleets, which require constant cleaning and sensor maintenance, as another line of business. The future, he said, will require a new kind of service infrastructure built around robotics and software rather than a traditional body shop.
"It's going to be more than just Jiffy Lubes and Valvolines," Naikal said. "We think of ourselves as the infrastructure layer for the future of autonomy."
