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President Donald Trump’s plan to take control of Venezuela’s oil industry and ask American companies to revitalize it after capturing President Nicolás Maduro in a raid isn’t likely to have a significant immediate impact on oil prices.Venezuela’s oil industry is in disrepair after years of neglect and international sanctions, so it could take years and major investments before production can increase dramatically. But some analysts are optimistic that Venezuela could double or triple its current output of about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day to return to historic levels fairly quickly.“While many are reporting Venezuela’s oil infrastructure was unharmed by U.S. military actions, it has been decaying for many many years and will take time to rebuild,” said Patrick De Haan, who is the lead petroleum analyst at gasoline price tracker GasBuddy.American oil companies will want a stable regime in the country before they are willing to invest heavily, and the political picture remained uncertain Saturday with Trump saying that the United States is in charge while the current Venezuelan vice president argued, before Venezuela’s high court ordered her to assume the role of interim president, that Maduro should be restored to power.“But if it seems like the U.S. is successful in running the country for the next 24 hours, I would say there would be a lot of optimism that U.S. energy companies could come in and revitalize the Venezuelan oil industry fairly quickly,” said Phil Flynn, a senior market analyst at the Price Futures Group.And if Venezuela can grow into an oil production powerhouse, Flynn said “that could cement lower prices for the longer term” and put more pressure on Russia.Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said oil companies are “going to go in and rebuild this system.”A major shift in oil prices wasn’t expected because Venezuela is a member of OPEC, so its production is already accounted for there. And there is currently a surplus of oil on the global market.The price of U.S. crude oil lost 23 cents early Monday to $57.09 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gave up 18 cents to $60.57 per barrel. Proven reserves Venezuela is known to have the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves of approximately 303 billion barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That accounts for roughly 17% of all global oil reserves.So international oil companies have reason to be interested in Venezuela. Exxon Mobil didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.ConocoPhillips spokesperson Dennis Nuss said by email that the company “is monitoring developments in Venezuela and their potential implications for global energy supply and stability. It would be premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments.”Chevron is the only one with significant operations in Venezuela, where it produces about 250,000 barrels a day. Chevron, which first invested in Venezuela in the 1920s, does business in the country through joint ventures with the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., commonly known as PDVSA.“Chevron remains focused on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets. We continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations,” Chevron spokesman Bill Turenne said.But even with those massive reserves, Venezuela has been producing less than 1% of the world’s crude oil supply. Corruption, mismanagement and U.S. economic sanctions saw production steadily decline from the 3.5 million barrels per day pumped in 1999 to today’s levels.The problem isn’t finding the oil. It’s a question of the political environment and whether companies can count on the government to live up to their contracts. Back in 2007, then President Hugo Chávez nationalized much of the oil production and forced major players like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips out.“The issue is not just that the infrastructure is in bad shape, but it’s mostly about how do you get foreign companies to start pouring money in before they have a clear perspective on the political stability, the contract situation and the like,” said Francisco Monaldi, who is the director of the Latin American energy program at Rice University.But the infrastructure does need significant investment.“The estimate is that in order for Venezuela to increase from one million barrels per day that is what it produces today to four million barrels, it will take about a decade and about a hundred billion dollars of investment,” Monaldi said. Strong demand Venezuela produces the kind of heavy crude oil that’s needed for diesel fuel, asphalt and other fuels for heavy equipment. Diesel is in short supply around the world because of the sanctions on oil from Venezuela and Russia and because America’s lighter crude oil can’t easily replace it.Years ago, American refineries on the Gulf Coast were optimized to handle that kind of heavy crude at a time when U.S. oil production was falling and Venezuelan and Mexican crude was plentiful. So refineries would love to have more access to Venezuela’s crude because it would help them operate more efficiently, and it tends to be a little cheaper.Boosting Venezuelan production could also make it easier to put pressure on Russia because Europe and the rest of the world could get more of the diesel and heavy oil they need from Venezuela and stop buying from Russia.“There’s been a big benefit for Russia to see Venezuela’s oil industry collapse. And the reason is because they were a competitor on the global stage for that oil market,” Flynn said. Complicated legal picture But Matthew Waxman, a Columbia University law professor who was a national security official in the George W. Bush administration, said seizing control of Venezuela’s resources opens up additional legal issues.“For example, a big issue will be who really owns Venezuela’s oil?” Waxman wrote in an email. “An occupying military power can’t enrich itself by taking another state’s resources, but the Trump administration will probably claim that the Venezuelan government never rightfully held them.”But Waxman, who served in the State and Defense departments and on the National Security Council under Bush, noted that “we’ve seen the administration talk very dismissively about international law when it comes to Venezuela.” Associated Press writers Matt O’Brien, Ben Finley, Darlene Superville and Rio Yamat contributed to this report. Josh Funk, AP Business Writer
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E-Commerce
Most people never change careers, which is remarkable when you consider how little evidence most of us had when we chose our first one. For many professionals, early career decisions are shaped less by talent or long-term fit than by convenience and coincidence. We follow friends into certain degrees, accept the first decent offer, listen to family advice, or pursue interests that feel meaningful at 18 but prove less durable at 38. These choices are understandable, but they are weak predictors of where our strengths will compound over time, or of what will sustain both performance and satisfaction across decades of work. In essence, we follow our own or other peoples intuition rather than facts or data, which is rarely a recipe for success. The problem is further compounded by how fast the ground has shifted, especially over the past decades. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} Even before the rise of generative AI, career predictability had been steadily eroding. Globalization, repeated economic shocks, declining job tenure, the collapse of clear promotion ladders, and the shift from stable organizational careers to project-based and boundary-less work all contributed to rising uncertainty. Longitudinal labor data shows that occupational half-lives were shrinking well before automation became a mainstream concern, with entire roles emerging and disappearing within a decade. In parallel, individuals were expected to manage their own employability, continuously update skills, and absorb risks once carried by employers or institutions. AI has not created this uncertainty so much as amplified it, accelerating the obsolescence of skills, compressing career ladders, and blurring professional boundaries. Knowledge and technical expertise, once reliable sources of differentiation, are increasingly commoditized. At the same time, employers place growing value on judgment, learning agility, influence, and curiosity, capabilities that universities still struggle to measure or systematically develop. The result is a widening gap between what people trained for, what they are good at, and what the labor market actually rewards. It is therefore no surprise that career anxiety is rising, even among people who appear successful on paper. Gallup data shows that roughly 60% of employees feel emotionally detached at work, while fewer than one in four strongly believe their job aligns with their strengths. LinkedIn data consistently finds that the average worker will change roles every three to four years, yet meaningful career pivots remain rare and often delayed until dissatisfaction becomes acute. At the same time, mobility has slowed. After the Great Resignation came what economists now call the Big Stay: people feel stuck rather than settled. They are rethinking their careers cognitively, but postponing action behaviorally. In other words, job hugging has replaced job hopping. So how can you tell whether you are merely going through a rough patch or whether it is genuinely time for a career pivot? Decades of research on career development, identity, and motivation point to four reliable signals. 1. Your learning has stalled, not just your motivation One of the most robust predictors of engagement and career satisfaction is perceived progress. When people feel they are learning, they tolerate stress and uncertainty better. When learning stops, even high performers disengage. Professor Herminia Ibarras research on career transitions shows that people rarely pivot successfully through introspection alone. Clarity follows action, not the other way around. If your role no longer exposes you to new skills, perspectives, or problems, that is not a temporary slump but a structural constraint. Before quitting outright, experiment: Be ready to fail smart, in the sense of learning from your experience and becoming wiser as a consequence. As the saying goes, experience is what you get when you didnt get what you wanted to get. For example, take on side projects, advisory roles, or temporary assignments that test alternative identities. Stagnation becomes dangerous only when experimentation stops. 2. Your strengths no longer translate into value Many careers falter not because people lose competence, but because the market stops rewarding what they are good at. Technological change makes this especially common. Skills that once differentiated professionals are automated, standardized, or absorbed into platforms. As I have illustrated in one of my previous books, AI is far more likely to automate tasks within jobschanging the skills constellation needed to perform themthan actual jobs. Research on personjob fit shows that sustained misalignment between strengths and role predicts burnout and underperformance, even among conscientious high achievers. A useful diagnostic question is whether your best contributions still feel essential or merely adequate. Successful pivots rarely involve abandoning strengths. They involve redeploying them where they matter more. 3. Your career identity has become rigid Ibarras work highlights that career change is as much an identity transition as a skills transition. People delay pivots not because they lack optios, but because they are overly attached to who they think they are supposed to be. This is also why authenticity is overrated: Why limit yourself to your past and present self when you can instead create or sculpt a broader, more diverse, and richer version of yourself? This is where the squiggly careers concept, popularized by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis of Amazing If, is especially useful. Modern careers are no longer linear ladders but adaptive paths, shaped by lateral moves, pauses, reinventions, and redefinitions of success. If you feel compelled to defend your current title, industry, or trajectory rather than evolve it, you may be protecting a legacy identity rather than building a future one. Indeed, progress is not a straight line! 4. You are succeeding externally but disengaging internally One of the most overlooked signals is sustained performance paired with declining well-being. Longitudinal studies show that people can maintain output for years after motivation erodes, but at a cost to health, creativity, and long-term employability. If your reputation is strong but your curiosity, energy, or sense of meaning is steadily diminishing, that is not ingratitude. It is misalignment. Career satisfaction is not a soft outcome. It is a leading indicator of future performance and adaptability. In short, we tend to romanticize career pivots as bold acts of reinvention. But the evidence suggests the opposite. Successful pivots usually happen through small, low-risk experiments that reshape identity over time, guided less by passion than by a disciplined willingness to revise assumptions in response to reality. In an era where work will change repeatedly, the real risk is not changing direction too often, but staying in place long after the signals suggest you should move. The most resilient professionals are not those with fixed plans, but those who know when the cost of standing still has quietly begun to exceed the cost of change. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
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E-Commerce
The geopolitical implications of President Trumps controversial weekend attack on Venezuela and the capture and extradition of its president, Nicolás Maduro, are still being digested by legal and security experts in the two days following the shocking announcement. What is more certain is the immediate market reaction from a select number of publicly traded stocks that have the potential to be impacted by the military action. Heres how Americas top energy, defense, and tech stocks are moving on the first trading day after the U.S. intervened in the affairs of its South American neighbor. Americas oil and energy stocks soar Some of the most closely watched stocks today will be those of oil and energy giants traded on U.S. exchanges, particularly Chevron Corporation. The Texas-based oil company is the American energy giant with the biggest footprint in the region, notes CNBC, and thus the one primed to benefit the most from Trumps stated desire to start making money for the country. But Chevron isnt the only one that stands to benefit. In a Saturday press conference addressing Americas military intervention, Trump said, Were going to have our very large United States oil companiesthe biggest anywhere in the worldgo in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure. While the president did not name any specific companies, based on premarket trading this morning, investors seem to think that the following oil and energy giants stand to benefit from the intervention: Chevron (NYSE: CVX): up 7.3% ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM): up 4.5% ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP): up 7.3% Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL): up 10.3% One interesting thing to note: Two prominent oil companies that trade on the New York Stock Exchange are currently down slightly in premarket trading. Those companies are Shell (NYSE: SHEL), down 0.7%, and BP (NYSE: BP), down 0.7%. Shell is a British-Dutch company and BP is a British company. Investors may believe that Trump is unlikely to allow foreign oil companieseven those of its alliesto profit from Americas intervention in Venezuela. But investors are cautious about defense stocks Americas military intervention in Venezuela suggests that under Trumps second term, the U.S. may engage in a new expansionist hard power policy, directly using its military might to enforce changes around the globe. Indeed, as noted by Reuters, Trump has already threatened another military operation against a southern neighborthis time in Colombia. While the moral and legal aspects of such action are debatable, it’s undeniable that an expansion of Americas military action is good for the bottom lines of the countrys most prominent defense companies. However, investors so far seem to be taking a cautious approach to U.S. companies operating in the defense space, with many companies up only slightly in premarket trading on Monday: Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT): up 1% RTX (NYSE: RTX): up 0.7% Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC): up 1% General Dynamics (NYSE: GD): up 1% The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA): up 0.2% Defense-adjacent tech stocks are also up While many of Americas tech giants, including Google and Microsoft, have defense contracts, some smaller tech firms almost exclusively cater to the countrys military and security apparatus. Such companies likewise stand to benefit from increased U.S. military operations. Yet as of the time of this writing, investors also seem to be taking a more cautious approach to these stocks, which include: Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ:PLTR): up 3.8% Honeywell International (NASDAQ:HON): up 0.2% L3Harris Technologies (NYSE:LHX): up 0.7%
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E-Commerce
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