Chonda Loder was drawn to working in the federal government because it promised stability. She joined the military when she was 17, and more recently has been working for the Department of Veterans Affairs. “It was the security for me,” she tells CNBC Make It, “but it’s a roller coaster right now.”

Loder, 33, is one of over 2 million federal employees who received an email late January from the Trump administration offering “deferred resignations” from workers who quit by Thursday, February 6. The offer states that workers who accept the resignation will no longer have to work but will be paid with benefits until the end of September.

A week of confusion ensued. Federal officials, union leaders and legal experts who questioned the legality of the offer and whether those who take it would actually be able to receive payment warned workers not to accept.

A federal judge in Boston paused the Trump administration’s buyout offer just hours before the deadline. The resignation plan will be on pause until a court hearing Monday, February 10, when the judge will consider arguments by employee unions challenging the legality of the buyout, and by a lawyer for the Trump administration defending the plan.

More than 60,000 people — about 3% of the federal workforce — have accepted.

Loder is one of them. On Wednesday morning, she submitted her resignation from her job she describes as “rewarding” as a purchasing agent with the VA.

The decision came down to needing a flexible and supportive job that will accommodate her role as a mom to two young girls, a kindergartener and 1-year-old, she says. She teleworks from her home outside Bowling Green, Kentucky, and lives 90 miles from her nearest physical office.

It’s not the first time she says she’s experienced job instability. In 2023, she took a contract job serving the Department of Energy that was supposed to last one year but the contract abruptly ended after six months, she says.

More recently, the Trump administration’s announcement calling the end of remote work for federal workers “was an alarm to me,” Loder says.

Overall, she says, “it doesn’t seem like my position is that secure and family-friendly position that it used to be.”

Although Loder has a lot of questions, she says she has only received general FAQ messages from HR. “I haven’t even gotten a response from my resignation email yet, so I don’t know if it’s even been received, if it’s been processed — who knows if we’ll even get paid?” Loder says. “There’s just so much confusion.”

In the meantime, Loder is still doing her job ensuring care for veterans while waiting to hear more from HR. As far as she knows, she’ll stay in her role until the end of the month. She’s not sure how the resignation plan will work for her hospital-focused job “because we do have the care of veterans that we need to make sure gets taken care of. So I have no clue,” she says.

In 2023, she started an LLC and opened her own gym. Her fiancé is self-employed and will enter a busy period in the spring and summer, “so that does help alleviate [things] if I’m not getting paid,” Loder says.

Ultimately, she plans to do “whatever is going to be good for my family.”

Loder still wrestles with her own decision and whether it’s the best for her family and career moving forward. She supports her federal workforce colleagues making tough decisions to stay or go.

Of course, Loder is part of just a small minority of federal workers who have accepted the resignation offer.

One 24-year-old in Washington, DC, who asked to stay anonymous to protect her job security, says she will not be resigning from her government health-care role. “The lack of clarity and the information that we are being given regarding the deferred resignation program is really making it difficult for people to make an informed decision,” she says.

Even so, she worries for her job future given the Trump administration’s plans to drastically reduce federal spending and headcount.

“Every day, I open my computer to a potential new email from [the Office of Personnel Management]. I’m just scared one of these days that email is going to say my position is terminated,” she says. “Millions of us are dealing with it.”

Want to up your AI skills and be more productive? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Use AI to Be More Successful at Work. Expert instructors will teach you how to get started, practical uses, tips for effective prompt-writing, and mistakes to avoid. Pre-register now and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+ taxes and fees) through February 11, 2025.

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Asking someone for feedback typically goes one of two ways, says Wharton organizational psychologist Adam Grant.

You could get some helpful takeaways, or the other person may tread too carefully to tell you anything useful, scared of bruising your ego. The latter is more common than most people think, says Grant. The bestselling author’s simple workaround, which highly successful people tend to use, he says: “The best way to get people to coach you is, instead of asking for feedback, you seek advice.”

Asking for advice instead of feedback gives you a better chance of getting some helpful suggestions, says Grant. In 2019, Harvard University researchers asked 200 people to offer input on a job application letter for a tutoring position, written by one of their peers. Some participants were asked to provide this input in the form of feedback, resulting in “vague, generally praising comment,” the researchers wrote in a Harvard Business Review article that year.

“However, when asked to give advice on the same application letter, people offered more critical and actionable input,” the researchers wrote. “In fact, compared to those asked to give feedback, those asked to provide advice suggested 34% more areas of improvement and 56% more ways to improve.”

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Asking for feedback tends to have two potential results, Grant adds: People go into cheerleader mode, “raising the best version of you, which is very motivating but doesn’t always teach you something new,” or critic mode to “attack the worst version of you, which is educational but potentially demoralizing.”

Seeking advice instead could be especially helpful for the people who tend to get the least helpful feedback at work — high-performing employees and women, according to a 2024 analysis of more than 23,000 performance reviews across 250 U.S. workplaces, conducted by HR communications platform Textio.

Specifically, high-performing employees are more likely than other workers to only receive surface-level feedback, and women are more likely than men to be given feedback based more on personality than job performance, the analysis reported.

Asking for advice allows you to “keep learning, developing, growing and getting greater opportunities,” Textio co-founder Kieran Snyder told CNBC Make It last year. Make your request well in advance, giving your boss ample time to come up with some substantive critique, she added.

Say something like, “Next week in our one-on-one, I’d like to have a conversation where we can talk about some of the specific examples of work I’ve done and, if I were performing at the next level, what I might be doing a little differently,” said Snyder.

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Allison Harbin jokes that she started working in artificial intelligence by accident. 

Harbin earned a doctoral degree in art history from Rutgers University in 2017 and spent much of her twenties and thirties working in higher education, intending to become a professor.

Then, in 2023, she was recruited to work on Gemini, Google’s generative AI chatbot, designing and refining its search engine responses. She joined the project in October 2023, figuring it would be an exciting opportunity to try something new. 

Harbin’s contract lasted six months but made a lasting impression on her career: Harbin has worked in AI ever since, a field that she describes as “equally challenging, exciting and fulfilling.”

She joined the wave of a new kind of AI engineer — one without formal technical training or a bachelor’s degree in computer science. Known as AI prompt engineers, anyone from marketing executives to lawyers can qualify for the buzzy job.

Prompt engineers are the key players behind how AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot generate accurate, relevant responses. 

By crafting precise inputs, they ensure AI delivers the best results in real-time interactions, streamlining communication between users and technology. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in various industries, the demand for prompt engineers is skyrocketing, with salaries reaching up to $300,000.

Some economists have cautioned that the sudden demand for prompt engineers could be a flash in the pan, while other technologists have predicted that prompt engineering could soon evolve from a job title to a skill that is expected — or required — of desk workers.

Those who are working on designing and refining the technology, like Harbin, are betting on AI’s staying power. 

For the past nine months, Harbin, now 38, has been working as an AI analyst and prompt engineer at a small health-care tech company. She works remotely from her apartment in Chicago and earns over $100,000 per year (she declined to share the name of her employer or exact salary). 

Harbin coaxes AI models like OpenAI’s GPT daily, utilizing natural language to encourage the model to produce clearer, smarter responses. She also teaches users how to use the generative AI tools her employer designs for their daily work tasks.

Here’s how Harbin got into prompt engineering and what a career in AI really looks like:

CNBC Make It: How did you decide to start working in AI? 

Allison Harbin: If you had told me five years ago that I would be working in AI, I would’ve been like, “What are you talking about?” However, I was stitching together a living writing white papers and assisting on different research projects when ChatGPT came out in 2022. And, whether it was a coincidence or not, I lost a big client shortly after its release, and a recruiter reached out with the opportunity to work on some of the writing and communication elements of Gemini, Google’s AI chatbot.

I don’t have a coding background and I’m also not a data scientist, but when I started working in prompt engineering, I discovered that a lot of the skills you need for the job are just clear communication and effective writing, which I can do well. The more I did it, the more I enjoyed it — it’s like there’s a hidden code waiting to be cracked.

Which resources did you use, to close any technical skills gaps as an AI prompt engineer, since you don’t have that coding background? 

I subscribed to LinkedIn Learning [which costs about $30 per month] and completed a couple of relevant certificates there, like “Ethics in the Age of Generative AI” and “Advance Your Skills as a User Experience Researcher.” But there are also a lot of free resources you can take advantage of. Don’t underestimate what you are capable of figuring out on your own, you just need the time and diligence to snoop around on the internet.

What does your day-to-day look like now as an AI analyst? 

This is where I think not having a formal tech background comes in handy. A big part of my job is training and showing people how to use the robot, or GenAI chatbot, that my team has designed. It’s intended to help employees in the professional services sector do their jobs more efficiently. 

What is your favorite part of the job, and what is the most challenging aspect? 

My favorite part of my job is talking to people about how they want to use AI or generative AI, and then figuring out if it’s possible. It’s like solving a complex puzzle — if it is possible, I focus on crafting the right prompts to get the best outputs. The most challenging part of my job is managing the rapid pace of change in the field. It’s like drinking from a fire hose, and that can be overwhelming at times.

What’s one of the biggest misconceptions you’ve heard about working in AI? 

A common misconception I’ve heard is that AI will completely replace jobs. While some tasks may change, I think humans will always need to be in the loop to proofread, fact-check and train AI. The most common question I get is,  “Am I going to lose my job to AI?” My answer is probably not, but certain aspects of your role might evolve. The technology isn’t perfect — sometimes the data it provides can be inaccurate, and it may even produce hallucinations.

When I run training sessions, I talk a lot about how many large language models are trained on data from the open internet, where not all sources are reliable. Some can be biased or inaccurate. It’s important to be aware of these biases.

What is your biggest hope for AI, and your biggest fear?

I think my biggest hope for AI is that as we learn how to use this technology for work, we also create new jobs around it, and we’re not just using it to automate people’s jobs. As for fears, I think this rush to adopt and create new AI technologies without properly understanding what these tools are capable of and where they fall short is something we all need to be aware of. Ultimately, I hope we catch any mistakes or problems AI can create before they become too big to fix.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Want to up your AI skills and be more productive? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Use AI to Be More Successful at Work. Expert instructors will teach you how to get started, practical uses, tips for effective prompt-writing, and mistakes to avoid. Sign up now and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+ taxes and fees) through February 11, 2025.

While the brain makes up only 2% of your body weight, it is responsible for over 20% of energy expenditure each day.

I’ve spent 15 years studying the brain, and five years as a medical director of a residential memory care facility. I am always reminding people to eat things that feed the brain, not harm it. You want to give your brain the nutrients it needs to heal, repair tissues, fight toxins and create neurotransmitters so that it can stay young, sharp and energized for as long as possible.

That means nutrient-dense, lower-carb foods. Nutrients to provide the building blocks, and lower carbs to help stabilize your blood sugar and even out the roller coaster of spikes and drops that create so many cognition-impairing side effects, including lightheadedness, anxiety, fatigue, irritability and a decrease in focus.

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So if you do one thing to improve your diet to protect the brain, start raising your carb-consciousness and begin swapping out some of the carb-heavy foods you eat most often for lower-carb alternatives.

A healthy amount of carbs to shoot for is around 130 grams per day (about 25% of calories in a 2,000 calorie diet).

But not all carbs offer the same health benefits, so the quality of the carbs you eat is much more important than the number. Consider that eating a higher carb fruit like grapes or watermelon after a high-fat, high-protein snack like greek yogurt will reduce how quickly and how much your blood sugar will go up.

Eat high-fat, high-protein foods first in your meal and save the higher carb options until later. Aim to snack on low-carb options like cucumbers, bell peppers, cheese, coconut yogurt, pecans or walnuts.

Sweets on an empty stomach will raise your blood sugar high and fast, then it will drop. Generally that drop in blood sugar feels bad and makes us act hangry, and over time it leads to diabetes, insulin resistance and cognitive impairment. 

That could look like:

• One piece of avocado toast for breakfast instead of a whole bagel or cereal.
• Soup and salad instead of a sandwich and chips for lunch.
• Swapping your side dish of potatoes or rice for quinoa or cauliflower rice at dinner.
• Berries with a little whipped cream or a few squares of dark chocolate instead of ice cream for dessert.

Don’t get too hung up on counting every gram of carbohydrates you consume, because it can be stressful and overwhelming (which is the opposite of what we want!).

But many times my patients don’t realize how many carbs they’ve been eating. Becoming aware of how many carbohydrates you’re eating in a day will help you eat less of them — after all, you can’t change a habit you don’t know you have.

Just this one change would do a ton of good — including bringing down glucose and insulin levels (and therefore reducing inflammation), and upping consumption of the nutrients that support brain health (protein, vitamins and minerals from vegetables and fats).

Dr. Heather Sandison is a naturopathic doctor specializing in neurocognitive medicine and the founder of Solcere Health Clinic, a brain optimization clinic, and Marama, the first residential memory care facility to have the goal of returning cognitively declined residents to independent living. Her latest book, “Reversing Alzheimer’s” is out now.

Want to up your AI skills and be more productive? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Use AI to Be More Successful at Work. Expert instructors will teach you how to get started, practical uses, tips for effective prompt-writing, and mistakes to avoid. Sign up now and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+ taxes and fees) through February 11, 2025.

Adapted excerpt from the book: ”REVERSING ALZHEIMER’S,” by Dr. Heather Sandison. Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Heather Sandison. Reprinted courtesy of Harper Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

We’ve all dealt with emotionally immature people: They get defensive at the slightest criticism, they constantly deflect blame, and then they try to guilt you into feeling sorry for them.

Emotional immaturity is a growing problem, and whether it’s in your personal or professional life, communicating with them can be a real struggle.

As experts on the psychology of communication, we know that if you’re not careful, you can also easily run the risk of seeming emotionally immature to others. Why? A lot of us automatically use certain emotionally immature phrases without even thinking about it.

Here’s a list of the most common ones to avoid:

People who are emotionally immature often won’t take responsibility for their own actions when something goes wrong. So what do they do? They extricate themselves from situations by immediately stating that they are not to blame. 

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An emotionally immature person will do everything in their power to not take responsibility for their actions, and a common tactic is to make it seem like you, or literally anyone else, is in the wrong — not them.

You can almost imagine a little kid saying this one. This phrase is a way for them to avoid any true accountability or genuine communication with the person they are engaging with.

This is a combo of gaslighting — trying to make others believe a false reality — and shifting the blame again. The message they’re sending: You’re the problem, not me. Another toxic phrase in this vein is “you’re being too sensitive.”

People use that simple “whatever,” often with a shrug, to say, “I’m done discussing this.” It’s an emotionally immature method to shut down the paths of communication and figuratively walk away from any further discussion.

Here we go again with the gaslighting. People who are emotionally immature rewrite reality, both for themselves and, possibly more importantly, for others. When someone says something like this, they’re typically trying to evade responsibility and make you think something else happened.

In this case, emotionally immature people walk away from any complicated issue by throwing it onto someone else and dismissing any and all responsibility. It’s the perfect example of transference.

Another example of invalidating other people, and one that is used in both personal and professional relationships. By saying phrases like this, an emotionally immature person is dismissing the other person’s concerns and opinions, and belittling their reaction.

Yes, it’s usually best to focus on the future. But emotionally immature people will often accuse people who bring up their mistakes of harping on the past. They don’t want to learn from their mistakes and they don’t want an honest discussion about whatever is happening. They want to move on without addressing the issue.

Here’s an example of how emotionally immature people passive-aggressively avoid taking responsibility for what they say. It might sound like they’re trying to smooth things over, but it’s actually more of a way of critiquing someone, then distancing themselves from their statement. 

Emotionally immature people often use broad generalizations. Instead of engaging in constructive honest conversation or using specific examples, they will issue an accusatory blanket statement and use that to avoid any further discussion. 

If there’s one phrase that really sounds like a kid said it, it’s this one. How many of us used “but all the kids are doing it” argument trying — usually in vain — to get our parents to allow us to do something? But emotionally immature adults use it, too.

They’ll pull out the time-honored “everyone’s doing it” argument as a justification for something they want to do or already have done. Of course, they’re blameless if they’ve done something wrong, they were just going along with the crowd, after all.

Kathy and Ross Petras are the brother-and-sister co-authors of the New York Times bestseller You’re Saying It Wrong, along with other popular language books, and co-hosts of the award-winning NPR syndicated radio show and podcast ”You’re Saying It Wrong.” They’ve also been featured in media outlets including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and Harvard Business Review. Follow them on Bluesky.

Want to up your AI skills and be more productive? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Use AI to Be More Successful at Work. Expert instructors will teach you how to get started, practical uses, tips for effective prompt-writing, and mistakes to avoid. Sign up now and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+ taxes and fees) through February 11, 2025.