King Kong vs. Godzilla. Rocky vs. Apollo Creed. Democrat vs. Republican. People love a good showdown, and the world of work is no different. This week's show highlights the trending conflicts between Google against OpenAI, Deel against Rippling, RTO against WFH, Labor against Capital ... and most importantly, Elon against Everybody. Beyond that, the boys are talkin' layoffs at Beamery, Josh Bersin's Galileo™, and Twitter ... er, X's new job search design. With Thanksgiving in America right around the corner, consider this week's show a solid appetizer for what's sure to be an overrated meal of dry turkey, runny potatoes, and undercooked stuffing.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by
Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls. It's time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast.
[music]
Joel: Oh, yeah. When it comes to females, Cosmo ain't got nothing to do with our selection. What's up kids? You are listening to The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Factory of Sadness Cheeseman.
Chad: Chad, it's Friendsgiving time. Sowash.
Joel: And on this episode, deal is kind of wait for it a big deal. Poaching gone wild in Silicon Valley and unions just keep winning.
Chad: Oops. Winning.
Joel: Let's do this.
Chad: Dude.
Joel: What's up man? I don't know if you're aware of this in Europe, but it's Thanksgiving next week.
Chad: Oh, yes. Of course. No we actually had Friendsgiving last night and, for all of you who don't know what Friendsgiving is, remember, that, you don't always have to go to a family's house because sometimes that's a pain in the ass. You can just go have Thanksgiving with friends. But during the pandemic, we couldn't get out and do Thanksgiving, right? So we did a Friendsgiving with Julie's team and it was virtual. And Amanda, who runs sales, her husband is a chef. So Chef Gabe, who lives in Washington State and is also a fishmonger, picks and packs fresh fish and seafood in dry ice along with veggies, risotto, and a great bottle of wine, and gets those packages out to everyone on Julie's staff overnight.
Chad: Then, just like a cooking show, Gabe teaches us all how to cook the meal together via Microsoft Teams. And last night, he literally had a stove top camera, like from the top so you could see the whole stove top. And then you also had a Chef Gabe cam, and he taught us how to cook a wonderful meal, a wonderful, wonderful meal. And this to me is just another way that we can demonstrate how if you are remote, you can be together. You can have a great time. And thanks to Amanda and Gabe for once again, creating an amazing night with fabulous food for the team at Disability Solutions. That was a blast.
[applause]
Joel: So basically you had Chef Gabe from the Food Network, showing you how to cook fresh seafood for Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Whatever, you were calling it. So I'm guessing there was no turkey dressing and mashed potatoes...
Chad: No.
Joel: On the menu.
Chad: That'll be happening during Thanksgiving though, so we can get a best of both worlds.
Joel: Yeah. I'm shaking it up this year. The wife is going to New York City for the Macy's Day Parade with her sister and mother.
Chad: Okay.
Joel: So it's me, my 84 year old dad, my six year old son and maybe an appearance from my 17 year old son.
Chad: Oh, dude.
Joel: You know how that works with teenagers. But we're gonna do barbecue. We're gonna do, there's a barbecue place in town. We're gonna get some rib.
Chad: I love it.
Joel: Some brisket. That's gonna be our Thanksgiving.
Chad: I love it.
Joel: We're gonna mix it up.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I mean, Thanksgiving dinner is pretty overrated. In my mind, turkey is a pain in the ass. I mean, stuffings can be good or bad.
Chad: It takes forever.
Joel: Mashed potato. Yeah. It takes forever. Like by the end of it, the wife is pissed off. Everyone cooking is mad, like the kids won't eat. The kids just eat the roll, right?
Chad: Yes.
Joel: You put all this work in for the kid to eat a roll, it's just not good. So football, pajamas and barbecue is gonna be my...
Chad: It sounds like a blast. Well, hopefully all you listeners out there are either having Friendsgiving and/or a traditional Thanksgiving as well. And if you're not in the US hell, you can still have one. I mean, we were in London last year, and we had Thanksgiving in London. They actually had a menu that had Thanksgiving meal on it. So just go enjoy it, whether it's American holiday or not, go have a good meal and enjoy yourself.
Joel: Yep. And by the way, we'll be airing our Jive Turkeys episode next year in lieu of the weekly show, which is one of the more...
Chad: Next week. Yes.
Joel: Fun episodes, I think. We're getting into like Naughty and Nice, Jive Turkeys, Predictions.
Chad: Oh, it is the fun part.
Joel: Like, this is our time of the year where we get to review and look at the past year...
[overlapping conversation]
Chad: Fun time of the year.
Chad: So that'll be fun. But let's get into stuff...
SFX: Shout out.
Joel: That's happening today. You got a shout out for me?
Chad: Twitter is hiring platform. That's my shout out baby. So let's make a deal real quick. I will start calling Twitter X when they actually start using the x.com domain. Because it's still on Twitter, right? So it's still Twitter.
Joel: That is true.
Chad: You go, yeah. You go to X and it's fucking Twitter. Okay. So that sounds fair. Right? But according to Adrian Carbone, who is the, who actually I guess a product designer at Twitter and working on the hiring platform over there, they have just unveiled how they are going to deliver jobs on Twitter. Can I get a drum roll? Can you get a drum roll out there?
Joel: Oh, we do baby.
Chad: There it is. There it is. It's Job Search. That's right. It's just basically they're gonna have a Job Search on Twitter. That's right cool kids. Driving innovation through 1990s Basic Job Search functionality. How many times have we seen this go wrong? How, and I mean, hey, let's just slap a Job Search on there. Put a tab there that says jobs. And it just, it dies.
Joel: They should just partner with SimplyHired, to backfill their Job Search. MySpace back in '06 or whenever it was.
Chad: Back in the day. Back in the day. But if you...
Joel: Back in the day.
Chad: Want to try out the search, Adrian...
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Once again Carbone, go check him out on Twitter. And he said, if you're interested on the early access in kicking the tires, go ahead and DM him. So I did. And I said, put your job search where your mouth is and let's take a look at this thing. So let's see. See if he responds. I am very doubtful that he does.
Joel: Oh, I can't wait. I cant wait for your review of Twitter's new Job Search.
SFX: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
Chad: I don't see it happening.
Joel: All right, Chad. Well, I have a triple threat down under shout out for you. So this is including New Zealand and Australia and you know how much Australia in equal parts scares the shit out of me and fascinates me. So here we go. So New Zealand McDonald's, they've apparently launched the worst menu item since the McDLT. Do you remember the McDLT, Chad? You had the hot side hot, the cool side cool.
Chad: Cool side cool. Yeah.
Joel: Little known fact about me. I worked at McDonald's for about a minute and I was the McDLT guy, so I was making McDLTs back in the '80s.
Chad: No wonder they failed.
Joel: Anyway, their law... No, that's true. And George Costanza was their pitchman on the commercial. So they're launching, get this, the McSalad burger. Now, when I read this, I thought, oh, there's probably an impossible burger on it. It's just, it's a vegetarian thing. No, no, no, no, no. It's got tomato, shredded lettuce, slivered onions, American cheese. At least they got that part right. Two pickles, peppery chicken sauce on a toasted sesame seed bun. So it's basically a salad.
Chad: On a bun.
Joel: On a couple of buns for that. Yeah, no impossible burger, nothing with parents on this thing, just veggies on a bun. Okay. So there's more from down under. It gets better than that. Okay. So I'm reading headlines last week, and I read the following headline, "World's most dangerous bird emerges from ocean, stunning onlookers." And I said to myself, it's gotta be Australia. And sure enough, I opened the story and it's in Australia. So the world's deadliest bird doesn't come out of a tree, doesn't come out of like the forest or some shit. It comes out of the ocean in Australia. That's how crazy this continent is. This country continent is nuts. Anyway. So, my triple hat trick here for Australia, this is great. So on social media, there's a show called Love Island, Australia Version. I guess there's a version in every country, but I got a soundbite for you. You haven't heard this?
Chad: No.
Joel: I didn't play it for you in the green room. So you'll be with everyone else that hasn't heard this. Check out this soundbite from Love Island, Australia.
[video playback]
[laughter]
Joel: And that is...
Chad: Humans.
Joel: My down under triple threat.
Chad: Oh Jesus.
Joel: Shout out.
Chad: Oh my God.
Joel: Maybe when you're on the bottom of the earth...
Chad: Oh my God.
Joel: It does look that much bigger. I don't know.
Chad: When we are getting dumber as species, the human race is getting dumber as a species. Let's just, I mean, we've got really, really smart people. And then we've got the really, really dumb people. And there's like, the division is just getting so much bigger. It's ridiculous.
Joel: Yeah. Australia is the Florida of the Southern hemisphere. I'm convinced.
Chad: I'm going to one up you with this one. Then when we talk about shock factor, we're going to give a shout out to the HR nightmare of the week. The following HR nightmare is brought to you by Solera, a global leader in vehicle life cycle management. A video has been circulating of a mass layoff via zoom. Not only is a zoom layoff incredibly impersonal, obviously, but you choose not to give a shit when you have a mass layoff, then you don't mute the fucking mics. The mics weren't muted and all hell breaks loose. Plus someone records it and guess what? It finds its way to the socials. Go ahead and take a listen.
Joel: And it finds it's way on The Chad and Cheese podcast.
[video playback]
Joel: Poor David, man.
Chad: David might be the problem though. She might just be calling it out.
Joel: Oh my God. And the HR, the HR lady who was on the call was just gobsmacked.
Chad: Nothing she could do.
Joel: No clue how to react to any of this. And it was contagious. Everyone starts going in. Like some of the sound wasn't good enough to put on the show, but man...
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Ouch, Ouch.
Chad: And they, and Solera currently has 203 jobs open. So if you are looking for a job, I would tread lightly. If you look at a Solera job, if that pops up, you just might want to go ahead and click no.
Joel: Yeah, job at Solera. All right, Chad. The shout outs. It's going to get better. Believe it or not.
Chad: Okay. Good. Good.
Joel: Your boy's has done it again. That's right. Josh Bersin has partnered with Sana to power "the world's first expert assistant for HR".
Chad: Oh my God.
Joel: Brought to you by The Josh Bersin Company. It's called Galileo and it's already got a trademark on it. So don't even try to use it for anything...
Chad: Galileo.
Joel: Devious. It's basically ChatGPT, but only using Bersin's content. Pretty high on his own supply. Bersin said in the release, "This paradigm shattering offering will change the way companies run their HR organization and manage their people, enabling any professional to operate like a world-class expert in a short period of time." Was Josh not hugged very much as a child? I'm starting to think that he wasn't. How long before this egomaniac clones himself and boxes himself up to be your company's robo HR manager and puts you out of a job. Shout out to Galileo, but don't forget the trademark TM at the end.
Chad: Just so we need more Android, like old white dudes in HR. That'll change everything. And you know what will change something, getting free stuff. That always change, and it changes my mood when something comes to the door...
Joel: Oh yes.
Chad: And I've got some free stuff, you can get some t-shirts, the Chad and Cheese t-shirts, the newest one, which is sponsored by JobGet, you can get a big pack of craft beer by Aspen tech labs. You know the guys who do the job sites and the spidering and all that cool tech shit. Whiskey by Textkernel, two bottles of whiskey by Textkernel. And if it is your birthday, you could possibly win some rum from plum.io.
SFX: Can you feel the tension in the air right now?
Chad: Oh yeah.
Chad: I know I can. I can feel it all the way down in my plums.
Joel: That's right, Chad, another trip around the sun. And since we're not broadcasting next week, I'm going to just finish out the month of November with birthdays. So we got Jim Lowe, Randall Emery Emory, Eva Zils. Betsy, Chuck Norris, Robert St. Jacques, Karen Hewell, Michelle Palermo, Sean Lutians...
Chad: Lutians.
Joel: Valerie Doyle. John Chirio, not Chirio, Wendy Dod, Jason Stevens, Tony Lee, Matt Charny, Kevin Wheeler, and last but not least, Chad, near and dear to your heart, Kennedy Cook is celebrating a birthday, so...
SFX: Happy birthday.
Joel: Happy birthday, everybody. What'd you get her?
Chad: Kennedy turns 24. She's living in Budapest. She's in the UK this week. What the fuck did she do? You need to get... She's fine. She's fine. No, happy birthday Kennedy. Way to go out there, kick ass, be a girl boss, and can't wait to see you soon. We're gonna see her... She's actually gonna come to Madeira, the island of Madeira...
Joel: Nice.
Chad: For new year. Yeah, she doesn't have a bad life, that kid.
Joel: She's doing all right. I think she's gonna be fine.
Chad: She's good.
Joel: I think she's gonna be gonna be fine. Almost as fine Chad, as our new show. If you haven't tuned into The Chad and Cheese Podcast Does Data with Toby Dayton of Linkup, that comes at you every month, only on YouTube. Go to youtube.com/@chadcheese. We called it this month. We called it Goldilocks. Things are back. You look at the markets, the CPI numbers, your 401K is looking a lot better since we did the show. I'm not taking credit for it.
Chad: Thank God for us, yeah.
Joel: But some of the data was right on this month, and every month we're gonna look at that. I think it's gonna be great information, but check that out. Only on YouTube, just like Chad is only gonna be in England next month on our travel schedule. Tell us about that, Chad.
Chad: That's right. December 4th through the 6th, gonna be at TAtech Europe in London. Kirsty Kelly and I will emceeing the show. Alex Tchaikovsky is gonna be presenting his latest findings on Google for Jobs. He's always coming up with shit around Google for Jobs. Hung Lee's gonna be performing a Brainfood live session. Who knows what that means, but it should be a blast. Adam Gordon's gonna be there. Matt, that British guy, Alder, my lovely wife, Julie Sowash, Andrea Wade, the smart people just keep coming. That's all I'm saying. If you live in London and you don't already have a ticket, go to chadcheese.com/events and register. Even if you're outside of London, take the train in, take the day off. Take a couple of days off. Take the train in, come see us.
Joel: Not to mention porn stars. Someone said Hang Lee everybody.
SFX: What are doing step bro?
Joel: And speaking of that, let's talk a little... Oh yeah, that's right. Week 10 is in the books. Heading into week 11, we got Fantasy Football with Chad and Cheese, powered by our friends at FactoryFix. Here's your leaderboard Chad. Michelle Sargent is outta the number one spot, replaced by Marcy Project Small. Michelle Sergeant Slaughter is in second place, followed by Dina Perro Fopyros, Joe Mixon Dixon, Chad Smith Sowash, Jagged Little Jill, Pat Patterson, Jimmy Dean Ossner, Jasper Spic and Spaniard, Brent. I'm Brent. I'm a lousy baby so why don't you kill me? Number 10 is Joel Rifkin Cheeseman. Number 11, Dennis Tupperware. And the caboose crisscross. Kristen Aribon. Y'all are gonna make a jump. Jump follows out the 10 on fantasy football, everybody.
[music]
Joel: Which brings us to a little bit of...
SFX: Layoffs.
Chad: Layoffs.
Joel: That's right, Chad. We got some layoffs. Well, it's been quite a car crash this year for the folks at Beamery, Chad. A little history. In December of last year, Beamery became a unicorn after raising a series D at $50 million. Then a month later, they laid off 12% of their staff. That's just a month later...
SFX: Wow. Dope.
Joel: Then in March of this year, again, Josh Bersin alert, your boy wrote a post entitled "HR GPT arriving now. Beamery starts the generative AI revolution in HR." Yeah. Maybe not Josh, maybe not. Word is, this week, another round of layoffs went down, with some rumors, putting the number at 35%. I asked around from one former employee who preferred to remain anonymous, of course, "Beamery is not doing well. Used to work there. They did big layoffs in '22. Then a bunch of us left at the end of the year. They just dropped their west VP, east VP, central VP left, head of strategic sales, left."
Chad: Shit.
Joel: "Director of engineering, left, sales consulting director, left. 80% of their AEs have left. Yes, it's that bad." I asked if it was the business or the leadership, and my source answered, "Both." [laughter] Another source said, "They plan to eliminate 25% of the global workforce in an effort to reduce costs by 35%. Sales have been terrible all year, so no big surprises from the news." That's Beamery. But from a big picture perspective, big tech continues to cut headcount. It was reported the likes of Google, Amazon, Zillow, and Snap will continue to downsize heading into '24. Analysts say it's most likely connected to an uncertain economic outlook. Snap, co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel is apparently pushing a, "Hardcore work culture". By the way, Chad, any thoughts on Beamery or big tech layoffs?
Chad: Yeah. I think we saw this ship sinking, the Beamery ship sinking. We've been talking about it for a while. They, again, and you say it all the time, they're, you can take too much money, and they did take too much money because it forces you to spread the TAM. It forces you to do a lot of things that you wouldn't regularly do. And unfortunately, when you take the kinda cash that they took, it doesn't always work out well. But we're gonna talk about Google more here in a few minutes, in their new designs, as I believe that they're shifting talent needs towards sexy, large language models, Bard and Gemini.
Chad: Ian Sherr, a tech reporter and analyst pointed out that some of the layoffs aren't always related to economic issues. Companies may have a division or products that are no longer viable. So they decide to cut those jobs, or to my point, they're ramping up hiring in different areas. We saw this with not Google for Jobs, but all the other Google platforms that they had on TA. They had an applicant tracking system, they were doing these different APIs, and then they cut all of that shit because they needed more resources over in Cloud. This kind of thing is gonna happen, especially when you are out flanked, and they were by OpenAI and ChatGPT. So a lot of this doesn't surprise me. There's gonna be some ramping up of hiring in some other areas.
Joel: I have nothing to add except for the fact that I was critical of Beamery, I think a year or so ago. And our buddy Matt Adam Gordon.
SFX: Welcome to [laughter] 'All Things Scottish our slogan is, 'If it's no Scottish, it's crap.'
Joel: Mr. Gordon gave me a hard time about my criticism of Beamery.
Chad: Really?
Joel: Well, it looks like I might be getting the last lap on the Beamery question. Adam, still love you though, still love you though.
[music]
Chad: TOPICS.
Joel: All right, let's get into it. Here's a headline for you, Chad. OpenAI's New Weapon in Talent War with Google, $10 million pay packages. "The recruiting fight between OpenAI and Google is growing fiercer as OpenAI proceeds with an employee share sale that would nearly triple the startups valuation to more than $80 billion. Its recruiters are courting top artificial intelligent employees at Google with millions of dollars and a message. Join us now to lock in a stock package at the current valuation of $27 billion in benefit from the impending increase. As part of their pitch OpenAI recruiters have claimed researchers would have regular access to computing resources, including the specialized chips staff rely on to run experiments and develop new techniques for AI models according to people with knowledge of the claims." Chad, we talked about American Airlines poaching UPS pilots to the tune of $250,000.
Chad: Champ change.
Joel: But this takes poaching to a whole new level. What are your thoughts?
Chad: Put your money where your AI is baby. So a quote from the article in October, "OpenAI leased nearly half a million square feet of office space from Uber in San Francisco. However, some employees have moved in the opposite direction from OpenAI to Google, indicating that the talent wars are just warming up." We're going to see, especially these huge Titans when it comes to technology, they're gonna be fighting over the just top talent. If you've seen the Blackberry movie, if you haven't, you should watch it. This is something that is really interesting because you see Blackberry at one time, going after talent with these huge $10 million packages. Right? The only difference was they were postdating the stock.
Joel: They broke the law.
Chad: Yeah, they broke the law.
[laughter]
Chad: Big difference there. But still, I mean...
Joel: Damn Canadians.
Chad: It's one of those things. This isn't something that's new, right? You start to pull in big talent because you wanna change the world. There are so many people in the world that can actually help you do that. And I'll give you a quote from the movie, he said, "I thought we had all the best engineers in the world here at Blackberry." He was like, "No, I said, we had all the best engineers here in Canada."
SFX: Take off, Lee, we're doing our movie. Don't wreck our show you hoser.
Chad: These guys are going everywhere.
Joel: Gotta love a good Blackberry reference. So if you were on the fence about AI being the future, well.
Chad: Wake up.
Joel: Everything this might make you commit to the fact that it is the future. Look, do you think back in the early 2000s, Google wasn't poaching techies from Microsoft, Oracle and whoever else with the promise of stock riches? The difference is Google didn't necessarily break the law, or didn't break the law like Blackberry did. Now they're getting a taste of their own medicine, Frankly.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Look, this is some Sun Tzu shit.
[laughter]
Joel: When your enemy is... When you're fighting Goliath you gotta be quicker. You gotta have a faster stone coming outta your gun or whatever the analogy is. But this is how the game works. And applause to OpenAI for playing the game. On a side note, AI giveth and AI taketh away. There was a story in the Financial Times this week about how much generative AI has impacted freelance workers in the content creation space.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Let's just say the picture showed a cliff dive in terms of revenues and opportunities for people in the gig economy to find that work. So it works both ways. I have kids on the cusp of college, and I'm doing my best to make sure they don't get AI'ed out of existence. [laughter] Making sure they take the right roads. So the winners will win big time. And it looks like the losers might lose an equal measure. But this shit's just starting to heat up. Wait till Facebook gets into it, wait till Amazon, wait till China starts poking around. Europe could get involved, this shit's just starting and a lot of people are gonna get really, really rich. It reminds me a little bit of the '90s and the rush for developers and people who could code.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And be webmasters. I remember visiting the headquarters of a company in San Francisco, and there was a nice Porsche 959 in the lobby.
Chad: Lord Jesus!
Joel: That when people would come in for interviews, they would see this and be like, this could be yours if you just joined the company today and last for 90, whatever it was last for a year, you get a free Porsche. So that's the kind of crazy shit that we're gonna see going forward. And I'm here for it, baby, I'm here for it.
Chad: Very boiler room. Yes and I mean, if the kids are good with their hands, plumbers, carpenters, HVACs. Yes, I don't know what to do with my hands. [laughter] If they do know what to do with their hands, then guess what? They're still gonna be jobs that are out there that are going to be AI proof. Good luck to all the rest of them. And hopefully...
Joel: That's right.
Chad: They don't come after podcasts anytime soon. [laughter]
Joel: Like Elon says, the laptop class is living in la-la land.
SFX: La escalated quickly.
Chad: Fuck Elon.
[laughter]
Joel: All right. Well, from one big Deel to another Deel, that's D-E-E-L, last valued at $12 billion, has hit $400 million in annual recurring revenue, a senior sales director at the startup said last month, up from a pace of $295 million in January, according to a story in the information this week. In case you missed it, Deel reached $295 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2022. So that's less than a year that they've had the increase. The company's co-founder and CEO told TechCrunch at the time, and that was up 417.5% from $57 million in ARR achieved at the end of 2021.
Joel: So we're doing the math here, 57, 295, 400. Deel says it has been profitable since September of last year, and they claim a profit margin of 85%. They claim over 15,000 customers, including Nike, Subway, Reebok, Forever 21, one of my favorite places to shop, Shopify, Dropbox, and Klarna. [laughter] The information highlighted a growing rivalry between Deel and Rippling. Chad, you know what's coming. Big Deel, little Deel, or no Deel?
Chad: The big Deel. I mean, they're obviously pulling in the cash. And the funny part about this is you might remember two HR techs ago when we were laughing at them because they had a little 10 by 10 booth at HR tech, right?
Joel: [laughter] I had forgot about that. Yeah.
Chad: Remember that? They had a little 10 by 10 booth. And then Eightfold had this humongous fucking spaceship, right? And yeah, we see where they're going. Looks like that spaceship might have a hard landing. But we've talked about the stupidity of return to office movements, but it's still gaining momentum. So here's a question. Deel is a platform that helps manage remote contractors. So how is Deel killing the game right now? Does that mean that the future of remote work is contract work? Is return to office only prominent in the US or is return to work just a mirage? Because Deel's numbers are not a fucking mirage. So what's happening here?
Joel: I think that I look to the commercial real estate market and news around that to get a clearer picture around this. From what I can tell, and we've talked about New York City, we've talked about some other bigger cities doing really well in terms of commercial real estate, people refurbishing spaces, some making it apartments or lifestyle places where you work, live, shop, whatever. But the cities we should probably be worrying about are the Detroit's, the Cleveland's, the Pittsburgh's, you know, in terms of going back to work there. I do think there is certainly a global remote work, the ability or the need to have payroll and benefits and understanding the tax structures and everything else that goes on in employing a global workforce. But if you wanna have a global talent pool, you have to have remote workers. You can't just have people in Bangladesh move to Boston that easily. So remote work may not be what we think it's gonna be, but it is going to be a part of the world. And we're starting to see who's going to win in this space and who isn't. I mean, I think when we... You and I were real curious when we had the unicorn parade.
Chad: Oh God.
Joel: A couple of years ago of like who was gonna make it, who was gonna to come out of this, who was gonna thrive. And I think we're starting to get some clarity around who is gonna be the big winner and who isn't. And just looking at things like either news stories or maybe insights on LinkedIn in terms of headcount, Deel, Rippling and Remote are all doing very well in multiple parameters.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Now the ones that are stabilized, maybe just for being really smart with their money, you've got the Paradoxes, the Fountains continues to do really well. Fountain to your chagrin is, is holding pretty steady, we'll see if that continues to hold. They have a lot of money to keep the lights on for a while. And then you look at who are the losers. And I think, Oyster layoffs that we talked about them recently. They seem to be challenged. Velocity Global, out of Denver, it seems to be struggling a little bit. Talent.com. We talked about some big layoffs there, pretty much the whole job board sector. If it's not declining, it's barely sort of keeping its head above water. But the unicorn slaughterhouse and who's going to be big made into mincemeat...
Chad: Clearing up.
Joel: Is starting to come to clarity. Deel is gonna, at least at this point, look like one of the winners. Now, I think both of us are super interested and excited anticipating the IPO flood that should eventually come with the Deels, the Personios, the HiBobs, the ATS' that we know and love that is gonna be really interesting. And who doesn't have the S1 to go public and what's gonna happen to those companies. At this time, it looks like the Oysters, the Talents and etcetera, are gonna be, on the chopping block in the IPO parade of unicorns that get steered into the slaughterhouse and not the fun house.
Chad: Yeah. I'd really like to dig into a lot of these companies because the go to market obviously is different from company to company to company. And it would be nice to dissect the differences between what happened and where. I mean, that to me is the most important. Talking about Velocity Global that's out of the US. Right? You've got a Deel, out of Europe. I would say intrinsically remote is going to be big in Europe. Right. You've got all of these different countries and then you need workers. So you need that EOR system in Europe, and that's a great way to start. And then to be able to expand over into the US, just through your portfolio, just through wallet expansion. So we'll see, I don't know if that's the case, but we shall see. It'll be interesting to dissect.
Joel: Yeah. The information also highlights the impending rivalry between Rippling and Deel. [laughter] If you look at both of those metrics, they're really, really similar. But yeah your point about taking too much money and we know what happens when you take too much money.
SFX: 60% of the time it works every time.
Joel: All right, Chad, a little RTO news, which we've had quite frequently lately. Can I interest you, Chad, in higher revenue growth in return for autonomy as a worker?
Chad: I'll take it.
Joel: A new report released this week by Scoop, a company that compiles data, completed an analysis of remote work policies and revenue growth at 554 public companies done in partnership with Boston Consulting Group. It found that the average public company that gives employees choice over whether to come into an office outperformed on revenue growth over the past three years by 16 percentage points compared to companies with more restrictive policies. Companies with fully flexible policies achieved a 21% industry adjusted revenue growth rate compared to only 5% for those with more restrictive policies mandating office attendance. Chad, your thoughts?
Chad: So, Scoop, this is kind of... You think it's kind of like biased information just because it's, what Scoop does and they wanna push their platform. But if you take a look at the data...
Joel: Public companies.
Chad: They do have a great point, right?
Joel: Yup.
Chad: And not only that, but they have data policies from 7,500 companies. So they can see the trends from a much larger data pool. But then they get obviously even more data around the public companies, which I thought was amazing. But remote and hybrid, as this is coming to fruition, all means fewer commutes, which is less wasted windshield time and better for the environment, more autonomy. Employees feel like you're treating them like a fucking adult, greater productivity because I don't have Jeffrey barging into my office every 10 minutes with a new meme he wants to show me. And we've talked about this for like the last few weeks. Diversity, expanding your talent pool outside your norm gives you more diversity and allows women to manage their own damn day. So let's face it. We need more women back in the workplace. How are we going to do that? I don't know. Maybe give them more autonomy over their damn day, right? If they're...
Chad: We've got to focus on performance and all this equals to higher revenue growth. I think they do have a point here. There is, you could see possibly some of a little bit of a bias, but it's not black or white, but this is a lot of good damn data that pushes toward at least a hybrid structure and starting to provide at least a little bit more autonomy to the work-force. Because they're adults and you pay them because you trust them. And if you don't trust them, that's why you manage them. And if you can't manage them, then that's your fucking fault.
Joel: Dare I say sexy...
SFX: I am happy. [laughter]
Joel: Data, Chad, in case you missed it, this also this week, 41% of workers would rather quit than return to working in the office full time. That's according to poll results released from our friends at Monster. Yes, they're still around and doing surveys. [laughter] If you're keeping score at home, and Chad highlighted this, fully remote work means greater productivity, helps the environment with fewer commuters pumping CO2 into the air, improves diversity, broaden the talent pool. As Chad said, improves your brand and increases the number of candidates who actually apply to your job.
Chad: Sounds good, right?
Joel: So you know that from LinkedIn postings. Yeah. And now we're adding growing proof that it means higher revenue growth. So other than that, remote work kinda sucks, I guess. [laughter] Some more numbers from the Monster poll. These are fun. 66% say their overall mental health and well-being has improved working from home. 58% have increased focus due to reduced social distractions. 47% have reduced stress from avoiding a toxic work atmosphere. Maybe those are some of the Solera workers that we heard from earlier.
Chad: Could be. Could be.
Joel: 67% say their growth opportunities are not limited by working remotely. 46% say that working from home actually improves their work relationships. 43% feel more energized when working remotely. So a lot of the numbers around remote work are looking pretty good. So if you're an employer on the fence of what we're going to do in terms of hybrid, full on back to the office or remote, you might want to take a second look at remote if you are negative on it at the moment. [chuckle] And from remote work to some people on the job, we got some unions, union news. On the heels of the UAW when against the big three Las Vegas hospitality unions negotiating for better pay and benefits struck a historic tentative deal with Caesars Entertainment this week, averting a 10,000 worker strike. The proposed five-year contract promises wage hikes, health care and pension support, reduced workloads and advocacy for non-union workers. Talks continue with MGM Resorts and Wynn Resorts impacting some 25,000 workers amidst expectations for significant pay increases.
Joel: The unions represent around 53,000 Vegas-based employees. Meanwhile, SAG-AFTRA's 118-day strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has ended, yielding a billion-dollar deal, addressing AI threats, streaming and actor rights, re-shaping Hollywood in the process. But wait, Chad, there's more. Tesla, Tesla faces worker strikes in Europe, particularly in Sweden. [laughter]
Chad: Sweden.
Joel: Challenging the company's refusal to negotiate collective agreements. Experts think European Union successes might influence US organizing efforts. You think? You think, Chad? So much union-winning.
SFX: Opps. Winning.
Joel: Your thoughts?
Chad: The last story we just talked about, remote work. This is all power to the people. There's a huge shift and the union side of the house. Hell, we're talking about non-union workers who are getting the UAW bump, right? And you'll see the same thing from the Vegas hospitality. Anybody who's not a part of the union, they're going to get a bump. But what do you think that's gonna make them think about? Should I join the Union? Toyota 9% bump? Should I join the union? Maybe I could have got more. Should I join the union? You take a look at Tesla after Elon's bullshit in Sweden, and Swedish Tesla workers are on strike. But even better, dock workers are refusing to let Teslas into the country in solidarity. Why? Because they're like, you know what? That might not be my job. I might not be a Tesla worker, but they're a worker just like I am. Right?
Joel: Yup.
Chad: And that's the thing. In the US, what we've done is we've put focus on this rugged individualism and it has exploded finally. And we're finally getting to the point where it's like, hey, I can feel your pain. And I understand that that could be me. Forever we've been like, well, sucks to be them. Right?
Joel: Yup.
Chad: That is a term that we use regularly in the US. Sucks to be you, sucks to be them. Now you've gotta understand they are you. And that's exactly what Sean Fane, the UAW and all of these unions are doing. And to watch us as a society become more, again, individualists has really splintered our trust in just about everything, in religion, in politics, in friendships, in family. If we get back to understanding that, hey, look, this is us together as community, we can fix those things. And I feel like, and I'm hopeful, I'm very hopeful that this is the road to fixing those things.
Joel: Go unions.
SFX: All right. All right. All right.
Joel: By the way, in every boardroom in the world, they're saying, how quick can we get the robots up and running? How quickly can we get the robots up and running? We knew this would be contagious if the UAW could pull this off. And they did, to my surprise, maybe less so for yours. Unionizing is the new black baby. If you go to Google and search unionizing in the news section, everyone's using a unionizing, restaurant workers, rail workers, healthcare workers, hell, there's a lighthouse workers [laughter] union percolating for goodness sake.
Chad: They are still lighthouse workers?
Joel: I didn't even know lighthouse workers is a thing, and they're unionizing. This thing is gonna be all the rage going forward, employers, companies are obviously freaking out. What do we do? How do we nip this in the bud? How do we get robots to take these jobs as soon as possible? Which again, goes back to the $10 million payouts for AI that OpenAI is paying people because companies are gonna wanna replace these workers as quickly as possible. But for the time being, if robots never happen, if AI never happens to take certain jobs, there are gonna be people getting paid and it's gonna be the union workers that are cashing in big time.
Chad: And then we're gonna have universal high income.
Joel: That's right. Thanks, Elon. Thanks Elon. Speaking of, when we come back, it's the all Elon closing. All right, Chad, from oral sex last week to Elon Musk this week. Sorry about that, everybody. Well, speaking of unions, the fifth circuit court in the US of appeals has ruled that Tesla's ban on pro union t-shirts at its Fremont, California plant did not violate labor laws. The defense Tesla does allow union stickers instead of t-shirts. So back to work, motherfuckers. And here's more Elon for you, Chad. Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain chip startup, garnered interest from thousands of brain implants after FDA approval for human trials. Musk aims to implant 11 people next year, targeting 22,000 people by 2030, envisioning a brain machine symbiosis, whatever the hell that means.
Joel: Hungry for more, Elon, Chad? Tesla is constructing a unique diner and drive in movie theater combined with a supercharger station in Hollywood. The plan initially set for Santa Monica. Oh, that's where Zip Recruiter is. [laughter] They will feature a two story restaurant... Also, our friend Evan, by the way, 32 charging stalls, movie screens and a rooftop bar. This project could potentially signal the start of a nationwide chain of dine and charge stations for EV users. Chad, so much Elon, so much to digest, if you will. What are your thoughts?
Chad: So you know what all of this is leading to, right? It's a town, a company town where Elon is the mayor. Everyone eats Elon burgers. Dogecoin is the currency. Everyone has a Neuralink chip in their head. And X marks the spot on Mars where this town is gonna be built. It's all coming to fruition.
SFX: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! [laughter]
Joel: Okay. On the T-shirts, Tesla's team wear policy, required employees to wear black shirts imprinted with the Tesla logo. The company said the policy was necessary to ensure that vehicles were not damaged during assembly. They thought the union T-shirts might damage the cars. That sounds like a lot of BS to me.
Chad: Whatever. Yeah. Sure.
Joel: On Neuralink. Nope, I got nothing else, but nope, I'm not on board with that. On a Tesla diner, however, Chad, I'm in. I'm in it to win it, baby. What do you think is gonna be on the menu? I have an idea. You ready?
Chad: Okay. Hit me.
Joel: Here we go. They're gonna have a laptop class club, a universal high income Italian beef and a dessert with Cybertruck sopapillas on the menu. Chad, count me in. Thanksgiving is around the corner. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Chad and Cheese, we out.
Chad: We out.
Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell. Enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey. Or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckle heads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.
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