Four podcasters walk into a German bar in downtown Indianapolis to discuss the state of recruitment and chaos ensues. You know (and love) two of the podcasters (Chad & Cheese) but you may not be familiar with the other two: Ira Wolfe and Jason Cochran, co-hosts of The Geeks, Geezers, and Googlization Show. Everything from AI to automation to … ah, hell, there were too many German beers and links of sausage to remember, but trust me, it was entertaining.
Gern geschehen!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Chad: What happens when four podcasters walk into a bar have a few beers and press record? You're about to find out. Jason Cochran and Ira Wolf from the Geeks Geezers and Googlization podcast join Joel and me on this episode recorded live from the Rathskeller in downtown Indianapolis. Enjoy.
[music]
Speaker 2: 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]
Chad: Okay. What were we talking about kids?
[music]
Joel: How was Vegas?
[music]
Chad: How [laughter] was Vegas?
Joel: You guys look well rested and you look recuperated.
Jason: 'Cause we're so young and sprawled.
Chad: It was Vegas dude.
[music]
Jason: I don't feel reinvigorated.
Chad: I don't feel like it either. Yeah, but you ran [chuckle] a, mini-marathon on Saturday, like a dumb ass. [laughter]
Jason: Family Traditions, man. What am I gonna do?
Ira: That is peak male performance to be able to go to Vegas and yes...
[laughter]
Chad: Which nobody said about Joel Cheesman in his life.
Joel: Since the '80s.
[laughter]
Chad: Three words, nobody ever said about Joel Cheeseman. Peak male performance.
Joel: Is the going, right?
[laughter]
Jason: That is real, right?
Chad: Never. That's gonna be the name of this podcast. [laughter] The name of this podcast is Peak Male Performance now.
Ira: Beards and Beer, Peak Male Performance.
Chad: Okay, so seriously we're getting good levels.
Ira: Toxic masculinity.
Chad: We're good... Toxic Masculinity. [laughter]
Ira: Test. Test. Test. Another white boy with a podcast.
Chad: Another white boy with a... Have you guys heard that song?
Joel: Uh-uh.
Chad: Oh it's fucking awesome. Another white boy with a podcast.
Joel: Yeah. So what do you wanna talk about?
Ira: So what was the talk at UNLEASH? What, were some of the hot topics that you guys were talking about with leaders?
Chad: Build, buy or partner was one of the things that we talked about because of all... Everything that's happening in Tech. ChatGPT, all that fun stuff. So that was one of the things that we talked about. But, we literally did 10 plus interviews. So, pick a topic.
Ira: So we have a dichotomy of your knowledge workers are getting laid off to a certain degree, tech workers, which I think is inevitably gonna be a good thing because they'll all start companies that hire a bunch of people and get a bunch of money. So I think that's inevitably gonna be a good thing. And then you have still a high level of stress around, seasonal hourly, frontline-type workers. And their stress is automation and how quickly, and do we automate many of the jobs of the frontline workers. So, I think if you looked at... For me a trend was looking at knowledge base and the challenges they're having, as well as the frontline workers and the trends on that side of the aisle as well. In addition to that, we still have a war in Europe. We have mounting tensions globally. We have an election coming up [chuckle] next year. So a lot of things going on in the fringes...
Chad: Plenty of things to talk about. [laughter]
Ira: Impacting hiring in America.
Chad: Layers. Shall we say.
Ira: Yes.
Chad: Layers.
Ira: It's an onion that we peeled back.
[laughter]
Chad: And it makes you cry every time you fucking peel it back.
Ira: It makes you cry, yes.
Joel: So what was the general mood? Were people still holding back? Is it fearful where the way the economy's gonna go? Or is it, "Hey, we're gonna take a step back, but after that, we're gonna have a, big opportunity".
Jason: I feel largely we're in a bubble. We're hearing about inflation, we're hearing about all these things, macroeconomics that are struggling.
Chad: And we keep hearing recession.
Joel: But we're still hiring like a mother. We're not investing in companies in our space as much, but we don't stop hearing about, people still need people to serve food, to take care of patients, to store warehouse goods and services and deliver them to people. At a very basic level employment is really strong while we hear so much in the news that things are going wrong. So hopefully that [laughter] continues for us.
Chad: But I think a lack of funding is good though, because we had way too... We had a sugar rush on...
Jason: Or, drunken.
Chad: On funding, yes. [laughter] It was horrible. Now I think we're gonna get an opportunity to see these startups actually perform or get eaten up or just die, which is exactly what we need. We had way too many startups, too much noise, too much shit out there that needs to be filtered.
Joel: But is HR tech lost in the tech bubble, or the tech collapse, in the technology industry. But the reality is, as you said, there's a shortage of people. There is no out, most people don't know this, but for the last 40 years, we've had 2 million new bodies. Not qualified bodies, but 2 million new people. [laughter] Millennials, Baby boomers, even Gen X come into the workforce, every single year. And we had immigration, on top of that. For the next 20 years, we're gonna have less than 500,000 new people from Gen Z and Alpha and no immigration. So there, literally is no people coming into the workforce to replace this. So we are gonna continue to have shortages, but HR tech seems to still be focused on the old practices and falls into the tech bubble. Isn't this an opportunity though, to disrupt and transform where we're headed, how we're gonna deal with people, new opportunity? But their heads are still stuck up their butts.
[laughter]
Jason: I got four words for you. Ira, ChatGPT. [laughter] If there was one theme at the conference.
[laughter]
Chad: One of those was an acronym, but go ahead. Yeah.
[laughter]
Joel: Hey, I was digging into my inner looking color, for back in the day. ChatGPT, AI. All these things are gonna disrupt, what we're going to do. It's gonna disrupt companies that currently do what, ChatGPT or other AI technologies can do. It's gonna disrupt a ton of companies, create a bunch of new companies and we're gonna have a good time talking about all of those for sure.
Jason: And ChatGPT is Auto-GPT now it's like, what could possibly top ChatGPT, now it's Auto-GPT, which is basically...
Chad: Oh just sit back and watch.
Jason: Yeah. Here's the project I want you to work on.
Chad: Crazy.
Jason: You put in the parameters and then it goes and does it. And I heard this crazy story, nightmare scenario with it that just happened to somebody. They put a project in front of Auto-GPT, it ran into a wall, a problem that it couldn't solve. So what does it do?
Joel: Kill all the people.
[laughter]
Jason: Kill all the people. That's right. It starts the AI Apocalypse, [laughter] it kills everybody. [laughter] If you're listening to the show, you're one of the few remnants of humanity that's left.
Chad: ICBM started the war. [laughter]
Jason: Let's seek refuge in Indianapolis, Indiana. That's the only reason we're surviving. Indianapolis is a refuge. No, it actually, that's hilarious. [laughter] It actually went out and it tried to secure a contract with somebody on TaskRabbit who had expertise to solve the specific problem it couldn't solve. So it posed as it's human and was negotiating a contract with this person. The TaskRabbit contractor sends the contract over to the human and the human is like, what is this? What's going on here? And it unpeeled the layers and realized.
Chad: I need to get a bank account to pay this contract.
Jason: Auto-GPT is running. Exactly.
Chad: And then naked photos started coming...
Jason: It got a bank account in SVB to pay this person.
Joel: Yes. Well, dovetailing on that, there was another one is what happens when a piece of it... ChatGPT is based on all the information that is out there. So it reads an economics book and it reads a psychology book.
Chad: Oh great, just what we need.
Joel: And it reads a psychology book.
Chad: We should double down on trickle-down economics.
Joel: And it reads about behaviors, psychology. So now it can negotiate with you based on your public profile, [laughter] So, I mean, you have all this but, it looks at all your feeds, how you behave, how you respond to things, what's your outlook. And it's...
Jason: So think about that in our space. AI will be able to look at your profile, where you've worked in before, where you've worked before, what your title was, what the average salary of that title is based on the years that you were there. And come up with some sort of a salary that it thinks you'll be taking because of your past experience.
Chad: It won't happen because salary transparency's gonna get rid of all of that. So that's a non-starter. Carry on.
Jason: But how about just interviewing you? I mean, it's gonna be a lot smarter than a lot of people who are. It may come up with a salary based on in aggregate.
Chad: The standardization. Well, that makes sense. But yeah. But it has to also take a look at all the people that you're currently employing. So Yeah, it couldn't happen. There's no question. But back to your original question, until HR gets a fucking spine, a spine and learns that business is what runs everything that they do. What they're looking at every day is, oh, wait a minute. My whole life is predicated on this new opening or onboarding or what have you. Right? No. If you understand the actual businesses that you serve, sales, marketing, you can talk to the CEO and CTO about their business, then you can get more budget. Why? Because they understand that without you right now, before ChatGPT, they need people to ideate, to create product, to sell product.
Joel: To serve customers...
Chad: Customer service product, to be able to expand wallet share. To do any of that, you need people. HR, the limpest of all departments. They go into the corner, they put their thumb in their mouth, and they get in the fetal position. We need to be stronger.
Jason: Less Limp.
[laughter]
Chad: Less Limp.
Ira: Less limp is what we need. We're hearing many cool stories how ChatGPT is being used by HR leaders, currently.
Chad: HR leaders, not as much as staffing organizations and startups. Because they're more innovative and they're not afraid. Once again, HR and TA for the most part, they're afraid because they might trip over some compliance tripwires that might be there. Everybody else is out and they're out in force using it.
Ira: And to add on that, I think writing job descriptions is an easy one. We're seeing vendors integrate that into their solutions. We're seeing some of the basic sourcing, the first contact, if you will, of candidates being automated. Rejection letters. Things that you would normally do content-wise are being automated by ChatGPT. And a lot of it is not even just vendors doing it, but just people on their own are figuring out where to go, what to put in, how it works. I mean, this thing has more users than anything else that came before it in a shortened period of time. So a lot of people are using this and messing around with it and coming up with their own solutions. I think also, interestingly, Chad and I have talked about on our show, how job seekers are being creative around ChatGPT and creating profiles and replying to tons of jobs and passing pre-screening questions based on ChatGPT intelligence.
Chad: Passing tests. Full-scale tests.
Joel: Oh yeah.
Jason: Pre-screen test, actual copy test, actual writing copy. That's doing better than most of the applicants that are humans.
Ira: Well I mean, it counts on your resume if you can write the prompt. You can engineer the prompt for Chat GPT and it's real.
Jason: That's prompt engineering baby, that's right.
Joel: Right. It gets translated...
Jason: It's the fastest-growing profession.
Ira: But the thing that you mentioned there, I still remember so many times, Kevin Grossman, who's a friend of ours in candidate experience, will talk about how many times people would apply and then they never hear anything back. So at least with AI, are you actually getting a rejection letter letting you know? That's a huge step forward, to actually get some kind of communication back.
Chad: Which is sad.
Ira: Which is sad, but it's actually getting done.
Chad: It if fucking sad, because the problem is that, and again, this goes back to Ira's initial question around HR, we have never been able to scale past the resume and the fax machine. As soon as we were able to start getting resumes electronically, couldn't scale since we have not been able to scale since. Hence all of these black holes that exist.
Jason: So if we go back three years, the pandemic revealed all the vulnerabilities of a company and then it created opportunity realizing what remote work could look like. The technology, people were unprepared. So ChatGPT and just AI in general, because now we're putting it into our hands. I mean, just pulled off the band-aid, exposed all the vulnerabilities of HR because we're... I've been in HR for 27 years, but you know, ran been in business for 40 years.
Joel: And you've only been in therapy for 25 [laughter] of those 27 years.
[laughter]
Jason: For all, for 45.
[laughter]
Jason: The, challenge is that we're still talking about people faking resumes and this just put it on steroids.
Joel: This is when Chad goes into his Web3, yes.
Jason: NFTs.
Chad: CV Wallet, watch out, baby, watch out.
[laughter]
Jason: That's the transition where people were saying, well, okay, we're trying to digest ChatGPT, we're trying to figure this out. Just give us time. We're gonna think about it. We're gonna put it on next year's strategic plan.
Chad: Tech is moving so fast, you can't put it in next year's anything. It has to be next week's conversation. And again, going back to the HR is so slow and so spineless, we've gotta be able to react, we've gotta be more nimble, and I'll revert back to one of the interviews that we had with Jeff Lackey, who used to be over all of CVS hiring. 90% of his budget came from other departments because he went back out to them with business cases and said, look, wait, you want those salespeople to get hired? You want those customer service, you want this and that we need funding. We don't have enough funding to be able to sustain. So your top five positions right now for us is your top one, maybe half position. So if you can fund us, then maybe we can talk. So he went back to the business to talk about these things. We need to think about HR in an entirely different way, and we need to be more nimble. He was nimble and he taught his team how to be nimble. We have to.
Ira: Ira, I joke on the podcast about one day we'll have robots interviewing robots.
Chad: He's really not joking.
[laughter]
Jason: No one will see anyone until they show up for the first day of work. And we're sadly going to a time where job seekers are automating, companies are automating, and robots are interviewing robots.
Ira: But you guys brought up a perfect use case for NFTs, right? The non-fungible tokens. Like so many times, I'm a big proponent, I'm on the bandwagon with you on Web3 but so many times the detractors would be like NFTs. There's no use case for them.
Chad: Just as long as you don't call them NFTs, I think you're okay. Right? Just like you don't call it blockchain, right? You don't call it blockchain. You're like, "oh, okay. I'm okay with that." It's like, here's a product, here's what the product does. "Oh, that's fucking cool." It's NFTs and it's blockchain. Oh, wait a minute. Get me away from that thing.
Ira: But I mean the use case you just brought it up is it's gonna be really easy for people to fake things. That they contributed towards their experience and stuff like that with AI. So there's gotta be proof of authenticity, the things that you actually contributed toward. And then also you can't have guys like Jewel that are trying to pose as Drake coming up with music that sounds exactly like Drake.
Chad: Gotcha. [laughter]
Ira: So there's gotta be this proof of authenticity on the artistic side of things too, with what's being done.
Joel: Fortunately, I was born to look like Drake. So the voice isn't that big of a leap for me. So let's get into this. LinkedIn is obviously partnered with CLEAR to verify profiles. So are you bullish, bearish, hold on. LinkedIn verifying profiles through CLEAR?
Ira: Yeah. I don't trust them and it's because I don't have any stock in LinkedIn.
Joel: That's a bearish, I'm guessing.
Ira: Selfish.
Joel: You're selling...
Ira: Bearish, you're selling LinkedIn.
Chad: Ira, what about you, Ira? What do you think?
Joel: On profile verification through blockchain and or LinkedIn/CLEAR? What else is out there? Anything?
Chad: Well, I think that's the direction, but it goes back to we have no guardrails in place. So part of it is utilizing that to verify it, to make sure people are actually who they are. I think it's a good thing. It goes back to what we were just talking about with resumes.
Ira: Do you have your blue check Ira?
Joel: I do.
Ira: Alright. There you go.
Chad: Which means nothing.
[laughter]
Chad: Which fucking means nothing.
Ira: It means he submitted his ID to Elon Musk. So, it means something.
Chad: Means nothing.
[laughter]
Joel: And I went through the LinkedIn process. That's why I'm bearish on it.
Jason: We're going towards a blue-check ecosystem. People are gonna need some sort of verification, I think going forward, whether it's blockchain, whether it's NFT, whether it's...
Chad: I think the guardrails come in with Europe. 'Cause Europe is actually setting the stage for the entire world for a lot of this technology with guardrails. GDPR was... And from what we're hearing was really just a mechanism to slow the American machine down. Because we were so far ahead of Europe and now we have to think about, oh shit, if we wanna sell things in Europe pretty large, market with 44 plus countries. What do you think about that compliance, guardrails, do you think that Europe is really gonna lead the way since the US is really just focused on cash as opposed to how it treats its people?
Joel: I'm not sure leading the way is the solution because we're still globalized. There's countries that aren't gonna participate.
Chad: Let's say Germany. Let's say Germany does.
Joel: Why'd you pick Germany? Why? Why?
[laughter]
Chad: It's the biggest GDP in Europe and we're here at the Rathskeller drinking German beer. Anyway, if one of those countries does it, it's much like California putting in regulation. The rest of the country really has to fall in line.
Ira: Well, we all know that Reddit is the 100% source of all truth.
[laughter]
Ira: And what I saw on Reddit.
Chad: You didn't know Joel was Q did you?
[laughter]
Ira: Oh, you're Q he's an on.
[laughter]
Ira: You guys are famous. But yeah, on Reddit they were talking about this subject and what was really fascinating about it was how many users of ChatGPT have said that basically the governor has been put on ChatGPT already. They'll put in the same types of questions or prompts, and it'll give a response like, "I'm not qualified to answer that question". Or it'll put some kind of a disclaimer out there.
[laughter]
Ira: And it won't actually answer it. And so we are kind of in this weird space of we do want it to advance, we want it to be able to help us innovate and create new product services, solve problems. But then we also have this problem of, yeah, is it going too fast where it's invading privacy or is it stepping beyond its balance of what it actually has competence in? Is it actually fabricating and creating false information?
Chad: Definitely fabricating shit. [laughter]
Joel: But you can create the regulations and the compliance in the Guardrail. But then you have China and Russia. How do you enforce compliance?
Chad: You stop them doing business in your country. That's how you do it. That's the only way you can force China or Russia to do anything that you want them to do, is choke off the cash. That's it.
Joel: But you're talking... When you talk about no backbone, you've got Congress.
Chad: Yes. [laughter]
Joel: When they're trying to figure out how Facebook still makes money.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: And don't realize they changed their name and they have a new business model.
Chad: I think they might go back to Facebook. By the way.
[laughter]
Ira: Someone from the audience brought up a good question.
[laughter]
Jason: Yes. Yes. Perfect.
Jason: Does all this confusion and ID verification lead us back to a time where we just hire who we know? Personal friendships, contacts, who knows who, which throws in a whole other diversity, inclusion and equity challenge to that. But do we go back to who we know. Like we don't know what the bots are telling me. What is AI telling me? I'm just gonna hire the dude I went to school with and they know somebody that wants to be an intern.
Ira: Then organizations better hire people that are really welcome connected.
Jason: It's still not what you know, it's who you know. Like you.
Ira: What about me?
Jason: Like you guys, they need to hire people like you guys that knows everybody in the industry.
Chad: And then what? White dudes.
Jason: With a podcast.
Chad: Middle-aged white dudes. Yes.
Joel: Four white dudes.
Chad: It could be the fallback position, but I don't think that's ever the answer. And most of these companies are making record profits. And for them to say that I can't officially go after... Fuck off. Use the money that you have, go diversify your workforce and then build from there. One of the things that we did, I don't want to get too political, but back in the '80s is, we started cutting off funding from employers putting money back into their employees. Trickle-down economics. We were like, "Hey, here's all these tax cuts, you're gonna put it back in the market." Which they never really did. Instead, back then, they were incentivized to drive and build talent pipelines within their own organization. Today we don't do that. We talk about talent pipelines. There's no company that has a talent pipeline that exists? Very few, put it that way. So we need to get back to actually building talent pipelines within our communities, and then our companies start to look what our communities look like. Whether it's policing, whether it's just Fortune 500 companies, we need get back to that. And when we stop focusing on "shareholder value", and we focus on the long term existence of an organization, then I think we have something.
Ira: So going back to your question, Joel.
Jason: Yep.
Ira: Do we move back toward human connections of who we know because we're comfortable with it, but it wasn't very good before. We hired people that we were comfortable with and we got what we got, but it was a low common denominator. And as over the last three years, we've talked about how we can't build relationships. You can't build cultures through a screen, because there's no serendipity, that... Where there's no creativity, but that's only because most people don't have the ability to do it. So part of it is, do companies revert back to that just as they are now is bring everybody back to the office. 'Cause that's the only place you can have innovation, growth and serendipity.
Chad: Have you seen the new Upwork commercial?
Jason: Of course.
Joel: Yes.
Chad: Okay. So the zombie grandpa who can't die because he is afraid of his company going under, because all he could do is hire his kids and his grandkids, and they were shit for talent. Then he goes to Upwork and he is like, "I've got all these talented people all over the world. That's exactly what Ira is just talking about.
Jason: So, I mean, we keep going back to this lowest common denominator, what we're comfortable with, going back to normal, which we can't do because it wasn't very good before.
Joel: But we have CEO after CEO talking about we need to go back to what it was. We need to go back to the office. We need to go back to a culture.
Chad: That's 'cause they're all old white dudes.
Joel: And most of them have ownership in commercial real estate, which is a side issue, [laughter] but where are you with remote hybrid, get your ass back in the office. Where do we go from here?
Jason: All of the above. That's actually... It's one of the parts we talk about. So we're talking about it in the wrong context. It's not about hybrid, in-office or remote, it's about flexible, it's, people want flexibility.
Chad: Autonomy.
Jason: And flexibility. So they're not opposed to coming back to the office. When you come back to the office, come back to the office because there's a purpose to come back to the office, because it's the absolute only place where we can function or do something. But I spoke last week, and 2 weeks ago in Missouri, and one of the people shared to us, she said, "I went into an office yesterday and walked down the corridor and there were 10 offices." It was a marketing HR kind of business. And no one was there. And she walks down the office and she hears voices, and all the doors were just marginally cracked, and everybody was talking in their offices to each other. So they were in an office, on a screen call, sitting at their desk talking to each other.
Jason: There is no reason in the world to say I had a higher childcare., I had to leave somebody, I had to commute an hour and a half to come to this meeting, to sit in my office to talk to somebody in the next office, because everybody talked through a screen because everybody was busy and they don't have to pay a 100% attention. But if there was a reason to come back, I think this is a brilliant model and it's from Cushman & Wakefield. We just interviewed Bryan Berthold a couple weeks ago on it. And they have a motto called Experience Per Square Foot. And it looked at, productivity was number one. They looked at the productivity of people wherever they are. It looked at collaboration, it looked at employee well-being, it looked at community, and it looked at communication. So those were the five metrics, and they put it into this measurement of Experience Per Square Foot. And they said, where is the highest value?
Ira: Number.
Jason: The highest number...
Ira: My brain hurts.
Chad: No, where they're playing Juice Newton, Morning Angel. That's where the experience is.
Joel: Which is where I want to work.
Jason: That's right.
Chad: That's the soundtrack of this podcast, by the way.
Jason: It's an interesting model and it puts it in a different perspective. But where does that happen? And that's the problem of thinking, are more people more productive in the office or remote or hybrid? And it still amounts to flexibility. Because even the four-day work week, which now regenerated for the 15th time.
Ira: I still wear my khakis on Friday, no matter what. Casual Fridays.
Chad: That's not very productive...
Joel: And they still have wing juice on this.
Jason: They still have the fleets that go all the way down.
Joel: That's not flexible for people. They have a working spouse, and they have to be in the office Tuesday. So do I. I have to be in the office Tuesday? We have to find childcare for one day.
Jason: Yeah. That's dumb.
Joel: That's not flexible, which means you piss somebody off and they don't want to do it. So how do you create flexibility? And that goes back to HR and their alignment for a business and their alignment with HR. What's the measure? What are you trying to accomplish? How do you measure productivity, communication, collaboration, employee well-being? How do you put all that stuff into a mix?
Jason: So am I hearing you say going back to the office is bullshit.
Joel: A mandate... No.
Jason: The story you just told was, it's bullshit.
Joel: If it's a mandate, it is.
Jason: When is it not?
Joel: Companies need metrics.
Jason: Why are you bringing people back?
Joel: What metric does that work favorably? What are you gonna accomplish by bringing people back to the office, mandating it, that you can't accomplish if they work somewhere else?
Chad: We shouldn't be... Okay, so first and foremost, Henry Ford came out with the 40-hour work week in the 1920s, that's still where we're at. We're focusing on the amount of time that we're taking or that we're "giving" as opposed to the outcomes. I don't give a shit if... And I didn't care when I was building teams if it took you 20 hours to get to the actual project timeline or not, it didn't matter. And when we start to get into that old 1920s mindset of the, "oh, we've gotta be there." And this is manufacturing. Most of us aren't in manufacturing now, 'cause America doesn't make shit. So now, 40 hours a week doesn't mean anything.
Jason: Here's the tie. So it's not only that. Flexibility is not only where people work, it's about when they work and what are they doing when they're working.
Joel: And how much they get paid.
Jason: I can't tell you how many times that we talk about flexibility also comes about when people get paid, so...
Chad: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Jason: Day pay. Going back, you have hourly workers, you have senior leaders...
Chad: He has flipped it on us. You see that?
Jason: They went from Juice Noon to Smokey Robinson. I'm a little bit outta my own element, I'm a little confused.
Chad: It's a Rathskeller playlist by the way guys.
Ira: When does Hasselhoff come on? Geez.
Jason: By the way, when we talk about day pay, getting paid, "hey, I worked three days, but I've got a bill, I've gotta go to the emergency room."
Joel: Are we in favor of day pay?
Jason: Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 2: Oh fuck yeah. Yeah.
Ira: Absolutely.
Joel: Just making sure. It'll never work because obviously it doesn't work for Fiverr and Upwork.
Ira: And since all the banks are basically being demolished...
Joel: We love it but it will never work.
Ira: Says Ira.
Joel: That's not how the cashless society works either, all your tradespeople. So basically, you get paid when you work. So I can go in and do that. The biggest percentage is not frontline workers who use it. The biggest percentage is this... Not necessarily C-suite, but management.
Chad: Is it because it's not available to frontline workers?
Joel: No. It's just when they make it available, the highest percentage of users turns out to be managers and above. That's the percentage. But that's just a side issue.
Jason: Okay. So you're telling me SVPs are taking daily pay? News to me.
Joel: People who don't need the money, but they want to get it into the account quick so they, yeah. Reinvest.
Jason: Yeah. But, two reasons.
Joel: Well, SVPs don't live day to day. And that...
Jason: The only thing I've ever read was that it was for frontline workers.
Joel: It was for frontline workers.
Jason: Hourly pay.
Joel: I've never heard of anybody building this for executives.
Chad: This is news.
Joel: This is new to me.
Chad: Write this down. Write this down.
Joel: Okay. So the original point was that the objection I hear with that is that, "oh, we asked our payroll company, and they say they can't. Or we asked our managers and it'll mess up our accounting. So the problem is that there is a demand for it, there's a purpose to it, there's a reason that you can attract and retain employees, if you offer that type of pay. That, "hey, I've worked a week, why do I have to work another week? Because, I'm all stressed out, and I don't have money to get my car out of the garage. I don't have time to take my kid to the doctor because I need cash." Because the payroll system or the accounting system or the managers don't allow it to happen.
Chad: Or cash flow. Yeah.
Joel: So we keep going back to, there are solutions out there that have been around for five, 10 years, that companies just trip over their feet with policies and administration is, go find another payroll company. Go find, figure it out. But if we're giving you a way that will attract and retain people and say, "hey, the only reason I'm gonna work for you is because I can get paid by the day." I don't have to wait two weeks to buy groceries for my family or to pay... Or get my landlord off my back, because I can get the money that I put in and earned already. And somebody comes up with the brainy idea is, we can't do it because our HRIS system doesn't do it. Our payroll company says we can't do it. Our CFO says we can't do it. Get rid of them and change it.
Chad: Yeah. And get one that has...
Ira: Bitcoin reserves so that you know that they have the liquidity.
Chad: Did the crypto king just say something?
Ira: Oh, sorry. Sorry. But you know the other part of this too, we're talking about the money side of it and where people work, is when people work. And Yahoo just had a fascinating report that came out on millennials and Gen Zs. You know what the new 9:00-5:00 preferred working hours are for millennials and Gen Z? 6:00 PM to 2:00 AM Sign me up.
Joel: More shocking is Yahoo still has breaking news.
[laughter]
Ira: Breaking news... You heard that first on Yahoo.
Joel: That's right.
Ira: Looking for a sponsor.
Jason: But yeah, that absolutely just floored me that like the other part of this freedom is not just where you work, but when you work.
Chad: It shouldn't fucking matter. That's what we need to get down to. It is like, look, if I have goals I have to hit, if I hit those goals, it doesn't matter when I work, how I worked, if I was at the strip club down the street for God's sakes, I got shit done, If I'm coding while I'm having prime rib with cherry, it's okay.
Jason: Oh, I think that's what this report was showing was that there needs to be that flexibility. If that's when they're saying those are their productive hours when they deliver the most value for the company and it works best in their schedule, why not?
Chad: They would like doing a rager and then they went straight to work after the rager.
Jason: But the same arguments going after the shift is that, hey, we can't find somebody. So we don't have enough nurses, we don't have enough staffing, and we have a 7:00-3:00, a 3:00-11:00. But you do have people that can work from 11:00-7:00. Or 11:00-6:00. Then the problem still goes back to, but how do we do the accounting for that? Because our models are set up.
Joel: They're all hourly anyway.
Jason: It doesn't matter because...
Joel: It does matter. It's paid on hours, Ira.
Jason: But it's how they schedule. It goes back to...
Joel: That's bullshit.
Jason: But it goes back to what you said. It's their policy is that we have our...
Joel: It's 'cause my pterodactyl wouldn't eat that kind of food. Give me a break.
Jason: We have a template that says 7:00-3:00, 3:00-8:00, 3:00-11:00, 11:00-7:00. And the fact is that we'll get a new template, and it'll go, well, we checked with our HRIS system or ATS and it doesn't allow that.
Joel: Hours are hours. That's one thing that hasn't changed during this entire workday.
Ira: The only thing I heard is that strip clubs should be open 24 hours a day.
[laughter]
Joel: By the way, when I retire, I'm giving all my money to Charity, and if she's not working that night, it goes to whoever is onstage.
[laughter]
Jason: Well done. Well done. Were there any fears around the second bank collapse with First Republic when were out on UNLEASH?
Chad: Here's the biggest problem, even before we get to UNLEASH. The biggest problem was we were starting to come out of this, Joel was talking about this bubble, we were starting to come out of this pensive do we spend money bubble? And then SVB throws all this fucking ice back in the water, which was getting nice and cozy. We're getting in the hot tub, it was feeling good, it was warming up, the bubbles were going and boom, they threw ice in the motherfucker. So we're in that now re-warming up phase. Then we had Republic? [chuckle]
Jason: Signature Republic today.
Ira: Jamie Dimon's feeling really good about getting First Republic on a pretty cheap basis with all the protection from the FDIC.
Joel: Still the smartest guy in the room, Jamie Dimon. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Chad: Until he opens his mouth.
Joel: Thank you very much [chuckle]
Jason: Exactly...
Joel: Until you're back in the office.
Chad: Until he mandates everybody back.
Joel: Yes. [chuckle]
Joel: Morale will not improve, the beatings will continue until morale improves.
Chad: Him and DJ Saul.
Joel: The meetings will continue until morale improves.
Chad: No, UNLEASH was, it was a big show.
Joel: It was great.
Chad: Big expo hall...
Joel: Third year, stellar.
Chad: Yeah, that was only year three, it was big.
Joel: And not consecutive.
Chad: Yeah. And then we've got RecFest that's coming to America this year. I think we're gonna see a lot of growth. Can we keep the ice out of the water long enough for some of these funders and some of these startups to be able to really just explode?
Jason: Were there any Web3 companies there? [chuckle]
Chad: I don't think so. Were there?
Jason: Joel's over here, cackling, he's got a story in the house, [chuckle]
Chad: There was one that actually did an announcement that week, and that's CV Wallet out of the UK. So Richard and Beverly Collins, who actually sold a company to Indeed, they're now getting into Web3. It's a portable CV...
Joel: Wallet?
Chad: Yeah, wallet. Which allows all of the credentialing, all of the background checks, all that stuff, that actually stays with me, not the company, 'cause it's not a background check on the company, it's a background check on me. So I get to keep that as I go from company to company and I apply, for as long as I want them to have my information. So I see this as evolution. We'll see if we can actually get adoption with that evolution.
Jason: Does it support NFTs?
Chad: I'm sure it does.
Jason: Yes.
Joel: I can imagine.
Ira: So if there weren't vendors, there was their conversation about Web3?
Joel: Very little from my perspective.
Ira: I mean, isn't that the problem?
Chad: Yeah. Well, okay.
Joel: Everyone's living in chat GPT shadow at the moment.
Chad: Yes. But here's the thing though, you gotta remember, how much did we talk about cloud computing? We did for a minute, it was like, "Oh, this is the coolest thing in the world." And then it just wasn't there, but it took over the world because it's actually like a white labeled solution that's happening behind the scenes. I see the same thing happening with Web3. It could power some amazing tech, but it's not something we're gonna talk about and there's no reason to.
Ira: It's fascinating right now. Web3 was really picking up steam and then AI came on the scene.
Jason: Well, and then certain companies went out of business that were Crypto or... They sneeze and everyone's caught a cold, so they're guilty by association. And I fear that Web3, Blockchain, Crypto, NFTs, do they all get lumped in the same thing as, be careful, don't touch. I think it's a long game where all this stuff plays out, but for right now, I think there's a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt around anything, Blockchain, Crypto, NFT, Web3, there's not a massive break.
Joel: So is it not happening right now or is it just that people are, "Let's lay low."
Ira: If you get into this CV wallet, it's the long game. I mean, you're not flipping this thing in 24 months. It's the long game as far as I'm concerned.
Joel: Somebody's gonna want to buy it, that's the thing though, because everybody wants to do a resume differently and we've been bitching about it for...
Jason: Which goes back to the uncertainty. If this is just another company I can buy and sell and acquire, they're gonna have to convince people that CV Wallet Web3 is different than LinkedIn. And that means you can't just sell it to another company. Otherwise you're just putting your resume and profile through another company.
Chad: I can't apply for a job on Indeed with my LinkedIn profile. I can't apply for a job in all of these other places outside of Indeed.
Jason: Can you apply on Indeed with my CV wallet?
Chad: Yeah. Well that's the whole thing is that if you can create these things and LinkedIn doesn't create it, Indeed doesn't even create it, but you have a third party do it, and they have these integrations with assessment companies and whatnot, the practicality of something like that happening goes up tremendously. As soon as Indeed builds something like that, you're gonna have half the market not want to do it.
Jason: Most job boards will have, apply with your Indeed profile, and apply through Indeed. And...
Chad: If it works.
Jason: If it works, [chuckle] I mean they have it. So the promise of blockchain, and particularly Bitcoin is right, Bitcoin is beyond any government currency...
Chad: But you're missing something. Indeed has a bunch of fake ass profiles. It's one of those things where if something that's credentialed, it's something that you know real, and it's portable for us as a user, it just makes sense. There's a messaging problem, a narrative problem as you say every week for Web3, Blockchain and Crypto, I agree 100%. They just need kick-ass marketing.
Jason: So let's go back to, and it's something you've just said just popped in my head, if you go back and we figure this out and let's say the wallet becomes the new resume, and we have a better way than in a LinkedIn profile, how do companies... One is, how do you verify the skills that you can build any resume?
Chad: Well, they're verified within the actual assessments and the assessment vendors in your wallet.
Jason: If the assessments are measuring what's important.
Joel: Or they're reputable.
Jason: But people are still hiring, and I came from this world. I mean, people hire on personality and behavioral style. So how do you hire people that actually have the ability, one is the knowledge, and the wisdom, and the ability to apply it? So I can take all the courses and skills and have 30 years of experience, but how do you verify that I actually could apply and I'm willing to apply?
Chad: Testing simulations. Those are the biggest keys. And...
Jason: But they have to be part of the Web...
Chad: Oh God yeah. Well that's part of the credentialing part.
Jason: So you're demonstrating your ability, it's not that I just went to school and I clicked this off and I had 10 years of experience and I met all my goals for 10 years.
Chad: And Jenny did all my tests for me.
Ira: You know Jenny too.
Chad: She's from the block.
Ira: I think she's friends with Charity, isn't she? She's friends with Charity.
Joel: Jenny's just short for Generative AI.
[laughter]
Joel: That's right.
Ira: So what? We often say...
Jason: Too smart, Ira.
Ira: Humans are still gonna have certain skills that AI can't do. I'm a little skeptical. I gotta be honest.
Chad: I don't know how long though.
Ira: Me too. So I'm just curious from you guy's perspectives, what are those things that...
Joel: Nuance. Emotions.
Jason: So that's one of the concerns, is that AI in the future, that we can't replicate human compassion and empathy, but you can replicate the behavior.
Chad: But what's the difference, Ira?
Joel: Since most people do it robotically now.
Chad: Yes. That's what I mean.
Joel: So you go, is how do I become more empathetic? It doesn't mean the person gives a shit about anything. It's the reality, is they act like they do.
Jason: Yes. Like most managers.
Joel: And then the person has to have the ability to discern, are they authentic or not? Which most people don't have that ability to discern it because, "oh, he gave me a paycheck and he really likes me."
Chad: And he's a Browns fan, so he must be full of shit.
Jason: Right. Because we have something in common.
Joel: Oh. Are you a Browns fan?
Ira: I'm a Browns fan.
Jason: You and Drew Carey. Yeah. You got something to say?
Chad: Two of them.
Jason: No, I'm a Colts fan, so I'm in misery too. Hey, I was listening to a podcast the other day and it talked about military preparation, and it said that in military battles or war games, that AI will typically do whatever it takes to win the battle or the war. It will sacrifice soldiers in order, for the big picture to win the ultimate prize, which is the war. Whereas human beings would look at sacrificing people as, maybe we shouldn't do that. Maybe there's another way. So to answer your question a little bit of like, yes, there is something to be said for human beings because we would look at that and say, sacrificing humans isn't just...
Chad: All right. Context.
Jason: An algorithm. These are people that live and breathe and have families, etcetera. I think there is still nuance.
Joel: So this is interesting. Yesterday on the way out here on the shuttle, met a guy...
Chad: Gingalactic.
Joel: Went to the airport, turns out he's a 3-star general.
Chad: Blue Origin, P-Rock.
Joel: So he oversees one of the defense organizations with the government. Three and a half trillion dollars, 250,000 contracts. I asked him, I said, "Hey, you want to be on the podcast?" He'd love to... He's retiring. I said, "Love to get you on the podcast. Talk about what the future is heading." He said something like, "What are you using for AI?" His answer was that they're not focused on AI. He says the biggest value that they see is business intelligence. Is where they're looking at AI is not in the strategy.
Jason: Really?
Joel: Is in analyzing all the data that they have to make better decisions leading up to how, where do they invest their money.
Chad: But yeah, but I mean that would be ML and AI at the same point, 'cause you have all that data to grind.
Joel: But it's not about the human life. It's about how do we make better decisions about, how many F16s do we really need? And, who's the best vendors, and how do we have higher quality? And they're not even using that yet. They're not even at that level of using the business intelligence to the level it should be. And now we're already extrapolating out to, who's gonna make that final decision about, is this gonna sacrifice more human lives? So we've got a long way to go. And as we always say...
Ira: Where's Matthew Broderick and his monkey when you need him?
Joel: That's a great point though.
Chad: Drones on the battlefield. That's what clears up this entire conversation.
Jason: Yeah. Boston Dynamics with the little dog robots.
Chad: We're not worried about human lives when we got drones in the air and we got the little Boston Dynamic dogs.
Ira: But, I mean, that's a really fascinating point with sometimes having... We've got a ton of information, but we're really terrible as humans a lot of times at knowing what it's telling us, and organizing and synthesizing... The human capital reporting is a mess. I mean, we just got into this a few weeks ago where there was a report that came out in February on human capital metrics, now that publicly traded companies are supposed to be disclosing this stuff. And what absolutely blew my mind, of the S&P 500 companies, only 23% of them are still reporting anything on culture. And of the 23%, 50% of those, what they are reporting on culture is an engagement survey that they do two times a year.
Chad: Poll survey.
Ira: Yeah. And that's it.
Chad: So they don't care about the culture in the first place and they never did.
Jason: The people are our most valued resource. What are you talking about?
Joel: As long as it's correct. To be consumed.
Chad: As long as they're white, middle-aged males, then they're our most valued resource.
Ira: That's right. And heterosexual.
Chad: Yes. Yes.
Ira: Don't forget that one.
Chad: Just the hypocrisy of corporate America who says, first and foremost that employees are the most valued. And then there's like, get your ass back into the... We know what you want is what you want, but we don't care. You were incredibly productive, but get back into the office. DEIB, the most important thing in the world. Oh, wait a minute. Let's go ahead and cut all the heads in DEIB. And diversity, equity is ongoing.
Ira: And don't you dare have a marketing campaign to those people.
Chad: Don't you start. Don't you start.
Ira: Don't you dare put that face on a BUD LIGHT can.
Chad: Yeah. The trans community doesn't need to know about that beer.
Ira: They don't drink beer.
Chad: And they said, come on people.
Joel: They don't drink beer.
Chad: Yeah. And a great campaign, but then Anheuser-Busch folded like a fucking cheap card table.
Jason: They did. They did.
Chad: And that was on product. That wasn't even on employees. So if they're gonna fold that quickly on product, they're not even thinking about employees, you fucking kidding me? It's all just fluff.
Ira: What I'm really hopeful for is, with AI, is that we're not gonna get more data, but we're gonna make better decisions with it. And so, imagining the day when there's gonna be an AI agent sitting at the table in a boardroom and just look at board members and say, that is a terrible idea, that's the stupidest thing I've heard today, and here's all the reasons why based off of the data.
Chad: You need data from Star Trek, right?
[laughter]
Jason: But being able to refute a lot of things that I think that often get conflated as fact, but are strictly opinion, or the ways that things have always been or the way that they've looked at data...
Chad: Oh yeah.
Jason: I really hope that there's gonna be more objectivity that comes to it. We've gotta get better than 23% of S&P 500 companies reporting anything on culture, if you're gonna say that you care about people.
Chad: We can't even get economy right. The shit that we talk about as rules in economy is basic theory. It has nothing to do with rules at all. Our Economics 101 that you go through in school is total bullshit. They're talked about as laws and it's total theory. We can't even get the thing that's most important to us right. And then we want to think about, oh, wait a minute, employees. Oh okay. Yeah.
Ira: But at least we learned how to square dance in high school.
Chad: That's a good point. Yes. That's a good point.
Ira: At least in Indiana.
Chad: You square danced in high school. You had to have.
Ira: Broke danced, square danced, I did it all. I did it all baby.
Chad: And he still does.
Ira: I'll break out the running man right now.
Chad: Pull out the piece of cardboard. That's what I want to see.
Ira: Breakin' 2, Electric Boogaloo, the classic. Who else is hungry? Is it just me? I feel like the super fans sitting around the table. I could use a Ruben.
Chad: Time for food and another beer kids. Ira, Jason, thanks for inviting us out.
Joel: What a pleasure.
Jason: Thank you for having us. This was a blast, man.
Chad: Absolutely.
Ira: Rathskeller. We're gonna have to do it more often.
Chad: Amen.
Ira: Monumental meeting.
Chad: And with that, another one is in the can. Another beer on the way and a Ruben is cooking in the kitchen. We out.
Jason: We out.
S6: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Chase podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded it 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 was off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful trainwreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.
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