AI is killing the summer slowdown

0:04This week on Great Chat, we have the whole gang together. And on the brink of a holiday weekend, we're asking the question that's on everyone's mind. Will tech see any kind of summer slowdown or are we all moving at AI speed? And what does that mean for founders and fundraisers or people looking for jobs? But first, a quick shout out to our sponsor, Mercury. Mercury is the fintech used by over 200 ,000 companies to simplify their finances. We are huge Mercury fans of Great Chat and we use it to run this podcast. And a few of us are also current customers for our funds and startups. not to mention the dozens of startups we've backed as VCs, angels, and scouts that run their businesses on Mercury.

0:44Something I love about Mercury is how straightforward the onboarding flow is. Using it is a delight and I'm excited to see them reach more startups and small business owners who listen to this podcast. So if you are launching a startup or fund, visit mercury.com to apply online in 10 minutes or less. Quick note, Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. For more details, check our show notes. And one last reminder, if you have questions for us, we answer them each week. Don't forget to submit all your burning questions at another great chat.com. I would really like a beverage company sponsor so we can sip gear for nine o 'clock in the morning.

1:25We could do like, um, one of those little cold brews. Oh yeah. What's the You have the frozen things that everyone's obsessed with. The pods. Cometeer. Cometeer. I don't drink them, but I can. They're so good. I am such a convert. I'm not even a coffee slob. It's like a snob. It's so convenient. You're not a coffee snob. You're a coffee slob. I think I can use that correctly. That is correct. That is correct. That's all I'm done. Yes. Oh, my goodness. But I'm obsessed. It's great. Well, if we're all properly caffeinated, we talk about the Bezos wedding.

2:07Best transition ever. So subtle, so chill. Love to see it. Yeah. Yeah. Who spent the weekend in Venice vicariously? Oh, I actually went. So. Oh, you were there. You were there. Who did you sit next to? I sat in between Orlando Bloom and Tom brady because i just really live for that divorce dad energy amazing i'm a weirdo but i think i'd be like most excited to meet not any of the celebrities or the tech bros but like like i want to meet like lauren sanchez's like sister or childhood friend and just get right like who are their friends i want to know like who like who are you actually i want to meet their plastic surgeons like who is I think it's believable that she's had celebrity friends for a while.

2:58She was an anchor, right? Somewhere. She was an anchor on Fox. Her brother, if you guys don't remember, was the one who leaked the entire story to the National Enquirer. Was he there? Nobody. I don't know. I actually did try to. Oh, that's a good question. She was there. But this is the amazing thing about, I guess, power and money is the fact that, like, they've totally buried that story and, like, no one's really resurfaced it. And then I did also go down another rabbit hole this weekend about how Lauren Sanchez got the cover of Vogue, the like last cover that Anna Wintour was going to be in charge of at Vogue, even though she's still staying at Condé Nast.

3:38So I don't know. There's a lot of a lot of little speculations on various corners going on right now. I will never forget those leaked texts. And my favorite part was Jeff calling Lauren a live girl. which is maybe the best pet name ever. And in fact, my dog - What does that mean? What does that mean? I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. Did you just say pet name? Pet name, but also to transition to, my husband and I call our dog a live girl sometimes. Especially after a couple of weekends ago, she ate an entire bar of dark chocolate. And so whenever Tawny survives eating something designed to kill her, we call her a live girl.

4:20And so I feel like it's a deep soul connection with Lauren Sanchez. so what was what was his intention when he called like I think she's just really alive guys and like I mean she kind of is like no one is living their better best life than Lauren Sanchez alive in her face but that's why I wanted more like I felt like I spent the whole weekend like scouring the internet for photos and it was the same like five photos of the Kardashians on a boat and like I wanted more foam I wanted more tequila like you know if anyone was gonna do it big it was going to be Lauren and Jeff and like we needed more like Marie Antoinette let them eat cake like I wanted I wanted more maybe they're going to give us a slow drip and just like prolong the news cycle yeah yeah wait who asked the question about who you would want to sit with Ashley you said you'd want to sit with the with this with the family members and figure out yeah I want to sit with someone who's known Lauren through like her multiple chapters and her many evolutions that that would be more fun to me uh than actually this is very like academic like ashley lens answer by the way i want to know the lauren sandra's history i want to sit next to her plastic surgeon i want to know who does all the work i want to know who's making the magic happen that's who i want to sit next to who knows like all the secrets i want to know who andy jazzy sat next to who's like who's now the ceo of amazon was he there yeah he was there he was on the guest list Did you spot him in any photos?

5:51Like, could you spot Andy Jazzy in a lineup? Because I absolutely could not. I mean, I can because my CNBC days. Yes, that's true. But very different environment from when he used to run AWS and then those conferences and then sitting at, I don't know, next to the Kardashians or Tom Brady. Maybe he sat next to Josh Kushner. Wait, was Katy Perry there? Like who gets the Lauren Jeff Bezos wedding post breakup? Yeah, I feel like if you went to space with Lauren, you should get an invite to the wedding. I didn't see any photos of her. Was she there? Yeah. Oh, that's true. Oh, that's a good point. I think there were only 250 guests I read somewhere.

6:32Maybe that's wrong. But that's actually a relatively small guest list given the sort of opulence and scale of the endeavor. okay so i saw that the all-in guys launched a tequila brand and they it's sold out within like days or minutes or whatever it's not sold out you can go buy it now no i definitely saw a tweet that said it was sold out maybe that was just like was that jason creating yeah creating a like a fake line or something okay um i'm gonna go look right now yeah yeah no it's still online i can buy it it's yeah$1 ,200$1 ,200 okay so good why is it so expensive well what would the great chat beverage be because I feel like tequila is like played out now I'm a martini girl spritz is very like border gen z millennial so I like I like spritz um I love a chilled red love an espresso martini I know we're past it but that's also would be really fun I just don't think that they do super well in a can ditto the spritzes I've never had like a good spritz from a can except for Ghia but that's not even alcoholic well it's na which would be very on trend I love na I barely drink so I'm pretty done with that oh you really have gone LA Mac I've always been like not a super heavy well not always I mean I went to college but like I like as an adult I'm not really a huge drinker just because I feel like shit afterwards and I just don't like it I I can't drink anymore either it's definitely like an age and like ability to metabolize alcohol thing I threw a party or a party like a work dinner a couple weeks ago and literally no one drank the wine maybe like one person had one glass of wine but the Ghia was like destroyed like I like I like should have brought I should have bought more Ghia it's it's I get it though I think especially I don't Mac I don't know if this applies to LA but in New York there are like so many events and if you're going to go to multiple events a week you can't drink at every single one of them I also feel like that's kind of specific to VC too because like yeah like it's your job to go be social meet people be out and about like creating value out there constantly like always at these mixers always at these dinners always I'm everywhere but by the way if you're if you're a finance or if you're in journalism and I've seen the lens of those they like to drink so I think it's not really just like hey because you have to network i think it's a very maybe it's just tech because we're all listening to like huberman and he's like don't drink it's poisoning your body so that you know you know what i want to rebrand i want a rebrand of the martinelli sparkling apple cider like that is that needs an adult it was funny i was talking about the all-in tequila on a group chat not our group chat um i know sorry guys that's an awkward way to tell you and i was just like who is the icp who would spent who like is so excited about all in pod but also will spend twelve hundred dollars on like tequila like show me the center of that venn diagram and um a friend very wisely said like the same people who spent like thousands of dollars for vip passes to the all-in summit so like i actually like you're gonna say the fire festival oh i maybe um uh but i do maybe or or maybe it's the same people who um bought enough trump coin that they got invited to that very sad looking luncheon like but i do think there is there is a market out there yeah i think we take for granted like how like there are like these in-group and out-group dynamics and then this you know silicon valley again i say this all the time it's like like vc used to be this cottage industry and the second you like launch it into the main stage which i think like happened when there was like the social network or there was um you know the shows where they talked was it called silicon Valley.

10:33Yes. But then there was like that, um, that reality show too. Like there are, there's this audience of people who just get fascinated by this too. And so I think that that audience is always going to be much larger than, than the people who are in it. Should we talk about, uh, like a, as a followup to our last episode, I feel like we were actually quite prescient with that topic around aqua hires because just in the past week, it's been a feeding frenzy for our good friend Mark Zuckerberg. Never bet against suck. He just wanted to steal the headlines for himself. He couldn't have the weekend be about Jeff's wedding, so he had to make his own splash.

11:11Like, it's Mark Zuckerberg wedding crashers. I loved that theory, Angela. Yeah, I thought it was super wild how they were publishing the roster. Let's just keep the sports analogy. And, like, you know, the full name, first and last name, And then where they worked. And it's like, yes, I'm sure you do the calculus of like when you're accepting a very large offer of how your life's going to change. But I don't know how many of them predicted that they would become like main characters and that, you know, get put on blast that way. Like that's, I don't know. That felt, that felt kind of scary. I don't know.

11:47I kind of loved it. Yeah, I enjoyed it. But I was also just like, yikes. No, no, no. I mean, from the like, again, I'm not obviously sitting in those shoes, in their shoes, and I'm not getting paid$10 million or this massive package. But I kind of do like the fact that they're getting treated like these stars. And I think, Helen, you shared that tweet that was it Cristiano Ronaldo got paid$80 million. And then like this Asian guy got paid$100 million. And like, well, I don't know. Nerdy is back. And it's kind of cool. I like it. I don't actually know what the like. i haven't read into the like real compensation i assume they're not getting like a chunk of cash for a signing bonus i assume it's like amortized over like four years or something i'm sure it's like taking equity into account and like total comp exactly so i i also think like i love the theory angela that zap was trying to crash bezos's uh wedding uh uh but also it seemed strategic because OpenAI is closed this week.

12:47Does anyone know why? Was it just like a, this is our summer off? Yeah, I think it's just like, you know, it's always hard to take vacation. And so I think some companies actually like force people to take a break because it's easier to not be on email and on Slack and everything like when other people are. I mean, just from a productivity standpoint, it is actually much better for the company if everyone is off, you know, at the same time. So that makes sense. But it was so weird. like I feel like we shouldn't know all these details it feels or maybe that's just like my internal comms alarm just going off totally totally yeah I guess if you were I don't even want to think about what devious like you're a hacker yes exactly people are just in the arena doing things I'm sure if you're a hacker and listening to this episode like don't get any ideas um but um but yeah like there have been all these like frantic internal comms that are now leaking from OpenAI leadership, and they've said they're going to revisit their comp, and there was some dramatic language around, like, you know, meta offers feels like someone has broken into our home.

13:54So anyways, it's really and truly on, and kind of a rivalry for the ages. So from an entertainment standpoint, because as we've said before, all news is now entertainment. It went from political news to tech news. like I feel like Zuck is keeping us very sated. By the way, just to be clear, the like meta hires was leaked from within, from probably right at the top, because it really worked. Everyone's talking about it and everyone's going back to like who, like where they recruited from. And all of these superstar engineers get brand endorsement deals. You know, everyone needs their own shoes.

14:32They need their own enterprise SaaS. Like this is the perfect group to go do that. no no Angela I have a joke that like there needs to be a CAA for for tech workers now for oh I love that and I had thought about it in a more limited way across like okay if you're like a star like you know operator like what board should you be on what like deal flow should you have access to but I think we need to think so you clear your package is probably like you get like equity right and then you get like aws credits and compute yeah i want polymarket for actual individual employees that would be hilarious oh like around performance around the performance review cycle yeah well no i mean like if we're doing if we're doing like 100 million dollar acquisitions of individual humans you can't create those markets on those prediction markets right now if you really want to that's crazy though that's insane i was also seeing that mira maruti's company, there were, there was a, I think it was a business insider article that broke down the like base comp and she's actually paying more than Anthropic and open AI.

15:41According to this article, I think the base comp was like$400 ,000 in salary for thinking machine labs, Mir Maruti's company. Um, and then like, I forget it's like Anthropic was like 300 K and open AI was like 250 or something like that. So again, like it's race for talents. Um, I actually have a really funny anecdote. I I was at the Humans in the Loop conference last week, and a lot of VCs were sponsoring it, including True, obviously, Helen. And I was having lunch with a friend of mine who's a VC. And in that same day, he said two of his portfolio companies just got approached for an acquisition, and it was going to be an acqui-hire.

16:24Like they're like speed of velocity of these like companies that are getting acquired early on so that they can like snatch up talent is just crazy. And I think the momentum is just going to like continue to grow. Well, when you think about it, paying like a hundred million for an individual makes paying like 20 million for a pre-seed company feel like a great deal. If you're getting, if you're getting talent with that. So is that Costco? Is that buying in bulk? Yeah, exactly.

16:58that's great that's great that's so good so these are like bodega buys right you just go and you pick up one right but then like so that would be an act or higher a hundred million dollars your bodega buy that's personally that's my erwan strawberry but like we may be living different parts of the west village where yes it feels that way and then okay so costco would be like you're like a true acquisition where the whole team is joining but like five people you know not a not a mega like a pallet like a pallet of engineers that you put onto your cart like an egg carton of engineers in uh in angela's parlance is there ever going to be a time in silicon valley where you don't where like somebody doesn't have a dream of an egg carton and angela's dozen of the association of engineers forever okay so summer's here should founders raise in the summer should job seekers pause their search in the summer i feel like we've gotten this question a couple times so i thought we'd just do like a summer episode you know apropos of nothing we are in um well i think three of us are in san francisco and it's like extremely foggy day but that's that's san francisco summer for you um so i don't know do you guys feel like a summer slowdown in your jobs, like at your companies or from an investing standpoint.

18:14I just saw my LinkedIn wall, one of the founders of a company I invested in. He was on vacation, like on the beach, and then his app got hacked by some crypto scammers. So he posted himself on his vacation bed saying, oh, I guess vacation's over and grinding away. And I don't know, I think it's all this like illusion of like, everyone's just doing shit. And so they have to like part of the like growth and like marketing strategy is about like posting how hard you're working. And again, that doesn't, I'm not saying that that's different from like how it used to be, but definitely the illusion of it has increased.

18:54uh so I don't know if that's how you guys are all seeing it as well but I don't think it's slow a summer slowdown is happening anytime soon this summer my theory is that COVID like killed the true like venture startup summer slowdown and when I say startup summer slowdown I don't think startups ever really get to slow down but at least it wasn't a good time to fundraise because all the VCs were in Italy and and the VCs may still be in Italy but like during COVID we all learned like oh we can do zooms anytime um and and this went from a a transaction that used to always be like very in person and relationship driven to something that i mean in like the summer of 2020 i feel like rounds were coming together in two days on zoom and fortunately we're like not quite in that era now but the the illusion that like people might not be able to take meetings because they're on vacation has been permanently shattered i'm sure it's a little bit different if you're like a gp at a bigger platform and there's a whole team of people to fill in for you um at least in all the emerging manager groups i'm in and helen i'm curious same for you like i feel like there's no real vacation there's just working remotely from from different places so that's really interesting you say that covid started this because yeah that's like so in the bay area i mean i joked that in san francisco like we have the same weather all year round so like you never go through that like ritual of like swapping out your summer wardrobe for your winter wardrobe and all those things so and then a lot of us like put our kids in like year-round school so there's also like no pass you know no markers of passing time and then now if there's no you know summer slowdown um yeah it's a very interesting life you lead here you're just grinding 24 7 why wouldn't you want to move here i'll say that like in startup world i don't know we're filming this on july first so you know first day of q3 like there's no so aggressive what percentage are you to goal yeah on day one there have been nine hours and 35 minutes into q2 q3 excuse me okay i was gonna go with 35 minutes into q3 but you know to each their own yeah no i mean please when's the last time i started my day at 9 a.m but like uh i'm not i'm just funny because like i'm such i'm so not a fan of all of the grind set hustle porn at all so like I hate feeding into the narrative but it's so true like I was I was texting you guys last night I was like working until 1am like it's not a it's not chill in the summer um and especially for us too because like in in manufacturing the real slowdown starts to happen around q4 so I'm it's busy busy as ever but also I just don't think that I've ever been in a startup where there's like a summer slowdown summer slowdowns happen when you're a bigger like growth stage or enterprise org or in BC.

21:41That's such a good point like different sectors have different seasonality like when I went to Glossier I was like oh my gosh like such a huge chunk of our business happens between Black Friday or like the pre-Black Friday sales through holiday and then like there's actually this huge ramp up period to get ready for that but that has implications on what the engineering team can do because there's a code freeze ahead so you can make sure you're ready to go and so like Like late summer was actually quite, quite busy at Glossier because everything was like all hands on deck. And then if you're doing enterprise sales, it's like every quarter at the very end has its own mini sprint.

22:18But then for a lot of like Q4 for a lot of traditional enterprise sales businesses. But Mac, it sounds like manufacturing is on a different clock. And then I also think just like both in a specific way, but a generalized way as well. Like AI has just sped everything up and I feel like no one feels they can take a break right now, whether you're building or trying to invest in the next company. Like, I mean, it is funny that OpenAI is closed this week, but it just feels like the pace of innovation and shipping and change is so fast. And so if you are in this world and you are in tech, it just feels like a sprint.

22:55And so I like I mean, we'll see if it changes now that we're officially in July. but the like speed at which these deals are getting done and these are like not small deals you have like 50 million dollar 100 million dollars or deals are being done in like days it's absolutely crazy so if you miss one email because you're on a like yacht somewhere uh the next day comes and then the the round is all filled out and i think it's happening at like the pre-seed too because like the there's almost um at the earliest stages you need to catch things before they take off. And it's very have and have nots, right?

23:32For most founders, it's still quite a grind to get an early stage round done. But if you have been like anointed and have like the right narrative and the right pedigree and the right category, I think a lot of early stage VCs are trying to jump on things really quickly because they know that if this is one of these companies that gets to like 10 million ARR really fast, you're completely priced out. And so weirdly, there's like an unusual amount of FOMO at the early stages too to preempt some of these companies. Actually, don't you know that 100 million is the new 10 million ARR? I'm all for 100 million ARR once I've already invested, but if you're 100 million ARR, don't even slide in my TMs.

24:12That's just rude at this point. So yeah, I'm trying to get there before 1 million. I think one of the topics that we've talked about internally a few times and I get a lot of questions on is around like fundraising during the summer. And, um, you know, like, uh, to your point, um, Ashley about just like getting to know, um, all the founders and like the, the deals getting done quickly. We did our fundraise, um, start of summer last year. And, um, you know, a lot of the questions we get around is like, Oh, should we raise in the summer? And bottom line really is, I think, how do you actually strategize before like majority of the work is done before you actually start fundraising.

24:53So a lot of the like, you know, founders are getting to know the investors, telling the story, kind of filling them in. And then once, once you start, you decide to raise, it's not like a full surprise. People have already started to do diligence on the company. So it's, things are getting done. One anecdote I like always find hilarious for a company like ours, where it was a European based company and a San Francisco based companies that european vcs actually do take off in august which is so bizarre to me and to a point where like i remember we like we're emailing someone about like a safe round and they like sent a calendar invite for september and we obviously didn't take the money from them but the idea that like they you know it's just like it's a very like standard thing across across europe but again like things are getting done i think the funny thing always is um i get a question around like should you rate like avoid raising during burning man um because so many vcs go to burning man and like there's no wi-fi on the playa so i don't know that that maybe that's like the one week you you you avoid but does that change with starlink does that is that like that's true that's true that's funny imagine someone like doing a diligence like on the playa on their bike.

26:14No. Can you imagine being like on a call with a VC, having it be your first introduction to them? And they're just like half naked, uh, covered in dust and messaging on a lot of drugs. I mean, like hopefully they wouldn't be doing it on a lot of drugs, but who knows? Like, I just think that would be really, that'd be really wild. You're like, Oh, okay. I'm going to go talk to 50 of you and get rejected by half of them. This is fun and enjoyable for me. I think it depends if you're web three, maybe it's great. Well, do we think it's different for job seekers or people who are like hiring like is there you know a slowdown at maybe not you know like later stage startups right the ones that operate kind of more i was talking to a bigger um bigger startup recently and you know we were just talking about like the job market and they were saying capital is not an issue for us it's really the like resource is the bottleneck and so people across the board i think are hiring really aggressively right now for you say resources is the bottleneck you mean talent talent yeah and and i don't mean just like ai like researcher talent i mean like operational talent like bd partnership sales um yeah they're all hiring pretty aggressively i think but i also think those are incredibly competitive jobs and not to totally sidebar but i've also been hearing from people who are in like on talent teams how impossible it is to sort through applications because everyone's using AI to perfectly tailor their resumes and cover letters to the JD and to the company.

27:42And so there's so much resume swap, it's like really hard to sort through and find the right people. And so ironically, like now more than ever, that warm intro might be the key to getting through. And it's like always been true, but I think it's really hard to sift because people are just able to apply at a volume, but with a level of precision that they never have been before. And it's just like noise that's canceling itself out. That's so interesting. So like one of the, like the thesis for my fund is that I feel like the equivalent of AI Slop, there are so many sort of fundraising factories out there, right?

28:19Like you go through an accelerator and they teach you how to create the perfect pitch deck and now everything's on Zoom. So it's like, you know, you go through a meeting and it's the most perfect pitch deck you've ever seen. and you ask good questions and then you get perfect answers. And then you're just like, okay, I have no more or less conviction than I did, you know, before this meeting. And so I had to completely change the way that I invest. And, you know, a lot of that is like, yes, through network referrals and sort of sticking to that, but it's also spending a significant amount of time with somebody, um, uh, like many, many, many weeks.

28:50And so I'm curious if maybe like that changes, um, in the hiring process as well. Right. I mean, especially top of funnel, like how would recruiters sort of figure that part out? I mean, to your point about the like deck too, like, I feel like every product video all look the same and they're all perfectly manicured. And like, like you can't tell how much of it is, you know, just vibes and how much of it is real like product implementation. Well, I think a real, actually a real advantage or differentiator is like, if you're not very online, I know that sounds silly, but like for SaaS. Did you say advantage?

29:23An advantage. Yes. Oh, an advantage. I'm working with a founder right now who's like AI, dev tools, and he's just not online. You know, I disagree with you on that one. Really? Yeah. Yes, you're missing the news. You're missing the zeitgeist. But if you're building in a category that you feel like is, you know, underserved and it's unique, like sometimes not being bombarded with like the this is what everyone else is doing kind of gives you that free space to like, I don't know, problem solve. You mean from an attention and focus perspective, but what about a distribution perspective? Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

29:57But I think I invest pre that, right? It's much more in this sort of like, do I have this interesting way to solve this problem? I'm going to be late to ask this question, but what is slop? Wow, Sally. That's a great question. I think it's just AI-generated content, right? It came with Gen AI. Oh, is that what it is? You sort of propped some. Sally, just go on LinkedIn and scroll. No, no, no. I've seen the word plenty of times. I just never dared to ask what it was. Actually, I should have captured what I said. Like yesterday, I think when I opened Twitter, there was a video and it was like, you know, a very AI generated politician or celebrity and they were like eating burgers or something.

30:40And it was just sort of gross. And, you know, obviously. So to me, like slop is that where it's just like it's gross. I got the definition here. Okay. AI slop is a term of low quality media, including writing and images made using generative AI technology characterized by an inherent lack of effort, logic or purpose. I think it's just like AI has so lowered the barriers to creation. And so like there's just like so much volume and and so little taste. So I think this is actually why taste has become like the new thing. Well, my hot take on this with like long form was that I feel like the SEO era of like companies like NerdWallet and all these companies, like HubSpot started this where you're just basically creating these factories of, you know, content so that you can like increase your ranking marginally.

31:33and like that was the start of slop and ai wasn't even involved there so to me this is like just taking it to another level and hopefully meaning like we hit like the maximum so we can like swing back the other way and i think that's where we are and now let's head to our q a away from sorry one more thing on this fucking ai slop it is so it is so just like detrimental to the general doom scrolling experience i think it might finally be the thing that that cures me of it the other thing that I can't deal with is like what I am now in the immediately in this moment deciding to term IRL AI slop which is when like you're in a conversation and somebody cannot stop saying well I actually I'm gonna go ask chat GPT or like I asked chat GPT or like I like I don't even care if it's chat GPT they're like their new best friend is Claude and you're like I I don't know like leave the house ever I don't touch grass it's weird it's weird to like be in the middle of a conversation and someone like starts pulling out like anyway I can't it's I like it conversational slop conversational slop it's so boring anyway anyway now let's head to our Q &A I want to change jobs but my current job is super intense and I have no time how do I prioritize my search that sucks I hate that I hate that for whoever this is um so this is a thousand percent been me before.

32:55I totally get it. The struggle is so fucking real. Like those types of jobs when you're working like late nights and through weekends. Um, I think something that you're going to have to, like, it sort of depends on your job. It might end up being one of those things where you kind of just have to like leave to be able to leave. But if you can, if it's the type of environment where you can get away with it, uh, learn to embrace sucking at things or learn to embrace delivering below your standards, because like what you want is going to be ultimately different than what the company wants and uh at some point like if look out for you before you look out for the company and so if it means that like some things like obviously take care of the main things don't like leave people in the lurch but if right now if you're really truly working constantly you're probably over delivering or like uh on like completely unfairly staffed so go back to working what a normal person like can and should be working and spend the rest of your time, whether that's like the weekends or like afternoons, doing the like networking and job hunting that you would otherwise be doing, which is a really shitty feeling.

34:03It really sucks to do less than what you know you can, but it's probably what I, that's certainly what I would do. I think it's good advice. The other thing I would say is like gauge whether you're even in like a mental state to be able to make a decision about your next job when you're in a really, really intense job. And especially if there's any kind of like toxic element to that, I think there's always the concern about making like a push decision versus a pull decision. Like you're so incentivized to leave that kind of anything that's not that job can look better versus like really being able to have like the space and the headspace to think about like what would be best for you.

34:45And obviously is this incredibly privileged position to be in. But if you can take a break, if you work in tech, like the concept of sabbatical is totally de-stigmatized. And again, that's like a huge luxury to be able to do that. But I really do worry sometimes when I've had friends who are in really, really intense jobs and I feel like they can't even like zoom out enough to figure out what they want to do other than they just don't want to be the thing they're at anymore. And I think that's a really challenging, one of my like fantasies for my like third act is like, a startup detox program where you like go through and you process everything you just went through and figure out what you want to take from it.

35:21I think it's like very, very hard to do that when you're in that moment. I totally agree. I think that especially what you said about like make sure that you're running towards something and not away from something. And sometimes you do need the space to do that. But I'll take the counter because I do feel like when you get to the comp negotiation, you do have a lot more leverage when you are, you know, currently at a job. And so then I might go back to what Mac said, which is just like, can you just be a little, can you lower your standards for yourself at your current job while you're looking?

35:53And I know that sucks. Um, give yourself a summer slowdown. There you go. Be the summer slowdown you wish to see in the world. That's a great place to end. All right. See you next week. Bye guys. Bye. Thank you for listening to Great Chat. Have questions for us? Make sure to submit them at anothergreatchat.com. See you next week.