Meta Employee Meltdown : LinkedIn Goes Loco : 32-Hour Work Week Law?

0:00Have you done the pickleball thing yet? That's apparently the next.

0:03Chad Sowash: I know two different people that tour ACLs playing pickleball. I'm not a fan right now. I don't need to be ripping anything. Yeah, you and Chad. Oh, yeah. Chad's a paddle guy. Pickleball is for punks and suckas. I don't know about you, but I'm having a what wine. What wine? You want a what wine? I think we should have a what wine. I'll have a what wine. You have a what wine? What wine? White wine.

0:57Yeah, I'm taking it back to the old school because I'm an old fool who's so cool. Hey, boys and girls, it's the Chat and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel. The AIpocalypse is a hoax cheeseman.

1:09Chad Sowash: And I'm JT Savvy B and Summercorn O'Donnell. And on this episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, Meta melts down, LinkedIn goes loco, and who'd you rather? Let's do this. JT, it's been a minute. How are you? I know. What's up? Good summer? Obviously, if you drink a white wine. Well, I just. Yes. When I hear that, I think about you. I think about you like in New England on a lakefront somewhere. It's the accent. You're drinking a white wine. A white wine. It's just white wine. It makes me laugh every time I see it. Yeah. Summer's good. I've updated folks on the show, but did a little Europe thing.

1:52uh enjoyed the backyard and uh you know reading reading barons and listening to beastie boys most of the summer um living the old old dad middle-aged guy life uh how's how's your summer

2:05Chad Sowash: good it was short it was busy improved the golf game a lot of outdoor time but it's been busy work's been busy say more about that are you taking lessons are you doing some augmented practice at Dick's? What do you know? I joined a club, right? So I'm a golf member and I treated it like a New England requirement, isn't it? That you have to join a club of some sort. I did, but I treated it like a gym membership. I literally was there six days a week, either playing or at the range, just working, working, working on the game and it worked, right? I've like, this is my first year ever playing. And so I'm happy and I'm playing in my first pro-am September 28th.

2:43Chad Sowash: So my first competition. Playing in your first pro-am, like what does that mean? So the pro of our club, he's obviously a registered pro takes us to attorney. It's him and three amateurs. So I'm one of the amateurs on the team and we compete against all these other club pro, you know, pros and they're three people. And so it's three ladies and our, our pro and we're going to go and we're going to try to kick some butt. I'll keep you posted. Does everyone hit the same amount of holes or is it like a relay where I get one hole, you get the next hole? No, we all play 18 and our scores count. Right.

3:15Chad Sowash: And we all have handicaps. So that's the other thing. I had to keep a handicap this summer because we're all handicapped and then play. And then they have a little computer that figures out which team scored the best based on their handicap. Look at us doing old people, empty nest stuff. No, it's a huge business now. No, the ladies are getting into golf. Golf is a changed game. Golf is huge. It's a young person. It is. It's a young person sport now too. So I'm just getting younger, dude. Have you done the pickleball thing yet? That's apparently the next. I know two different people that tour ACLs playing pickleball.

3:46Chad Sowash: I'm not a fan right now. I don't need to be ripping anything. Yeah. You and Chad. Oh yeah. Chad's a paddle guy. He pickleball is for, uh, for, for punks and suckers. Uh, so I had two topics for banter. I wanted to run by you after checking in on, on summer. So the big narrative this week is AI is going to kill us. Uh, we need, we need to pause. Trump is saying like full steam ahead. Um, what's your take? Uh, we've been through some catastrophization in our life and things are going to kill us from nuclear nuclear weapons to everything so what's your take on ai i i did what i think probably most people did i went to ai and said tell me how you're going to kill me everyone's done everyone did it like walk me through this like and and it came down with two paths and said one like you've seen in every movie we're going to get smarter than you and take you out but two more likely um people our technology is going to get in the wrong hands and people are going to do bad things with it.

4:44Chad Sowash: Right? Like, so I was like, all right, I get the basics. This is where you're going with it. Then there's me who now wants to think 10 steps ahead. And all of a sudden this week, what are cyber stocks? Like all the stocks in technology that would help with this is through the roof. And you're like, so then I go, is this media at all timing? Like what's going on? Like, we've known this for a while, but why this week? Why now are we suddenly deciding? And all because of one guy, you know, writing his resignation letter and claiming there's a 10 % chance we're done in at the end of the decade. Right.

5:15Chad Sowash: Like that's what stirred this whole thing. And I just, I don't, I don't know. Of course there's a real threat. I get it. I'm not saying there isn't a real threat, but I just, I don't trust all this anymore. Like everyone else. I just, I don't know what to believe. So your next prompt should have been, if I were going to make a lot of money on this whole AI fear thing, what would I do? And the first step would be like AI, then data centers and then security. And yeah, the grift, the grift is real. I just so historically I mentioned nuclear weapons and you and I are both of the age where like we both remember the day after the TV show that showed nuclear Holocaust.

5:58We've obviously been through covid. We've been through climate change, global warming. I can remember when there was going to be another ice age, believe it or not. I can remember that. So you and I have both been through a lot of like, we're all going to die moments. And not that there isn't bad things that happen, like wars do happen, like all this stuff happens. But until something has to happen, like with with Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, like there has to be a major thing that happens before anyone goes, oh, shit, we need to do something about it. Now, the warning is we should do something before that happens.

6:37But human nature is until until we're shown the horror of it, we don't know. Now, is A.I. smart enough to like lull us into a false sense of security and like slowly boil us until we're like, holy shit, we're gone? I don't know. But yeah, I tend to be more optimistic about most of this stuff. although it does go beyond my pay grade of understanding these agents and these agents swarming into stuff. And that's scary. I saw Terminator just like everybody else.

7:09Chad Sowash: Right. Two things come to mind when you say that. We never consistently take our vitamins, but we always take the aspirin when we're in pain, right? The vitamins could be preventative. We wait to the pain. So you're right. I'm with you on that a hundred percent. And the other thing is predictions are useless. It's always the thing that we didn't predict that surprises us. So we should be more concerned about what we're not realizing. We're so focused on this could happen, but it's going to be something totally different than we expected. It's also a political, you mentioned the money thing, but also politically.

7:40This is one of the few issues where both parties seem to be in agreement, whether it's data centers, whether it's just AI, because I don't think people are seeing the benefit of it.

7:50Chad Sowash: I think it's this sort of, well, um, the other thing that came out, another theory, and I would agree with this one too, was even AI saying we should slow the roll, um, because all the predictions they made about their earnings aren't coming to fruition. So they're missing earnings marks. They're missing predictions on revenues. So when you can turn around and go, well, we had to slow the roll. Sorry. That's why we didn't make our numbers. Yeah. That's a good point. You can tell your, your investors, Hey, you know, uh, we had to slow it down because the government there's a um do you listen to diary of a ceo not all of them but i do love steve okay there's there's a guy uh recently i don't i don't remember his name but he is um he is a critic to say the least of these businesses and where they're going and sort of the the the roundabout of money that's funding this whole thing and that it's a house of cards So if you get a chance, I recommend Diary of a CEO talk.

8:44AI is destined to fail or whatever. Like these business models are not great, to say the least. So, yeah, we'll see how it goes. But politically, I think it's something that if Trump is on, like, we're full steam ahead. I think it's a real political winner. If you get on the side of like, let's slow it down and belts and suspenders. I'll say this.

9:06Chad Sowash: A year ago, we were kind of talking about AI. Now on this podcast, it could be a drinking game. Oh, said AI drink. I'm going to have a white one. Right. It's all we talk about. So it's definitely here. There's something going on here at the Chad G's podcast. One thing that we love is obviously you watching, but also like and subscribe. So the other thing I wanted to get your opinion on is I know you're an iPhone user. What the iPhone duo, what's what's your take? Are you going to buy the foldable phone? Are you is it a winner? Is it no big deal? You know, I am one of those people that always likes to wait for version two, three, four or five, you know?

9:46Chad Sowash: So to me, I want to watch and see. It's interesting. I just, I'm not in any rush to have one. The one I have works fine, you know? So show me reasons why I have to have it. I'll think about it. But for now, I just think it's a novelty. What do you think? I'm going to give you my take. And I know that you're a student of the human condition. So I'm curious about your take on this. So I've always thought that part of the appeal of the iPhone is a little bit sexual, a little bit of like, you'll want to mate with me because I've made good decisions in my life. Like the whole Apple brand historically has been, I'm creative, I'm intelligent, I'm a little bit edgy.

10:24I have the money to spend on this. Like when the original iPhone came out, it was$500. And Steve Ballmer famously said, no one's going to buy a$500 phone when they can have a$99, you know, Microsoft phone or whatever that was. So if you had an iPhone, it was like, ooh, you have a little bit of money, you have a little bit of, you know, clout. You have something going on in your life. Now, over the decades, I think that brand has been diminished because if you have a 2018 iPhone, it looks about the same as the 2026 iPhone. There's not a ton of difference, and I can buy the five-year-old phone a lot cheaper than I can now.

11:02So my take on this is people will buy this thing because if they can pull it out at a restaurant or a club or a conference and have that look of like, oh, shit, they got something going on. They got two grand to spend on this thing. They're creative. They're like, I think it's going to be a like, hey, check me out thing that Apple hasn't sort of embraced in a long time. So I think I think it's going to be a huge hit. the early numbers we have is that the other options of phones, like the regular ones, the sales are pretty low. The demand is pretty low because I think everyone is waiting for this big phone to come out so that they can get it and look like a baller again, like they did in 2007.

11:46Chad Sowash: I have two thoughts on it. First of all, the group that were Apple fanatics, waiting in the line for everything, they're aging. Like you said, that brand is associated with a generation. They're aging. There's not as many of them. Doesn't surprise me that the phone sales are down. Because I think everybody's like, whoa, wait, flip phones. We're going back to like everything else new again. So what I said was demand for the... So there's a whole lineup of these phones and only one of them is foldable. The demand for the regular ones is low. My take is that they're all waiting to buy the foldable.

12:21Okay.

12:21Chad Sowash: So we'll see. We'll see that prediction when it comes out. But I still stand by the idea that there are the Apple obsessed. And so the way they describe it is, it's not that I have discretionary funds. It's that my hobby, my life, my world is wrapped up in this Apple identity. I love Apple. I nerd out on it. Therefore, I buy it no matter what. So I don't think it's a... To me, it's not a sign of the rich. Normally, when I see somebody with it, I'm like, you have Apple everything, don't you? And they're usually nodding. Yeah. So early adopters. First thing. Second thing is what you refer to the kids call LARPing, living as a rich person.

12:53Chad Sowash: So in social media, there's this whole thing about LARPing. Everybody knows when somebody is LARPing. And so I think you're not... Is that like maxing? Kind of. Well, it looks maxing. It looks maxing is trying to maximize how attractive you are. But LARPing is really big in social world where they're all claiming they're driving these cars and flying in private planes. And it's all a bunch of hoax. Like they're renting them for the day and taking his pick. Right. That's LARPing. And I think there's going to be a lot of people going, yeah, you can't even afford your rent, but you bought that thing to LARP that you've got that phone.

13:26Chad Sowash: Right. So there'll be the younger generations. I don't think there'll be rushing for the phone. Like I said, I think there's a very certain group of people. I think it'll work against you. So I'm glad you said that because I talked to my daughter who's 17. She's a teenager. So she's got her finger in the pulse of this stuff more than I do. and there is there is a desire with young people to embrace the analog the the ways of the old right like whether it's 90s style like you know flannels back and uh 80s music or whatever it is and i asked her about this phone like oh is this cool like is this something if you could afford like you would and and her take was simply it's just too much it's just more of this sort of trend of high tech AI, like the world, the kids are, are, are abandoning that.

14:16And so there's actually a new phone. I think it's called nothing, the nothing phone, uh, that's appealing to young people. And it's sort of a no frills phone. I know foldable phones or flip phones are kind of coming back. So I, I think we're going to go back to our, you know, our tech talk feeds and our busty latinas and bug fights but i could be i could be wrong i could be outdated i don't know ask your daughter about larping she knows i'll ask her about larping let's get to shout out is it time for shout out all right jt our shout outs are sponsored by proven base because everyone loves free bourbon oh i love chicken cock i do that's right thanks to proven base chad and i were able to send out a bottle of chicken cock, one from me, one from Chad to a lucky winner.

15:08You got to go to chadcheese.com slash free to get it. Special thanks to our friends at Proven Base. They're making miracles happen and they're helping you find talent that others can't reach. So JT, I was a kid of the eighties, seventies, and I, I loved ads. When I was a kid, I wanted to be like an ad exec. I wasn't smart enough. I wasn't creative enough. I was in this no zone for that, but I've always loved where's the beef 1984, you know, Apple commercials. Like I, I love the periods where a show aired and 70 % of the country watched that same show. We all watched the same ads. Like we all talked about the same stuff, the internet and everything has become so customized that your ads are different than my ads are different than Chad's ads are different than like everyone gets different ads.

16:01So I've missed the days of the big ad. The Superbowl is great for that, right? We get the ads that everyone watches. So whenever there's a period where like, oh man, a big ad just showed up, everyone's talking about it. Like, I love it. So I don't know if you've seen this, but, uh, Sydney Sweeney is doing a provocative ad, uh, for Novig where She's an equity holder. And it's really stirring the pot with everybody. So I'm going to show this if you haven't seen it. For our listeners, I apologize. You won't get the full effect. But those of you on YouTube will appreciate this more than the audio.

16:45Chad Sowash: Think you know sports? Prove it. Novig is just sports. So they wanted a show. Just sports. You can trade this sport. And this sport. How about this? This sport too. Or this. Sports. Sports. Sports. Sports. Sports. Sports. You can't trade this. I just look it here. No betting on wars. or deaths and no politics just you your takes on sports

17:33so just for the record jt there was a shorter version of that of that ad but i thought the full minute was really necessary to get the to get the point across so i i know you're so predictable yeah i love sydney sweeney i love sports i love the big ad i love the controversy um i think this is great. It's got people talking. Look, 70 % of sports bettors are men. It's a lot of, let's be honest, women that are mad about this ad. And I don't think it like Novig should not care because their audience is men that love sports and betting money. And they, I think they hit the nail on the head, but you might have a different perspective.

18:13Yeah.

18:14Chad Sowash: Sadly, I don't. I'm sure you wanted me to debate it out of it. And I'll probably have a lot of women in my inbox after this. But I'm a businesswoman. And I am heavily into social media. I, like you, I'm more fascinated about the psychology behind it. We're in a time right now where people... Shock is... Hold eyeballs. We all have social ADD. And so companies realize this and have to build things that are shocking. I think they're, they are rolling the dice. You have some very recently, you have a lot of brands who have a problem because their ads went, didn't land correctly. I don't think that this is the one, like you said, they know their audience.

18:58Chad Sowash: Nobody's succeeding from using Novig because of it, you know? And so she knows her audience, she's invested in it. She understands exactly what she's doing in that she's using her assets. Yeah. You know, I just, to me, this is capitalism. This is advertising. This is what's going on right now. If anything, I think that one lands way better than the stuff I've seen. Like, you know how I feel about Good Good Golf and Callaway, who, you know, really blew it with a domestic violence video, you know, versus this. So, you know, I think you do have to try to find a way to swing for the fences and you're going to rattle some people.

19:34Chad Sowash: the fine line of rattling versus having everybody cancel your brand is there, but I don't, they're not going to cancel this brand. I think, I think they accomplished the goal. You go big, like they're competing with FanDuel and DraftKings and Vegas. And like, so they, this is going big and I think they crushed it. And I just, I love it. I know it upsets people, but I think that's the point. It was, it was designed, it was designed to upset people, but it also was exactly for the audience that was intended, you know? And so, right. That the tier point. So yeah. Two thumbs up for Sydney Sweeney.

20:07That's what I'm talking about.

20:08Chad Sowash: Plain and simple. I mean, I wake up in the morning. I piss excellent. All right. Bring us down with your shout out. So I was laughing so hard because you were like, what's your shout out? I'm like, I'm not going to tell you, but I was between two. So the funny thing is the first one I was going to do and real quick shout out to season four of Ted Lasso and his ladies team. So you want to keep it in the ladies theme. I am loving this season. If you're loving the season, message me. I just, there's so much to it. I keep rewatching episodes because I love it so much. But the big one I want to hit, and this is really funny, shout out to the game Hitster.

20:39Chad Sowash: If you have not played Hitster, and I'm obviously not endorsing them anyway, you need to play. And it ties into what you're talking about. You talked about 80s and what you loved. Hitster is a game where you have to guess the year of the song. So you use your app, the song starts playing, you're supposed to guess the song, but most importantly, you're supposed to decide where on a timeline it is. So if you've got 1997 down and you get a song, you have to decide if it's before or after that. And that card goes down and you decide where. So the more cards you get, the harder it is to fill in. Okay.

21:08When I tell you, it's been a long time.

21:11Chad Sowash: I love games. But it's been a long time since I've played a game where I'm obsessed and everyone can play. Every generation can play because what you do is, like you said, you hear the song and you're like, what was happening that year? What do I remember? What does the music sound like? What ads were playing? You start reminiscing everything. And it is such a joyful, fun game. And again, there's all the way up to 2025. So young people play it and win just as much as our generation. Highly, highly recommend folks. Grab Hitster for your next family party or friend party. And then message me because you're going to love it.

21:46Okay. I've never heard of this thing. So let me get some clarification here. It's a board game. It's not like an app. It's a card game. It's a card game. Okay. So it's a real world game in real life. It's not an app. Okay. So you get a bunch of cards and then how do you play the song?

22:04Chad Sowash: So imagine this. So you download the hitster app on your phone and there's just this big stack of cards with QR codes on the top. That's all you see. So if your turns up, Joel, I go like this, the song starts blasting. It reads the QR code, starts blasting. You sit there and you go, all right, I think that's, you know, Cindy Lauper, uh, time after time, I'm going to go, it's, you know, I've got 1992 here. It's before 92. I'm putting it here. And then we flip over and see if you're right. If you're right, you go down and you get to keep it. If you're wrong, you're out and next player. Okay. And so, so you chooses it before this year, after this year, it's not like a window.

22:39It's not like 81 to 85. And then it is over time.

22:43Chad Sowash: Cause the more cards you get, the more times you win. Now you might have 82, 85, 87, 91. And that song comes up and you're like, was that 86 or was that 89? And you're guessing... So the more cards you get, the shorter the time spans get for you and the harder it is for you to get more cards. Do you get more points as it gets harder? First person to 10. First person to 10 cards straight. So it's really... You will freak for this and your whole family will love it. So you're welcome in advance. Everyone go get hitster. It is so good. Hitster. Okay. It's at my local Walmart, Target. Any place you get games, Amazon.

23:27Chad Sowash: Hitster. You got it. I heard it here first. All right. All right. All right. All right. What's next? Let's get to some events here. Events. Where are we going, boys? So everyone knows our events and our travel sponsored by the good folks at Shaker recruitment marketing, who we will see in Nashville next week, along with you and Mo and Chad and cheese and everybody else. So if you're going to rec fest, come by and say, hi, we'll be at the disrupt stage. You guys are at innovation. I think we are running innovation. Give us a spiel on what you're doing at breakfast. Mo and I are coast coasting innovation stage day one, 10 amazing groups coming on stage.

24:10Chad Sowash: page. It's going to be a good one. And I didn't realize how competitive Nashville Wreckfest is. Okay. People are throwing down on the link... Well, on LinkedIn, they're like, not... Like somebody wrote, look, there's a lot of stages, but just for the record, ours is the best. I'm like, oh, those are fighting words. Okay, let's go. So that little banter has been going around. On day two, I am on a panel about ATS systems and I am hosting a panel as well. So yeah, busy couple of days. I'm excited for it. Okay. We tried to get Sydney Sweeney to come to our stage, but that, that was a no-go, unfortunately.

24:45She was not into that at all. Okay. So in addition to Nashville also we'll, we'll be doing hopefully the show, the weekly show live. I mean, we'll record it live and I'll go publish, but like it should be us for talking about the show and what's going on. So that'll be fun. And then October 6, Chad and I will be in Amsterdam for the Recruitment Congress. If you're in Europe, it's a must see, in my opinion. Go to your recruitment dash congress dot com to get in on that. And then on the 12th of October, Chad and I will be at the Future of Frontline Summit in Vegas. That piggybacks on the Workday Rising Conference, which is the Paradox Conference.

25:29So a lot of travel coming up in the next few weeks. And then I'm taking like, I'm chilling. I'm chilling through the holidays, Halloween with the kids. Like that's, that's all, that's all, all good. And also playing some fantasy football. That's right. That sounds means it's time for an update on our fantasy football league sponsored by the good folks at factory fix. Well, JT week one is in the books. Here's your leaderboard. Number one, Jarrett Holdersma. Number two, Nicholas Tiziak. Hopefully I'm saying that one right, too. I know I'm getting this one right. Number three is Scott Clark for Nick Livingston.

26:07Number five, Mackenzie Mad Dog Maitland, who won the league last year. She's off to a good start kicking my ass this week. Number six, we got Molly Sly. Seven, Dejan Amare. Number eight, Desiree Goldie. Number nine, Bosco Vujatovic. Number 10 is Chad Sowash, followed by me and the biggest loser in week one goes to Ben Kuntz. Thanks for saving me from the basement, Ben. But that is another update from Fantasy Football, sponsored by our friends at Factory Fix. Let's get to some topics, should we? Topics! All right, JT. This week, Meta reversed course on two of its most controversial internal initiatives.

26:58Number one, asking individual contributors to step back into middle management roles after cutting thousands. And number two, indefinitely suspending a highly unpopular employee monitoring program that had sparked a worker revolt. This is not the AI utopia we were promised, JT. Break down your thoughts on the, my bad, at Meta.

27:23Chad Sowash: Yeah. I mean, I just, this is going to be the new mantra, right? Now we're going to see all middle management start returning, not everyone, but start seeing this all back. Cause once one of the biggies is publicly says, mea culpa, I was wrong. You know, first we have this whole, okay, we laid everybody off for AI. Now we're bringing some back, you know, so should it surprise us? Of course not. Because I love other thought like, Oh, all adults will play just fine by themselves. Everyone could just be fine with no management. That's not how the world has ever worked. We know that. It's just not how it is.

27:56Chad Sowash: So it doesn't surprise me at all on that initiative. I'm more excited about the second one being rolled back. I mean, what were they thinking? Just literally with that whole monitoring thing. It used to be, you would talk and say, getting hired at Facebook, getting hired at Meta was everything. Get that on your resume and you were set. And you and I talk a lot about this. What are the career things that can give give you an edge. And it was forever and ever and ever saying that you worked for meta was it. People are leaving it in droves. The best of the best are leaving. It does not hold the same cache anymore.

28:27Chad Sowash: It does not. It just people. In fact, if you're sticking around there and you're not going other places with everything that's going on, people are like, why? What are you not good enough to go someplace else? So you got to be careful. What's wrong with you? My point, my point, the best are jumping ship. And so medicine trouble. They've, They've had this image issue for a while. It's constantly getting more magnified. They're not going to get the same talent that they used to get. And that's what happens. Yeah. I worked for an organization once that was very linear, right? There is no hierarchy.

29:02Everything is horizontal in nature. And it just doesn't work that well. It doesn't work. And there's a reason why the military is a hierarchy. because it kind of works like taking direction. And so while AI can optimize tasks, it really cannot replace the complex human leadership required to coordinate like massive products and projects and the number of people that are into that. And I think that the dream of AI is that we wouldn't need people to manage that, but we actually do. If you just give everybody a gun and say, go out and defeat the enemy, it doesn't really work very well because everyone has their own sort of agenda.

29:44Interestingly, the internal data revealed that extremely lean structure resulted in depleted teams and a 40 % increase in technical incidents and actually slower overall development. So if you just have everyone's an island, it doesn't work out very well. You need managers to do that. And I think that's interesting. The surveillance part, it's not only that you're watching employees. And I went off on this last week that I think if you work for a big company, just just understand that everything you do is going to be tracked, whether it's for productivity, whether it's for are you misbehaving?

30:21Are you doing what you're supposed to do like that? And I think for most companies, it is a it is a reality. People understand all my emails are read. All my slacks are read. Everything that I do on a company device is going to be tracked. The problem with the meta thing is that people were training their replacement. They were basically saying like, we're going to look at your Google activities, your LinkedIn, your Slack, like everything, even outside of meta to then train your replacement slash AI to do your job. Well, shockingly, there was a revolt about that. Employees realized that they were being replaced or they were training their replacement.

30:58The revolt was kind of funny. There were like internal memes. Apparently there were like old school posters put in the bathroom where, where no one, you know, no one's watching us in the bathroom. So like posters were being put in the bathroom, like fight the AI and do this. And we had, they had 1800 or 1800 employees sign a, sign a petition against this. They have since paused what they're doing. I can't imagine that they ever bring this thing back or try to bring it back in a new, a different way. This was a bad idea from the start. You're going to be surveilled at work. But if it's surveillance to replace you, I think that's a line that most people aren't willing to cross.

31:39Chad Sowash: Yeah. I think what this really showcases is that big companies, they have to put such crazy things in place because of the sheer size of them. And the one prediction that I will make is that AI is switching. And no company has ever said, I want more employees. Humans are unpredictable. Stuff happens. So I understand the theory. I think we're going to see a lot. It's a have to. Right. I think we're going to see leaner companies because smaller companies can be more agile, but you will need management. Like you said, I just hope we see a lot more of them, you know, so everybody can work for a smaller, leaner, more interesting company, as opposed to these big companies where you're a cog and where this kind of stuff goes down.

32:17Yeah. And more and more like I get the productive productivity side. And I think if, if a CEO can understand, look, have AI helped me understand where are my holes, where is productivity lacking? and then I can go and understand that better. Where are my high performers? Where's my, like what someone's in a role that maybe needs to be somewhere else. And I definitely understand HR understanding. Okay. And the correspondence of our, of our daily activities, who is a risk, who is like, who, who, who might bring a machete to work and hat, you know, hack up some people. Like I understand wanting to know that.

32:53I just think what the line is, um, is, is something that companies have to be really aware of and not cross any lines.

33:02Chad Sowash: Agreed. Also, I think what agents do, going back to the AI catastrophe and apocalypse, companies have to realize, like, what are agents doing? Like, the agents that got out of the sandbox and hacked a hugging face, that's a real thing. And look, there was a great example, I think, on Pivot this week where if I have a pit bull and that pit bull chews up my neighbor's kid, you know who's responsible for that? Me. My dog's not going to jail like I'm going to jail or something's happening to me. So these companies, like who's responsible for agents going nuts and who's tracking all this activity? Companies are going to be held liable for this.

33:52So they better track not only what their human employees are doing, but what the hell our agents are doing because that could come back to bite them in the ass. Yeah.

34:01Chad Sowash: We have, we've built human review into everything. Like we're heavily AI functioning right now in this company, my company. Yep. But there's human review in every critical stage for that exact reason. Cause it does hallucinate. It does go rogue. It does give the advice we told it not to give. There still needs to be checks and balances. And so, you know, to me, that's never going to go away, But the things that's allowed us to do that would have taken not just four people, not just 40 people, but, you know, the stuff that we're building now would have taken hundreds of people is so exciting to me.

34:37Chad Sowash: So, you know, you take the good with the bad. This opportunity is amazing, but we're still really careful about the human review aspect. Well, you know what I say about the choices we make as humans and organizations? 60 % of the time, it works every time. All right, guys, we're going to take a quick break. If you're not following us on your podcast platform of choice or on YouTube, please do so. And we've been stuck on 88 reviews on Apple forever. So if you're listening on Apple, give us a review. I want to hit 100 before 2027. I want to hit. We need 12 more reviews, people. We need 12 more on Apple.

35:13So please take your folded phone out, open it up and give us a review on Apple. We'll be right back. LinkedIn lunatics. I love that. Business Insider published an article entitled, Why Becoming a LinkedIn Lunatic Might Save Your Career. It features our very own JT O'Donnell and Maureen, which is very exciting. Here's my summary of the article, but you were in it. So, I want you to comment on this. So, in a world of quiet hiring, people need to be active on LinkedIn while not looking too active by their employer. And this is in light of LinkedIn cracking down on AI slop after initially saying, hey, we love the AI slop.

35:56We'll actually help you write it. By the way, Chad and I are never in business insider stories, but whatever. JT, you were in this thing. You read it for sure. What are your thoughts on the LinkedIn lunatics?

36:12Chad Sowash: Yeah, I was really excited. So first of all, Amanda Hoover is an awesome journalist over at Business Insider. You should read some of her other work because she really explores all sides. And that title, I laugh because she perfectly baited people with it. Right? LinkedIn Luna. Just nailed it. It comes from a Reddit thread where they're pulling the cringiest LinkedIn posts and putting them all over there for people to laugh at and make fun of, which I think is hilarious. For me, what I've been trying to explain to people for the longest time is in the same way I like to give people the opportunity to grow.

36:43Chad Sowash: You want to believe people are growing and changing and being different. I think you need to think about LinkedIn as a platform that has grown and evolved as well. This is my 20th year on that platform. I started on in 2006. I've watched it change many, many, many times. I've seen them go in one direction, pivot back to a different direction. Some of it I've loved, some of it I've hated. But ultimately, where they've landed right now is they are the one place where you can go and validate that you are real and that you know what you know. And we live in an age now where doing great at your job so that everybody that works with you knows you're great is useless.

37:17Chad Sowash: Because when you lose your job, they can't help you get it at the next one. And nobody trusts resumes anymore because they're all fake. So this platform is giving people a place to authenticate. You're going to see more things like... You've already seen them. They've partnered with Clear where you can validate that you're a real person. They are talking deeply about validating recruiters. So, hey, only respond to recruiters that have the checkmark, so to speak. They're the one platform that's the furthest along in allowing this to go. And what's been most exciting to me about being a LinkedIn lunatic...

37:47Chad Sowash: By the way, I am going to AI myself in a t-shirt that says I'm a LinkedIn lunatic. Get ready for it. But people who got pigeonholed based on their past work experience are getting jobs in new fields and in new industries because are be able to document their knowledge and show that they know what they're talking about in spite of not necessarily having the track record. And they're surfacing in the results because the algorithm is based on relevancy and frequency, not on your job titles anymore. And this is what people do not get. So if you've ever wanted to change careers, or if you want a shot at some place that you would have never had a shot at before, this is how you're doing it.

38:23Chad Sowash: And people have confirmation bias. You've already decided you hate LinkedIn. So anything you can do to hate LinkedIn more. Fine. But you're missing out on this very powerful career thing that's happening right now. And trust me, the moment there's something other than LinkedIn, I'll be the first to tell everybody about it. Because there shouldn't just be one. Everybody thought MySpace would be the only one. Look at us now in social media. So something is going to come for LinkedIn at some point. But right now, they've innovated and they're the place to be. And so if you're looking for a new job, you want things to happen, you want to be in stealth mode, you want a great company to knock on your door.

38:56Chad Sowash: There's now never been an easier way to do it, but you don't like LinkedIn. So, okay. By the way, we're still waiting on a Twitter slash X to be the LinkedIn killer that Elon promised us. Yeah. I love your take on the history and, and I've been on it equally as long. I remember. So what's interesting is how the users have evolved. there was a time where employers restricted employees from being on LinkedIn because it's like, I don't want my competitor to see my engineers. I don't want my competitors to see my high-performing salespeople. Now, over time, as people left jobs and got laid off and they started a LinkedIn thing.

39:42So then it became, well, we can't tell you to delete your LinkedIn. You got it, but don't look too busy in it. And this is before the content creation. It was just like your profile's there. If I see it updated, hell is following. So if you updated your LinkedIn, it was like, oh, shit, my employer got pissed off. And now you're active on it and you're creating content. And I think the part of the story with you was I have this side gig and my employer is concerned about I'm doing my side thing more than my real job. And they were pushing that employee to put like a hero image of their employer's brand on their LinkedIn profile as if to say, hey, are you committed to us or not?

40:28Are you are you in it to win it? So this this back and forth of the relationship between employees and our workers and companies is really interesting. And I don't have a good answer for what a company's policy should be on employees using LinkedIn. Like, what's the line? I think it's probably dependent upon the company, but this is where we are. You have to be active on it. You have to be organic on it, right? LinkedIn wants you to be real. They don't want AI slop. So now you have to be really good at LinkedIn, which I think is kind of what your service helps with and your blog and content helps with.

41:06You got something to say. So go ahead.

41:07Chad Sowash: I do. I'm so anxious about it. So years ago, I was with some Glassdoor executives and And they would say, yeah, people would come to us and say, Hey, I have a glass door problem. I've got all these negative reviews. I have a glass door problem. And the executive looked at the CEO and said, You don't have a glass door problem. You have a retention problem. Because if you're doing things right, you wouldn't have these scores. So own it. I say to every CEO executive out there that like, Oh, I don't want our people to use LinkedIn. Then you have a retention problem. Because if you really know you're doing a great job, your employees actually will be on LinkedIn saying, I did this cool thing this week at my company and my company won this.

41:46Chad Sowash: And they shouldn't have to do it all the time. You're LinkedIn. You are a business of one selling your services to an employer. So that is your brand. Protect your brand. I tell people that all the time. And if your company has some sort of agreement where you're not allowed to do this, what does that say about them? Why do they feel the need to have to have that? And most companies are realizing now because LinkedIn's algorithm is suppressing business content. So companies aren't getting the mileage out of it that they used to, that their best asset would be to have an ambassador program of employees who are comfortable posting because individual posting is beating in the algorithm intentionally.

42:19Chad Sowash: They're very clear about the algorithm. So anybody out there listening, any executive, any HR person, please rethink your social strategy. You're sitting on an asset right now, an untapped asset with what's going on on LinkedIn for your business, not just for recruiting. Where do you think companies are and accepting that reality and actually even encouraging it. Because we had a story years ago about a Sherwin-Williams employee who would go on and he would mix paints and he would put like strawberries and shit in the paint and Sherwin-Williams fired him. And at the time I thought, that's so dumb.

42:54You're getting so much free advertising and great content. If they had to make that decision today, I don't know if they would fire that kid. I think they would be like, do more of what you're doing. Is that your take as well? The companies are actually encouraging more activity on social.

43:11Chad Sowash: I'm excited to see more and more companies understanding his power because traditional advertising channels talking about today's the advertising theme, right? Ads on TV and things like that aren't doing as well. Social is where it's at. Organic social is even more powerful. You're crazy not to build that plan and teach your employees how to create good authentic content. You should be teaching them the guardrails. And there are, by the way, we're further enough along to know that there's five types of content that work best. We know everything we need to know about how to avoid it looking like AI slap.

43:39Chad Sowash: There's such an easy 45 minute tutorial that you can give people and give them the guardrails to succeed. I just, you know, it's, it's a shame that companies aren't doing it. I do think it's better now than it was not as severe, but I think more likely people are sitting on a completely untapped marketing asset, which is, you know, their loss. But you can see if my company makes bicycles and you're creating content about I'm investing in how I'm flipping houses. Like that has nothing to do with my business. You're doing it outside like that. That should be OK. From your perspective, the company should be fine.

44:18100 percent. OK. Yeah.

44:19Chad Sowash: Did the company. Wait a minute. Am I getting a stipend for being a marketing arm of the company? You want to pay me to be a market? Like pay me extra. Oh, and by the way, there's an X thousand dollars a year for you not to do any other kind of content because I see you as the brand. If you think your employees are the brand, pay them to be the brand. If not, it's none of your business. So companies need to be comfortable with where you're nine to five, but we're not your only thing. Right. Okay. I'm being paid to work your nine to five. What I do five to nine, my business. As long as it's outside of the company, company time.

44:48So here's, here's my question to you. Cause I know that you're, I go to, I go to you for all things, LinkedIn in a, in a world of, so LinkedIn's hiring assistant. is from all accounts that I hear is very successful. People love this sort of automated sourcing, outreach, interview-like thing. They love it. Now that's automation. At some point, LinkedIn is going to have that for the job seeker, where I have an automated reply to companies and have like that connection, I think, is happening if it hasn't happened already. So in a world where humans aren't checking what you're doing, Are they checking content?

45:27Are they checking just the profile? Like how does the automated hiring assistant stuff impact LinkedIn and what happens there from your perspective?

45:36Chad Sowash: Yeah. Well, first of all, it can read what you've written in the feed, but as they've learned quickly, people are creating a lot of AI slop. You've probably noticed that videos are now automatically being overlaid with subtitles. So if you go and look at that, there's a reason because subtitles transcription can be read by AI, Canon. So when you start to think about where that's going, I think if I was behind doors and I'm not going to name any names, but if I was behind doors on LinkedIn right now, I would be saying, how do we get our feed to look more like TikTok and Instagram? I want video.

46:08Chad Sowash: I want authentication. And how do I make people do it on my iOS or my Android? Because that is automatic authentication built into it. Okay. So now I know that that's not a fake video. That's a person. That person is talking about what they know. So I can then match that to opportunity. LinkedIn doesn't want to make you an influencer. It wants to match you to opportunity. So the more you give it in your feed, the more it can match you. That's the reality. And it's going to continue to build that way. So I see that as a feature. What most people are sleeping on, and I hope you record this in the predictions episode, is that LinkedIn now understands where its big money is going to come is not from recruiting.

46:43Chad Sowash: That recruiting product is awesome. That's not where their money is going to come from. Nope. Okay. They are now going to be the platform where millions upon millions of people can make money off their knowledge. They are going to monetize the individual. The knowledge creator economy, according to Gartner's$480 billion and growing. They now realize that all of you have a business of one and that you could be on there monetizing in multiple different ways, the same way people do on TikTok or Instagram, but with your business knowledge, with your industry knowledge, with your skillset knowledge, right?

47:14Chad Sowash: And so they want to give people that opportunity. What does that look like? Is that, is that, Hey, I've got, I'm posting content about this. If you want my exclusive stuff, pay me$10 a month. And then LinkedIn takes$2 of that. Is that the model or is it hard for you to, that's just one possibility. You can be running a podcast on it. You can be running a subscription service on it. You can be doing all these things like people are already doing it on LinkedIn, but where does it go off LinkedIn? Right. So So I don't know what those will specifically be the moment. I do know, I will tell you, but I just watching them and how they think they're sitting on a literally billions of dollars that could be monetized.

47:54Chad Sowash: It's already there. The audience and the matching is already there. You just need to give individuals the tools. That gets exciting to me because I do believe we're in the digital renaissance. We're coming into a time where people are going to be able to make money in a lot of different ways. I just look at what's happening with AI and we're coming into this very cool second renaissance. And this is the one platform where that could be happening. So you're saying it's a profit deal. Give me that money. All right, let's play a little Who'd You Rather. You don't know the rules. Here's what we do.

48:27We talk about two companies that have recently raised some money. Look at their business models. And then JT and I will both pick Who'd We Rather. You ready to play, JT?

48:41Chad Sowash: I'm ready. All right. First up, we have Jack and Jill. Went up a hill. Agentic recruitment startup Jack and Jill announced it has raised$40 million in a Series A round of funding. The London-based company, which was founded in early 2025, utilizes conversational AI to completely automate the initial stages of recruitment. That is Jack and Jill. And in this corner, we have Boomerang HR. They've raised$12.7 million in a seed round. The platform helps companies maintain relationships with former employees, turning them into a network for rehires, referrals, and potential sales opportunities. So, JT, Jack and Jill or Boomerang HR?

49:32Who would you rather?

49:37Chad Sowash: I don't like the name, but I like the concept. I'm going Jack and Jill. And I'll tell you why. I think it's a bigger play than going back to your alumni, because a part of your alumni are going to leave you and never want to work for you again. You know, there's that piece of there. I think that's a very specific application. Conversational AI is something I've been working a lot in right now, And I have a product that's almost complete. And I never dreamed it could be that effortless and that conversational. It's very powerful. It's very effective. We've made so much advancements in that. And that's what people want to do.

50:19Chad Sowash: They just want to have a conversation and they want to get an answer. And as long as it's the conversational AI is good, you don't care that it's AI. And that is what I've learned through building Mira. So it's been eye-opening to me. And I, I think that's something that job seekers really, truly want. Like, can I just talk to somebody is the most common thing a job seeker will say, can I just talk to somebody? So if it's built properly, they're going to get to talk to somebody. Okay. And you know, to me, that's super powerful. So they got my vote. Is your anti-boomerang more complicated than just, uh, people don't want to work there.

50:50So why have them in the loop?

50:53Chad Sowash: No, I just think, you know, it's not that I don't think the business is going to work. I'm just looking at both and saying, where do I think the scale and the bigger opportunities? exactly so no discount to them it's just a smaller play i'm going bigger all right jt's taking jack and jill home for a little uh a little who'd you rather uh okay i'm gonna i'm gonna start this off with a history lesson time for a history lesson so uh when i worked at at jobbing uh now ownership changed everything um they had you know this is going back they had what's what was called jobbing video so video was really hot and for a time people actually made their own video player like they coded that shit they maintained it like it was a pain in the ass now youtube was around but there was a time where we weren't sure if is it going to be youtube is it going to be vimeo is going to be some other secondary player so people just say you know we're going to make our own our own player now over the years youtube added uh you know 4k different speeds transcription like they added all this stuff that a company like google can do and a job board not so much like we can play the video but oh my god now we got to have 4k and mobile friendly and all this stuff so what eventually happened was they moved all their video over to youtube they saved all the money on hosting the video they saved all the money on development like They crushed it with that.

52:25So that was the decision that they made. So when I look at Jack and Jill, the parallel to that is I was online. I'm online every day. But I saw a perplexity ad that was like, get a job. And perplexity, which is a little smaller than Anthropic and OpenAI and Gemini and some of the others, but it's in that sort of universe. you put in your LinkedIn profile and then perplexity went to work. They went to apply to jobs for you, like source the jobs and everything. So my point is, when the history is written on this automation stuff and conversational, whatever, am I placing my bets on a niche player with a few million dollars in the bank?

53:13Or am I putting it on anthropic perplexity, open AI, Gemini, etc.? And all day, I'm going to go with the big player with the more resources and the better ability. I think Google could do this. No problem. They already have the jobs. They have all the data. They know more about you than Jack and Jill ever will. So that's my problem with Jack and Jill. Now let's go to Boomerang. I think it's a good idea in theory, right? You dump a girl. Maybe I was at the wrong time in my life. There was a different opportunity. Like just things didn't work out. But a few years later, I really liked her. I'm going to call her again.

53:53That almost never works. Probably never works. It's never worked for me. I don't know if it's ever worked for you, JT. So the parallel to that is, okay, when people leave a job, it's usually because something's not right. Like I got laid off. My boss is an ass. The business is failing. Whatever it is. Now, according to Glassdoor, I can't believe Glassdoor has made an appearance twice on the show, but according to Glassdoor, 71 % of people who leave a job have an improving opinion of that employer. Now, I think that's just natural, your brain filtering out the bad memories and remembering the good stuff.

54:29But there is a universe of people who either the company grew or pivoted or it just wasn't a fit and it didn't work out, who still like the company, but they parted on good terms, who down the road might be open to an opportunity. It's a small number. I think it's probably less than 20, 25. But whereas I think Jack and Jill is going to get squashed by a big AI player, I do think that Boomerang HR does have a better chance for success. So for that reason, I'm going to choose Boomerang HR. What are you doing, step bro? I want to go back.

55:10Chad Sowash: I want to punch a hole in your theory around. Okay. I didn't change your mind. Not at all. You reinforced my, my theory. Okay. I love that. Like, I get your point. Like, Hey, these big ones could build anything they want. But do you remember when Google said they were going to wipe out everything because they were going to build the place, the job board? How'd that go? These big companies do do the things that they do well. They should allow other businesses to build big, beautiful businesses off of them. You look at Jack and Jill and they build the right large language model, which I know personally, because of what I'm doing in career coaching and the large language model we've built, our AI products kill other people's because they don't have that.

55:49Chad Sowash: They don't have the specialty. This is where the brains behind the bots matter. So I think where Jack and Jill is going to win if the right people are in place is that that conversational AI is going to be so rich in its large language model and what they're doing to it. They'll be far ahead, package it up, marketing, money spent, great little$200 million,$300 million business off of the backs of whoever they're using, whichever AI tool they're using. And that AI company should be fine with it because they're making money off the tokens. So let it go. So to me, that's where I see the job growth coming with companies like that.

56:22Chad Sowash: That gets me super excited. That's what you're wrong, Joel. Sorry, you're wrong. I see a future where people adapt agents and agents just become the shit that we do in life, whether it's, I want to travel to Europe, like figure it out for me and recommend it, or I need a job, go find me a job. Like I, I, I just think like the monolithic agent provider, I think the battle will be, is my agent open AI is my agent grok is my eight. Like to me, that's the competition and whoever wins that. Yeah. But then you talk by versus bill. One of those biggies comes along and grabs Jack and Jill for a pretty penny and tucks it right in.

57:01Chad Sowash: So they just, then they don't have to build it themselves. They just go grab what somebody already built out there on their platform. So again, so much opportunity. That's what excites me about right now. I know there's a lot of back going on, but we're talking about really cool stuff that's coming down the pike. It is very cool. And if the AI doesn't kill us all, we'll be able to watch the show. All right, guys, that is another episode of Who Would You Rather. Stay tuned. We'll be right back to talk some Bernie Sanders in the work week. That's right. Sidney Sweeney, Bernie Sanders, and Glassdoor.

57:36The thumbnail is going to be really interesting for the podcast this week. All right. Here's the news. A new bill introduced by Senators Bernie Sanders and Mark Takano, both Democrats, proposes a gradual reduction of the standard work week from 40 hours to 32 hours over four years. The 32-Hour Workweek Act, that's very creative, aims to benefit working families by lowering the overtime threshold and preventing employers from cutting pay or benefits. What is this? Europe? JT, is America ready for such crazy ideas?

58:12Chad Sowash: Not only are they ready, it's already working. So in 2018, I took my company from a 40-hour workweek to a 35. Seven hours a day, totally flexible. just tell us when you're going to be here when you're not. Pandemic hit. We never went back to an office. My team retains a 35-hour workweek. Tell me when you're in. Tell me when you're out. And it works beautifully. Productivity went through the roof in the first year. Right? Retention is very high in my company. And the performance level and I think the satisfaction people have is unparalleled. We do not need to be working those hours. We weren't meant to be in front of a computer.

58:47Chad Sowash: A lot of those jobs that are in front of a computer like that, You weren't meant to be on a computer eight hours a day. You just weren't. And so I am all for it. I've seen it work in practice. It's amazing. Yeah, it's something I hope they pass. So the pushback would be, yeah, I don't have to be in the office that long, but I'm always plugged in. I've always got to answer emails and slacks and texts. And I work more than ever before, even though officially, I don't work as much. What do you say about that? I agree. I think part of the things that I did as a manager was recognize that I had to cap, you know, when I asked for things, right?

59:22Chad Sowash: So I love what I do. I do work on the weekends. But if I schedule emails, I schedule emails to show up in my team's inbox after 8am on Monday, right? Like, and not after 5pm. I'm not texting anybody. So it then becomes choosing your manager wisely, making sure that they're not abusing that process. That's a much different problem that the government can't control, right? But at least putting a parameter in place that says, look, legally, I'm 35 hours, starts to give people some boundaries that they can work off of to help with that. So to me, it's a step in the right direction. As long as there's a really strict corporate, hey, the lights go off at 5, the computers go off, we're not expecting you.

1:00:00I think that's a really hard thing to expect. I think most CEOs, small businesses are like, we need to make money. We need to survive. you need to be available to work. Um, like I, I worked at a company where the vacation time was like voluntary. Like if you need time, take it. There wasn't any, you get two weeks and if you don't take it, you lose it. So you need to take it. And what happened was nobody took vacation because everyone was like, Oh, I'm going to look bad if I take vacation, even though it was like, take whatever time you want. That was never the reality. The reality was very genius, very evil genius.

1:00:39Like, oh, you can take all the time you want, but nobody did because they were scared about looking bad.

1:00:45Chad Sowash: It's funny you say that. So my team gets the week between Christmas and New Year's off and the week of 4th of July off already. They then get 2 additional weeks of vacation, not PTO, but vacation. But you cannot carry those. You can only carry one week forward. So my whole point is you're going at least three weeks a year, you're out. I would rather see you use up all of them plus all your holidays because of that. Exactly what you said. I want you out. I want you refreshed. I've just seen so much evidence that when your brain isn't burnt out, you're going to make better decisions. How many times are people working around the clock probably doing something stupid?

1:01:20Chad Sowash: Building something bad because they weren't given a chance to rest. We're not thinking about the power of that, that compressed time, that peak time, and then allowing people's brains to refuel. Once you've moved over, I'll just tell you, once you've built a business like it, you never go back because you just see how much better it performs. And retention levels and satisfaction all go up. Yeah, you're a way better boss than Chad is. Chad's horrible. Chad's a slave guy. All right. Time for another history lesson. Time for a history lesson. So in 1930, kids, economist John Maynard Keynes published a famous essay entitled Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.

1:02:04This was 1930. Well, we're about 100 years on, and he was spot on about everything except, you want to guess, the hours that we work. Keynes predicted that we would work about a 15-hour work week 100 years on from 1930. 30. We're not close to 15 hours a week. So in terms of technology, global wealth, like he was so spot on and all that, but the work week and amount of time that we work. And again, I would say not only are we working 40 hours a week at the office or hybrid or whatever, but we're also working on the weekends. If we get an email from our boss, we have something going on. So So I think this has to be a law to take effect.

1:02:53I'm with you. I think that with AI, with productivity, studies show if you have a four-hour work week, if you have three-hour work days where you work more hours, but then you get two. All these sort of ideas seem to not impact work productivity at all. In fact, they improve it. So I think it's going to take a law and start at the federal end. And if you have a federal job or state job, you will only work X amount, 35 hours a week, whatever it is. But that's probably what has to happen in order for it to take hold. But small businesses, it's not going to happen.

1:03:31Chad Sowash: You know, I wish... It's funny. When the pandemic hit and we all went remote and everybody realized how much they enjoyed working remote, especially executives, they allowed remote. Now they're worried about productivity, which I understand, but they're still hanging on to flex, uh, flex time and hybrid, right? Because they still really appreciate. I think a lot of it is a facade. I think people are working more. I think they're working after hours. I think they're always plugged in. Yeah. More reason to put into 35 hours. To put in laws. To put in laws in place to get them comfortable with it.

1:04:03It's, it's you saying you're going to take these days off because they don't roll over. Like if you don't use them, you lose them. So yeah, you're, you're a trendsetter. Much like my dad jokes are setting trends.

1:04:15Chad Sowash: Make them stop. Make them stop. JT. Oh, you love them. Don't just stop. JT. What do you, what do you call a sad strawberry? What do you call a sad strawberry? A blueberry.

1:04:35Okay, that was cute. Time for a white wine. I don't know about you, but I'm having a white wine.

1:04:40Chad Sowash: White wine. See you in Nashville, everyone. See you in Nashville. We out. We out. Thank you for listening to, what's it called? A podcast. The chat. The cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout-outs of people you don't even know, and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar. Blue. Nacho. Pepper Jack. Swiss. There's so many cheeses, and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

1:05:27Chad Sowash: That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. So weird. We out.