Ask Us Anything: My boss is working from home but we’re in all the office + Dealing with loss and it’s impact on work

0:00I'm Adam Schwab. I'm Adir Shifman. And this is The Contrarians with Adam and Adir.

0:09And we're back episode 202. And actually putting these on YouTube as well. We had some, we had a great audience survey, got some amazing info from our incredible audience. It's an even better audience than we expected. So thank you guys, girls for listening in. But we're going to, one of the things people did say is they want more YouTube. So we're going to put as many episodes as we can, full episodes on YouTube. So you can see us or you can listen, of course, whatever you prefer. We're going to have every single episode. We're going to try and get close to every single episode on YouTube, especially these that ask us anything.

0:37So we did struggle with the remote stuff. We think the quality is good enough to be on remote now. So you get to see us as well as hear us. So on that note, onto question number one, Michael. All right, guys. Question number one this week comes in from Lindell. She asks, I'm in my late 20s working in a small team in the media industry. I've heard Adam talk a lot about how working at home ruins productivity. My whole team is in office four days a week, except for my boss who lives interstate. We rarely see him except over a weekly video call meeting. I feel like leadership is lacking and the whole team is not able to do their best work.

1:18Do you have any thoughts on how to manage this? It's not like I can tell my own boss to come into the office. Lyndall, come work at Luxury Escapes with my first point. That is a great question and it wasn't actually written by me in drag. It's a real question. I think that boss needs to be fired, first of all. That's disgraceful. And the boss's boss needs to be fired because the boss's boss is the one who put the boss in there. So obviously I don't know where, we don't know the business Lyndall works on, it's a marketing business the fact that the rest of the team's coming in is great the fact that this boss is taking the piss and working interstate and not even not even having a daily call with their team is appalling so this sounds like a business you probably you probably don't want and you don't want to work in the fact that lindal's picking up on this and not happy about it proves you're way too good for this place lindal uh it's just crazy and really it's the boss's boss's fault uh the boss is doing what they can take they can take in the piss because they can the boss's boss is letting them do that so that's who I'll be fingering the blame on here and I think Lyndall and the entire team should go move work at a better business last week we spoke about how you deal with situations as an employee in the workspace where you feel like you're either being taken advantage of or things are not progressing in the way or running in the way that you think is appropriate for your career this is a slight variation on a theme and the thing is it's really what I would want to do in this situation is I would just want to turn into you Adam and start making snide remarks about the low quality of performance from people that work from home to hope the guy or woman in charge gets the hint but I probably can't do that without having another job lined up that I could go to because the risk of being performance managed out of the business or made redundant is fairly high by a boss who I suspect you'd have to I suspect he's insecure about this because you'd have to be you'd have to have a complete lack of self-awareness not to be insecure about this the only argument that says they are oblivious to it is they only check in once a week despite working remotely which that is the most bizarre part of this whole story is that you've got a like I would understand if the boss said look I'm interstate I don't think that this is necessarily going to work long term but it might like I'm interstate I manage a team I fly down once a fortnight to spend a few days with them in the office I check in every day via zoom and just in general for some period of time each day I'm just on zoom while I'm working so if you need to ask me anything or talk to me I'm right here you can just engage with me maybe that would make it work that would to me would be the example of someone who wants to make it work.

4:04Why can't you actually be on Zoom all day? Like it's actually a really good point. Because you're probably on calls and stuff sometimes as well. Oh, obviously we're not on calls. But like just having a camera sort of there. That's right. Working away, even if it's a bit like further away from you so it's not right in your face like this is. But that actually is a really good idea. And interstate is not so far. You know, people are bi-coastal in the US. Do you know what that means? Working on LA and New York. Yeah, they live in LA and work in New York or vice versa. And like that is a lot. well, it's Sydney to Perth type of thing.

4:34And so that's a long journey. And so presumably this person, one of these people is not in Perth. And so if they're not in Perth, it's not very far. Get on a plane if you're the boss and get into that office every fortnight. This story is the story of someone taking advantage of a system and a business allowing them to do it. That's what it sounds like to me from the outside. And it goes to the point I've been trying to make for a while. and people blame gen gen gen gen zed and gen y millennials and gen zed for uh being this little lazy work from home that watch netflix all day don't want to come in i found that nothing further than the truth the people who are best at coming in generally was two groups one of the dads who can't wait to get in and two of the younger people under 35 who want to be in want to get mentored want to learn it's the people who are the worst at the 40 plus earning great money don't need to learn and they're meant to be teaching others and they're just being incredibly selfish not coming like unless you've got a really good reason which is carefully caring for kids or parents or all being special needs you should be in the office every day otherwise especially if you're a manager because otherwise it's the height of selfishness and this manager is absolutely taking the piss that they're not doing the right thing by that team they're not doing the right thing by the business the manager's manager both the manager and the manager's manager should be fired today and if they work for me they would be and lindal i think sounds like a real go-get and should be just getting a job at this this place is you're way too good for this place with the sounds of it and just get a better job at a partner who appreciates you and not taking the piss and not teaching their young team.

6:00Clearly, Lyndall's the kind of employee you want and this manager's the kind of employee you don't want. Well, not to advocate for the unionisation type approach of the labour force, but I wonder what the other people in the team think about this. Presumably they've got the same view on this, would be my guess. And I think any one individual on the team is vulnerable, but I think collectively they might be able to go to someone and say, listen, this is really not working. We have to change things because you can't fire a whole team. And I think that that would produce a lot of pressure on the organization.

6:37I agree with you though. Like the problem is you're fighting the person above your boss ultimately. But, you know, the person above your boss might just want to keep their job and they might placate a mob that comes and says, get rid of our boss. They don't come into work. We need someone that actually turns up. So there you go. What's the saying that the union people yell? Like that's their chant? I don't go to many union rallies. You'd be shocked to know. I think they chant, we shall overcome. Isn't that their big thing? Is it? So we can chant that about this group of people. We shall rob. I don't know.

7:08It can be any number of chants they could do. We shall rob Victorian taxpayers. I think that's the CFMEU one. So Lyndall, you've obviously a great performer and probably deserve better than this. And it sounds like this organisation's rotten to the core. And really, the boss is the issue here. and the problem is you need two levels removed, not just one. So I think this could be almost fighting a losing battle. Better off just taking your skills elsewhere. Agree. Go find another job. Question number two, Michael. All right. Question number two this week comes in from Hudson. This kind of flows on to some of what we were just talking about.

7:41Hudson asks, I'm 28 years old and university educated. I know my generation is sometimes criticized for whinging, but myself and most of my friends have a genuine fear of not being financially stable. It feels like we take one step forward and two steps back. Do you have sympathy for people my age and what advice would you give to people in our situation? I think Hudson makes a great point and 28 years old is probably the prime age of people being shafted. If you look at the massive transfer of intergenerational wealth and we talk about this a lot on the pod it used to be about three years income to buy a house the average median house now it's about 10 to 12 years income to buy the average median house so it unequivocally has become a lot harder for young people and it becomes continually harder for young people the only sort of point i'll make is sometimes young people are kind of bringing on themselves by voting these left-wing parties that makes it actually worse but that said both left and right have been appalling to the way they treat anybody but really anybody under the age of 40, essentially.

8:45And we've had this massive intergenerational theft from things like the principal capital gains exemption, generally the capital gain, negative gearing, all the ridiculous exemptions for pensioners, for older people, not pensioners, for the superannuation loophole, superannuation is essentially a massive tax fraud. The fact that older people can get discounted transport, even as simple as that when they have the most money. There's just so many unfair things in this economy that is really tilted against young people. But young people have to start getting smarter and stop voting for people like the Greens who are just going to make it worse.

9:16So I think he's, I have a huge amount of sympathy for Hudson. I think he's totally right. There's no question that young people have had it far worse than that. This is the first generation where people's parents are doing better than them. And we've had this sort of, as Scott Galloway said, it's always been this pact between generations that each generation will have it better than the last. And this is reversed. And it's a real concern. Yeah, we share the view. Like I think this is not whining about problems. This is real problems. Like you're 28 years old. The salary increase that you're getting, wage growth, is probably being outrun in most states of Australia by property price growth.

9:55So you're actually falling further behind. I mean it's not true in Victoria but it's true in most other states. It's true in Victoria because wages aren't coming up potentially. Yeah, that's true. But I think property might be going down faster than wages. And you think, you know, you do the numbers. The median house price in Victoria is a million dollars. It's not far off anywhere else. It's higher in New South Wales. I think it's 1.5 in Sydney, right? 1.5 in Sydney. Queensland is high now. Queensland's 1.3. Yeah, yeah. It's 1.3. Like it's crazy. And so let's say you're 28. 28 many people are partnering up and thinking about having kids.

10:32Maybe early 30s but getting into that age potentially. And so you want to go and get an apartment, even let's say the apartment costs$700 ,000 or$800 ,000, first you have to come up with$150 ,000 as a deposit. How the hell are you going to have saved$150 ,000? After tax. And then after tax. And then you have to say, well, then now I've got a$600 ,000 mortgage. And so interest rates are 6%. They could only go to 7%, right? Like we're in an interest rate increase. Almost certainly will. Yeah. And so now I've got$600 ,000, 7%. That's$42 ,000 interest only. not repaying any of the loan interest only which the bank might not let you pay they might force you to pay some principal but that's 42 000 after tax and so how can a 28 year old do that i mean they can't do that right they're not going to own an apartment and then they have to go and rent well good luck with that because if you look at a place like obviously we live in melbourne so it's easy to talk about melbourne so many taxes have been um added this is a real story so many taxes have been added to investment property in Melbourne, that the number of rentals is diminishing in Melbourne.

11:39And so how are you going to find a rental property? And if you're trying to find one in Sydney or Brisbane, they're exorbitantly expensive and you often see… It's still a lot cheaper than buying though. The rent is much cheaper than the interest. You're right, but you have to get a rental, right? You have to get a rental. And there is definitely, I know a lot, most countries or most big cities around the world, many people rent. We can't compare the sense of personal security or, not security, but personal settledness, I guess, with owning versus renting. And so I think all of those complaints by a 28-year-old, or maybe not complaints, let's call them lamentations, they're all legitimate.

12:16They're all legitimate. And I don't know that there is any solution to this in the short term. And political parties are going to make promises about all sorts of things. and some promises are going to exacerbate the problem, like fixing rent prices, for example, at the Greens. I suppose that exacerbates the problem. But I'm not sure there is much that can fix the problem in the short term about this. I don't know what to do about this. What's really killed young people is every policy that's driven greater creation of money. So look at all the COVID policies, and that's far from that. The NDIS, all these policies that effectively give special interest groups money, that money has to come from somewhere and that generally results in inflation debt or inflation the only two ways to fund these extravagant spendings every time you build a train line in melbourne or sydney every time you fund the ndis for autistic kids who are 300 000 people on there that is making life worse for 28 roles like hudson so that there's a direct link there's not it's not like this it's impossible to say there's a direct link in terms of what can you do here's what i'll and this is not doesn't always sound great but i think this is you got to really go back to basics and say how can I get my expenses lower than my income and what can I do there so I think you don't buy your rent especially if you're in expensive cities like Sydney where it's just too expensive to buy you get you probably share a house and I mean even sharing a house with other couples or you have like three or four to a house that reduces your cost you don't do things like smoke and take drugs and drink and even reduce your coffee and that reduces your expense so get everything do everything you can to get your expenditure down and your income up and that's the only way to somehow and it's not going to be pleasant because none of this stuff is pleasant but ultimately if you want to get ahead of that sort of that peg otherwise the bar keeps raising but get your expenses down and stop spending lots of money and that's the only way to get ahead because otherwise it's just it's just impossible and it doesn't start with property prices i mean the price of everything is exorbitant and driven by the inflation caused by the issues you've just highlighted.

14:14The other bigger problem for a 28-year-old is that when there was zero interest rates that drove asset bubbles, this person Hudson was 23 or 24. He's not participating in those asset bubbles at that point in time. So he doesn't get the upside of it. I think this is very bad for society. If I'm 28 and I've got a good job and I'm looking at my prospect of buying a house and then I see stories of houses trading for 8 mil, 10 mil, 20 mil, I feel like I feel probably angry. That's, I think, the emotion I would feel and cheated. And that leads to bad places. And I know we said over and over and over again, and I said to Hudson, just please don't get the pitchfork out.

15:01Like, let people have a chance to solve the problem. Because I think we're creating a society where a very large group of young people are getting very very angry and that is a dangerous place to drive a society i think we totally agree that that the policies for younger people have been completely uh just disgraceful and catastrophic but i think there's also i don't think we should take that as bad as it is and not do anything about it and there's and i mentioned stuff you can do with sharing houses and working one or two jobs and as jumping on and start doing food like food delivery if you're a really good food delivery person you can make 50 60 70 bucks an hour if you're really smart about it uh so there's ways to there's ways to increase your income another stuff's pleasant i said stop don't go out don't don't go out and spend a lot of money uh and even stuff like don't go out for don't go out to restaurants make your own food and even make your stuff like make your own bread make your own part there's actually ways to eat for far cheaper if you're buying natural ingredients and and not not buying processed stuff and not getting uber eats actually doing delivering uber eats rather than buying Uber Eats.

16:06So there's ways to significantly bring down your cost base. So it goes to two things. So do everything you can to increase your income, reduce your cost base, every cent you save, try and, and it's hard because the market's really high now, but at some point you can potentially lever into ETFs when the market's low enough. And that's like levering into property. So you can lever into an ETF for much less money than levering into property, not investment advice. There's two-hour ways to get ahead, but it's hard. It's really hard. And if you're at 28, you've been dealt a really bad hand. No one is denying that.

16:35that doesn't mean you can't do anything. My father-in-law grew up in London in post-war and they shared a house with four other families and they had one bathroom outside the house and it was a tough existence and they did an incredible job. And so I think like, I'm not saying that young people have meat share. I think they clearly have relative to older generations, but relative to how other generations lived before us, we've still got it pretty good. So I think we can also look at it in multiple different ways. So yeah, there's been a huge intergenerational theft. That's not to say we have it not a lot better than we had three or four generations ago.

17:08The issue is the last generation had it better and the last generation, I'm not saying no one's blaming older people for doing it intentionally, but the way it's transpired with the way governments have operated is there's been this huge transfer of wealth from younger people to older people and the huge accumulation of debt that young people are going to have to repay. So great question, Hudson, super topical. Let me just throw this last thing in at the end. So you know who has houses that's 28? Heirs. That's who has houses. People whose parents or grandparents or whatever buy them a house or at least pay the deposit on that.

17:38And it doesn't have to be billionaires, right? It just has to be someone with a few million dollars that pays a deposit for their kid or guarantees a loan or something along those lines. And so what we see, such rises the new aristocracy. That is the problem that's going on in society. Great question. We'll go to a super quick break. Back with question number three in just a moment.

18:08and we are back last question over to you Mike question number three this week comes in from Freya this is a slightly different one but I thought it was really interesting I recently lost my father which while not unexpected has really shaken me it's a life change I've never really experienced before and it's made me really contemplate how I want to spend the next part of my life as I feel I've over-prioritized work over connection. My question is, have you experienced a loss like this and how did it change your approach to life and work? Well, thankfully I have not. Both of my parents are very much alive as I experience almost every day of my life.

18:50In a good way, in a good way. And, you know, I think when you lose grandparents, I was very close with my grandmother, but it's not the same as losing a parent, right? So I can't speak from experience I can't be I can't I don't have the identical experience thank goodness but I want to just say my broader view about all of this I kind of think about this issue every day like every day I think about how inconsequential and brief our time on earth is and I know I sometimes say that to people and they think it's very depressing I don't find it depressing at all I find it very liberating because it means that like all the things that you think are important, like they're very unimportant.

19:31I would advise people strongly, if you haven't done this before, just go walk through an old cemetery and look at all of the graves. It sounds morbid. I don't do it infrequently. But it's pretty good because you look at all these people and you think to yourself, every one of those people thought all these things were important in the way that I do now. And not only is none of it important and they all look the same. And like I go to the cemetery where John Monash is buried, he looks the same, okay? His gravestone is nothing special. And not only is it all unimportant, but really no one is visiting any of these gravestones because everyone who cared about these people, they're all dead as well.

20:09Like these people are gone. And it's not bad that they're forgotten. It's good. Like that is the cycle of life. And so then the question is, how can you enjoy yourself while you're here? and if you care about this type of thing, which I do, how can you maybe make things better for the people that will be here for a bit of time after you're here? But it's not going to last long because everyone will forget about that as well in 200 years, 100 maybe. And I think that the broader way that I think about life is just very – I think about this a lot. It sounds crazy but like number one, thank God my parents are not dead.

20:42But like I do think about this very deeply. I don't know if I'd say every day but definitely every week I think about this. maybe most days, that we're this tiny speck somewhere in the universe that we don't possibly understand. And it is very unclear if there's a reason or not why we're here. And if you believe in religion, you've got some reasons for that. And if you don't, you might not. And so all you can think about is, I'm not here for long. I might not be here tomorrow. Like that is the truth. Like you might not be here tomorrow. So how can today I live in a way that makes me feel happy and makes the people around me feel happy.

21:20And I feel like that is the main thing that matters in life and everything else that we worry about. And by the way, I do not perfectly live this at all. I've got lots of problems. So there's a whole stack of them. But this is how I try to think about living life. It really just comes down to being happy and trying to make the people around you happy as well and maybe trying not to make people too unhappy that are beyond that. So I don't know if that helps, but that is how I think about the world all the time. hard to top that answer and sorry for your loss Freya uh like I do I haven't I haven't lost any parent yet I never really knew my grandparents two passed away one passed away before I was born one I was very young and two lived in different countries so uh I never really knew them so I haven't other than losing my best friend when I was in early 20s haven't experienced the loss of a family member uh so it's hard for me to comment too much but I strongly second what idea said I think I think the way you're looking at it uh to reflect reflecting on your life I think that's what your father would have wanted.

22:16So I think it's a great question. I think Adia answered it really well. Nothing more for me to add. Well, I'll just add something to my own answer, which is because I don't want to imply that I think that I live each day as if it's your last because I think that is a bad way to live life. That's not good quality decision making. And so I often say to my kids, if they're getting upset about a decision that I'm making, for example, maybe I tell my daughter, I don't know, she's got to do something and my son has to go to bed at a reasonable hour and like they don't like it and I say I say to you that my job is to try to help you find happiness in life but I'm about long-term happiness not short-term happiness so short-term I appreciate I might be making you sadder but I'm doing this because I think it's going to be good for you over the long term and so I think it's smart to make decisions there's some balance it's smart to make decisions that will make you happier over the long term and makes do some self-sacrifice in the short term.

23:13But the flip side is, you know, the stories of people that put off all of the great stuff they were going to do until their retirement. And then they die like three days after they retire. Like, that's a terrible story as well, right? So, you know, I think there's a balance. And I think some people are cynical, and they say, why does it take something terrible, like a, you know, sad death of Fry's dad to contemplate life? I'm not cynical about that. I feel the opposite. I feel like what a good, what a positive that can come out of such a negative thing that you reconsider how your life is and that the time after he passes away leads to a happier life than the time before as a result of contemplation because of that event.

23:53So yeah, I'm all in favor of that type of thing. Thank you, Frank. Thank you, I dear. Thank you, Mike. That was another three amazing questions from Australia's, the world's smartest podcast listeners. It doesn't surprise me. We'll be back with our big episode on Tuesday, of course. And don't forget, you can catch our episodes on YouTube as well. So if you want to see us, in see ideas biceps in person make sure you jump on and don't miss them they're kind of cut off in the webcam in this view though thank goodness that i'm not totally humiliated a wider webcam i'm going to zoom in stereo i'm just going to be one eye on this video from now on we'll get our engineers to work and resolve this bicep issue for everyone in the next week our female listeners on that note thanks again we'll see you on tuesday Thank you.