Jeff Wald | Developing the Necessary Skills for The Future of Work

Srini Rao: Jeff, welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. So I found out about your work, I believe through somebody on your team and. You wrote a book called The End of Jobs, which is all about the future of work which I think is something of tremendous importance to all of us and something that's a mystery to many of us, especially creators and in people who do freelance work, like many of the people in our audience.

But before we get into all that, I wanna start by asking what I think is a fitting question to kick our conversation off with, and that is, what did your parents do for work and how did that end up shaping and influencing the choices that you've made with your life and career?

Jeff Wald: When I think about my parents and I just I immediately go to how unbelievably lucky I am, how grateful I am, how fortunate I am to have grown up in that family.

My father was a dentist. And that impacted me and as much as I've got very good teeth very good dental health and it certainly has annoyed every dentist that I've ever gone to since he retired, but they're like, we're going to do this. I'm like, that doesn't seem like a necessary procedure.

And then my mother, who may be the smartest person I. No she was a high school math teacher actually a calculus professor. And prior to going to high school, she was a college calculus professor. She went to high school because she had kids and she needed the flexibility. And she needed to take some time off, which she did for a long time as a mother, and then went back teaching high school.

And she often told me she, or I should say, she and I often spoke about the fact that her father, my grandfather, always said to her, you could be a nurse or a teacher. That's what you can be because that's what young women were told at that point in time. And I always think about what she would have done in business Had she been pushed in a different direction because she is smart.

She is tough. She's hard working. And so her intellect, her drive to push me certainly had a huge impact.

Srini Rao: Yeah. I wonder what is it about somebody like your mother who had that capacity to look at something that is set in stone according to societal values and challenge the status quo and transcend it.

And how did that impact you? How did that play out on your own life? And then how do the other people develop that? Because I think that we're talking about work in particular, but. I think it'll make a natural segue to talking about education, but you look at large scale structures and systems almost always some outsider is the one who dismantles the system and rebuilds it for the better.

It's never somebody from within inside the system. And particularly at a time when your mother grew up, it was uncommon for people to do that. So what is it about her that made her that way?

Jeff Wald: It's a fair question. I don't know that I would say that she was. Ready to dismantle a system. She acquiesced she became a teacher.

She got into, I forget which college and I think Penn, she got to UPenn. And my grandfather was like, no, you can't go there. A single girl shouldn't be living in a city and he made her go to a different university. And I think about those things and how proud she is of me when I. Got into Cornell when I got into Harvard for business school.

She called my graduation from Harvard, one of the best days of her life, being able to sit there at Harvard and watch her son graduate. And so I think that I'm living out what she could have done. As I go and try to break things and push boundaries in her name, although I will say that she is certainly my harshest critic.

Srini Rao: I can relate. So it's very clear to me. I'm the son of a college professor. And so I, I understand the role that parents play in valuing education and given Cornell and Harvard, I was a Berkeley undergrad. So I understand what kind of environment that is. I want to talk about that in particular, because having the opportunity to do those things, I think I've come to realize is something that is a privilege.

It's something that only people who grew up in privilege often get opportunities to do. And I wonder when you think about looking at work through the lens of privilege how does that shape your worldview? That

Jeff Wald: is a great question. When you think about the world of work, you got to start with the world of education.

You think about the offset of efficiency versus equality because the two sometimes are counterindicators. You can't have equality if you're driving for efficiency. Efficiency necessarily creates winners and losers. And and is that the outcome we want in our education system? I wouldn't pretend to know.

But to pretend that people with the same capabilities have the same opportunities is laughable. In our society. I remember a conversation in undergrad that I got very fired up about. I actually stormed out of the classroom 'cause we were talking about a book called There Are No Children Here. And it was a book about a family growing up in the projects in Chicago.

And the kids in the class, my, my classmates were very dismissive of. Of the plight of this family. And I remember saying, if Pharaoh, if memory serves, that was the name of the kid, if Pharaoh had grown up with my parents, he'd be sitting here with you. And I said a bad word, you blanks. And if I had grown up.

In those projects, I'd be dead and I stormed out and there's a great saying from this organization I'm involved with called the Opportunity Network, which helps kids build their networks and get their first internships and jobs, which is that talent is created is spread evenly. Opportunity is not.

Srini Rao: Let's talk about education in particular because you went to arguably some of the most elite institutions in the world. And I know this because my friends are all graduates of those places. And I that's what happens when you're a Berkeley undergrad, you're surrounded by people who are all smarter than you are.

But one thing I wonder I had a really interesting conversation with Seth Godin just a few days ago about this, but when you look at education and the connection to the future of work, do you think that. The current system is designed to prepare us for what's coming, and I don't think it is, but if that's the case, then what do we need to change about it?

What actually still works about it? And if you were tasked with redesigning the education system to get us ready for the future of work, how would you do it? I realize I asked you like four questions.

Jeff Wald: Let me respond to the first one is the education system designed for the future of work? Hard no.

Definitively, no, I don't know that there's anybody in the world of work or in the world of education that would say that it is, but I would get, I would tell you this, if you ask somebody that same question 30 years ago, you'd get a hard no, and it hasn't really changed. And so if you're giving me the magic wand, you give me the magic wand.

I get the magic wand? First I would say I'm not the right person to wield this magic wand. We should give it to someone more

Srini Rao: intelligent. You and me

Jeff Wald: both probably. Someone more thoughtful about the education system. But the things that come to mind for me are this focus on the four year kind of liberal arts college as an unnecessary component to the future of work that works for some people, the fact that we've pushed.

Everyone to try it, I think, is a mistake. I think there is a huge role to be played for technical schools, for two year colleges, for more vocational training, because what we need are people with the right skills that they can monetize over a lifetime, especially as those skills constantly get refreshed.

Look, it's wonderful to say, oh, we should try to get everyone into these great educational institutions, but... A, there isn't enough capacity in those educational institutions, and B, most people don't need that. And they end up in a lot of debt for really no reason. They didn't get the skills.

And I'll leave this part of my rambling answer with 90, with two statistics, 96 percent of college administrators believe they're preparing their students for the world of work. And 94 percent of HR professionals think that people come in from universities completely unprepared for the world of work.

So we have a disconnect as you can find and two is, I think it's 60 percent of job requirements require a four year degree, but only 34 percent of the population has a four year degree. So clearly people are getting these jobs without. The necessary degree and the idea that we put that degree in as a standard just doesn't make any sense.

Srini Rao: It's funny you say that because we have a community manager who manages our private listener tribe. And I remember when I called her, she was one of our listeners. And I said, listen, I've tried to hire people for this job based on a bunch of resume nonsense, like social media experience. I need a community manager.

She's I'm a civil engineer with a PhD. I don't know anything about this. I was like, that tells me two things. You're smart and you know how to solve problems. She is hands down the best person I've ever hired. I am amazed at how good she is at this job because she didn't, the resume was not a good indicator of whether she was qualified or not.

And I feel like so often that's precisely the problem with what what you're talking about. We look at a resume and say, okay, you're not qualified to do this job, but unfortunately they don't. Resumes don't reveal a lot of other traits that are essential. 100%.

Jeff Wald: Look, I, as you I am incredibly fortunate to have gone to the institutions I've gone to.

The two biggest benefits from those institutions are the network, and we should not in any way, shape, or form downplay the power of those networks. They're incredibly powerful. And the brand. It wasn't anything I learned there. It wasn't frameworks and institutional knowledge or intellectual. It was, it's the network and the brand.

Those are the two biggest benefits by far of those institutions. And I am the beneficiary. Of those benefits.

Srini Rao: So I, I had William Dershowitz here and you may have read his book. He wrote a book called Excellent Sheep called The Miseducation of the American Elite. And it talks a lot about elite institutions like the places that you've gone to.

And one thing I wonder about because In my experience, I went to Berkeley thinking this is going to be this liberal hotbed of thousands of ideas. And the more time I spent there, and especially I only recognize this in retrospect, I said, wait a minute, this place is a breeding ground for conformity.

Everybody has four or five career paths. It's banking doc, med school, or law school. And I wasn't smart enough to do any of those things, so those weren't options. But when you see a place like Harvard, because I think that even at a place like Harvard Business School, I'm guessing, A person like you isn't the norm.

I'm guessing that checking boxes is much more of the norm. Look, I got to Harvard Business School as an M& A banker from J. P. Morgan and left as an M& A banker from J. P. Morgan.

So you know exactly what I'm

Jeff Wald: talking about. J. P. put me through. But yeah but look, I think actually Harvard does a very good job of dividing the class up.

And if you're a banker from Wall Street, there are a certain number of slots. If you're a consultant from McKinsey, Bain, BCG, wherever, there are a certain number of slots. And then they've got slots for entrepreneurs and people in non profit and the military. And it does make for a very rich conversation.

Because that is the power of higher education is to challenge ideas and to have those debates and discussions in a safe space. And I don't mean a safe space where you can't be offended. A safe space where you can and should offend and debate and discuss respectfully, thoughtfully, with evidence. But you should challenge all those things.

And I think Harvard Business School actually does a very good job of that because They are curating that class.

Srini Rao: Let's do this. Let's get into the book. You start out by talking about the history of work and you start out by talking about corporations, unions, and social safety nets. Can you expand on those and talk about the role that they've played in influencing how we've gotten to where we are?

Jeff Wald: The framework I tried to set up is this undulating power balance between companies and workers that is impacted by a number of variables. The biggest variable that throws that equation off is huge changes in technology. And we call those traditionally industrial revolutions. We have the three industrial revolutions, mechanization, electrification, and computerization.

And it's important to study them because we're in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution with robots and AI. And each time huge amounts of power moves to companies and workers are disadvantaged. And what we find historically are those counterbalancing forces. Unions, the social safety net regulation that enable workers to get some semblance.

of power back in that relationship. And so they are incredibly important historically, and they'll be incredibly important going forward because we are already seeing the huge power balance shift to companies.

Srini Rao: Yeah. So one thing you said was that the lifetime employment contract has been broken, even as a tacit expectation of partnership, a model for lifetime employment seems to have gone extinct.

And I think what, when I read that, what it reminded me was of was graduating from business school in 2009. I saw my classmates who all sat around under this delusion that there was going to be this moment when the economy was going to improve and all the jobs that were gone were going to come back.

And I think it was a rude awakening for many of them when they didn't, when they realized that was not going to be the case. And yet people seem to still buy into this. Lifetime employment contract. Like I remember when I saw the first time Microsoft announcing layoffs. I thought, okay, wait a minute, there absolutely is no such thing as lifetime employment, no matter how successful or stable your company is.

And I'm the guy who's been fired from every job I've had. So to me I have an inherent distrust of anybody who would tell me that, oh, you're we're invested in your future.

Jeff Wald: It is a perfectly fair statement that the lifetime employment model is certainly gone. And I would argue. As I do a bit in the book that it never really existed when people look at the average amount of time that a worker spends in a job in the United States right now, it's 4.

2 years. The average amount of time someone spends in a job, obviously, it's all over the place when you break that down and people that are older in their career stay longer. People are just entering the labor force. Move jobs very quickly. It differs industry to industry in the fast food industry. The turnover, I think, is 300 percent a year where people are moving jobs, but on average 4.

2 years. If we dial that back to 1960 when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track of how long people stayed in a job. People guess, oh, it must have been 15 years, 20 years, 30 years. It was five. It was five years. And did the lifetime employment model exist for some workers at some companies?

Of course it did. Some people marched towards their gold watch and stayed at the same place for 40 years. But for the majority of workers, it never existed. It never was a reality. It's a nice notion. But to your point it is just that it's a notion that I think is long past.

Srini Rao: Yeah I remember I had a friend who worked at Apple and he was there for 10 years and I said, what did you get?

He said, Oh, I got a pen. I was, what do you get when you're there for 15? He's like a little pen that's a bit nicer. Seriously, that's what you're getting for all this time? Yeah I

Jeff Wald: also got a bunch of stock options.

Srini Rao: Yeah, hopefully well, and a few free iPods. So that's nice. But so then why is it that people seem to buy into this narrative still?

Because I think there are people. So let's take, for example manufacturing jobs. I think if there's anything we've seen for our politics for the last couple of years, it's this delusion that, oh, we're gonna bring all these jobs back when in reality, those jobs aren't coming back because that we have technology to replace them.

Jeff Wald: So a few thoughts. One, you're 100 percent correct. And let's talk about the manufacturing sector for a second. We went from 20 million manufacturing jobs in the United States in 1980. That was the peak manufacturing employment in the United States. And over the next, over the following 20 years, it dropped by 40 percent to 12 million.

And we've remained relatively stable at 12 million for a decade or two. And people point to the Chinese or NAFTA or environmental policies. The data would tell us that 90 percent of those jobs don't exist in the United States anymore because robots perform those tasks. And so you can talk about environmental policy all you want, it's just not the case.

The same thing is true, by the way, in the coal industry. People talk about, oh, the environment and the Democrats war on coal. We went from a million coal workers in the United States to 200, 000 coal workers in the United States, then down to 80, 000 coal workers in the United States because machines ripped coal from the ground.

This was over a 50 year period. And that's it. It's not environmental policy. Did that have some impact? Yeah, on the margin. But the vast majority of impact is because machines rip coal from the ground. And so that's the enemy, quote unquote, to be thinking about, right? What happens as machines, as robots, as AI systems become more adept, more capable, cheaper?

And start performing more and more tasks. What do we as a society do? But back to your other point, by the way, because I don't want to let it go on why people cling to this lifetime employment model. People get addicted to it. There's a great quote. I don't remember who said it, but I remember who said it to me was the great venture capitalist Fred Wilson.

In a speech he was giving, said the three most addictive things are carbs, cocaine, and a weekly paycheck. People get addicted to the stability of it, and I get it, but I would argue that, especially as someone that did a lot of innovation in the freelance workforce, where do you have more stability, where you have one point of failure?

That one employer or the 20 clients that the average freelancer has.

Srini Rao: Yeah it's funny because I remember you had an interesting statement about that where you said freelance gig might disappear a company isn't entirely likely to disappear. But let's actually talk about where we're at now, because you break where we're at now into four key areas on demand labor, remote work, income inequality and increased.

Personal responsibility, let's start with on demand labor, because I think that when we think of on demand labor mainly in my mind, it's things like Upwork, DoorDash drivers Uber, all that kind of stuff. What's the impact of on demand labor in terms of where we're headed?

How is that going to play out in the future of work? Because I had somebody here who once said the future of work is going to be projects, not jobs.

Jeff Wald: A, I agree with that statement, and I disagree that on demand labor is the future of work. So is work itself continuing to get atomized down into its component tasks?

Hard? Yes. Data here is very clear. Are companies increasingly staffing people on projects and teams instead of just having one manager? 100 percent Yes. But has the on demand labor market the number of workers that are classified as freelancers or temps? Has that substantively changed over the last 30 years?

The answer is not really, it has had a slow and steady uptick and ADP has by far the best data set here. And the ADP data set would tell us that there's been a 3 percent market share gain over a 10 year period. So 0. 3 percent per year market share gain from W 2 employment. To temp or freelance employment.

And so we think about the Ubers and lifts and DoorDash and Postmates and Upworks and they're amazing companies. I'm a huge fan of all those companies for various reasons and a critic of them for other reasons, but they are not some substantial change in the way the world works. And do I think on demand labor will continue a slow and steady rise?

I think another few points of market share gain over the next 10 to 15 years is possible. But that's it. That is as far as we're gonna go.

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I think what's interesting and I wonder what you'd have to say about this is as somebody who does what I do, I realize on demand labor gives me a level of power to bring ideas to life that I've never had before. I, we work with a graphic design firm called Del Sign. And it's unlimited graphic design for 399 a month.

And the amount of output these guys produce is remarkable. It's amazing how much we're able to get out of them. In, in the span of a month, we can do what we couldn't do before over six months with one person.

Jeff Wald: It is true. Look, that is the benefit of on demand labor. You get to tap into these unique resources.

You get to use them in a very discreet fashion. They are subject matter experts. There's no ramp up time. They just hit the ground, run and they produce a hundred percent, but will it result in a structural change? And the way companies and workers come together to produce goods and services, there's no data to support it yet.

We'll see. Because not only is our business processes and a host of other things that we call the labor equation in the book, not only are they incredibly important, so is regulation. And so even if companies could Convert all their W 2s to 1099s, they wouldn't be allowed to, and I will tell you this, I have never once been in a meeting where a CEO or any business leader says, hey, we want to convert all of our W 2s to 1099s, therefore we need your software.

And I can promise you this, if somebody were doing it. We would get the call, because we are by far the largest piece of software in that space. But I've been in this meeting a lot. Hey, we're getting really uncomfortable with the regulatory environment and what's happening, and we are going to convert all of our 1099s to W2s.

We just, we don't want to use 1099s anymore. That meeting. That meaning I've been in a bunch.

Srini Rao: Let's actually do this. Let's first talk about two, two things you brought up when you talk about where we're at now you talked about personal responsibility and you said for many reasons, personal responsibility is now a hallmark of the modern work market.

The reality of personal responsibility, the future work is becoming clear, but you also couple that with income inequality because it takes us back to the beginning of our conversation opportunity and talent aren't talent might be spread equally, but opportunity is not.

So how do you, how do we resolve that when increased personal responsibility is becoming more and more important, but opportunity isn't equally available?

Jeff Wald: I wish I had a great solution for you. I don't. Thank you. It makes me concerned about societal stability because there's only so much you can put on an individual, on workers, on families before the system starts to break down and those counterbalancing forces will rise.

And so whether it's an increase in the regulatory state in some way, which has positives, it has negatives, whether it is a change of the social safety net and a more redistributive society, positives there and negatives, whether the union movement recasts itself, because the union movement as it exists, as it has existed for a hundred years is not.

Working overly well, they are not gaining market share, but we can look at the fight for 15 and the fight for 15, I think, is a great example of an evolution in the union movement of workers coming together in common cause through social media, not driven by unions, but by non union activists around the country that have pushed for substantial change in the minimum wage, which leads to a substantial change in how the economic pie gets divided and We can debate and discuss different studies on is that actually good for workers because does it mean that at higher wages companies employ fewer workers or start using more robots?

There's actually very inconclusive evidence on it, but the near term is you'll see big wage increases for workers.

Srini Rao: Let's talk about regulation, because I think that as somebody who runs a business I think about regulation a lot and tax policy and those kinds of things. And on the one hand, my roommate and I have had this conversation every good society is driven by some level of self interest.

But I think that when you push that to to the extreme, you reach a point of diminishing returns and I I really wonder as somebody who is an entrepreneur, does it change the way that you vote? Does it change your political beliefs? Because on the one hand, there's going to be things like we said, certain regulations that will probably be good for you as a business owner, but terrible for society at large.

Look

Jeff Wald: at prop 22 in California that just got passed. So the regular regulators in California, the legislatures in California came up with AB5, which really said to the gig companies, just to simplify it, make all your people employees because they're working for you, but they don't get any benefits.

And the gig companies said. Now, if we do that, we're going to have to charge a lot more for our service and people have to wait longer and they got it to be put to a vote and basically people said I don't want to wait another few minutes and pay 30 percent more for my Uber drive Uber ride. So let's move on, right?

That's what people said with their vote. So they didn't say do we really want a society where some people are really being taken advantage of or this or that? And I'm not taking one side of this issue or the other, but they were very clear when put on the ballot between, do we want to protect workers or do we want to wait a little longer and pay a little more for Uber driver?

People said, I need to get to where I need to get to.

Srini Rao: I think that just you have this quote in the book where you said many of today's labor laws and regulations are more than 100, 000 years old and were crafted in response to very different needs. Yet our society is still working under a workers compensation that was enshrined into law a century ago.

The thing is, I sometimes when I watch what plays out in Washington I jokingly said that watching this Congress even try to get this stimulus bill done, like a bunch of kindergartners could have done this more effectively, Republican or Democrat. I

Jeff Wald: would make the argument that the people in that room are doing exactly what we sent them there to do, given the incentives we sent them there with.

And so I don't blame the people in the room so much as I blame the process that we have for getting them in the room. And if we want to see Any substantive legislation that addresses societal issues, whether it's income inequality or the future of work, labor standards, foreign policy, tax policy, social policies, we need to change the process through which we get those people into the room, change the incentives of the people when they're in the room, that they actually have to be responsive to the majority of people in their district, Not just the 2 percent of people that vote in a primary and if we start doing that, I think we'll see a very different outcome.

Srini Rao: I think that makes a perfect segue into talking about what on demand labor, excuse me teaches us and the future of work. So you talk about the... Six components of the on demand labor, which is total personal responsibility, which we've addressed task based labor, data driven HR algorithms for work allocation, impermanence and platforms.

So let's talk about those, but funny enough, I want to start with impermanence because I think when I see the word impermanence, what it reminds me of is friends of mine who graduated from the computer science program at Berkeley. And the funny thing nowadays is that for almost every computer science grad, by the time they finished school, everything they've learned is outdated.

Jeff Wald: I think that is certainly the case. We can think about the diminutive I don't know if the right term is here, how quickly a skill abates. It used to be you'd learn something from 18 to 24, basic times, either from a vocational standpoint, an apprenticeship standpoint, on the job training standpoint, or university.

Where you learn all the skills you needed, and you can monetize that over your career, over a 30 year period. Now, it's four to six years, where a skill becomes not monetizable. So that is problematic. That is certainly problematic, and it enables Or enforces this idea, which a lot of people say is an overused idea or statement, I would say it's not used nearly enough, and that is lifelong learning, that you need to be a lifelong learner, and so impermanence casts its pal over many aspects of the labor force, not just this idea that lifetime employment contract was a notion, not really something that ever happened, but also how you get the skills that you need To be able to earn a living.

Srini Rao: I think the natural question that probably comes from that for most people is, okay what are the skills that we're going to need to develop that are going to allow us to monetize the future of work? Because like we said, many of our skills become outdated. I feel like there are a few sort of.

Hard skills that I see that play out that become timeless. So first off, what are the timeless skills? And then what are the ones that you need to develop to thrive in the future of work?

Jeff Wald: That is a really good question. I've never thought about it that way. I'm going to, I'm going to skirt the question and I'm not going to answer what I think is timeless.

Cause I'm not sure what is timeless. We could say things around networking. Around sales. I think everybody's in sales and things like that. If you're good at those things, they will almost always apply. That said, when I talk to people about how do I prepare for the future of work? How do I as an individual prepare?

It's very different than when I'm advising companies on the future of work. But as an individual, I say, go hard, go either hard tech or hard human. The hard tech jobs. Easy enough to understand, right? Those have been growing for decades and will grow for decades to come. Software engineering, and data, and robotics, and AI, cloud computing, and cyber security, and blockchain unbelievable growth in those jobs, and they will continue.

The hard human... Are to focus on the jobs that the robots and AI are nowhere near in the next 20 years capable of catching up to, and those are jobs that involve creativity and design and human interaction and empathy. So jobs in sales and in marketing and in customer service and in health care, those jobs are also expected to grow when you look at jobs that involve repetitive high volume tasks.

Date entry, transportation or some retail jobs, some food service jobs, continued manufacturing jobs, those jobs in the near term are going to be displaced at a greater rate.

Srini Rao: It's funny because I have a friend who was also a guest here, who I was working at some real estate. Trust firm where he was doing finance stuff for them, and they laid him off.

He basically they've made him an offer after being a freelancer to do to come on full time, and he didn't think the offer was high enough. So he started a business where he literally automated everything that he did at his job prior using air table. Now that business generates 50 to 60, 000 a month, and he has so much demand.

He makes more, I think, now in one month than he did an entire year at that job.

Jeff Wald: That's great. Not everybody has those skills, but he was very astute to recognize this is a repetitive high volume task. It's going to get done by a machine. I should build the machine. It's awesome.

Srini Rao: I think that makes a perfect segue.

So we talked about the skills, like what should people particularly creatives be thinking about in terms of repetitive work and automating, because I've been spending a lot of time looking into where I can optimize my work through A. I. For example, things like SEO things there's a firm called W.

R. K. dot com. Right now we're working with them. They use a combination of A. I. And human labor and look, I want to write a blog post. I don't want to do any of the rest of this. And so right now they're actually building out a workflow to the point where we're gonna be able to push a button and everything else will be done from them.

Jeff Wald: I look, I think that would be great. That is very powerful. And there are a lot of things around. Not the creative side, right? Not the writing the article. Cause we've all heard oh, now there are articles that can be written. Not really. They're really quite terrible. And the odds of those things getting better in the near term are incredibly low, but everything else around it.

Everything else around the post. Why am I spending it? Just click a button and all the same steps. I'm going to post it. I'm going to tag it. I'm going to share it on social. I'm going to do some SEO spend and this and that. Set up the business rules and let it roll.

Srini Rao: Yeah, it's funny because I think a lot of creatives don't really realize how much of the process they waste on all these sort of non essential activities.

There

Jeff Wald: are business processes in so many fields, creatives notwithstanding, that are just, whenever you see the same thing over and over again, I'm not saying it's gonna happen tomorrow, but at some point, history would tell us. The repetitive high volume process, no matter where it is, eventually gets automated.

Srini Rao: It's funny because Victor Chang wrote this book. He's a venture capitalist and a guy in Silicon Valley called extreme revenue growth. And one of the chapters in that book that really struck me was, he said, one of the first things he does when he goes into a company is he has them literally document every single process.

And he says, tedious, it's mind numbing, but he said having some process documented is better than none. And I'm amazed by just how having a checklist. Alone is such a game changer for understanding that and like increasing your ability to do work efficiently.

Jeff Wald: It's very true. Look, if you don't have a process, then you're reliant.

On the team to do it, which in a lot of cases is great. And if you've hired the right team, then by all means, tell them where you're going, tell them what you believe and unleash them, let them do their thing. But most people don't aren't blessed with that, with a very clear vision, with a very clear.

Set of rules or guidelines that can let their team go. And so the processes for doing it when we talk about startups end up being cults of personality around their founder, and people do things the way their founders do them. And eventually a startup moves from a cult of personality to a systems of policies and procedures, because that's how companies run.

And the more you can document them, the better off you are going to be.

Srini Rao: Let's talk about two other components of what you say on demand labor teaches us, which is a data driven HR and algorithms for work allocation as well as task based labor. Like what how are these going to play out in the future of work?

Jeff Wald: So algorithms allocating HR is. As things continue to get broken down into tasks, the algorithm is going to look to see which labor resource is most capable of handling that task. Now, that's based not only on skill, but on availability, on what we want to do as an organization. Clearly the labor resource I'm going to go to first are my full time workers because I'm paying them whether they do work or not.

And then if people aren't available, the algorithm will start looking through on demand labor resources to bring on. But that necessitates understanding All of the skills and all the availability of everybody that does work at your organization, and most companies do not know those things.

Srini Rao: So you've talked about in the future of work near term, you're talking about convergence, incremental change, alumni, labor clouds, and total talent management.

Can you expand on that? How did those play out? So take somebody like me. I understand this just from I'm doing my own work. But if you were to look at this through the lens of a creative person listening to this, how would that play out in their own life?

Jeff Wald: That's a really good question, and I'm not sure that I would really know enough about their own life to answer those things.

Srini Rao: Let me give you something more concrete to work with. And let's take some, for example, a blogger. Perfect example. Let's say a blogger. What is the role of convergence, incremental change, alumni, labor clouds and total?

Talent management and somebody who's building a blog.

Jeff Wald: Total talent management would allow that blogger to stay engaged with multiple different companies in a systematic way. And as companies are increasingly managing all of their labor resources in one area, you want to make sure that you're a part of those labor clouds.

The alumni labor cloud will be places that you worked with before, and that's just another labor cloud being plugged in to that total talent management labor cloud. So if I'm a company, I want to know every single person that does work for me. My full time employees could write a blog, but do, are any of them available?

Do they have the right skills? Okay, if not, I want to go to my army of freelancers. Who's available? Who has the right skills at the right price? I also want to look at people that used to work with me, and they'd be a part of that freelance army, just a subset of it, but a preferred subset. I prefer to work with somebody that has been a part of the organization, that understands our values, our culture, and all those other things, and I want to keep them engaged.

And the alumni labor clouds. are an increasingly important part of the world of work because they are the means through which companies can keep in touch with anybody they used to work with before.

Srini Rao: So I think that makes a perfect segue to the last part of the book where you talk about the rise of the machines.

So let's talk about this because one of the things you say is that in the future robots and AI could provide all the goods and services we need at only a small fraction of the human effort that we use today. But then you also contrast that with the reality is there's a brilliant future.

Waiting for us, but immense challenges for those at the greatest risk of displacement and thus all of society in the near term. So I think the two things that come from that is, okay, what do we do to navigate this displacement without having our lives fall apart? Because I think we're seeing it play out right now with COVID and everything else that's going on.

Jeff Wald: I will tell you, man, if I knew the answer to that look, these are things that scare me that I'm concerned about might be a better statement. If we look at the history of work, we always end up with more jobs at a higher standard of living and working fewer hours. That's what always happens.

And people look and they say, Oh this change will be no different than the last ones. We'll end up with more jobs, a higher standard of living, and working fewer hours. And I always say, Yeah, 100%. We will. But getting from point A to point

Srini Rao: B is not

Jeff Wald: easy. And when you look historically, this is time of literal blood in the streets.

And so how do you avoid it? I will say this. Societies have done a terrible job of avoiding it. Of providing the services, specifically job retraining to the workers that are left behind. And I am more hopeful about this transition than the other three for two reasons. One is we're more aware of it. We've become better students of history.

That might be laughable, given some of the things going on in the world, but I am hopeful in that regard. But the other reason to be hopeful is that new technologies are coming on stream that massively compress the time. And the cost necessary to retrain somebody. So I think about VR VR technologies that you can put a set of VR goggles on and 200 hours later, you are now fully ready to not apply for a job, but to start at a company and perform the series of tasks you were just trained for.

That is amazing. That is unprecedented. And so those are the things that give me hope, because if we don't retrain those workers in the United States, you're talking about upwards of 25 million workers over the next 20 years that are going to lose jobs structurally and permanently, but there will be more jobs created.

We need to get those people into the industries that are growing.

Srini Rao: So the thing that I I look throughout all of this, I couldn't help but think over the last 10 years, are we going to move to a breaking point where we're going to see massive civil unrest? I think we're seeing the edges of that, not just here in the United States, but around the world.

On the flip side of that the economist Tyler Cowen, he wrote a book called average is over. And that book always stayed with me because you basically what it said is that we just, we can't society no longer rewards average, particularly in the world of work.

Jeff Wald: I think that is probably true. But I having not read it I don't I don't know that I could comment. Okay, fair enough. Surprising, right? Most people will just start blathering on, but I, there are certain areas I just don't know enough about.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Do you worry that we're headed towards massive civil unrest and if so, what is the responsibility, I think, of the individual?

And then what is the responsibility of people who govern the lives of those individuals?

Jeff Wald: Okay that that I've got a very different point of view on. I, again, wouldn't say that I'm overly knowledgeable, but I would say we have a clear responsibility as a society. It is in our interest. Let me say it differently.

It is in our interest as a society, and it's been in the interest of every society, to ensure stability. And will there be mass civil unrest? No, I do not believe we'll see mass civil unrest. Do I think we'll increasingly see people vote for populist candidates, for nationalist candidates? And do I think that history would teach us that those are tremendous mistakes?

Yes. But do I envision in the United States civil unrest of a revolutionary scale? No. Not at all. There are questions about what kind of society we want, but the wonderful thing we have here are these elections. And as much as the current president wants to rant and rave about the elections not being fair or free, they are 100 percent fair and free.

There is zero evidence there was anything. Literally zero evidence of any malfeasance, and so that is what we get to do. We get to select the people that go into that room and choose what kind of society we want. I hope that we choose the kinds of people that recognize that this is a very large problem, and we need to solve it because society's...

that leave people behind in that massive scale are not societies that have stability for very long.

Srini Rao: Wow. This has been really fascinating to look at this. I think for me, as I think about this like I said, as the person who was not able to sustain a job for more than a year, I have this just inherent distrust that anybody will ever employ me for a lifetime.

And that personal responsibility is one of those things that was inevitable. I knew that if I didn't take responsibility for my career outcomes, then I would always be at the mercy of somebody else. And, but I think a lot of people feel that they're at the mercy of the people they work for, that they don't have the freedom to make a choice.

And in some cases that is true. So what do you say to that person who, is working three jobs because I've always said the conversations I get to have here on unmistakable creative, the advice that people come here and give are largely tailored towards people who come from privilege, not the person who is working three jobs to put food on the table.

I don't think that person has the capacity to say, Oh, let me go do something creative that adds joy to my life when they're barely surviving.

Jeff Wald: You're correct. I don't have any answers for that person. My heart goes out to them. I hope that we would live in a society that values the work that people do, that looks out for those that are not capable of providing for themselves, but has the right incentives in place for people to work and for people to continue to change the art of what is possible.

Because... There is a balance between equality and efficiency that needs to be struck. I would argue we don't want to live in a society that is completely socialist, to pick a word that is massively misused in the media, and I would also argue we don't want to live in a society that is you know, Completely and 100 percent brutally capitalistic that there is a middle ground that I in the United States.

We've done a decent job of finding that middle ground, but the robots and I changed that equation and we're going to need to refine that middle ground that allows us to have the companies like Tesla and Apple and all of these incredible innovations that occur here. They don't occur anywhere else. They occur here.

They occur here for a reason. We want it. The kind of economic system that creates those companies, but we also need to have the kind of economic system that provides enough for for every member of society.

Srini Rao: Yeah. So when you see somebody like Elizabeth Warren talk about her wealth tax on billionaires as an entrepreneur, you, when you view that, what are you thinking?

And when you see. The people who've become billionaires hypercritical of this. I wonder what you think because I think Naval Ravikant had a podcast titled how to get rich. And he did this incredible breakdown. It's about three hours. But one of the things he said that you don't actually consider when people propose policies like this is that most of these people who build these companies actually work for years without taking a dime.

Jeff Wald: So do I think that the rich could be paying more in tax? 100%. And as a person whose taxes would go up from that, I am 100 percent fine with it. Would I like to see that money go to efficient government programs and not the, some of the programs that we have? Yeah, I would. Do I think that dynastic wealth is a issue for society?

Yes. Do I think that families that are passing billions and billions of dollars from generation to generation are a problem? Yeah, I think it is suboptimal. But you do not want to create the incentives that have those families create the kind of wealth in the first place, but whether it is taxes on capital being different than taxes on labor, which I don't fundamentally understand whether it is.

Taxes from an estate standpoint going up to now only estates with I think a hundred million are taxed. There's something wrong with that system. So there needs to be a change. We need to create a different system. But we need to be very careful.

Srini Rao: Yeah, it is. It's tricky just from reading this and talking to you.

I can't help but think that finding that middle ground has got to be one of our greatest challenges.

Jeff Wald: I 100 percent agree. It is a huge challenge. But it's not one that is insurmountable. But back to my earlier point, by the way, getting the people in the room and the process we have is not going to produce it.

We're not going to get the enlightened solution that is that great middle ground doing doing things the way we're doing it. We're just not, we're going to get a bunch of people yelling at each other and a bunch of extreme positions one way or the other, and it is not the way to run a society.

Yeah.

Srini Rao: This has been absolutely fascinating. So I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews, the unmistakable creative, what do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Jeff Wald: I would actually argue that one of the problems we have in society is that people keep trying to be unmistakable.

And the only way Given all of the noise that exists in societies to be unmistakable or noticeable in our societies to do something so outrageous that you capture the news cycle and that is a problem. So I wouldn't tell people to not try to be unmistakable. I would say I'm going to, I would say that the important thing is to be unmistakable to the people that are going to.

In whose lives you matter now, you can be unmistakable by being the kind of person that is always there to help for your friends and loved ones. You can be unmistakable by always being the person that gets the job done for your boss. Those are things I think that are really important because when I think about the people that are unmistakable in my life.

It's the people I know I can count on from a personal standpoint or from a professional standpoint. And those are things that I think make you unmistakable.

Srini Rao: Amazing. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story and your wisdom and insights with listeners. Where can people find out more about you your work in your book?

Jeff Wald: I wish I could say that the book is available or ever find books are sold in your local bookstores. But given that we're almost back to a lockdown here Amazon, shockingly, Amazon has the book and it's still the best place to find it. And anyone can always connect to me on LinkedIn.

If they want to talk about the future of work or on Twitter at Jeffrey

Srini Rao: Wald. Amazing. Again, thank you so much. This is phenomenal. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.