Pivot - Debt Ceiling, Trump Town Hall, and Guest Claire Hughes Johnson

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

Kara and Scott talk about the coronation, CNN's Trump town hall, and Elizabeth Holmes. Also, Twitter is bleeding blue checks, and Tucker Carlson reportedly spoke to Elon Musk about his next moves. Then, which party will come out ahead in the debt ceiling negotiations?  And, Friend of Pivot Claire Hughes Johnson to talk about what managers get wrong. You can find Claire on Twitter at @chughesjohnson, and can buy “Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building” here. Send us your questions! Call 855-51-PIVOT or go to nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway. And I have to tell you a few things about your liquor cabinet. No, kidding. We hid your liquor at your apartment. The Swishers were there. Oh, you busted into the liquor? No. No, we did not.

Daddy has good liquor. You do. Daddy likes the fire water. What'd you dig into? We didn't dig into anything. We actually moved the cart away from Saul and Lou Louis, really, in a lot of ways. But we moved it away from the children because they would have enjoyed playing with all your very clinky bottles and expensive crystal and stuff like that.

Champagne, Cool Whip, and 1942. A few of my favorite things. You did. 1942 is still sitting there on your thing, a gift from a friend of yours. You have beautiful liquor. But thank you so much for letting us stay there. We had a great time. You're very welcome. Did you guys have a nice time? We did. We had a great time. I had to travel to Toronto for the day on Saturday,

and Amanda went off to Brooklyn with the kids. But Louie did babysitting. We went to Chinatown. We went to dinner. We did a lot of fun things. We went to see Lucky uptown. Went to the Central Park Zoo. It was very New York.

It was a very New York situation. And it was lovely to stay. Your apartment, went to the Central Park Zoo. It was very New York. It was a very New York situation. And it was lovely to stay. Your apartment's perfect to stay at. And the kids loved running around in circles around the living room, which was great. That's great. Well, you know, I have the kids' room with the climbing wall. Kids aren't allowed in there. It's mostly to signal to strange people that I'm actually interested in parenting. Yeah. No one's allowed in there. Well, the kids were, and they actually solinated up quite a bit up the wall, which is a little

bit disturbing for a one and a half year old. He's quite athletic, which is interesting. Anyway, I heard you have a new king there in Britain. I mean, now that you're a British subject. Yes, this is very exciting. How'd it go? Look, I mean, a few things. One, if you think about it, I've been struck by kind of the level of snarkiness and animosity around it. I don't know if you've seen, there's TikToks everywhere of different football games all over, mostly in Scotland, of course, but also at the Liverpool game of fans, tens of thousands of fans erupting into you can stick the coronation up your ass.

Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, there was a lot of that going on. I put out a thing saying, in one of my more controversial tweets, with a picture of Charles the King saying, I can't help it. I like him and I wish him the best. I think he, like his mother, takes service seriously. And there's just no getting around it.

The idea of a monarchy and a bloodline is just a primitive concept. It probably doesn't stand the test of time. But in terms of monarchies, it's kind of the best bad one or it's the best of a bad lot. It actually generates money. I think if you think about, I look at it as a marketing construct, and I think it's one of the most successful marketing vehicles in history. And that is if Qatar spends a quarter of a trillion dollars to get the world to focus on them for a few days. I mean, for a lot less money, the whole world was focused on the UK.

In the pageantry, people are cynical about it, but I do think it's a sign of stability and consistency. It generates money for the UK in terms of media, tourism. Yeah, no, just so you know, the royal ceremony at Westminster Abbey was the first UK coronation in seven decades. Elizabeth was around for a long time. Over 2,000 guests attended, including 100 heads of state and First Lady Jill Biden. Well, there were protests, and there were a lot of crowds too. And one of the things that was interesting is that British people tell me Americans like the monarchy more than they do in a weird way. Americans like celebrating it. So, I mean, I think it was,

did you do anything? I watched in honor of it, Queen Charlotte on Netflix, which was fantastic. It's a six-part series about one of the Bridgerton plot lines, which was quite good. I did do something. I had a Cobb salad down by the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Oh, okay. You weren't there. And I had an Arnold Palmer, which for some reason I find British. But actually what I did was I charged my oldest son his home on the weekends. And I charged him with taking his 12-year-old out. I'm trying to get them at any excuse to get out of the house and do something for the coronation. And so I actually posted the picture on Twitter.

It's really cute. It's them at a restaurant and they have like a British Union Jack stuck into their burger. Oh, that's nice. That was their celebration of the coronation. And the photo was so hilarious because, you know, the 12-year-old, you know, fanboys, this 15-year-old, and he's leaning over for the picture and the 15-year-old is like leaning away. But I, look, I loved it.

I've been there. But, you know, the most controversial thing about the coronation was the date for the coronation, the date for Charles's coronation was announced like a decade ago, and it created a ton of controversy. You know what the date was? What? Camilla. It was Camilla. Oh, my God.

There's a lot of— Last one. Last one. Okay. It would have been so much better. It would have been just so much better if Charles' name had been Richard, because at some point they would have had to say, Introducing the Dick King. By the way, quick request.

Oh, my God. I would like you, if possible, just a small request. Can you start referring to me as king? No, I will not. I shall not do this. You are not the king. There's King Charles III. I'm excited about it.

King Charles. I like the monarchy. I'm hopeful for him. Good. There's King Charles III. I'm excited about it. King Charles. I like the monarchy. I'm hopeful for him. Good. He's a nice man. You're living in the perfect place then. God save the king. God save the king. Anyway, today we'll also talk about who's in and out at Twitter.

Also, Republicans aren't giving an inch in the budget, even as the debt ceiling gets closer. We'll speak with author Claire Hughes-Johnson about what managers get wrong. But first, tomorrow or tomorrow. Yeah, Tuesday. Trump is CNN's hosting a town hall for Trump. The event will be hosted by Caitlin Collins, who is CNN's chief White House correspondent during the Trump administration. She's now on that that doomed morning show. It's not doomed, but cursed morning show, I guess.

It will be live calling fact checking abilities into question after criticism. Warner Brothers CEO David Zasloff said, he's the frontrunner. He has to be on our network. We're happy he's coming on here. Obviously, he had to say that. And he wanted to have Trump on. What are you talking about?

They're trying to pull very hard to the right at CNN. I would agree with that issue, although I think it's going to be an almost impossible interview on many levels for Caitlyn, who's very talented and considered one of the hot stars of CNN, which is not very hot. Yeah. I'm curious to get your take on this. You're going to forget more than I'm ever going to know about journalistic situations like this. Kara, your thoughts? You know, I've talked to a lot of people at CNN, and they're not happy about it for a lot of reasons. They're not happy about it for a lot of reasons.

They're not happy that they're platforming him? Yeah, I think they think it's too early. Like, why now? Why this second? They don't think that he's not, you know, if he's the frontrunner, obviously, they would like him to be on the network. They just find it unusual that they're doing it at this moment. And, of course, it's because of ratings. Because CNN ratings are in the basement, like way below MSNBC and Fox and

everybody else, like significantly. And they've lost a lot of money. They've gone from a billion to 750 million. Of course, along the way, they insult Jeff Zucker, who was at the billion mark, right? And the better ratings mark. But I just think it's early. I would agree. Like, why now?

I think doing it with not being able to fax check quickly is a problem. This guy lies like he breathes. So I think that makes it difficult. You have to be extraordinarily quick on your feet. And I think Caitlin's quite talented, but man, it's gonna be a lift. She's not gonna win no matter what.

If she's too mean to him or too tough on him, she'll get slapped around by whoever slaps people around online. And if she's too nice, that'll be an issue, obviously. I think if you don't write up the top, ask him about the insurrection and really give it to him. I don't know where you can go with that interview if you act like nothing, you know. It's not normalizing as much as as I hope she's not too polite. I'll tell you, because this guy deserves enormous scrutiny. But given how much he's insulted CNN, et cetera, real early for this.

And so I don't quite know why he's on there right now. But they got him, I guess. I think they should absolutely have him. Yeah. He's the former president. He's the front runner. I mean, of course they should have him. Yeah.

And not only that, they need the ratings. They need the ratings. The meltdown at CNN is literally historic in terms of the number of viewers they've shed. But also at Fox. It ends up that Tucker, the shows before and after him, not only has his hour lost a ton of viewers, the hours after him, it ended up he literally was the anchor. Yeah, he's the Rachel Maddow with that. And Rachel did the same thing. And without him, people just aren't tuning into the network for the entire evening.

So I believe that everyone talks about, so the Don Lemon and Tucker Carlson firings immediately went to, well, what did they do? Right. It's not what they did. It's the fact that their businesses are imploding. And when business is bad, they would have overlooked Tucker's bullshit. If that morning show with Don, maybe not CNN, because CNN is more, you know, it has more self-hate and it's more subject to outside criticism, which might be good or bad. But when times are good, you find reasons or you wallpaper over inappropriate behavior.

And when times are bad, it becomes intolerable when that person that's making 10 or 20 million or whatever, Don, you know, makes a mistake. The reason Don Lemon got fired was not because of a stupid comment. He was fired because that show wasn't working. Yep. And they were looking for excuse. I would agree. It was a bullshit reason. And Tucker.

Yeah. Yeah, and they were looking for ex-chefs here talking about it. There's something about the prestige and the marquee value of television. But what will be a lot more important is what happens after on social. In terms of actually influence. A certain number of arbiters and influencers will decide if it went well or it didn't go well. And that'll be the impact, the shampoo effect that'll take place online and the memes and all the things, the clips that are played over. But they should absolutely have him on, and she should not overthink it. She should hold his feet to the same fire or not fire, as she would any other political guest. But she absolutely, in my view, should push back and say, that's not true.

You know who I would love to do this interview? I think her name's Deirdre Bolsa from CNBC. She did an interview with Keith Robois, who came on to talk about Open Door. And he immediately began lying. He immediately began saying, oh, we've been profitable five years straight. And she said, no, you haven't. The construct we use for establishing profitability is GA gap. You have never been profitable. And she would, in a polite, forcefully yet dignified way, stop him and go, you can't say that on CNBC. forceful yet, you know, graceful. Yeah. Because that is hard to do.

It's hard to stop someone and go, that's not true, Mr. President. And at the same time, because, you know, he'll immediately go to, oh, I see CNN's ratings are failing. You will see him. The only thing I know about this interview is he will reference CNN's declining ratings. Yep, he will. Without me, you're nothing. But good luck, Caitlin. I don't even know what I would ask for.

It's probably about the insurrection but there's so many things all the uh the rape thing the oh god just and then he'll say why are you focused on that and not what i want to do with my next presidency kind of thing that's a great first question yeah what's your vision for america why do you want a second term yeah start there yeah i guess but you really have to go into the the the insurrection the other stuff quickly. There's a lot of things to cover. Yeah. I don't think David Zasloff should have been up there flacking.

It made Chris Licht, who runs CNN, look weaker. And it was weird. It was weird. I don't know what you're talking about. The CEO, David Zasloff, got on and justified it when he was asked about it. He was answering other things. And I guess they asked him that, but he should defer. He should defer.

He can't help himself. He's a big footer. He's a major big footer. Thing, did you see the New York Times profile of Elizabeth Holmes, Call Me Liz, over the weekend? Again, I just read about the evaluation of it. A lot of people think she's – a lot of people found it almost like – it reminded me of the reviews of when SBF interviewed with Andrew Osorkin. People felt it didn't make any sense. She didn't do it to herself any favors. What did you think? I don't think it was very good on the writer's part. I thought the writer,

there was a really interesting, it was far too kind. It was weird. It was weird. And I don't think she had the chops to be able to pull it off. Her name's Amy Chozek. I'm sorry, Amy, I think you're a very talented writer, but this one was really terrible. I was, she wrote, I was admittedly swept up in Liz as an authentic and sympathetic person. She's gentle and charismatic in a quiet way. My editor laughed when I shared these impressions telling me and I quote, Amy Chozek, you got rolled. Amyzik, you got rolled. Amy Chozik, you got rolled. This is someone who was, I suppose, people are complex. Amanda pointed this out to me. But I think this woman was just convicted for fraud. So she might be good at it. I asked Elizabeth Holmes for an interview, but I would have been quite tough on her. And not, you know, there was a lot of like, how lovely and gentle her and her husband are and how this is so unfair. And, you know, she had a lot of babies.

The words you're using sound quite frankly, a little bit sexist. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Well, that's what they, that's what she was using.

And they, there was, you know, she had the children out, you know, showing off the kids. She has two young children. Can you believe that? She got pregnant in the midst of a trial.

Yeah. And I'm talking about how she fell in love in the middle of it. I just feel like most people who are convicted of fraud don't get this kind of treatment. The reason she's charismatic is because she was charismatic when she was defrauding people. And on one hand, I feel like Elizabeth Holmes, there's lots of people in Silicon Valley who did the same or worse than her and didn't get to go to jail. Same thing like Martha Stewart was the only person going to jail for insider trading. You're kidding me, right? I get that. That said, both of them are guilty. So that's the way it goes, I guess. I don't know. Well, but that's the uncomfortable part of this. And that is 3% of unicorn CEOs are female.

And it felt like the first one to go away for kind of 10 years plus was a woman. And I feel like, so compare her to Adam Neumann. Adam lost $13 billion. Right. And I want to be clear, there's a distinction here. Adam Neumann was never accused of fraud, nor was he convicted of it. And she was outright lying. People would say that Adam Neumann exaggerated.

There is a distinction. And people always go, their go-to is, well, but this is more serious. It's not about lying about office space or exaggerating office space. It's about issues related to people's health. She wasn't convicted for anything regarding misleading people around their health. She was convicted of lying toank wanted to save face. And they weren't going to go after him and accuse him of fraud because it would have meant the company going bankrupt and American vultures coming in. So they worked it out with Adam.

Whereas the board at Theranos, which was a bunch of very, very prestigious, what I call FIPS, formerly important people that pollute these boards. FIPS, nice word. Which kind of describes every country club I've been to lunch at. But anyways, I think they decided they felt really wronged and they went after her. Well, it was the investors. It was the investors mostly. Yeah, she lost institutional capital.

Right. The board didn't do its job asking real questions. No. And they went after her. They actually ignored it. I think if Adam Newman's board had gone after him and claimed that there were so many exaggerations around these numbers, I think he would have been on a lot of hot water. I think Adam Newman is literally the luckiest person. First off, the first person to get a 10% commission on losing $13 billion. No one's pulled that off. I think things, I got to admire his bravado. I would have thought after watching some of the trials that are happening, and the worm has turned, people are being sent to jail now. It's not just Elizabeth Holmes. There's several kind of tech executives who've been brought up on charges. But if I were Adam Neumann, I would be keeping a very low profile. I got to admit, he's got incredible backbone and moxie. Yeah. Yeah. Well, getting back to Elizabeth,

there was so many great tweets about it, like that now she's Liz as opposed to Elizabeth. And this was a very kind article, I would say. But it sounds like the definition of access journalism. That's a big guess, right? Yeah, she didn't come on my show. I asked her. I texted with her, too. So everybody's competing. Elizabeth Holmes and her probably very high-paid communications consultants are selecting on who they think will be kindest to her. Yeah.

So I think it's difficult. Anyways, I don't— I guess. I can sympathize with a woman with kids going to jail, but not as much as this was. This was really— But didn't she decide to have kids once she decided to— I guess. I can sympathize with a woman with kids going to jail, but not as much as this was. Didn't she decide to have kids once she decided? She did. It felt to me very emotionally manipulative that she was trying to manipulate the jury.

I don't know about that. It's a terrible thing to say, but I think showing up. There might be an age thing. Who knows? But nonetheless, I would urge you all to read the profile. It's called Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth. The black turtlenecks are gone, so is the voice. As the convicted Theranos founder awaits prison, she adopts a new persona, devoted mother. Everybody, guess what? She had the black turtlenecks and she had the voice. So maybe you should think about that. Just think about why she did that. Anyway, let's get to our first big story.

big story. Twitter Blue's early adopters are also its biggest quitters. Last November, about 150,000 users signed up for Blue. Of the early group, fewer than 70,000 still subscribe, or less than half. Others have signed up since then. Twitter Blue has about 620,000 users total. They're not the only ones heading out the door. High-level executives have left the company since the start of May when the vesting clip took effect. The departures came from the trust and safety team as well as public policy. There's reportedly confusion over the company's parental leave policy. It was formerly 20 weeks and supposedly went down to two. Now Twitter says it's 12, maybe. There's also rules around the Parental Leave Act around those numbers. Depends on the state you're in, too.

They also stopped issuing cash bonuses to employees. So we haven't checked in on this business. But Blue is not working as a big business. I mean, if you math it out, I guess, 620. That's about $5 million or about $60 million a year if everyone's paying $8, right? Yeah, because it could be us mixed in with it, right? Could it be people who have them before? Yeah, I don't know how many of those people are paying. Who knows? And who knows what numbers from this bucks, right? Yeah, because it could be us mixed in with it, right? Could it be people who have them before? Yeah, I don't know how many of those people are paying. Who knows?

And who knows what numbers from this guy, right? But let's say, let's assume it's somewhere between $30 and $50 million. They used to be $5 billion. So that's 1% of previous revenues. Post-Moss taking over, it's now $2 billion. So it's about somewhere between, call it, 1.5% and 3% of their revenue. And as long as it's growing but this this just hasn't i mean there's nothing around it this just hasn't worked no it's not

worked it's fine it's fine it's a little business like kind of a little thing um i don't know what they else they're gonna you know supposedly he keeps saying they're rolling out all kinds of things for businesses um and then you know i was thinking we talked about brian chesky rolling out very useful things features over time that work, like price transparency, whatever they were trying to do, more and more small features that make your life on the app better or whatever you're using better. And this is not that. They're doing the exact opposite of what Airbnb did. The biggest impact in business this year is not AI. It's not supply chain. It's the sonic boom heard around

the world. Elon Musk taking Twitter from 7,500 employees to 1,000. And he's done it in about, what, six or nine months? I don't think that has ever happened at a company that was breakeven and not an immediate distress. I have never seen, when he came into the company, it was losing money on a cashflow basis, but it was kind of breakeven-ish. There wasn't a burning platform other than the debt he took on. I got to give it to the guy. I do think it's a minimum viable product.

I personally wouldn't know the difference other than the thing I've noticed about Twitter. And I don't know if you feel the same or if people just dislike us more. It feels like it's gotten even more toxic. Oh, I just turn off comments, Scott. I don't know why you would leave them on in any way. But my point is, since he took it over, the one thing I would notice, to be fair, I haven't noticed any change in functionality. Maybe that's because I wasn't using a lot of the functionality other than for two weeks, I couldn't get on it.

But the thing I have noticed is, and I've thought, is that people getting angrier or more upset because the world is getting harder for them. It does feel like the ratio of really ugly comments, people saying really aggressive, angry things has been ramped up. And also the thing I've noticed about the blue check is it does appear to be definitely Elon fans. But it just seems like, he's got to come up with more businesses. I'm sure he can keep this thing afloat for as long as he wants.

I don't think it's in any crisis position, but he certainly hasn't saved it and made it better. He's made it worse, essentially, and less lucrative, I guess. Yeah, but whether it's a writer's strike or parental leave at Twitter, it all reverse engineers back to the same thing, and that is consumers are spending less money on advertising that used to support two and a half men for 30 minutes every week.

Now it's one seven-episode, one-hour thing, so there's less. And consumers are spending $12 a month instead of $200 on their cable bill. Right. And there is $2 billion to be divvied up at the end of the year from advertisers instead of $5. So, you're about to see just everything get a little shittier and a little worse. And, you know, whether it's – there'll be all sorts of arguments for AI and there's leverage between the studios and writers. At the end of the day, the thing causing all of this is there's not enough money to go around. Yeah.

Because if cable viewership was up and they still commanded the CPMs, there probably or there were still just a ton of people were watching a ton of late night television or ad supported television. The studios probably would have come to an accommodation with the writers. And Elon Musk, I would think, wouldn't be cutting parental leave. I was about to say, I don't think he's malicious, but I think sometimes he is. I just think you shouldn't expect it with him. Although Tesla has 16 weeks paid leave, which is interesting. We've made a lot of progress around that. I mean, paternity leave were not two words you ever heard in the same sentence when I was working. No, I get it. But still, we haven't made progress. The United States sucks on this issue. Every other- 100%.

I mean, I don't even want to say we made progress because it really isn't. It isn't progress. California, 12 weeks unpaid leave. Well, thanks. You know, you just get to leave. You just don't get to pay for it. I think it's just really the way we treat parents with children. No, but there are a lot of the better companies. And granted, it's still, I mean, we don't have, we've got to pay for, we have to have universal, we have to have universal childcare if we want to maintain a growing workforce. But so there's a lot of places we could start. I'm just saying in terms of the best, when my mom was working, you got two weeks vacation

a year. And my partner at Prof G, Catherine Dillon, who runs the company, talks about it at ABC News. They got two weeks maternity leave. That was hard when I had Louie. Louie's about to turn 21. I was, it was a whole, you had to cobble together stuff. And companies finally got, companies are the ones that are better. And I'm just saying, whatever, they should.

They should. It's a good cost to pay, but companies can decide. The world that this generation doesn't recognize is the difference between, and I'll use business in school as an example, the average graduate of Stern right now, they're making incredible money. And I think the average number of offers is somewhere between like three and five offers per student. Wow, that's good. When I got out of business school in 1992, in the midst of a recession, 40% of the graduating class on the day of graduation had a job.

Oh, that's amazing. So the majority of us had zero offers. Right. offers. And the negotiation with an employer was just entirely different. The benefits, the amount of leave, the asymmetry of power or leverage between capital and labor has massively benefited labor for about 20 or 30 years across the information economy, not across the lower end of the spectrum. But if you had the right skills and right certification, effectively all management meetings were about how do we surprise and delight employees with compensation, economic and non-economic, to keep them happy here. And for the first time in the young adult lives of the majority of information workers, the power has swung back to capital. That's right.

And Elon will do whatever he wants. And speaking of doing whatever he wants, Tucker Carlson, as predicted here on Pivot, reportedly spoke with Musk about working together, although he's- Shocker. Shocker. Are you shocked? I'm shocked. I'm not shocked. I love being right.

Though he's supposedly having similar conversations with Rumble and Newsmax. Chris Ruddy's really out there doing a fan dance for him. Maybe looking into his own venture. Maybe he's going to do his own podcasting. Maybe he's going to do his own events. There was one about whether he's going to do a Republican debate. He's still under contract, though, with Fox into early 2025. He'd have to get out of that before he could join anybody, which means they can do whatever they want with him, which is hysterical.

He can make as much noise as he wants. They don't have to let him out of that contract. I don't know. Do you think they probably will if he takes less money, presumably, right? If they own 20 and if he takes five or something like that? Well, it depends. Usually, it's something called garden leave. And that is when you leave, you have a contract that says there's a cooling off period. And investment banks, it's very common because they don't want the guy who's running coverage for healthcare. Yeah. No, he has it. He can't do anything until 2025 with anybody. He's quite locked up. My guess is if they really want to stick up the middle finger,

and my sense is these guys have a middle finger the size of the Empire State Building and are willing to use it, they would just pay him and keep him off the market and let his career waver a little bit. I don't know how much money we're talking about. I think it's like $20 million for something that sticks in my head. Yeah, but for a guy like Tucker Carlson, who I would imagine has made hundreds of millions, the biggest fuck you would be to let his career atrophy pay him the money so he can't do anything. Yeah, maybe they'll do that. He's got a pretty tough lawyer, same lawyer that Don Lemon has, but we'll see if they let him. The lawyer's making a lot of noise, which means I think

Fox is like, fuck you, we're not letting you out of the contract. Because the lawyer is suddenly blabbity blabbing. If I were Rupert Murdoch and I really didn't like this guy and it sounds like he generally doesn't like him, I'd be like, okay, boss, go fade into oblivion. Here's your 20 million. Fade to black, my brother. Yes, all right. In two years, no one's going to remember who you are. Yeah, could be interesting.

I'll see. He's going to try to get out. But the ratings have plunged since he was let go, as you said. And so I think they're going to sideline him. I think they're going to sideline him. Yeah. There's always a deal in some way, but it was interesting. The lawyer is suddenly rather loud about the issue. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, the debt ceiling is getting closer and lower, and the Republicans want to slam right into it. And we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Claire Hughes-Johnson, about a wide range of topics. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Scott, we're back and starting the negotiations over the debt ceiling. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is headed to the White House on Tuesday to try to hammer out a deal with President Biden and congressional leaders. No deals expected, though, and time is running out. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the country has only weeks left before it hits an economic and financial catastrophe. And that's the Treasury Secretary. Oh, that's scary. The Secretary also warned against proposals to invoke the 14th Amendment to avoid breaching the debt ceiling. Scholars say that doing so would cause a legal fight and turmoil in the markets. The 14th Amendment has a provision that says a validity of public debts shall not be

questioned. I can't believe we're going to the 14th Amendment at this point. What would be the economic effect of a default? One analysis by Moody's projected the Republican budget could destroy nearly 800,000 jobs. We'll just review quickly. The House has passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling. The bill goes after the Inflation Reduction Act. Chuck Schumer says it's dead on arrival. And McCarthy has only a five-vote majority in the House. He has to keep everyone on board, including the Freedom Caucus. Yeah, I don't fully understand. I mean, I don't fully understand. I mean, first off, America has this secret aircraft squadron that several hundred aircraft carriers called the US dollar. Everybody uses our dollar. The other incredible weapon we have is that the cost of capital is the lowest for all American businesses

and individuals because our government can borrow money at a lower rate. And the reason they can borrow that money at the lowest rate globally, maybe with the exception of Japan and Germany, I shouldn't have said the lowest, Switzerland, Germany, and Japan probably have lower rates. But is the full faith and backing of the U.S. government means something. People believe they're going to get their money back. And any interruption in that essentially is this insidious, somewhat imperceptible, but real impact on everyone's lives. If interest rates go up, in the short-term, havoc it would wreak would just be immense. And not only that, it's the definition of a self-inflicted wound. The other thing that strikes me about this, Cara, is that the Republicans have normalized this hostage-taking

because it wouldn't be any less strange. It wouldn't be any less un-American than if the Democrats said, we control. You're the Republicans. You're the ones that love business. You're the ones that are supposed to be the market people and the adults in the room that hold the checkbook, right? We Democrats who control the Senate want you to fund universal child care and increased social security and social programs, or we're not going to agree to raise the debt limit. It would be no different than if the Democrats took the whole thing hostage. Child care for all, although I'd be going, yay. And yet we have decided, because it's the Republicans that do this over and over, that this hostage taking is somehow a legitimate point of negotiation for the

Republicans. It really isn't. And even the left, even the liberal media is saying, well, you got to hand it to him. I watched Meet the Press this weekend with TikTok. TikTok. They said, well, the Republicans have put forward something that's reasonable. And I'm like, the whole thing begins from the premise of being unreasonable. And that is, why would any one party just hold a gun to the head of the

economy to try and get leverage? Why wouldn't the Democrats do the same thing? How have we normalized Republicans taking the debt limit as a hostage? They've got a pretty hard right side. He's got a pretty hard right side. Of course, there's other districts that are less so in the Republican Party that might move over to the Democratic side. And of course, everyone has an interest in lowering the deficit, FYI. It's far too high because of both Republican and Democratic spending. That's a conversation we should have. We should have conversations around spending and how we cut it and be responsible. But what's most cynical about this hostage taking is they don't want to even outline, even when the Democrats say,

what do you propose when we cut? The Democrats, the Republicans don't want to even outline specific programs they'd cut. They want everyone to do it, so everyone takes the blame. They're like, we just need to spend less, but they wouldn't dare say what they want to spend less on. If you were an AI generative model that looks at the relationship between words and patterns such that it can predict the next word, that the color of the night sky is black or blue, depending on the time of the night. It figures out the relationship such that it can predict what would be the next word and the relationship between those words in a sentence. If it did the same thing around what's happened with the debt ceiling fights,

it's usually that as we get closer and closer and the markets become more jittery, Republicans realize this is a losing issue for them. That if in fact they do tank the economy, that the majority of the blame won't be on the president at the time. It will actually be the Republicans. So I think it's a winning issue for the Democrats. The Democrats just say, this is a hostage taking. We're not even going to validate this

or justify it with an attempt to negotiate. We just can't. What do you imagine happening? Like they're going to get together. And Biden's been nice. He's saying that Ken McCarthy is wise. He's not being too mean. I noticed he was being rather gallant. What do you imagine happening? They won't default on this. The Biden administration will give them something like an agreement to look at this or a committee or whatever it is such that Kevin McCarthy and Republicans can declare victory and say they got something.

But this is a loser. I would imagine this is a loser issue for the Republicans. Yeah, they've gone out on a limb here like an idiot. I mean, this is Brexit. This is our form of Brexit. That is probably the greatest self-inflicted unnecessary wound in the West over the last decade. You know, if you go back 20 years, you'd have to say invasion of Iraq. Anyways, the biggest one, though, by far would be if we miss a debt payment and cause this

crazy havoc in the capital markets. Yep, the stock market, especially with everything else happening with the banks. It's just, it's a really badly timed and, you know, especially with the deficit, which everyone's responsible for, not just Trump, of course, increased it quite a bit. But other presidents have also. I think Clinton was the one who brought it down, which is kind of funny. George Bush exploded it. Yeah.

Basically been tax cuts and wars and then the pandemic. Pandemic, yeah. But yeah, it's Republicans that have exploded the deficit. Well, both. There's been Democrats who did. I mean, yes, but yes, Republicans have not been conservative in this regard. But they just want to go after the kind of things they want to go after and increase spending on things they like. But you're right. Reagan started it.

Yep, 100%. Vice President Cheney is famous for saying deficits don't matter. And this is the problem. The reason why financial services companies go out of business and banks go out of business is not because they're bad businesses. They go out of business because banks go out of business. It's not because they're bad businesses. They go out of business because of mismatched durations. And that is they take in short deposits, people who can get their money back in two minutes on their iPhone, and then they loan it long. And that is they can't call in a mortgage. They can't call in a business loan on three minutes notice on an iPhone. Mismatched durations. And you have the same thing here and that is we have we have a mismatch

in durations from a civic standpoint and that is our elected officials aren't around long enough right to have incentive to try and think long term that's right because the deficit is like that'll be the next president's problem yeah that'll be we will maintain low interest rates we can pay the interest on this massive increase in debt that'll be someone else's problem. the Inflation Reduction Act. But we'll see where it goes. I agree. Just one more point here. I apologize, Sarah. Sure. No, go ahead. The thing that's just so ironic or so, I mean, you got to really respect the Republican Party. The Republican Party represents the 1%. And the 1% is super important. Our innovators, they control a disproportionate amount of the capital and influence. Okay, they do a great job.

What's super impressive, though, is they convince a lot of people, not even at 98%, but below 50% in terms of income-earning households that they represent them. And if you look at social spending, they get more money from the federal government than they pay into it in taxes. You would think that every red state would love big government because they're the ones that are benefiting from it. They do. They're takers. I point this out every time they start going on about development. Well, then stop taking so much. Stop taking so much from California, which is a giver. Yes, that should be pointed out continually how certain states, most of the states that take are red states. Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

Claire Hughes-Johnson is the former chief operating officer of Stripe, where she remains an advisor. She also spent 10 years at Google. She's the author of Scaling People, Tactics for Management and Company Building. Scott, I brought her here just for you. So, Claire, welcome. We've known each other a long time since you were back at Google, right? And then you went all over the place. You went to a number of different companies,

including Stripe. I want to know, talk to me, because one of the reasons is you are companies that scaled. So talk about this idea of what scaling is for people who don't understand. There are companies that cannot, don't scale well as they get bigger. Google obviously wasn't one of them. So talk a little bit about what the concepts of people can understand it. Well, I think when people talk about scaling, they're usually talking about getting to high growth. And that's usually, Kara, talking about like, did I get product market fit and then really take the traction and the opportunity so the market in front of me and grow quickly. But I think you referred to this. I think of scaling as how do you actually build a company to last? How do you build so that you don't fall over in the process of that high growth or even maybe not high growth?

But my book, Scaling People, is really more about intentional investment in company operating structures and how you hire and how you invest in teams and people. Because I think the companies that do fall over or do run into trouble, it's often because they don't have a great foundation. For that, of scaling people, of the talent itself. So talk, what are the most important things when you think about that? And of course, there's a difference between, you know, Google back in the sort of the salad days and now, which is very different. But what are the most important elements? Well, I think that, by the way, I mean, the whole, my philosophy of the book is, yes, people matter,

but it's investing intelligently in operating structures. So the system in which you operate and the people, which is how you get outsized results, as opposed to that being an afterthought. And I think there's a lot of resistance in young companies to processes and ways to make decisions and ways to actually identify talent and develop them. And that is all known by many great big companies as important. And so why not? Let's talk about it for something that's younger. Google, I think you probably remember, early on didn't have a lot of... Chaos is how I recall.

Well, not a lot of belief in management. They didn't. That's correct. Yeah. And it was not highly valued. Let's just say that. And that was something that I struggled with because it mattered to me. It mattered to me that I was a great manager. It mattered as I became a leader, which I think is a different skill set. And I think that did change. That did change over time at Google, but it was pretty chaotic. So what do you mean when you say you've got to have it when you're saying there's got to be management there or being a good manager right now? So management to me and part of like this book is very tactical. It's sort of like, how do you do the thing? Templates, outlines of conversations, guides.

And a lot of that is because John and Patrick, the founders of Stripe, were like, look, you end up, especially as a founder, all of a sudden you've built a product and gotten product market fit. And then you have to do something pretty different, which is build a company. And you need to put a lot of things in place and you also need to manage people all of a sudden. You're suddenly hiring and managing a leadership team. Often in tech,

there are people who have more experience than you have. And so I think that when I say management, I think it's a very knowable skill. It's very trainable. It's like, look, I've got an assignment. This is my scope of responsibilities. I've got to get from A to B. So I've got to collect the right portfolio of people, get the best out of them, track progress, set metrics and goals and execute.

Right. And by the way, coach and understand. I mean, the hardest part about management is you have to manage different people differently. What motivates Kara versus Scott, I bet is pretty different. And so your job is to sort of, I say, be an explorer, not a lecturer, is to like really figure that out. Because if you want to get, you know, 3x returns, I mean, I'm not an engineer. A 10x engineer can build a product by themselves. The only way I scale and the only way I have impact that's 10x or 3x even is through people.

And so if you don't get good at that, I don't really know what you're doing with your time. Right. Scott, this is your area. I'm just curious what your observations around how best practices regarding management of change in a remote world. I actually don't think they've changed. They've become more important and more intentional, and people sort of feel awkward, though, doing them, right? Because a lot of best practices have to do with hallway conversation or let's touch base after the meeting.

Let me see how you think you did in that presentation. Here's some feedback. And you get this sort of synchronous interaction around the work that you don't get in the same way when you're working remotely, which means you have to create it. You have to create windows for your team to connect more personally,

even if it's on Zoom or maybe even asynchronously through Slack channels or fun documents that you share and comment on. And you need to feel comfortable texting, slacking, pinging, calling your team to have the hallway chat. And I don't know that every manager, instead, we're sort of like, leave meeting. And then we just like forget about our team. And that's a recipe for some trouble. It's so true. We used to, the companies I was working at and running, no less than eight times a day, just impromptu, you know, yell at someone or get their eye contact and just notion. We could read each other's body language and we jump into a conference room sometimes for two, three minutes to talk about something.

And or provide feedback. Or in almost every meeting, we'd ask a couple people or I'd ask someone to stick around just to debrief or whatever it is. You'll lose most of that, or at least maybe because I'm not disciplined enough, but you just lose that organic fluidity I find in remote. I wonder if they're going to start building in tools

to remind people for those organic, more fluid interactions. Because Zoom is like, okay, 60 minutes for this, and there's five people on it. Can you think of a company that's been able to, a startup in the last three years, that's been able to scale remotely? I'm not a fan of, I think there's a lot of downsides to remote work. And I'm trying to figure out how companies, what are the better companies that have been able to extend their culture? I feel like they're harvesting a strong culture and surviving, but not building cultures remotely. Do you have any thoughts? I do. I think that I, I mean, I think of Automatic, which owns WordPress, right? And they've been

remote, fully distributed for a long time. Forever. And they've published. Forever. they've been remote, fully distributed for a long time. And they've published forever. Yeah. And they have, I think, very intentional cadences. I mean, one, they have an internal norm, which is if all three of us were in a in person in an office, but we were joining a meeting with a few other people who were remote, we'd all three do what we're doing right now, we'd be on separate machines, even if we were physically together, because they're trying to level the playing field of the of the sort of hybrid communication. So that's one. Another is they're extremely intentional, and I think, and Stripe now does this, of gathering people in person on a cadence. I think some of their development teams, meaning like design, product, engineering, gather

quite frequently, and then others gather less often, maybe at least once a year. I think GitLab has published some stuff. I mean, if you look at Stripe, honestly, Stripe has always had remote employees. When I joined it, when it was 160 people, I would say it was about 15% of the company. And that was a talent strategy. We weren't going to attract engineers if we didn't sort of hire them from all over the place. And it was always about 20%. And now, obviously, it's much higher. But it is about being extremely intentional about your communication practices, how you document work so that people can work asynchronously, and then how you intentionally do connect. And I do think, Scott, I agree, people need to be in person occasionally,

they need to make the human connection, which I think you can't. But, and then Stripe is a very avid user of Slack. I mean, we just, there's a lot of, you know, again, hallway chatter that just happens in Slack. And I was actually in a board meeting for another company recently, and most of the board was in person. We had a few people on video and we had one person from the company presenting and I was sitting, I happened to be sitting next to his boss. And the guy right as he finished his presentation, you know, his manager, who's the head of sales at this company, sent him a slack and said, you know, hey, great job, and made a suggestion. And I love seeing that I actually wish he'd asked him first, how do you think you did? But you know, I think that you there are tools, then you can use them, but you have to

be intentional, intentional. So one of the things that had happened, and you've been through these days is tech had sort of a real boom with the all the benefits, the free lunches, everything else, obviously, we're in an era of layoffs now, Stripe 2 has also had to pull in its horns quite a bit. Talk about how you both incentivize employees in this situation that are there and also how you cope with it because it seems like managers have gotten an upper hand on employees

or maybe we just discussed that around Twitter with the parental leave stuff that was floating around this weekend. Yeah, I think that, I mean, first of all, I've never subscribed. There was sort of a mercenary thing that starts to happen, right? Where it was like an arms race around benefits, some of which, you know, I don't need my dry cleaning picked up at my cubicle or whatever. Like benefits that aren't what motivate me as an employee. It's nice to have them. But I think

you want to be focused on what matters to people, purpose, autonomy, independence to do their work, ability to learn, who am I learning from? Am I getting more responsibility, right? I think going back to those basics is something that, well, good companies didn't really lose, but you can really emphasize. But when you talk about something like parental leave, you know, that's different than laundry service, right? Or like you can have less, fewer snack options in your micro kitchen, and you're going to be fine if you have a good culture, if you have the right other incentives in the place. I think being strategic about what matters truly matters to people and their kids and their experience as new parents really matters to people. Their health, right, matters. And things that are more like a perk.

And I think you have to really be smart about when you distinguish between the two. And what is the power relationship now between, especially in tech, between employees and managers? I mean, you've seen sort of the hard-edged Elon Musk efforts that other people admire. And you, of course, still see most tech companies, which are pretty nice to their remaining employees, for sure. There's something here that's a little bit, I don't know, it feels a little Machiavellian or cold, which is depending on, you know, your economic power is how you should decide these things, which I don't subscribe to. I think company, I mean, there are humans founding these companies and leading these companies. I've been one of them.

And I actually do care about the people who work there because I know they're the ones doing the real work. And I am not looking at my economic status to see like, you know, where's my leverage against them. And in fact, I think companies used to have more of that mindset. And I think today's worker, if you will, does not really enjoy that mindset. And they want to feel connected to the place they work in a different way than they did 20 years ago when that just didn't seem on the table. But I will also say this, which is there is still a war for talent, right? Especially, I mean, if we're talking about engineers, let's not kid ourselves. There's never going to be enough engineers at any time. I mean, I think some of the engineers, let's not kid ourselves. There's never going to be enough engineers at any time.

I mean, I think some of the advances we're seeing, whether it's in AI or low-code tools, are starting to level that, but not meaningfully. So companies that think they have some kind of power, if you will, I think are misguided. Claire, any thoughts on best practices regarding what I've always thought was the most difficult thing about management was compensation? I said in the book, I was like, I could write a whole other book about compensation,

and I really don't want to because it's still like, right now you bringing it up, I just got like a little bit of a hive. I don't know. It's brutal. It is brutal. And I had no idea when I walked into being COO of Stripe that that would consume so much of my time and energy.

Shocking. Like if everyone had to say, what surprised you the most when you joined? That. That is what surprised me the most. How much I had to think about compensation. And if you are lucky enough to be in a high growth environment, meaning your value is growing at a really rapid clip. You get all these inequities of how you did compensation two years ago, where the stock price was, how you think about the next set of employees. And it's a monstrously hard thing to do. I mean, I have some ideas and some thoughts, but I don't think anyone has figured out any smart practices here. What are your ideas and thoughts?

One of my ideas I'll give you is that I came to believe this is going to be, like, there's a lot of energy wasted on these sort of annual increase, whether that's a merit-based increase or it's a market, you know, increase or whatever. Like, you spend all this energy on a few percentage points of additional salary. And now, right now we're talking about fairly highly paid positions, right? I mean, I'm just gonna, and I came to believe that I think we'd be better off

saying, okay, it's almost like a school or some institutions do this, which is you're in this job at this level. You're a level three engineer or you're a level two operations coordinator. And you know what? That salary is this, XK a year, 80K, 120K a year. And that salary is going to get reviewed for market data.

So we may move that salary up or down based on what's happening in the market, but we're not going to get into like a couple percentage points. You perform better than you performed. Where you're going to see any additional compensation is going to get into like a couple percentage points you perform better than you performed. Where you're going to see any additional compensation is going to come from some kind of bonus program or equity refresh program. Because I think too much energy is spent, you know, working on $500. And you really want to actually level. You can't possibly know that Scott should have gotten another $500 than Kara.

You should be spending the energy on your top talent and on rewarding the people who had the outsized impact and thinking of how you do that on a, you know, maybe that's twice a year, maybe it's once a year, but that's the thing I want to explore more. The bonus, a bonus, like a bonus, but it's more like, like, look, what, what your inputs and your outputs. How did you work? And then how did you impact what we needed to get done? Which means, by the way, you have to build a good way to measure that. And so I think that's the other place people fall down is they put a bonus in price and they have no way to actually tell the impact. And I would love to see more team-based impact, by the way. So much of comp is built around the individual.

I have a follow-up question around culture. The first company, the only real job I ever had was at Morgan Stanley. It's built around the individual. I have a follow-up question around culture. The first company, the only real job I ever had was at Morgan Stanley. And the culture and the implicit agreement between its employees and the organization was we own you. And you're going to work your ass off. You're going to have no life. And in exchange for that, your career will accelerate faster than it would almost anywhere else. And you're going to make a lot of money for a 24, a 30, or year old. And then my first client was Levi Strauss and company. And they took the opposite tact. And they said, part of your compensation here is that we recognize you

have a life outside of work. We have summer Fridays. We have leave. It is absolutely encouraged to say, I'm a little league coach and I need to be out of here at one o'clock today. That was encouraged and rewarded. I have not, and maybe it's because I've been out of the workplace for a while, I have not seen companies be able to manage or traverse up and down that based on people's individual needs. Have you? Yeah, I thought where you were going is like, yeah, I do think, I remember my mom, who was a college professor, once like sort of took me aside and said, look, I had to make a choice in my career between money or time. And that's a pretty hard choice that a lot of people feel like they end up making. Traversing up and down that is hard because you can be, I mean, I have a kid who's going to be applying to college. And if you look at colleges, they're making choices. And you're like, well, do I want to be in more of this kind of grind environment, but they might have better like real world jobs and internships and work you do while you're in school? Or do I want to be in this sort of more flexible, different kind of academic environment, and you could choose one

or the other? How do you flex it up and down? I don't know, Scott, what do you think? Like, I don't think it's pretty hard to build a culture that has that in it. I mean, one thing I have thought about back to the team-based work thing is if you had, you know how sometimes the week of a company or even you guys, you record your podcast, like, it's a little slower on this day, then it ramps up to intensity. And then it's sort of like maybe Friday's a little less busy, fewer meetings, whatever it is. I've thought about if there's a way to cycle teams through being really high intensity and then having downtime more intentionally, but I haven't really pushed that thinking very far. I think where it rears its ugly head and the reason why many of these companies that offered the best compensation ultimately became more male-dominated and didn't have as many opportunities for women

is when this really becomes a problem is when people have kids, specifically when women have kids who still shoulder a disproportionate amount of responsibility. So, at Morgan Stanley and these high-accelerant, high-compensating, you know, very expectation of massive amount of work and commitment, that's all fine and good until you have kids. Right. Scott, you said it. The problem there is that women are being expected to shoulder a disproportionate amount of responsibility. It's not actually women. It's the societal situation.

I will say, though, when people ask me about working in tech, which, yeah, it does have a lot of men, but honestly, you couldn't pay me to go work in banking when I was coming out of business school. The tech companies, I mean, Google, Stripe, much better environment. They had childcare. Much more progressive. Exactly. Care, overall benefits, and actually a certain amount of flexibility.

And you know what? The goldmines of the world have gotten better because of the pressure for talent placed on them by tech companies. Let me ask you a question. You just mentioned AI very briefly. IBM said it will place over 7,000 employees with AI in the years to come. Do you, is it, it's showing up in HR, it's showing up in all kinds of places.

Do you imagine that being, them becoming managers? They would certainly intuitively know what people want and need and how, what their impact is. Yeah, you know, Kara, I watched Sal Khan give like a TEDx talk fairly recently where he talked about teaching and AI. And I subscribe to his philosophy. Well, one, I will say to you, it's happening.

And if we don't start looking at it and thinking about what it will do, our heads are very far into the sand. But what Sal demonstrated, and I think this makes a lot of sense to me, is one, you have to create constraints. So I'm in a teaching model, or I'm in a manager leading model. So how do I build tooling that's appropriate for that, that is actually augmenting me? Because sure, like me, as a manager, especially say you've got eight, 12 direct reports, am I there every day, especially in a knowledge-based workforce? Yeah, AI could know what they do. AI could, you could be having to do the first time you've ever done a deeply analytical project, you've got to present to the team. You could have an assistant that walks you through steps of building a model and helps pressure test what you've built.

And I think that's really interesting. Do I think AI replaces the intuition that a human gets? I mean, look, especially when we're in a room together, I can look at your body language. I can smell you. I can see, you know, I can feel you. And I think that is very hard to replicate. But I think an assistant for some of the coaching. Also decisions and decisions.

98% of HR leaders said they'd rely partly on algorithms and software to make decisions on who to cut, for example. That's right. Right. And I think that someone to make you actually, frankly, be more data-driven in certain decisions would be better. Because often the worst, you know, like a promotion. sometimes decisions- I just don't like the looks of you. Yeah. Who gets the project? Right. Yeah. I like the looks of you. Claire, what advice, you're advising a 22-year-old, someone who's really blessed,

come out of a good school, maybe have more than one opportunity. What advice do you have in terms of the questions they should be asking themselves around the kind of person they are and about the company such that they can find the right fit out of the gate? I find there's just a total absence of self-awareness that the kids I deal with just go to the highest prestige, highest compensating firm, and oftentimes they're just miserable. What questions should you be asking yourself and about the company? Yeah, I love that. And actually, my first operating principle that I talk about is building self-awareness, because I actually think too and about the company. Yeah, I love that. And actually my first operating principle that I talk about is building self-awareness because I actually think too many leaders and managers

don't start with themselves. What am I good at? What do I need to compliment about myself? And it's hard to develop that as a younger person. You're talking to a woman who, I graduated from a very nice college without a job because I had decided I was going to go work in politics and government

and I was going to go break into it. So my advice that I've been giving pretty openly to a lot of people that age is, you've got to seek to know yourself and figure out what you're interested in. Truly, if you are blessed to be in that situation, you must have true interest and curiosity in something. And I guarantee you, it is not the hot job

that everyone's trying to chase right then, the hot company. You've got to do some deep thinking about whether, and if you really don't know, you know, that's a fine thing to do for a few years, go the common path. But the most interesting careers are the ones that are built with, I think, a little bit of a contrarian approach, a different path. So the very last question I have, who was the very best manager you had? The worst? Yeah, I think probably, you know, I didn't work much directly as Cheryl's direct report, Kara, but she was an excellent manager. Like how come? She really noticed your work and she was all over you if you were not bringing your A game. But she knew and she got what it was taking to deliver. She was empathetic towards your assignment and then she was very clear on

accountability, in my opinion. Did you say who was the worst? I had so many absentee managers, like didn't ever even met with me, never got a performance, you know, never got feedback, never met with me. I actually flourished. I was like, fine, I'll manage myself. Thanks very much. But that was not just in tech, by the way, that was in some of my early career. They just didn't care. I don't think I think that they were focused on the work. And I get that. But it certainly didn't make me any better. I mean, if I got better, it was me. It wasn't them. Yeah, it was you. It was them. So someone who was there to have accountability and also understand the struggle you go through.

Yeah, well, and also give you clarity on what really matters. Like you are, especially if you're earlier in your career, you're in a system, right? We all know this. Whether it's a small company or a big one or a government institution, you are existing in a system. And that system has rules and unspoken things. And someone who's saying to you, hey, let's think about how to make you successful in this system and hold you accountable for what you need to get done. They notice you and they show that they care about your outcomes. I don't think it's that hard, by the way, but it is about taking some time.

And for some reason, we get very oriented toward the task and we don't think about the people. And I think we pay a price for that. I think a lot of companies pay a price for that. Excellent point. That is an excellent last point. The book is called Scaling People, Tactics for Management and Company Building. It's available now. Thank you, Claire. It's good to see you. Thank you, Karen Scott. Great to see you. Appreciate it. Nice to meet you, Claire. All right. One more quick break. We'll be conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Okay, Scott, some wins and fails.

What do you have? I'm going to go first, actually. Wins. Queen Charlotte on Netflix. I just mentioned it. It just was so good. It was so much better than Bridgerton, I have to say. Yeah, I love the actors that they pulled from Bridgerton.

Does it have as much sex? It has a lot more sex, actually. There's a lot of sex happening. Queen Charlotte, more sex than Bridgerton. I have to say, yeah, I love the actors that they pulled from Bridgerton. It has a lot more sex, actually. There's a lot of sex happening. There's a lot of sex. There's a lot of sex. There's at least an equal amount, but I felt like there was more. And it also was very touching in many ways. It was about the mental illness of King George as a young person and what Queen Charlotte did. And obviously, that's a real story. as a young person and what Queen Charlotte did. And obviously that's a real story, but, and this was, of course, Shonda rhymed up kind of thing,

but it was really quite lovely. It's only six episodes. It was a lovely little jewel box of a group. It's very nice. And I really thought, well done. A lot of people don't like it, but I do, but it's very popular on Netflix. And I like, they did a great, great job. And, you know, Bella Bajaria, who runs their content,

chief content officer, urged me to watch it, which I thought was interesting. And I said, oh, all right. And then I did. So I liked it a lot. I will get to the fail in a second. What's your wins and fails? Actually, my win is, you know me,

I don't really enjoy your work outside of Pivot, but I broke down and I listened to your on interview with Roy Wood. And that was my win. I thought it was really good. I think you did a great job of interviewing him. And I was really impressed with him. I had never heard of him. Yep.

And I thought he did the best job since Michelle Wolf. And I but what he managed to do that maybe Michelle wasn't able to do. Yeah. Was he was able to thread the needle by being provocative and saying some inappropriate or uncomfortable things. But he didn't really offend everybody. Everybody walked away feeling fine. Yeah. And that is such a you know, you were talking about the task that the person interviewing. Yeah.

President Trump's going to have. That is a tough gig. It is. To do the White House Correspondents Center. So I thought he did a great job and I just really enjoyed listening to him and some of the things he said that he will never make fun of someone's, you know, he has these guard rails. He doesn't ever make fun of someone's personal appearance that he could never, just the way he talked about how he forms a joke, what they think through. I mean, people just think it's someone really funny who gets up there and kind of goes at it. I mean, people just think it's someone really funny

who gets up there and kind of goes at it. I mean, there is a lot of work. They battle test every joke, how they say it, who's the subject of it, what's the rhythm, the cadence. And I've always known that was there, but he kind of breaks it down. Anyways, my win is on with Kara Swisher's interview with Roy Wood.

I thought that was great. I think you'll really like my Lily Sing if you can make it into a habit at all. I interviewed her up in Toronto also. Very thoughtful. What I liked about the Roy Wood one is it went very serious. And we played a lot of his comedy. Obviously, he's very funny. But he's a very serious-minded person.

And I really appreciated that. Most comedians are. They are. But he really showed it, right? Yeah. Yeah, I liked him. I just, I felt it was really, I just felt he, I was, I liked the direction that interview went, right? It could have, he could have just been, you know, hand-wavy entertaining, and he wasn't.

What's the other interview you want me to? Oh, Lilly Singh. It's not up yet. It's, I just want to know, because the bottom line is that it's not going to happen. I'm a bit long, Kara Swisher, right now. There's not up yet. I just want to know because the bottom line is that it's not going to happen. I'm a bit long Kara Swisher right now. There's too much Kara Swisher. What is your fail? How about some life with your Kara Swisher, Scott?

Yes, life. Yeah. I was in your apartment. I was touching all your things as I always like to do. I like that. Yeah, it was nice. I have to say. Fail?

I don't. I'm trying to think of the fail. Obviously, the shooting. Another shooting in Texas. White supremacist, too many guns. I just don't know when people are going to get tired of this. It's really, it's sickening to me. And I would urge everybody to read the Washington Post series on what the damage an AR-15 can do to the human body. They have a series about, it's called American Icon,

Deadly Weapons, Divided Nation. It's not really a divided nation, but it's all about the AR-15. And they talk to people who own them and why they own them. The police being up, even though they have AR-15s, aren't happy that other people, the trauma, it's just a really good series because this is just, it's, we're now at record levels again in this mall in Texas. And you just get numb to it, and it's always some white supremacist doing this. Very dangerous. Very dangerous. Yeah, but we don't – yeah.

So my fail is kind of the same thing. And that is – and to be clear, we have white supremacists, we have a lot of mentally ill people, we have a lot of young men who are struggling, but we don't over-index relative to other nations. Where we over-index is access to weapons of war, full stop. That's right. And I worry that anytime we talk about these very serious issues, it's usually picked up as a weapon of mass distraction to not talk about the real issue. And we don't have a monopoly on video games, mental illness. What we have a monopoly on is AR-15s and access to them or weapons of war. My fail is along the lines of yours.

And that is, and I'm trying to ground it in something that motivates people. And when I'm traveling, that day, my blood pressure is just elevated. When do I need to leave for the airport? What's the traffic like? I'm a little bit of a nervous. Just that day I am less healthy because I am operating in the context of slightly but consistently elevated stress and blood pressure any day I'm traveling. But one of the things I didn't realize that would really be a substantial improvement in my life because I didn't recognize it. When you're in the midst of a crisis, you don't even realize you're in the crisis because

you go into operations or triage mode and you don't realize how stressed you were and how hard it was on you until you're out of it because you get this fight or flight and you deal with the situation and you adapt. And what I've realized moving to London is that living in the United States and my message to fellow Americans is you don't realize the context and the level of elevated stress Americans have to deal with when they drop their kids off at school, when they go into a mall, when they go into a mall, when they go into a movie theater, when they're walking around a crowded place. The frequency and devastation, horror of these mass shootings is not something that happens in most Western countries. And when I'm in the UK and I drop my kid at school, or I'm at a movie

theater, or I'm in a crowded place, this imagery, this stress for me that I was living with in the United States is not there because it is entirely different. And my message to fellow Americans is we don't have to live with this context of stress. We don't have to live with this context of stress. Nope. Other nations don't live, other nations when they drop their kids at school don't immediately have any, and I think most parents can't help but occasionally think, all right, what would happen? How would I respond? That's it. I think about that a lot.

Alex went to Texas for a prom this weekend for his girlfriend, and I was like open carry. The first thing I thought of was guns. I don't know why. I just was like, open carry. The first thing I thought of was guns. I don't know why. I just was like, guns there. There's a lot of guns. I know it sounds crazy, but I just had been reading about the open carry and everyone carrying it around. Just the presence of so many guns made me nervous.

And I know it's crazy. I've gone to Texas myself. Active shooter drills? Yeah. Do they realize what that is? We're doing to our kids to normalize the notion that you have to prepare for a mass shooter? Twenty-two mass killings this year, collectively 115 deaths. It's on pace to break the record.

It's ridiculous. It's just ridiculous. And then, can I just add a second thing? This weekend, I had a conversation with Louie, and, you know, this person who was throttled in the subway was put in that chokehold by the guy on the subway. I get everybody really exhausted by mentally ill homeless people yelling at them on subways, but the death of this guy, and I don't think this guy malevolently meant to kill him, but boy, placing him in a chokehold. And then the issue I have was Eric Adams not understanding that this cannot happen, vigilante killings, whatever. However, again, I don't think this guy meant it to do it. I just think citizens should not be chokeholding homeless, mentally homeless people on subways. Like, are you kidding me? That's the same level of fear you're talking about. It sort of was

gripping New York, this debate. And, you know, my son was like, I cannot believe this guy did this for that long. But we immediately go to, all right, 45,000 people are going to die because of handgun deaths. And so, you imagine, the way you think of the horror here is, what if I was one of those very unfortunate people who lost somebody? And what we don't pay enough attention about is you don't realize how much stress you're enduring, distinctive whether or not it touches your life. Because we live in a context of fear and anxiety around this shit. And it's always easy to talk about, but I was trying to find good resources like, okay, what do I do other than vote? And Sandy Hook Promise, the website at sandyhookpromise.org has a really thoughtful page on things you can do for gun control advocacy

and specific steps and people to call and what personally how you acquit yourself and be most effective in advocating for gun prevention violence. But my message is, or my fail is, obviously, this continued violence. But you don't realize until you leave America the context of stress Americans are living in. Yep. It is not, by the way, it is stress that in most other Western nations that also have guns, that also have gun rights, where you can be a responsible gun owner, they don't have to live with that stress. where you can be a responsible gun owner, they don't have to live with that stress. And what we have found in all these studies about happiness is happiness is not only a function of the things you have, economic opportunities and rights, it's absence from a fear that something might be taken away from you.

And we need an absence of fear. We need an erosion in the context of stress that all of us deal with in the United States because of this unparalleled precedence of mass shootings. And the other thing is that I thought, I don't know if you noticed this, Cara, but your idea about showing the corpses, supposedly one of the things that really rattled people about this most recent shooting was because it was live stream, people actually saw the horror. That they said, oh my God, this is even worse than I'd imagined what actually happened here. There was a controversy of it being on Twitter.

I think the parents should give permission, but they should show the pictures. I just don't know any other way. Anyway, it's just horrific. It's horrific. And the fact that our politicians just kowtow and make it into a ridiculous political issues, they repulse me even more than those. Anyway, great show. We want to hear from you, by the way, on these issues. If you don't agree with us, agree with us, whatever. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question

for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Scott, thank you for thoughtful wins and fails this week. It was good. And everything was great this week. Anyway, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday with more. Scott, will you please read us out? Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andretat engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Neil Silverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Call me king.