Pivot - Uber threatens to shutdown app over AB5, Airbnb's surprise IPO and a listener mail question about WFH with Andrew Ross Sorkin

Episode Date: August 14, 2020

Kara is joined by New York Times columnist, founder of Deal Book and CNBC Sqwuakbox Host Andrew Ross Sorkin to talk about Uber threatening to shut down their rideshare app in reaction to a new AB-5 ruling. They also discuss Airbnb's surprise IPO. In listener mail, we get a question about the future of working from home and how company cultures will change to the fit our new environment. In predictions, Andrew and Kara discuss the potential future cabinet of the Biden/Harris administration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Scott is out this week. He's actually gallivanting with David Gregory in Nantucket, if you can believe it. I got photographs, proof last night. It was disturbing. And I'm joined by Andrew Ross Sorkin, who he is deeply jealous of for a number of reasons, including his fantasy.

But I'm deeply jealous of Nantucket. No, you aren't. No, you are not. You do not want to be there. You are perfect where you are. It is a sea of corduroys and white people. And whale belts. And white people.

It is really not. And seersucker. And it just says to me someday, like, it's so flat, it's disturbing. It's a disturbing – it's very pretty. It's very pretty, but you are glad to be here. I'm glad to be here. Anyway, Andrew, for those who don't know, besides his fantastic hair and his Canadian citizenship, is a New York Times columnist and founder of Dealbook and,

of course, a CNBC Squawk Box anchor. And he is incredibly popular with our listeners. People are going to start believing you about this Canada thing. I was born at Roosevelt Hospital. Scott keeps putting this idea that you're so nice, but I said you weren't as nice as he thinks you are. But indeed, you are very nice. You're nicer than Scott. That's all that matters. I spent the day with Scott yesterday on Pivot Live. So I've had a lot of Scott. He was dying to talk about, he was mad because there's so much news. And of course, there's a lot to talk about, Andrew. Let's talk like some of the smaller stories. Kamala Harris is Joe Biden's running mate. And I'd love to know what you think that means for Silicon Valley and big business. Secondly, the former CEO of Pinterest,

Francois Bauer, who abruptly left the company in April, is suing Pinterest for allegedly firing her after she complained about sexist treatment. I talked to her and I'm going to be writing about her in a column in the New York Times. I'm hoping to talk to the CEO of Pinterest, Ben Silberman, too. Apple will introduce its Rundle this fall, which Scott talks a lot about. What do you think? Start with Kamala. What do you think of going on with Kamala? I think if you are in the world of technology, living in Silicon Valley, not only do you breathe a sigh of relief, you might have gotten up out of your chair with some kind of standing ovation because I think the chance that she goes after big tech in any meaningful way is next to nil.

Next to nil. Call me in four years, but I say next to nil. I agree. People think that she, because she has spoke, she spoke out against Twitter in one of the debates. She did revenge porn stuff. She's interested in the privacy issues. I think she is. I think there will be action on privacy because that's something she had done as attorney general in California, not as effectively as the current one who's trying to

work with it, who is much more hostile. She may do things around the edges. Clearly, look, she has a history. She was a lawyer. She was an attorney general. These are what people do. But in terms of the big actions, the kinds of actions that I think some, frankly, all the way on the left and even some all the way on the right would like to see, I think are unlikely. Yeah. Well, what if they bring Elizabeth Warren and say is the head of the FTC? Well, that gets that gets interesting and gets interesting pretty quickly. I'm curious, actually, what role Elizabeth Warren takes. I mean, we talked about it on the last pod. And, you know, does she have more power as a senator? Does she have more

power in the administration? By the way, I think you're only going to give up that seat if you think that you can replace it with another Democrat who may have similar views. So I think there's a couple of permutations and steps that have to take place before we get there. But yeah, if Elizabeth Warren is at the FTC, she can do some pretty interesting things. Yeah. And what I wonder is if they let her. I mean, I think they're mildly interested, the Biden people, but they're definitely down the center.

You know, he has also expressed some problems. And, you know, I think it's not a big issue in the election at all. I don't think people are thinking about everything else but big tech, although it's on their minds. I think it's there. This is the kind of something that's going to be, I think, has to be sort of shoveled out by people who keep going and going and going and continue to, because I don't think you can get people mad at Amazon necessarily or angry, even though I think people are more irritated at Facebook.

Getting them really angry to take action is difficult. It's just going to have to be, we have to not let these companies be so big. That's really, you know, like seatbelts. Sorry, we're not going to let this happen. It's unsafe and to have to be we have to not let these companies be so big. That's really, you know, like seatbelts. Sorry, we're not going to let this happen. It's unsafe and stuff like that. Well, by the way, they can limit. Look, without breaking these companies up, they can do lots of things. They can effectively limit them from getting bigger. They can limit them from buying other companies.

And once you do that, it changes the dynamic. You know, a lot of people would argue that unto itself going after Microsoft, even if you don't think they were, they ultimately broke up Microsoft, that that changed the landscape of Silicon Valley and technology. Yeah, but she's not the most aggressive one. And she has a lot of ties to the tech industry. She does. She has, she's sort of a, she's friendly-ish, I would say, very much like a lot of the people in Congress. Although I think Nancy Pelosi is much more hostile to tech, given, even though she represents San Francisco. And a lot of these companies are there. But I think she's, you're right, she's close to a lot of people. Her brother-in-law, if people don't know, Tony West,

who's also mentioned as a possible person in the Biden administration, is the general counsel of Uber. There's a lot of links. And I don't necessarily think that affects her or not, but they're within that universe. They're within that universe. It's hard not to be. And she does know everyone. And in fact, just to finish this up, when I was at Code trying to interview Lorraine

Powell Jobs, she wanted to be interviewed with Kamala Harris. They're very good friends, which is interesting. She's like, can I bring a friend? And I was like, who? And she said, Senator Harris. I'm like, yeah, you can bring her. So it's an interesting time. It'll be interesting to see if she does.

But people change. People also change once they get in different positions. Different positions, you bet. CEO of Pinterest. Oh, my goodness. She's a big deal. She was a big executive at Google, a big executive at Square, very well-liked at both places.

I've been doing a lot of reporting. And she wrote a corker of a, of a memo about Pinterest and the, the atmosphere there. So here's the thing. And look, you're doing the reporting on this. I'm a spectator on this. I have never thought of Ben Silberman and the Pinterest crew as a, you know, Silicon Valley bro crew. I never thought that. And look, I'm a guy, maybe I misunderstood this. I didn't think there was a lot of chest pounding and fist bumping and all of

that. Yeah, it's not that. Yeah. So, you know, reading that was powerful stuff. It was fascinating to me, the issues that clearly she was confronting. Yeah. And to me, always the question is, that clearly she was confronting. Yeah. And to me, always the question is, you know, how much of this is a function of a terrible culture? Is it a terrible culture? Was there a fit issue?

Was it genuinely sexism? And try to, you know, unspool that and really get to the core of it, I think. I shall unspool it, but I will say she is not without cause. I have found, you know, it's not, it isn't a sort of chest pumping bro culture, but it is nonetheless, it's sort of the softer side of bros, but it's still bros. You know what I mean? And it's not, it's interesting because there's a lot of prominent women who have left that company in

high positions who've left and gone elsewhere more than, you know, Google tends to keep a lot of women, which is interesting in high positions. And this company has lost a lot and not just women, but a number of men. There's been a lot of movement in the executive team. So that always signals. Can I ask you a bro question? A Valley bro question? You know, over the past couple of months, maybe longer now, we've had a couple of high profile female CEOs who have been pushed out and questions about those cultures. And I actually just want to hear your view of that relative to this, because I was talking to somebody last week about this and they were saying, is it a bro issue? Is it a sexism issue?

Is it just that these companies are startups run by young people who don't know what they're doing? Is it that they're just all growing at crazy speeds and going too fast? Is it a combination of all of those things? I think all of the above. A lot of the companies you talk about aren't actually Silicon Valley companies. That's true. They're way back. The wings, yes.

Wings. They're in New York. Here's what I think. All of the above. all of the above. But it's really interesting. And secondly, a lot of these, several of these companies, Away and Wing, they had sort of these lofty ideas about fairness. And they used that as part of the branding, I think.

And also they were trying to, and they didn't walk the talk. I think that's one of the, so they were seen as hypocritical in that regard. And that's always a, you know, you should never, when you, Google still suffers from don't be evil, you know that, you know what I mean? Like, and then every time they're evil, everyone goes, they said, don't be evil. But I do think it's really interesting, you know, it's some of its race too, like in terms of white women running. There's all kinds of things mixed in here. But I do think women tend to get the gender judgment much heavier than men. It's really, it's not just, there was another one, Carta, the woman left and wrote a really persuasive piece about it. Obviously, go back to Ellen Powe, who I actually did talk, I did talk to last night.

I wanted to get her take on this. It's. There's a genderedness to it that I think Francoise actually depicted quite well, being left out of meetings, being sidelined about where the real decisions are made. And it tends to have, not at every company, for sure. She had a great time at Twitter. She had a great time at Google, although she did acknowledge that there were problems there too. But she's never seen it to this extent. You know what I mean? Like in one place. And so I think this is going to be tough for Ben Silverman. I'm going to talk to him, so I'm going to wait to hear from him today, hopefully, and see what he has to say. But he does portray a softer side of these things.

And so you might be deceived. But I think there's something quite from my reporting so far, there's something dysfunctional in that culture there. Well, I look forward to that reporting. As there are in most startups. You know what I mean? And when they're successful, it's like a dysfunctional campaign.

You know, when you, if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency, you wouldn't have seen all those books about how dysfunctional her campaign is. It would have just won, you know, and by the way, the Trump campaign is dysfunctional. The Trump White House is dysfunctional. They just won. You know, that's, it's the same thing. All right. Last thing, very quickly, before we get to Uber, Apple introduced the Rundle. I mean, that's, that's where everybody's

going. These Rundles, these bundles of subscriptions. The big, big bundle. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm an Apple fan boy. Do you know that? I, I'm obsessed. It's a problem. It's an addiction. I actually just bought. You're like that? Yes, I do. I'm obsessed. It's a problem. It's an addiction. I actually just bought. You're like Walt Mossberg. I just bought two new Mac Pros literally this morning. By the way, there's a delay. Look, I have kids and school's starting.

By the way, for those listening, you can't get them until the middle of September at this point. For real. No, that's a long time. This is what's happening. Well, school starts hopefully the day after Labor Day, so we can only hope. On the bundle, I'll probably be a buyer. I think some people would be a buyer. Having said that, look, if Tim Cook is listening, the Apple News Plus service is still one of the worst services around. And it pains me every day.

I used to be a subscriber to Texture with all those magazines, the Netflix magazines, and I loved it. And then it came to Apple. It was bought by Apple Apple and then they ruined it. So I don't know. They're terrible at certain. And I don't know whether if you're interested in film or TV, I just saw the new Tom Hanks film, which was great on Apple. I saw, um, uh, the banker, which was also spectacular. But, um, you know, if the discounts there, the other question is, are they going to make money on these things? Cause what you keep seeing them do is every year they get, if you buy a new device, you get a free subscription. So is there really going to be service revenue on the other side of that? What happens to churn? The service revenue

has been growing with Apple music and others. And so I think it's smart to do this. They just have to get better at it. I think, I think some of their Apple TV stuff is good, but as Scott says, it's a lot of really mediocre content with huge distribution, and they will go upwards, as did Netflix. And that's where Netflix is in trouble. Netflix still has the best content of all of them. And, you know,

Disney has a lot of old content and some good new content, but they all have to, like, and NBC, same thing with Peacock. I'm watching something that they bought from Britain called The Captive or Capture or whatever. They've got to really, nobody is really as good as Netflix is. They all have distribution. And I think it's smart for them to start to bundle these things together. And then the other thing is, though, and this is the conundrum for all of them, and it would be very interesting to see what happens with Apple,

especially this fall into, you know, what, 12 months or eight months into COVID. Production obviously has stopped. We'll see whether it really restarts in the next couple of weeks. But if it doesn't in a meaningful way, there's just not going to be a lot of fresh shows, fresh movies, fresh product come December, come January, February. And then do you say to yourself, you know what, I burned through everything. I'm going to turn this thing off for a month or two and I'll see if they come back with something new later. Yeah, that'll be interesting. There's all kinds of, I've been talking to a lot of Hollywood people about how they're going to do this. And some of them, they have some interesting solutions, including constant testing, but you know, it's still going

to be just like school. You just, you never know. Well, some of them are trying to create like the NBA bubble, but then the other, you know, some of them also could be like, you know, major league baseball could turn into the Marlins. Exactly. And these are celebrities and they don't like getting sick in any case. We will move on to big stories, Andrew. Uber is threatening to shut down their app in California if California forces the company to classify drivers as employees instead of gig workers. California forces the company to classify drivers as employees instead of gig workers. This week, under California's new AB5 law, the judge prohibited the rideshare company from classifying drivers as independent workers.

The order will require Uber and Lyft to provide benefits and unemployment insurance to older workers. Both companies are appealing the order within the next 10 days. Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, told our friend Stephanie Rule on MSNBC that, quote, if the court doesn't reconsider that in California, it's hard to believe we'll be able to switch our model to full-time employment quickly, which means no more Ubers in California. Now, we're having Dara on the show next week, Pivot Live next week. We're going to ask him about all this. He also wrote a big

piece in the New York Times saying that they're open to this kind of stuff. It was probably the furthest anyone's gone on this topic. But what do you think? Is this a real threat? I think it's a real threat. I think it's a gutsy play. And I think the customer always wins. And so we'll see, does the customer vote effectively in favor of Uber? And does the customer win over the employee? And is the employee the customer to some degree? Because there are some employees out there or drivers, if you will, that don't want to see the service go under either, even if they're not going to get everything that they want. And so. So hard knocks. This is what

he's doing. Now, Scott calls Uber and Dara also lipstick on cancer. So this is like pushing this around. I think the idea that Dara did bring up in that piece was we do have to change the classification of workers in some way. Now, California is taking a very strong stance as employees. Dara, Uber is going the other way. There is a middle ground here. Do you imagine there will be a middle ground? This is a law. This is a new law in California that is going into effect. to effect? Well, look, if the law effectively gets voted down, which could potentially happen

at some point, then you could be into a situation where you do find that middle ground. Right now, there is no middle ground. So you have to play, either say, I'm not doing this, or we're going to do it this way. And as I said, I think the customer is going to win, and I think the employees are going to win, or drivers, I should say, who are not employees, because I think that they're going to start calling their their local officials saying, don't shut us down. Don't shut us down. I mean, look, you saw this happen, by the way. This is actually sort of and you could argue this is the magic of what Travis thought, despite all of the critique of Travis. Travis's view was get ahead of the regulators.

If you can own the market, people will love you and the regulators will, you know, will have to, they'll have to placate you. And I think to some degree, I'm not saying that's what Dara's strategy is, but a little bit of, of sort of, they've now gotten to some scale and size where there's a lot of damage that happens if this thing doesn't keep going. What, what does Gavin Newsom do? I mean, this is not, this is something he's talked about. He and I have talked extensively about reclassifying workers in general. And this was years ago. He, when he was Lieutenant Governor, had nothing to do.

He was able to call me a lot. And we did talk about this idea of like, what is a new worker? What is like, he was very obsessed with the concept. And this was before all these controversies. How do you, how do you, what is the pathway here for, for all these? Because most people feel that gig workers were going to, are going to be, you know, I think President Obama talked about this for the left office. Absolutely. We've talked about this. This is the, but this is the, the big way to solve this. The big way to solve this is that every single American as a,

I'm not going to call it a human right, because maybe that goes too far, but everybody gets unemployment insurance. Everybody gets benefits. Everybody gets some form. I'm not a UBI guy, but everybody gets some form of health insurance, of course. In a world where that's portable, of course, and in a world where people are going to be moving around and culturally, that seems to be the way things are headed, you need to set up a system. Doing it piecemeal, forcing Uber to do it or Lyft to do it in one type of industry or one kind of subset and not in another is complicated. By the way, in California, in Hollywood, for example, and I don't know why people aren't screaming about this, look at all of the workers there who are independent contractors, who, by the

way, are oftentimes working. They may not be working 12 months a year, but they're working nine months a year. And sometimes they're working 18 hours a day. Journalists live in this sort of weird, freelance, independent life oftentimes. Right, right. It does affect them. This AB5 has affected them, I know. There was some discussion of that.

So I think it's a bigger issue, frankly, than just Uber and Lyft. And I wish it was not just contextualized that way, but approached that way. Because I think what really happens is people sort of target one company or two companies that they think are rich and wealthy and whatever, but they're not really addressing the sort of larger complex problems. Who would be the argument against this? I mean, my thing that springs to mind is that all these people like Travis got wealthy off the backs of workers. And I agree with you.

When you got, when you paid, every time I paid $4 and they'd be like, look, you got this right. I was like, doesn't cost $4. Somewhere, someone is getting screwed or over, or it's the VC money. And so, you know, they had, they had one, one argument to make is they have a business model that just doesn't work. Sure. But I would argue that the capitalistic answer to that, to some degree, though, I'd like to solve, solve it on a more organic level, is taxes, something we don't do enough of in this country prefer lots of views about taxes, but I think you can you can there are there are solutions on all ends of it. You just have to think about it like that. You can capture it at one end or you can capture it at the other end. Right. I guess so.

I just feel like it's it's it's one of these things where Silicon Valley is pushing forward business models that advantage them and not other people and are paid for. Eventually, we pay the taxpayer pays for these workers, like right now during COVID. And so they're offloading costs onto us. A hundred percent. But by the way, I would argue that's true of Amazon. I'd argue that's true of Walmart. I'd argue it's true of basically anybody who's paying minimum wage in America today. And we have to figure this out. It'll be interesting to see who, among the politicians, you see anybody really thinking hard about a real solution, not a screamy solution on either side. Who do you imagine? He's got my same first name, but he didn't do very well, did he? Yes. Oh, Yang. What are they going to put him in? That's

a great idea. What are they going to put him in this? I don't know. He wants something. He does want something. He's been pretty active on Twitter recently. I'm not sure where he fits in the grand Game of Thrones that will probably take place if in fact there's a Biden win. I love that if he gets it. That's right.

I love that he's aggressive about it. I do. You know, everyone's like, oh, Stacey Hems and Andrews, they're asking for jobs. I'm like, so what? It's a big deal. They want a job. You know what I mean? They want to do something, and they are asking, and I just love that they do. I don't find that a problem at all. It's not untoward. I just have heard a lot of criticism of both of them for that,

but I like it. Yeah, Andrew Yang would be a really interesting person to bring here. Who do you like? You spend time with so many of these people. I do think that a lot of these companies think they hung the moon when they're just getting a freebie. You know what what i mean it's sort of like people from the midwest saying don't give you know people um whether it's you know welfare or or food stamps or whatever form of that and they themselves are getting it too from the government whether they're farmers

you know what i mean like that's everybody's getting a handout, just so you know, whether it's a tax handout from the rich or a farming subsidy or whatever. And so I think we have to recognize this is not a new, fresh thing to be helping people and to recharacterize it as, you know, everyone deserves not to be ruined by health care and unemployment. And I think that maybe perhaps this COVID thing has taught people that. Is there a politician, though, that you know? You interview so many of them constantly, and I listen to so many of your great interviews. Is there someone that you think could, I mean, like an Andrew Yang type that, is there anybody out of the box who's really out of the box? I think perhaps, again, Elizabeth Warren has the intelligence. You know, you can say Bernie Sanders thinks that an AOC, AOC could evolve into that, I think.

I feel like she's so canny. You'd imagine, of course, she sort of stakes out one side pretty strongly on the left, but she's got to be thinking, she looks like someone who could understand that this is a complex issue, right? Or Katie Porter. There's a whole bunch of people that really, if she becomes senator from California,

speaking of which, that her name is being bandied about to replace Kamala Harris if they win. You know, there's a lot of people who can think hard about this issue and not immediately go to their sides, right? That's what happens. And this is, we've got to stop going to our sides

on this issue. And Republicans, I don't know. They would like everybody to be a serf in some ways, a lot of people to be serfs. But they just, you know, elected a QAnon person to the House. That's insane. We'll go to that later. Anyway, Andrew, let's take a quick break and come back to talk about Airbnb's IPOs, speaking of interesting new business models. And bad predictions, by the way. And bad prediction and a listener mail question about working from home. Picture an online scammer. What do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting, crouched over their computer with a hoodie on,

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Okay, we're back here with Andrew Ross Sorkin. Okay, this may come as a surprise, but Airbnb is planning an IPO this month. The Wall Street Journal reported the company will confidentially file with the SEC and shares could be offered by the end of the year. The company was supposed to go public earlier this year, but those plans were halted because of the pandemic. In the meantime, the company laid off a quarter of its staff, and Airbnb's private valuation dropped to $18 billion from $31 billion. Now, I interviewed Brian Chesky not long ago, and he didn't rule it out this year. But he said he didn't know.

He wanted to see how things were recovering. And things had started to recover because people were renting Airbnbs for longer. And, you know, the travel business part of it had really dropped off the face of the earth, but it was being replaced by other businesses still. What do you think? Now, talk about this prediction. Is it a good time to go public? People are dying for IPOs. You know, I don't get it. But as I said, I don't get this market at the moment. So, yes, if the market stays at this sort of, you know, Dave Portney, everything goes up way. Sure. Maybe this is a great time. Maybe it's a great time to go get a lower valuation today, get some cash in the door.

But again, we don't know if they're going to do it as a listing or a direct listing or they're actually going to raise cash out of it. as a listing or a direct listing, or they're actually going to raise cash out of it, get in the door. And then, by the way, the valuation, if you, I mean, you want to believe two, three, four years from now, people will be going to Airbnbs the way before. So maybe that's a good strategy. And in a supply-constrained IPO world, bankers and investors desperate for stuff. But you sighed. Why did you sigh?

I sighed because you have to think between now and next spring or next summer is going to be a very, very choppy, choppy world. And, you know, the unemployment numbers are going to be real and you're going to see people out of their homes. And it just it could look it could go it could spiral in lots of different directions. Could it spiral upwards? I don't understand how it could continue to spiral higher from a market perspective. I can only hope that the economy does it, but it requires the government assistance. It requires so many things. So there's just too many variables for me. Well, one argument you can make is the customers of Airbnb are not, are people with means, right? And they're dying to get out, right? They want to, they want to,

or at least have, are not quite as under siege financially. That's one argument. There's that argument. There's the argument that you could drive to wherever you're going. You don't need an airplane. Yes, I can make the bullish arguments. Well, Brian was talking about that, that people were – instead of going to – like say you're in D.C., you're going to West Virginia, you're driving there. Or you're driving somewhere from California, you drive to Oregon and stuff like that.

So they're seeing an uptick in that kind of things, which makes sense because people are desperate to get out percent. But at the same time, I think that his business, I mean, I know he thinks it's a hedge on the airline or the more if you go on Apple mobility, and you look at that data tracking, the more people are moving, the better it is for his business. I just right, I think it's very hard to turn around and say somehow, this is magic for Airbnb. This is a magical moment for Airbnb the same way it's a magical moment for Amazon. Right, right. But you're right. But I do think potentially, because a lot of people feel this is the one quality company coming out of Silicon Valley in a long time.

Totally. And that it is a business that eventually will be fine. Now, of course, same thing with gig workers, people making money in a different way and effects on cities. thing with gig workers, people making money in a different way and effects on cities, you know, especially as rents drop. I mean, which is interesting because you have the rents dropping, which was a big argument against them and not enough rents now. There might be enough rentals, right? It's a kind of an interesting, that is good for us.

I think there's one distinction, though, between the Airbnbs and the Ubers of the world, because one is taking people's labor. The other is effectively, hopefully, using an asset more efficiently and actually creating potentially revenue for people who might not otherwise have it. I've always had a huge regard for, Brian, what they've created. I just don't know in this particular environment how much it thrives relative to how well it was thriving only six months ago. They cut their airline plans. They cut all kinds of, he talked about that, all the things they cut, the ideas that they had that they just put in the closet essentially for later. But what do you, if you were sitting in that room and decided to do this, what is the

argument? The argument is the same argument that, you know, we were talking about Barry Diller the other day, you know, buying a piece of MGM. The argument is, if not now, when? If not now, when? Buy it now when everybody's fearful and get on the ground floor. The valuation's significantly lower than it was. And in the same way that you would believe, hopefully, that Vegas will be back a couple of years from now, this will be back, you know, by the way, not to bring it back to Barry Diller, but Barry Diller continued his investment with Expedia right after 9-11. A lot of people thought nobody would get on airplanes again. He basically said, I can see farther than you can. It's a little bit of the Jeff Bezos bet, which is,

I'm just going to, you know, my time horizon is going to be longer than yours. And so if, if you can, if you can play that out, it could work for you. I think this is what I would do. I would be like, you know what? We're just, we have a good product. Again, I focus a lot on product. And Scott and I argued this yesterday about TikTok. It's a great product.

Like you can't fight the great product. And I think people like it. And there's all kinds of issues off of it, including the impact on cities, which I think is eventually going to get sorted out. These party houses, which is going to get sorted out, all problematic. But still, it seems like this is a business that makes sense on a lot of levels to a lot of people. And people like it. People like the product for all its different problems. I mean, if you remember the problems they had around orgies, if you remember. I do.

I'll never forget. I'll never forget. Brian, go ahead. No, I was going to make a bad joke that only Scott Galloway would tell. Yes. Okay, go ahead. Go for it. I better not.

It's better not to. Oh, come on, Andrew. Make an orgy joke, please. Please, please. That's for Scott. All right. Okay. I will say this.

The best answer I ever got in an interview, I think one of them was from Brian when I interviewed him right after this whole orgy situation. This has happened when people messed up. I had an orgy in a house and made a mess of it. And the woman sued and just wrecked this apartment, which seems totally, you know, there was all kinds of issues, people dying, people putting cameras in houses. They've had all kinds of things. And Brian was really beside himself. kinds of issues, people dying, people putting cameras in houses. They've had all kinds of things. And Brian was really beside himself. And, of course, they were a very young management team and stuff.

And so he wasn't as well-trained from a PR point of view. And I said, well, what are you going to do about this? And he goes, you know, Cara, they've been having orgies in hotels for years, like for decades now. And I was like, that is the best answer to anything. Yeah, it's a real answer. And I was like, that is the best answer to anything. It's a real answer. The hotel industry had been on its high horse, and hotels are dangerous in so many ways that don't get reported.

And so it was a great answer. We've been having orgies in hotels for decades now. It was a great answer. Anyway, let us move on to listener mail. On Monday, you asked listeners to tell us how they're feeling about working from home, and we got a range of answers. You have a lot of popularity, Andrew Ross Sorkin, or Andy, as I like to call you. A lot of people say they like the flexibility but miss the social interaction of being at the office.

But here's one specific question. Roll the tape. You've got, you've got. I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. Hi, Karen, Andrew. My name is Matthew Kobach. I'm a big fan of the show, and I also love that Andrew is guest hosting this week.

I'm calling you from the road, and I'll explain why after I ask my question. So the conversation around where we work is binary. You either force people to work from home or you force people to work from the office. But it seems to me that there is a really obvious third option that no one ever talks about. Why not just let your employees work from wherever they want to work? So have a dedicated office space for the employees that want to work from the office. Let the employees that want to work from home work from home.

Let your employees switch between the two. Or if they want to work from some third location, let them work from there as long as they have access to Wi-Fi. And the reason I'm calling from the road is I work for a company that recently implemented this policy, and it has completely changed the way I think about the future of work. So my question to you is, do you think more companies will do this? Why not have the best of both worlds? I look forward to your answer. That is a really good question.

You know, let me just start. Yahoo had this and then Marissa Mayer ended it because she wanted people at the office working together. And Basecamp had an office there, a very distributed company. And he just closed it because nobody was using it as well. But go ahead, Andrew. What do you think? So the question that I, look, I think that's where maybe this is headed. But I think there's so many little, not even little, big parts of this that have to get figured out first, which is we live in a world of what I describe as proximity to power. So if you have an office and you're the CEO of the office

and you say you're going in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, guess what? Half the place is going to show up. Historically, people who worked from home were not trying to climb the corporate ladder. They were doing it because they cared about a balanced lifestyle, families, whatever it is. The question is how that all works in the future.

If everybody's remote, maybe you could actually deal with this. And if everybody's in an office, but once you start doing the hybrid thing, I think that it's the pull of human beings to be near each other, not only to be near each other, but to be able to whisper into the ears of their bosses

is going to be so powerful that even if they wanted to be at home or wanted to be traveling or whatever they're doing, that it's going to be complicated. And someone's got to figure out how to nail that. What if there were days where the boss was in the office? Now, it's interesting you say to a person, I have been working from home for 20 years now. Like, literally, I hate going to the office. And in fact, you know, even though I'm not a Times employee, they're always like, come in the office and say hi to her. I'm like, no, I don't want to talk to you.

But you have climbed the Kara Swisher corporation ladder. Right. Without. And you can do that if you're the principal, 100%. Yeah, but I'm not the principal. It's an interesting thing. I do still maintain relationships with people in power by text or calling or stuff like that. And so I think it's just a different way of looking at it.

I think, but the question is whether everyone's maintaining their businesses. Some people are growing their business, obviously, during this period. I like it better. The question, are people going to start getting promotions from home? Are they going to be moved into completely new roles? It's one thing to sort of maintain the status quo. It's another to be able to train people, be able to not just create a culture, because I think that actually oddly could be done remotely, but to be able to create those relationships where then you genuinely trust people that you may have never even met before.

Yeah. There's a couple of companies in Silicon Valley I've tried, like Basecamp, like WordPress, you know, have tried that. It worked really well because people like it. And they do do things that bring people together. I mean, Jason Fried was talking about having events where they're together. I do think there's a question of creativity. But when I think of newsrooms, like, look, that's where you and I have grown up. Do you go in the office a lot?

I don't think you do. No, I do. I mean, pre-COVID, I did., I was in New York. I was I was there. I may not have been there all day because I'd be running around the city doing interviews and meetings and whatnot. But no, I went in and it was in part not FaceTime per se, but it was in part relationships and people that I knew and wanted to know. And sure. Look, I also worked in the London Bureau for many, many years, and you're completely remote. So it's doable. I don't want to say it's not. But eventually, at least in the context of the journalism that I lived in,

you always needed to come back home at some point. And so what is home, right? I think the tech companies are leading the way on this. You can go or not go, and they will build you offices, just like you have studios for NBC. You will find it easier to not go into the studio. You will find it easier not to eventually. What's interesting is if there's sort of these WeWork, if WeWork comes back, this resurgence to replace offices, because I think big offices are finished.

The idea of big offices, I think smaller workspaces are, and sort of starting to experiment, which is something that, again, tech companies have been doing for a long time with workspaces, even what desks look like. You know, I remember at Google, there was a Quonset hut, there was an open plan, there was lockers, you could, they were testing everything to see what would work. I think the permanent desk, the densification idea, which was such a false euphemism for, you know, basically having everyone sit on each other's laps in an open floor plan. I think the- Permanent desk. The densification idea, which was such a false euphemism for basically having everyone sit on each other's laps in an open floor plan, I think that's over. And I think that has been a major realization for a lot of people. Yeah, there's no more laps sitting at Google.

And in fact, they had an issue with that in some cases. Back to Scott Galloway humor. Back to Scott Galloway humor. But actually, it was factual. But I think what's interesting is whether they're going to be tax write-offs for employees. Like, I'm using a home I have right now, and I'm going to write it off. I use all my work here. And my accountant was like, you're using all your work.

Write it off. Put a mortgage on it. Write it off and stuff like that. So it'll be kind of interesting from a tax point of view. But the last question I have before we get to your prediction is how do you create creativity amongst and between people? I mean, you and I both interviewed Reed Hastings. There's a new book out called No Rules Rules, and he talks about talent density and things like that. How do you create excitement between people and creativity?

Because so many businesses, you know, there's certain people, by the way, let me just, before we finish, that have to work from a place, whether it's a restaurant or it's a, whatever it is, who have jobs that you do, you have to physically go to, and that is going to not change. And they have a harder time of it and they need public transportation and support in these offices, but a whole lot of them don't. So how do you create creativity in that regard? So at least over the past pandemic that I've lived through now, and we have a team on Dealbook and obviously the Times, and then I have a team that I work with at Squawk Box. I've actually found it's less, the creativity is not necessarily happening in the Zoom meeting. That's not how it's happening.

It's happening in a lot of one-on-one emails, calls, slacks, very idiosyncratic, trying to almost replicate the time that might've happened when you bumped into somebody. But I'm much more, I don't know if you've had this happen to you. Well, A, more productive, but B, you know, in the old days, pre-COVID days, you know, you'd have to schedule a meeting with somebody. If you wanted to call them, you'd send them a text. Can I call you at this time? Now it's like back to the future. It's like 20 years ago. I just call you. And if you pick up, you pick up.

If you don't, you leave a message. But there is this idiosyncratic thing. And I think it's it's but it's but it's on the employees and the managers to keep those relationships moving and to be almost, you know, extra dedicated towards having those, you know, that kind of back and forth. Because I think when you lose it, and I've had even a couple of days here and there where I've lost it for whatever reason, I felt the difference. Yeah. Well, what's interesting is whether you have declines in things like sexual harassment or racial incidents and things like that, although someone just told me there's a big

problem now because on Slack, people lose their minds and they think they're on Reddit one second and they're on Slack and there's still incidents of that. Yeah, I hear two things on that. I don't know about you. So the Slack thing, everybody acts like they're on Twitter and they say crazy things because it's faceless. But then on Zoom, I've heard some people say

they think it's actually, it democratizes the room because everyone's in their own little box and either nobody has power or I've heard the exact opposite. And I actually recently read a piece by a tremendous gender reporter at The New York Times talking about the opposite effect, which was that women felt that they actually had less of a seat at the table. Ah, interesting. There'll be studies. People are doing studies. I just heard the table. Ah, interesting. There'll be studies. People are doing studies. I just heard about a study on this. But it'll be interesting.

It's a really interesting time. Matthew, thank you so much for that excellent question. I do think we're going to be doing a hybrid answer to this going forward. I think there's just no other way, especially because the fast-forward companies are doing it. And Andrew thinks offices are coming back. No, no, no. Hold on. Let me take it back.

I do think it will be hybrid, but I don't think it'll just be willy-nilly hybrid. I think it'll be, there'll be structure to the hybrid. You'll come in three days a week or whatever it is, and you'll be, and there will be the proximity to power issue. You will be trying to be there when other people are there that you desperately want to suck up to. Still sucking up never changes, no matter how much digital things happen. Sucking up is still a longtime practice

of people in this country. Anyway, Andrew, one more quick break, and we'll be back for your prediction. Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic. You already know that AI is transforming the world around us, but lost in all the enthusiasm and excitement is a really important question. How can AI actually work for you? And where should you even start?

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to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Okay, Andrew, this is usually Scott's thing, but you are in the hot seat. What is your prediction? What is your prediction? Just what is your prediction? My prediction is that Bernie Sanders will find a way into a Biden administration if he wins. Oh, how so? Please illuminate us some more. You know, this is a completely wacky prediction. And by the way, I was wrong with the other prediction the other day. So just like get out your salt shaker, the biggest one you got. Okay. Right. I think he's going to end up campaigning for Biden at this point in his career. Does he have more power as a senator or in the administration?

Could he do you know, could he could he push them into a place that he wants to be? Maybe. Could he create more excitement about it? Maybe. I frankly, I'm sorry. Pick a place. Pick a place. You got to pick up like an actual role. Yeah. Yeah. An actual role. Not just wandering around yelling at people. That's what I was really thinking the role might be. Or Larry David. That might be the role. That might be the role. I think Larry David should have a role in the Biden administration. But what, pick a role. I need you, I'm going to press you further.

Just special advisor. Special, that seems like one of those things. You think that's too lame? Yeah, I think he's going to be... Then he'll be mad. You know what I mean? Because he'll not have real power. That's something you give to someone you just want to put off to the side.

Special advisor to the president. Unless you're Peter Navarro and you get to wander in and scream at the president every now and then. Yeah, but that's because that's a crazy... The way he runs those offices is like... I don't know. These predictions...

Because I was trying to come up with a wild prediction. I thought that was... That's a good one. I like predictions, because I was trying to come up with a wild prediction. I thought that was in the wild. That's a good one. I like it, but I want you to put him in a spot. Just a senior advisor. You don't think like a cabinet position.

I mean, you know, because all the cabinet positions have been so, I mean, I was going to say like, if I said education, then you know who I think of now. And then I think that that's like a role that's not.

All right. I'm going to press you just a little bit on this question. Who's education secretary? If Biden wins. Oh, that is a good question. Trump people who knows they'll bring in the next gang of people they'll bring in. But let me go through them. Education. I honestly don't know. This one I haven't given enough thought to. Who do you like? The guy who works for works with Lorraine Powell Jobs. Arnie. Oh, Arnie Duncan. Arnie Duncan. Very smart guy.

You think he gets it? That's my idea. I just said it. Didn't he do that under Obama, though? He may have, yeah. I just don't know. He's going to go back to a lot of people he's comfortable with. What about EPA? Jay Inslee.

That's not bad. Yeah. Commerce? You know, does anybody really want to be commerce? Because commerce is always one of those jobs that feels like, you know, like understudied to the Treasury Secretary. Like you wanted to be the Treasury Secretary and then you got that or you got National Economic Advisor. It's like a consolation. You do a lot.

Yeah, I agree. It feels like a consolation prize, even though actually in this day and age, Wilbur Ross has, I don't know if he's got power, but you'd think with all of the things going on with Huawei. Yeah, he's sleeping a lot. I can't even go on. Come on. Yeah. Come on. Be sleepy. Snoozy. Speaking of sleepy Joe, sleepy Wilbur. I say Elizabeth Warren for that one. How about that? How do you like them? Who do you like for Treasury then? Treasury Secretary.

Oh, I think they'd have a hard time putting Elizabeth Warren. I'd love to see that, just to watch Jamie Dimon's head blow off. That would be a pleasure to watch. But who do they do it? Who gets the job? Oh, that's a tough one.

You know, in olden times, Sheryl Sandberg, but no longer. She's on the outs with them. Could it be a Wall Street person? Or you think a Jamie Dimon or a Larry Fink, impossible? No, no, no, but no longer. She's on the outs with them. Could it be a Wall Street person? Or you think a Jamie Dimon or a Larry Fink? Impossible. No, no, no, no, no. That AOC's head blops off on that one.

So, or Bernie Sanders. That is a... How about like a Doug McMillan? Oh, that's a nice choice. He's a lovely man. Lovely guy. He's not sleepy at all. That's an interesting question. That's a good question. Last,. He's not sleepy at all. That's an interesting question.

That's a good question. Last, let me give you two more. Housing? Oof. What would you want in housing right now? That's a great question. Oh, this is so hard. I know.

See? Start thinking about it. It could be at a real certain column. Last one. I'm going to, well, two more. Department of State? Oh, Department of State. Well.

Come on. Why, you have, come on. Susan Rice. You give it to Susan Rice? Hello. Susan Rice. Add her CIA. Sure, but then there's going to be these crazy hearings where you're going to be hearing

about, you know, this sort of like Hillary Clinton Benghazi nonsense. Whatever. And you think that they're going to be willing. Got Pompeo in there. You think they're going to be willing to suffer through that? They didn't want to suffer through that with the vice president's nonsense. Whatever. And you think that they're going to be willing to suffer through that? They didn't want to suffer through that with the vice president's role. She likes her. Or else she'll be national security advisor.

You know what I mean? Like that attorney general. What's new again? He's comfortable with her. He likes her. She's going to be in there. I say Sally Yates. Sally Yates. She looks good. She's been there.

She's done that. She should be running it. She's got all of it. Hold on, what about, are we giving a role to your, I don't know if he's a, is he a rival, a colleague, a peer? Preet Bharara. Preet Bharara could also be Attorney General. Yeah.

I like that Preet Bharara. I like that Pre-Parrara. I do. He's a funny guy. He's great. He would be great. He's got a whole Twitter history now because he really goes crazy on Twitter. It'll be interesting. I think there'll be a lot of Republicans if he wins. I think there'll be a lot more Republicans in the administration

because they're going to want to be like do a Gerald Ford kind of thing. Like, let's all hold hands and stop yelling at each other and let's ignore the QAnon lady. By the way, though, you know, we have this conversation as if we're like talking about it as if Biden's going to win. Hold on. But are you looking at these crazy, are you looking at these betting markets? Are you? Because the betting markets are much tighter. And I don't know what to think about that. It's going to be tight, tight. It's going to be tight. And in the Trump administration,

I don't know, it's his barber, you know, like he's run out be tight. Tight. It's going to be tight. And in the Trump administration, I don't know. It's his barber. You know, like he's run out of people. They won't run out of the administration. It'll be filled with the people who want to be president next. You know, you'll see the return of Nikki Haley, those kind of things, I think. They'll come back to hang for the next. Okay, I got a prediction for you, by the way.

All right, go ahead. You will hear stories about Harris and Biden hating each other within three or four weeks. Oh, yeah. True. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I don't think they do.

No, but I'm saying that the whole issue has been that Biden supposedly wanted to have this partnership with somebody like Obama. They really wanted to trust each other. And you know that they're going to turn her into some kind of conniving something or other who's trying to become the president before he's even in the role. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's Fox News. My mother already had the talking points of the Trump administration. She literally typed the exact thing the Trump administration, it was astonishing to watch. You know what I mean? Of course, she's a Fox News fan, as people know. And she literally typed exactly what the, she wrote me, I swear, it was crazy. She wrote me, Biden won't know what hit him when she manipulated him. And then the Trump administration wrote the same things, which is these sort of ugly misogynistic talking points

focused strictly on talking about how Harris completes the radical leftist takeover of Joe Biden because he doesn't know what he's doing because he's adult. It's just, I was amazed by it. If you're a fan of Fox, can you be a fan of Chris Wallace? If you're a fan of Chris Wallace, can you be a fan of Fox? Yes. Yes. Yes. No, I'm a huge fan of Chris Wallace. Yeah, there's a couple people there. But he often goes against the grain. That's why I was curious. He does. I just, I think they're so irresponsible. Just the whole naming, the fact that Tuchel Carlson couldn't pronounce Kamala Harris was really, I mean, it's like a 10-year-old who wasn't raised right. But I don't want to even blame his parents because I'm sure they tried.

But misnaming her is just ridiculous. Like, you don't have to like her policy. you don't have to like her policy you don't have to like her her record you don't have to like her on a level as a politician but to mispronounce her name is really ridiculous it's it's vaguely you know it's it's just weird it's just weird it's just so it's so aggressive in the worst possible ways so i think but i think it's effective i hate to say it i think it's effective and that that, I mean, I looked at my mom's tweets and I was like, okay, it works. It works. Unfortunately. Yes. It's going to be a very tight race. So we will next, I will predict with our next host, who's going to be the Trump administration cabinet. Sorry.

All right. Okay. Andrew, you've proven yourself not only to have good hair, but to be an incredible co-host. How is sitting in Scott's shoes? You are a very kind soul. I'm not wearing shoes right now as it happens. Okay, all right. So I can't speak. And not Scott's shoes either. I can't speak to Scott's shoes. He may be in flip-flops if he's on the beaches in Nantucket. Yes.

Yeah, he is indeed. And do you have any advice for me as your temporary co-host? Advice. Advice for Tara. Yeah. I keep doing what you're doing. I love it. That's so boring and lame. I love it. It's boring and

lame. Someday we will have a show. Now we're just making Scott jealous. That's just unfair and mean. We are. I've decided this. I'm moving on. It's me and wives. I like wives. I like a lot of wives. Anyway, thank you so much for doing this.

We're going to move to Utah. Andrew Russvogin is a great journalist, and I really appreciate you doing this. We're going to move to Utah. And Andrew is, Andrew Roswergen is a great journalist. And I really appreciate you doing this. Thank you for having me. No problem. And by the way, I do love Scott. And we've been loving our live stream series called Pivot School. They're terrific. We look great.

You guys looked awesome. Thank you. We look good. You really did. And it was. It's just the camera and a lot of Vaseline, Andrew. That's what it is. Really pretty much.

You can get tickets now for next week's show at pivotschool.com. We have Dara Khosrowshahi coming on along with another amazing people and ideas and things like that. And Scott's been doing some amazing presentations. Thank you again, Andrew. Thank you. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Fernando Finete engineered this episode.

Eric Anderson is Pivot's executive producer. Thanks again to Andrew Ross Sorkin for co-hosting with me this week and have a great rest of summer. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. If you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you liked our show, please recommend it to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week with Amina Sao, co-hosting our breakdown of all things tech and business.

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