The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Office Hours: Should I Work for Meta? + Why Unions are Failing, and Engaging an Audience

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Scott takes a question on the strengths and weaknesses of unions as a labor resurgence seems to be heating up. He then offers advice on taking a job with big tech when the company clashes with your values, and shares his tips for how to hold an audience’s attention. Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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cards, savings accounts, mortgage rates, and more. NerdWallet, finance smarter. NerdWallet Compare Incorporated. NMLS 1617539. Welcome to the PropGPod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question, please visit officehours.propertymedia.com. Again, that's officehours.propertymedia.com. And again, we do not listen to these questions before we hear them. First question. Hi, Scott. It's Adam from Nashville. I'm a human resource manager for a large non-union manufacturing plant here in Tennessee. Recently, unions have made headlines for successfully organizing at Starbucks and Amazon

locations. Part of my job is building a strong employment value proposition, one where all employees feel professionally fulfilled and well compensated for the work they do. I like to think that's possible even without third-party representation. In your opinion, what are the strengths and weaknesses of a union? How should companies respond to a resurgent labor movement? Thanks, Adam, from Nashville. So we're definitely experiencing a moment or sort of a resurgent labor movement. The question is whether it's a head fake, whether it's temporary or signals a structural shift back towards unions. We'll see. We'll see.

I think the jury's still out. According to the National Labor Relations Board, between October 2021 and March of this year, union representation petitions increased almost 60% from the same period a year ago. And more than 250 Starbucks locations have filed petitions to form a union, and 54 Starbucks stores have formally organized. According to Gallup, about two-thirds of Americans, 68%, approve of labor unions. The greatest rate since 1965, which is a surprise. I think people feel that our frontline workers not getting fair compensation is resulting in, at a minimum, homeless encampments popping up all over America. And also, we just hear the stories and read about just how America is turning into two Americas. Unions should be appealing. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a worker with a union contract earns about 10% more than a non-union member with a similar job.

Still, last year, union membership hit its lowest point since the Great Depression at 10.3%. In sum, the number of people working for a union, I think, has been cut in half in the last 40 years. In 2020, the rate of union membership in the private sector was just 6% compared to 35% in the public sector. So why is this? For starters, they're just sort of outgunned. Union spend, and this is every union representing 10% of all workers, spent about $48 million lobbying in 2021. Just Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook spent more than that. So I have sort of two minds on unions. I was a member of a union when I worked at San Vicente Foods as a box boy, and it was a difference between making $8 an hour and like $3.50 an hour. And that played an important role in my ability to get through my,

I think it was my freshman or my sophomore year at UCLA. I do think that a lot of people who end up in unions end up learning a trade. Unions have a really positive track record for the most part around integrating and being champions for incorporating people of color into the middle class. I think some unions do a great job of training their employees or training their union members. So there's a lot to like theoretically about the basic intention and notion of the right to assemble, the right for collective bargaining, and there's just no doubt about it. We need a mechanism, we need a construct to ensure that the middle class prospers. And one of the big myths, I think, in a modern economy is that the middle class is organic, that if we let the market just do its thing, ultimately the middle class will heal and prosper.

No, the middle class is an accident. And unless we make concerted investments, and I'll use the R word, redistribution, and that is take money from other parts of the economy, specifically call it the top decile of income earners, and reinvest it in things like state education, reinvest it in things like minimum wage, reinvest it in access to healthcare for people who can't afford it. And we're just not going to have a thriving middle class. We've seen it in every economy. Ultimately, the wealthy people aggregate political power, weaponize government,

get lower taxes, which ends up putting more economic burden, more social burden on everyone else but the rich, and slowly but surely everyone but the rich starts to fail. You have huge income inequality, and at some point when you recognize there's a small number of people who own more than 50% of the bottom half of America, right now I think it's about seven families in the U.S. are worth as much as the bottom 50%. The bottom 50% figures out that the fastest way to double their wealth is to either kill or take the assets away of just those seven people. This has happened over and over in Central and Latin America. I mean, that's kind of the basis of the French Revolution. So what we have

here is we've gotten to those kind of crazy levels of income inequality. And if you look at income inequality, it's pretty simple. It's absolutely correlated to the lack of strength of unions and whether minimum wage is suppressed. And capital versus labor always has a tension. So what have we had? Because we have not reinvested the middle class, because we have basically kicked unions in the nuts over and over, cut their membership in half. And we have a ridiculous minimum wage that hasn't increased in, I don't know, I think it's like 13 years. We've seen the middle class wane. We have prosperity in this country. We have very little progress. Now, unions, I think, are the perfect enemy for corporations. They're disorganized. There's a lot of infighting. There's legitimate claims or accusations of corruption, not well run. When's the last time you met a super impressive 24-year-old who thought, I'm going to go to work for the union? Said no one ever. Said no impressive 24-year-old ever. So, I wonder if unions are a failed construct, that they just don't work, that the union that

does work and the union that's needed is called the federal government, and that they need to mandate a certain level of health care or access to a certain level of affordable health care. They need to demand minimum wage, get raised to $12 and $15 and $20 over the next three to five years. And also adopting a German approach that the board of directors has to include a certain number of directors that represent the rank and file employees. One of the reasons that CEO's compensation has skyrocketed over the last 30 years is compensation is a function of proximity. And when the CEO is having lunch and hanging out with the directors who decide his compensation, they put a face and a name to it, and they want that person to do well because we know him or her and we like that person. But the factory shop floor worker isn't in the boardroom. They're faceless. So we don't have the same empathy for them. And

they don't make that mistake in Germany. Sometimes these companies have up to half of their directors are from, are representatives or fiduciaries for workers, for kind of the frontline workers. I think that's a great idea. And if you'll look at Germany, they've kind of avoided some, not all of this income inequality. Anyways, I think that we need a new union, but what is going on here is not working. And I worry that the recent blip up and unions will yet again give us the false hope that unions are going to solve the problems for the middle class. They're not. This needs to be government action supported by voters. We need minimum wage to go up dramatically. We need a massive investment in vocational training,

and we need to legally mandate a certain level of dignity and work, specifically minimum wage and access to healthcare. Adam from Nashville, thanks for your question and your good work. Next question. Hey, Scott. Ramon from Jersey City. I'm 27 and spent the early parts of my career working as a paid social media buyer at large ad agencies. Over the past year, I've been making about $100K as a result of yearly promotions, merit-based bonuses, and salary increases. While my job is comfortable, I feel unchallenged and I am not a grown professional due to the team and clients I am on. Additionally, I've also been interviewing with one of your least favorite companies, Meta, or Facebook, for a role as a client solutions manager in their ad sales org. I feel in my gut that this is not the move for me. My question is, how do I avoid joining my peer group's trend of joining big tech companies for the sexy LinkedIn job updates and work on something more true to how I am while increasing my financial security.

While 100K may be a lot, it's definitely not a lot in the New York City area. Thanks, Scott. Love the show. Ramon from New Jersey. Thanks for the question. I think a lot of people your age are struggling with a similar kind of issue. Although I just want to start out by saying these are good problems. Wondering if you should leave your $100K a year job to go to Meta. It doesn't feel like you're making a lot of money living in New York, but you are making good money, and you obviously have the skills that our information economy wants. So start from a point of appreciation that these are good problems. According to Business Insider, meta-employees typically make somewhere between $100,000 and $400,000 a year, depending on what position they hold and where they live. People in New York tend to be paid more, while a software engineer in Massachusetts

makes $123,000, while in New York makes roughly $160,000 for roughly the same job. So look, it's easy to be a purist with other people's lives. And I think that what you want to do, and it sounds like you've done it, Ramon, I think you want to take responsibility for economic security for your and your family's life. And that's not to say sometimes taking economic responsibility as a man means getting out of the way or being more supportive of your partner, who is better at this whole money thing than you are. That's being a man. But a good place to start, and I think you've done this, is you want to take economic responsibility and you want to bust a move to a certain level of economic security. I think there was a dangerous trope or myth that, oh, just do what you want. It'll work out and be true to

yourself. You know what? Fuck that. Make Benjamins. And I know how gross that sounds. I just think we live in a society where in America, it's a gentle, loving place if you have money. It's a rapacious, ugly place if you don't have money. And that's not to say you need to be 100% focused on doing nothing but making money, but just have a sober conversation with yourself. Are you willing to move to Jersey City or move to Syracuse and take your cost of living way down? Those even aren't even low-cost domains and not be as focused or as totally committed to work. Some people work to live. There's nothing wrong with that. And a lot of young people decide they want to get economic security younger, so they sort of live to work. And you just need to have an honest conversation around what economic weight class you expect to be in and what are the sacrifices to get to that aspired economic weight class. And if you're really being honest with

yourself, that the two match each other. In terms of meta, look, I think Facebook has great people there. I don't think it's a great company. There are a lot of really talented people there. People have a right and an obligation to make a good living, and I understand why they're there. I do believe they invest in their human capital. They pay people well. It's just that they're bad for the planet. Having said that, I don't resent anyone who works there except in senior management. Those people who have already achieved economic security and still decide to deploy their massive talent and capital to delay and obfuscate and gloss over things like teen depression.

What's the point? Okay, so you'd be worth $20 million instead of $40 million? Hey, Sheryl Sandberg, you'd only make $100 million instead of $200 million this year if you stopped prostituting personal loss and this important conversation around gender balance such that you could get people to look away from teen depression, which has skyrocketed 80% in the last 10 years or since social went on mobile and there's just no getting around it. Facebook has played a role in that. And you've spent much more time and effort and ultimately Mark Zuckerberg has to take responsibility for all of this as the CEO. You spent much more time, creativity, and capital trying to get people to avoid this discussion, to not bring it up, than actually addressing it. So look, there's some huge issues

there. At the same time, a lot of people go to work for Exxon, and these are good people. A lot of people work for Altria, for their tobacco company. So I don't think it's fair to judge you. I would look at Meta and say, all right, what is the cost and the trade-off? Am I going to be unhappy working at a place like that? But at the end of the day, a lot of this is moot. You want to let the market decide. When kids come into my office hours and they say, should I go and work for Google or should I go to work for JP Morgan? I'm like, do you have offers from both? They're like, no. And I'm like, well, then why the fuck are we having this conversation? So get that offer from Meta.

See if you can get two offers that's infinitely greater than one. And then try and leverage that offer or parlay that offer into another offer from a bigger firm that you might feel better about, whether it's a Salesforce or even a Google, which I think has actually behaved more responsibly than Facebook or who knows, right? There's Snap. There's a bunch of social. There's a bunch of folks trying to grab.

Amazon Media Group is just a juggernaut. People don't realize that's one of the largest media companies in the world and it's growing faster. But the key here is to get as many offers as possible such that you can let the market decide and help guide you into what is the best opportunity. Ramon from New Jersey. Again, these are good problems. Congratulations on your success. We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us.

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Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Welcome back. Question number three. Hey, Prof G. My name is Colin, and I'm a trainer for a tech company in Madison, Wisconsin. Listening to your show, it's very clear that you're a really engaging speaker who can make any topic interesting. When I listen to your show, even if I'm not necessarily interested in the topic at hand going in, I still find myself hanging on every word.

I find this fascinating since, as a trainer, I lead classes and sometimes the content is just plain dull, but I have to make it interesting for the audience. So, any tips for holding the attention of an audience and conveying knowledge in an engaging way? I ask this question completely selfishly since my job is to essentially hold attention, but I do think in a chaotic, busy world, your super skills in presenting information could be really helpful to anyone. Thanks for your time. Colin from Madison, thanks for the kind words. You're being generous. It's also, it's a really good question. I figured out pretty early that I was going to make my living communicating. And I say I make my living teaching, but at the end of the day,

I make my living communicating, whether it's writing, speaking, presenting. That's how I support me and my family. And it's like a sport. And that is some of its genetic. My father is a great presenter. I oftentimes wonder if my father had the opportunities I had in terms of going to college or graduate school. My father was pulled out of school at the age of 13 and joined the Navy, the Royal Navy at 17, sent money home because he was worried about getting stolen in his barracks on a ship and spent two years honorably discharged, roaming around the North Atlantic in the Arctic Circle as a frogman jumping in and out of water trying to save 160-pound dummies or get them into a helicopter. That couldn't have been fun. I think it would be fucking terrifying. But anyways, he also repaired planes.

He went home and found out that his mother had spent the money he'd been fucking terrifying. But anyways, he also repaired planes. And then honorably discharged, went home and found out that his mother had spent the money he'd been sending home. And her excuse was, I was bored. And she spent it on whiskey and cigarettes. Anyways, not a great upbringing. But I wonder, my dad is always super charming, much more charming than me, much better sense of humor, much funnier, and really fascinated. I was fascinated early with management concepts. And I'm blessed in that I inherited that from him. I'm interested in

concepts. I'm interested in turn of phrase, thinking about ways to communicate something in a compelling, humorous way. I also got a selfishness, which has really haunted me my whole life. Although that's probably my own decisions are my own decisions. I can't really blame him. I'm going to blame him a little bit. Anyways, that is who I'm modeling. But anyways, I got some natural talent and then I started training like any sport. It doesn't matter how much natural talent you have if you don't train really hard. One of the things that has been super helpful in terms of my ability to communicate and hold an audience is teaching. If you get in front of 300 kids who are each paying $7,000 for two hours and 40 minutes, you've got to bring it. And you learn tricks of the trade. You learn the line between being provocative and offensive.

You learn how to engage the audience. Also, I spend a lot of time thinking about visuals and storytelling. So I just don't, you know, when I'm doing something in front of an audience, I make 60, 70% of my income speaking now. So that depends on what year. But anyways, I don't just get up on stage and start rambling. I have a team of analysts who pull together slides for me. We go over, we spend hours on the phone together going over ideas, reviewing the slides for flow, for a narrative, for a story. So generally speaking, you're gonna get up on stage, you're gonna tell people what you're gonna tell them,

you're gonna tell them, and then you're gonna tell them what you just told them. It's up to you in terms of your own personality, the level of humor. You're telling a story, and I find that proprietary data sets are really compelling and visuals. To me, those are that sort of the chocolate and peanut butter of my storytelling is I try and find proprietary data sets are really compelling and visuals. To me, that's sort of

the chocolate and peanut butter of my storytelling is I try and find interesting data sets and communicate them through really interesting visuals. You might have a different means of storytelling, but there's no getting around it, just a lot of practice, trying to get in front of people, taping yourself, practicing. Some people want to memorize every word. Some people feel more comfortable winging a little bit. But by all means, it's about the work done before the actual presentation.

It's about using visuals. It's about having data set. And then it's about an honest appraisal of the kind of presenter you are. You know, do you incorporate humor? Do you incorporate provocative viewpoints? Do you, are you more reserved and just kind of just the facts?

But you'll know pretty quickly if you have an aptitude for this, if you do really invest in it and get yourself opportunities to get in front of people and practice. I don't think you can be engaging unless you're kind of born with it. If you're somewhat engaging, I think you can become very engaging. Also, what I do is I call on emotions. I try and relate all of this to biology and personal experiences around my family, as I find that in most conferences, people are desperate for authenticity and to hear about some of these stories couched in your relationship with your sons or some of your own insecurities or flaws. Anyways, Colin from Madison, thanks for the question. That's all for this episode. Again, if you'd like to submit a question, please submit a voice recording by visiting officehours.propertymedia.com. Our producers are Caroline Shagrin and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our associate producer.

If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the PropG Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Thursday. Hey, it's Scott Galloway. And on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for?

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