The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - What Impacts Will AI Have On Hiring? What to Do if You Get Laid Off, and Being a Dad

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Scott discusses the human resources industry, specifically how AI will disrupt the hiring process. He then gives career advice to a listener who is struggling to land steady income after being laid off. He wraps with thoughts on what it means to be a dad.  Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Buy "The Algebra of Wealth," out now. Follow the podcast across socials @profgpod: Instagram Threads X Reddit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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providing intelligent tools for your service agents to make customers happier all built into Welcome to the PropG Pod'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 email a voice recording to officehours at profgmedia.com. Again, that's office career in human resources with experience in both public and private sector. From your perspective, what impacts will AI and automation have on human resources, particularly with employee relations? Love the pod, love the book, keep up the good work. Thank you. I think it's going to have a huge impact. AI is crawling all existing data, which means that AI wants to take the arc of history and move it forward on the same arc. And there's been tremendous bias in the workplace, so that bias is reflected. What is being done about this?

Legislation. In an effort to root out potential bias in hiring and promotion software, New York City became the first city in the country to regulate the use of automation and AI in hiring decisions with NYC 144, a law that went into effect earlier this year. Still, this law has been described as a public disclosure law, not an anti-bias law. Under the new law, companies will need to review any software that plays a major role in hiring or promotions and publish adverse impact ratios, as in data showing whether the software affects certain races or genders more than others. I don't see how you can enforce that. But anyways, employers are also required

to post these impact ratios on their websites, including the notice that they're using the tools and an option for job seekers to request an alternative to being screened by the software. If businesses don't follow these rules, they could pay fines of up to $1,500 per day for each violation. Yeah, that means fucking nothing. Big tech is like, fine, we'll do it at whatever we want. Send us a bill. I don't know if this legislation is going to work. It seems to me to be pretty easy to cover your ass saying, yeah, we use technology, but it didn't impact our hiring. I used a form of organic intelligence around hiring in my last firm, L2. We did a ranking of all the people who was really adding

the most value. And we took the top 10 that were really the culture carriers, working really hard, great with clients, could trust anything they did. And what we found are the commonalities through all of them was three things. One, they went to world-class universities. You don't like to think that the current narrative out there is it doesn't matter, go anywhere you want. It doesn't matter what school you go to. Yeah, it does. Because effectively the primary value out of the elite universities is their admissions department because they get so many applications. They can select these freakishly remarkable people and the children of rich kids. But when you get someone out of UVA, when you get someone out of Georgia Tech, they generally just have their shit together and they're very good. That was number one. Number two, they were athletes. Yeah. Learning how to lose, learning a certain level of grit, learning how to play with others, discipline. Our best employee has had a background in sports. And then finally, this is the interesting one, they were women. It wasn't you had to have all three. We generally tried to have two of the three. Some people don't

play sports. That's fine. Some people didn't go to a university. That's fine. But generally speaking, we found the best employees had checked all three of those boxes. Isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting? Anyways, I think AI should be incorporated into HR. AI is coming for everything. Be the ninja warrior in AI who has the ultimate weapon. And that is a really facile, deep understanding of AI. Thanks for the question. Question number two. Hey, Scott, I appreciate you taking the question. I'm a 31-year-old college dropout who's been fortunate enough to build a career for themselves

in tech. I taught myself programming and eventually found my way into product management. By the age of 28, I was earning about $200,000 a year. While I attribute that mostly to my negotiating abilities over my actual merits, at that point in my life, it felt like I had unlocked a cheat code and figured out a way to make a high income while avoiding significant student debt. And then in 2023, all of that got flipped on its head, and I, along with about a quarter million tech employees, found myself

looking for a new role. Over the past 18 months, with the exception of a couple of one-off paid consulting gigs, I've struggled to find a meaningful source of income. And so my question to you is this. If you were a young Scott Galloway today, entering the job market, with how hyper competitive it is, with the ever-increasing cost of living and cost of higher education, and with AI making the future of work fairly ambiguous, what would your approach look like? How would you approach it differently than you did when you were starting your career today? And lastly, asking for a friend, what advice do you have for a 31-year-old college dropout who is struggling to write the next chapter in their adult working life?

I appreciate your time. Thanks. So the first one is forgive yourself. You've recognized a lot of success. You've made a lot of money, and now you're not, and you're facing your sort of first what I call professional crisis. The only thing I can guarantee anybody is that they're going to face a crisis like this. Keep in mind, everyone you talk to, regardless of the bullshit narrative of how amazing they are and amazing their life has

been, has been where you are right now. So the first is forgive yourself. The second thing we're going to do is we're going to put together a kitchen cabinet of people. We're going to reach out and ask for help and say, hey, I'm looking for a job. I'd love some advice. If they obviously have contacts or can keep their ears open, great. But more than that, say to them, I would just like someone to check in with and make sure I'm doing the right things. Third, we're going to do three or four things every day. We're going to stay fit. We're going to use that for mental fitness, whether that's running, whether that's yoga, whether that's meditation, whether that's lifting weights, but you're going to keep sort of your mental wellness shit together, right? You obviously understand technology, you understand how to do projects, whether it's trying to lean into AI,

whatever it might be. Also, we're going to take advantage of what our strengths are. One of your strengths, it sounds like to me, because you're so young, is you probably don't have dogs or kids, so you want to be open to moving elsewhere. And that is, if you were living in a blue state that was expensive, making, I think you said 200 grand a year, you might be able to take a job making 120 grand a year in St. Louis or Atlanta or Nashville because the cost of living is so much lower. But lean into the fact that you might be mobile, if you will. Go on every interview. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. What you don't want to do is be out of the job market a year passing up opportunities because they weren't exactly the right thing. But I would

put together a kitchen cabinet of people every day, three or four emails to strangers or people you have some sort of contact with or who you used to work with. Write down a list of everyone you worked with, you had a good relationship with, track them down, tell them your situation and see if they have any job openings, hit job boards, start sending out resumes, be aggressive. It's a bit of a numbers game, right? But let me circle back to where I started. Forgive yourself. You're going through what everyone has gone through. In terms of specific industries, it's hard to predict. My current thinking right now is the industry that's most ripe for disruption is healthcare at the hands of AI. It has grown costs faster than inflation for 40 years with no underlying innovation. We're actually living less longer. I mean, if you're rich, this is the

best city in the world or best country in the world for health care. The bottom 90, it's not. And I think AI is going to do incredible things there. So maybe think about taking a lower salary and going into a startup in a place like health care. But look, you have technical skills. You understand technology. You have real skills. I can hear in your voice that you are articulate. You sound confident. And again, recognize you are exactly where the most successful people in the world

have been several times. Appreciate the question. We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us. Support for PropG comes from Mint Mobile. There are times when you discover something so incredible, so game-changingly great, you can't believe you ever lived without it. Maybe it's a specific pair of house slippers, or noise-canceling headphones, or an actual full night's sleep. Well, Mint Mobile's phone plans are sort of like that.

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Right now, you can get an additional 15% off any annual membership at Masterclass.com slash Prof G. That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash prof g masterclass.com slash prof g welcome back question number three hey scott i'm going to comment on your favorite subject you thanks for everything you do and for being vulnerable and discussing the hard stuff about being a man and more importantly, being a dad. Your comments about taking body blows as a parent and the need to feel like a dad in a Hallmark commercial during your last podcast, that really hit home. They were basically a body blow in and of themselves for me as a father of a 12 year

old daughter and a 16 year old son i'm working through exactly what it means for me to be a dad during those years you're bang on it's certainly not at all what i imagined and while they're tremendous kids as a dad i can't help but feel as though I'm missing something due to the fact that relationship is not two-way. Or as you said, I'm really struggling with this debtor relationship as they become themselves. I understand this is a healthy and necessary process for my kids, but I can't shake this feeling that I'm still doing something wrong due to the fact that my kids want to share so little of their lives with me. Any suggestions you might have to make this next stage of parenting a little easier? How do I learn to accept my role as a debtor in this relationship and find new ways to enrich my relationship with

my children in this new landscape? Thanks so very much for your wisdom, Colin in Canada. Hey, Colin in Canada. So I hear you said every dad anywhere. I grew up thinking that my can't wait to my kids watch World War II history documentaries with me and come with me to CrossFit because they're going to find me so impressive and want to be like me that they're going to just be naturally really into anything I'm into. I've been thinking a lot about the notion of masculinity and the rite of passage when a boy becomes a man. And I love what Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men says, he uses this concept of surplus value. And I've actually sat my boys down and explained this concept. And I said, okay, boys down and explained this concept. And

I said, okay, right now there's all these people at your school trying to help you damage the muscle in between your ears so that it grows back stronger. You're not doing a lot for them. Your parents are paying them some money, but you're not adding a lot of value there. You are in a society that for the most part really values children. We're living in London right now, and they spend a lot of money such that you can have the tube to go to school. They spend money on building malls so you can go play mini golf or whatever it is, and you're not adding a lot of value back. You're not making any money. You're not paying any taxes. We love you immensely. We think about you all the goddamn time. We're constantly thinking about the lunch and filling out the form so you can go on

field trips. We're constantly thinking about ensuring that you have the right pillows because one of my kids is allergic. We're just constantly working on you and you are not constantly working and thinking about us. It's negative value. How you become a man is you start adding more and more value. And when you become a man is when you flip to the credit side. Is that right? You add surplus value. And that is you start doing more for other people. And I do little things called what a man does. And that is I say, okay, when visitors show up, a man immediately jumps to his feet, goes man looks around and pours water in empty glasses. A man, when he's with women, pays for everything. If that sounds sexist, it is. I don't care.

I still think men should pay for women in almost any context. And at some point, I say, you're going to start adding surplus value. Hopefully. Some men never do. Some men raised in environments where they're coddled, they never get to a point of adding more value than they're taking from the government, from their friends, from their family. And I think part of being a man, quite frankly, or part of being a father is to be blunt. We get less than we give. And there's a certain reward in that. We take blows. Quite frankly, I'm sometimes devastated by the fact that I try so hard with my kids. I call my kids every night at the same time. You'd think they'd start

to figure it out. I FaceTime them. I try to do these workouts with my oldest. I try to check in on my son and see what's going on with him. And on a regular basis, my son doesn't pick up and I don't hear from him, even though he knows I'm calling him at 9 p.m. My youngest sometimes, when he picks up the phone, says, literally picks up the phone like this, what, what? Well, I was just calling to check in. Oh, okay, and he's doing something else,

checking out his hair in the reflection or on, I can tell he's on some sort of app or something. I think at the end of the day, the best advice I can give any father is just time. And that is, I hate the notion of quality time. I think that was invented by men who don't spend a lot of time with their kids to feel better about themselves. There's no such thing. The thing about those key moments when you kind of connect with your kids is that you're in the car taking them to school and they just sort of tell you something about someone they like, or they ask you a question. That's kind of the garbage time, or Ryan Holiday from the Daily Stoic taught me this term, garbage time. Try and find as much garbage time with your

kids as possible. I think at the end of the day, what they're going to remember, you know, maybe you weren't a great dad or you were a dork or, I don't know, they didn't think you were cool, whatever it might be. But they will remember that you were there, that you were there. And then I would also say, I thought my kids would be into the things I was into. And what I realized is if you want to be a good dad, first you have to get them into something, whatever it is they take to, ceramics. My kids got really into Premier League football. I am not interested in sports, but now I go to Premier League football all the time. And I find games in different cities. I try and do one trip alone with each of them. And we go together. I'm leaning into what they're interested in, because you realize if you don't lean into what they're interested in, you're just not going to have that much overlap. I was asked to speak at my kid's school in front of his whole class. And he said he might not be comfortable with me doing that. He thinks it would be embarrassing. That was like a spear through my

fucking heart. A chance to demonstrate what I do, and I'm good at it in front of my son and his classmates. That was just so exciting for me, and he's decided I'm kind of embarrassing, and he doesn't want me there. Literally like a spear through my fucking heart. But that's what we do. We take those spears. We add surplus value. We acknowledge we're not going to get as much back as we put in. And why do we do that?

Because we're men. And that's what men do. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursatproptomedia.com. Again, that's officehoursatproptimedia.com. Again, that's officehoursatproptimedia.com. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Caroline Shagrin, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Profiteer Markets Pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.