The Starr Conspiracy Podcast

I never liked the idea of throwing out babies but at least I get the point of the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” A few companies that have been historically great places to work might want to take a fresh lesson from it, though.

As January closes, the tech sector is in full-on hunker-down mode, with layoffs (see more below) that unwind recent headcount growth and torpedo long-shot projects. Dark clouds aside, there are two big reasons for Work Tech optimism, but one significant caution.

In recent weeks, all of the big names in technology announced significant layoffs. What happened at Microsoft over the past week is endemic to a larger problem here, but I’ll spend a little time picking on them. Why? Because, honestly, I expected a little better.

The Generative AI Frenzy of 2023 is woven with so many fascinating threads for the implications for the future of all work but especially for marketing — designing better and faster, writing copy, developing PowerPoints, and even doing intern work. As Work Tech tries to figure out what this means for the industry, we can take a page from another field, one that’s already in full-on freak-out mode about AI: academia. As this article from The New York Times points out, the choices are to fight it or learn to work with it.

It’s been almost a month since Southwest Airlines had one of the biggest meltdowns in aviation history. A combination of bad weather in the wrong places coupled with ancient crew-scheduling technology sent the company into a metaphorical nosedive.

January gloom is definitely a thing here in the Pacific Northwest this time of year. With major holidays out of the way, and with about seven hours of actual daylight (if you can call it that), we’re all just powering through until spring. What am I reading in the pale blue light of my screen? Below are stories about quiet hiring (I know), CX and EX connections, and tech workers recalculating their risk. But first, I want to talk about what it’s like to be a work leader in 2023.

The tech industry is still roiling as the fallout from the past five years of irrational exuberance continues to unwind. However, the future of Work Tech continues to come into focus.

Just to close the book on 2022, it was a bruising year for startups. Layoffs were of 2001 proportions. Many expect 2023 to be another challenging year. After an investment downturn in 2022, VCs are sitting on mountains of capital to deploy, and many investors are telling portfolio companies not to plan on raising capital this year. As a result, startups are slowing headcount growth and preparing for worst-case scenarios. As it was, tech layoffs in 2022 happened faster than during the pandemic. Yeah, last year sucked. But what about 2023? Can we be optimistic? Absolutely. 

Happy new year! Hopefully, you were able to spend some time away from your e-mail inbox over the last few weeks and enjoy some non-newsletter time. We’re covering what’s keeping HR up at night, employment trends for 2023, and getting stuck in an Applebee’s. But first, we’ve got new HR laws to talk about. Don’t get too excited.

Revisiting Work Tech predictions from a year ago, the thing that stands out most is that people’s expectations were all over the place. For example, some correctly anticipated that hybrid and remote work would continue going strong in 2022, but others — even people who I thought knew better — predicted the pendulum would swing hard in the other direction, that people would return to the office in droves. ...

Let's jump into this week's Work Tech Weekly newsletter from Steve Smith. As we near the end of 2022, it’s hard to ignore the challenges facing the tech industry. This year has been one of the most difficult for the sector since 2001, and it’s important to learn from the past and look ahead to the future. I highly encourage you to read this Wall Street Journal article about lessons to learn from the 2001 tech bust. An entire generation of investors, founders, and marketers have only known a time when the growth of big tech companies outpaced the broader market, and capital was easy to come by because interest rates were at historic lows. The market dynamics that encourage growth at all costs don’t exist anymore. R-Value and Gross Profit Net Revenue Retention are high-value indicators for a reason. ...

Let's jump into this week’s Work Leader Weekly newsletter from Lance Haun: About this time of year, we can’t help but look ahead and try to figure out what’s going to happen over the next 12 or so months. The last time I did this, in 2019, I did not predict a global pandemic that would upend life and work as we know it. Thus, you can understand why I might be a little hesitant to do benign predictions about “AI coming to work” or “recruitment marketing taking a big step forward.” After all, it’s been a weird few years, and 2023 isn’t promising anything drastically different in that department. ...

Let's jump into this week's Work Leader Weekly newsletter from Lance Haun. Bad press for remote work won’t end. The “office apocalypse” is upon us. I’m not being dramatic. That’s the title of a story about low office occupancy that will likely cost cities hundreds of billions. The blame for persistent lower-than-normal office occupancy are those darn working folks who don’t want to fight the commuting hellscape every single day. ...

Let’s jump into this week’s Work Leader Weekly newsletter from Lance Haun: We all keep hearing about layoffs, and that probably won’t change until at least the end of this calendar year. While concentrated mostly in the technology sector, other industries are being impacted, including e-commerce, real estate, and consumer products — all of which were red hot during the pandemic. ...

For tech companies, the hits kept coming. Twitter is in turmoil. Crypto is crashing. There were multiple layoff announcements, including Meta and Salesforce. Tiger Global — an investment firm that has pumped big money into Work Tech over the past few years — slashed its valuations of private tech bets by billions. It’s hard to find a shred of optimism when the tech market is hitting its biggest dip since the dot-com bust. But there is a silver lining: Out of this storm will be winds that propel the growth of the next stage of Work Tech growth. The core fundamentals of Work Tech are good. The bellwether brands of the industry — the big ERP/HCM players — are posting solid earnings and growth. The business pains that drive sales keep increasing. Remote work will continue to be a growth driver. Dozens of companies have routes to go public with solid fundamentals when the IPO markets become favorable again. This will be a good decade for Work Tech, even if 2023 is shaping up to be challenging. Stay positive and keep moving forward.

Lance is back with another Work Leader Weekly newsletter: We can do better than Musk’s Twitter disaster. It’s been a meme-worthy three weeks since Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover took place. From his proclamation that comedy is now legal, to his plan for the $8 fake verification checkmarks going about as badly as you’d expect, it’s easy just to laugh at what’s going on at the organization.

Yesterday, Lance was finishing out a great ee are ee Recruiting Conference in Atlanta. What did he learn from the leaders in the room during a tumultuous week for politics and economics? Here’s the latest Work Leader Weekly newsletter.

The 2020s have already been a difficult decade by any measure, as we have already confronted disease, war, and civil unrest. Now we face yet another challenge to peace, prosperity, and tranquility. I’m talking, of course, about that dreaded menace known as the Philadelphia Phillies.

In this week’s newsletter, Lance Haun wanted to start with the always-interesting world of economics and employee productivity before we covered the new chief remote officer role, HR’s 2023 priorities, and myths about Halloween candy.

In 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that in a hundred years we would work only 15 hours a week to satisfy our basic economic needs. Ninety years later, Americans work on average over 34 hours a week. How was he more than 100% wrong? Simple. He underestimated technological innovation (and population growth), especially the tools that allow us to create more stuff with less effort. In other words, automation. The big news this month — besides inflation (more of the same) and Taylor Swift releasing her new album Midnights (“Anti-Hero” is an instant classic) — is something over which Silicon Valley has been erupting these last few weeks. It’s called generative AI, and I expect it to transform Work Tech into something unrecognizable in a very short time.