Episode

Today, we're stepping slightly outside equations and algorithms, and straight into the cultural forces shaping the tech industry right now.

My guest is Alana Karin, who after 23 years at Google, made a bold move.

She left to write, reflect, and challenge the way tech companies think about people, power, and progress.

Alana's new book, The Hard Tech Era.

looks past the headlines to understand what's actually changing amid mass layoffs, return to office mandates, and AI reshaping priorities.

We talk about AI's impact on job security and why understanding how your company makes money is becoming a core survival skill.

Alana also explains why diversity isn't a nice-to-have, but a prerequisite, and why hiring based on familiarity keeps holding the industry back.

Finally, Alana shares

hard-earned insights on resilience, why so many people leave jobs because of managers rather than roles, and what good leadership really looks like in an age of uncertainty,

trust, clarity, and the ability to let people thrive without micro-management.

This is Learning Beijing Statistics, episode 149, recorded October 23, 2025.

Welcome to Learning Bayesian Statistics, a podcast about Bayesian inference, the methods, the projects, and the people who make it possible.

I'm your host, Alex Andorra.

You can follow me on Twitter at alex.andorra, like the country.

For any info about the show, learnbaytestats.com is the last to be.

Show notes.

becoming a corporate sponsor, unlocking Bayesian Merge, supporting the show on Patreon, everything is in there.

That's learnbasedats.com.

If you're interested in one-on-one mentorship, online courses, or statistical consulting, feel free to reach out and book a call at topmate.io slash alex underscore and dora.

See you around, folks, and best Bayesian wishes to you all.

And if today's discussion sparked ideas for your business, well, our team at Pimc Labs can help bring them to life.

Check us out at www.pimc-lamps.com

Hello my dear Bajans!

Before today's episode, I wanted to let you know that this year, we'll be talking about Bajan modeling in soccer at the Field of Play conference in Manchester, UK on March 27,

2026.

So if you want to meet me, you can come there in the audience if you want, but also as a speaker, because we have already locked in most of the speakers, and announcement coming

soon.

Stay tuned and well, follow on LinkedIn.

Last year we had speakers from baseball, cycling, education, fantasy sports, soccer obviously, because it's Manchester.

And that mix honestly genuinely raised the level of conversation.

The theme for this year, 2026, is communicating complex ideas.

How do you take something technical, nuanced, uncertain, models, abilities, trade-offs.

and make it understandable and useful for people who are not data experts.

Like last year, we are opening up one of the final speaker slots.

So if this theme resonates with you or someone you know, whether they work in football or somewhere completely different, feel free to contact me and I will take a look.

And in any case, you can already buy your tickets, go to Field of Play's website or LinkedIn page.

and you'll have all the information there.

I'm really looking forward to seeing you there, and well, I will for sure have some LBS merch with you, so please come say hello, and well, come to my talk also, so that then I

can say that the room was full, because otherwise, I don't know what I will do.

Thank you so much, people, I will see you there, and now, let's go on with the episode.

Alana Karin, welcome to Learning Vasion Statistics.

Thank you for having me.

This is great pleasure because you have so many interesting things to talk about today as listeners here.

First, a big thank you to Jesse Grabowski and Jordan Thibodeau for putting us in contact in a way because we've met uh through one of Jordan's groups.

So yeah, thank you so much guys for...

We're in his collection of people.

Right, exactly.

But this is great because as listeners know, I love having people with a lot of different backgrounds.

And from time to time, I do a bit more uh research in some fields or some topics.

And so I tend to invite people from that field.

And we've had...

Jordan on the show a few days ago.

The episode is not out yet as we're recording, but through time travel.

It will be when your episode airs.

So people go check this out.

It will be in the show note.

I think it's going to be episode 147.

And today we're going to talk about tech.

Also with Jordan, we did that a lot, but through a prism that was more like basically career advice for tech people.

And also we talked about M &A and the current environment in tech right now, especially through Jordan's specialty, is M &A.

With you today, we're going to talk about tech also, but it's going to be a bit more generalist and you have so many years of experience in that as well.

As we'll go through your new book, your second edition actually of your book.

We'll go through that and...

And we'll talk about all of that today.

But first, as usual, can you give us your origin story, eh Maybe what you're doing nowadays and how did you end up working on that?

Ah, well, what I'm doing nowadays is I'm trying this like author, I don't know, creator gig, because I left Google last November and I had been there 23 years.

Various operations.

and leadership roles through those years on everything from ads through Google Fiber to search.

And I really couldn't imagine going to any other company, being in a conference room anymore.

And I had started writing books, and we'll talk a little bit about that while I was at Google.

And I had this idea for a second edition to my first book.

And I said, okay, I'm going to give myself this year to put that

book out there and test out other forms of creation, whether it's video or a substack or whatnot.

And I'd always liked writing.

I love the writing gig.

Love it.

Of course, one has to like spend a whole lot of time on sales and marketing when one is a creator slash writer.

um Don't love that as much, but I think I'm getting better and better at it.

And that's like, it was a very, very organic journey.

I'm doing some coaching, I'm doing some consulting on the side.

I'm sort of just being open to opportunity right now.

And so after years of being in tech and having almost a very like prescriptive day, I am trying to explore right now.

And that is how I got here.

Now, my very one quick note I feel like I have to say on here is my origin story does involve a statistician father.

I feel like that is important street cred to say here.

It is, it is.

Although like I really like having a lot of different backgrounds on the show.

think it's very important to sample the whole space, you know.

So what I'm very interested in, in your profile is that what was really surprising to me is that you spent 23 years at Google.

Because when you think about people who've spent like almost the whole career in a company, I don't think most people would answer Google.

I think most people would answer, you know, older companies like GM or Ford, you know, things like that.

And no, actually maybe more and more we'll see, we'll see people like you.

I'm actually wondering, you know, how much of a, how much of an outlier you are?

Like do people tend to stay that long at Google or even other tech companies or is the turnover, is the turnover faster?

Would say that.

There is a solid group of people where you will look at their LinkedIn and be like, oh, they were at Oracle 15, 20 years.

They were at Google since 2004.

They were at Microsoft since I wasn't alive, depending how old you are.

And there is a core group of people who, whether it was opportunity,

that just unfolded at one company as that company grew, or their own unique skillset, their personality, whatever it was, have made a career for themselves in tech at one

company.

And you will find them, and you don't have to look that hard to find them.

So there is a solid group of people.

But I would say I would be surprised if it's 20%.

Like it's not such a huge group.

The very common thing you will see on resumes is moving every few years, every four to five years, every eight years, as maybe opportunity presents itself or the road diminished

at a company, something happened with the company.

Also just like a lot of companies don't succeed, right?

So very common in a tech resume that like someone was at a startup for X years.

or the group they were in at a bigger company did get shut down and they moved on, or again, better opportunity presented itself.

So you'll see a whole bunch of paths.

And I think it is less common than it was once to join a company and be a family, you know, be a company man.

But I think because of how these companies grew, there was a lot of opportunity to stay too.

And in my case, I just kept finding something else to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, because as you said, you've done a lot of different, you've had a lot of different positions in your whole career at Google.

not like essentially joins three different companies in one company.

if your company is big enough to do that, you may stay a while.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

It just happens to be another same umbrella company, but you are actually doing very different things for very different products.

Actually, so let's also talk about...

Let's start talking about your book because it's a big book, you talk about a lot of things, including the things we're talking about right now, so think it's a good thing to

have that as something that will accompany us throughout the episode, references to it, but also feel free to depart from things that are ah in the book if you think it's

interesting to answer.

m

Mainly, so your book, your new book is called, uh, the Hard Tech Era.

It's a second edition of your first book.

The first one was in 2020, if I remember correctly.

Uh, so now it's been five more years.

Maybe can you give listeners the elevator pitch for your book?

What can you, like, can you tell us what the book is and how has the, the focus you talked about, you talk about in the, in the book, shifted tech culture away.

from its foundational innovative dreams.

Yes, I can.

So the full book title for Transparency is The Adventures of Women in Tech, Navigating the Hard Tech Era.

The reason it's called The Adventures of Women in Tech is five years ago when I wrote the first book, I was very concerned that I was seeing increasing messaging that maybe there

was an opportunity for women in tech.

And as a woman in tech, I felt very much like, whoa, whoa, whoa, everyone.

Like, I don't know.

Yes, there are bad things that happen.

Hashtag me too is a real thing.

However, there is a ton of opportunity.

There are higher paid jobs here than general other industries.

And while it can be hard for women, it honestly can be hard for women everywhere.

So let's have that conversation.

And so I wrote a whole book.

I interviewed over 80 women.

and really share their stories, all different backgrounds, all different paths, all different career options.

The main point being, if you wanna be here, If you are here, stay.

And here's, yes, there are tough things, but here's how you navigate it.

Fast forward five years, and I was like, one second though, because what had started, like it had already started where there were system...

and culture questions about tech emerging when I wrote the original book.

I just didn't touch on them.

But there had already been diminishing trust in what technology companies were doing and achieving.

There had already been questions culturally about whether they really were investing in diversity, inclusion, fairness, wellbeing, even as they had programs to try to do those

things.

And there had already been an increasing reliance in at least the US economy on these companies as a major part of the S &P.

All of that power and dominance by the time I started to write this sequel was, for me, it felt like a really major missing part of the book.

Really major, like, but hey, do you still want it?

Do you, you know, if my first book was about tech needs you, the second book is, you want tech?

And are we really understanding the changes in the environment and how does that affect you as employee?

So that's the pitch.

Now, the whole new part that I've wrote isn't particularly women-focused.

I do point out where the changes in the tech environment, especially over the last five years, have hurt women in my minorities.

greater percentage rate in terms of layoffs and programmatic shifts.

But the general shift I'm seeing to be quite gender neutral.

And I really wanted to write that too, to support everyone going through it.

Very much a group therapy edition.

Yeah, exactly.

That's also the impression I got skimming through your book.

And thanks again for the...

The advanced edition I got in my email uh the other day, definitely appreciate it.

And that was super helpful to prepare for the episode.

Yeah, same with the podcast, you start to get the ins.

Yeah, exactly.

And so something I was wondering about is, as someone who is, you know, adjacent to this Silicon Valley world, can you define what heart tech

here means for listeners and you've mentioned the the changes you've seen in these last five years with mass layoffs so can you also uh talk about that like how have these mass

layoffs impacted the the psychological mindset and mind and maybe of our trust of the remaining technical employees because um like this is so concentrated in one

space, geographical space that I'm guessing it's not because you got laid off that you necessarily get out of the Silicon Valley.

So still meet these people, see them and so on.

So yeah, I'm wondering how did that work?

So hard tech is a term popularized in the media now.

It's unclear the exact origins, but Mike Isaac from the New York Times wrote a whole article really popularizing the term.

to basically name two things that are happening in parallel.

Number one, a real shift in financing towards AI and core systems to enable really sort of the next technical chapter of evolution.

And at the same time, a real change in attitude towards the workforce in tech away from kind of, if you would.

If you want to talk about like uh a soft, nurturing, playful environment towards a this is wartime era, buckle down, um work nine hours a day for six days a week, right?

Like hard time, competition, environment, return to office, enough of the playtime.

So in parallel, kind of these two things happening.

And that alone would have already been a major shift for culture at these tech companies.

you know, to some degree, I think sometimes people have a little bit of like, oh, crybaby, rich people in Silicon Valley having to work hard, no more, you know, whatever the

popularized idea was that we were like surfing around on exercise balls with lava lamps, you know, whatever the kind of

hard idea of the playground we were working in.

The truth is we always were working quite hard and working around the clock.

But in an environment where there was a much bigger acceptance of failure, a much better programmatic support of systems to help us, whether it was well-being programs or the idea

of a flexible working day or whatever it is.

And

What's happened really that you'll see in these companies right now is a pretty abrupt shift in the last few years that happened in sync with the battle for AI, but also the

over hiring that happened during COVID leading to layoffs, where now it is a hyper competitive environment.

You could be fired anytime, work, work hard.

We can't even really tell you.

where the next round of cuts will come.

And we've cut all the programs because they're considered soft.

So no wellbeing, no DEI, can't even do it in the US because of executive orders anyway.

So keep on your toes, all of you are at risk.

Psychologically, do we perform best under those circumstances?

No, the answer is no.

When humans are under threat, our little animal brain just responds.

with life-saving measures, fight, flight, freeze.

So what you're seeing in these tech companies is a lot of fear and fear reactions.

We don't perform best under that.

We become highly political.

We become very cutthroat, very game of thrones.

You only get to kind of higher level thinking, our most creative brains, when we are psychologically safe.

And that has really been reduced during this period of time.

And a lot of employees are now sort of reckoning with that feeling, that stress, and trying to figure out what to do next.

Do you stay and make the best of it?

Do you change jobs, environments?

Is anywhere else going to be better?

Or do you just leave tech overall?

What do you do?

And I think that's all very interesting for this period of time.

Having started back when it was like, come here because we're different than traditional companies, to see

and comfortable circle and feel like, it's very traditional here now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is also like from, from my point of view, which is I know a lot of people in tech, but I've never been in there like per se.

This is very interesting for me to see these changes and from time to time disappointing changes, like a lot of the time as you were, as you were saying in the sense that they

were, yeah, what, what was making

the tech world and the Silicon Valley really something of its own.

And I still remember I visited Google main headquarters in Mountain View in 2012 when I was uh doing a summer school at Stanford.

And I remember that that was really incredible.

uh And that was when I really realized, damn, this somewhere.

I definitely love to work at some point in my life.

And what's interesting is that this was really

different.

This was really something that set Google apart from all the rest more traditional companies, know, especially from my parents' generation, for instance.

I still think these are great places to work.

I just think we have to understand that perhaps the story we were told about them is not what is actively happening.

You won't be able to join today.

have this beautiful La La Land where you can work on whatever you want, have 20 % free time to try new things.

No, like the environment is going to be like, you were hired to do this job, do this job and do it very, very well.

And we keep changing our performance system to change what very, very well means.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which can be like that last part.

mean, the first part that doesn't sound too weird to me.

The second part, yeah, is like if the definition of

very, very well changes too often, then that can be unsettling and also can put you in a psychological mindset where actually you don't perform at your best because you don't

really now know when the ground is gonna change under your feet.

So that can definitely be a problem.

can see where.

We've seen it from Metta saying they're changing their performance tracking system, right?

It's happening across tech because

what used to work isn't working for them anymore to continue to remain competitive and continue to grow at the rate that they want to.

So this gets very tied up into capitalism and why we always need hyper growth from these companies.

And I still think though that there are meaningful jobs there.

That feeling of it though can impact people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's interesting you're talking about.

that need for hyper growth.

I think we'll get back to that when I ask you about AI in a minute.

But I'm also curious, what do you think is behind the thinking that a lot of established leaders in that realm have been pushing harder for return to in-office work, despite I'm

seeing a lot of employee preference for flexibility, not only in tech, but everywhere.

And interestingly, I've seen

A lot of other companies outside of tech being much, much more flexible with that.

So I'm very curious, where does that come from?

Do you think it's tied to the topics we just talked about?

Well, you know, I wrote a whole section on this.

What do I think is behind it?

I think it is both simple and complicated.

The simple part is that everyone who has succeeded in leadership, exceeded, succeeded and exceeded expectations in a work from work world.

Their entire understanding of success and idea of opportunity is from sitting side by side with people, brainstorming ideas, often on the same whiteboard, having these aha moments

together.

And they simply cannot conceive of an environment and a competitive environment, particularly when you're trying to achieve results.

in an incredibly short period of time in a hyper competitive world where people are not together brainstorming for as many hours as possible.

They just cannot conceive of it.

That also means that they were the people that succeeded in that environment, which means they enjoyed it and were good at it.

So leadership is almost entirely filled with people who enjoyed and thrived in that environment and succeeded at it.

And much like when

you have people recommending that like you, your kids should do sports because sports teach you so much.

Well, those people were probably very good at sports because if you sucked at sports, you probably don't recommend sports because sports for you was terrible experience, right?

Just not getting picked for teams, learning resilience maybe, but like not positive elements of teamwork and confidence.

So similarly, you have the people who were the best players.

recomb, like deciding the game rules.

And so when push comes to shove and they're not seeing what they want to see, huge culprit is we're not all together.

Whether it's true or not, whether it's a little bit of like, you know, data, whether it's a little bit of, you know, assuming the data means certain causation, you know,

correlation causation fun.

Regardless, they're going to say, well,

We gotta get the team back together.

We gotta all be in one place to fight this battle and win this game.

And even things where they see data that doesn't match that would either be viewed as sort of special exceptions or necessary sacrifices because the majority, know, engineers aren't

coding as much.

Well,

It's too hard to solve the complicated systems problem or through 7 million managers try to like get the right management system involved for people who are remote.

No, the easier thing is get everyone back together.

And remember, this is all happening behind a really swift change in a talent environment where all of a sudden lots of companies are laying off people.

So if

You needed to, you could hire people who would move or who are local.

If you can't get, you know, you give these people a choice, move back where we can replace you, right?

This isn't as competitive a hiring environment as during COVID or previous years where we'd have to pay a ton more to replace you.

You're replaceable.

So yeah, that's what's going on.

They really believe it is best.

They absolutely believe it is best and they can do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense.

it's like two main factors, which is like first one is much more on the realm of belief than evidence-driven decision-making.

And second one is, even if whether that's true or not, we can do it now because the power structure has shifted.

So it will happen.

It'll happen.

Yeah.

Going back to, so talking about AI, which I mentioned a few minutes ago, like this is...

Obviously one of the of the new war if you want for for tech companies ah And this is definitely related to the need for hyper growth you were mentioning before how How do you

see these intense focus?

influence job priorities and resource allocation across the industry, so I think it's a very Very big question right now.

Not only for strategies like you but for tech people

like us, you know, modelers and builders and engineers, things like that.

It is hard to explain the night and day here.

Machine learning and AI concepts had been around for the last 20 years, slowly growing and slowly being leveraged for various issues.

It started to see it in the medical community, genome sequencing, like various, you were starting to see machines trained to solve problems while humans did their thing, slowly

gurgling away.

And it was really very research-based.

So if you talked to particular research engineers or research scientists or whatever, they were making a career of this.

And...

There had already been some automation involved with it, but very sort of rote automation, not believing like a machine could be trained on complex problem solving.

When ChatGPT launched their user focused product, it was the first time that really the imagination was captured by a broad set of people.

And overnight, remember this has been gurgling away for 20 years, overnight.

All the money rushed there.

Now why?

Number one, this was all of a sudden an existential question for lots of companies.

If you can use this for this, what else can you use it for?

And are we going to lose?

Is our entire business model built on something that could be replaced and replaced soon?

Because all of a sudden Chachi Buti gave people a way to think about it happening today.

Not tomorrow, not in the far off future.

And that was really needed in some way in the engineering community, because things had been getting a little boring.

I talk about this in the book, but like, really like engineers who love working on complex problems were getting a lot of the hard problems had been solved.

Now you're just like refining ad systems, trying to make more people click on social media.

So all of sudden.

People who really, like I watched at Google, people who had been trying to solve business problems be like, thank God, there is an actual technical problem.

And like all the excitement, all the attention, but also the funding moved towards how do you solve those problems?

And at the same time, separately,

The people who fund, who give their money towards business problems, both through the stock market, but also through venture funding, angel funding, et cetera, were like, okay,

what are you doing for AI?

So basically companies had to have their AI solution overnight and show that they were doing something.

And if you were startup, you better start saying you're an AI startup overnight.

So if everyone's wondering what the heck is going on, that's what happened.

Money, energy, focus, everything.

Teams reoriented.

If you look at Google, they just took all these people from other teams, put it into what became Gemini.

People who've been through it were like, I was called at 11 PM at night and told to show up in that building in the morning.

You were called up to the big leagues.

You're in sports.

You're in sports.

You were just called up.

And I guess what I would say also is that it was overnight and all consuming.

So the people who are working on the teams, an article just came out in Wall Street Journal, I think that's like, these people are working around the clock because what's the

opportunity costs of having some other company achieve AGI, which I think is pretty far off.

Hey everybody.

But what's the opportunity costs if you miss it and you believe and you could have, it could have been you.

So good times.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

These, these opportunity costs thing.

Definitely makes sense, like even from like from an incentive perspective, you know, even if everybody thinks there is a very, very small chance that it's going to happen.

If the chance is still over zero, then you'd rather your company to make that happen.

And if you are a research engineer, research scientist, one of these people that had been toiling away in obscurity, working on these problems for years.

and all of a sudden someone gives you a billion dollars.

This is play time.

So it is both grueling, but for some people it is a dream, right?

All of a sudden their thing that wasn't sexy is incredibly sexy.

oh So for some people it's drudgery and for other people it is the change of a lifetime.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so if we, if we dezoom a bit and

and talk a bit more about people who are much more my audience, you know.

There is, so there is still a lot of very, there is a lot of noise around what AI is going to do.

What are the impacts going to be?

I'm curious to get your thoughts about how as AI takes up simpler coding tasks, you know, the simple coding tasks.

the boring things that everybody had to do before it was here.

What specialized non-basic skills do you think data professionals like us should develop for long-term relevance?

So my general message is that I do think as you've hinted at, simple tasks are going to be replaced by machines.

And I think that is

hard because a lot of times when you're entry level, that was your job.

So I think a lot of the gearing towards even what entry level is will shift towards more complex tasks.

So if you had really made the beginning of your career or your career around simple calculations, simple analysis, whatever it was,

I think that you are going to have to upskill on more complex tasks where more human judgment is needed.

I think what's really interesting about AI is it's only as good as it's trained.

And I think because of that, we still see issues when it comes to having the judgment.

It will think all data is equal in a way that a human will have.

live adaptation or live understanding of.

And while you then could keep training and, and by the way, this is complex and expensive and it requires people with skillset in exactly that field, which could be you, to train

AI to say, well, no, like this type of data should be treated with this weighting versus this weighting.

This is what people expect when you ask it an answer.

The more niche you get into a field, the more expensive or unlikely I think it is to be solved by AI in the near term.

So that's why you're seeing a lot of basic coding, basic data analysis be generally answerable by AI now.

But as you start to get more complex into the medical field, the sports field, like you are, wherever you are,

the less likely it's going to be to be specifically trained or answered in that field.

And I don't think, again, this might be forever.

So there is a possibility that over time you'll see that shift.

But I think in any case, right now, when you're thinking about job replacement, it really is entry-level simple tasks.

And again, I will emphasize anywhere where true human adaptability, human judgment,

responding to complexity is needed.

It is not good at that right now.

I think you've probably even seen it as you use it for your job.

However, I think it's really useful to try to leverage it for speeding up your simple tasks, making yourself more efficient.

If you run your own business or you're at work and you want to be able to get more done, if you're just resisting using it for simple tasks, I'm not sure why.

Right?

Like it can really speed up your everyday.

I use it to draft initial emails for myself and then I refine the emails versus me staring at a blank page.

I train it on things other, you know, are generally used for book launches.

And then I ask it for a press announcement, right?

Like there's just like things you can do with it to speed up your day right now.

And I think if you're looking to give yourself an edge as a professional, you should really

be doing that versus avoiding it, even if you think it could replace you down the road.

That's not now, and maybe not ever.

So let's not bet against it.

Now there are people telling crazy stories about like, it'll replace all human jobs and humans will just be paid a stipend.

I encourage you also to use the tools to see just how far away we are from that.

You will immediately realize that that is science fiction, at least right now.

And you've got plenty of time to make money for now.

Yeah, Although, I mean, it depends how big the stipend is, but you know, I could be game for that.

Like, you give me a stipend, I can live with that.

I don't have to, you know, tolling.

I can do whatever I want.

I'm damn for that.

Interesting questions about what humans become if they could just...

Would it spur the next round of creativity?

Or would we become horrible, demonic creatures?

Hard to know.

Um, very interesting existential questions there.

I am just saying it's not soon.

Sorry.

Apologies.

Alex, you will have to continue.

Damn, Alana.

need to keep working.

Yeah, but I think I really love the way you're framing that and in the book, you go in details, you interview all these, all these brained women.

So definitely give the book a read.

Folks here were just scratching the surface, but you can see Alana has a lot of, of depth and things to say about that.

Opinions.

have opinions.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but they are very informed.

I think that's it's very interesting.

I have a lot of footnotes, everyone.

I have a lot of footnotes to back me up.

I know who I'm talking to people.

You do, you do.

And so I will again refer listeners to episode that that's actually 146, not 147 with Jordan, Jordan Thibodeau.

We talked about that a bit more technically and I shared a bit.

what I, I, the way I use the VII tools in my workflow.

So if you're interested in that for more technical and concrete part of you refer to that.

Here, will say that I really like the way you're framing it.

Just basically to summarize, I understood correctly what you said, basically just use it because it's a new technology that appeared.

Like when Excel appeared, I'm sure people thought it was, it would replace jobs and I'm sure it did.

uh

But it's because it was solving a pain point and then people adapted and we were using Excel to do the boring stuff from before and then use it to do better things on top of

that.

Same thing when Python arrived, know, Python programming languages and so on.

It was the same once we've gone through everything we could from Excel, then we started using Python and now it's one step above.

So definitely not resisting it, I think is...

Very important.

um I can see that in a lot of jobs where now it's not only what you can do, but how you can augment what you do with the AI tools.

This is extremely important.

I mean, none of us are sad.

Oh, sorry, just to plug in, like none of us are sad that we don't have to always create our own pie charts now.

None of us are sad that like technology were auto correct our bad spelling.

Like we do live adapt to these things.

And I think that a lot of the AI fear under credits human adaptation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, completely.

think we almost always underestimate the capacity we have to adapt to a new situation.

And I mean, these, brains are weird like that.

We're the state, the status quo and what feels familiar always feel less stressful than

what is new and unfamiliar, even if what is unfamiliar is going to be better in the end.

it's definitely a buzz with am currently afraid, Fy, I sent out an email yesterday that AI helped me correct.

I forgot to remove M dashes from it because I use M dashes.

You know what those are?

Just the Y dashes that everyone's now like, oh, that's AI.

So now I'm like, oh, did those people get my email and just archive it because they thought it was AI?

But I really use them, Dash.

Yeah, me too.

I love them.

I use them all the time.

I'm so sad.

Yeah, yeah.

Even in French, that's much more um common in English, but now I use them all the time in French and in Spanish too uh because...

I mean, it's a different level.

I like it because it's like, it's kind of an adjacent thought to what you just said, but you don't want to put that in a parenthesis because you want to signal that it's still

important.

And so I think it's a very, very interesting punctuation.

you naturally interrupt yourself all the time, it's very useful.

Wait, but I need to tell you this.

Okay, now we're back to my main point.

I'm so sad about the dash thing.

Anyway, the crisis, the true crisis is the dash crisis.

All right.

for sure.

This will be the title of the episode, by the way, Bring Back the The M- crisis.

so, but yeah, like basically viewing that as a new technology and using it, I think it's a much more sane way and not overthinking what it's going to do.

And also I think honestly, when I'm in the hiring position, so not the person interviewing, but the person

hiring, I think it's also very interesting to me, for me to see also what this person, what the person in front of me do with the new AI tools, because it's signals to me how

open to innovation they are, how adaptive they are, how much they like to learn new things, how curious they are.

And I think it's like, it's usually a good signal if you can show that.

In interview, know, like you're not believing in it like a religious person, but you're using it, you're trying things out, you're seeing what you like, what you don't like, and

you're able to talk through that.

I think this is a much, much, much better signal than a candidate who would tell me, no, I'm not using that because I think it's bullshit.

It makes mistakes or something like that.

Well, also I would say that if I were someone running a corporation now and hiring people, I would want to see that you understand its failure points too.

that this is an employee who's going to maybe leverage it, but understand they need to check it.

Because we're certainly seeing stories about people just wrote even our government like using it and not check it.

Are these citations real?

Does this data actually calculate?

And so if I were hiring now, I would want to say you figured that out.

I would want to see that you figured that out and you have a system for yourself of absolutely leveraging it.

for your tasks, but applying judgment to it.

Yes, definitely.

Very good point.

You know where it succeeds, but you also know where it doesn't.

And that's basically what you do with models.

It's also the way I interview people and understand if they really understand the models is if they can show me and explain to me where they think

the model is failing because it's always going to fail in some dimension.

And so this is very, very informative to me usually.

So that's AI.

I encourage people to read the book because you talk about that in even more, even more depth, but also obviously It is like three pages, just to be clear.

It's not an AI.

No, no, for sure.

Yeah.

But it does transpire in some interviews.

mean, because now it's, yeah, because it's like-

It's a tool and it's a tool everybody uses right now.

So it's, it's interesting to see how the people you interview view that and use that.

So definitely, definitely give that a read.

Also, what I'm interesting to hear you talk about is, well, diversity, because that's, that's also one of the impetus of your first edition is diverse representation.

How critical that is in AI development to

prevent systemic bias, also what the cost of under-representation is.

So yeah, I'm curious how, yeah, what are your thoughts on that and how have they evolved maybe between the first and the second edition?

Well, my primary thought is the same, which is if you are going to have successful technology, the people working on it have to reflect the whole world.

Why?

When only certain people build things.

you will absolutely see the failure points correlate with their blind spots.

And there's lots of examples of this entire books written, even in the medical field, we're just getting around to studying medical impacts on the women's body because for

years they just focused on the man's body and thought it was the same.

So we have major failure points, blind spots, when we don't actually involve

more people in the design and creation of the products.

You've seen cameras that can't adequately take photos of dark colored skin.

You've seen cars that don't really keep people safe for all body types.

It's just human nature.

We design for what we know.

And if we are truly going to build products that help humanity, we will

have a broader representation in who's in the room.

You also won't think of products that truly solve human problems if you don't have diverse representation in the room.

I think you're actually seeing that gap in tech today where we are not seeing as many creative products and creative solutions because the people in the room are somewhat

static, solving for certain problems.

particularly money-making products.

If you want to make a billion dollars, there's only so many things you can do.

And a lot of them honestly prey upon human addiction or human gaming impulses, not necessarily true problems that solve optimizing food shortages, optimizing water, right?

Like solving true problems of the human race.

So I absolutely think

you need diversity in the room to even think of the right things and then to address them properly.

I think right now, because of various things, we are not seeing that commitment the way we did maybe five years ago in tech companies.

Some of it has to do with U.S.

government issues.

But I think even if that was taken away, the programs that had been invested in

weren't necessarily leading to effective solutions yet or like measurable effective solutions.

And I think they might've gotten defunded over time anyway.

So I think that we're still sort of battling the fact that human nature is you hire who you know.

When things are ultra competitive and you have a surplus of talent, you are definitely gonna hire who you know because...

even though 200 people are applying to every role, now you have a problem getting through all those resumes, figuring out who's good.

You're definitely going to like referrals and introductions even more during that period of time, right?

Like to help you surf through the clutter and the noise.

And then the machine keeps going.

There's also a little bit of a fun backlash against softness in tech right now, like hard tech era.

And softness is associated with feminine qualities.

So softness, I don't know, actual emotional talent, uh collaboration, right?

Like, you know, like working with people, worrying about wellbeing because you don't want people to burn out, soft skills, even the name soft skills, like.

innately understanding what's happening and intuition and all of these kinds of things.

And now it's like hardness, we heard Zuckerberg on podcasts, like, gotta compete.

So we're back to kind of the male dominated feeling right now.

I think it's going to be like a cycle because honestly, it never worked to begin with and people are just kind of forgetting it during this hyper competitive period of time.

I'm hearing so many stories of burnout that I think will probably cycle back to a little bit of the softness in not too long, but you're weathering this right now.

And it's hurting diversity too.

A lot of the layoffs hit women and minorities because they were the last folks in and a lot of them were hired into non-technical facing roles because the technical pipeline is

still low.

So.

a little bit of a low point right now.

But I think we just keep going.

The only option is forward.

during this period of time, there'll be mostly survivors of the current system.

But over time, we can keep trying.

And I also think it could be a great time for innovation, because so many people aren't landing at the big tech companies, and they might strike out on their own.

And with AI available, you can really

get to prototype and beyond way easier than you used to with very low funding.

So I, you know, I don't know.

I'm chosen to be a little excited, even though it kind of sucks for diversity right now.

A lot of women and minorities who fought for change only temporary got it or didn't get it at all.

And that is a little depressing, but I think it's just one stage.

Keep going.

True, true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Really like that.

That was a very long answer, but you asked me about So what do expect?

yeah, it's a complicated question and you've got a whole book where you talk about that.

I mean, I have whole book on it.

But yeah, I mean, I still think it's super important.

I think we've forgotten that it's important and I think that people will see it.

now, obviously, if you're training AI and you don't take this into account, you're going to have blind spots and we're already seeing it.

Yeah.

Something I'm also curious to hear you about is, yeah, like, so you've been, you've been talking about these, these evolutions here and I'm curious how, how do you advise

technical talent to best position themselves near like the core revenue makers to maybe increase the chance that their roles are deemed essential during cost cutting cycles and

it's related to

everything you just talked about.

talk about this in my book.

Listen, you can have different goals in your career.

And I think not everyone needs to stay safe, especially if you have a life where you could weather layoffs here or there or down cycles.

However, if you are concerned about staying employed, if you've got a visa, if you've got

family to support if you are trying to pay off student loans, right?

Whatever your situation is, I highly recommend understanding how your company makes money and staying close to it.

A lot of the initial things cut are always going to be the fluff.

And whether you loved it, whether it was the most exciting thing you've ever worked on, whether-

It could have done X, Y, and Z if only they'd stuck with it.

It doesn't matter if it's not a revenue generator right now.

And I think a lot of people join tech and they want to work on the sexy thing.

They want to work on the fun thing.

And that just has risks.

Understand the risks.

If it is a pet project of the CEO, if it is something exploratory, if...

It is creative more than it is a moneymaker.

It could get cut and you could work for something for two years, three years, five years and poof, it's gone the next day.

And I think there's certain people who kind of love that.

They're just in it for the adventure.

They're in it for the research, for the experience.

And there's other people who need it to launch, who need it to matter and are.

heartbroken when things like that happen.

Like know who you are and know what you want to do.

And I sort of tell a story without a name in the book about EM who really built their career around knowing how the ad auction system worked.

And you have to imagine that that's incredibly unsexy.

And yet it was the thing that made money, right?

And that guy still has a job.

all these years later, and he probably always will, because he knows how the secret sauce works.

He knows how that thing works.

And I think other people trotted off and did adventurous things, and results will vary.

Understand there is risk in that.

Now, is your job perfectly safe if you were close to the ret...

No, no job is perfectly safe.

They could decide to take 10 % haircuts across the board, but...

Being a strong performer near the revenue is your best bet for security.

Sorry, I badly timed the end of that.

No, no, no, that makes a ton of sense.

I'm also, so again, yeah, you talk about that in the book and I'm really curious also what your advice is for tech professionals to build resilience in front of so much uncertainty.

As we've been talking about during the whole episode.

don't want people to leave the episode depressed and pessimistic.

So I'm curious what you recommend.

There's so much opportunity.

You shouldn't be depressed.

Well, I mean, you shouldn't stay depressed.

Yeah, for sure.

Here's what I have noticed after years.

listen, there's a whole section on resilience in the book as well.

What I have noticed is that there's always going to be things in organizations or in your career that push you through the change curve.

And you can go look up change curve on your favorite search engine.

I accept whatever it is.

And it's going to show you a really simple picture of like basically you going down or wait, we have to go this way.

Maybe because I'm reversing people going down in mood and then back up.

And what you're basically going through is that, you know, people are familiar with it and maybe the 12 stages of grief or the stages of acceptance.

But initially when change hits us, we're gonna be in shock.

Then we are gonna go into anger.

Then we hit apathy.

The trough of disillusionment is what sometimes it's called.

Then you start to come back up and you start to get hopeful.

And then you see possibility.

To build resilience, you are gonna have to be able to go through all of those stages and come out the other side.

Resilience is about building the muscle that helps us get back up after we fall.

Sometimes resilience is also a little bit about being able to avoid, like see it coming and avoid.

But initially, what you just need to be able to build is the muscle for dealing with it.

And I see some people and it could be at any stage of their career because either they've been able to avoid or they've been lucky or whatever it is, but they've had a pretty good

run and they hit that first real hiccup, whether it's first layoff, the first bad review on their performance, the first product that didn't launch well, whatever it was, and they

don't have the muscle to get back up.

Now, some people had a really hard youth and they come in and be like, whatever, you would throw anything at me.

But other people, it could happen anytime in their life.

And so at that moment where you are struggling to get back up, if it's been weeks, give yourself days.

Days is normal.

Everyone goes through the stages.

Just try not to write any angry emails when you're on the first part of the change curve.

Just, just give yourself some grace, complain with people, eat some ice cream on the couch.

It's like going through a breakup.

Give yourself that grace.

But if you're still stuck in there weeks and months later and you haven't made it through the apathy, whether it's colleagues, mentors, if you believe in therapy, I love therapy.

If you have coaching, there's sometimes free services available, right?

Especially through your employer.

If you're not getting through that, I do highly suggest others to help you because a lot of it has to do with how we're talking to ourselves in our head.

And until we start to say it out loud, we don't get through it.

Until we start to release some of that anger, some of that apathy, some of that disappointment, we don't get through it.

And I've talked to people who are still years past their layoff who haven't gotten through it.

So you really need to work on it and find your way through it.

Now there is some natural stuff where you might be okay and then you go backwards.

That's natural, but you just have to be able to get

back forwards, right?

So like, you'll be okay, but then you'll be okay, but then you'll see someone get promoted and you'll be like, I'm angry again.

Totally normal.

If you don't feel yourself be able to move forward through it, that's where you have to work to build the resilience.

Yeah.

So I love it.

And I love these, these chapters in the book.

think this is extremely important, extremely helpful and very concrete.

So yeah, thank you so much for writing that down.

and talking about it here.

uh Personally, this is also the way I've coped with disappointments and setbacks in my life.

And something that has been very helpful has been uh Stoic philosophy.

uh An author I really like is Ryan Holiday.

He has a bunch of books about Stoic philosophy in the modern way, if you want of interpreting it.

One of his most

known book is the obstacle is the way.

Definitely recommended for people, especially when you're going through a rough patch, it can definitely help you.

And yeah, as you were saying, lot of reframing is extremely helpful.

seeing the obstacle as something that makes you stronger and that's- I might be on the opposite side of Stoicism because I've decided the best way to think through this is to

think of it like-

you're breaking up with a bad boyfriend to like hyper-personalize it actually, because I think we do and we don't accept it.

And then we keep trying to talk ourselves out of being disappointed in this bad relationship with our employer because we should be smarter than that.

No, it's a relationship.

We spend so much time at work.

So I'll have to read.

I'll have to see whether I'm opposite or right on track.

I don't know.

Yeah.

No, I think, I think you're, I think you're really close to it.

em

The issue I think stoicism has is that in English, you talk about stoicism small s or stoicism capital S.

And most people think about stoicism small s, which is basically like, oh yeah, you need to toughen up and have a stiffer per leaf, Which is definitely not what I recommend.

that's not what- Yeah, I don't think you're going to brute force your way through it.

No, no, no.

some point you'll think you have-

forced your way through it and then you'll be yelling at someone in a McDonald's because you never dealt with your anger.

Right.

Yes, exactly.

yeah, so the stoic philosophy, so stoicism with a capitalist would be much more empathetic in the first step where it's like, yeah, that definitely sucks, you know, that's a shame

that it happened.

But actually, maybe it's not a shame, you know, like in the second...

in the second- There's value to it.

Yeah, exactly.

And the second step is, well, actually, you know, maybe it's a good thing it happened to you because it's going to make you stronger in that sense.

uh You've learned that already and maybe it's going to be much better down the road.

And you'll realize that this obstacle was your way, was what made you stronger.

And as you talked about your metaphor of this is a breakup,

How many people have you met who told you, actually that breakup was the best thing that happened to me.

You know, it happens a lot.

And I don't think it's like, so usually it's not, it's because these people took the steps for that to be something good.

Like you still have to take action and make that something good.

And that was actually one of the best thing that happened to you, because it can definitely be one of the worst thing that happened to you.

If you, you know, just stay in your couch.

eating ice cream and just hating everybody.

But there is another handle, there is a way out.

that's usually, so that's like, yeah, basically in a nutshell, uh stoic philosophy.

love it.

We're on the same page.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it's extremely helpful for sure.

Yeah.

As you were saying, there is always at least two handle to a situation.

Try and always take the handle that's more useful.

That's going to make you move forward at some point.

At the beginning, it's going to say again, you won't want to move forward and see the positive in that, then that's fine.

But then you'll want to then do that.

So another thing I think also that's very interesting in the book is I found that very, very astute.

I had never thought about that, but you make an interesting point that many women prioritize interesting rewards like learning or balance over titles.

And I'm wondering if you can talk to us about how can companies research your career progression to recognize these diverse ambitions?

Yeah, it's interesting.

mean, obviously when we talk about these things, they're generalizations and I've, I've met women who would absolutely prioritize title.

So it is not necessarily a absolute, but what you find a lot with, at least what I found when I was interviewing women.

is that they would talk way more about growth or value or, you know, did I like, did I value this?

Did I feel valued?

And sometimes very much regardless of the title.

And it's interesting because I do think companies sort of love that if they can get employees like that, because it's hard to have every single employee constantly want to

get promoted and get a new title.

Um, but on the other hand, I don't think that they always invest in progression, other progression.

Like the main ways that you can show that you value an employee are through salary or overall comp promotion.

Like those are the main ways.

silence.

Right?

Like those are kind of like your main tools as a manager and.

You can then get a culture which is hyper-focused on those two things, which actually did happen at Google over time.

Because if you hire all the employees over the years who got A++s and then you put them in an environment where the main way they continue to get A++s is through comp increases and

great ratings and promotions tied to those things.

You get people hyper-focused on those things, doing only things to get those three things.

That is just like a natural, that it's just a natural progression.

And you will still have people kind of in the middle, valuing these other intrinsic benefits, but you haven't given your manager suite a really strong tool set to do that.

And I think it's interesting because sometimes during the hard times, programs get cut, right?

How much are you investing in corporate training or ongoing training, coaches and ongoing coaches, opportunities for them to go to conferences, opportunities for them to speak at

conferences, right?

Like how much are you continuing to vest on those things if you feel like there are hard times?

It's an interesting question, but I think some of those opportunities help this set feel valued.

Also things where they can like,

switch roles, change roles, get a different perspective on things in a much more fluid way, right?

Not necessarily coming with a title, well, maybe like a title changes because they change teams, but not like a level change in the organization.

How much does your comp system value ongoing performance at a level?

Which I do think

Google did actually fairly well, but like how much can people continue to move if they're not moving level?

Lots of things.

It's, and I guess maybe one of the most important things, which is undervalued is like, you giving people good managers that actually care about them?

Because I think you have another question about this, but I'll just blend in.

I was going to ask you exactly about that.

Just after.

One number one things is, do I have a good relationship with my manager?

do I feel like they value me?

And especially in hard times where you want results, I think sometimes that diminishes.

And then all of those players who would actually do the best thing for the company, regardless of title, feel undervalued by their management and leave.

And then what you've got left are the politically motivated people who may or may not deliver results, depending on kind of their just overall ability and perspective.

So it is a really interesting thing.

You want those players.

They often are A players.

They just don't behave like you expect A players to behave.

So you in your head think they're B or C players, but they're not.

Often they're the ones getting stuff done because they really care.

And you absolutely need those people.

And I think unfortunately, sometimes they're the people who have the hardest roles to describe because they're surfing around cleaning up everyone else's messes.

They're being the glue.

They're finding out things that other people aren't finding out.

And I think really figuring out your system of understanding those people and rewarding them is critical to your company's success.

I love them.

I spent a lot of time on them, but I think it is a subtle art because often the tools you were given as a manager, you would have to augment personally, right?

Like you wouldn't necessarily just buy

the corporate position, if you didn't find the conference, if you didn't invite the person yourself, if you didn't essentially act like a sponsor and bring them into the room

yourself, no one would tell you to do it.

You have to step up.

Yeah.

These topics are so important and also very, very dear to me.

um Completers on it with everything you just said here.

And to dive a bit deeper.

into the manager topic, which is a big one.

And then I'll stop playing this out because you've already been very generous with your time, but there is a very interesting part in your book, which I reasoned at personally

with, uh not only personally, but also I know a lot of people who've had manager troubles.

And you explain in that part that most employees leave roles due to managers.

Not another reason, but managers.

So what?

Do you recommend listeners to do what critical questions should candidates and employees ask to vet a potential supervisor?

This one's always a little hard.

I'll give the reasons why it's hard and then I'll actually answer the question.

Number one, managers are in fact the hand of the company.

You are seeing the man.

They could be a woman, but I'm just saying like,

They are the representative you have been given of the company, of the corporate will.

Managers will wear different faces of this, some stern, some friendly, but underneath it, you should know that that is what they are.

They are not your best friend.

They are not your mom.

They can only protect you so much from the will of the company.

And I think sometimes we want too much from them.

We place all our other expectations of authority figures in our lives on those managers.

And I think it's just healthy to understand the sort of limits of what a manager can do and will do given their role in the company.

Often they only have so much power, but on the other hand, you can also feel like they have too much power over judging your performance.

and giving you a rating, deciding your salary, all of these kinds of things.

But usually that's all within frameworks they don't control.

So just understand a little bit of the context there.

I think secondly, what's hard about it is that managers will, when you are interviewing them or interviewing with them, they might say the right thing.

You won't know until you get it.

whether they really do it or not.

But things that you can feel out are when you are talking to them, do they seem to really know what they're talking about?

Like if they're interviewing you for a role, do they seem to have very surface level knowledge of what it is you would be doing, in depth knowledge of it?

Like where are they on that?

I would say a healthy zone.

is to have a really good under, somewhere in the middle, to have a really good understanding of what it is, but have left the details up to their employees.

If you see really like surface level knowledge, the flag there is that they will never truly understand what you do, and therefore they will be very subject to the whims of

whatever they're told.

If someone says they love you, great.

If someone says they hate you, uh-oh.

Like they will have no understanding.

Now, you might like that because then you get to tell them whatever you want.

Just know you will have to manage up more because they are highly subjectable to what other people tell them.

The person too close to work who knows everything might really micromanage you.

I like the data this way, presented in this format.

If you hate that, red flag.

If you love it, great, whatever.

Like, if you hate that, just red flag for you, right?

I think middle is great because middle, will know enough to protect you.

They will know enough to like call BS if someone complains about something that is absolutely exactly what you should have done, but they will give you space to grow and do

your job and just guide you where necessary.

You can also poke at that.

You can poke at, hey, how do you give out assignments?

How do you, you know, what do you expect?

What is your perfect relationship with an employee?

Um, what kind of meetings, you know, do do a weekly one-on-one, right?

It's feel out kind of what their rhythm is and make sure it matches your style.

Beyond that, if you can, I actually suggest just like, if you can, like if you're at the company and it would be easy to talk to a team member on that team, if you happen to know

people.

Beyond that, I actually really suggest trying to get a feel for the team outside of that person because I don't think there's too much you can feel out.

without doing that.

That's my advice.

Just kind of try to get the rhythm and understand what they expect.

And honestly, just pay attention.

Like if they say stuff that's like, this is a hard driving round the clock culture, believe them.

Cause that's like the number one thing I see is like people kind of like glossing over that and then being surprised that they're getting 11 PM pings from their boss.

I mean, the person told you.

Believe them.

Right.

And if you're not sure what that means, ask, oh, okay, you said hard driving.

What does that mean?

Right.

Like I'm curious.

Does that mean like you expect weekend work?

Like, what does that look like?

But don't glaze over critical clues.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, that makes, that makes a ton of sense.

And completely agree with that.

To me too, the managers in the middle of the spectrum, as you're talking about are the, yeah, the most,

the most valuable to me and the way I enjoy working the most.

But it will depend for sure on your character, maybe even more on where you are in your career.

I'm guessing that maybe if you're a junior, you may want a bit more hand handling, hand holding, sorry.

Or if you're brand new to a field, right?

Like you've never worked in X before.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so that, but yeah, after, after some point I know, like...

much handholding is way too much for me.

I really love it when I have a manager who is very keen to, let's say, PhD supervisor.

I come to them when I'm stuck and then in five minutes they ask me a question and I'm like, yeah.

Did you check this out?

Or, know, they can tell me, yeah, I've tried that, I don't know, two years ago or six months ago.

It's not going to work, but maybe you can look into that direction.

I didn't have time at the time, but I think it's promising.

This is super valuable to me.

And I know these kind of managers are the ones I enjoy the most and they're hard to find in my experience.

They're hard to find.

And here's why it's hard to find.

I'm just going to bottom line it.

What you're really looking for is a manager.

who trust themselves enough to trust you.

So they believe that if they hire you, they made the right choice.

And all they have to do is lightly guide you because they trust that they made the right choice.

Now, if you're more junior, they might put you through a training program or if you're new to it, they might put you through a training program.

But fundamentally, what you're looking for are signs of systematic lack of trust.

If the person is like, oh, I like to have standups every day to keep the team on track,

Unless it's a code yellow, unless it's like a fire, you mean your normal operation is to check on your employees every single day?

To me, that's a system of systematic lack of trust.

So what you're watching for, because that is honestly, when employees leave, it's that they ended up having a relationship with their manager where there was no trust and the

person both wasn't trusted, but didn't trust their manager as a result.

And

They just frankly built a terrible relationship.

And so you want to look right from the start, there are signs that this person has the capacity to trust.

And if you see signs that they need either 100 % control because they don't trust that they made the right calls or they ever trust their people, that is a red flag for me,

unless you really like that form of operational rigor.

I think that

The number one problem I see with managers is actually lack of confidence where for whatever reason.

You mean in themselves?

In themselves.

It conveys as lack of trust in everyone else.

But really what it is is, know, they don't really know what they're doing or they think they don't know what they're doing.

And therefore they're very subject to the whims and whimsies of everyone around them.

And then they don't.

provide you air cover because they don't trust themselves in having picked you and believing that you did what you said.

And it just suckled.

just, was obviously super confident, maybe too confident.

my people had the other issue, but I deal with my hyper confidence, but I've seen the other thing and, it really is insipid.

ends up degrading the person's job over time and then they leave.

Yeah.

No, I can definitely see that for sure.

These are some very, very good points you're making and hopefully that will help everybody listening to you right now in their If everyone just went to therapy, that's all I'm

saying, Alex.

If everyone just went to therapy, it would all work out.

Completely.

Yes, yeah.

That's what I'm doing.

That's what I'm saying also all the time.

It's so good.

At worst, you have a regular session where you get to whine about whatever you want.

At best, like you're really leaving with some like great gut checks on yourself or some different ways to think about it or whatever.

I love it.

I love it so much.

Listen, it's not affordable to everyone, but if it is.

No, for sure.

If you're in Europe, this is much more affordable folks.

I talk from experience, so do it.

the US, I talk from experience too, it's much harder.

While health insurance is a mess in the US, different US companies actually do fund through

Lyra or other types of programs, at least a certain number of free sessions.

And so if you're particularly in a troubled moment, I definitely would look into that.

I'm so sneaky.

I'm so sneaky.

Okay, so what I'm basically saying is, listen, I know a lot of the programs that supported, whether it was like diversity or well-being or whatever is your like sort of

pet peeve slash issue, like your thing that you would have thought that

companies could have comprehensively solved and they haven't.

um It might not be happening right now.

And so what I'm saying is like, don't give up on it.

Just continue to fight the battle yourself to whatever degree you can.

You don't have to spend a ton of time on it, even if it's just mentoring one person, even if it's just inviting friends to do yoga with you, colleagues to do yoga with you, like

invest in it to whatever degree you want to invest in it.

and continue on the path of your career and be in the room.

Be in the room when the decisions are being made.

If you stay in the room and you continue to excel at your day job, you will probably be positioned over time when the investment environment shifts to help make these decisions.

And it will not be easy.

There's nothing about this that I'm saying is easy.

But I'm just saying when things get tough, that isn't a message to give up.

It's just a message to change approach.

And the previous approach didn't work or endure.

So what's next?

And I think what's next is a lot of us individually doing a lot of good things.

If you just know good people from diverse backgrounds,

and you can recommend them for jobs, you're playing a role.

And honestly, it may have been more effective than some of the programs that were trying to do this centrally because they didn't always leverage individual ability that way.

So I don't know.

I just say get Wiley.

Be there and keep doing the right thing, right?

Keep speaking up when you think the product design is leaving people out.

Right?

Like keep recommending the right people for the right jobs.

Right?

No one can stop you from doing the good thing.

And so I think just keep it up bit by bit.

Like way before the programs were just a bunch of us doing that.

And it got us to the point where we got to try the programs.

And so yeah, those didn't work, but just keep going.

Right?

Don't give up.

Yeah.

True.

Yeah.

You're very much aligned with Stoic philosophy.

Okay.

I'm a Stoic now.

Yeah.

This is very much also my way of thinking, I'm very happy to hear that.

will put actually one of the...

Put links so I follow up too.

I got to read more.

Yeah, exactly.

I'll put some ask me your two final questions.

I have prepared for this.

Yes, I know, I know.

I am going to do that.

So I'll put Ryan Olyday's books in the show notes and of course all your socials and so on.

First though, as you're saying, last two questions.

Ask everyone at the end of the show.

First one, if you had unlimited time and resources, which problem would you try to solve?

I can't pick one, but I'm fascinated by where right now.

There are problems that weren't solved because there weren't technical solutions and there is a weird culture built up around them.

So my example is airplane control towers.

I right now can imagine AI that helps say, hey, that plane is getting pretty close to that other plane or that plane's on a path that could intersect and

not making the judgment necessarily yet to warn, auto warn, you could do that.

But I think it could be presented to the very tired human in the control tower to decide what to do.

However, there's a really interesting, what would I call it?

Like hazing culture in the training pipeline for airline controllers, which is why partially there are so few of them.

I bet that culture wouldn't receive automation and AI very well.

Just my little guess.

Because A, is it replacing humans, which would be the fear.

But B, I did this for 50 years this way.

Right, like you can imagine it.

I'm fascinated by that.

If I had unlimited time, like that's like one of the problems I would pursue.

Because why?

You know, modern humanity, we could do better.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

True.

really love that.

I would love some of the stuff I mentioned earlier, food, water, just places where we have such inefficiencies on food waste, but then people are hungry.

Places where there isn't enough water and we're not taking weather patterns seriously.

And yet there's like flooding other places.

I just, I just, I love that stuff.

I love it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can see that.

can definitely see that.

I'm sure listeners can hear it.

Last question.

If you could have dinner with any grand scientific mind, dead, alive or fictional, who would it be?

This was so hard.

This was so hard.

I literally had to ask AI to give me a list because like I'm not one of these people that is like a super fan.

So I just didn't, I didn't have, I was like, any, what?

Are you kidding me?

Throw me anybody.

So I had to, I had to go to AI anyway.

And I first looked at like factual real people and I was like, I don't know.

And then I looked up fictional ones, because you said fictional too.

And on that list was Dr.

Temperance Bones Brennan from Bones.

And I was such a Bones fan.

I mean, I don't think I would want to spend that much time with Bones, literally.

But I loved the whole idea of that.

That like here she was in like a special government role, which was literally to take like the hardest cases.

and like build a whole story off of the bones.

And even though she's a little bit of an awkward person, I think I would just, I would love talking to her.

So that's it.

But I don't know, you literally could throw me, throw me Marie Curie.

I don't care, any of them.

I don't think I would be enormously awkward with anybody because I'm an introvert, but I would, I would take any opportunity.

Anybody.

I learned something from anybody.

Yeah, great answer.

really love it.

You're the first one to answer Dr.

Temperance.

that's great.

That's a woman too.

I looked at the ladies.

did.

looked at the ladies.

I asked AI for the ladies, but I don't know.

literally give me Louis Pasteur.

I don't care.

It all sounds interesting to me.

Edison.

I see.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

Edison would be fun because Edison you'd be like...

Did you really do it all or did you steal?

No, anyway.

Yeah, like you'll have all the links in the show notes.

Also, if people want to follow you and dig deeper, is your website, sub stack, LinkedIn, Instagram.

So yeah, folks, feel free to follow Alena, contact her.

uh I think you've heard enough to hear that it's worth your time.

And on that note, thanks again, Alena, for taking the time and being on this show.

This has been another episode of Learning Bayesian Statistics.

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Alex Andora.

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